Ceera Murakami

Seeing an image of what you're talking about might help get a more solid answer, but I think that Knowl Paine had the right answer. Here's amore detailed explanation. When you apply a texture to a prim surface, the 'Default' texture format is to apply one repetition of that texture in each direction. So for example, if the image was a logo for a business, you would see one copy of that logo. When you re-size a default textured prim, there is a check box in the building tools for 'stretch textures'. If that is not checked, making the prim larger will leave that logo the same size, and it fills in the area around it with more repeats of the image. So if you doubled the length of the prim, you'd have one logo centered in that face, and a half of a logo on either side of that. Make it three times longer than the original, and you see three logos. Looking in the building tools and selecting that one prim face, you'll see that the repeats in the X direction, for example, changed from 1.000 to perhaps 2.000. If you change it back to 1.000, you'll only have one logo on that face, but it will be distorted now - twice as wide as it was before. If 'stretch textures' had been checked before re-sizing the prim, this stretching would have happened as you resized it, and the repeats in each direction would remain at 1.000. "Repeats per meter" is sort of a strange texture setting. What it is supposed to do is tie the repeats to the actual measured dimensions of the prim, so if the prim face is two meters wide and one meter high, so a repeats per meter of 1.000 would apply the texture as one repeat in the X direction and 2 repeats in the Y direction. Double the size of the prim, and the image size remains the same, so you now would have two repeats high by 4 repeats wide. Since most building in SL is of a more arbitrary size and proportion, this setting isn't very useful to most builders. There is also a texture format called "Planar" texturing, which projects the texture onto a surface, rather than mapping it to the edges of the surface. If you had a cube prim that you tapered to a point at the top, and the texturing was "Default", the triangular faces at the end will 'pinch' the texture to a point at the top. So a grid of squares would get narrower and narrower as you got to that point. Change that to "Planar", and the squares become squares again, with some of the texture not showing at the top. This is extremely useful when applying a regular, seamless texture like roof shingles to a triangular prim face. It makes them work without distorting. Planar texturing also has a repeat factor in X and Y, just like Default textures do, that controls how often the texture repeats. But this is based on the size of the original texture in pixels. A 512 x 512 texture applied as a planar texture to a cube prim's face with a repeat of 0.200 will repeat twice as often as a 1024 x 1024 version of that same texture, applied with the exact same Planar texture settings. You need to adjust the repeats factor to make the texture fit the face it is on. But all prim faces that share the same texture and setting will have the same size for the details, regardless of the size of the prim face. So individual shingles in a seamlessly repeating texture, applied on a long rectangular face will have the same dimensions as the ones on the small triangular prim ends. Planar textures only work on flat surfaces. If you apply them to the curved surfaces of a sphere, torus or any other curved surface, they distort in very unpredictable ways. Planar textures also may react badly if you resize the prim with stretch textures checked. The way they 'stretch' does not work right in SL's building tools. If you re-size a planar textured prim and the texture repeats seem to distort, change the X and Y repeats back to what they were before in the building tools. You may find it less confusing to apply planar textures only after prims are at their final size,

Just FYI, you want to make the image about 170 pixels wide by 190 pixels high. I had to experiment a lot to find a size that worked in both Answers and the Forums, and it still crops differently in each. Also, don't try any of the 'stock' badges. If you do, you apparently can't get rid of them. The 'Bayfog' stock image is the only one of those, if you did pick one earlier, that allows you to see an uploaded badge.

Well, I'm still around. Slowly finding where they moved things like the Scripting Library and the LSL Wiki...

Okay, in this wonderful new "Community Portal", where did they hide the LSL Scripting Library and the LSL WIKI? I wanted to help a newer user by providing an example of a physical elevator script from the public-domain scripts posted in the script library, but in this new format, I can't find a single resource for LSL scripting help! Where is it hidden? Or did they just decide no one needs scripting information any more?

