Nicholaz' Viewers for Virtual Worlds

Linden's New Viewer Policy

2010-04-03T15:00:00.010+01:00

With the new Terms of Service published by Teh Lab yesterday, comes a new policy regarding access to SL with software which is not made by LL.

I did not agree to their TOS and have canceled my accounts today. Binaries of the my viewers are also no longer available.

If you have one my viewers installed already and plan to continue to use the software for access to SecondLife™, please make sure you are aware of the implications. (If you are interested in background about the third party viewer policy and how it was received by other viewer developers, jump here and start reading in the mid February archive.)

My viewers did meet most of their requirements (they especially have no copyright violating, privacy invading or other malicious features), but not all of them and I refuse to update the code just because the Lindens have new ideas about what they find acceptable. I will also not register my software with LindenLab™. On the practical side, it will remain to be seen if the Lindens take any actual actions, but technically (based on the terms of the TPV agreement) the software which was found here does not meet the Linden requirements.

It was fun while it lasted, but the implications of this new policy and the way how they are trying to make me agree to it are utterly unacceptable in my view. The folks from Imprudence viewer have explained their reasoning quite well (mine is very similar in regard to what they explain there in the paragraphs starting with "Let me state clearly...").

As it seems, Boy Lane who makes the excellent Rainbow Viewer is also packing her bags (final versions are available there), and Imprudence will also not comply and disables support for SL. Henri seems continue his work without listing the viewer in the Linden viewer directory, there has been no word from Emerald yet and I have lost track of the others.

It will be interesting to watch how many and which viewers will eventually end up on the approved viewer list and how the Lindens will practically handle the whole issue.

Bleeding Edge Updated

2009-07-09T16:20:00.007+01:00

Just a short note that I updated the BleedingEdge viewer. It had problems rendering flexiprims, version BE-z2 should fix that.

The BleedingEdge viewer is the one of my viewers which despite the long time makes most sense if you have a performance challenged machine, because it comes without the Windlight rendering. To install it, please follow install instructions here with a version number of BE-z2 respectively.

If you want a viewer with Windlight instead, I'd recommend the CoolViewer. If you have an insanely powerful machine, try even Kirsten's viewer (see links at the right). For way old hardware you luddites can give my OldSchool viewer a run.

Nick

Version Overview

2009-06-25T11:45:00.004+01:00

Note (Bumping this overview up to the top of the blog): My SL viewers are vintage versions. They are still operational (in line with latest essential security and protocol changes), but based on 2007/2008 Linden viewers and they are probably only of interest to folks who run SL on underpowered computers or who dislike changes which LL made since mid 2008. Newer alternate viewers from other programmers can be found here (personally I recommend the CoolViewer).

If the variety of my versions are a bit confusing to you, here is an overview for starters.

My builds always require a specific original viewer from Teh Labratory installed. The following list outlines which viewer matches which and the individual release posts contain download links to the older versions from Teh Lab as well as download links for mine plus instructions.

Eye Candy: 1.19.1.4 (good if your computer can handle atmospheric bliss, although in that case you'll probably want a more modern viewer like CoolViewer, see links at the right side of this blog).
Bleeding Edge: 1.18.5.3 (good if your machine can't handle the fancy sky rendering or has problems with 1.19., it still gives you voice and the search all tab, this is my recommended version for older hardware)
Old School: 1.18.0.6 (before voice and chatterbox, rock solid workhorse, good for very performance challenged machines and luddites :-)).

These are all for Windows. Barney has Mac OS X builds for some of these and Balp did some for Linux.

If you want to see other non-Nicholaz builds, here is a link to a complete list.

Hope that helps :-)

Nick

Accessing Adult Content with Older Viewers (Updated)

2009-06-17T16:24:00.014+01:00

I'm currently trying to figure out how the new adult changes will affect users of older viewers like mine. Here are my findings so far, purely based on experimentation, so take them with a grain of salt. If you have other findings or better information, please post them in the comments here.

1) If you never logged in an avatar with a new V1.23 viewer, you seem to be able to teleport to the new adult continent without problem (e.g. go to the map, search for "Mosh" and just jump there).

2) If you have logged in with an V1.23 viewer at any time, the server seems to remember your setting from the General tab in preferences, even if you go back to an older viewer. So, when running/testing a V1.23 viewer make sure you choose "PG, Mature and Adult" in preferences, then click OK or Apply. After that you should be able to go to Adult parcels even if you switch back to an older viewer version.

3) I wasn't yet able to figure out how search is affected, because I could not find any parcels which appear in search and which are flagged as Adult yet. Does anyone know something which (when using the new V1.23 viewer) only appears when 'Adult' is checked in search? If so, I'd like to see how that appears in older versions.

Update:

3) Search doesn't seem to be an issue with older viewers. In older versions, if you check the 'Include mature content' option in search, the viewer always also includes content flagged as 'Adult'. Being able to teleport there will then depend on the above (as described under 1. and 2.).

Bottom Line: Unless the Lindens change something, with old viewers like mine (or anything based on 1.22 like the current CoolViewers) you should be able to access all content if you are

a) using account with 'Payment info used' or 'Adult verified' status (this remains a basic prerequisite) and
b1) either you never logged in with an V1.23 viewer at all
b2) or you logged in with an V1.23, go to Preferences and set access to PG/Mature/Adult

Nick

PS: Experiment on this yourself with searching for a parcel/island called "Yasemine". It's a private island available in search and flagged 'Adult'

Two New Old Patches for Builders

2009-06-03T12:34:00.007+01:00

I had a bit of a flashback and ported two of my old patches forward for version 1.22 for the benefit of builders/coders of other viewers (my own stuff only goes forward only up to 1.19 where the old versions of the patches still work).

I've put the two patches for V1.22 into a folder on my server for others to use. They are just ported forward without much testing, but the porting was pretty straightforward (those places in the source which broke the patches only changed marginally), so they should work fine.

The patches are however both great examples of how the Lindens are not working with stuff.

The first is for VWR-779. I think this was the second patch which I ever made (May 2007). It's merely a minor cosmetic issue, cleaning up of visual clutter in the texture console (Ctrl+Shift+3) and back then when I posted it to the Lindens said this was due for being fixed internally anyway, but now two years later the window still looks the same in current viewers.

The second still irks me even after having given up active contribution to the JIRA. It is VWR-3878 from Dec. 2007. The viewer occasionally freezes for a few seconds and it's really no rocket science to figure out why, but ... oh well ... just read the comments there on the issue.

For good measure, I am also reposting a third (old old) patch for VWR-3877. It still goes in smoothly and without patch-rejects in it's original form. It used to fix some nasty random crashes which occurred when the grid was laggy (when asset storage transfers timed out). ~~Not sure if it's still necessary, but~~ even if the Lindens fixed this from anthoer angle, the patch sure won't make things worse. And if they didn't (which is more likely) it will help a lot if the asset servers are under stress. (Update: from looking through the source I'm now 80% sure that it is still valid and necessary.)

Direct Links:

Enjoy!

CoolViewer and Some Updates

2009-04-15T11:19:00.008+01:00

I have updated my own three versions to fix a few things.

Before going into the details though, I would like to mention that I have been looking around current viewers I found Henry's and Boy's work excellent (gives them a double thumbs up). There may yet be other good alternate viewers out there, but running the latest CoolViewer just gave me a very nice experience ... good straightforward GUI, crash proof and newest features. They have been around almost as long as my viewers and they are certainly trustworthy, even if you raise an eyebrow about the RLV-extension (which is disabled by default and which you will not even notice unless you turn it on). Highly recommended!

However if you want to stick with Nicholaz Edition anyway, the new changes I made include a crash with new sculpties (oblong scupt maps) and include something to handle a possibly 'breaking' server change which Teh Lab said they wanted to implement in the future. The oblong scuplties still don't render correctly (they look more like an explosion in the prim factory) but at least they will not crash the viewer whenever you get near one.

For download instructions etc. just see the previous install/release notes. You'll find them jumping from the version overview to the respective three flavors and just ignore references in the text regarding the specific EC/BE/OS version numbers. The new versions are EC-i, BE-z and OS-r and the instructions are still valid otherwise.

I don't expect any problems, but it's been a while since I built a viewer, so I will leave the previous versions on the server (you can roll back by simply installing the previous version if something isn't working).

Update: Latif made me aware of another security patch. I am uploading EyeCandy with version h this moment and will include it also in the upcoming OldSchool and Bleeding edge viewers. Please make sure to read the Install.txt file regarding the message_template.msg file.

Again, the version numbers with the fixes are EC-i BE-z and OS-r.

Enjoy your other reality ...

Current Debug Compiles (Windows)?

2008-11-26T21:29:00.003Z

I have a question to the fellow (Windows) developers. I tried an 1.21. compile recently but for my favorite game for rainy Sundays I need a debug compile (real Debug, not ReleaseWithDebug). The Debug compile failed somewhere in the boost library headers with an obscure error message (the way boost is working with templates I guess every error message is obscure). I didn't want to dig into it so I gave up pretty quickly.

So here's my question: Can anyone build a Debug version on the out-of-the box sources of the more recent official viewers? If so, which version?

Also (question to everyone): What's the current state of official viewers in regards to memory leaks?

Well, before you get too excited, I don't plan to make a new viewer, but if I'd find something interesting, I'd sure share it with my fellow developers.

Nick

Updates with Security Fix (Mission Complete)

2008-10-11T13:10:00.010+01:00

The updates for the Nicholaz viewers with the security fix should appear on the server over the next few hours/days (EyeCandy is already there). If someone does platform builds (Linux, Mac ... *waves at Barney and Balp*) post your links in the comments.

For download instructions etc. see the previous install/release notes. You'll find them jumping from the version overview to the respective flavors. I don't expect any problems, but it's been a while since I built a viewer, so I will leave the previous versions on the server (you can roll back by simply installing the previous version if something isn't working).

Update: Latif made me aware of another security patch. I am uploading EyeCandy with version h this moment and will include it also in the upcoming OldSchool and Bleeding edge viewers. Please make sure to read the Install.txt file regarding the message_template.msg file.

The version numbers with the fixes are EC-h (uploaded), BE-y (uploaded) and OS-q (uploaded).

Enjoy your other reality ...

Nick

Message in a Blog Post

2008-10-07T11:10:00.007+01:00

Hello Everybody!

It's been long since I posted here and due to current events I'd like to keep you updated.

Nothing much changed in regards to making new viewers. I am just logging on to SL once every few weeks and am spending all of my time for my business, where we are working on a major upgrade of the software which pays for my bread and butter. This is my main area of interst now, it is hugely satisfying work and won't change any time soon (we just started beta).

My older viewers still seem to work fine and I am really surprised to hear that people say that --despite all the Linden™ efforts in fixing crashes-- mine are still working better than theirs. Dunno if this is generally so or just in specific cases, but if the Lindens did not catch up by now, I don't know what they are doing wrong. But at least so far they kept their promise to keep their server changes compatible with older viewers.

However, it seems that yesterday Teh Laboratory has uncovered and fixed a security issue (click here for details) and made use of their latest viewer mandatory.

As far as I can tell now, there is no real issue for Nicholaz Editions. The requirement to update does not seem affect 3rd party viewers (I was still able to log in today) and as long as you use my viewers to only log on to the Linden™ servers and trusted OpenSim sites, there is no danger (~~it's my understanding that an exploit of the hole requires a malicious server, please correct me if I'm wrong~~ (thanks Latif for the clarification)).

I will check which changes they made to better understand the nature of the issue. If it seems necessary or if the Lindens really lock out my versions, I will try to stuff the hole for these (EyeCandy, Bleeding Edge, OldSchool ... in this order). But I think this will need to happen.

So, just take a deep breath and relax ... it may be merely a storm in a coffee mug (I know that the idiom calls for the tea cup, but I'm living on coffee for months now :-)).

Other than that, let me say thanks for your use of my viewers and for your comments and for the occasional donations. I am still glad to make your virtual lives better.

Also, if you are looking for newer builds (mono scripting etc.), make sure you check Henry's and BoyLane's CoolViewer (see links at the right side of this blog).

I'll keep you informed about the security thingy in the comments to this post.

Cheers

Nick

PS: Here are a couple of trademark signs ... if I forgot them, please insert them in the appropriate places: ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ :-)

Next Version?

2008-07-28T09:06:00.003+01:00

I've been asked about a Nicholaz 1.20 build, but at the moment RL has me in it's firm grip again and I haven't looked at 1.20 since RC5 which had broken most of my patches.

From what I've heard, two of the major memory leaks are fixed. Even if what the Lindens claim (35 crash reasons fixed) is just half true, their 1.20 could run better and more stable than any Nicholaz viewer ever did.

I'll currently simply wait what happens with their new release and will then see if it will be worth the effort to try another iteration.

Hippo Awards

2008-07-02T12:09:00.004+01:00

The Lindens announced this year's Hippo awards and are calling for nominations. The process is tedious (it goes through the JIRA, adding subtasks to task representing the various categories).

You may remember (or not) that I was last year's over all winner and went away with a nice iMac. Obviously this was a different time, a time when everybody thought that contributions would continue to be readily accepted and not largely ignored.

I'm a pretty ambivalent about this years awards, given that the Nicholaz Edition is now more of an independent viewer and given that I even stopped making submissions. I'm pretty proud of my last one about the Asstachments, which was around January, but the feedback from the Lindens (essentially calling it a cheap band aid) about was less than thrilling. Others which I'm equally proud of, actually the ones which make most of the difference between Linden versions and Nicholaz Editions, have hardly been accepted or I pulled them out after seeing them ignored for months.

Well, anyway ... someone asked me for some of my submissions, so here is a list of the better ones.

VWR-374 Attachments sometimes move to where the sun doesn't shine ...
VWR-3877 A nasty possible memory overwrite and two minor leaks
VWR-1769 Memory bubble, clearning the keyframedata cache
VWR-3878 Purging cache textures causes viewer. to pause for many seconds, with heavy disk activity
VWR-2685 Possible crash in bounding box (getBoundingBoxAgent()) from hud attachments
VWR-2683 Possible crash accessing dead llviewerregion
VWR-2682 Possible crash accessing dead cubemap

Alternatives

2008-06-10T11:04:00.004+01:00

Henri was a busy beaver and has done a version of his CoolViewer based on 1.20, which features the old GUI and many fixes. It is available for Linux and Boy Lane has one compiled for Windows.

Kudos to Henri!

Nick

PS: My viewers overview can be found here.

What it means when they say "optional"

2008-05-29T17:41:00.007+01:00

Over the last few days there was a bit of a lively discussion on the sldev mailing list, caused by a Linden dude who, when inviting people to test a high end experimental feature, wrote some posts with some weird overtones about graphics cards. The issue is discussed here on the forum where Kitty Barnett's and Matthew Dowd's posts pretty much reflect my ideas of the issue.

However, the discussion went on a tangent as it aways does, about how Teh Laboratory handles additions which are meant to be optional and how they affect those who want to opt out of those. Atmospheric rendering came up, being pretty close to the topic discussed and how Linden Lab says that if you disable the blissful sky, the 1.19.1 series of the viewer should run better than previous versions, while many people say it runs worse (which is my opinion too). Kitty Barnett made comparisons which were indicating the latter. I made some quick tests here with similar results.

Now today comes an interesting comment from the Lab which is interesting. What it essentially says is, that except for the lowest end, in WL there are no settings which exactly match the older viewers. Of course you can turn off the sky, but a bunch of new features come in a packet (Preferences, Graphics, Custom, Basic Shaders), which will either hit your performance or which will leave you with noticeably less appealing visuals. I.e. with mid-range machines, you can trade off graphics or trade off performance, but there is no way in the middle as with old viewers. (If you are getting funny results with Eye Candy, even while you think you have similar settings, the Basic Shaders option may be the key).

This may be a pesky little technical detail, but I found myself being irritated by the Linden's claim that Windlight was optional and could easily be turned off to give you an experience as before and the fact that whatever I did, I either lost visuals or framerates.

This not-so-optional new feature is not unlike what happened when voice was introduced. You could of course turn off voice, but you were then left with questionable changes to the user interface and with grayed voice-related buttons scattered around the windows.

Humans learn from experience. The lessons learned from Voice, Windlight and Dazzle, coupled with derogatory remarks about hardware introduced 3 years ago make it hardly surprising that people are getting nervous at the mere mentioning of a new experimental high-end feature or that those "optional" improvements are often considered downgrades.

Release: Old School OS-p

2008-05-20T10:09:00.006+01:00

The Old-School viewer still had over 500 downloads this year and I am personally still very fond of this version. I was even asked about upgrades by a few people, so I wanted to give it a little attention.

