AyelaNewLife

I do something similar. "Creator Name - Name plus Descriptor - Colour/Pack"; eg, "Ayela - Example Clothing - Fatpack". Inside each of these, I have a "Boxes" or "Backup" subfolder and then purge all the sizes I don't and won't need plus landmarks, notecards, unpack scripts etc. It seems to work well... so long as the structure for where to put these folders also works.

I know this is a necro but this is my own thread so it's allowed. Because it is. My inventory layout has been pretty much fine since I started this thread (even if I've been lax in actually sorting stuff). Clothing is fine, appliers/layers and hairs etc are all fine, landmarks are sorted (even if largely out of date) and notecards just get ritually purged every third full moon. But I have no idea how to handle furniture, decor, other objects, and poses. I have a folder with each of those headings, but they are completely unwieldy to the point of uselessness (even after I've subdivided poses into "singles", "single sets" and "couples/groups"). I'd love to steal draw inspiration from your setups for sorting and handling all these non-clothing bits and pieces... because I haven't got a clue.

First off, yay! Hopefully this bump can help inject a little more energy into the world. All online worlds and games follow an annual cycle of ebb and flow that roughly aligns with the seasons in the Northern hemisphere. People spend more time online when it's colder, it's not exactly a revelation. Be prepared for a crash in PCU by about June; the 'tail' of this round of lockdowns will mostly be over by then, and with the summer kicking in, online activity of any kind (that doesn't involve a phone) will be at a low. This will look dramatic compared to this month's high point, but it isn't really. So please resist the urge to roleplay Chicken Little in two month's time

Please do not take the Lord's name in vain.

Stop 👏 painting 👏 sunlight 👏 on walls&floors 👏 A little bit of shading and shadows at the corners of a skybox or building is fine. Better than fine, it's a lovely way to add a little depth to a scene. But painting on the sunlight shining through a window onto the walls and floors? Absolutely not. It looks bad and is functionally useless - sunlight does not magically travel through solid bits of furniture, but that's the result which you are forced into if you want to actually decorate the product rather than just look at the empty box. I don't know why creators keep doing this. It's ruining their creation. It adds nothing, and only subtracts from their hard work - it's the equivalent of leaving a steaming turd on the little of the floor. Don't do this, wtf.

Emphasis mine. In the UK, we have had a daily press conference delivered by a senior minister or two, and a senior scientific adviser or two. These briefs usually come with a few graphs, based around the key metric of hospital deaths with confirmation of Covid 19 each day - the press conference is at 5pm (4pm weekends), and the data covers the 24 hour period leading up to the previous 5pm. We have a strong media campaign here in the UK from the ignorant and the disingenuous to include deaths from suspected Covid-19 from the care sector into this very specific daily measure. It has been explained almost daily for two weeks now in the Q&A part of these briefings why that's nonsensical, and why monitoring suspected deaths from outside hospitals is also key to their understanding of the outbreak, but that it must be done in a way appropriate to the information concerned. The methodology chosen by the ONS (Office for National Statistics) is effectively a sift of all death certificates registered in a certain period. Death certificates should be registered within five days, but exceptions may apply when coroners need to conduct a longer investigation (relatively uncommon in care home Covid-19 cases). Most are however not registered within a day; and the standard amount of time it takes varies wildly due to regional variations in both the care sector and local authorities. In practice, that means in some cases you could have, say, 5% of suspected Covid-19 deaths registered in time to be included in the daily statistics the following day, while on another day you could have 40-50% of suspected deaths registered in time. This data would be chocolate teapot levels of useless. However, if you leave it about a week prior to gathering said data, you can get a far more reliable set of data. It might only cover 80-90% of suspected deaths over that period, but the relative variation is far, far smaller and can (and has!) actually be used to monitor trends outside the hospital environment. And remember, unlike journalists our scientific advisers are not idiots; they will not be looking at a single graph and basing decisions off that. They're taking into account a great many metrics, each treated appropriately based on individual circumstances. The idea that no one is paying attention to care home deaths is raw fantasy - this is a complaint manufactured newspapers more interested in their morbid scorecards, and tabloid readers peddling half-truths. I don't think anyone here is arguing that, however... but plenty of idiots out in "the real world" are, and it's those I'm ranting about.