If the elevator is not the type that requires the avatar to sit on a pose ball before the elevator moves, then you're trying to male a "Physical elevator", and the script needs to set physics to TRUE for the elevator car just before it moves, and then set physics to false when the car stops. Also, loop the llSetPos command to move the car in small increments, and you'll get a better-working elevator. Here's a link to a page in the archived scripting library from the old forums, for a physical elevator script: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Simple_Elevator_in_a_Box

There's only one way to put a hole in a prim. You can hollow it on the Z-axis, and make that hollow larger or smaller, or to a limited degree change its shape. But it will always be centered on the prim, and all the way through. (Some prim shapes, like Tube and Torus, have a hole as part of their design, but it is also centered on one specific axis, and can't be relocated.) So, there is no way with prims to place a hole at an arbitrary location. There is hope, however! Mesh construction will soon be available in SL, and when that arrives (it's in beta testing now), you can use external applications like Blender, SketchUp or Maya to create an arbitrary mesh shape, and then import that into Second Life. A single mesh object will usually count as more than one prim for parcel prim limits, with the exact count depending on a number of factors, but primarily on how complex the mesh shape is. Mesh will allow arbitrary holes and shapes completely impossible with just prims.

Personally, the thing I want most to get out of web profiles... is to get out of them entirely. I don't need or want spyware from Facebook and Twitter on my profile page, nor do I want ads on my profile page. I don't see any value whatsoever in allowing people who are not logged in to Second Life and in-world to have access to my profile information. I don't see any value in a format that takes up more screen real-estate and is slower to load. Dump the web profiles.

I would like to give you an honest, thoughtful, courteous and respectful reply, Amanda. But every time I try, your blog software prohibits posting my response. I will write you a nice, long, e-mail, and reply that way. You do still accept and read e-mails, I hope? By the way, like quite a few residents, I do not and will not ever use Facebook or Twitter. Where can I go to get the same information that you post to those data mining services, without exposing my systems to either one's servers? What Blog or website other than those two disreputable companies can I also get this current-event information about SL from?

The Real Life section is indeed back, and fully exposed. Hey Yoz? How much are Facebook and Google paying LL for selling us out? Hope it was worth the tier you'll lose as people leave SL over this breech of privacy.

OK, here's another great one on this Profile exposure mess: Under the 1.2x Viewers, and the 1.2x version of Search, the behavior if you uncheck "Show in search" for your profile is that the earlier web-based profile search tools didn't show you AT ALL, but in-world people could still do an "All" or "People" search and find you. That is a desirable configuration for personal privacy. With the 2.x viewers and 2.x version of Search, the behavior if you uncheck "Show in search" for your profile (now a checkbox hidden deep in Preferences, and badly marked as "Show me in Search", and no longer anywhere near the profile you're trying to protect), is that a web-based search still shows your name, and offers everything if you log in, but in-world people attempting to do an "All" or "People" search and find you will not find you AT ALL. That is NOT a desirable situation, because you have to completely sacrifice being able to be found in-world to gain even a marginal level of personal privacy from Internet searches. And the new my.secondlife.com profiles will STILL show you, regardless of that setting! The behavior at that site if you uncheck "Show in search" for your profile is that the my.secondlife.com profile still shows your name, if you're not logged in, and requires an SL login to get the entire remainder of your profile, including your First Life tab info. Vote to get this inconsistent behavior fixed, and restore our ability to protect our privacy: WEB-3603

Ceera there is so a check for show in search in the 2.x viewers. its under privacy. its always been there. OK, I stand corrected. They removed it entirely from Profiles, and hid it in a seldom-used tab in Preferences, with no explanation that it is your profile that you're showing or hiding... Who designed that? The Vogon Fleet Construction Crew?