Of course most user will instead want to try my Eye Candy or Bleeding Edge viewers, but I am sure this blast from the past will find it's audience (luddites like myself, or users which performance challenged hardware).

For vintage connoisseurs, the Old School version now comes with a few backports from the later releases, mainly Havok4 (4096m) building, redmap warning and IM filter, but also the new icon, title and channel name. See the change log for all the details.

Old School won't give you atmospheric bliss, it won't even let you use voice (although I guess few people will actually miss the latter), but it will give you good performance, low memory usage and the same extras as my later viewers. If you look at the change log, this viewer has come a long way, all based on the same version and I think that this does show in terms of quality.

Luddite or not, you will of course be subjected to my usual release blurp :-)

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

Important: Before running this Old School version, you need to have the totally outdated Linden™ version 1.18.0.6 (download here) installed, preferrably in a separate folder like SL_1-18-0-6 .

Then have a look at the install instructions on my server and then download nicholaz-OS-p.zip from there.

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure the files go into the right folder and don't hesitate to buy me a beer if you find this piece of software beneficial to your second experience!

Also you will most likely download this little goodie from my server to get a more compact and appealing friends list (see the readme.txt inside that file).

Enjoy

Nick

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz". Also, at the top right of this blog you will find a link to a forum thread where I am sure that people will be able to help you if you have problems.

Eating your world

2008-05-14T10:45:00.015+01:00

At the time of this writing, a rolling restart is underway, which ~~most likely~~ will have your ability to create oversized prims for breakfast.

Despite my and Tateru Nino's judgment, where we both independently came to the conclusion that the ability to create new big-prims was intentional, the Linden™s say it was a bug.

Server updates are now being applied to change this particular server behavior, but you may still find opportunity to create sizes which you need if you find regions which are only due for update tomorrow (possibly down south on the map if the update follows previous patterns) or to pick up various pre-built prim packages available for free on SLX or via this forum thread.

Andrew says that the feature will come back as part of a more thorough approach and that Quarl is working on the project. If I could wish for anyone working on a Linden project, Quarl would be high up on that list, so I am sure the implementation is in good hands. But don't hold your breath: The procedures and hamster wheels inside Teh Laboratory are grinding slowly and the queues are long, so I'd even consider a time to market of 3 months being quick.

What I do like about this (w)hole issue though, is the spirit which it inspired. I sensed an feeling of adventure, liberation and cooperation among residents, something which is rarely experienced throughout the highly fragmented virtual population. At least for a few days, there was that feeling of our world, our imagination again.

So let me just say that I tremendously enjoyed the opportunity of being part of that.

Thanks

Nick

PS: If you like, post SLURs or SLX links to your primsets in the comments if they are for free.

Release: Eye Candy EC-f

2008-05-12T14:35:00.025+01:00

Last week's experimental Eye Candy worked well, so I am also calling it good. The change log has a bunch of changes since the previous EC-e version, which should make the upgrade worthwhile. Mainly the separation of settings files between Bleeding Edge and Eye Candy, the fact that the New IM tab is now gone from the communication window. There are a bunch of fixes/changes by other contributors as well: Aimee Trescothick, Gigs Taggart, Henri Beauchamp, Squirrel Wood and Teardrops Fall (again see the change log for details and JIRA numbers).

I also added (quite literally) a last minute patch. Yesterday Able Whitman posted a patch on the sldev mailing list about the creation of megaprims (see discussion on sldev near the bottom and also check this forum thread). After some mulling over the pros and cons and after a bit of testing on the beta grid, I decided to give it a go and implemented that feature (it's just done in a slightly different way, i.e. via Ctrl+Alt+S debug settings rather than patching the official dialogs, see comments to this post for details).

Reason for the implementation is that there are already ways to achieve this via legacy megaprims and via libsl and slproxy. Also, I found that the Haovk4 sims do limit the size of prims on the low side (H4 still does not allow true microprims, i.e. no scales under 0.01m) and with that and with the megaprim discussion a while back and even H4-megaprim fixes, I seriously doubt that this is an actual server side bug. To me this "bug" looks more like something which is tolerated but not actively supported. My implementation however limits the creation to max. 100m, which should cover most legit uses for megaprims and which is well within the bounds of which the Linden™s say that they are safe.

Source code is also on the server (see the notes inside the archive). If you want to do builds based on this source (or if you do your own homebrews), feel free to post them here in the comments and I will let people know. (Update: Barney, fast as lightning, already offers a Mac OS X build of the EC-f viewer).

After this short intro, we return you to the usual release blurp :-)

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real SecondLife account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure that you have the Linden™ 1.19.1.4 viewer available or download and install it here.

Then download nicholaz-EC-f.zip from my server (or from this alternate temporary download link) and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log.

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure the files go into the right folder and don't hesitate to buy me a beer if you like this viewer!

Enjoy ...

Nick

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz". Also, at the top right of this blog you will find a link to a forum thread where I am sure that people will be able to help you if you have problems.

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-w

2008-05-11T21:12:00.004+01:00

There were no reports of adverse effects with BE-xw, so I'm calling it a good release. It is based on an old Linden version and you can see the glorious details in the change log. Main point is that it allows building and teleporting to up to 4096m and separates settings from the Eye Candy versions (you may want to copy settings_nicholaz.xml to settings_nicholaz_BE.xml).

Source code is also on the server. If you want to do builds based on BE-w, post them here in the comments and I'll let people know. (Update: Barney's Mac build is already available).

So, here goes the usual blurp:

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the expired Linden™ 1.18.5.3 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-w.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure the files go into the right folder!

If something goes wrong with this version, go to the previous-versions folder. BE-v will still run very nicely and rock solid.

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

What happened to ... ?

2008-05-09T10:02:00.007+01:00

Maybe some of you who follow more closely what the 2L guys do (or who go to their meetings) know something about these?

Age Verification? Personally I'd say it's face down dead in the water. I see no way Aristotele can fix their process internationally, not in Germany, France or Canada for that matter, where all the relevant informations are not at all released by the governments and where they are even protected by strong data privacy laws.

Quality Metrics? Last update seems to be in January. From what I see on JIRA I doubt that crashes went down and from my own tests with WindLight, I doubt that FPS goes up either.

I've ran my BleedingEdge against EyeCandy in various places and the frame rates were either very similar (around 10% difference indoors with many avatars around and imposters enabled) or BleedingEdge came out on top with up to 50% more frames (outdoors with few avatars around). Henri told me about similar results for Linux (and even worse results on single core machines). I guess one of the basic laws of computing still holds. Surprise: if you do more complex stuff, it takes longer :-)

As far as I can tell, the only way they could have gotten better overall frame rates was because they reset draw distance to 128 for almost everyone, but that's just spin-doctoring and not really a performance improvement in my book.

I think I remember seeing a graph that SIM crashes went down dramatically with Havok4, but I'd really like to see full metrics for the last quarter.

Grab a Band Aid and Snow Goggles

2008-05-08T17:13:00.005+01:00

More arrivals in the ~experimental download folder.

Bleeding Edge
One is a new BE-xw build. It should be fairly solid, it is just tagged experimental to be sure and it will eventually become version BE-w.

After juggling versions for some time now, this is still my absolute favorite. It is still high in demand (total of almost 9000 downloads now), balanced visuals because most content seems still to be build for the old rendering engine and probably because I'm a luddite who prefers the tried and trusted :-).

You will find the download here, together with change log and installation instructions. If something goes wrong (pretty unlikely), please go back to BE-v.

Snow Blind
This is a new build and with that name I think you will be able to guess what it is. It is very early, very experimental and very low priority for me (I just did it because I had some spare time and I'm just sharing it because it might help someone). I just put in what went in easily (most of the GUI reversals are dead, but release-key, IM-filter, memory bubble fix, etc. are there). It will be better than the official RC6, but understand that it is merely a half hearted attempt in Nicholazification and besides, the original source distribution does seem to have stale files too.

Feel free to post your findings here, but don't hold your breath for fixes. If you're adventurous grab your Ray Bans or some snow goggles and download it here (also see install notes and change log).

Experimental EC-xf2

2008-05-06T18:18:00.003+01:00

I have a little update to Sunday's experimental viewer.

fixed collision of settings between Nicholaz EyeCandy and BleedingEdge viewers (manually copy user_settings\settings_nicholaz.xml to user_settings\settings_nicholaz_EC.xml if you like to import the older ones)
fixed a bug in the texture-hiccups patch
VWR-4371 (ambient sound volume) by Aimee Trescothick
(full list)

As far as I can tell, this should be a very nice viewer. I plan to turn it into EC-f without other changes after a few days (probably next Sunday), but for now I'd call it true release-candidate status.

If you want to give it a try, point your browser to the experimental folder on my server, follow the usual steps and post observations, problems, results as comments to this blog post.

Everybody who is interested in stable and tested versions instead, please continue here.

Enjoy ...

Nick

PS: As a side note, I'm also planning an update of the BleedingEdge viewer (1.18.5.3). Nothing dramatic, just a tweak to the settings and one or two patches. I personally really prefer the BE viewer for it's performance and even visually so I'll give it a little extra love.

Second™ Sunday

2008-05-04T12:43:00.005+01:00

Selfless über-geek that I am, I'm spending part of this lovely Sunday in front of the computer, digging through Second Source. :-)

The result is an experimental version, basically EC-e (based on 1.19.1.4) with a few new things.

Here's the excerpt from the change log:

removed the "New IM" tab
768/4096m building, teleporting and 100m prims for OpenSim (thanks to Henri Beauchamp for leading the way)
backport of a few Linden fixes in 1.20.5 (unbind-Textures and others, not really sure what it is good for precisely, but it looks like it will help some)
VWR-5308 (performance improvements related to wind-sounds) by Gigs Taggart and Aimee Trescothick

If you want to give it a try, point your browser to the experimental folder on my server, follow the usual steps and post observations, problems, results as comments to this blog post.

Everybody else who is interested in stable and tested versions, please continue here.

Enjoy ...

Nick

Back again ...

2008-05-01T11:48:00.010+01:00

Monday night I returned from a lovely vacation with excellent weather, lots of beer, wine and and fine food, courtesy of generous donators (again, thanks to everybody), but also finding a not so lovely backlog of RL work. (One of the wonders of self employment is that a vacation is more or less an time of organized procrastination, but heck I wouldn't want a different life :-).

Today however is a national holiday here in Germany, so I'm taking a little break from the backlog and was checking what's up with 3D Life this morning, so here is what I came up with:

Trademarks
One bit which comes back to my mind is the new Linden Lab® trademark policy and it happens that Barney shares some good thoughts about it on his blog. What amazes me about the Linden™s is how they constantly misjudge or ignore the effects which their actions have on people. It's like a company suffering from Asperger Syndrome. Asperger of course is an individual issue and I doubt it has ever been diagnosed on a group, but if you have a bit of time I am sure the the description of the problems in social interactions, loosely applied to LL™ and residents, may ring a few bells.

For myself I'm still unclear how to handle the use of the Linden™ trademarks, I guess I will try to avoid the terms whenever I can and will otherwise follow the rules to the letter, up to the point where it is shows how ridiculous the whole issue is. This is not because I do not accept their legal rights, because actually I do. I have two registered trademarks myself but it would never occur to me to use these against fan sites or even add on products. After all, especially with the Googlification of the internet, the biggest asset for a brand is exposure.

Anyway, Barney is certainly right that levering the enforcement of their guidelines through the TOS is baaaad idea. They already know that seizure of assets most likely will not hold up in court because the TOS shows signs of being unconscionable because of being a contract of adhesion (see here), so all it does is alienate people. The average customer of course won't go through the hassles of going to court like Bragg, but in a situation of such power imbalance users will instead try to evade the issue by either avoiding use of those terms or by following the rules rigidly or satirically, which will limit the brand exposure and/or will show how kafkaesque LL™s idea of brand usage is.

EyeCandy
The new EyeCandy viewer seems to be doing nicely (there were over 1700 downloads in April, WOW!). A few users have pointed out some quirks which I will try to fix and I'll also see if I can integrate some stuff like Henri's 768m limit backport or add the odd patch from the patch sematary.

Speaking of the patch sematary, Steve Linden™ has posted a viewer roadmap, which in the middle somewhat indicates the Linden™ stance toward patches. This is nothing new. In the past features or changes already had least likelihood of acceptance, but it sort of clarifies how many (albeit not all) Linden™s or at least their studio bosses' view of outside contributions (tidbit 1). But this is fine by me, now that I managed to adjust my view (tidbit 2) and adapted myself towards this situation. In fact I'd wish they would make this even clearer and/or put that into a more prominent place, because that's not just something about the next quarter but also about the time since Summer 2007. Business as usual really.

Dazzle
I also gave 1.20 a whirl. Previously I had just seen the screen shots which did not thrill me to any extent and now having seen it live I am even more underwhelmed. I fully agree with Aimee Trescothick's excellent analysis about GUIs in general the dazzle GUI in particular.

This somewhat ties into Steve's roadmap, because as with patches, Dazzle it is of little surprise and mostly business as usual. They'll roll out early and repair the damage later. If anyone feels reminded of the voice GUI, this is no surprise because Dazzle is brought to you by the same team as the voice GUI, i.e. User Experience who's boss Benjamin Linden™ has an impressive track record of being resilient to outside opinions.

At least the roadmap says, they don't want to make the viewer mandatory before it offers user-skinning, but saying "However, this is the look we are planning to support going forward" is pretty much what I expected. It will be interesting though to see how or if things change with their new CEO (interview).

On the source side, I did a quick run of my patch script which showed that many of my patches need some (or even serious) attention to go into Dazzle. With no visible benefit whatsoever in this viewer I will ignore 1.20 and instead, when I find time, will spend it on EyeCandy instead.

CoolViewer
Boy Lane has posted a comment that a new version of Henri's CoolViewer is available. She says: "To give Nick time to relax in Spain...I've just updated the Cool Viewer for Windows with the new feature to build / TP over 768m and up to 4096m high. If someone needs that *smile*. Linux: (link) Windows: (link)". Barney also has a version for the Mac: (link)

Traffic vs. Showcase
As with the trademarks, Barney offers some good insights on traffic metrics. Prokofy also has thoughts on the issue and what I find pretty amazing are the comments there. Not having a business I'm not really interested in the issue, but if you are, these may be two good places to go.

Off to Fuerteventura (Spain)

2008-04-17T15:44:00.008+01:00

I have a few more tidbits to share ...

The new viewer seems to be doing fine. A bit over 100 downloads within the first 24 hours, mainly favorable or even enthusiastic feedback and no known bugs that aren't in the official viewer also.

Mentioning downloads, I had a look at the server download stats and over the last six months almost 7500 people downloaded one of my versions (the majority went for BE-v), and that In the light of the fact that I have published practically no new builds since November 2007. We will have to see if the same is going to happen for the EC-e version.

In fact a few people have taken the opportunity to donate despite some quirks (donations page came up in German). I already mentioned that I will be on vacation (plane leaves tomorrow nine'ish) for 10 days and am happy to announce that all the beer is now paid for already, even a few cocktails and the odd dinner too ... YAY!

Before I distract you too much from your OwnExperience with my blurp here, let me just say thank for all the beer and fish and for the overwhelming feedback in general.

Enjoy your OtherLife with Eye Candy, while I will enjoy FirstLife with all it's nice features ... *waves cheerfully*

Nick

PS: If you saw a different post here yesterday, I deleted that, because I already had celebrated the first few donated beers (well wine actually) and when I looked at it today with a fresh set of eyes, the post seemed pretty irrelevant (some rant about something on sldev, I wonder what I found so interesting about that yesterday, but wine does that sometimes).

If you want to buy me a beer, a lunch or a Porsche ...

2008-04-16T20:01:00.030+01:00

Yesterday's new viewer had 100 downloads in a bit less than 24 hours and no problems ... YAY!

A few people are so happy, that they have asked about donations or even about hiring me to do more work on the viewer. While I am very reluctant about working on the viewer on a commercial basis, because I really want to keep fun and business apart, donations are of course welcome (in fact I already had a few pleasant surprises when looking at my L$ balance).

The Nicholaz Edition viewer is free and will remain that way. But if you like it so much that you feel like buying me a beer, a dinner or a new pair of shoes (just to name something which girls can relate to :-)), then don't think twice about dropping a few Lindens into my SL account, or press the donate button on the right. It's not that I'm starving, but there is never enough free beer and there are always a few gadgets on a man's wishlist ...

Thanks ...

