So I’ve had a couple things I’ve wanted to add to Reloop lately, but haven’t had much free time to tear it apart & dig in. The main addition is going to be adding textures to the pads, stored in the cartridges & associated to the buttons the same way samples are. Pretty simple to add, and it’ll do a lot for usability when juggling a bunch of different songs around. I’d like to toss in some basic textures as well, if I can work some up, to make it a little easier for cartridge-makers that might not be photoshop wizards (not that I am, but maybe I can win a bet against one or something).

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Had an interesting in-world conversation with a pal over my previous post on the forums. Turns out that the Content creation forums are not getting dropped. Hunted around for a good 15 minutes trying to find a post on this though. Robin dropped it in 1 of the 150+ comments on the original blog post. Ranted for about 15 more minutes on how the B in Blog really does stand for Backasswards. Not slighting Robin or the SL blog, both are great - it’s the format’s failure.

Condensed version: People go on & on about the mighty “blogosphere” like it’s a community and how blogs really enable communication, but it’s still just a community of one-way roads. It’s not a conversation - there’s the post, obviously the important part. Then there are trackbacks and comments. Those are… links to other blogs talking about the same thing and a place for people to woo & boo. No implied dialogue anywhere, just monologue & a laugh track.

Maybe Robin’s comment should’ve been a new post entirely (more obvious for us RSS subscribers too), but then there’d be no connection to the comments she was replying to. Either the comment reply goes unheard or it gets cut off & put into a new post, making it recursively one-way.

Kinda sad that, after however many billions of dollars have been tossed around on advancing the web, email still wins. Bite me, hypesters.

Anywhizzle, throwing it in reverse to rework that previous post:

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The official SL forums are going to be phased out, and it seems to be a big deal for some folks. I’m no fan of forums (see previous post), won’t miss them. I see it as a good chance to replace some of the useful/used bits with something better. Past all the LL-negging and postcounting, the forums serve 4 main purposes that I can see: Content creation info/help, classifieds, contact with LL, and meeting & talking with other residents (in my own order, mind - can’t speak for y’all).

Going backwards:

Meeting other residents - This is already taken care of, I think. There are already other established forums people will migrate to, or blogs, or just wandering around in-world more. Don’t really do a ton of this myself, I hang with my little crew & avoid the mainland already.

Contact with LL - Entirely up to what they’re willing to handle. It seems obvious that not every Linden uses SL, so there needs to be something more than just bug reports and the messy feature voting app for the rest of us to let them know what’s broken/confusing. 10-20 Torleyclones sharing the same brain would rock, but that’s not happening. Going through Live Help or direct IMs to Lindens in-world… only useful for immediate issues and occasionally results in conflicting answers. Not seeing a good solution here. But the one-sided Answers forum kinda sucks too.

An in-world request handler could replace the Land Management forum well enough. Either add it to the help menu or script up a mailbox to set out at the infohubs. A web-based one would work too, not much more than a mailform.

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random updateness:

1) Attention anyone who bought my crutch AO! Someone bought one a while back and managed to get one with absolutely no permissions on it when it should’ve been mod / copy / no-trans. I still haven’t managed to replicate it via alts/friends/etc, but - if you bought one & it isn’t +m / +c / -t, let me know in-world (IM Stella Trenchmouth) and i’ll drop one with proper permissions on you. Be sure you’re logged in as the avatar who actually bought it, mind. I keep a lot of lists ;) I’m gathering up a list of folks to IM just to be sure, but don’t want to get too spammy about it since it likely hasn’t happened much.

Same goes for pretty much anything else I sell - everything to date should be mod/copy/notrans, even the animations (+mod on an animation is kinda silly, but there for consistency). Big fan of that permission set, lets me change everything to fit. I don’t think i own anything that hasn’t been tweaked a little. Yank the braid & ribbon off of Toast Bard’s (can’t remember the name but i’m sure it was awesome & witty, that one that’s kinda shoulder length, with the ribbon in back, black with blond highlights version) hair, and BOOM, instant cutie-hesher. Or stuff straws in the bun of the nice schoolmarm-ish one. Or color the barrettes & headbands. I love that I can do that. Also, I generally obsessively adore anything Toast makes. Just sayin’.

2) Been asked a few times why i don’t post stuff to the New Products SL forums. For two reasons:

- I don’t really want to be a known quantity, same reason I keep my shops somewhat hidden out of view. I just like to hang out & do stuff. The more people with big expectations, the more likely I’ll just churn out generic crap or just never release stuff out into the wild. Granted I already do both in quantity, but still ;p

- I avoid all “public” forums, not just the SL ones. It’s the nature of it, along with blogs (this one included, mind), wikis, and any other “here’s my message to the world” style communication. Sometimes people post wonderful things - great ideas, input on features, explanations of things, actual constructive debates. Most of the time it just instills a stupid king-of-the-soapbox mentality. If, in the middle of a normal in-world conversation, someone said, “that’s fine, but that doesn’t fix [completely unrelated issue i feel obligated to rant about repeatedly],” i’d be more likely to rez a brick wall for them to talk to & wander elsewhere (that’s the original intent of the joke wall i sell). Even the LSL wiki gets dragged into the destructive criticism game regularly. Waste of everybody’s time, even this little ranty tangent. Screws to that, y’all.

3) And yeah, still working part two of the sim stats scripty thing. The dayjob, a messy back injury (or at least the messy meds), and usual pursuit of things more fun have kept me a bit occupied.

4) I really don’t like this whole “posting here as a way to avoid IMs” thing. Not a very appropriate place for it. Bad Stella.

Another plug or two, real quick:

1) Suffugium is going to be staging some stuff on saturday for SL’s 3rd birthday party. The big one is Jaycatt and Frogg making wonderful noises at the Moonrise Cabaret (TP to Suffugium and head down the street the giant statue is facing, can’t miss it) from 6-8pm SLT/PST. The cabaret can hold a whole lot of people, but it’ll probably pack the sim so get there early!

Also, there’ll be tours of the sim before & after - anyone who hasn’t had a chance to really explore (gone dumpster diving for freebies, seen the slums, etc) can join in & see all the nifty secrets. I think our pal Gomi Mfume will be DJing as well, with her insane library of industrial/EBM/noise/wacky songs (including the work of a few Suffugium residents!). Search Events for “suffugium” & come say howdy.

2) June 21 is Go Skateboarding day. It’s good times.