I've been teleporting around all evening on a window-shopping spree. Suddenly one of my group IMs buzzed to life with "Is it only me or can no one teleport?" Over the next few minutes we've had no ability to build, search is borked (nothing shows up even if you search for sex with mature checked, it must be bad!) and people that are relying on the dataserver for reading notecards and customer information are finding that's not working either.

No word from the official blog as yet, but your second life may be rather adversely affected. I may not see the resolution of this one, it's getting kind of late for me.

[UPDATE] Official blog catches up, adds shopping, loading money and rezzing no copy items to list of things with problems.

[UPDATE] According to the main blog this has been fixed. I've not yet been back in world to check, but we had a rough two hours looking at the time it was declared fixed.

There was great anticipation in the air as we awaited the arrival of our instructor. At last last, we too would be possessors of knowledge of the recent art of 'nano' and 'tortured' prims, our hands as eagerly at the ready over CTRL-3 as a mistress' over her whip and chains.

RoseLinUK London, the instructor, arrived at the top of the hour, and class commenced directly, with introductions and the distribution of class materials.

While this article is all about a plan to create a modern update of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, its final paragraph mentions that the original tower has been recreated in SL, though without a link. This makes me think again: why aren't we creating more physics-defying builds?

Are we so tethered to reality that we can't bear the leaving of it even in our virtual lives? Are we trying to live out our dreams of owning palatial mansions that we can't afford in RL? Are we *gulp* just too adult to be whimsical?

Send me some landmarks or photos of your Impossible Build and prove to me imagination isn't limited to avatars!

(Via telegraph.co.uk)

The splendiferous Mitch Wagner has written a great little piece on building in SL for the first time. This should be required reading for anyone just starting out. It's a good one, and worth checking out, but there's a bit in there unrelated to building that made me think.

Mitch mentions the idea of clutter in SL being something that you don't clean up, you acquire. On the surface, this idea is simple and obvious; a means to an end. However, beneath it lies a group of assumptions that bear watching. At what point is detail necessary to develop the proper verisimilitude? How much is too much? Can it ever be faked to the extent that it's no longer noticed as an affectation? It's at this point I go completely literary-wonk, and quote a favorite band of mine: Going through people's closet shelves/To see if it's what we hide ourselves

What does our clutter tell us about ourselves?

Linden Lab can be said to be in the virtual world business. Or they can be said to be in the e-commerce business. Both of them are valid points of view. Who runs Second Life? Who operates it? Who makes it what it is?

It might be trite, but it really is us; the residents. Linden Lab try their best to keep up with us, but most of the time that seems to be a losing race. If it can be broken, by golly we'll break it. If it can be built, we'll make it. If there's a deficiency, we'll jump right in and find a way to profit from filling the gap, while simultaneously complaining long and loud that that deficiency should be fixed.

There's no manual anywhere that says "This is how you run something like Second Life." or "This is what something like Second Life should/shouldn't have." That's because there isn't anything out there like Second Life.

What we can say is that whatever Second Life is, it isn't what Linden Lab expected it to be – and it won't be like what any of us expect it to become. Second Life is the very definition of the bleeding-edge, and it's evolution is something none of us can sanely claim to predict.

Well ... it is generally asserted that 1.12 is a success, in terms of an update that didn't break a whole load of new stuff. Fair enough. In my terms, however, it isn't a success, because I am still being bugged by the same old building bugs that have been driving me crazy for months and months. Plus I have a new lag problem which is affecting other people too. It's making building a pain, difficult, not enjoyable at all..

The "link failed, pieces too far apart" bug is still alive and well. This refuses to link an object even if the object is well within the maximum size available. In some cases I have had this message with hair and small objects, or with an object in the middle of an already linked object.

The "can't stretch inidividual prim of linked object even when you check edit linked parts" bug is alive and well. This means that if you try to stretch an individual prim in a linked object, it stretches but immediately springs back to its original size, until you unlink it.

The bug ... well I presume it is a bug ... which means that if you select a couple of prims from a linked object and delink them, the whole object, both unlinked and linked parts become selected, is still with us. This has meant recently that I inadvertently retextured a whole build because I hadn't realised the whole object was selected.

