I’m having an annoying issue with screen captures - it might not necessarily be the Second Life client, but I’m not sure. I’ve opened a bug report with Linden Labs. Torley has been real helpful in trying to track it down. It seems to have started with the last 1.15 release maybe. I’m getting an ugly black band across the center of a high res screen capture. It makes a screen capture pretty much useless. I’m going to tinker around more with it to see if it might be anything with my system or the client.

Has anyone else seen this sort of thing before or currently? There are some JPEG2000 capture shots in the bug report. If you need a viewer for JPEG2000, try IrFanView - it’s free.

-Veyron

Work and Real Life are taking up a lot of time right now and this weekend is not going to be a vast improvement…. But, we’ll see. I gave the new First Look Client a whirl last night and it is spectacular with the new sky and weather. Give it a try. I would have some pictures posted, but there seems to be an issue with screen shots on my system right now… I’m trying to get that worked out.

I’m also trying to do another video - with sound…. Lots of things to do, not enough time.

-Veyron

Okay, so I broke down and bought a new keyboard. The Logitech G15. My old one, a Microsoft one, does not seem to be supported by the empire any more. This is very annoying. I can’t get a driver for it and the scroll wheel on the keyboard doesn’t work anymore - which is friggin’ annoying.

It’s actually a pretty nice keyboard. What really drove me to it was the function keys on the left side of the keyboard. You can program them to your hearts content. I programmed the middle set to act as the arrow keys and the page up/page down keys. So, now I can move without switching back and forth between chat mode and movement mode. I also programmed the lower function keys to act as the alt and make day keys. I has been pretty convenient.

It also has a LCD display which can give you information on what’s going on. At one point, a Second Life beta displayed information on G15, but then subsequent beta’s did not and the release that followed, does not either. Which is a disappointment. It would show chats, IM’s, where your location is, etc.

Oh well, at least I know it can do it.

Well, not this Traveling Avatar, but this avatar will be traveling this week for business… so I might be a bit slower on the posts and in Second Life activities. Hard to say. Now, if I can score that first class upgrade….

-Veyron

I hear now and then about people who have trouble with Second Life crashing their Windows PC from time to time. There are a few reasons why this might occur, but here’s one reason that you might not think of. Heat (or maybe power).

Okay, if you can run Second Life for about 5-15 minutes, and then it crashes, or your machine locks-up, heat or power is a likely candidate for the root of the problem. Now, the Second Life client has a lot of problems, but… here’s what is going on.

On a reasonably new computer while you are normally using it, it will idle down considerably. This draws less power. When you just have your normal windows display up, the 3D portion of your video card is probably turned off, and not drawing power. Your computer probably is drawing around 100 watts or less power while just surfing or playing around.

For example, an AMD X2 (Dual Processor) Athlon CPU draws about 30 watts of power when idling. When it ramps up to full speed it alone will draw up to 120 watts of power. This does not count the memory, support chips, the hard drives, etc.

A 7000 series Nvidia GPU can draw up to 150 watts of power when fully driven, sometimes more. Every watt of power consumed is turned into heat. Your power supply is also not 100% efficient, between 60 and 80% efficient. My PC at home when running Second Life probably draws close to 400 watts of power. This is a lot of heat for a home PC.

Most generic computers you buy off the shelf are not designed for 100% duty cycle for any extended period of time. Worse, as the high rises, electrical resistance rises, producing more heat.

This heat problem is going to manifest itself as being able to run for a while - the system is cool - and then crash after a while - it has over heated. Usually the video card over heats first. So, how do you fix this? Your number one problem is probably dust. Dust impairs the ability of the fans and heat sinks to remove heat. Open up your computer (after turning it off) and blow it out with air and clean it up good. Heat is also the number one killer of computers and hard disks. This is going to go a long way to solving problems. Get rid of the dust. If you smoke around the computer, that makes it worse.

Next, you can try to improve airflow into the computer. Do this intelligently. You want to blow cool air in and take hot air out. Usually, blow in from the front and out from the rear. You may also want to upgrade the CPU cooling unit on your computer. This can be somewhat difficult to do, depending on your computer design. You can find a lot of cooling fans and upgrades from companies like Newegg or Computergate. Buy ball bearing fans, avoid sleeve bearing fans.

Next problem might be an under powered power supply. It may be over taxed and the voltage might be sagging, causing a crash. If it looks cheap, it probably is. On most PCs, you can replace it with a bigger, unit. Newegg also sells power supplies. Look for high efficiency units. Do not buy a fan-less unit, as you are going to run it HOT. A good power supply is a good investment.

Lastly, you might look into upgrades. I’ll talk about that next post.

-Veyron

Coming in at #95 is a Second Life girl on their Hot 100. Interestingly the Second Life girl avoided Hottest Cartoon Babes. Who said it was cartoon love?

The model is Callie Cline. They omitted her name from the posting, probably to keep her from being blitzed with proposals, both decent and indecent….

