Darrius Gothly

Thank you Clover. I checked out KoKoLoReS and didn't find anything. But no.match had one that really struck my fancy. So here it is: no.match_ ~ NO_REST ~ Pack of BLACKS

Exploring the woods at Gulf of Lune:

Okay I did the Belleza Jake body and kept my system head. I did however switch to Belleza's Jacob skin for its updated facial hair; I think it looks a bit better. Next I went hair shopping with my RL daughter. Do you know there is virtually NO shoulder length hair that looks good? It's all either cropped short or down to the middle of the back. Anyway, I settled on some prim hair that's ... acceptable. Then I did some shopping. I wound up with a few outfits. These pictures show me in the new hair and wearing a different kind of shirt than normal. No attributions though .. just stuff for the picture. Oh and i played with Windlight a bit too.

In RL I was always a button-down shirt, sometimes a tie, and khakis. It made a nice business-like appearance when showing up on customer site. In my off-hours, the shirt opened up and sometimes I'd throw on a leather bracelet and switch to black slacks. But always slip-on shoes (cuz I'm basically lazy that way). But those were simple choices to make. Fortunately in RL the clothing selections are broad and available all over. As an update though, I'm pushing into the mesh realm and trying out some demos. Here is just a quickie setup using Belleza's Jake DEMO with their Jacob skin DEMO .. and my old system head and hair. See? Not much different. And on yeah .. I'm the one on the right. I guess I need to do some clothes shopping to show off the stuff beneath the tux, huh?

I spend a fair amount of time consuming the Forum topics about style and fashion of one's avatar. There are heroes and heroines both that I absolutely adore and treasure. (Not gonna name names cuz this is a limited length post y'know). Anyway, what I am on about today is the total frustration I, and perhaps many other men, feel when confronted with the need to "dress up". I have ZERO fashion skill. Nada. None, Zippo. Squat. Need I go on? I can see it. Oh lawdy I recognize when an avatar is beyond the pale in their fashion or style. Some people have that amazing knack of touching three things and turning them into masterpieces. Me? Not so much. I DO have an eye for technology, computer code, geeky mechanical or technological creations that go whir and click and do neat things. But being able to assemble a half-decent avatar? Oh hell no! I will eventually stumble and plod my way into a mesh avatar. And I will eventually find an assortment of accessories that don't make me look like a noob fresh off the 3D printer. But in the meantime, I am busy making essential things that work .. things that fill the rest of the virtual world with amenities that please the populace .. while looking like a throwback to the 00's. And mostly? I'm okay with that. As long as the ladies are willing to look past the cartoonish bits and hear the echoes from my thinkbox instead of stopping at my face. Your thoughts?

From mid-2008: Even though this one is from a few years ago, it's not far from me now: Yup, same hair. Hey, if it ain't broke ... And I added some leather here and there ...

Okay, you convinced me. Swoon Emoji comes first. THEN the Hug.

Pondering in Wondering Dew. Nothing fancy .. just a plain old system body, pants and ancient hair. But y'know .. it still looks like the 'Me" I've known for all these years.

Hey! I had a request in for a HUG emoji first. Get in line!

Trust me, I wasn't using a home machine. I was leasing the cloud instance from one of the nation's biggest hosting services. They have a setup with high-speed fiber interconnections between each physical machine. Their hardware is all located in the same protected server building on the east coast of the USA. They're also using top of the line disk emulators that use RAM instead of physical drives. So moving an instance from one machine to another is blazing fast. BUT .. when you are moving basically the entire RAM space of a very fat system, it can and does take time. With a web server there is actually very little "application specific" data that must be copied. The state of the web server is pretty much reset at the start of every request. But that is not the case with a MySQL Server or a Region Simulator. The amount of private and volatile "application specific" data is many times larger. And that is what has to be copied to another computer and its virtual drive when a switch is required. Yes, it can be blazingly fast. But only if nothing else is happening on the network at that time. Do you seriously think there won't be much traffic on the interconnecting network? The last part of your last sentence though is what I see as their reason. You are right imo about this: "a setup that will lower costs on their hardware end and will provide better up times and performance because they can split that across many machines is an attractive bonus for them." After all, they are looking at any means possible to lower their costs. If it causes some hiccups or burps, as long as they're "acceptable" .. onward to infinity!! PS: I will just still argue with the "better .. performance" part of that sentence.