Nick

PS: I'll go on vacation (going to Spain for 10 days) on Friday, so please excuse if you're not hearing anything from me in the meantime, because I'll enjoy the sea there (if you buy me a meal, I'll say "thanks for all the fish" because that's what we (GF is with me) will be eating there mostly :-)).

Release: Eye Candy EC-e (Updated)

2008-04-14T21:05:00.022+01:00

A bit surprising in the light of what I said last week, but as promised yesterday here is another Nicholaz Edition for Windows. It is based on Linden Lab's current SecondLife™ viewer (1.19.1.4).

This version somewhat completes the Nicholaz Edition series. You can now choose between the pre-voice version Old School, the pre Windlight version Bleeding Edge or, if performance permits, now the atmospheric rendering Eye Candy a la Nicholaz. And of course, should you prefer different flavors or platforms, please have a look at the links to the right of this blog and check the ones from Barney, Boy Lane, Henri or Marine.

EC-e is overall a bit closer to the Linden versions than my previous builds. The Reason is that the Lindens have caught up a bit with crash fixes, asstachments and user interface and also because I have only put into it what did still fit in with reasonable effort (which was more than I initially thought). There were no compromises in stability and performance though, those patches are all back.

I did use it for a few hours now and am pretty satisfied with the result. The only slightly weird thing is that you will now have two different friend lists to choose from, but there are never enough ways to reach a friend and while Linden's un-docked friend list is far from being bad, I find mine still a bit more sleek and compact, so I took the liberty to exhume the friends button for the bottom bar.

Oh I amlost forgot: You will also notice a new icon, courtesy of Linden Lab's new trademark policy. I'm not sure if it was necessary (probably not), but for good measure other homebrewers are free to reuse it for their own purposes. I hereby declare it as now and forever being in the public domain with no strings attached (download here).

The main difference for the viewer however, and the reason why this release exists despite my earlier plans, is that it fixes a severe memory leak which was introduced in version 1.19 (not anyone to blame, it was just a case of Shit Happens™). But it's fixed now and unless you have an insanely powerful machine I am sure you will be able to feel the difference, because as far as I can tell there was absolutely no way to avoid it besides standing still and doing nothing.

Source code is also on the server (see the notes inside the archive). If you want to do builds based on this source (or if you do your own homebrews), feel free to post them here in the comments and I will let people know. (Update: Barney's version for the Mac is already available and now also Balp's for Linux).

Now, before anyone asks (and I am sure some will want to know), my stance towards continuing the work on the viewer hasn't fundamentally changed. My priorities are still my own business and real life, but I also must say that the leak hunt was a nice distraction. So I guess it will be best to make no plans and to allow myself to surprise me with whatever I may do next and that is all I can say about that.

After this short interruption from strictly version related information, we return you to the usual release blurp :-)

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real SecondLife account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure that you have the Linden 1.19.1.4 viewer available or download and install it here.

Then download nicholaz-EC-e.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log. If you have trouble downloading or unpacking the file from there, here's a temporary alternate link. (In any case, the hash for the file should be "MD5 (nicholaz-EC-e.zip) = 448bb7ec74ec3e5a21b6597d17c327f0".)

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the right folder!

Enjoy ...

Nick

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz" and on the top right of this blog you will find a link to a forum thread where I am sure that people will be able to help you if you have problems.

Three Tidbits ... (Updated)

2008-04-13T14:25:00.017+01:00

I have a few tidbits which I want to share or which I want to get off my mind:

First: A few people have pointed me to the Linden 1.19.1 Office Hour where the issue about my patches was raised. I've read it, but there's nothing much I care to say about it. The Lindens (or more precisely some Lindens) mahave their views, I have mine -- and they differ.

However, since the issue was mentioned in the office hour and because through a pointer from someone, I did notice that VWR-374 (asstachments) is marked as closed and fixed on the Jira. I did not see it in the release notes but for sure it is there in the source code. And given what Brad Linden says about the patch in the office hour, I must admit that I can't help but point you with considerable smugness to the source code (see line 169/170).

Second™ thing on my mind is a comment made by Prokofy last week. He was asking about my view of Open Source (see the comments to the Moment of Truth post, somewhere in the middle). I've often seen Prokofy as being quite insightful and ironically the longer I have been in this, the more I tend to agree with him, even on views which I found utterly ridiculous when I first heard them (oh, and btw, I found his coverage of VW08 excellent, especially the parts about OpenSim).

But regarding his comment and Open Source: I now think there's Open Source (truely cooperative ventures, which are for lack of a better word, democratically organized) and there's open source which merely means that the source code is available to the public. To mistake one for the other has been the root of many of my frustrations with this little adventure and I guess I am not alone there. I would be tempted to blame some of it on the Lindens for talking like Open Source and acting like open source, but there is nobody to blame except myself, because I failed to do what I thought I learned long ago, that is, to look at what people do rather than to listen what people say.

As Proky says in his comment: Coders are free to come to a project and they are free to leave. He's right there and also in saying "It [LL] is a proprietary group that isn't showing its hand." Nothing of this is new, but sometimes there is a difference between seeing and hearing something and taking it to heart. I have no problem with a commercial operation (I'm running a commercial closed source business myself), nor do I have a problem with idealistically inspired ventures. My only problem with commerce is, when it's sold under the guise of idealism. But as I said, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Did I mention that I find Prokofy insightful? Oh I guess yes :-). He correctly picked up my vibrations about the screen estate of "Your world. Your imagination" vs. "Linden Lab and IBM" and "CSI:NY". It took me a while to figure it out myself (the biggest blind spots are always about oneself), but their website is not about what I think they should be, but it is simply what they do which, like avatars, reflects what they are.

I now remember something which I had forgotten. The first time I really questioned my involvement with SL was last autumn, when I saw the CSI:NY covering the whole screen and more importantly, when hearing that their OnRez viewer had closed source improvements based on the open source version. While I have no problem with spending free time on an idealistic venture (let's say something like OpenSim, although that doesn't work for a variety of unrelated reasons), I have absolutely no intention to work for CBN (or now IBM) for free ... hourly rates or flat rate pricing per project upon request, thank you for your interest.

As long as I saw Linden Lab as an idealistic venture, I did not mind if they cashed in a few fruits which fell from my tree. It's not so much that I need to be paid for what I did here, because my business always had provided me with more than I need. This is similar to Prokofy not needing to get paid for writing his blog or newspaper, because these activities (blogging and OS coding) are quite similar, in that they have their return in intangibles, whatever these may be for the individual person.

Prok says: "Ultimately, you have not persuaded me that somehow opensourcing and crowdsourcing people's labour for free is preferable to proprietary code managed by companies that take into account many other considerations than whether you find something interesting."

I fully agree, nobody could persuade me about that either. It is not preferable. It's merely different. As I said, my own business runs on proprietary closed source and so do many successful ventures. Equally successful ventures run on Open Source and voluntarism. I'm running Firefox on Microsoft XP here, I'm not using Open Source operating systems, neither am I using commercial browsers. It's not how they are made, but which result I prefer.

Mixing both approaches also works sometime (there is a project called Wine which does it with great success), but it requires skillful management and communication, two traits which Linden Lab is distinctly lacking. To me, Open Source isn't an ideology (although I admit that there are people for whom it is one). It's just a means of organization and if there is involvement bordering to self exploitation, it is because people are getting something else back, something which mostly can't be paid for with money anyway, like a sense of community, interesting exchange, the opportunity to do something you enjoy (many open source programmers have a different daytime job, so it gives them a chance to do some meaningful coding). Once the rent is paid, it does not matter if you get those intangibles from going to a bowling club two times a week, or to a rabbit breeder club, or if you work with others on a software project which you find appealing.

My rent is paid, but getting intangibles from catering patches to Linden Lab™ has become increasingly hard, so I'm putting an end to that part of the involvement.

Now third™ but not last, the following may come as a surprise to you. You can believe me, it came as much of a surprise to myself: Despite of what I said and thought I would do last week, and despite what I say above, the idea of looking at the recent memory leak kept bugging me (it seems that I still enjoy solving puzzles or I guess I'm just a pervert coder).

Last Friday I had downloaded the source code because I was looking for the asstachment fix (see above). Somehow one thing led to the other and before I knew I was looking at leak dumps. I swear I didn't intend to do it, really it was just an accident :-)

Well, I guess I don't need to mention the outcome *grins broadly*. Then, because a result like this is too good to go unused, especially for a guy with an ego as big as mine, more things led to one another ...

I'll spare you the details, but unless something goes very very wrong, you can expect the fruits of Friday night to appear at an Open Source (capital letters) outlet near you pretty soon (Update: see the comments for a first download link).

If you're looking for alternatives ... (Updated)

2008-04-11T10:36:00.010+01:00

So far it looks that Bleeding Edge v is still running fine and I'm even hearing that there are stil people out there running Old School. If you follow the links and read the instructions carefully (and follow the links on these pages to download the original versions from You-Know-Who which are required to run mine) I guess the will be of some use.

Basically, those two can continue to remain usable for a long time. They won't give you stuff like Mono scripting or Windlight, but as long as the Lindens don't mess with the protocol in which the viewer talks to the server and as long as the keep legacy functions (like old search) in place, these versions will be fine.

A note regarding mandatory updates: The viewers are grouped into so called channels (you'll notice the channel name is displayed in the lower right corner of the login screen). Update notices and mandatory updates these days are mainly organizational and not technical decisions and they are only enforced based on specific channels. Viewers from other channels (like mine) are unaffected. Also, you can change the login channel for any user by modifying the icon and using the -channel parameter.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to say is the following: If you want to try other viewers, there is Henri's Cool Viewer for Linux and Boy Lane's Windows version of the CoolViewer. These are obviously not identical to Nicholaz Editions, but Henri is a good integrator and like me he is pretty religious about stability, so he has incorporated many fixes from other open sourcers, many of mine included. From what I know, all the essential memory and crash related stuff is there. So if you are interested running an 1.19 version with old style interface and better stability than You-Know-Who's, then CoolViewer is definitely worth checking.

Other than that, again I appreciate all the comments and support which I got on my last post ... I hope you will continue to be able to enjoy your OtherExperience (actually I was about to wish you smooth sailing, but that idiom seemed pretty misplaced because smooth sailing and OtherExperience are really two totally different things ... anybody who ever crossed a sim border in a boat after 2005 knows that).

Enjoy ...

Nick

Update:

Barney sez: "Well, just to let people know, I am back in the client building game and leveled up to the Cool Viewer (minus Restraint Life due to patch-apply-problems there): (link). It's the first build of the cool viewer on mac, so I don't have much ideas about it's stability, but people might want to give it a try. I doubt it will be worse than the official client ;)"

Nick sez: "Hey Barney, welcome back :-)"

The Moment of Truth

2008-04-06T20:37:00.004+01:00

A very insightful person once told me to look at what people are doing rather than listening to what people are saying (which more or less is a variation of "actions speak louder than words").

I can't ignore any longer the gap between what I'm actually doing compared to what I've been planning to in regards to the SL™ viewer. If you look back over my last posts here, I said that I wanted to build something based on the 1.19 version, but if I look back what I actually did in over the last weeks, I see that I just didn't. Not that I didn't want to, it's just that I did not spend time on it after making an initial attempt with an 1.19.0 RC.

Today, after I heard through the blog comments here that 1.19.1 went gold, I wanted to give that a shot, but seeing that there isn't any up to date source and hearing that a couple of people had trouble getting it to run out of the box, was the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. I just one time too often stumbled over LL™'s inability to support their open source in the most basic way.

I could write a nice little rant here, but the point is that I'm having too little time at the moment to do all the things I'd like to and when multiple ideas or projects are competing for time, the most attractive ones win.

What I am doing these days in my own business is quite thrilling ... and one of the most rewarding points about it, from a programmer's perspective, is that I don't have to deal with entropy or outright chaos originating from other people.

And I hate to admit, that despite the wealth of positive feedback which I'm still getting about my viewer builds, the idea of getting into the treadmill of bringing the official viewer up to speed once again is utterly appaling.

Working on the viewer always had had it's treadmill components, but they were outbalanced by rewarding parts, like the perspective of contributing to a larger project, making other people happy and last but not least scratching my own itches because I spent a lot of time inworld, so I fixed issues because I wanted them fixed and because I could.

When I started, I thought LL™ folks were just a bit overworked and with some outside help from a group of friendly open sourcers and code sorcerers the viewer would turn into a solid, stable and even sleek piece of software.

The realization took me some time, but eventually it did dawn even on the optimist which I am, that it was not going to happen. Not through the Linden™s themselves, and certainly not through contributions from the coding community, because the Linden™s were increasingly ignoring the contributions.

There was a time when code submissions were readily accepted, then they were more and more cherry picked and these days, as far as I can tell, they are ignored at large, even if they are addressing the most basic and obvious problems like crashes (and I am not at all speaking of GUI changes).

The way I see it now, the best I could hope to achieve here would be to build a fork (spawning an independent viewer) and trying to keep up with their server side changes. This would be a time intensive and tedious task, which would require inspiration and a vision.

If there is something that has changed over the last year, it is a loss of faith and a loss of the feeling of being inspired. Noting all the changes which happened to the platform on a meta level (governance™, management™ and the like) this 2nd™ experience got more and more trivial and in my view. It merely turned into a pixelated copy of the real world.

Is it just me or did they shrink the size of the "Your world. Your imaginantion" slogan on the web site over time? At the moment it's covering little less space than the text "IBM™ and Linden Lab™" and about one tenth of the space of "CSI:NY™". Is it just me or did the showcase images on the Second™ Life™ website got more and more meaningless over time, now essentially just showing ordinary people standing around or shopping?

Remembering the time when I started, I envy everybody who is still inspired by what SL™ is offering. I had a hell of a time there and I wish I could make it come back.

But these days when I look at the blog, or the Jira or when I occasionally browse over the mailing list, more often than not I'm irked or shaking my head in disbelief or both.

In technical terms, with the current state of the 2nd world, like daily outages on the server, new leaks in the viewer, other problems, it would be like starting all over and probably even worse because now the binary crash reporter is removed from the viewer (this was the tool which I used to locate 90% of the crashes I found).

*sighs*

Putting off this decision and hoping things would change again did work for some time, but eventually I can't ignore the facts. So let me be straight and say that they way things look now there won't be any new builds from me.

At the moment I simply don't have the time, but to be true to myself and you, probably even if I had, I'd be no longer willing to put up with Bullshit™ any more.

*sighs again*

I am grateful for all the feedback I have gotten and also that I had the honor to help you people out there to have a better time in this alternate experience. I guess many people will be disappointed and I'm truly sorry for that.

But things have changed a lot over the last few months and I want to move on. In fact I guess I alreay have ...

Nick

PS: Leave me an occasional comment here if you like, or if you are a coder, then use the comments it to advertise your viewer builds.

Mandatory 1.19, etc.

2008-03-09T09:09:00.006Z

Hi All!

Please don't worry about the 1.19 becoming mandatory. The Nicholaz Editions are using their own channel (the word/phrase you see in the lower right corner on the login screen) since 1.18..0.6 so unless the Lindens do something entirely unexpected, BE-v will continue to run nicely.

Besides, I tried to make an 1.19 with my patches but I'm pretty dissatisfied with the results. Some GUI patches broke (does someone has a standalone patch to fudge the menu/status bar back to old style?), it still crashes in one function and I don't have the time to redo or investigate these issues.

With these issues, that version currently falls short of BE-v in important areas, so that I don't want to release it ... not as long as BE-v is still good (very good in fact from what I hear). At the moment, the Nicholaz-1.19 would be a compromise, which I'll only make if absolutely necessary.

Speaking more generally, trying to compile an 1.19 was an opportunity to look at the SL viewer again (I haven't seen any new viewers since my last Windlight build). It is somewhat interesting to watch this project from a distance. I had always thought that the Lindens were driving me nuts because I was too involved with the viewer and because did not have enough patience. But even the way it is now, being involved in my own projects, seeing the patch list on the JIRA grow or reading some of the blurp on their blog still sets my teeth on edge (I guess my comments occasionally does the same for some Lindens, but that's par for the course :-)). But that's why I'll have to do that new stuff in small doses ...

Anyway, bottom line is that Nicholaz 1.19 will have to wait and what I have is probably obsolete already with the 1.19.1 RC, which ironically (from what I've been told) isn't even worth bothering with anyway. (Maybe it is okay as a beta, but it's certainly not the stuff Release-Candidates are made of). BE-v should continue to run after Wednesday.

Last but not least, from what I see on JIRA and what I saw when trying the 1.19, some of my best patches are still not there, so I can almost guarantee that BE-v will still give you superior stability, even if the latest bells and whistles may be missing.