Anyone that doesn't understand basic statistical concepts shouldn't be allowed to talk about this outbreak. For example: "Death rate" based on # of confirmed cases is useless as a statistic. No country has widespread enough testing to make that calculation. Methodology varies wildly from country to country (and even within many nations), but almost without exception the population which is tested is significantly more likely to have a severe infection than an asymptomatic case (ie most of them) or with very mild symptoms than the general population. It's self-selecting, and makes the "death rate" measure near useless. Deaths/cases (although we have no remotely accurate way of measuring cases, so we go with deaths here) per capita is the only measure that matters. Yes, the UK has more deaths than any other EU nation. We also have more people than all but Germany, and they're hoarding testing reagents thus could clamp down much more efficiently. Belgium is currently far worse on a deaths per capita measure than us, and that's what matters. Daily death tolls have one use, and one use only - to monitor trends. That becomes useless if you mix up the methodology part-way through this outbreak, especially if you intend to add highly unreliable and varied data with a lag time of between hours and days into the mix. So yes, anyone calling for care home deaths to be added to the daily hospital deaths total is an idiot. Total suspected deaths has a use as a separate measure, and will by its very nature require a lag time of probably a week and looking at week-long snapshots in order to be useful. I could go on. But in short - it would really help if the media could stop sending their political editors to Covid-19 press briefings, but instead send health/science editors who at least understand highschool-level statistics.

I quite like the selection available at men's shopping events, to be honest. If I'm ever feeling down about the lacklustre offering for women any month, one quick trip to TMD cheers me right up!

I die inside a little every time I read this.

You're right, of course, and I think "what's up?" is pretty much the best response possible in this circumstance. And this is rarely an issue with actual friends. But as a general rule, I'd much rather not be put in the position in the first place, and would prefer people to just tell me what they want so I can respond accordingly.

I think this depends on delivery. Asking "May I ask a question?" and then waiting for a response before asking said question is the problem here, as that is just wasting everyone's time, and I fully appreciate the annoyance that generates. On the other hand, I've often opened with a "Can I ask you something?" and then proceeded to ask said question, for precisely the reasons Rolig outlined. It doesn't matter too much if it's asking a question; but this is a larger pet peeve of mine when it's asking if I am free or busy, with the followup question a "would you like to do x?". Very rarely is anyone doing literally nothing when sat at the keyboard, they are always doing something. Often that something isn't important at all; procrastinating on social media, idly chatting, reshuffling inventory around, etc. "Are you busy?" is not actually the question being asked here, you're actually being asked "are you willing to pause what you are doing right now in order to do the thing I'll suggest in a moment?". And as I cannot read minds, I cannot answer that. I have to guess, and then I am committed to that answer. If I say I'm not busy and the suggested activity sucks (or more often is a blatant attempt at a lazy pickup), I've just lost my easy and polite way out. What else can I say? "Sorry dude, I'd rather stand on my platform shuffling boxes than go sit on a deck chair at some perfectly-flat empty A-rated beach with you." Suddenly I'm a five-letter-gendered-insult, all because homeboy over here left me no choice. Or I lie, in which case it's incredibly transparent and the above applies. Or I go along with it anyway for a bit before I can find another excuse and waste everyone's time. Alternative, I can say I am busy, which protects me from the above yet also means I could miss out on something I'd actually want to do. There are no good options here, because my hand was forced by this terrible line of questioning. So if your intent is to ask someone to go somewhere or do something, hecking say that. Don't try to trap them into a certain answer through manipulation or ignorance. If you want to open with a cover like above, then do so but ask the real question immediately, and do not wait for a response. But just be honest and don't try to back people into a corner with your words.

Bearing in mind I don't have the background knowledge to fully understand how viewers work or could be made to work: I wish viewers would prioritise avatar positioning over everything else. Stuff takes time to load in, and that's fine. I'll often need perhaps a minute or two for the world to be fully populated. I'm okay with longer times than that too... but what I'm not okay with is the constant rubberbanding and "treacle-walking". It's horrific, frustrating, and makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Letting me move around the environment is a far, far higher priority than the environment loading in, and rubberbanding while buildings slowly pop in shouldn't ever happen. I have no idea how this could be done, if it's a server-side problem rather than or as well as a viewer problem, or anything like that. But god damn is this an unending source of frustration.

