SL Video: "Merryjest: Opening Act at Second Life's 23rd Birthday"

 

 (click here if the video does not play)

 

 From Merryjest Starchild on June 27, "For those who missed the SL23B concert, we're doing a watch party on Youtube for it- this was recored on my computer so you'll get to see me frantically typing at people (or trying to) while singing, when things go wrong. And the hilarious reaction in the chat when thy get YEETED to another region in the middle of the finale XD  starting at the top of the hour"

Office Chair Issues

 

 

 Well, a recent small meeting at the Newser office in HV Community had a slight snag. I'd gotten some new chairs to go with the new building. While they seemed to work well when I got them, on the day of the meeting there was a snag. We couldn't sit in them right. It seemed out of the early days of SL in which you needed a poseball to sit properly.

Thankfully Gemma had a solution. She rezzed a dinner table with chairs. While a bit unconventional for an office, it was certainly welcome especially with lunch available.

Hopefully we'll have the chair situation taken care of soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

St. Patrick's Moon Dance Almost Falls Apart, Leprechauns Blamed

 

 

 Every Thursday, the Relay for Life's Sunbeamer team holds their weekly Moon Dance. On the one around St. Patrick's Day, they do a special one by making the moon green, which gets it's share of jokes of green cheese along with the green beer. But on the one for Thursday March 14, there was a problem. Much of the set just up and vanished, notably the lunar surface. This left new arrivals arriving via the Moon Cannon plummeting back to the ground, at least until Shockwave Yareach inserted a temporary floor. 

Cynthia Farshore, who hosts the event, had been knocked off, but was soon back, and the normal lunar surface was restored, and she was playing the tunes. Somehow Yogi Bear snuck in (perhaps looking for picnic baskets?)

But this being the St. Patrick's dance, it wasn't too long before we had the green moon back.

 

People were saying the reason things fell apart was because of leprechauns. But no one saw any.

At the end, team captain Rita Mariner, along with Shockwave and Cynthia, thanked everyone for coming. 

The Moon Dance is every Thursday at 6PM, and is BYOK (bring your own kiosk) with all Relay teams, and everyone else, invited.

 

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunweaver%20Space/108/113/50 (Moon Cannon)

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Nvidia Card Graphics Issues

When it comes to graphics cards, NVIDIA is one of two brands Linden Lab recommends your computer uses. But lately, it seems the latest driver programing is causing glitches and problems.

The Firestorm Wiki states a bug "appeared with Nvidia driver 515 and 516," with some also saying the issue is on driver 512.95, causing lines and/or flashing objects to appear on the screen, "and occurs when Advanced Lighting Model is enabled. ... Symptoms include horizontal lines on the screen, objects repeatedly flashing visible/non-visible, shadow issues on objects & avatars, and a wood-grain effect on some objects or avatars."

The solution, at least until the bug is fixed, is to "roll back the driver or use the Nvidia Studio Drivers instead." Or one can turn off Advanced Lighting.

This is not the only issue. The wiki also reported recent updates on Nvidia, "including driver version 381.65," may stop Firestorm from starting up, "The crash is reported to occur on the “Detecting Hardware' step."

Another issue is with 378.49 Nvidia drivers is there may be a blue tint on 64-bit viewers when Advanced Lighting is turned off.

Team Firestorm filed about the issue with Nvidia (here).

To read more about the issue, check out the page on Firestorm's Wiki, or this article on Modem World.

Image from Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Error Messages

A couple people have been telling me the Newser doesn't always come up in their browser. Blogspot, which the Newser has it's pages on, seems to be glitching a little. If the paper has trouble loaded, refreshing the page once or twice should take care of it.

Hopefully the glitch will be fixed soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

Newser's Gemma Cleanslate Temporarily Offlined From Windows Trouble

Gemma Cleanslate messaged the Newser that her computer has been disabled and not able to connect to Second Life, at least for now. The trouble seems to be related to the Windows updates for recent computer chip flaws that we wrote about on Friday January 12. Hopefully, she will be back on soon.

Missing Items, Missing Lindens

By: Alura Denver (Alura Messing)

For over a week now Second Life has been having an issue with Marketplace.  Today they posted a similar update to previous alerts, saying "we are still actively investigating".  They are however, only reporting that there "is an issue causing no-copy items to become unlisted".  What is not being shared however, is that the transaction will still be processed taking your lindens and not giving you any merchandise.  Additionally, Marketplace will have no record of the transaction ever happening.  You will only be able to find the transaction in your account transactions on the main Second Life Web page.  Residents have also reported that these transactions come out multiple times, taking money each time.

Should you find yourself the unlucky person that this happens to before it is resolved, you can submit a support ticket at https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new  be sure to include as much information as possible.  Remember it can take Linden Labs up to a week to process tickets.  If you want to know more about the status of this issue you can check the grid status and issues at https://status.secondlifegrid.net/ for any updates that have been posted. 