Even more about 1.19

2008-02-29T13:14:00.005Z

Hi Folks! Thanks for all the feedback recently and sorry for not answering requests, but RL work didn't leave much headroom for SL.

Anyway, I did make a test compile with 1.19 some time back, and I guess I can implement something based on it (maybe not the full set of Nicholaz features and reversals but most). I'll see if I can do a test with the 1.19 viewer this weekend (thanks Alexandra for mentioning that it went gold! :-)). As said, it will probably be a compromise, but OTOH I guess it'll be better than nothing.

Regarding RestrainedLife features: Sorry, I understand it would be nice, but it would cost time which I simply don't want to spend. I'm already juggling way to many patches and have too many things on my mind.

But check this blog after the weekend for more news about 1.19 and we'll see how it goes from there...

As usual: If you're new to the Nicholaz Editions, please choose version BE-v for a start. If you have your own builds, feel free to advertise them in the comments and if you're interested in other builds, check the comments in this post and the recent ones.

More on Version 1.19

2008-02-16T04:21:00.008Z

I had a look at the 1.19 version this week, but the changes will take more time than expected, which is more time than I want to spend at the moment. So I'm sorry to say, but for now there won't be an 1.19 from me. Hopefully 1.18.5.3 plus BE-v will still work for a while, but it may be prudent to look for alternatives.

But Boy Lane has 1.19 versions of his viewer (based on Henri's Cool Viewer, see the comments to the posts here).

Boy Lane says: "The Windows version of the Cool Viewer in 1.19.0.79627 is finally working without crashing...up on my blog. With the old userinterface of course and RestrainedLife 1.10.2. Have fun! Boy (which is a girl *smile*)." and (s)he also posted later: "Linux and Windows Cool Viewers updated to 1.19.0.79890: (link) (link)"

Version 1.19 Odds and Ends

2008-02-09T18:27:00.000Z

I heard that version 1.19 is RC now, so I gave it a a short look. The Linden source compiles right away which is a nice surprise after the last versions I've seen, but the source breaks a lot of my patches. From what I see, bringing them up to speed into will be tedious (merging patches after the underlying source changed is one of the most awful tasks I can think of at the moment), so don't hold your breath waiting for my next version. I'll however try to get it done when 1.19 goes gold.

Meanwhile Henri posted a comment that that he has an experimental 1.19 of his Cool Viewer for Linux (a blend of Henri's own patches, some Nicholaz patches and the Restrained Life viewer). Cool Viewer is pretty close to what I do, with reverting the user interface and undoing some other brilliant Linden ideas. I guess Boy Lane will soon have a Windows version of the Cool viewer too (he already has a Windows 1.18 with and without Windlight). See the text and the comments from Henri and Boy at my last post.

Also, if you have anything related to 1.19 (own builds, general comments, etc.) feel free to post them here.

Last but not least, if you are new to all this and if you are looking for a Nicholaz Edition, please scroll down for previous posts with my own versions, especially this one.

Windlight Builds from Daniel and Balp and others (2x Updated)

2008-01-19T12:22:00.000Z

Here are Linux Windlight builds more or less based on my Patches:

Daniel says: "Here is the unofficial, but 100% nicholaz style "EC-b2" source and linux binary:source code and binary. Binary has been compiled with -O3 and -march=pentium4. Just unpack into your Linden release Windlight 76886 folder. Hope this works as smoothly for you as it does for me."
Balp says: "Also I made a version of Nichlaz patches for WL-16886: Release notes in my blog"
Henri says: "The latest Windlight (77495) experimental build of the Cool SL Viewer is available on my site (http://sldev.free.fr/). It uses many of Nicholaz' patches as well as many others. Boy Lane also compiled a Windoze binary of the normal (not Windlight) Cool SL Viewer version."

And here's one for Windows:

Boy Lane says. "The latest Cool Viewer for Windows in normal and WindLight version including the RestrainedLife v1.10.1 fixes is ready for grabs at (link) or (link)"

Thanks Daniel, Balp, Henry and Boy Lane for the builds.

Also see the comments for updates on these versions.

Outlook (again) ...

2008-01-09T18:28:00.000Z

I have currently resigned (again) from working on SL because of RL time constraints and a general shift of focus, so let me post a short outlook on what you can expect next.

At the moment BE-v is still the official viewer. My version of Windlight FirstLook still works if you download the latest Linden build and adjust the version number (see the update note here).

Concentrating on my RL business with a thrilling new project, I am currently not really having time or interest to looking into bugs or quirks, so you will have to live with what's out so far, which should in fact still be pretty good (based on BE-v).

The Lindens have posted a roadmap on the sldev mailing list, see the initial post here and you might also want to see the follow up discussion here. The post basically says that there will be a semi-mandatory 1.19 some time in February.

Besides the 1.19 release, you may be interested in following the "Roadmap 1.19" posts there because there is currently discussion about a planned change related to how group IM will work. This change is most likely going to upset a lot of people. I'll refrain from commenting on that because it would be hard to stay polite and also because it would be pointless anyway.

However, 1.19. is planned ot be mandatory for official viewers while homebrews like mine will continue to work for a while (until eventually they will also choke on the new login). This will more or less define my own roadmap, i.e. I hope to revisit SL with 1.19 and will try to make a new viewer based on that.

In a nutshell: Until 1.19, if you want to run a Nicholaz viewer, use BE-v or see if you can bang the Windlight EC-b into running.

Other than that, see you again around February ....

Platform builds with Eye Candy (Updated)

2007-12-26T11:17:00.000Z

Henri Beauchamp (Linux) says: "I also posted the experimental versions (release candidate v1.18.6.2 and Windlight v1.18.6.76116) of the Cool SL Viewer on my site: http://sldev.free.fr/ Most of Nicholaz' patches are used, as well as other patches by me and others. Merry Christmas ! :-)"
Barney Boomslang (Mac OS X) says: "Ok, th anks to the works of Nicholaz and Alissa and some others, I finally got it to work. Mac version of EC-B downloadable here: (link) The windligh versions in generall give me much lower framerates than the standard versions, so maybe only use it when you really need or want the eye candy."
Bit2zero (Windows) says: "I included Alissa's Japanese input improvement in your nice viewer. I introduced it at my personal sites. Let's begin OpenSim (for japanese). Moreover, in order to be able to connect to OpenSim by the Windlght version, -legacylogin patch is included too."
Balp (Linux) says: "Back from vacations and my closer to Nicholaz build is made for this. My versions are closer to Nicholaz code that Henry, (one small change to make it build on Ubuntu this time.) Relesed note here: (link) and instructions to work with 18.6.76453, the version from LL with a correct German login language file but not source code."

Thanks Everybody!

Aaaaarrrggggh!! (Updated)

2007-12-22T12:16:00.001Z

I think this was the 4th time where a new Linden version is released just within hours (if not minutes) after I made a build available.

Anyhow, same procedure as yesterday, just that it's now Nicholaz Edition EC-b in the experimental folder, based on Linden Windlight FL6 1.18.6.76116 (direct download link).

In other words, essentially follow my notes from here, just with the new Linden version and EC-b.

Update: There is a newer Linden Windlight version out now. You can still put BE-a1 on top of that and if it complains about the version number not matching, edit the releasenotes.txt file and simply adjust the version number in the first line to match the one which BE-a1 expects.

Experimental: Eye Candy (EC-a1) (Updated)

2007-12-21T17:11:00.000Z

Here is something to play with over the holidays: You will find a Windlight based version in the experimental folder. I'm running out of letters for the Bleeding Edge series and I figured Windlight would be a good point to start a new one, so these will be tagged Eye Candy (or EC).

It's the first one I made, so there may be some rough spots (alas, it's a beta based on a First-Look, fasten your seatbelts please), but it did run okay on a short journey. If you are running Windlight 1.18.6.75762 (direct download link) anyway, just drop it into the Linden Windlight folder and let me know what you find.

Note: If you are new to Nicholaz Editions, this one is probably not for you. Start with Bleeding Edge V (based on the current official viewer) instead and follow the instructions there.

If you want to do compiles, the source is also there (source snapshot should be 100% in sync with the .patch files). If you have a build to share, post a comment and if you find platform quirks in the source, also let me know.

Update: Oops, that one was short lived :-). It crashed on the History button ... EC-a1 now should fix that. Sorry!

Outlook ....

2007-12-16T17:36:00.000Z

Assuming there are no extra problems with today's BE-v, this will be the last release for a while. Real life calls again (my business needs time, a friend has bought a house, Xmas is coming). The 1.18.6 RC does not appear to offer any serious improvements and Windlight is still too early for my taste, so I guess we won't miss much.

I hope everybody has a good First and Second Holiday with all the attachments staying where they should be.

Nick

PS: If you have crashes with BE-v, you can send dumps and I'll see if I can find the time too look at them and if I can dig anything interesting. Just follow the instructions after the crash.

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-v

2007-12-16T17:15:00.000Z

Over the last few days, many avatars have been saved from embarrasing and potentially painful situations (the list of attachments mentioned in comments and IMs include shoes, horns, dreadlocks and more items which do not belong there :-)).

There were no reports of adverse effects, so I'm calling it a good release. It is based on the current official Linden version and you can see the glorious details (compared to the previous BE-u or compared to Linden 1.18.5.3) in the change log.

This release also has the optimizer turned on, so it may (or may not) run a bit faster, depending on your machine.

Source code is also on the server. Barney's Mac version is practically identical to this version (the only substantial change I made here is for Windows only anyway), so if you are looking for a Mac OS X build, click here. RobinC made what he calls half a Nicholaz version (including fixes but no GUI changes), which is also available under that link. If you want to do builds based on BE-v, post them here in the comments and I'll let people know.

So, here goes the usual blurp:

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the now official Linden 1.18.5.3 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-v.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the right folder!

If something goes wrong with this version, go to the previous-versions folder. BE-s will still runs nicely and rock solid, but is based on Linden 1.18.3.5 (download link) (please note that the older fallback BE-s is based on Linden viewer 1.18.3.5, not 5.3).

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Platform builds for the experimental BE-v0

2007-12-13T16:30:00.000Z

Yesterdays version seems to run fine after an initial glitch, which caused a crash when pressing the History button (note to self: avoid last minute changes after midnight).

Here are two builds for other platforms based on BE-v0b

Mac OS X: Barney says: "Ok, me being a full-prim avatar most of the time (and banging on prims to make prim avatars to sell at Grendel's), this was far too sweet to read :). The mac build of the BE-v version is at: (link) and so far it looks fine - no weirdnesses to report and no asstachments, either."
Linux: Robin C says: "Although i am not releasing direct builds of your viewer as i was a few months ago (due to time restrictions) I am using a good percentage of the patches in the Debian packaging effort. I am paying particular attention to bug/crash and leak fixes (which i have just applied to 1.18.6.1), so its kind of half a Nicholaz version :-). You can at last apt-get a secondlife! on Debian Linux (and its pretty stable). If anyone is interested the 1/2 a Nicholaz version can be found in an apt repository, details at (link), 32-bit and 64-bit builds."

Thanks Barney and Robin!

V stands for Victory (or Votes)

2007-12-12T22:17:00.000Z

Ass-tachments should be fixed! Yay!! :-D

I have a version which is high on JIRA votes. As mentioned recently, I did attempt to fix the avatar attachments and as far as I can tell I have succeeded. It took a bit of time for testing, so I also looked into two other issues with high votes.

Here is the deal:

VWR-374: Worn prims moving themselves where the sun doesn't shine should now be a issue of the past, as well as orphaned attachments (copies hovering in mid air away from the avatar). Special thanks here goes to Ollipeist Balogh and Flaran Rau for their assistance and time invested.
VWR-333: The message about gestures not loading which sometimes shows when you log in will now try to determine which gesture it is about, so that you can search and edit/reactivate that gesture, which does fix the problem in most cases (at least it did that here on my avatar once I knew which ones were causing the message).
MISC-64: Group IMs can now be turned off. This feature is a bit hackish and not as nice as you might want it, but it does the job and should alleviate the pain until someone decides to thoroughly address it (which requires server side changes). To mute group IMs, go to the debug settings (ctrl+alt+s) and look for _Nicholaz.Chat_IgnoreIMFromGroups. There you can either mute all group IMs by entering an asterisk (*) in the field, or you can enter a list of kill-words separated by semicolons (e.g. Nicholaz Edition;Fashion;XYZ Clothes Store). If any of the words or terms is found in the group title, the chat IMs from that group will be suppressed.

These three issues are worth over 500 votes on JIRA, so I guess a few people will benefit from the upgrade :-)

I'll call this first release experimental (named BE-v0b), so it is intended for early adopters, but I am fairly confident that this viewer will work well (besides the server side problems and lag which currently plague the grid).

There are also two other changes by Henri Beauchamp and Mm Alder (see the change log).

Source code is also there, but please note the change in the source license. I am now offering the changes as GPL 2.0, which is the same license as the Linden open source.

You will find the download in the experimental folder on my server (please note that the viewer is based on the currently official 1.18.5.3 and that we have five xml files now).

Please post problems or feedback here as comments (especially the group IM part could use some testing).

In case of serious problems, you can just go back and install BE-u.

Cory Leaves Linden Lab

2007-12-12T11:24:00.000Z

It seems that Cory Linden the technical chief at Linden Lab has left or had to leave the company. Hamlet Au has a pretty good roundup of the news which originally was published bit by bit via massively.com. Also Prokofy Neva's thoughts about the event are worth reading, because (unlike myself) Proky has met and interacted with Cory and Philip in the past. Last but not least, Daniel Terdiman of c|net sums up the facts in a fairly compact way.

I met Cory once online at the Open Source Awards where he spoke, but besides the Spaghetti Monster avatar I don't remember anything about what he said. I don't even remember why I don't remember, it was either because it appeared to be the usual blurp said on such occasions or because voice transmission (it was an in-world voice event) made it hard to listen to. Probably it was both.

Looking at the articles above leaves me as clueless as everybody else as to why he left or what it means for the future about SL. He seems to have masterminded some of Linden Lab's ideas of putting power into the hands of the people, giving the residents the intellectual property rights of their creations and advocating to go open source, which both is huge.

What I do notice, is that in an older publication (Jan. 2006) Cory is vice president for product development . In May 2006 however we find a press release which names Joe Miller as new vice president of platform and technology development. I don't fully understand the pecking order of American corporate titles, but the current Linden website lists Cory somewhere in the middle for some time now, so probably he already either withdrew or was shoved to back more than a year ago (have a look at the internet archive to see how the management page changed).

If Hamlet Au ~~and Tateru Nino~~ with their Linden connections do not have an idea about why it happened and what it means, I am sure that my speculations would be doomed to be futile from the beginning, so I will not even try. But looking at Cory's bio, I'd say he does not look like someone who can live in middle management for long. Given the management changes indicated above, I'd say that whatever led to this event was predictable to insiders already and whatever it was, it merely put the last nail into the coffin.

I've recently read an older post about Linden communication on Hamlet's NWN. Lem Skall made a comment there, which I found quite insightful. In the last paragraph he says: "My feeling is that people in LL are divided themselves on what this relationship [between LL and users] should be. The ambiguousness is making our relationship so much harder."

He was speaking about communication issues of course, but I have the impression for some time now, that the Lindens need to (re)define their own ideas about who they are and what they are doing. I think Lem Skall is right about the ambiguousness and probably Philip's new mission statement and Cory's demise is part of a process to resolve it.

I have zero idea if it is good or bad that Cory leaves, because I do not know over which ideas they were in disagreement and who's side I would have taken.

But I want to say, that if it resolves ambiguity and if it leads to less pushing and shoving inside Linden Lab, and if it results in more clarity about their directions and actions, it will be good for the company as a whole. And if it's good for the company, it will very likely be good for the users, because nothing is more annoying to a user, than a company which acts erratic and unpredictable.

Ass-tachments

2007-12-11T10:26:00.001Z

I would like to report my progress on the issue regarding attachments occasionally ending up where the sun doesn't shine.

This was an interesting problem to solve. I started last weekend and with the assistance of two helpful residents I was quickly able to pinpoint a location in the source code which seemed crucial to these incidents. The hard part was to understand the details around these occurrences, because I could not look at the program myself (in the debugger), but had to poke around in log files instead. This took a while, but it was fun too.

It was a true CSi Nicholaz operation, collecting tiny bits of information and putting the pieces together in order to get a bigger picture. I'm 99% there and in fact there are two different ways in which this happens (post teleport and when changing attachments), but I am now quite sure that I can fix them both. In fact I believe I already fixed them both, the fix just needs a bit of testing.