The bug which means that you can select three prims together, try to rotate them as one object and find that they are all rotating separately, but at the same time, is still around. Annoyingly, if you try to revert back by reversing the procedure, they will invariably then act the way that they should, as one object.

In addition, I am getting a delay between clicking on a texture window and seeing the texture picker open. It's only a couple of seconds, but when you are trying to retexture a complex object it makes everything so sloooow.

Oh, and I crash when I try to sort inventory or delete anything from inventory.

Fenrir reports on the forums problems with building in an empty sim with no connection problems, and I have the same problem. I had a discussion with one other avatar in an empty sim and was getting a 10-15 second delay on chat appearing.

I don't know what's up, but it is making trying to build for the project I am building for very frustrating indeed.

I'm working on a project I can't tell you about. It's common in SL -- clients ask you to sign an non-disclosure agreement (NDA), and not to tell people their secrets. I worked on a big pitch a few months ago where I signed the NDA, but was allowed to tell my team as long as I was responsible for them not disclosing anything I told them. That was a bit nerve-wracking, I can tell you. I trusted my team, but I was worried that one of us would accidentally disclose something the client didn't want disclosed and I would be sued for it.

The silly thing about that project was that I then found more than I knew had been released on a press release and was freely available on the web! I wasn't taking any chances though and I still am not.

Anyway ... working with a new set of people got me thinking about team building in SL. It's different from working with a team in real life. If you're running a team in SL you need to keep on top of how people are feeling by talking to them -- you can't read body language or hear in their voices that they are upset, or annoyed, or sulking. Communication is essential.

It's also imperative that you listen to what they are saying. On the pitch I mention, I failed to do that and upset one of the people I was working with. It's all too easy to assume that things that are obvious to you are obvious to everyone, and that's often not the case. You have to ensure that you spell out even the obvious, and consult about it too.

When it works, team building is a fantastic experience in SL. Just with RL teams, the team is more than the sum of its parts, and sparks a creativity that can't be beaten. When it doesn't work, team building turns into a lot of muttering in corners, resentment and tantrums. As you can't nail people to their seats in SL, it may also result in the loss of some of the team.

Here are Cali's tips for a smooth team experience: communication ... communication ... communication. Be explicit about everything -- don't trust that people will guess things, even if you feel stupid, spell it out, in instructions or in questions. ALWAYS ask if unsure about anything. Don't wait for it to come out in the wash, ask. Agree a plan of work and deadlines. If people break the deadlines or change the plan of work without consultation, discuss.

Finally and most importantly: remember to praise good work. People find it isolating to struggle on with a project not hearing whether they are doing a good, bad or indifferent job. If they're doing something right, tell them, and make it clear what it is you are praising them for.

The Ivory Tower of Primitives is a build worth seeing, even if you don't plan to take advantage of all the wonderful building tutorials and other resources in the building.

Lumiere Noir deserves high praise for having maintained the tower through all the updates and changes to Sl and the building tools. Many people owe their start in building to the place.

There is also a very useful sandbox which is generally clearer than the other public sandboxes, and enables you to build in peace.

A posting from a new user in the forums, reminded me that it isn't initially clear to newer people just how useful the forums can be. I can remember visiting the forums, feeling confused by all the headings, alarmed by how aggressive some people seemed to be, and then unsure how helpful they could be to me, when I first started in SL.

The SL forums are currently the best place to find official announcements about down time or updates, a good place to find information about new products or events, and a brilliant place to ask a question about SL. Even if you only "lurk" and don't post, they can be very useful indeed.

One of the most useful automated searches is hidden in the bar across the top: "new posts". Clicking on this will throw up a list of new posts since you last visited the forums, newest first, and enable you to see what the current hot topics are, and scroll down the list to find anything of interest.

Okay, let me see if I have this straight. We can build anything we want in Second Life, without the restrictions of building materials, regard to physical laws, or even the dicta of good taste. Wood never rots. A single beam can hold aloft a structure easily ten times its size. And finally, we can all fly. Why, then, do I see so many split-level ranch-style houses? Why so many office buildings? Why so many blocky, steel-and-mortar, non-opening-windowed edifices?