If you un-checked 'show in search' in your profile using the OLD Viewer, then all they can see if not logged in is your name, and it appears Google doesn't index you either. I looked through all the pages that come up in Google when I search on "site:my.secondlife.com resident", and it only appeared to list people who had checked 'show in search'. But that option is unavailable to users of the 2.x based Viewers. There is no option in the 2.x Viewers to check or uncheck 'show in search'. Anyone who had left 'show in search'; checked, which was the default behavior for all new accounts, was fully exposed by this action, with no recourse. And for many people, un-checking 'show in search' isn't an option. A busy content creator or merchant needs to be able to be found in search by potential customers. Allowing our profiles to be searchable by the entire Internet should be opt-in, not a forced fiat accompli decided by Linden Lab, with no way to fully opt out.

And here's how to block the Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons on Mac OSX: Open the Terminal application, in Applications > Utilities type "sudo nano /private/etc/hosts", without the quotes, and hit return. enter your login password, since this requires root access. add the following at the end of the file: 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 twitter.com Then type option o to write the change, and option x to exit the nano text editor. this has been tested on my Macs, and it definitely blocks both websites. The Facebook 'like' button won't even appear, and the 'tweet' button won't be able to link back to Twitter, and you can't browse to their websites.

There's no hard and fast limit for script use altitude. If you can fly to that altitude, (with a scripted flight assist), generally all other scripts still work as well. I've heard of people reaching well over 100,000 Meters, though after 6,000 or so it's academic, since there's nothing up that high but you, and the only thing that changes is the altitude reading on the screen. You can't rez prims above 4096 Meters. It's possible to physically move them above that height limit after creating them, but anything that moves them even the slightest amount after that, including scripted actions like opening a door prim, will make the linkset snap back down to 4096 Meters altitude. So again, moving prims above the 4096 M altitude limit is relatively pointless.

Well, until they do provide better privacy settings, I have hidden all groups in all my profiles, and have unchecked 'Show in search' for my profiles, using the 1.23.5 Viewer. I am not releasing anything more than I have to, for access to people that don't even have Second Life accounts.

(I apologize in advance for the use of all-caps here. If your Blog's text formatting wasn't so screwed up I would have used italics.) So fine... If we sell via the Marketplace, we will, with some effort, be able to flag our products so they can be access controlled by the purchaser's maturity rating, and the 16 and 17 year olds will only be able to buy goods tagged as G-rated. Eventually, other content can be flagged so only those with payment info on file or Aristotle age verification can see and buy Adult items. And Linden Lab insists this is necessary, and a good idea. Right? Then WHY will in-world merchants not have the same protection from their goods being sellable to the minors that you have insisted on allowing into our virtual world full of non-G-Rated content? If this is necessary for the Marketplace, then it's necessary in-world, too. Give us the ability, by script, to allow or prohibit sales or scripted activity based on the maturity rating cap allowed by the purchasing account. GIVE THAT TO US NOW! If the Marketplace needs to be able to check a buyer's ID, and prohibit transactions for those whose maturity rating isn't adult enough, then the rest of the transactions in-world deserve the same protection. Period. You say we need to restrict access to Mature and Adult content, so the minors can't buy it? I agree. But that must apply equally to ALL BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS in SL, and not just to the marketplace. Why is an on-line purchase of a XXX pose ball set any different than buying that same pose ball set from a scripted vendor in-world? Why is it different for buying a Mature-rated, detailed Human skin? We have told you and proven to you that the teens will easily be able to cam from G-rated into Mature regions and make purchases that are in no way suitable for use in G-rated sims. We merchants have BEGGED you for the ability to detect the minors by script, and ban them from making purchases. LL refused. No more. You admit now that it is necessary. Well, it is necessary IN-WORLD, even more than on-line.

Why wasn't this started when the commitment to the teen grid merge was announced? We told you that this would be an issue. Why wait until AFTER you let the minors in the door, before allowing us to lock the door to the mature/adult content and keep them out?

Perhaps Rodvik or someone else on the LL staff could simply explain one thing about these web profiles: "Why is it necessary, AT ALL, for ANYONE to be able to access these web profiles without first providing a valid SL account and password?" Why does any of this need to be open to the whole Internet? Can someone explain that? Why does anyone who does NOT have at least one valid SL account have any reason to access this information, AT ALL?