Bottom line is that the times of sore butts should be over soon, well ... at least for those who do not attach prims to their avatar's center intentionally :-)

Tagged

2007-12-08T14:44:00.000Z

I've been tagged seems to be a current SL or internet meme and I got hit by Peter and Balp.

I won't spread it further, but here are eight factlets about me which you can't live without knowing :-)

The first program written for someone else was about 24 years ago when I was 17. It ran on a Commodore PET 3000 and helped my school doing the room and time planning (cross checking if rooms or teachers were assigned to two classes at the same time).
I almost had to repeat class in school four years in a row, each year missing the margin just by a hairbreadth in at least two school subjects (mostly Latin, English, Chemistry).
My favorite book authors (judging by the number of books read by the same author) are Jane Roberts and Terry Pratchett. The last book I've read was Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster and the next ones will be Ubik by Philip K. Dick and True Believer by Nicholas Sparks.
When I was 20 I became a member of Mensa. I canceled my membership after about two months, because I thought most people there were jerks.
The worst effect caused by a bug in a software written by me was a terminal emulator software which caused the police to visit some of the users, because the program accidentally dialed 911 (the local area code where I live is 0911, a local phone number was in the program's address book and the program sometimes dialed the wrong entry).
I'm interested in painting and tend towards abstracts. My favorite non abstract painting is Girl with Pearl Earring by Vermeer. My favorite painter over all is Mark Rothko and my favorite contemporary painter is Fletcher Sibthorpe (I have a signed print of his Blue Shadows hanging in my living room).
Three things, which I am utterly bad at: Singing, couple dancing and reading aloud (true story: one of my teachers once said "Every time you are reading, I am wondering if we have the same book").
I love British Humor. Monty Python, John Cleese, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are my heroes for their hilarious ideas and for their keen eye of people's and society's quirks.

And here is a bonus factlet:

Movies which I really enjoyed recently: Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Ratatoullie.

Linden Support

2007-12-02T17:33:00.001Z

It's often said that people only complain, but that they never say a word when things go well.

Now, the sim with the land which the Lindens gave me as part of the Open Source Awards was down today. I filed a region unavailable report on the support system and the sim came back within less than five minutes (and that being on a Sunday).

Awesome!

Warning: SL Security Exploit

2007-12-01T17:02:00.001Z

There's currently a security exploit related to Apple's QuickTime. I contacted the people who found the exploit and asked if there is anything that can be done in the viewer, but unfortunately it seems the only way to avoid it at the moment is to turn off streaming video (see the link above or the Linden blog post).

In any case, next time the Apple software updater prompts you for a Quicktime update, make sure you install it.

Mac/Linux Builds for Nicholaz Edition BE-u

2007-12-01T16:49:00.000Z

There are Linux and Mac builds available already. If you are also doing these and want them to be added to the list, please post a comment here.

Balp says: "A linux build of these to additional patches are available at my site, new blog here".
Barney says: "I made a Mac build of this one available at: (link). I have the BE-t release linked there, too, for the Mac, but don't see much reason to use it. It's either BE-s (for the stability of it) or BE-u (if you need the search stuff). But first short tests show that BE-u is a promising candidate for general use."

Enjoy!

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-u

2007-12-01T16:39:00.000Z

The experimental version yesterday seems to have worked so far, so I'm calling it a release. The files are exactly the same, so you don't need to download them again. It features the new Linden search plus my usual stuff (but without the extra optimizer turned on) plus two patches from fellow developers.

Source code is also on the server already Some patch files have been renamed and there is a bit of extra logging in two files (llviewerjointattachment.cpp and llvoavatar.cpp) without a separate patch ... sorry for the confusion this may cause. I will do a Mac/Linux post in a few moments and if you do builds for that, you can post your links in the comments.

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the now official Linden 1.18.5.3 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-u.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the right folder!

If something goes wrong with this version, go to the previous-versions folder. BE-s is still my favorite viewer and runs rock solid based on Linden 1.18.3.5.

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Experimental: BE-u

2007-11-30T21:40:00.000Z

I made a viewer based on Linden 1.18.5.3 today. I'm not confident about it enough to call it good, so it resides in the experimental folder. It is basically the usual thing, but with two extras: The search bar removed from the statusbar and the net/lag meters brought back by a patch from Henri Beauchamp and a patch from Gigs Taggart to show online/offline notices in IM windows. (Update: A Linux build made by Balp is available here).

No official instructions and release blurp, those who know the usual routine, take a look if you like. Everyone else please go with BE-t or BE-s (just follow the links).

Besides that, I'm going a bit megalomaniac: I'd like to take a shot for the ass-hair bug. Unfortunately I can't reproduce it myself (have not seen it in months), but I'm sure there must be someone out there who sees it on a regular basis.

So, if you have a sore arse from all the stuff sticking in there regularly and if you are willing to invest some time in the hunt, please install BE-u and send me an email (nicholaz at blueflash dot cc) to check how to proceed.

SecondLife/Linden Jokes?

2007-11-29T12:00:00.001Z

I've always wondered about the lack of SecondLife or Linden jokes. Almost every area of interest I ever was interested in had their jokes and SecondLife or the Lindens should sure have enough weird/odd characteristics to

The only joke I ever saw or heard of was of the type "You are spending too much time SL if ..." which was posted as a comment on the Linden blog. I can't find it again, but Google came up with one (see below).

Did anyone hear of any? I mean unique stuff, not cheap ripoffs of blonde/lawyer/etc jokes.

If yes, please post them here and if not, let's make some new ones:

You are spending too much time in SecondLife when ...
What's the SecondLife/Avatar/Linden's answer to: Why did the chicken cross the road?
How many SecondLifers/Avatars/Lindens does it take to change a lightbulb?
The SecondLife/Avatar/Linden interpretation of Shit Happens.
Any other scheme I forgot?

The comments are open ... :-)

Understanding JIRA (Part 2)

2007-11-27T09:12:00.000Z

I have been pondering how to approach this article for some time and to be honest, I didn't really find a good point to launch from because you can approach JIRA from so many perspectives. But those many possible perspectives are probably the core issue behind the public Linden bug tracker.

I'd like to isolate three groups here, who are interacting on the JIRA. The first group is end users and residents who come there because they have a problem with the software and who want a solution. Their fulfillment and fun lies purely the in-world experience. The second group is enthusiasts. These also have problems in-world, they are also interested in getting them solved, but they also derive some pleasure from being part of the actual process of solving the problems. The third group are the Linden developers. Their main focus is software development and getting things done.

Obviously those groups and interests overlap and I am not saying that developers themselves are not interested in having a smooth in-world experience.

But you also have three different social continuums. The life in-word (for users, residents), the interaction on the process (JIRA, office hours) for enthusiasts and the communication inside Linden Lab for developers. These social spaces are quite different. They do overlap of course, but most people are firmly rooted in one of those spaces, each having it's own set of values, priorities, expectations, tools, customs and reference points.

Switching between those spaces is like going to foreign territory. You bring your own ideas and expectations and over time through trial and error adjust them, which, unless you are a natural talent or have learned how to do it, is a slow and sometimes painful process.

In a normal support procedure however, these spaces have their defined meeting points, staffed with people who mitigate and translate between two of the arenas. Usually people from either end (users and developers) are not getting into direct contact. In fact, normally they are not even getting glimpses of each other.

What the Lindens have done however, is to create a melting pot of different groups which should not really get into contact with each other.

The biggest issue with the P-JIRA is that ideally end users should not be there, because end users have no means to genuinely understand what is going on there. I am of course not saying that end users are stupid or that they should not have a means to report their bugs, quite the opposite, but there is a cultural clash going on there, which is caused by a missing link.

Did anybody notice the first sentence in the box under the heading? Welcome to the BETA issue tracker for Second Life, with a focus on the open source initiative.

The tool itself is not designed for end users. It is now used for that by LL, but it is designed for internal issue tracking or project management. I am sure that users/clients won't see it on the website of any of the company's listed on Atlassian's list of customers.

Prokofy Neva recently wrote an article about the P-JIRA, suggesting that it should be taken out and replaced by something like the earlier feature voting system. I do not believe that this is an either/or issue, but I do agree that we are lacking a procedure where normal end users can at least present their ideas to Linden Lab.

Among other things, Proky writes: "Everyone who has heard of the JIRA knows that it is difficult to use, is obscure, and has an arcane culture of fanboy code-kiddies clustered around it who zealously go around closing, moving, and defeating proposals they find "off topic," or "inappropriate" or "not-doable" or "bad ideas" or "not what the Lindens want." (emphasis by me, NB)

The part about difficult to use is easily explained by the fact that the tool is not intended for end users by it's makers. It probably wasn't even intended for that by the Lindens, at least not in the beginning when they came up with the idea.

I also like the the use of the word culture, because there are different cultures clashing into each other on the P-JIRA.

The culture inside Linden Lab is dramatically different from that of most open source projects, as has been pointed out by Linden's open source director Rob Lanphier (Rob Linden) many times. Now, keep in mind that open sourcers and the Lindens are both developers, they are a basically close to each other in their overall ideas and values. Lindens are used to a reserved, polite communication style, while open sourcers are usually are pretty direct and often even blunt. It is like having a German engineer talk directly to a Japanese engineer. They are both technicians, but there are worlds between them. This is hard enough between Lindens and open sourcers, as is visible on the Linden developer mailing list.

Throwing residents into the mix, makes it very very interesting, to say the least.

Now, approaching it from a purely technical standpoint, the P-JIRA procedures work quite well. The people who do volunteer duty there have developed a pretty good sense of what is possible with the Lindens and what is not. There are certainly a lot of users stranding on the shores of JIRA because of the general user interface, but I believe that those who get through are more or less having the same problems as everybody else, so they are reporting a pretty accurate snapshot of problems with SecondLife, especially if you look at the issues and their vote counts in relation to each other.

Also, in the past I have watched the bug tracker for months and have seen most (if not all) issues and comments there and I also followed how they filtered through the process. The volunteers are doing a good job sorting reports and I have seen many occasions where users were IM'd for more details or even provided with possible solutions. The volunteers are also doing a very good job in predicting what is possible and what the Lindens are likely to accept and this is a point where I strongly disagree with last part of Proky's quote above. It may not work always, but overall it works quite well.

Please bear in mind, that I am still purely focusing on the technical aspect here, which may be bordering to being cynical. From a technical viewpoint, a viewpoint which I acquired by being a developer myself and from getting an understanding of the Linden's development process, a view of this process probably as accurate as an outsider can get. The volunteer work on JIRA is technically a lot better than if it were done by a support team outsourced to India or Ireland in the name of Linden Lab. In the end, the last decision is always made by Lindens picking their work from the L-JIRA, nobody can influence that. The Lindens are a tight knit group and are amazingly resistant to outside influence, individually and as a whole.

In terms of customer relations however, I think it the whole thing is a disaster. I am not speaking of public relations (which is a disaster of it's own). PR defines the view of a company by the general public (which may include users) and in general terms. CR instead defines the personal relation between a user and a company, it is the kind of relation which results in customer satisfaction or lack thereof.

Even if a resident is helped out on the JIRA by a fellow secondlifer, volunteer or open sourcer, the average resident has the intuitive expectation that he should be helped by Linden Lab. At least that Linden Lab should be listening. The resident may be grateful that his problem is solved (if it is solved) by a fellow, but he still walks away with the feeling that he has been left out in the cold by the people who are really supposed to be helping him.

When I helped people through my work on the viewer by looking at their crashes or problems, by fixing the bugs or by giving them tips about how to avoid them, I have been told many times, that Linden Lab should hire me. Now that is a story of itself, but what this expresses, is the intuitive understanding that someone else is doing the Linden Lab's job.

SecondLife is not seen as an open source project. Most of it's users and residents do not even know what that would mean. Their view or SecondLife is defined by the relation between them and Linden Lab and they are lacking a tool or method or procedure to enter into a meaningful interaction with the company.

By meaningful I mean an exchange which makes sense from their point of view. And by interaction I mean a sort of inter-action, actions from two sides, where the communication and actions are connected and related to each other.

The way issues are currently filtering through the system has so many steps, so many social spaces and so many points of failure, that the results of an action are basically unpredictable.

What is probably most fatal on JIRA, is that it makes impression of being an open system, because you can get a peek at what seems to be the internal workings of Linden Lab. In fact however, it is so loosely coupled to the actual internal procedures (which remain opaque to everybody outside Linden Lab), that it can become highly irritating.

P-JIRA appears to let you track the progress of an issue, but once the issue skips into the L-JIRA, you are lucky if you get P-JIRA to reflect the correct state when the bug is actually fixed and released (there are tons of fixed internally which have actually already been released). The idea that the assignment of an L-JIRA id means somebody is actively working on it is as misleading as the assigned to field.

P-JIRA appears to allow residents to enter into an interaction with the guys behind SecondLife, and users are drawing their conclusions from that. But the rare occurrences of a Linden on the P-JIRA are painting a misleading picture, because the Lindens are working on the L-JIRA and every appearance on P-JIRA to them (from their viewpoint) means extra work. And the volunteers who are doing the majority of work there are not perceived as being Lindens and sometimes are not even perceived as helping the process.

Technically P-JIRA sure is a success. The Lindens have successfully outsourced work and are getting meaningful technical feedback within their own frame of reference. Obviously this is also a success for residents, because it allows the Lindens to address issues more effectively, which eventually everybody benefits from.

I will leave it for everybody to assess for themselves if those benefits are worth all the soft spots punched and the irritation it causes in the communication arena.

Openness, which is a Linden ideal and sure a driving force behind P-JIRA. Actually, openness is a somewhat misleading word in itself, because what the Lindens mostly mean or at least what they mostly do when they cite openness, is the publication of information. I believe that in that context transparency is a better word, because I would interpret openness more along the line of open-mindedness. Be it as it may, even the easier to reach transparency consists of two important aspects: Information and the ability to interpret the information in a meaningful way.

The raw information on P-JIRA alone is far from accurate, because it does not reflect the true picture from inside Linden Lab. And the context in which it will be interpreted (due to cultural differences and the fact the tool is often used for a purpose for which it was not designed), is mostly not a context which will lead to accurate conclusions even if the information itself was accurate (see the 3rd comment on my blog post from Sunday for example, where Gigs reframed my own observation, interpreting it possibly more accurately).

If you like an example, point have a look at VWR-2051 and browse over it down to Nov 26th. It is a bit of an extreme case, but it nicely outlines the cultural clash.

I can fully see where Steve Linden (a LL senior software developer) is coming from and what he says is technically correct.

Judging it from the standpoint of a user who is suffering from this problem and judging it from the from the standpoint of customer relationship however, problematic is most likely not a strong enough word to describe the effect.

Understanding JIRA (Part 1)

2007-11-26T21:18:00.001Z

In the comments to yesterday's post I said that I would write a bit about the Linden public bug tracker JIRA. I actually wanted to do it later this week, but it seems to be a hot issue at the moment. It also has ties into my ramblings about the Linden perspective differing from the resident's one.

However, when I began to describe the bug tracker, it turned out that this will be getting longer than expected, so I am splitting it into two parts. The first part mostly describes the current procedures, the second will focus more on psychological aspects and on the effects as I see them.

Normal Issue Tracking
In a typical commercial software company, the work which happens on the Linden JIRA is actually done by support staff. There are usually two or three levels of support, each dealing with problems of increasing complexity.

The first level are people who mostly sitting on the other side of the globe which are about as knowledgeable as the average users and sometimes know even less. They can handle newbie problems, they check/fix the most obvious problems ("did you plug in the power cable"), they can type the description into a trouble ticket system and when they run out of ideas, they escalate the problem to the 2nd level.

People on the 2nd level have the about knowledge of a power user and may have even seen glimpses from the development side. They have the mental and technical and tools to solve the majority of day to day quirks and problems.

Depending on the project, there may be a third level or the third level are the actual developers, although very few people ever get that far with their problems.

Through this tiered approach, issues are solved by the people with the least necessary knowledge (and salary), i.e. a senior technician doesn't have to deal with scratched CDs or cabling, while serious problems eventually filter through to the developers if they are bugs.

The system which handles this is usually monolithic, i.e. a status update even on level three can be checked by the original reporter/end user. These systems are normally internal and the user is getting status updates through email or has a simplified access tool on the support website.

Specifics obviously vary with the type of products and/or size of the company involved. As far as I understand it, Linden's regular support (billing, accounting, sims) works pretty much like described above. Also, I recently had a support case with Dell and it was handled this way (entirely through first level support although the person internally checked a detail back with 2nd-level while I was on the phone).