Koz Farina of BlogHUD has lost all of his inventory. I blogged about it before, and now it’s hit someone again. I wonder how many other people this is hitting we are not hearing about.

UPDATE: It looks like Koz got his inventory back. Yeah!

As anticipated, the old Second Life rating system is now gone from the latest client. This new client and server upgrade has a number of new “features” we all really love, but rather than start ranting about that, I’ve been looking into a replacement for the rating system. I decided to give TrustNet a try. Its cost is low, I like how the logic of it works and it has what I would consider to be a useful HUD. You can get the HUD in world in the Sprawler Sim. The cost is free. It appears to be subscription based, but it’s not very clear on that upfront. It looks to be L$50 a month, with is pretty cheap.

TrustNet has a web site for your account to manage your ratings and you can rate other skills than just behavior of an avatar, such as building, appearance, scripting, buying and selling.

They are also promising a security orb that uses the TrustNet data. This might be very useful. I use a Home Security Orb by Psyke’s Defense Systems, which I have found to be very useful, but this may be more useful, as it could be self-maintaining in the list of people who get access. It appears to have most of the features of Psyke’s Security Orb.

Maybe it might be a good idea to get together in world and start to build up a trust net?

-Veyron.

In my last blog posting, I talked about the Google Operating System. You can also expand on this and create an entire operating system for your Avatar, to better separate your lives from each other. It might also help in keeping your Avatar’s existence private. An interesting tool is the Free Portable Privacy Machine. It is a Linux virtual machine that will run under Windows or Linux using QEMU, potentially off of a USB memory stick.

From within the virtual machine you can run Firefox and get access at all of your Avatar’s life within the Google world. The only down side is the version of Firefox they have installed, version 1.5, is getting old. I’m not sure if it can be upgraded to the 2.0 version easily or not. In any case it should still do the job.

-Veyron

Last week an active member of the Second Life libsecondlife software library, Jesse Higginbotham, who’s avatar was Jesse Malthus died in an automobile accident. It is always tragic to see someone that young die. It brought up another interesting and often disturbing thought, what happens when the person behind the avatar suddenly dies or is disabled, and no one in real life knows about there Second Life? I am sure it has already happened, given the size of the population in Second Life.

I suppose the avatar just does not sign on ever again. Sort of vanish without a trace. A rather tragic way to go actually, since know one would know why they are gone. Some close friends in Second Life would never have a wake or a get together to pay tribute.

Even more disturbing, what would a family member think or do if they logged in with the decedent’s account? What might they find they might not want to find?

Interestingly, I have seen a service to address this sort of problem on the Web, MyLastEmail.com. Maybe Second Life needs something similar, but what would it really say or do? Even more troublesome, people disappear from Second Life for other reasons.

-Veyron

Okay, so I have a huge inventory of clothes, shoes, and other assorted items. That comes from being a shopaholic. Some people can sympathize. The unfortunate part about this large inventory is that this represents a a rather large personal investment, which I don’t really like to think about. Not only for the cost of that inventory, but the amount of time I put into acquiring it and “organizing” it. Reading about inventory loss in the Official Linden Blog sent a shiver down my spine. Removing your inventory by setting it to the default, sounds rather horrific. I think if I logged in and found my inventory missing in would probably have a nervous breakdown (well maybe not, but I’d definitely start throwing things)….

I’m even more astounded to read from Lordfly’s blog that Linden Labs does not backup your inventory. A substantial amount of my objects in my inventory are no copy, which prevents me from making a backup. But let’s just say I could make copies of my inventory objects and put them into a container and store them in a running sim. Look what happened to the Blue Note. A database crash fried the running plot of land and Linden Labs response was, should have had a copy of what you needed in… drum role… your inventory…. It seems to be a catch-22.

Linden Lab’s is going to try to defend themselves with some boiler plate terms of service, etc ad nauseum, that they are not responsible for the database. I don’t think that will work, you cannot have it both ways. It is inexcusable. My inventory has a comparatively small value, wait until someone’s inventory with a high value gets fried and cannot be recovered - send in the lawyers….

-Veyron

There has been a lot of discussion since Linden Labs announced that voice will be added to Second Life. Akela Talamasca made some interesting points about that person didn’t sound like I expected them to. There is of course the point about the handicapped or the socially challenged having issues with voice. What I think it will really come down to is two major points, at least for me. Privacy and usability.

Information can not be un-given. Once it’s out, it cannot be taken back. Text is text, my voice is my voice and distinctly my voice. I don’t want to have what I say used against me sometime in the future, perhaps far in the future, when I’m not an being an avatar. I’ve considered using some voice cloaking software, but that seems extreme. I’d more inclined to use it if a voice was a generated part of the avatar. Makes sense, everything else on an avatar is an artificial computer construct, except who is behind it controlling the avatar. And that follows into the my next thinking.

Usability. When you’re talking with someone you are either talking or waiting to talk. Unless your trying to talk over someone, only one person can talk at a time. When texting is going on, there are multiple conversations going on at the same time. I can actually queue up what I am going to say, and I get the great advantage of being able to have a moment to reflect on what I am about to “text” before I hit enter. It’s pretty hard to remove your foot from your mouth once you have planted it firmly between your teeth.

