Nika Talaj

/me notes the mixed stone & stucco exterior, arched french front door with glass, multiply-paned windows with simple framing and flagstone walk. If this Halloween house is a Linden Home, it's a new one. Peers at the top of the right-hand column outside the door ... could it be another arch? I was hoping for a new fantasy home, but ... that yellow terrain texture ...the rather classic exterior details ... maybe a new 2048 theme? Tuscan/Mediterranean? Interestingly, there's little here that would conflict with the old pic that Patch offered a while ago as one of the ideas for a new theme.

I can't shake the feeling that this preview is a pretty early mockup that's being shown just as sort of a promise that the land page will be reworked, not as a preview of what it will actually be. Maybe no-ones meant to be looking it over very carefully. Hopefully! At least to my eye ... if this is actually what they'll be doing, it could be worse than what we now have. So, fingers crossed the actual product will have evolved from this "preview".

Hmm, indeed. This preview does look to be a pretty early mockup. It's NOT easy to design a UI of which you are not an active user. If @Patch Linden were to lay out a 2-page set of requirements and subcontract the design of this function to @Frigga Freidman (for example!), I'm betting that this subcontractor could quickly find a small group of expert users to review her best shot at a design, and LL would rather rapidly have a Linden Home external interface that would be both rather easy to implement and easy to use. Early on in my UI design education, I was taught that in-depth application knowledge is the most important requirement for success in GUI design. That's why medical device companies send their engineers to observe hospital operations and shift changes. Hard for me to believe that any Linden has spent hours and hours claiming homes via the LH land page.

Your story is so cute! Personally, I have no Asian background at all, but I find the Sakura theme so peaceful and gorgeous, I don't know that I'll ever be able to leave it.

Kudos, LL, on allowing users who already have a LH to easily browse others! BUT ... I find this preview confusing. Some comments about the UI: The upper half of the screen pertains to your current home. I hope this part of the preview is not being shown on every page of new home choices? If so, WHY? If it is being shown, then it should be more clearly delineated from the new home list - with both the current home and the "What Next?" banner sharing the same background color. In the preview's home choice section, there is a mix of themes and individual home styles. For example, the "Log Home" tile is a theme within the Bellisseria continent, and the Log Home theme has four home styles. The "Maple" tile is a home style of the Tahoe theme within the First Generation home continents. Mixing themes and individual homes styles in one list is UNBELIEVABLY CONFUSING. Assuming that LL sorts out the themes vs. home styles confusion in the previous bullet, let me assure the designers of this page that there is NOT ONE Linden Home resident who knows all the individual home style names, and I would be amazed if anyone had ever made an alphabetical list of them. Presenting a list of home styles from different themes and generations all mixed together in an alphabetical list would not be useful. However you structure the list, it needs to include ALL home styles themes (which I think is LL's intent), and clearly highlight the ability to change home styles in any parcel of that theme, regardless of current availability. However, once you do that, you need to provide a visual indication as to whether homes of that style theme are available to be claimed right now. Before a person dives in to choose a home from a list, links to inworld demo areas should be offered. I see under the What Next banner that under the "Meet Your New Neighbors" that there is a community portal? What is that? I can think of a few great and helpful things it could be, but what is it really? ETA: Once you choose a home, I hope LL also redesigns the claim confirmation page to do away with that badly placed tiny little box you have to check. That is incredibly awkward on a phone screen.

Thank you, Daniel! I've started a new thread, using your post, to bring in people who don't read this thread.

In the SSP thread, @Daniel Voyager drew our attention to LL's announcement of a new Linden Homes portal, replacing the current land page. I thought this deserves its own thread.

More oddity in the SSP zone that was previously used for the Fantasy buildout (large green block). That entire area was deleted LONG ago (tho of course leftover map tiles still show, patchily). I just noticed that just two regions in the middle of it have returned. Neener neener!

And now, an update to this Wild Speculation post about possible new Fantasy homes: Today, in one of the few remaining regions in the original SSP zone Fantasy buildout, there was a person dead center. Really, I NEVER see anyone in this sort of leftover region. Then that dot disappeared, and one immediately showed up in the SSP QA Vault region, where moles seem to archive Linden Home builds. Also, on and off, there has been someone in SSP83X, traditionally used to test home controller modifications. It's quite early to be doing controller work for the new theme. OK, yes, someone might be working on a bug fix. Or a Fantasy Halloween build. My little observations mean nothing. OR DO THEY??? Is there some culture where believers get wishes granted on Halloween? If so, my personal wish would be for new Fantasy home styles!

