Cartoon of The Day: Breakdance Fail

 

 

 Taken at a music event at Outshop Cancer. One guy was breakdancing. But I couldn't help but wonder that in years to come, in real life a guy wouldn't find it so easy after a while.

 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Cartoon of The Day: Shirt Fail Message

 

 

 Taken at Club Squeaks. Being a virtual world, computer humor isn't usually far away in Second Life. In this case, on a guy's shirt.

By Bixyl Shuftan

"Thanksgiving Bakefail" - Grid Gliches Inspire Linden Humor

 

Despite that all the sims have been moved to the Amazon Cloud Servers, there's been no shortage of glitches on the grid. From longer avatar load times, to delayed teleports, to the map not showing landscapes at times, and more. There's been some minor grumblings from some residents (including a rumor or two). As for the Lindens and Moles, they've gone about fixing things the best they can. But it looks like the irritation of the residents hasn't gone unheard as there's been a display of some self-depreciating humor. On Thursday November 26, their Grid Status Report announced they were dealing with a problem causing people to stay clouded.

Our engineers are currently investigating an issue where some Residents may be unable to change outfits, always appearing as a cloud regardless of the outfit they put on. We have identified a potential cause of the problem and are working on reproducing and fixing the issue.

The title of the report was "Thanksgiving Bake Fail."

It wasn't until December 2 that Linden Lab announced they were well on their way to solving the issue. Other issues are still continuing to happen. But there hasn't been an opportunity for the Lab to show it's humor since, at least not on the Grid Status Report.

Bixyl Shuftan

Reader Submitted: "Hilarious TP Error"

Teleporting around is a pretty convenient way to get around Second Life, and when getting between places not connected, sometimes the only way. But sometimes, things go wrong. When Henning Lionheart tried going to Fairelands Junction, he ended up inside one of the mirrors.

From the outside, only his head, and the basket he was holding, showed. "This would be an annoying TP error if it hadn't been so hilariously perfect."

"Darn Teleport Disconnects," Lab Admits Grid Trouble

If you're been having trouble teleporting across Second Life lately, you're not alone. Lately, a number of people in group chats I've listened in on, as well as friends and associates in private messages, have been complaining about various glitches on the grid. Besides the lag, probably the most frequent complaint I've heard has been crashing while trying to teleport from one spot to another.

Well, it seems things have gotten to the point that the Lab has to acknowledge there's a problem. In the "Tools and Technology" part of the official Second Life blog on Monday April 9, they posted that they're aware of the problem.

Many Residents have noted that in the last few weeks we have had an increase in disconnects during a teleport. These occur when an avatar attempts to teleport to a new Region (or cross a Region boundary, which is handled similarly internally) and the teleport or Region crossing takes longer than usual.  Instead of arriving at the expected destination, the viewer disconnects ...

The Lab believes that the cause is "a timing-sensitive failure in the hand-off" between sims when a teleport takes place, and there doesn't seem to be a way to eliminate the chance of a crash. They have people trying to get to the root of the problem and get rid of it. "Quite unfortunately, this problem dodged our usual monitors of the behavior of simulators in the Release Channels, and as a result we're also enhancing those monitors to prevent similar problems getting past us in the future. We're sorry about this - we empathize with how disruptive it has been."

A few residents I've talked to wonder if Linden Lab's moving information of it's data centers to cloud servers has something to do with recent bugs. When Patch and Grumpity Linden spoke at the VWBPE last Thursday, Grumpity stated the Lab was "very carefully moving things and not disturbing the way things are set up." So if one takes the Lab's word for it, the problem isn't The Cloud.

In the meantime, it looks like residents will be dealing with the possibility of their teleports ending up as viewer crashes, and having to restart the viewers and slowly log back in.

Bixyl Shuftan

Giving Tranquility A Try, But ...

With the demise of InWorldz, and it's residents heading to other places, one of the top destinations is the Tranquility Grid. This required downloading a new OS compatible Firestorm. As Tranquility wasn't among the list of grids included, I had to add it in, and then register for a Tranquility account. And then ... this.

"Could not authenticate your avatar. Please check your username and password and check the Grid if problems persist."

After a couple of hours of frustrating work, I decided to call it a day. Anything related to Tranquility will have to be from someone else, for now.

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at "The Pocket," a woman's dress in "fitted mesh" doesn't quite come out right in my viewer.

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at Luskwood

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

By Bixyl Shuftan
(picture from SamanthaS Nightfire)