You can also be IM’ing people left and right while chatting. We all do it. You can usually tell when someone is doing it. This would be something very hard, if not impossible to do with voice.

Oh, and let’s not forget about the possible annoyance factor…. I have not seen any real comments about how annoying voice could actually be. Think about how annoying howling and yowling in a club is as text and some basic audio is now, can you hardly wait for it to come live over streaming audio? Oh, and let’s not consider the possibilities for griefing. I will make a prognostication right here, right now. Some griefer will figure out a way to blow a 90+ decibel sound through the system and right into the headphones people are wearing. I can hardly wait for the news flash on that one.

Audio spamming, err, advertising. You think ugly spinning billboards are a problem now? Wait until they start yelling at you at 90 decibels. Buy my 16m lot next to yours for an extortionists price to stop the screaming…. I’m not naive enough to think that this will not happen. I’m sure Linden Labs has some smug plan to prevent this from happening and will be shocked when someone smarter than they are figures away around them. Or worse they have taken on the usual laissez-faire attitude and stuck their head in sand pretending that none of this will actually happen.

Lastly, two other minor points for me. I spend all day at work talking to people. When I get home to play on Second Life, the last thing I want to do is keep on talking. I also rarely turn on the steaming audio in Second Life. I like the peace and quiet at home.

Finally, I feel the immersion factor of Second Life I so enjoy might be ruined with voice. The people’s avatars I see and meet I feel are real to me. Just like the places. I feel voice might break the spell.

Within a year or so once the voice option is mainline in the Second Life software, I expect their to be a bifurcation of the user base. The percentage, and probably large at that, of older avatars will not be using voice, while the newer avatars, not knowing anything else, will be yammering away with voice. The two groups will look at each other with puzzlement…. Then the next wave will be live streaming video, but then at that point, what is Second Life? Skype?

Call me a Luddite, but text it to me baby….

-Veyron

Oh my God.  Or as most Second Life residents would say, OMG.  I look like a freak or a something that dropped out of some bad hippie movie from the seventies.  I’ve just been rezzed and popped into what could only be described as n00b island.  This will not do.  There is no way I’m going to go around looking like this, and worse there are at least a dozen more clones just like me.  This will not do.

The Narrator has wisely sent off an email to an acquaintance she knows who is in Second Life for tips.  Cleverly disguising the fact that she is already in Second Life, realizing that maybe being anonymous might be a good idea here….

After a while of working on the mechanics of how the client works and how to get around, I’m getting the hang of this.  This is a lot like Doom or Quake.  Except there’s no BFG and no monsters to kill.  Hmmm, at least none that I’ve seen, and I look ugly.  Well, this is getting boring on n00b island, I might as well leave this paradise of n00bness and join what everyone is calling “the grid”.

It sounds scary out there, away from this safe island of n00bness.  Us clones might not be safe there.  Then their are these ominous warnings of never being able to return here.  It could be dangerous out there.  What if I get attacked? Hmmm. Well, I might as well bite the bullet and go into the real world, err, second world.

Bravely I hit the kiosk to teleport into the main grid.  It was the Bear sim.  It was night.  And the teleport sound the client made sounded very similar to Quake or Doom or something like that in my past and for a moment I thought….

Shit, I’m not armed!  Where’s my gun?!?  I’m gonna get killed here.  I forgot to practice with weapons.

Then I relaxed for a moment. Suddenly I saw someone walking nearby. She was beautiful, she had what appeared to be real hair, skin that did not look like it was made of plastic, clothes that did not come from Goodwill’s reject bin, and she even walked like a woman should walk.

Then panic really set in. OMG, I need a paper bag for my head.  I look like a total dork. Save me from myself. Kill me now. Strip me naked.  Oh no, she is coming near me, she’s going to talk to me. Oh my God, I can’t believe I look like this. This is so embarrassing.  Run away!  Hide! Find a paper bag!

Suddenly there was that sound of an incoming webmail….  Oh, it was my friend.  An email some odd locations of places to get things, these SURLs, in a nice list of things to get…  Hmmm, shopping?  Oh, I get it.  I can buy my way to beauty.  I notice that up on top of the client there is clever little $ spot up in the corner of to put more quarters into the machine.  How convenient.  They make this so easy.  I whip out my Visa card, and it is already its shaking with anxiety.  I say to it, don’t worry, it looks like most everything here is inexpensive.  This won’t be that bad.  Twenty five dollars should be plenty to get all I need here.  

I can see this is important to get fixed up right now.  After all, this is not very expensive, a few cups of coffee or maybe a movie.  Besides, this is fun, and it’s nothing like that Worlds of Warcraft those nerds in the office spend all of their free time playing.

I start working on the list….  First off, a shape.  Mmmmm, a shape, I might like this Second Life.

Next up, gawking in the meat market.

-Veyron