FWIW, up in the SSP zone all 36 regions now have been created for what appears to be a new theme. Nowadays, there's usually at least one person at work there whenever I check. The speed at which this has is being put together seems to me to indicate that it's a new 2048 theme, but that's of course speculation. /me places a marker on mid-December. Also, any idea what this little block of new-ish SSP regions is for? I noticed them recently above the "Monkey" regions. Perhaps another sort of Hub? Or something to facilitate moving from first generation LHs to Belli?

YUS! If both objects are mod and you own them (and no, the scripts do not have to be mod for you to use them in a different piece of furniture). Actually, with beds it's often quite easy, because if you edit the bed you will usually see that all the scripts and anims are in a very small or invisible prim, maybe a very small cube or flat plane. Usually whatever quilts it rezzes when you go to sleep are also in that prim. Just unlink that prim, and link it to the bed you want them in, and you're all set. Why is this the case? Because anims can be tedious to adjust, so usually creators just set up their anims in a single prim and link that to every bed they make. Often chairs are the same way. BUT! Be careful to note if the little prim with anims you want is actually the root prim of the bed you're taking it from ... usually it is. If so, make sure you link it so it's the root prim of the bed you're moving it to (that is, link it last). Note that whatever the name of the root prim is, that's the name of the entire object. Before you do this, remove the anims, scripts and notecards that came with the bed you're adding the new anims to, if any. Again, these are probably in a single prim that you can just unlink. Once you do that, you may want to take the bed into inventory and re-rez it, just to be sure it's happy. All those anims you're moving are adjusted for the bed you took them out of. So TRY THEM - you may have to rotate the little prim, and possibly re-adjust some of the anims, which can be tedious, depending on the size of the new bed, how many pillows it has on it, etc..

Here's the previous discussion, really a survey, of opinions about Fantasseria, I found it very interesting: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/496466-fantassaria-survey/#comment-2563714 As to Chalets, they baffle me a little differently than they baffle you, Unilway! I like the neighborhoods a lot. LOVE the big river. I rolled a couple of nice ones, but when I tried to furnish them, all I could think of was all yodel-ay-hee-hoo. Yech. I believe this is MY problem, not a problem with the theme.

I like to get under the covers too Here are some beds that I've found with this feature: > All of the beds at Bazar (Ria Bazar), including those in the clearance room. It's quite possible that they have a bed with the right aesthetic. > Heima (previously Laq Decor, Winter DiPrima) has a nice bed - maybe not modern enough - which was on sale a couple weeks ago, half price. > Check out Dekute Decor (Debil Skute), which specializes in 1-prim furniture. We have used her Country Bed over and over. Don't tell anyone, but I've been known to take one of the bed animation engines and quilts (retextured if need be), and use it to replace the anims in beds that looked perfect but DIDN'T allow you to get under the quilts. Shhh. There is also a gorgeous red futon bed that allows you to actually get in it at one of the Japanese furniture stores, if you really want I can find the name.

Thank you! Actually, I just have a parcel. The lighthouse on the left belongs to another resident. IA lot of folks are leery of private estates, I'm not. I've known this estate owner for about 10 years, she's wonderful, has a very stable life and is active in landscaping and the estate's social life. As are the folks at The Grove and Calas Galadhon. Say what you will about Prok, he also is/was somewhat active in decorating and social occasions. When the original owner/creator of the Fruit Islands estate had to give it up due to illness, he managed a transfer to Zoha Islands that was fair to all current residents. Eventually we left, since Zoha was a more "corporate" experience than we liked. But I have NEVER experienced any sort of loss when renting from an estate. You just have to pick a quality one. These estates created long-term communities with excellent retention long before LL emulated them in Belli, after years of prodding on the forums and in meetings by people like me (and, doubtless, Patch before he joined LL). I love the freedom on both private estates and on (selected areas!) Mainland. And I love what Belli offers as well.

Yes, well ... you know, many of us here are fairly capable oldbies ...it would be silly to rely on the moles to make all of our dreams come true within the LH model. In a seasonal estate, I'm having a lot of fun working on my own version of fantasy

I'm kinda hoping the 3 in a row will be for a rodeo!!! Maybe the others will have granges? I find it interesting that we can't enter the Range homesteads. I think all of us with range-oriented avatars and pets should organize a protest march about that.

