This weekend, I uploaded 4 Second Life Video Tutorials, covering an array of both very basic "need to know" stuff, "OMG I wish you'd told me sooner!" topics, and the lateral, eclectic trivia I'm known for. They've arrived thanx in part to suggestions I've received, so the topics may look familiar:
» How to change your appearance
» How to manage your inventory
And I didn't make an announcement about this earlier — last week, I uploaded 2 more vidtuts too, and here they are:
» How to use the building grid
A continued gracious thank-you to each of you who've watched and hopefully learned something while having fun. Now, I'd like to share some contextual info about all of this…
I'm pleased to confirm we (Linden Lab) have hired a new Technical Writer. His name is Jeremy Linden, and in his first week, he's been so helpful and agile at editing existing inaccuracies. I'm handing over the reins to him as I (already have) become occupied with more work — you can be assured there's never an end to interesting projects to resolve. You may've seen me on the Public Issue Tracker recently, which is one place of several I'm helping our devs in Studio Blacklight ferret out hot bugs. I'll still be checking 'round the Knowledge Base, so send in a KB Request if you've usefully observed something we can do better on!
And yes, lack of that infernal commodity, time, means I don't plan to be doing any more vidtuts… for now. My days usually consist of a menagerie of assorted interruptions, most of them welcome, some of them not. I'm a creature of chaos, which some find hard to believe, but this also means it's difficult to find concentrated blocks of time to film and edit movies. Since I'm also amenable to adaptation, I might do some shorter "tips" clips, but I ultimately hope my actions in this field will inspire more Residents to create wonderful vidtuts… Second Life is a user-created, community-driven world after all. This is also the reason why I started the Video Tutorials page on the Public Wiki!
YouTube and I have a difficult relationship. By that, I mean: I apologize if you haven't seen me leaving comments on any of my vids there recently. It's not because I haven't — it's because several times, I very doggedly entered replies to feedback I've gotten, only to press "Post Comment" and watch them vanish into the ether and never appear. YouTube doesn't have a good comment management system, and atop of that, I'm already spread across so many communication channels. So it's not that I don't want to talk; it's these obstacles getting in our way. I'm thankful for the fact they host my vids, but at the same time, unappreciative of the blurry quality — they should really upgrade that, going forward, and add stereo sound too.
I'll also apologize in advance if you sent me an Instant Message inworld, and I didn't reply. My "personal bandwidth", as they say, is maxxed out and IMs are also inconvenient to manage. For example, there's no easy, integrated way to set messages aside to reply to later — if you're having them sent to your email, you can check that, but it's troublesome to switch windows. Also, when I login, I'm typically confronted by the following text, which I'm sure is familiar to some of you:
Second Life: Too many instant messages. Delivery capped.
and since as mentioned, my days are full of interruptions, I quite frequently have to log in and out and reply to correspondence I get later, when I can devote a block of time to that. Inworld focus is very important to me, so when concentrating on tasks at hand, I'm not paying attention to my IMs. (Don't buy into the multitasking myth!)
There are far more things I do than I have hours to write about, so please safely assume that I'm always wrapped up in something, which is expressedly why I've currently making time on Fridays @ 6 AM and 2 PM PDT for my inworld office hours in the Linden Village. This time is especially setup so you can come and visit me and we can chaaaat. Lindens holding office hours sensibly tend to do it based on their expertises. Since I'm heavily focused on the inworld experience and "hardly observed but really important" stuff, I love learning more about this. Please feel free to drop landmarks on me of your fave locales too, whether it's during my office hours or otherwise, because when I go on a jaunting teleport spree and take piccies of my adventures on Flickr, I want to experience new places I've never been before, as I continue to better understand what's happening in our community.
Related, being able to personally respond nowadays is generally not realistic for me, so as noted in my Profile > Web contact tab — which I have confidence you read, because it's mentioned in the very first line of my About section 
— best to send me an email. That goes for both my work and play stuff, altho for the latter, you know I have this blog and you can comment! I continue to keep up reading what I'm sent, but taking all the above into account, you can see why I might not be able to reply. Unless you clone me, in which case, understanding how you'd do it would be a top priority of correspondence.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
You seem to get so much done Torley.
