Long dark tea time of the soul...

Almost 2 years which might be some kind of record.

When RL takes over with health and family problems then a blog takes a back seat. Lately even logging in seems like an effort. 
I know, sounds really depressy right ?
But don't worry, things are slowly turning around. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not the light that you expect to see in your final moments (That actually came a few weeks ago and was not a pleasant experience but perhaps more on that another time)

I'm posting on Flickr more often these days than here, so perhaps it's an idea that I could tie the two together ? My partner Alex does Flickr and Twitter so I could Flickr and Blogger..Flogger ? Fligger  ?

We'll have to see :)

It's been an incredibly long time since I posted anything here but I want to recommend a new blog by a friend of mine,Pepite Roxan.

Hopefully she'll be more regular than I am *laughs dryly*

Here is the link.

Pepite Roxan

So you want to stick with Viewer One ?

Well the good news is that Viewer 1 will be around as well as all the 3rd party alternatives like Phoenix, for as long as LL allow access. the bad news is that V2 really is going to be more important as time goes by, no matter how much you hate it. 

I know what you're saying; Phoenix gives me inventory links, avatar physics, enhanced radar etc,etc but what if you could use something like Firestorm,based off V2 and like it ?

Consider this helpfull illustrative picture.

 

There are  quite a few options that can be set in the Firestorm preferences to give it more of a viewer 1 look & feel.

As I like that Dark skin in Phoenix I'm fairly comfortable with the standard Firestorm skin but Metaharper is a good alternative.

If you want Firestorm to look more like the default V1 UI then the Starlight retro skin will give it the old camera look with the rest of the UI in the old blue colours with rounded buttons.

I hear from many of you that you really don't like avatar icons in local chat and IM's. well, yay, you can turn that off.

Now don't let the fact that I'm using the latest beta build put you off trying the following settings; if you don't have it yet it should be available in the next few days !

In preferences,starting with the general tab, untick Viewer  UI hints if you don't like the big square popup appearing whenever you hover over a toolbar option.

Moving onto the chat tab, untick the 'show mini icons' option to make it more like V1, or, tick 'Remove chat headers' so all chat in nearby and IM's looks like V1 style.

Set incoming chat popups for IM's etc. to your own preference, I personally don't like IM chat appearing on my screen unless I have the chat window open.

At the top of the screen, where the navigation bar usually is on V2, right click for options to hide the search bar, navigation bar & favorites.Make sure that show location is ticked in top bar so it shows location the same way as V1.

Next we move down to the UI tab & set use pie menu (usually ticked by default in firestorm) and show script dialogs in top right so they no longer show up in the bottom right of the screen. (Incidentally, in the colours tab you can set the foreground and background colour how you like for scripted menu items and the pie menu) In the Firestorm tab is where you'll find the option to set vertical or horizontal tabs. Moving along the different options while still on the Firestorm tab, choose chat and set 'use console for chat popups instead of toasts (Viewer 1.x style) and also use full screen width for console.

Most of the other options in preferences such as keyword alerts and radar options are sinilar to Phoenix. One thing you might like to do though with the radar (People icon) and nearme tab is click on the gear icon at the bottom of the panel then choose to untick 'show minimap above radar'. Then you can resize the panel so it behaves more like it does in Phoenix.

In the build options, you are still unable to set a default texture the same way as in Phoenix but there are some options so that it doesn't show boring plywood (unless you're a plywood fan) Setting your own texture is planned for the future.

Hope this is of some use to you all. Have fun experimenting and discovering what firestorm has to offer. Each build makes it better. 

Until next time,

*Huggs*

Mondy <3

I was meant to post this.

Looking through my older posts, I noticed I promised to show a video from my friend Mossky.

oops...so here it is

What can you run SL on ?

Couple of snapshots from my Acer Aspire One netbook. Tech specs are 1.6 ghz atom processor, 1 gb of ram and Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics.

Logging in:

At my home location with the UI in view. Note the integrated chat bar for local chat & the contacts/groups window.

*huggs*

Mondy

Phoenix Firestorm. Unedited

Just to give you a rough idea of how it looks.

*huggs*

What happened ?

Wow February. That came fast. I never even noticed January slipping away.

So...updates!.....hmmmm....

hmmmm...*hmmms a bit louder*

Even though I'm not logging in so much I have still been testing various viewers. On the 1.2x series Phoenix and Cool VL are just great with backporting of features.

V2 still mostly using Kirstens, the official 2.5 viewer is pretty usable now with Starlight skin from Hitomi and now..finally, a pre-alpha build of Phoenix Firestorm is available.

Biggest feature in this is the local chat can now be integrated and docked with the other IM windows as available in V1 viewers. Which is absolutely awesome and a feature I've asked for inclusion from V2 developers since the outset. (hey, I know it wasn't because of listening to me, but still great to see it) 

Things to add to Firestorm to make it my V2 viewer of choice ? Distance in the near me field,then it can be a proper radar replacement.

Umm...you know what ? This pre-alpha is better than the original V2,official build in my eyes. Starlight comes with it but has some minor issues that need sorting out I think. It has the near-me range of avatars but seems to not work properly and has a similar issue right now in Kirstens. 

Other groovy things in Firestorm are a rather nice couple of skins, choice for sidebar to be on or off, all panels can be undocked,resized and closed without re docking,plus the position of windows and floaters is remembered on a relog. I think in the next few days I'll be doing a proper review with video and screenshots (hah,believe it when you see it  :P )

As usual, *huggs*