Notes:

Residents:
Jacob Cassady
Bill Smit

https://status.secondlifegrid.net/

Unscheduled Marketplace Maintenance Subscribe
Update - We are still actively investigating Marketplace issues. We appreciate your patience while we have this resolved
Nov 29, 14:07 PST
Update - We are continuing to actively investigate the issues surrounding Marketplace items becoming unlisted. We thank you for your patience as we continue to investigate. More information will be provided as the situation develops.
Nov 27, 13:00 PST
Investigating - We are currently investigating an issue with Marketplace that may be causing a variety of items to become unlisted.
Nov 22, 09:53 PST
Unscheduled Marketplace Maintenance Subscribe
Investigating - We are currently investigating an issue with Marketplace that may be causing no-copy items to become unlisted
Nov 22, 09:53 PST

Alura Denver

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at Seagull Island Park, this vampire bat isn't going to find his next meal in a bottle soon.

by Bixyl Shuftan

"Direct Delivery" Marketplace Troubles and Rodvik's Response

Direct Delivery for the Second Life Marketplace hasn't gone the way Linden Labs intended. At first, it seemed to be a simple bug of gifts to others not always reaching the recipient. But apparently, it's much more.

Inara Pey noted a number of other problems, including, "Listings on Marketplace do not match the actual items," incorrect merchant information (products from one seller listed as belonging to another), "products from one merchant appearing in stores belonging to other merchants, items incorrectly priced," and "incorrect ratings assigned to products (G-rated items appearing as Adult, etc)" She also stated she was beginning to observe "rising accusations of 'theft' among merchants as they come across what appears to be their own goods being listed by others." Tateru Nino called the source of the problem a "unicode bungle," listed in the JIRA as "WEB-4587."

The initial response from Linden Labs was largely silence. Then a few days ago, Rodvik Linden gave a few answers on his Twitter account, pointing out an update on the commerce forum, "team has been crunching non stop to get those issues addressed. We will update as soon as we have a fix." Calling it "not an acceptable quality of roll out," Tateru Nino deadpanned, "perhaps is wasn't an acceptable quality of rollout, but it was the level of quality that we have become used to all these years."

The commerce forum update was further updated the next day, saying "two of the top three outstanding issues" were addressed

• WEB-4580: purchases are now delivered to recipients with the inventory name (which does not allow unicode characters). This will prevent future orders from getting stuck in the Being Delivered state due to this issue. In addition, all orders affected by this problem have been pushed through.
• WEB-4587: updates have been made to support updating store search results, which we will process over the next week; we continue to work on the issue related to mismatched data on listings. We do know that this issue has existed since September 2010 (during the migration from Xstreet to the Second Life Marketplace).


Hamlet's article on Rodvik's response drew some positive feedback from readers, mixed in with cautionary notes, "Wow, a straightforward acknowledgment, with no BS, no spin. … Kudos to Rodvik, may this act serve as an example for all of LL. This kind of forthcoming communication can make all the difference in the world in making SL live up to its full potential." the same resident also stated, "Whether it's truly accompanied by the promised action is a different issue … everyone should hold LL's feet to the fire on this regardless until it's fixed."

On the Linden forums, residents seemed a bit more critical, "And yet he can't even manage to post this timely info on his company's official website?" "Although it is refreshing to see a CEO like Rodvik use some of the other social media to communicate with the community, the flaw with Rodvik is that he seems to ONLY use non-LL official tools to interact with his customer base. "

Second Life Newser has yet to hear whether or not things have improved on Marketplace or not. But judging by some of the comments observed, some merchants and shoppers will be relying less on it.

Sources: Living in a Modem World, Tateru Nino, New World Notes, Twitter, Linden Forums,

Image Credit: Emilly Orr, Sera Lok

Bixyl Shuftan

Delinda Dyrssen "Taking Flight" at the Snail Races

Delinda Dyrssen took part in a “Special Edition” snail race as part of Relay for Life. To her relief, she and the others took part in smaller snail avatars than normal. Although it was much easier for her to steer, quite a bit went wrong, the results sometimes hilariously awry.

Read the story in People.

Update Chaos: Trouble at the Bunny Ranch

Shellie Sands recently had some more trouble with her Ozanimal bunnies. Frequent updates from the company for her means trouble with her bunnies as they suddenly become unable to eat. Poor Shellie has to find the solution before her pets end up going to the carrot patch in the virtual sky.

Read the story in Extra.

Disaster at Shelz' Haven

It's happened to the best of us. You log into Second Life, expecting all to be well in the Metaverse, and CRACK! You find your world turned upside down. Our roving reporter Shellie Sands describes her own experience as she logged into her home one day, and cannot believe what she found.

Read about Shellie's story in our brand new section: People