I often wonder if you have heard of this thing called "sleep"..it's this state where your mind goes blank for 7-8 hours, and intermittantly invokes some wierd inner visions.
Then you "awake" and walk around for the next 30 minutes wondering who you are, and why you exist.
Come to think of it, if you don't do this "sleeping" thing, don't bother, your probably better off without it.
Hiya Torls,
Sorry I haven't dropped you a note lately, I've been swamped. I get the feeling you know exactly how I feel.
Will try to stop by office hours sometime soon.
I can't for the life of me find that tip for setting fog to 10.0. Could you let me know how please Torley?
Many thanks
@Shockwave: O gosh can I quote you on this in the future? It's one of the funniest things I've read! Great dialog for a movie, I'm thinking Philip K. Dickian noir with a touch of romantic comedy. (I'm also thinking of that film, The Science of Sleep.)
@Adri: Nice to see you at my office yesterday!
@Flugel: Sure, it's right here, as originally written by me and updated recently by Jeremy Linden. Note if you didn't have a fog value in your settings to begin with, you'll have to add it. Cheers!
Sure Torley, and these Inner vision things are called Dreams,…they are sort of like Second life, but more like when your cordless keyboard and mouse batteries have run flat, just as and you fall into a pose ball display case.
Then you start doing all sort of weird stuff, and can't stop yourself.
The flying is rubbish, the Avis are badly done, but the textures, and animations of these Dream things can be quite good. Personally I would like to turn the screen contrast up, but can't find the controls. TP is OK, but iffy.
IM doesn't work, and Live Help never answer.
So this Dream stuff..no where as good as SL.
@Shockwave: I do wish we had more control within Second Life to crank up the contrast; I often do it in post-production when moviemaking, but some people have astutely observed that SL looks kind of flat compared to other games, and I think a lot of that has to do with the contrast, lighting (I want bloom!), etc.
LOVE your vidz, sorry you can't do more. Recommend them to all my SL friends.
Can't thank you enough for the brilliant tips.
Recently followed up your blog by getting a Space Navigator, I can't tell you how grateful I am that you took the trouble to publish the settings, as I would NEVER have worked that out in a million years! As it was I keep trying to tweak things and whenever I do, it goes into a death spin. (so I leave it alone now)
I really like it, but it seems to me the controls are counter-intuitive (to my mind) unless I kind of think of it as moving the world, not my viewpoint. A quick fix was to physically turn it through 180 degrees, so at least left seems left to me and right seems right. However, I still instinctively swivel the wrong way, and it is maddening.
I e-mailed 3DConnexion, who kindly responded saying it is basically up to the Software Developer to use the SDK or software developer's kit, available from 3DC website, so to try contacting them.
I am not optomistic about the busy people at Linden Labs listening to one solitary user, but passed it on in the form of a support ticket under "Miscellaneous" asking if it were possible, or who I should talk to.
Can you be of any help. (as if you had nothing else to do!) LOL.
Anyway, since you must have one, I figured it might be in your interests, and you might know someone who could make it happen.
Obviously I am not blaming you for making me buy the thing in the first place, but it works a treat in the likes of Google Earth, etc. Just SL seems to bypass the driver software and pick up the joystick direct.
Have you found any more ways to tweak it to get it right perchance?
I do appreciate you are busy, and thankyou once more for being such a marvellous e-tutor already, even if you cannot respond to this personally.
regards, Zimmo Hallard. (Ian)
@Zimmo: Thanks for your extensive comment and suggestions! And for watching and enjoying my videos!
I didn't write the Flycam instructions, Runitai Linden did and Illumine Demina added some info to that page, too. I'm simply sharing that info in case it's of use to anyone else. I haven't used the SpaceNavigator myself personally (yet); I recently got a Saitek P2600 gamepad to help me use the Flycam tho.
If I do find a way how to make it work better, I will surely share that. =o)