Welcome to our reality, Rod. Sounds like you're off to a fairly good start, or at least a well-intentioned one. Please, don't be like most of the LL staffers who think that if they post their Twitter link, everyone can and will be able to use Twitter to communicate with you. There are many of us among your customers who wouldn't use Twitter or Facebook - and their inherent exposure to privacy loss - even if someone in the real world was holding a gun to our head. Post your e-mail address as well, and actually read and respond to that too. Make blog posts, and actually read the replies and respond to them. Most importantly, realize that a large segment of your customers utterly detest linking real-world social networking sites to our fantasy lives. Some challenges for you: Instead of trying your building on an isolated sim (that most likely cost you nothing and is restricted access - Lindens only), go to a sandbox area, and try to build and script there, with the griefers dropping LOL cubes on your head, and stealing what you build as fast as you can create it, and blasting you into orbit with weapons. Then ask yourself is this is a neighborhood you want to be the landlord for, and what you can do to improve the public's use of sandbox sims. Do the same for several welcome areas, including the infamous "Bear Infohub". See what it is like, as an unidentified noob alt, to be exposed to the rough crowd that gets its jollies off ruining your day, or scamming you out of every L$ you have. Then, once again, ask yourself is this is a neighborhood you want to be the landlord for, and what you can do to improve the public's use of Linden welcome areas and infohubs. Pick up a randomly-assigned Linden home, and see how well you can decorate it, using just 117 prims. Experience the lag, and the broken Voice Chat. See what it is like to try to have a civil conversation with a friend when a couple in the cabin next to yours is chat-spamming the area with the text posts for their lovemaking. Try moving several times, to see what different Linden Homes sims are like, and how the lag and the use of those sims differs. Buy a small parcel of land, and try selling it to an alt at a fairly low price, slowly reducing the price to lower levels, and watch as a land bot steals it from you, marks the price up tenfold, and refuses to give you back your land. Try shopping in a busy mall, where there's 40 avatars or close to it already there, and experience the lag. Try going to a busy social area, like a dance club, and try to make sense of it all when posts scroll by too fast for the Human eye to read them. Turn off Voice, and go to an area that uses Voice a lot. See what it is like to be ostracized for your refusal (or simulated inability) to let everyone hear your real-life voice. Go somewhere that a griefer attack is in progress, and see what it is like to be assaulted by those vermin. Go to a well-managed set of sims, like Caledon. Enjoy the people and the resident-created goodness. Then consider that many of the people who created those areas have left SL, or are leaving, because of various problems in-world. Go to a PG mainland sim, with a test alt that has been created as one of the 'restricted' accounts given to the 16 and 17 year olds. Stand at the sim edge, and see how many XXX adult things and activities are within easy camming range. Try to have a conversation with people, when you have no idea if they are a minor or an adult. Purchase a full-use sim, try to set it up as rental parcels, and try to run it as a landlord, with your own money on the line, and the very real risk of losing money if your business plan fails. Consider how you fare, and whether or not there's a level playing field between your small-time rental business, and Linden Lab's free Linden Homes, that can undercut a low-end landlord in more ways than I can list here. Compare also how well you fare compared to mega-landlords, who are permitted to obtain sims more cheaply than the rank and file, and to operate them at a lower price. Second Life can be a wonderful, engaging place. But there is a lot that is 'broken', because most of the Lindens only see what life on the grid is like on their isolated, secure, Linden-owned sims. You can't see what the grid is like on your own free Linden-provided sim or parcel. Put on your most shabby cloak, oh King, and walk among the people as a common peon, and see what life is like outside the gilded palace walls.