Atlassian on the other hand (the makers of the JIRA software) is a smaller company and their clients are mostly developers or technicians themselves. Atlassian is handling their software support on a public support system (in fact showcasing their own product that way), similar to the Linden JIRA, but it seems there are less layers of support, so you see developers appearing there pretty quickly and often.

SecondLife JIRA
With the SecondLife software itself (not speaking of billing/accounting/etc), this the system however is severely fragmented and a lot of the 1st-level work has been outsourced to the end user and community in the slightly (or at times totally) chaotic way, which is typical for the Lindens.

One important thing to notice, is that there are actually two JIRAs: the public one (P-JIRA) and the Linden's internal (I'll call that L-JIRA). They both run on the same type of software (Atlassian JIRA), but are more or less separate. Users, volunteers and open sourcers are dealing with the P-version, while the Lindens are working on the internal one.

The two systems are even not really linked/synchronized, besides an import feature, which transfers an issue from P-JIRA into L-JIRA. The importing is mostly done as the result of a bug triage, where volunteers put issues on the agenda for a meeting and the Lindens accept them for escalation to the internal bug tracker (the "Linden Lab Issue ID" field on P-JIRA indicates that). The normal procedure after that, is that an issue is subsequently dealt with internally and occasionally updates are made (manually) on the P-JIRA by the Linden who handles the issue. The "fixed internally" is one of those updates (and actually in most cases the only one).

When the change/fix finally sees the light of an official version (having filtered through the product manager's idea of timing and quality assurance's approval), someone (again manually) needs to set the issue to "fixed" on the P-JIRA. Torley used to do this, although I have seen other names recently, and it seems to be happening mostly based on the release-notes.txt file which accompanies the software release (you'll find it in your SecondLife program folder).

Open Source Patches
Open Source work is also closely linked to the P-JIRA. Basically pieces of source code are submitted the same way as bugs or feature ideas. OS coders usually either pick other people's issues from the P-JIRA, solve them and attach source code to them, or the are covering the whole process, reporting an issue (bug or feature) which they found themselves and are providing the solution alongside with the description of what the piece of source it is good for.

When this was done, the issue takes pretty much the same route as end user's reports. They are imported, a Linden developer checks it, and if he decides that it is good and worthy, he feeds it into their internal processes, they run through Q/A and appear in a release candidate and eventually in an official version.

Long Road Behind, Long Road Ahead

2007-11-25T15:14:00.000Z

For those of you who missed it, Philip recently made one of his rare appearances on the blog, talking about about Linden Lab's new mission statement which now reads "To connect everyone to an online world that improves the human condition" and SecondLife's future in general.

His post is quite ironical in two ways.

One is the the mission statement's use of the word connect. The post was made on a day where SL was unreachable for almost 24hours for many residents and if you look at the Linden blog today and scroll back, you'll see a series of posts about connection problems every single day between the 17th and 24th of November. In fact today is another rainy Sunday on which I wanted to toy a bit with the source and even spend some time in-world, but the only results I got was were "Login failed", "Site is taking too long to respond" and "503 Service not available".

The other bit of irony in it is the title of the post: "Long Road Behind, Long Road Ahead." Philip certainly is a visionary and his vision is surely what made SecondLife possible in the first place. But it occurred to me recently, that a lot of friction and frustration between Linden Lab and the SecondLife residents, may be caused through a difference in focus.

I do not want to go into the spiritual or philosophical arena too much, but there are many schools of thought, who are beginning to discover, that happiness is rooted in the here and now, while constant focus on the future or past tends to create angst, frustration and dissatisfaction.

SL Residents naturally are focusing on their experience in-world right here right now. Personal tolerance levels obviously differ, but nobody can live on a vision of a better tomorrow, if tomorrow never comes. On the other hand, over the last months if not year, Linden Lab seems to have worked based on the idea, that at least this next thing, is essentially required to keep them ahead of the competition (Philip quotes Voice in his post and Torley currently and tirelessly beats the drum about how Windlight will improve the depth of the experience).

Looking back over my experiences with SecondLife as a developer and pondering Philip's post made me aware how different this kind of focus is inside and outside LL. Probably the most prominent example of this is the status of issues on the bug tracker when they are marked as fixed internally. For a Linden developer such an issue is dealt with and finished, on the outside it means it's still unfixed here and now and circling in an orbit of Linden Lab's internal procedures, slowly descending towards impact on the official version. Looking at the JIRA and searching for issues marked fixed internally currently yields 159 results for the viewer. Technically they are marked as resolved, which of course reflects the Linden view (or the view of the devs who go to office hours), but it is obvious, that the same (the issue being resolved) is not true for residents.

Don't get me wrong, the developer's standpoint is legitimate, it is their view and experience that the problem has been fixed, but there ought to be someone understanding and tending to the gap between developers' and residents' point of focus and experience. Torley might be this person, feeling the gap (welll, when he's not all excited about Windlight), but regrettably his influence on the whole process seems to be close to zero (invariably, when he posts on JIRA that he's forwarding some issue or finding to the devs, subsequently nothing much is happening) . Look at MISC-124 on the JIRA if you need an example.

I was recently sent a transcript of a Linden office hour, where an interesting statement was made by a Linden: "... but my understanding is that the [Nicholaz] fixes that haven't been incorporated mask the real problem rather than address it."

I don't want to go into details about my individual patches here, but what my changes always do is to address a problem quickly or at least increasing the chances to address it. I think I never submitted a patch which made things worse. Even if they had the potential to push a crash towards another place in the source (by adding a check to make the program flow pass a crash point but with the possibility of failing later) they never made the source less readable or less reliable. However, this is somewhat besides the point, because even if they were nothing but band aids, they had an immediate effect, which obviously is felt by a lot of people.

But again, it mostly outlines the difference in focus between residents and LL.

Here is an example: Two of the first patches I did were submitted in mid May. One is a minor issue of no real importance (layout of the texture debug window), the other had some major impact on memory use. Both are a nice example of what I am trying to say. When I submitted them, someone inside LL said that the issues would be addressed in a different way with a more general redesign in a later release. Now (over six months later), one of the two is still open, the other is fixed internally. I don't really care about what's the state of these on the JIRA, but today both still affect end users in exactly the same way as six months ago in the official version and release candidates.

Another example like this is the Chatterbox. The Lindens have said that they will address the problem. They way I understand their line of reasoning (although this purely speculation), it means to put (off) the solution into a basket of general GUI redesign (a project which seems to be in Linden orbit for some time now).

In a blog post a week ago, I was answering a question by JayR about the difference in quality of my viewers in comarison to the Linden ones. I tried to provide an answer in that post, but I now think I missed an important point there. A good part of the answer, as I see it now, is "... because I focus on the here and now."

How long does it take Linden Lab to replace a broken light socket? About six months. Because there are currently plans to completely renew the electricity in the house anyway, which you will understand takes some time, thank you for your patience.

I think what many residents are tired of, is hearing the word later. Maybe not all, but certainly many who are using my viewers. Living based on visions works for some time, but it is part of the human nature, that experience happens in the Now. Which incidentally is the part which is missing from Philip's headline.

A developer can draw his now-experience from designing and implementing visions, but users are living an entirely different perspective. Successful companies in the Web 2.0 area are giving their users/clients meaningful and satisfying experiences, which then may serve as a solid platform to add the excitement of visions.

I don't know if I'm right in all this, but a blog post with ramblings like this is what you get on a rainy Sunday with login failed and 503 service unavailable :-)

Counting Downloads and Stats

2007-11-23T13:32:00.000Z

I just ran download counts for October and November. The numbers are interesting insofar that BE-s was my state of art version for a longer time than usual, so the download figures indicate number users better than previously.

From Oct 1st to today there were over 400 downloads of OldSchool versions. BE-s was downloaded over 2100 times and BE-t (together with t2) scored over 650.

Doing something to the viewer without adding fancy features that makes over 2000 people jump through the hoops of downloading and installing without a real installer, sure makes me proud!

Thanks folks! :-)

Patches for Homebrews

2007-11-19T19:36:00.000Z

I'm getting the occasional message from people who ask about inclusion of my patches into their viewer (or who get pestered by their users to do so :-)).

So here's a guide to patching a la Nicholaz:

If you download my source archives, you will see a patches folder.

The numbers in the patch file names are obviously JIRA numbers (VWR-xxxx, well mostly).
With the files there you will most likely want to ignore the ones starting with 0000, because the code in them is of least general interest (my personal coding preference, modified crash reporter, modified title, etc.). Some are tied into each other and unless you want to clone my viewer, you best ignore them.
The ones starting with and x are borrowed from JIRA and are from other contributors (some slightly adjusted by me). They can be applied independently.
Patches 2038 and 2074 are GUI changes of lesser importance.
Number 1550 and 2037 revert the chatterbox gui and require nbfloaterfriends.* and nbfloatergroups.* from linden/indra/newview in the source archive (add them to the newview project) and also the nicholaz_*xml files in the distribution.
1769 and ~~9999~~ 1769_undo belong together and fix a leak and memory bubble, they need to be applied together and are quite valuable.
The rest (0001 to 9999 except the above) will noticeably improve speed and crashes without changing the user interface.

If you want to get the most bang for the buck in terms of performance and stability, take the two with number 0001 plus the two 1769's ~~and 9999~~plus everything which has "possible crash" or "leak" in the name.

In addition to that, most long time users will carry you on their hands if you apply 1550 and 2037 (see notes above).

The patches should all go in cleanly in numeric order and applied to a Windows 1.18.4.3 source.

If you have questions or problems email me at nicholaz at blueflash dot cc or post comments here.

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-t2

2007-11-18T20:28:00.000Z

I decided to fix a few minor things which went wrong when making the BE-t release and uploaded the fix as BE-t2 today (nothing spectacular, just missing source files, compiler optimization, the server select box on the login screen, etc).

For installation etc., just follow the instructions for the BE-t release (please note that you will need SL 1.18.4) or of course take the tried and trusted BE-s version (based on 1.18.3) from the older-versions folder.

This will be the last release for another while. The new 1.18.5 seems like it will take some more time for the dust to settle (most of the issues high up on the bug tracker are fixed in my versions already and some are beyond what I can or am willing to deal with at the moment anyway).

Notes about BE-t

2007-11-16T09:11:00.000Z

In BE-t you will see a box with choices next to the preferences button. This was caused by an error I made when compiling the version, please simply select Agni from the choices and ignore the box otherwise.

The BE-s version is still my favorite. This latest BE-t build based on 1.18.4.3 had a few problems when building it (missing libraries which I had to pull in from the internet, despite the fact that these were reported on the JIRA when the 1.18.4 RC came out). Unfortunately I also could not check the complete source changes because there was a header added to the comment/license of each source file so that the source diff was huge and unreadable in practical terms.

Barney says that the Mac build exhibits slowness and pauses every few seconds so it does not make much sense at the moment to make a Mac version.

The bottom line is that unless you have strong reasons to prefer 1.18.4, I would recommend to stick with 1.18.3 and BE-s for Windows and Mac OS X/Linux.

Mac/Linux Builds for Nicholaz Edition BE-t (Updated)

2007-11-15T09:17:00.000Z

If you are doing platform compiles/releases for Mac OS X or Linux, please send them to the comments section to this post.

From the comments:

Henry Beauchamp says: "I published my own Linux version of the viewer, the Cool SL Viewer. It makes use of some of your patches as well. :-)" (this viewer is not an exact replica of my BE-versions, but contains a bunch of "possible crashes fixed" patches made by me).

Balp says: "I gave it compiles for Linux, uploaded the binary to Acc, http://www.acc.umu.se/~balp/second_life/balp-build-t1.tar.bz2
Patcher are up there way to the same location and in a mail to Nicholaz. (some stuff that didn't work in the current Linux build environment (link to source diff))"

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-t for Windows

2007-11-15T09:00:00.000Z

The test drive yesterday seems to have worked fine, so I'm calling BE-t a solid release. It's the same files, if you did the test drive, you do not need to download them again. Everybody else, please see the post about the test drive and some older ones for background. Of course also have a look at the change log has all the details (it should especially be helpful for users who are new to my viewers, see the bottom of the file).

I still consider the older BE-s the tried and trusted milestone, only time will tell if BE-t can compete. Also, BE-t was not compiled with extra optimizations, so it is possible that BE-s will give you better performance.

Btw, 1.18.5 ~~Windlight~~ with new search seems to be around the corner with the first release candidate now. I plan to do a Nicholaz version based on that as well, but don't hold your breath ... most likely I won't look at them before the 2nd or 3rd iteration of the release candidate (that is not before 1.18.5.2 or .3).

Source code is also on the server already. I will do a Mac/Linux post in a few moments and if you do builds for that, you can post your links in the comments.

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the now official Linden 1.18.4.3 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-t.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the right folder!

If something goes wrong with this version, go to the previous-versions folder. BE-s is still on the server and is rock solid (runs with Linden 1.18.3.5).

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

JayR's Questions

2007-11-14T17:59:00.001Z

A few days ago JayR posted a comment here on the blog: "On another note a recent meeting with Rob Linden & the AWG / I asked him why was it that the Nicholaz patched SL clients were always so superior to the official LL releases. He pretty much side stepped on a direct answer to that question."

The short answer may be a bit surprising, but it simply is: Because I am following my bliss and because I am very uncompromising about doing so.

Technically (and probably less surprising), there are many factors that go into the quality of my builds: skill, experience, determination, personality and focus. Not that there are no skilled or determined people inside LL, quite the opposite. But I think the environment there really does not lend itself to sitting down and focusing for eight or eighty-four hours on the same problem without interruption. I think, besides the talent, the fact that I am not a Linden and that I am entirely outside of their procedures plays a part which is not to be neglected. In fact I doubt that I would have been able to do what I did if I were part of LL.

But it really boils down to following my bliss and not going anywhere if it's not fun.

Which leads to the second question.

"So I asked why LL had not offered you employment. His reply was 'What makes you think we haven't all ready'. So if you would care to comment on this issue / please do so."

This is something which I have been asked many times . Let me just say that I have my own company here in Germany, together with a friend and quite sucessfully. I did quit a job in a large company about 10 years ago and have been my own boss ever since. You would have to drag me kicking and screaming (and probably even scratching and biting) into any organization that is bigger than a handful of people. The only thing I'm more fanatic about than fun, is personal freedom.

Then put two and two together and there's your answer :-)

Test Drive for BE-t (1.18.4.3)

2007-11-14T16:54:00.000Z

I managed to compile the official 1.18.4 and applied the patches which were still valid, so there is something to try for some early adopters. The file is in the experimental folder of my server, technically this could be a release but I only spent a few minutes online, which makes it appear prudent to declare it experimental/beta.

So, without any release blurp and without further instructions, those of you who know the project and who are curious or adventurous enough to give it a try, point your browser here and throw the contents of the zip file on top of a Linden 1.18.4.3 version in the usual way. I don't really expect any problems, but I'll wait for your feedback before calling it a release. (It is for Windows, I guess the folks from other platform will also wait a few days before they spend time making the Linux/Mac compiles).

If you are new to the project, please use for the latest stable Windows or Mac OS X/Linux builds.

Btw, I saw that an 1.18.5 is out now as a release candiate. I intend to handle that the same way as 1.18.4, that is I will wait for the last iteration of the release candiate or it's final release and will then put on top those parts of my code which by then are still relevant.

Will have a look at 1.18.4

2007-11-11T11:15:00.001Z

First of all, thanks for the many kind comments on my last post, they were all read and are much appreciated, even though SecondLife itself has been low on my radar.

I do check the Linden blog occasionally and today saw that 1.18.4 went official. I can't get a clear picture about it from the blog comments because they are probably more influenced by the grid problems than by the viewer itself, so can you guys out there tell me if you tried it and how it compares to the official (non Nicholaz) 1.18.3 viewer?

Anyway, it is the proverbial rainy Sunday here today, so I guess I'll download the source and see if I can compile it and how my patches apply. The last time I tried to compile it, the compiler choked on a missing library, but I'll see if that has been fixed in the source or if I can get it running on my own.

Bug Hunting Season is Over

2007-10-31T21:25:00.000Z

This is just a quick post to let you know that I didn't go AWOL or died in an airplane crash. Quite the opposite, I had a great vacation, good weather, fun, food ... really enjoyed it.

But I also had a bit of time for thinking and it became clear that I won't continue the SL project with the same intensity. There are many reasons for it, in fact too many to explain, but in a nutshell I really need to focus on my own RL business, which I neglected quite a bit over the last months.

