Torley rolls out a new Tip of the Week, but not to the SL blog

I love Torley Linden’s Second Life Tip of the Week videos, but the devs are working on the site so he can’t post to it yet. Here’s Torley’s explanation of why it’s on his blog rather than on the SL blog.

If you’re wondering why this is on my personal blog instead of the official Second Life Blog and why you haven’t seen the KB Article of the Week lately either, it’s because Linden Lab is undergoing changes in communication policy and preparing for future improvements.

As much as that doesn’t seem to make sense, I can’t go into details now, and I would’ve let you know earlier were it not for events beyond my control. Please pardon me, I promise to share more if/when I can do so. In the meantime, if you have ideas for how I can better help you by making video tutorials broadly visible in places I’ve missed, let me know!

Awww! But this week’s video tip is a cool one, so I wanted to make sure you guys knew about it. This week’s video tip is about Custom Collision Sounds in SecondLife. That’s so cool I’m going to have to play with it one day.

In case you missed last week’s tip on reporting abuse, you should definitely check it out. I meant to blog it but RL got in the way.

Don’t forget, if you miss any of Torley’s tip videos you can see them again in the SL wiki, and you can always download high quality versions of the tips so you can always have them on your hard drive for the next time you want to refer to them.

Peng’s links for Wednesday, 6 August and a Gmail tip

I discovered something in Gmail yesterday that I meant to mention that some of you will say, “Well duh, Peng. I’ve been known about that for a while.” I’ll give you a gold star, but if I just found it yesterday than I bet others don’t know you can do it either. First let’s get today’s links out of the way.

• Ubuntu Productivity: Better backup, syncing, and sharing. Windows and Mac users know about the Dropbox service but Linux users have been left out in the cold. There’s a Linux version currently in alpha testing, but you can request an invite. The author lets you know why that’s such a big deal, and after reading his post and checking it out I’ve requested an invite myself.
• Asa Dotzler: consumer reports: stop using safari, get firefox. This isn’t just Asa being a Mozilla evangelist (his job), this is a major consumer testing organization saying that safari shouldn’t be used. At all, alt least for now.
• Steven Rose: Ultamatix – Ubuntu NL warns against. The Ubunteros in the Netherlands (and Flanders) have looked at the Automatix replacement and don’t just say “Danger, Will Robinson!”, they tell you why you should avoid it.
• Scott Ritchie: Wine sucks and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The WINE maintainer (it really is supposed to be in all caps since it’s a recursive acronym) for Ubuntu has some major beefs with our favorite Windows programming layer for Linux. Luckily tomorrow he’ll post his plan for fixing the issues, which I’ll post, but I wanted to post this link today to give you reasons to watch for tomorrow’s link.

A Gmail Tip

Like many of you I have filters set up on my Gmail account to help store my email in a way that I can hopefully find it again later. But I don’t save all of my email in Gmail, since I download all of it into Evolution at least once a day. So I end up having to select Unread messages, then deselect the news emails since they get deleted once I read them, and start reading my new emails. But it turns out I don’t have to select then deselect. Instead, since messages are already labeled thanks to my Gmail filters, once I read them I simply click the X box beside the Inbox label.Voila! The message has been archived without dumping you to your inbox.

Do you use Google Translate to translate web pages in a foreign language? There are bookmarklets available to give you one click translations of web pages. I only wish I had found those sooner. It would have saved me a ton of time even sooner.

/me checks his email and RSS feeds one more time

Yep, that’s a lid. I’ll post if I find anything that just won’t wait until tomorrow. Enjoy your Hump Day.;)

[UPDATED] SecondLife finally rolls out 1.20 viewer

[Added a link to another video from Torley. - Nanci]

It took LindenLabs 14 release clients (although many of them were misnamed betas IMO) but SecondLife version 1.20 came out last week. I was waiting to blog it until I could confirm that VWR-2778 (the annoying invisible skirt bug) is truly fixed, and when I fired it up I had to rebake my textures (Ctrl+Alt+R) and sure enough, it seems that skirts are finally showing up.

They’re calling 112 bugs as being fixed in this new version, plus we finally have the ability to use different skins, although I’m still trying to find out how to add skins to the ones available. I miss my Retro skin.

There are more things available in SecondLife 1.20, such as the appearance of “cloud people”, and there’s a handy wiki page to discover ten things you’ll want to check out in the new viewer.

This new viewer is completely optional, but I strongly recommend any female in SecondLife to upgrade to this new version, even if only for the fix to the system skirt issue that has been bugging the daylights out of many of us since last October.

While you’re updating your SecondLife don’t forget to check out Torley Linden’s seventh set of QuickTip videos. I definitely want to check out the Customized Speech Gestures, Lip Syncing (while talking, not singing, naturally), sitting tricks and a whole lot more. YAYZERAMA, indeed!

Updated 28 July 9:12am: Woops! I knew I had a video from Torley that specifically addressed this new release but I had it flagged wrong so it didn’t come up when I was looking at the tings I wanted to blog. It’s Torley’s Video Tip of the Week #43 – What’s new in SecondLife 1.20! Sorry about that.

Peng’s links for Monday, 7 July

I think it was a good thing I took the weekend off after Saturday’s final post. Yesterday Comcast crashed so hard that we were without not just Interweb but also cable and phone all day long. Luckily we had some things saved on the DVR or else the three of us would have been bored out of our gourds. It finally came up after nine last night making Comcast offline for around a dozen hours, but I haven’t been able to see any reports on what went wrong. If anyone knows what happened to Comcast in the Malden area please post it in the comments.