Discord is sadly lacking in features that actually matter, over finding ways to monetize blob emojis. The biggest one being the total lack of multi-account or multi-client support. Many of us have highly justifiable and inviolable reasons for keeping their SL and RL identities separate, and there's no way in hell I'm going to join a discord server where everyone can click my name and see AyelasRLUsername. Not happening. There's a sloppy workaround however; if on PC, you can download the beta client (Discord Canary) and run that in parallel to the main client. You have to put up with updates every couple of days and there's no similar option for mobile devices, but it does allow you to run a second account at least. But only a second client. Compartmentalisation is a cornerstone of basic online security, and Discord made the conscious decision not to carry that feature forward when copying drawing inspiration from Slack. If I was active in other online communities distinct from SL or RL, this workaround would be no good. As much as I end up using Discord these days, it is objectively not up to task and not something companies, creators or communities should be pushing this heavily.

Quoting this as it's relevant once again.

This is honestly the first time I've heard of this. I've never seen it in action before, and I've had scripters tell me outright that quoting account names/usernames was their only option. So thank you for educating me about this! Out of interest, do you know when this was introduced? Was there a time in which referring to account names was the only option?

The group title and display name are in different sized fonts. The display name is also in most other locations; in their profile, in the chat windows, in the tooltip from hovering over the avatar, in nearby avatars, etc. See also: (The faintness of the tooltip is due to my screencapping program.) This display name is what that avatar has chosen to be identified as; to disregard that is indeed disrespectful. It's not a title, or a badge, or a gimmick - it is their name. If they've used an illegible display name composed of unicode characters instead of letters, it's more forgivable; but a host that isn't willing to take two seconds to use someone's chosen name does themselves and their venue a disservice.

I said this in the other thread, but I understand the need for a fee of some kind, to deter griefers, bots and name-farming. A fee of $5 for any account tier is enough to discourage almost all bad-faith name changes. The difference between $5 and $40-50 is in how many legitimate residents are turned away; and that's the problem here. The fee goes far beyond what is necessary and into raw greed territory.

You know what I meant. Scripted objects can only recognise you by your account name, nor your display name. Changing my last name opens up the possibility of changing my first name to my identity, in a way that is recognisable by scripted objects. Also I stand by what I said about hosts. Referring to people by their account name rather than their chosen display name is incredibly disrespectful and borderline offensive. Exceptions apply to those with illegible unicode display names of course; that's self-inflicted.

But they'd need to pay the fee anyway. It just means basic accounts need to pay $40 + $10 (or w/e it is) to change their name. I understand the need for a fee of some kind, to deter griefers, bots and name-farming. A fee of $5 for any account tier is enough to discourage almost all bad-faith name changes. The difference between $5 and $40-50 is in how many legitimate residents are turned away.

Because I'm tired of every scripted object or 'host' (ie scripted object) referring to me as "ayelanewlife Resident". It's demeaning, and strips me of that basic right of self-identification. My name is Ayela. People call me that. The inadequate mechanics of SL force various automated processes to disregard that entirely. Changing last names gives me an opportunity to correct that - there are very few first names left which can be paired with "Resident", but the new last names allow all of us to pick even common first names without issue. ...in theory, anyway. The $40 fee and highly limited (and mediocre) selection of last names makes this less-than-ideal.

Good to see they've changed that semi-recently. But the entire system of having your username plastered above your head is still rotten, and terrible for account security.

So just to clarify; the signup process still lies to residents and tells you that you can change the name which people see at a later date, tricking a great many people into using a distinct account name intended to be non-visible (as is standard practice these days). They log in, find that their account name will be visible and recognised by scripts for all time, but it's okay folks because you can choose to set a second name which will also be visible alongside the account name? Oh, and we gave your account name the surname "Resident" because we decided that was a better solution than actually fixing the architecture to handle account names when forcing you to use those. But don't worry, you can change "Resident" (while being stuck with the account name you were tricked into supplying by a dishonest signup process), for a mere $40! Are they having a giggle?

One common theme I've noticed, definitely here in the UK but also across most of the "first world", is just how vital local authorities have been in the delivery of each government's response to the outbreak. No matter what power structure is in place, from a federal US/Germany to a much more centralised UK/French system, local democracy has been the key to saving lives. That relationship between central and local/regional governance is unlikely to come out of this unchanged. I know most people don't really care about local governance or politics, but it's something worth keeping half an eye on. We could see some fundamental shifts in the balance of power over the next few years, and with that some real progress in addressing the regional inequalities that exist within every nation.