From what I can see, if someone un-checks 'show in search" at the profile level, with the 1.23.x Viewer, then you have to be logged in to see much more than that person's name. If they own groups and uncheck 'show in search' for that group, then you won't see those 'hidden' groups. At least, I get that result on my Win XP system. As a test, look up ceera.murakami : https://my.secondlife.com/ceera.murakami I hid my "Fox and Ground Properties" land group, so you shouldn't be able to see that in my groups. In the 1.23.5 Viewer, I unchecked "Show in Search" for my entire profile. That seems impossible to check or uncheck in this new web-based Profile. The option does not exist! The groups that I own, I can check or uncheck a 'show in search' option. But NOT groups that belong to anyone else. Got a racy group that you belong to, and the owner has 'show in search' checked? Tough. You can not hide it in your own Profile! Example of this, the "Foxes in Corsets" group that I am in, which is actually just an innocent land access group for a friend's home parcel, that has a sexy name. But I can't hide it. I would have to leave the group to get it not to show.

The new web-based profiles look nice, but I agree I don't want anyone else linking my web-profile to their FaceBook or Twitter networking. I don't want anything to do with either of those 'services'. Added to my Profile info: "I do NOT do Facebook or Twitter, and anything about Ceera on those services is unauthorized." As for the 2.5 viewer itself, I am in absolutely no hurry to check it out. Eliminate the sidebar entirely, restore the text entry field to the text chat floater, and eliminate the unnecessary extra mouse clicks in the cumbersome 2.x UI, and maybe I'll consider it worth looking at. Sticking with 1.23.5, until you force me to abandon the better, more functional UI of the former Viewer.

Most of the Linden Homes that I have seen have no land at all outside the walls that is yours. Do you really want a horse or two in your living room or bedroom?

In detail? It's impossible. LL only maintains the last 30 days worth of detailed transaction history. You need to log in every 20 to 30 days and download it to your PC if you want to keep a full record for longer than that. Transaction history for the past 30 days, in detail, is here: https://secondlife.com/my/account/transactions.php?lang=en-US If you're worried about tax purposes, you CAN get the record of your L$ purchases and cash-outs via LL, which shows the only thing that the tax authorities should care about - how much real-world money you gained or lost via SL. Until it is converted to real money, the L$ flying around inside SL are just fictional game credits, of no more interest to the tax authorities than how many pairs of pixel shoes you own. Here's the URL for the monthly account statements for your USD balance and cash-outs, that LL keeps for as far back as you have done business with them. https://secondlife.com/my/account/statement.php?lang=en-US