Another part of the story is that I currently don't see much gain in investing time in the SL viewer. The last BE-s seems to run quite solid, while (at least from what I read) the new release candidate comes with new bugs and there are many fixes and patches are still stuck in the JIRA pipeline. So essentially applying my patches to 1.18.4 would mean redoing work already done and having to deal with newly introduced problems, neither of which seems to be particularly appealing.

Bottom line is that I want to spend my time more effectively, so I will put SL on the backburner until 1.18.4 goes official. If by then it is noticeably better and more solid than the official 1.18.3 I will put some Nicholaz code-candy on top :-)

I hope you will not be too disappointed, but I believe that BE-s is still a very good viewer and that you will enjoy your time in SL using it.

Vacation ...

2007-10-12T20:18:00.000+01:00

As mentioned on the last release, I'll go on vacation for two week, starting tomorrow. During that time you'll find me here in general and more precisely here Yay!

See you in a while ... :-)

Mac/Linux Builds for Nicholaz Edition BE-s (Updated)

2007-10-10T00:32:00.000+01:00

Linux:

Robin Cornelius says: "I'm done!, AMD64 linux builds in .deb or tar.bz2 format. http://www.byteme.org.uk/secondlife-amd64/binary-packages.html". And later: "RSYNC server now available. To save download bandwidth and time, I am releasing my AMD64 builds via rsync as well. A simple command will update the secondlife files to my repository with the minimum of data transfers."
Lilly Zenovka says: "Linux i386 build at usual place: http://emak.free.fr/src/sl-nicholaz-linux/ Cheers :)" and adds later "I now have a blog for Linux version of the secondlife viewer ! http://lilli-zenovka.blogspot.com :)"
Balp says: "My build Linux build ubuntu i386, is updated: http://www.acc.umu.se/~balp/second_life/balp-build-s1.tar.bz2 and http://www.acc.umu.se/~balp/second_life/balp-build-s1.diff.gz. The build coexists with the official client in the same directory. And is being started with ./balp-secondlife"

Mac OS.X:

Barney Boomslang says: "Ok, Mac Universal build ready at the usual place: http://radio-boomslang.shacknet.nu/~bb/articles/nicholaz-edition-mac/index.html".

Note:
Post your builds in the comments here and I'll update this blog post accordingly

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-s

2007-10-09T23:46:00.000+01:00

Again a new release. There is one more crash fixed, but the main change is that Bleeding Edge should now also be independent from the Linden mandatory updates. As always have a look at the change log has all the details (it should especially be helpful for users who are new to my viewers, see the bottom of the file).

I consider this a milestone release. I'll stick with the name, but this is not Bleeding Edge anymore. It's really as good as it can get for now.

Btw, I will go on vacation for two weeks starting Friday night and when I come back will sure have to catch up with the backlog from my RL business, so don't expect much news from me over the next three weeks. During that time the Lindens will probably come out with 1.18.4 as a release-candidate and turning that into a Nicholaz Edition will start a new cycle. We will then have to see what will happen based on that.

So BE-s (or the OS-o from earlier this week) now being independent from possible Linden mandatory updates and with many crashed fixed, the current versions should give you a smooth ride on the viewer side for quite some time.

Source code is also on the server already. If you do Linux or Mac builds, just drop me a line for a blog post with platform versions.

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.5 (download link) or the now official Linden 1.18.3.5 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-s.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the right folder!

If something goes wrong with this version, go to the previous-versions folder. BE-p to BE-r are still on the server, they are pretty good already and they also run with Linden 1.18.3.5 (both RC and official).

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Heisenbug

2007-10-08T10:11:00.000+01:00

Heisenbug (n): A bug which follows the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Either you can pinpoint where it happens, but not when. Or you can determine the time but not the location.

Release: Old School OS-o

2007-10-07T21:44:00.000+01:00

Here is a new Old School release. It should now be safe against Linden mandatory updates (it uses a feature which logs in as a non-Linden version rather than cheating with the version number). It also has three nice crash-fixes imported from the latest Bleeding Edge, so it should be worth updating. See the change log for all the details.

Important: You need to have Linden version 1.18.0.6 (download here) installed before running this Old School version.

There is still the little goodie on the server, for those who want a more compact and appealing friends list (works with all my Old School Editions, see the readme.txt inside the file).

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

This version is for the Windows platform. It is optimized in processor independent ways. It offers all the optimizations which previously my P4 releases had, except for the processor dependent options. I'm not sure if the processor optimization made any actual difference anyway, but this should be a good balance which serves everybody.

If you choose to use this release, please first check that you have1.18.0.6 installed (otherwise get it here). Then have a look at the install instructions on my server and then download nicholaz-OS-o.zip from there.

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Two More Platform Builds: Mac and Linux

2007-10-05T10:27:00.000+01:00

I just updated the list of platform builds for version BE-r to include links to Barney's and Lilly's version. Thanks Barney and Lilly!

Enjoy!

Havok4 Removed From the Beta Grid

2007-10-05T10:18:00.000+01:00

The Linden blog has a post that the Havok4 engine was removed from the beta grid because of reports of inventory distortions. They hope to have it returned on Monday.

Platform Builds of the Nicholaz Edition

2007-10-05T00:57:00.000+01:00

Eloise Pasteur, SL veteran and blogette over there at the SecondLife-Insider has posted a short note about the Mac build of my viewer. She seems to be quite happy with it, so I thought I'd pass it on to you guys who invest the time bring my version to the other platforms.

What you are doing is an important part of this project and I could do all the patching in the world, without your builds the Linux and Mac users would still use have to use the official viewer (and that would include me on the iMac) . And I really appreciate that I don't have to invest the time to deal with the intricacies of those platforms ... this is really cooperation at it's best.

Linux/Mac Builds for BE-r (2x Updated)

2007-10-04T13:39:00.000+01:00

There are wonderful people out there who have been busy beavers and compiled the latest version BleedingEdge-r for Linux and Mac (see the comments for the BE-r release).

To run them, you will need an 1.18.3.5 (official or release candidate) for the respective platform (download links).

Here is the list of builds we have so far (will update this post with new ones as people are offering them):

Tilly Ariantho says: "Here is the MacOS.X Intel binary: http://tilly-server.de/files/nicholaz-be-r-mac-intel-bin.zip :-)" (see the install.txt inside the ZIP)
Balp says: "And Linux builds at: http://www.acc.umu.se/~balp/second_life/balp-build-r1.tar.bz2" (32bit I assume - NB)
Robin Cornelius says: "As usual the Linux AMD64 build tar.bz2 and .debs are in there usual place: http://www.byteme.org.uk/secondlife-amd64/binary-packages.html. I have also added RPMs of the openjpeg2000 and xmlrpc-libs as well on my downloads page to help you rpm guys and girls."
Barney Boomslang says: "Ok, my universal mac os x bleedingedge-r build is up at the usual place: http://radio-boomslang.shacknet.nu/~bb/articles/nicholaz-edition-mac/index.html" (updated with link ... that is the Mac build with patch app - NB)
Lilly Zenovka says: "Finally, Lilly's build @ http://emak.free.fr/src/sl-nicholaz-linux/! Although there's already a linux build, this download is much smaller as it only includes the binary. This means you need to download 1.18.3.5-RC first. I'm planning to make an apt repository for all debian based systems. Ubuntu users will have latest Bleedeng Edge showing up in update-manager :) Cheers" (that is a 32bit build - NB)

Thanks all! Yay! :-)

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-r

2007-10-03T21:45:00.000+01:00

And again we are rrrready to (BE-r)rrruuumble!

As mentined earlier today I had a nice series of bug fixes since the weekend. Basically I could eventually make sense out of two types of crash dumps which I've seen many times and then I had a 3rd one (which I also knew from dumps) happen here while I was in the debugger hunting for left over memory.

Especially that last one was pretty nasty and may account for problems in other areas of the program, because it could randomly overwrite memory in some situations (it's just hard to tell how common those situations are), causing other areas of the program to mysteriously crash.

The result of those fixs is a release about which I am pretty thrilled. Many of the crashes fixed in the recent versions were more or less one-time crashes (stuff that I've seen only once but which seemed easy to fix), which is of course still worth the effort because they add up. But I saw those new ones over and over again, I just couldn't make sense of them as of yet. Having those fixed means that this new version has the potential to crash significantly less than the previous ones.

If this turns out well, we are indeed moving from the bleeding edge to the leading edge.

As always there are a few minor changes and the change log has all the details (it should especially be helpful for users who are new to my viewers, see the bottom of the file).

Source code is also on the server already. If you do Linux or Mac builds, just drop me a line (especially for Macs!!, hint hint). I hope I didn't break your compiles by my changes, but if I did, please let me know and I'll merge your fixes back into the viewer. Same goes if you have something useful that affects those platforms and my viewer (e.g. the Mac version could use memory footprint calculation, see dump_memory() in nbmisc.cpp).

Oh, btw, I am typing this on a Mac *wide grin*

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.5 (download link) or the now official Linden 1.18.3.5 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-r.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the right folder!

If something goes wrong with this version, previous BE-p and BE-q are still on the server, seem rock solid and also run with 1.18.3.5 (both RC and official).

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Happy Hippo

2007-10-03T16:43:00.000+01:00

It looks like I'm having a lucky streak.

Since Sunday I was able to fix one weird crash each day with a few minor leakish stuff thrown on top (yes, that means there is a new version coming real soon now).

Obviously the higher forces out there must have noticed that I've been a good boy lately (and I seem to have covered my tracks well when I was not, alts are a godsend) so yesterday the postman ran and brought an impressive packet.

As you can see, the packet is a lot bigger than you'd expect for a MacBook/Pro, but nice guy that I am and nice people that the Lindens are, someone bent the rules a bit and an iMac instead of a MacBook!

Now, those new fixes I spoke of, should have been rolled into version BE-r yesterday, but I guess everybody understands that a box like this can change a man's plans and priorities within a split second. :-)

Unpacking alone is something Apple really knows how to turn into an experience by itself with all those nifty details. The machine itself is incredibly nice, alu casing, impressive screen, fine keyboard ... well, it's an Apple.

Installation was easy, besides a few hiccups (like not being able to find out the MAC address of the internal WLan on the outside and accidentally wiping out the pre-installed OS.X partition while trying to sneak an extra partition into bootcamp).

Thanks to Tillie and Barney, I could immediately run SL the Nicholaz way. Oh how sweet that is on a 24" wide screen display (1920x1200) with an ATI 2600 PRO. Be careful trying that anywhere or you'll be spoiled forever.

I'm not anywhere near doing anything productive on that machine and it will be a long time before I will be able to build SL on it (see that book lying next to the computer?), but you guys out there are doing such a good job of making platform builds for the Nicholaz Edition, that I'm sure in no hurry with so many new things to explore.

In any case, that machine makes a nice addition to my personal Huston Control center at home (just for comparison, those tiny screens on the other computers are 15" and 19" displays).

Thanks everybody for making this possible with your feedbacks, nominations, votes and of course thanks Lindens for making SL open source jumping through a few extra hoops with the Hippo Awards.

But now back to something totally different ...

(that is the debugger running for version BE-r).

Robin Cornelius' Linux AMD64 Build (Nicholaz BE-q)

2007-10-02T23:30:00.000+01:00

Robin Cornelius updated his previous AMD64 build of the Nicholaz Edition to version BE-q.

Here's what he said: "Just to let you know i've caught up again and have the q version of the viewer packaged up for 64bit linux systems with a tar.gz and a debian .deb package ready to roll.

http://www.byteme.org.uk/secondlife-amd64/binary-packages.html"

Please read the instructions on that page ...

Thanks Robin!

Release: Old School OS-n

2007-09-30T20:19:00.000+01:00

Today I imported a two of the better patches from Bleeding Edge to Old School. They both had huge impact on usability with the new viewer so they might also improve the experience with the vintage viewer. One of the patches should reduce memory consumption if you stay longer in busy areas without teleporting between sims, the other avoids possible stalls when the viewer cleans up the disk cache. They are both tried and trusted now so I do not expect problems. See the change log for all the details.

Generally I'd like to repeat that in my opinion my Bleeding Edge builds should run as good as Old School now, so that's what I am focusing at the moment. Working on the OS series is for rainy Sundays of if I find really important bugs or improvements.

If you want to keep using Old School, here is the usual release blurp:

Important: You need to have Linden version 1.18.0.6 (download here) installed before running this Old School version.

There is still the little goodie on the server, for those who want a more compact and appealing friends list (works with all my Old School Editions, see the readme.txt inside the file).

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

This version is for the Windows platform. It is optimized in processor independent ways. It offers all the optimizations which previously my P4 releases had, except for the processor dependent options. I'm not sure if the processor optimization made any actual difference anyway, but this should be a good balance which serves everybody.

If you choose to use this release, please first check that you have1.18.0.6 installed (otherwise get it here). Then have a look at the install instructions on my server and then download nicholaz-OS-n.zip from there.

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Mac Builds: Version BE-q (Updated)

2007-09-29T21:23:00.000+01:00

Tillie Ariantho just IM'd and says: "MacOSX/INTEL (binary + xmls only, read the install.txt): http://tilly-server.de/files/nicholaz-be-q-macos-bin.zip. Can someone tell me if that works for him/her? For me it works on my MacBook Pro. :)"

Barney Boomslang also has his version for BE-q ready and says: "Ok, my patcher is updated to the BE-Q version now. It's a universal build with a little tool that patches the official client. Should be able to patch a BE-O version, too. Download again at http://radio-boomslang.shacknet.nu/~bb/articles/nicholaz-edition-mac/index.html"

Thanks Tillie and Barney! :-)

PS: The Linden Mac versions which can serve as the basis for the above Nicholaz-Edition builds are available for download here (Linden 1.18.3.5-RC) or here (Linden 1.18.3.5).

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-q

2007-09-29T18:50:00.000+01:00

A new version is available on the server. I did a bit of work under the hood to make source more manageable, especially with the possible prospect of merging and mixing with other homebrews (there are no plans yet, but I expect that eventually).

There are four probably crashes fixed (all of minor impact though) and a focus nuisance (keyboard focus stolen by blue notifications) taken care of. Also a change that stores the settings in it's own file (settings_nicholaz.xml) so that the Nicholaz-settings (ctrl+alt+s) won't get reset when the official viewer is used.

As always, the change log has all the details and it should especially be helpful for users who are new to my viewers (see the bottom of the file).

Source code is also on the server, so keep those Linux and Mac builds coming. I hope I didn't break your compiles by my changes, but if I did, please let me know and I'll merge your fixes back into the viewer. Same goes if you have something useful that affects those platforms and my viewer.

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.5 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-q.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the SecondLifeReleaseCandidate folder!

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

SecondLife Authentication

2007-09-29T13:29:00.000+01:00

Together with the Havok4 announcment, another Linden mail hit the sldev mailing list (ahh those Fridays).

There seem to be plans to change the Login process on the viewer to make it more secure with regard to 3rd party viewers (like mine or anybody else who makes an open source build), basically finding a way to not give the password to a viewer to log in.

Details are here (wiki) and the sldev thread can be followed in the mailing list achive (scroll down until you find Website Viewer Authentication).

In a nutshell, I agree with most comments that the proposed change is useless in that whatever kind of authentication, once the viewer is logged in it, a malicious viewer still can do what it wants and that the proposed change is also a nuisance from a usability perspective and will probably break many ways people are using SL (Ajax-Life, libsl, etc.)

It is not yet clear, how far it is implemented and what the time frame for this change is. The initial mail said "pretty soon", but I would at least expect a release candidate cycle for something as far reaching as that.

I made a proposal for a different approach (search for Improving Authentication Security on the mailing list achive page) with less usability impact.

I may be wrong (and I really hope I am), but the announcement and the way Donovan Linden talks about the first iteration sounds a lot like this is more in final stages than in early discussion.

Given the fresh memories of how the communication window for voice was implemented, I'd like to raise public awareness of the issue and suggest that join discussion on the mailing list or via the wiki talk page or in office hours.

I don't mean to stage a protest, but I think now that the questions are asked, feedback should be early, constructive and clear.

Havok4 on the beta grid

2007-09-29T13:26:00.000+01:00

Lindens announced on the developer mailing list that the Havok4 physics engine is implemented on the beta grid. If you are interested in testing, see the Havok4 Beta page on the wiki.

Bleeding Edge: Two Mac Builds (Yay!)

2007-09-27T13:44:00.000+01:00

It seems like nobody has an excuse anymore to not use a Nicholaz Edition :-)

Yesterday Barney Boomslang and Tillie Ariantho both posted links to Mac builds in the comments for BleedingEdge BE-p. (I almost missed these because this time I didn't receive notifications about new comment, otherwise I would have posted them asap.)