• Alan Pope: Is that a Paul Smith shirt? Alan wore the tee that Nanci and I want and got a great response from one of the other parents at his daughter’s ballet school.
• Dante Díaz: How to Install Linux Media Center Edition step by step. Yes, Virginia, there is a Linux Media Center Edition, and Dante’s vid shows how to install it on a KDE-based distro. I suspect it will be similar on GNOME desktops.
• Bill Dwyre: Where have you gone, Ernie Banks? Do you remember baseball’s double headers? I don’t mean the ones caused by rainouts, but the ones that give fans the chance to see two games in a single day, usually around a holiday. Dwyre remembers them, and wonders why we don’t have them anymore, as do I.

I do have one other thing I want to blog about, but it deserves a post of it’s own. But before I close this post I have to pimp my new favorite place to get coffee in Boston. I love Starbucks, but I also like having a place closer to home to be able to get a cup of joe as I hop on the subway every day. I used to get my coffee from Mike’s Donuts in Forrest Hills Station but after three straight cups of coffee that weren’t what I ordered, as well as trying to talk with the owner but having to wait while they took care of customers I decided to find a new place to get my coffee. It’s too bad, too, because I’ve known the owner’s wife for over a decade but when I told her I’ve had problems with getting coffee the way I ordered it she didn’t even take the time to find out what was wrong.

I finally tried Java Jo’s, which is not just across the street from the station but also on the side of the station that bus drops me off to get on the subway. I found it was more like a Starbucks than a Dunkin’ Donuts (Mike’s takes your order, and hands you a supposedly ready to drink cup of brew), but I don’t mind putting my own cream and sugar in my coffee, especially when the cream is cool enough to make the coffee immediately drinkable, an issue that prompts me to ask for a little ice in my coffee from Mike’s although lately they don’t fill that part of my order well. Which is part of why I tried to speak to the owner in the first place. The owner likes ice in his coffee, and his wife, who runs the Forrest Hills store, respects a customer’s wishes in that respect. Alas, her employees don’t have the same idea of customer service that she has. I still get coffee at Mike’s on the weekend and on holidays, but only because Java Jo’s doesn’t open as early on weekends and I’m on the road pretty early seven days a week. After having to go without Java Jo’s coffee over the recent three-day weekend I really missed my proper cup of coffee as I got on the subway.

One thing that makes Java Jo’s even better is that their coffee, a rich, bolder coffee than Mike’s sells, is so good that I don’t have to run through Back Bay to hit Starbucks in the morning any more. And their food is delicious, too, so you may want to take advantage of their catering service for your office one day.

If you’re in the Forrest Hills/Franklin Park area of Boston and you’d like a good cup of coffee or some delicious food check Java Jo’s out. You’ll thank me for it.

Peng’s links for Wednesday, 2 July

• Markus Thielmann: Neat trick: Faster access to Ubuntu’s menu entries. It was posted by a colleague on Planet Ubuntu Users but it’s such a handy post that I wanted to make sure my readers see it.
• Mariano Iglesias: Transparent chat windows. Another PUU post that’s great for those who want a transparent window for their buddy list. Or any other window, for that matter. Although his blog theme needs a little tweaking.
• Launchpad News: Launchpad 1.2.6: code review by email and improved bug page Ui. Launchpad, the bug tracking site for Ubuntu, got an update for the start of July that makes the site even easier to use.
• Softpedia News: Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1 Screenshot Tour. The next version of Ubuntu has reached Alpha stage and Softpedia has posted a collection of screenshots from it. Feel free to discuss it here or in this topic on the Ubuntu Forums.
• CNET: CBS closes CNET Networks acquisition. I meant to post this sooner, but the Eye net has officially bought one of the top sources of tech news, as well as Gamespot, MP3.com, ZDnet and TV.com. For more information on how it will impact CBS’s coverage you can check out this story from the Boston CBS owned-and-operated station.
• New York Times: Starbucks Announces It Will Close 600 Stores. In January Starbucks announced that they’d be closing 100 US stores, but yesterday the number of underperforming locations to be shuttered jumped to 600. The closures, 70% of which have been open less than three years, will lay off over 12,000 employees. Starbucks chairman and CEO Howard Schultz stated that he expects to notify the specific locations of the impending closure by mid-July.

Want new default avatars? SecondLife can do that

Two weeks ago I posted a note about the new possible default avatars SecondLife was considering, and Wednesday Katt Linden took great pleasure in announcing that there are a number of new avatar possibilities available not only during the registration process but also in the Library section of your avatar’s inventory Library. You can also get a glimpse at the new avatars in the SL wiki.

Torley Linden also comes to the rescue by making a video tutorial on how to switch avatars (don’t forget to backup your current avatar’s settings so you can get back to it if you decide you ever want to switch back. Jeremy Linden wrote this week’s Knowledge Base Article of the Week on saving outfits.

I may have to find an  hour or so to pop into SecondLife and check out teh new avatars. I’m suddenly getting an urge to fly.

A little news from SecondLife

I came across some important info from SecondLife and wanted to pass it along to those of you who don’t keep up with the blogs.

New SL quick tips, and Torley tells on customer service

Torley rolled out 16 new quick tip videos that were prompted by resident requests. And at less than 2 minutes long you can get your answer and keep on boppin’ down the virtual road to your destination.

Torley shares a wishlist, and another awesome video tip

Torley Linden posted two articles yesterday, a post on his own blog about things he’d love to see from SecondLife, and he posts another great tip on the SecondLife blog for watching YouTube videos (including his tips) right within SL.

I never thought of this

I’ve long been a proponent of buying ground meat in multi-pound packs and separating it into meal-sized Ziplock bags before I put it into the freezer, but I StumbledUpon something today that is so cool I’m going to have to try it.