Well i'm back again with news and updates.

Emerald Viewer
 Emerald Viewer is sadly no longer with us, it has been officially banned from connecting to Second Life. Don't be too sad though, there is a knock-off version here:
Pheonix Viewer . It has most of the same features of Emerald, except for the controversial faster rezzing capabilities. Personal opinison: While the program to speed rezzing had no place in the viewer without giving knowledge to us users, I do miss the speed. God, I miss the faster rezzing. :(

Second Life Bug
Ever since I lost my faster rezzing capabilities thanks to Emerald Viewer being banned, every once in a while I experience a problem where my avatar's shape and clothing fail to load, i'm im left as a cloud/white blob of nothingness. Everyone else says they can see me fine (most of the time) but i'm a cloud on my screen. No matter how many times I rebaked my textures nothing would show. The first time it happened I did this:

1) Gave my sl husband my account password, and had him long in.
2) Had him take off all of my avatar's clothing, and switch my skin and shape to a default one.
3) Logged back into my account and WOOT fixed. Just had to redress my avatar and such. (Which is why it's always good to make a backup folder in your inventory of your most common avatar components)

But i'm sure most of you don't want to give someone else your account info and instead of bothering my hubby again I googled my problem. I came up with this:

1. go in the "Advanced" client menu.
2. go in "Character"
3. select "Character Tests"
4. select "Test Male" or "Test female" regarding your situation
(Made by Zdenka Jun )

Normally, it will load the basic avatar. After that, you will be able to load your own shape and skin and clothes.

If you don't know how to get to the Advanced menu please google it! Clients are different and such, so i'm not going to say how to get there.

You can read the origional post of the 2nd solution here: Character Test Solution.

I like Jun's solution much better. ;)

Second Life: Zoobys!
A couple of days ago I purchased a Zooby Ultimate Black Husky for 2,800 Lindens. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to spend that much on an sl pet, but it turned out to be worth it. He's cute, he barks, eats, pees, and plays. You can walk him, you can ride him. There are just so many possibilities!

Me and Popsicle!

Just some more news on the whole Emerald Situation, this time from both Linden Labs and Emerald.

[Linden Labs]:

Dear Second Life Resident,
Late last week, we discovered a denial-of-service attack that was being served through the widely distributed Emerald third-party viewer. This is in direct violation of our third-party viewer policy (part 2, section d, paragraph iii).

We have removed Emerald from the list of third-party viewers, and are now in touch with the Emerald team to discuss what can happen next. We did this to do our best to protect the safety and security of Second Life users. We will not tolerate a viewer that includes malicious code, nor will we tolerate development teams with a history of violating users’ trust or disrupting their lives.

We take privacy, safety, and security very seriously, and we will act to the best of our abilities to protect it. We have not yet disabled logins via the Emerald viewer, but will do so if we feel the software and the team behind it is not able to meet the standards we’ve set. While Emerald is currently the focus of our attention because of what happened recently, all third-party viewers are held to the same standard, and must comply with the third-party viewer policy. Read more >>


If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the Linden Lab viewers, or an alternative third-party viewer.


Philip Linden




[Emerald]:


As many of you have heard, Emerald was removed from the TPVD yesterday. This removal was a result of recent actions by former Dev member Fractured Crystal. Fractured resigned from the team due to those actions and Emerald Dev Team has undergone a massive restructuring.  We will be re-applying for the TPVD very soon, however there are some rumors and fears I think need to be addressed.
Many people have heard that Emerald is banned or that users will be banned for using the Emerald Viewer. This is completely untrue.
Linden Lab’s Third Party Viewer Directory is optional for third party viewers to apply for and join. It is not a requirement to be on the directory. What is a requirement however is that third party viewers respect the Third Party Viewer Policy http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php. With the exception of the actions of Fractured recently, Emerald has always respected that policy and will continue to do so.
While Emerald is not on the TPVD you can rest assured that this does not mean Emerald will be banned or blocked by LL, and you will certainly NOT be banned for using emerald.
Sincerely, Jessica Lyon

 -----------------

I've been waiting for these messages. I wanted to flip out on the Second Life club "CLUB BADA BLING!" that sent me this via group notice in a notecard:

********* ENGLISH **********
Those who now are using the client Emerald, Modular Systems, please remove it from the PC and install an alternate client, with the recommendation to change their password as soon as possible since Emerald is * no longer on the list of clients approved by Linden Lab* and its use will soon become a crime, not to mention that is a danger to your safety and privacy online.
Here the viewer .. Secondlife accept that .. http://viewerdirectory.secondlife.com/
OR download from the Viewer ORIGINAL
*WIN Viewer 1*
http://download.cloud.secondlife.com/Second_Life_1-23-5-136262_Setup.exe
*WIN Viewer 2*
http://download.cloud.secondlife.com/beta-releases/Viewer-2-1-0/Second_Life_2-1-1-207998_BetaViewer_Setup.exe

*Snowglobe 1.3.2*
http://download.cloud.secondlife.com/Second_Life_1-23-5-136262_Setup.exe
*Snowglobe 1.4*
Release Candidate*
http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/downloads/2009/1.4/3614/Snowglobe_1-4-1-3614_Setup.exe
*Snowglobe 2.0.2*
http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/downloads/2010/2.0/3591/Snowglobe_2-0-2-3591_Setup.exe

Don't we all love stupid rumors? I'm not in groups to be tricked by gossip thank you very much. *leaves group*
And no, this isn't slander. It's the truth, it's what they did. Also, if they read the official statement OR watched the treet.tv video, they would have known their passwords were never at risk. Some confidential computer information such as where Emerald was stored on your hard drive and your computer user profile name was at risk if you were either a Mac user or installed Emerald to your desktop on a PC. No one wants someone else to know this information but let's at least get the facts right. And where the hell did a "crime" come from? I don't even want to get started on that.

Definition: Slander: Charge falsely or with malicious intent; attack the good name and reputation of someone.

Not false accusations. :)

Enough about that, moving on to the truth. Both parties [Emerald and Linden Labs] are handling this very professionally. They're making official statements on what is going on so that we know exactly how to react to all this chaos. As I blogged a little while ago, Emerald isn't banned. Linden Labs just have to re-check it again to make sure it's safe for its users again.

Fractured Crystal, the previous leader of the Emerald Project did some real damage to Emerald user's trust. Do I think the Emerald Viewer will suffer a loss of users because of this? Of course. We all want the ability to trust the programs we use. Emerald may never be the same again, but that doesn't mean i'm giving up on it just yet. It's done so much to make my clumsy self in Second Life so much less clumsy; there's no other Second Life client for me right now.

There's this awesome guy I met in Second Life, his name is Peter Kiers in real life. So anyway the last time I spoke with him (a couple of days ago) he mentioned he was working on a game (here). I loved how he tried to casually slip in "I'm working on a game" into every day conversation. He's so cute lol. I've tried coding, that's not an "every day thing". There's a reason why I don't want to be a Software Developer anymore; coding isn't for me.

So yeah, now i'm sorta net-stalking him; snooping around his Twitter and what-not...Would help if it were in ENGLISH...or just one Peter Kiers on the net..I'm still trying to find his Facebook :(..So anyway i've decided that i'll try and get an interview with him about this game idea later on (and shake his Facebook profile out of him) I'll keep you posted. :)