Barney has a version BE-o with a patch application for download. My knowledge about MacOS is close to zero, but I'm sure Mac users can make sense of what he says there.

Tillie has version BE-p as ZIP file with just my viewer binary and the associated xml files (see the Install.txt inside the ZIP file) and another one with "random bits" (again see the comments on my BE-p release notes for the random bits).

Thanks folks, you rock!

Woot! :-)

Land Sales Issues

2007-09-27T13:39:00.000+01:00

The problem of accidental land sales came up on the developer mailing list recently and I remember having been asked about it.

I have no idea about estate management and much less about sales. Is anyone aware of combinations where land can be set to sale accidentally (accidentally meaning without clear confirmation dialogs)?

Please let me know as comments to this blog post.

Robin Cornelius' Linux AMD64 Build (Nicholaz BE-o)

2007-09-25T13:53:00.000+01:00

Robin sez: "I am hosting my build at amd64/binary-packages.html
In fact I have a complete standalone (opensource) AMD64/linux install there and a debian.deb."

I have no idea what that means (being a Windoozer) but I'm sure Linuxers will understand it :-)

Lilly's Linux Build of BleedingEdge-p

2007-09-25T13:00:00.000+01:00

Lilly Zenovka emailed me with a new i86/32bit Linxu build of Nicholaz BE-p.

Download from http://emak.free.fr/src/sl-nicholaz-linux/ and/or have a look at her README file.

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-p

2007-09-24T21:05:00.000+01:00

I've been a bit of a busy beaver yesterday and eventually found a way to detect redmap situations (minimap going red when the viewer looses connection to the current sim). It was quite easy once I came up with the brilliant(!) idea, to actually look at the minimap source code instead of digging through the communication parts *duh*.

It will detect the situation in the same moment the minimap would detect it (which may be some after the loss of connection actually occurs). It seems to work quite well, the only risk is that it detects false positives, so I need a bit of feedback if you have situations where it reports the problem while it actually doesn't exist. In any case there is an option to turn the warning off (debug options, ctrl+alt+s).

There is also a bit of smaller stuff, like tweaking the last patch which deals with the viewer stalls and source changes which should help with Linux compiles (non portable code fixed and a Linux files.lst file updated).

As always, the change log has all the details and should especially be helpful for users who are new to my viewers (see the bottom of the file).

Source code is also on the server, so keep those Linux builds coming. And if someone wants to do a Mac build I'm all for it (my own Mac is still in the works and I guess it'll be a long time before I'll be able to make a distributable build).

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.5 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-p.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the SecondLifeReleaseCandidate folder!

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Another "Bleeding Edge" for Linux

2007-09-24T17:49:00.001+01:00

Lilly Zenovka also provided a Linxu build (version BE-o).

Download from http://emak.free.fr/src/sl-nicholaz-linux/ and/or have a look at her README file.

Thanks Lilly!

PS: Where are you Mac guys?? :-D

Bleeding Edge for Linux

2007-09-23T16:00:00.000+01:00

Barp (Anders Arnholm) made a Linux version out of the BE-o (1.18.3.5) viewer, and sent me the link, so you can download it here:
http://anders.arnholm.se/balps-asikter/SecondLife-BalpBuild-i686-1-18-3-5.tar.bz2.

Also, for all of you working on other platform builds, I'll try to make the source as portable as possible, so I'll fix a few things right away and if you have stuff which breaks your builds, please let me know what and where (I have a few points already, so give me feedback with the next release).

And of course, if you have builds for download, just send me URLs and I'll post them here.

Release: Bleeding Edge BE-o

2007-09-22T16:57:00.000+01:00

Here is a new version which complements Friday's required(?) update 1.18.3.5 for the release candidate.

My viewer now contains a sweet little patch which should cure some of the 15-30sec. hiccups and for good measure I also activated the compiler optimizations (first time for the bleeding edge series). It probably won't cure all pauses/stalls, but one was clearly identifyable as happening when the viewer flushed files from the disk cache.

As always, the change log has all the details and should be most helpful for users who are new to my viewers.

Source code is also on the server, with an additional patch for Linux/Mac. If someone makes a Linux or Mac build and has a download link, please let me know.

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.5 (download link) installed.

Then download nicholaz-BE-o.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the SecondLifeReleaseCandidate folder!

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Alternate Viewer: Dale Glass Edition

2007-09-21T23:28:00.000+01:00

I would like to draw your attention to another homebrew edition.

Dale Glass is one of the respected contributors on the sldev mailing list and a nice guy. He has spent some time and effort to create extra features which help dealing with security and anti griefing, so if you have needs or interests in those areas, check the alternate viewers page on the SL Wiki or go to Dale's website or blog directly.

The viewer is currently based on the release candidate, comes with full installer, installs independent of my edition and is available for Linux or Windows.

30 Sec. Freezes (Redux)

2007-09-20T18:54:00.001+01:00

I'd like to make another attempt to shed some light onto those 30. sec freezes. From your comments to the last post it seems there are various versions of them, so for a start I'd like to clarify what I'm looking for.

There seem to be freezes which stall the viewer, mostly when walking or using the camera. They seem to be new since the voice viewer, and there is a JIRA issue for it.

So, what I am looking for are details about "random" freezes which occur in the official Linden viewer (and possibly my derivates). I know there are issues related to inventory, but these are not what I am looking for.

For those of you who encounter these freezes, I'd like to hear details here in the comments.

When they happen ...

... does switching windows (e.g. putting the viewer behind another window), give the viewer a "not responding" title or is the viewer still usable?
... does the viewer use extreme CPU load (ctrl+alt+del to the task manager, check the process tab there)?
... does the viewer (in the task manager) increase or decrease memory usage (VM size or RAM) during the freeze?
... is there heavy disk activity during those times?
... when you look at the logfile (for the latest viewer this would be nicholaz-BE-n.log) are there suspicious entries around that time (just note the clock time and look at the time in the log)?
... are you using XP or Vista and with how much system RAM?
... are the freezes more prominent in the official version (compared to Nicholaz Bleeding Edge)?
... will the freezes go away for some time (not happening for hours/days) after doing a cache clear or are they possibly less prominent if you use smaller SL cache size?

It'll be hard to compare to the Old School version, but I'm sure there are some of you who are knowing these freezes and sticking to old school for exactly that reason.

Release: Nicholaz Edition BleedingEdge-n (18xn)

2007-09-20T15:29:00.000+01:00

After the change of version numbering with Old School, this new Bleeding Edge release now also follows the new version scheme. Therefore this viewer is now called BleedingEdge-n (BE-n) and would be more or less equivalent to 18xn in the previous version counting.

It is now based on the latest Linden 1.18.3.4-ReleaseCandidate and besides the usual Nicholaz changes (memory, gui, etc.) comes with a few minor improvements. See the change log for the version specific and general details/features/fixes. I also changed the folders on the download server and the documentation a bit.

This version is currently my preferred viewer. The recommended setup now is: Latest official Linden 1.18.2.1 (download) viewer plus Linden 1.18.3.4-RC (download) plus Nicholaz BleedingEdge-n (see download instructions below).

Those of you who still prefer the pre-voice viewer for performance reasons, can of course still use my Old School release together with the latest RC and this version. Old School still seems to have performance benefits for some people, but most people should be quite happy with this new Bleeding Edge viewer and that includes the user interface.

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.4 (download link) installed. Then download nicholaz-BE-n.zip from here and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log on my server!

After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the SecondLifeReleaseCandidate folder!

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Confused?

2007-09-20T00:56:00.000+01:00

If you're new to my viewers or confused by the recent flood of versions, here is a quick overview:

1.18.0.6: This (non voice) viewer is called old school here on this blog. The Linden viewer with that version does not work anymore, the same goes for my earlier versions which were based on that (18a-18l). Today's OldSchool-m (techically 18m) uses a hack get past the mandatory update.

1.18.2.x: The current official Linden viewer (voice, new chatterbox GUI). 1.18.2.1 today is the latest one, and there is no working Nicholaz Edition based on it.

1.18.3.(2/3/4): This voice viewer is a Linden release candidate and can be installed parallel to the official viewer. It is more solid than 1.18.2.x and will soon become the next official viewer. It has the chatterbox GUI. For this version there is a Nicholaz Edition with additional bugs fixed, and with the GUI partially reverted to the old style (friends and groups as separate windows). This edition is currently named Bleeding Edge 18xm and is what I am using myself most of the time.

Release: Nicholaz Edition OldSchool-m

2007-09-19T23:55:00.000+01:00

We have a new Old School viewer, but it's truly going vintage now because the underlying Linden Viewer 1.18.0.6 was rendered void by a mandatory update today. For the moment (unless the Lindens decide to bring their 1.18.0 series back from the dead), the only way to run old school is by doing creative version numbering upon login, which is what this version does.

Speaking of version numbers, besides a few minor changes (see the change log) I decided to change the naming scheme for my editions to avoid confusions. In old terms, this would be Nicholaz Edition 18m, but it is named OldSchool-m now.

Before you download this version, I'd like to encourage everyone to give the 18xm viewer a try. It is based on the Linden 1.18.3.3 release candidate, runs very well now and most people should not notice much difference.

Unless you have strong reasons to stick with my Old School viewer, here is my recommended setup: Upgrade the official/main viewer to Linden 1.18.2.1 (the one patched for security today). Next, install the Linden 1.18.3.3 release candidate and then to put my version 18xm on top.

If you do however want to keep using Old School, here is the usual release blurp:

Important: You need to have Linden version 1.18.0.6 (download here) installed before running this Old School version.

There is still the little goodie on the server, for those who want a more compact and appealing friends list (works with all my Old School Editions, see the readme.txt inside the file).

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

This version is for the Windows platform. It is optimized in processor independent ways. It offers all the optimizations which previously my P4 releases had, except for the processor dependent options. I'm not sure if the processor optimization made any actual difference anyway, but this should be a good balance which serves everybody.

If you choose to use this release, please first check that you have1.18.0.6 installed (otherwise get it here). Then have a look at the install instructions on my server and then download nicholaz-OS-m.zip from there.

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

New mandatory Linden update 1.18.2.1

2007-09-19T22:45:00.000+01:00

Lindens have released 1.18.2.1 a moment ago and made that the mandatory viewer because of a security exploit.

This breaks the old non-voice viewer. The release candidate remains unaffected (probably because it has a higher version number anyway and because the exploit does always start the official viewer).

For the moment I suggest you use my latest Bleeding Edge edition (which is voice with old style user interface based on the Linden release candidate). Download links (Linden release candidate, my viewer) and instructions are here.

Meanwhile I will see what I can do to keep the Old School viewer alive, so don't delete your old installations yet.

PS: If you do want to upgrade your Linden voice viewer, here is the correct download link for Linden 1.18.2.1.

Exploit of Security Vulnerability

2007-09-18T18:55:00.001+01:00

There is currently a pretty clever exploit of a few web browser and SL-viewer features, which allows websites to launch SL and pass an encoded version of your password to a third party server. I'll spare you the technical details, as they are already described in the link above, but want to provide a summary which the average user can understand.

To run into the problem you need to surf across a malicious website, which will then launch the viewer from within the web browser. Through a custom coded viewer the attacker could then theoretically log in with your avatar, but he will not aquire the actual password, so he can't log in to your account on www.secondlife.com. There are several factors involved, one is that you have the store password option in the viewer's login page, the other is that you are using IE or allowing Firefox to launch the program.

Unfortunately this can not be fixed through the nicholaz viewer, because the web browser will launch the original viewer.

I think the risk is relatively low that anyone will be hit by this. If you want to be sure, uncheck the "Remember password" option on the viewers start screen. In the unlikely case that you surf a website and you are without knowing why are asked if you want to launch SecondLife, simply decline. If the viewer comes up unexpectedly and automatically and then shows a login error, immediately go to www.secondlife.com, log in and change your password there.

There's no reason to panic. Knowledge beats fear (there'll probably be rumors and angst pretty quickly going through the blogs). I guess LL will probably come up with a solution sooner or later (hopefully one which does not break the older viewers), but at the moment it should be sufficient to be aware of the problem and knowing the symptoms.

Linden RC Updated (1.18.3.4)

2007-09-15T00:00:00.000+01:00

1.18.3.3 was a short lived version.

If you want to download and run that new version put my 18xm on top, it will complain about a version conflict. Y ou can simply fix that by faking the version number in the releasenotes.txt file (just set the first line to 1.18.3.3).

Besides, I think you won't need 1.18.3.4 anyway because the double-code problem which they mention in the updated release notes is already fixed in 18xm.

Bleeding Edge: Edition 18xm

2007-09-14T20:59:00.000+01:00

Today I had a look at the latest Linden viewer 1.18.3.3-RC. The changes since the last release candidate were fairly small, which is good and also to be expected for a 2nd RC version. My patches went in easily, so I decided to make a new version.

Most of it is just like 18xj, except one change, which is a complete overhaul of the particle system by Blakar Ogre. This should result in better performance in regards to particles and also fixes a lot of smaller bugs in that area, especially with moving particle sources.

The previous combination (18xj and Linden 1.18.3.2-RC) still runs fine, there is no real reason to upgrade.

If you do upgrade, please take a look at the change log for the newest additions and check the bottom of the file for all details differing from the official 1.18.3.3-RC. Also make sure you have a look at the Debug Settings window (now Ctrl+Alt+S) to see the new ways to adjust the viewer via _Nicholaz-Options.

If you find issues with this version, including issues which the Linden version has, please post them here and I'll try to see what I can do.

Oh, and if you wonder about the version skip (18xj to 18xm) I had messed up version counting before (there was an 18xk before 18xj ... the alphabet is a tricky thing, LOL) and I also wanted to avoid confusion with the old school viewer 18l. So this is 18xm, the next viewer after 18xj.

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

First make sure you have installed the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.3 (download link). Then download nicholaz-18xm.zip from here and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions on my server! After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the SecondLifeReleaseCandidate folder!

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

30 Sec. Freezes

2007-09-09T22:17:00.001+01:00

I just had a very interesting feedback from a user. Basically what he said was that 18xj did not have those 30 sec. total freezes anymore. Well they're reported from a few seconds to a minute and I never had them, but those who had, probably know what I mean.

Now the question is, did these get fixed for anyone else too? There is some weird code removed in 18xj which could theoretically account for them, although I removed it for another reason.

Anybody who used to have them with previous voice versions (official or mine), do you still encounter them with 18xj?

Old School: Release Version 18l

2007-09-07T20:13:00.000+01:00

We have a new Old School viewer. The most notable change is that the Recent Items tab should be fixed, the rest are minor details (see the change log).

Also, I'd like to encourage everyone to give the 18xj viewer a try. It should run fine for everyone as far as I can tell, voice or non-voice and I'll probably focus on that one from now on. You can install it besides your existing viewer (the Linden release candidate goes into it's own program folder and 18xj goes into that too) and then swap as you see fit. I really would like to get some broader feedback on it.

Important: You need to have Linden version 1.18.0.6 (download here) installed before running my Old School versions (18a - 18l). If you have a more recent Linden viewer with voice (1.18.1.2 or 1.18.2.0), you will instead need to install my Bleeding Edge Editions.

There is still the little goodie on the server, for those who want a more compact and appealing friends list (works with all my Old School Editions, see the readme.txt inside the file).

Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.

This version is for the Windows platform. It is optimized in processor independent ways. It offers all the optimizations which previously my P4 releases had, except for the processor dependent options. I'm not sure if the processor optimization made any actual difference anyway, but this should be a good balance which serves everybody.

If you choose to use this release, please first check that you have installed (otherwise get it here or use my latest Bleeding Edge release). Then have a look at the install instructions on my server and then download nicholaz-18l.zip from there. (Previous versions are still on the server and should continue to work fine in case you want or need to go back, 18g seems to be pretty solid.)

PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"

Recent Items (Updated)

2007-09-07T18:00:00.000+01:00

I've been asked a few times about the Recent Items tab not working. I just dug into it today, and came out a bit confused.

As far as I can tell, there is a filter for the recent items, which is supposed to be stored across sessions. If you activate the Recent Items tabs, then select File, Show Filters, you can set the Since Logoff option there. Maybe it got accidentally cleared in a release or maybe there is a way to lose it (it should be stored in filters.xml), but so far it seems to work with the current viewers, once it was set.

If you have problems with Recent Items after setting the option, please try to find a way to reproduce it and I'll look into it.

Update: Ok, found it. Appears to have been a bug in Old School. Between 17 and 18 the Lindens changed the format how the filter was saved to XML. While doing that, they forgot to save/load back the since_logoff setting. It appears to be working correctly in Bleeding Edge. I'll fix it for the next Old School release.