Whoever is on the other end of that glare? .... they're in BIG trouble.

I find myself extremely underwhelmed at the prospect of LL moving SL's Simulators to the Cloud. I spent a giant chunk of 2016 and 2017 attempting to equip a medium-demand MySQL Server on a Cloud instance. I had tons of help, the best minds and experts on cloud computing at the hosting company, and finally they just refunded most of the money I'd paid in fees and said "We're sorry but it's just not going to work." Okay .. After thinking and studying on it for some time, I've come to the realization that the major problem was the "hand-off" time. That's when it turns out another physical computer running as a Cloud Server is designated as being better able to serve up the response. With your typical web page servers, that hand-off time is no issue as the amount of information that must be replicated to the new computer is pretty small. But when it comes to FAT applications (like MySQL and SL Simulators) the data transfer is prohibitive. So when the switchover occurs, everything freezes for the 2-10 seconds it takes to mirror the whole shebang. I realize that "Cloud Computing" is all the rage now. And I also realize it seems to be less expensive than dedicated servers. It's also pretty common to find 3rd party hosting services that will do all the management of the Cloud for you. But is it REALLY suitable to host a Region Simulator? IMO ... No.

I'm wondering about the "s" ... as in more than one sweater.

Boiling it all down, what about this? Premium Members get access to in-world vendors linked to their MP store.

Don't forget Pestilence. That's my favorite .. Pestilence. Gotta have a full-on dose of Pestilence.

/me passes out lollipops and butterfly hair clips to everyone with their feels hurt ... (well? They won't give me the dang hug emoji. What's a guy gotta do?)

So .. is that what we call a "Fuster Cluck"?

My example image URL is a bit nondescript. Sorry about that. It's a Region Tile such as you'd see in the World Map. However this applies to any and all images from SL as well. LL does indeed scrunch them and turn them into the three really useless formats. I suspect you are quite right, their intended use is only for LL's use on their SL web pages. My use is for products that I sell. The web-side of those products are moving to secure hosting, but the dang images from inside SL cause that dreaded "mixed content" error AND, even worse, cause my sites to be ranked world-wide as "probably unsafe or the source of malware". GACK!!

Sometimes you find places that .. well .. they just interest you. Ezari (forgot to mention that)

LOL I didn't mean that kind of work-around. I was hoping there was some service already established, some KB or Wiki posting I hadn't found .. something in the known (and legit) universe that would help surmount this issue. But since posting this and getting nary a wiggle of a response from anyone (not even Whirly!) I've been mind-designing a caching system that would do the work of loading images from the LL source over HTTP then serve them back up via HTTPS. Clunky but .. perhaps the only route available. *sigh*

Decided to take a friend's advice and visited Time Portal. Found a couple blasts from the past worth sharing .. I think ... I might rip the upholstery Man I miss my ride.

The cop avi would prolly frisk your avi thoroughly first .. then demand payment in "personal services" for promoting your report to the top of the pile. Leastwise .. it's what I'd do .. *ebilgrin*

At the present time there does not seem to be a reasonable method to retrieve In-World Textures from a Secure HTTPS web page. For example, if you try using the URL: https://secondlife.com/app/image/d2773340-b1dd-b030-e9bf-2c2851000283/2 That resolves to the following URL: http://texture-service.agni.lindenlab.com/d2773340-b1dd-b030-e9bf-2c2851000283/320x240.jpg/ But notice that the first part has been changed from https:// to http:// ... GACK! Any secure web page that attempts to include an In-World Texture will trigger a "mixed content" warning in every browser out there. If you try and pre-resolve the second URL but manually stick an https:// on the front, you get an interesting error. (In Chrome it's a Privacy Error because the source is not secure.) Sooooo .. Linden Lab? What are your plans for providing a secure web service for In-World Textures? Can we get something going since it seems Secure Hosting is a nearly free and easily obtained technology these days? In the meantime, does anyone have any hacks or tricks that might get around this issue ... or maybe just sees that I've totally missed some obvious thing. I'd appreciate any help that folks can provide. Thanks in advance.

We need that HUG emoji thing .. NOW! *harumph* Fine .. do it myself .. CurseSmile? HUGZZZZZ!

May I have a sip of whatever you're drinking .. please?