I want to see more buildings that look like paramecia! Buildings of interlocking rings, suspended from a giant chain being held in the beak of a purple squid that's on fire! Hell, let's have an office park consisting entirely of Habitrails! C'mon, you know it'd be fun, and nearly half of SL is Furry anyway!

Seriously, kidlets, we're missing some incredible opportunities to play with dimension, color, optics, mass, and a whole lot of other terms I don't know 'cause I'm just a big white werewolf. We can build ANYTHING! So let's do it!

If you don't know Dezeray Mondrian already, it's likely that you will eventually bump into her or one of her beautiful builds in the near future. Most likely she will be naked when you do, but that's beside the point! Dezeray has been making a minor splash in Second Life by setting the "gritty" slider to the max with her gorgeous New York City style builds.

What's ironic about virtual building is that imperfection is far more difficult to achieve than perfection! To make a flawless kitchen counter top, simply rez a prim and set shiny to the max. But making a counter top full of cracks, stains, and butterfly poo can be a real challenge. Well Dezeray is up to the challenge so please enjoy the following snaps of her magnificent work.

Growl.  The update to 1.10.0 is today, due to start at 7am SLT.  I read the notes about new features, the main ones being flexible prims and hardware lighting. Tucked at the bottom is a list of bug fixes. I'm glad they're fixed. But the ones which have been causing a problem for AGES don't seem to be there. 

I posted to the forums at the update for 1.9.0, because I got a veritable shower of emails from the bug reporting team which said, basically: "We've fixed this with the new update kthanxbye." I was apoplectic when I realised that they HADN'T fixed them, just signed off all the bug reports from the previous version, fixed or unfixed it seemed.

Now, they told us that if only they got bug reports on things, they would carry on and fix them. So I have been reporting bugs ago-go, looking forward to seeing some of the more irritating things fixed in the next update. But most of the ones which make me go "grrrrrrrrrrr" aren't there.

What about the "link failed" bug? That's the one where even if you have just two prims, a millimetre apart, the program refuses to link them on the grounds that they are too far apart?  But will then link a prim 5 metres away, no problem?

WHAT about the texturing bug, where you select a whole object and choose a texture, which should lay that texture over every surface of every prim in the object and doesn't ... even the third or fourth time, or if you wait?

WHAT ABOUT the bug which reverses rotations, which may or may not be the same bug the resizes prims back to the size they had before?

WHAT ABOUT THE BUG which means that if you select three objects together and rotate them, instead of rotating as one object, each object rotates individually?

I will wait to be buried under a flurry of "we believe we've fixed this in the new update" emails. But if fixed, it is hard to know why they aren't listed in the bugs fixed list. And if not fixed ... just grrrrrowl.

Finished my entry for the Gazebo competition in Dreams, and then went to Epsilon to get on with the temple build there.

I used Cadroe Murphy's ring generator after a long struggle to make a 12-sided plinth. This is a free-to-copy gadget that allows you to make a ring of any size, with as many sides as you require.  It is a clever and useful gadget and I bless Mr Murphy every time I have reason to use it.

I built the temple, and that had the traditional wrestling match with the linking, as the program somehow believes things which are next to each other to be too far away ... and infrequently stuff which is quite some distance apart will link with no problem. 

Had the oddest request I have ever received from one of my customers while I was working on the temple.  Please would I make some shapes for her, as she is making furniture.  Just any old shapes I have lying around would do.

I asked: "What sort of shapes are you after?"  "Anything," she replied, "whatever. I will use my imagination to turn them into furniture."  I sent a few of the more difficult shapes, but I am intrigued to know what has been done with them. Will report on this later.

I was led to explore a sim under construction by an SL forum posting which talked about natural landscapes in SL. My SL partner, Oclee and I went to Isle RFyre and explored, and loved what we could see.

There seem to be a number of builders working on the sim, in a variety of ways but the picture above, showing the roof of one of the structures was one of my favourite things. It is an innovative shape, and fits really well with the rest of the build. I love organic building that seems to grow in place, and develops a cohesive style.

The only unfortunate thing from my point of view is that it looks as though this is mainly a shopping sim, with shops already set up in the main structure, and in the shopping mall in the sky. The mall in the sky is an innovative design too, although the sound of rushing water drove us crazy. Overall, this is going to be an interesting place to shop, though.