Welcome to the virtual world called Second Life, Rod Humble. I sincerely hope that you will be the decisive leader that Linden Lab needs at the helm, and not just a puppet and yes-man for the venture capital people and managers here. In spite of investing money in SL or working in SL management for many years, the venture capital people and the managers that are pulling the strings and making the major decisions that affect the course of the future of Second Life seem completely detached from what this virtual world is, and don't have a clue how their customers use this product. Can you imagine what it would have been like at EA, if the people making the decisions didn't know, or even care, how any of the games were actually played, or what they were capable of? If, for example, they tried to make The Sims Online into a banking application, or into a business conferencing system? If they ignored what users of the game could do and did do with the product, and made all their decisions based on some marketing person's fantasy of what future users might use the product for, if only they signed up for accounts, and if only the product was changed into something completely different, to accommodate that radically different use? If they made these decisions regardless of harmful impact on how the current user base used the product, and regardless of overwhelmingly negative customer reactions to those plans and decisions? Sadly, that is what the past several years of Linden Lab management have been like. The Lab's management has consistently ignored the majority of the feedback that they get from their current customers, and has made their most critical strategic decisions in a vacuum, without seeking customer feedback or investigating how customers use the aspects of the product that a new plan will change. Then they launch the changes without being at all prepared for the pitfalls that are blatantly obvious to active users of the product, even though we tell them, quite loudly, where those pitfalls are, and what can be done to resolve them. They stumble along and halfway fix what they broke, and call it 'good enough', and move on to the next shiny new plan that some manager dangles before them. The only reason they get away with it at all is that this virtual world is unique. There is no other alternative that offers similar capabilities, and also has anything remotely close to the volume of customers and resources that are here right now. There is a major policy shift in the works right now that is misguided and being implemented without due precautions being taken for the consequences. I am talking about the merger of the 16 and 17 year old teen grid members with the main grid. As long as there are G-rated sims side by side with Mature and even Adult rated sims, there is no way that the G-rated sims are suitable for 16 and 17 year olds to access. This needs to be halted in its tracks until the problems with the merger have actually been addressed, and before LL gets sued for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or worse. Would you have allowed an "18+ adults only" area to exist in The Sims Online, with simulated sex acts and almost any kink and perversion imaginable being allowed in those areas, and then permit those areas to exists side by side with the rest of TSO, viewable by all the under-18 users? Can you even imagine what it would be like if the TSO grid had been 18+ adult content from its inception, and you were introducing a "teen friendly" set of regions side-by side with all that porn? The current LL management seems to have no problem with that. They are going to allow 16 and 17 years old minors to access G-rated regions that are side by side with regions that permit XXX Adult sex acts to be depicted in them. And they are changing the access the teen accounts have without informing the parents of these minors, or getting their permission to allow the minors access to adult content. If the minors must be allowed on the main grid, they need a special region maturity rating, called "Teen", that is what the G-rated sims are supposed to offer, but which is not permitted if there are any contiguous regions attached that are of Mature or Adult ratings. The G/PG rated Mainland areas need to all be re-rated as Mature, because it is nonsense to have a G/PG region located side by side with a Mature region where the people in the G-rated area can look across the border and view any imaginable sex act. Please, take the time to really explore the Grid, and talk to Residents. Use both the 1.23.5 Viewer and the 2.4 Viewer, as well as the major third party Viewers, and see for yourself what the difference is in the experience as you try to shop, socialize, build, interact with large groups, or do other common activities. Explore the Zindra continent, with the worst of its depravity, and understand that any inventory item sold there can be taken to any Mature sim and freely be used by any 18+ resident, in full view (or at least by camming through a wall, which is trivial) of the neighboring G/PG sims. Learn how to build a house and make clothes. Go to the Livingtree sim, and see the sweet innocence of 18+ residents like Marianne McCann, who use G-Rated child avatars to roleplay a second childhood, with fireworks shows, and playgrounds, and fishing off a pier, and camp-outs where you toast marshmallows. Try your hand at scripting and making animations. See what the differences are when trying to do those things with different Viewers. Learn, first hand, what SL is and what it can do. But please, don't just sit on a small parcel in Linden Village, surrounded only by LL employees, walk around and attend LL meetings, and think you understand what SL is and what it can be. It is SO much more than just that limited experience! Read the forums. Not just these blogs, but also the archived earlier forum system. Read the user feedback threads where the maturity ratings changes for Zindra were discussed. Read about the changes in Homestead and OpenSpace sim policies. Read about the current decisions to merge the teen and adult grids. Read about SL Marketplace, and the issues merchants have there, and the fact that most of the team that is managing that product seem to have been fired or left the company. Above all, get to know and listen to your current Residents. They are your customers, and a surprisingly large number of them are very experienced in content creation and in how SL actually works, and would be very willing to give you the benefit of their experience, FOR FREE, if only you would seek their input and listen to them. LL is not a game. It is a virtual world with almost unlimited potential for growth and creativity, if only it had the leadership and vision to acknowledge what it is, and help it to grow. You need to be the President of a country, to run SL, not a banker or a lawyer or a finance manager. This is a community, with residents world-wide. Remember that, and you could thrive here, and turn SL back into something wonderful. Try to turn it into a G-rated game, and you'll kill it.

Adding to what Unclebob said, there's no solid reason for anyone to tell the truth about their RL gender when creating an account, either. So in all probability. LL hasn't got a clue either about the breakdown of actual real-life males to females in SL.