The presumptive new 2048 theme up in the SSP zone is now up to 27 regions. 6 more to go (of course, they still have to finish building out all of them, and even after they seem to stop working on them, it can be months before they release.) Also, I posted my Belli map in another thread. If anyone would like a framed copy inworld, you can pick it up at my Sakura home (the same one that has the ferries). http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Shiawasena Itachi/190/83/24 I intend to update this now and then. Feel free to walk in - play the game or the koto, try to get the boy to clean up his mess, whatever. The pic is above the TV, and if you touch it, it will give you a copy of the framed picture (to demonstrate its correct aspect ratio), which also contains a copy of the texture.

I'm not willing to discuss it (due to a lack of actual facts) but I doubt your assertion. If it were true, why would @Abnor Mole say repeatedly that they need to deploy about 20 LH per region to be profitable? Remember, they are not just buying raw servers or storage on AWS; they are paying for AWS services supporting SL's network architecture as well. And LL's service usage (24 hours, geographically dispersed, avg concurrency maybe 25,000, peak 55,000) is not typical for a company of LL's size (and budget!). At one point I took a quick pricing spin for just AWS's Appstream service, in a "regional" configuration, medium size servers, and came up with about $3,000,000 per month. I'm sure that's way offbase, but the point is, we're not talking $99/year for a single region.

Here is my current map. Each label is on a separate layer, so names of areas can be changed; these are just how I think of them. Note that these are just geographic labels, not indicators of exactly where all homes are. For example, the east coast of Bellevaria (Bellisseria+Bavaria!) is fringed with houseboats.

Congrats! Actually, I think they've changed the covenant wording re: visitor tracking. All it says now is: So I think you're fine, particularly since you use parcel detection instead of those horrible ancient visitor counters that used sensors. At this point I would usually share my visitor counter script, but I'm currently reworking it to use linkset data.

Well, no it wouldn't take months lol. Maybe a week tho ... between Hurricane Idalia wandering through the state (I think it missed the area where their support center is), and Labor Day holiday, yes it could take a few days. So I would definitely try messaging the owner, preferably using an alt. Sometimes it can help to quote a relevant sentence from the covenant. If it's still there Tuesday morning, say around 10 SLT (peak concurrency!), I would try dropping a distressed comment into Belli Citizens chat. Just something like "Oh lord, this person rezzed a Sky Dome that covers FOUR REGIONS and messes up environments, I AR'd it Friday, but it's still there! I love this parcel but may have to move on ... " Mayhap a mole might see your angst. Once I asked in Belli Chat if I should abandon a parcel where a neighbor had done something unsightly, and Patch showed up! Morning is not only peak concurrency, but also a common time for status meetings, aka boredom factories.

You can drive all the way through the stilts, from the lovely bridge in Beiramar region at the Northeast tip of LogLand to the Chalets. The moles put in place a carefully crafted road-and-bridge design to enable that! I used to have a stilt-on-land that had enough water in back to moor 2 boats and fronted on that looooong road. It was a beaut.

The 9-region "Monkey" area up in the SSP zone has been stripped down to only 2 regions. This is what it looked like yesterday, today the red regions have no names. At no point have I had any idea what these were supposed to be used for. Work continues on SSP45xx (probable new theme). Still 16 regions. I noticed that with the Ranches in place, the moles now have TWO missing coastlines where they could provide a shorter water route between Olde Bellisseria and the Stilts: the northern LogLand coast, or the southern Ranch coast. Maybe someday.

I know of 2 volcanoes in LogLand, in addition to the Devils Tower butte. Their locations are documented in Jon Ree's notecard about Special Interest locations. All 3 of these features occur at the juncture of 4 regions (this fact has actually led them to be documented redundantly in Jon's card, which gives the impression that there are 4 or so volcanoes). Nika has not edited the wiki in a long time, but I'll try to add them to the page you so kindly linked, @Istelathis, unless someone else does so first. @Matthieu Quander, you may be thinking of the big volcano party that the Moles threw in Millbank around the time that Logland opened. It was a blowout, so to speak!

Aren't there 2 ... or is it 3? ... volcanoes in LogLand? Not counting Devils Tower. If memory serves, some sort of lost creature ... was it a Mole? or a Hobbit? ... dropped a "One Ring" near one of them. How precious!