Difference between revisions of "User:Simon Nolan"

Revision as of 05:43, 31 May 2007

Just me.

About Me

Just your average avatar, exploring this amazing virtual world since I first rezzed on 27 March 2006. This thing still has my attention, though I can't remember now how I first discovered Second Life. Probably an article in a tech magazine or website. I'm on a constant quest for good guy hair that has a ponytail.

I run SL on an iMac Core Duo (Early 2006), Mac OS X 10.4.9. Pretty much stock except for 1.5GB RAM, DSL and other goodies. Try to not to boot the Mac into Windows unless I have to, because that's just so very wrong. Hoping to get a MacBookPro so I can get my JIRA fix while travelling for RL work. And then, after hitting the lottery, an eight-core Mac Pro with the phattest possible video card.

Projects

Spending lots of time in the JIRA Issue tracker, mostly commenting, reproducing bugs, and hunting duplicate issues.
View the issues Simon Nolan has filed at jira.secondlife.com
Writing about SL and other stuff on my blog.
Trying (so far with questionable results) to be a wikimonkey.
Wondering why this article from Wired is so true.

LSL and Web Integration

Currently developing a RubyOnRails-powered, web-based events calendar, using LSL to communicate with the web server in-world, as part of a project for the Gay Life group.

Viewer UI

I'm learning about XUI and other parts of viewer architecture.

Replacement UI Icons

Working on replacing the oh-so-1995 stock UI icons (and wondering about the "right" way to do it), and trying to figure out how to skin the viewer. Read about what I've done so far on my blog in the article Modding the Second Live viewer: UI icons.

Branded Application Icons for Mac OS X

Voice Beta branded icon
WindLight branded icon

If you're like me, you keep the current general release viewer, a beta, and a First Look viewer all installed on your computer. Since it gets confusing having three identical Second Life icons in the Dock, I like to "brand" the beta and First Look so I can get to them easily.

Just paste the PNG files below onto your SL application icons to make them easy to differentiate. You'll need to delete SL from the Dock and re-add it after doing this to get the Dock icon to update quickly. Here are the exact steps to get your SL applications branded:

Download the images above by right-clicking and choosing "Save Image..." or whatever your browser prompts in the contextual menu.
Open the image in Preview
Type CMD-C to copy the entire image.
Find your SL viewer in the Applications folder or where ever you put it, and type CMD-I to Get Info.
Click on the application icon in the Get Info window.
Type CMD-V to paste on the new Icon.
If you have the SL viewer in your dock, quit SL. Drag the viewer icon out of the Dock to delete the icon, then Drag the newly branded icon to the Dock.
Enjoy your new icons.

(Before you copy three different SL versions to your application folder, remember they have to have different names or they'll overwrite. LL doesn't always give the beta or First Look viewer a unique name. When installing the viewer, copy it to your desktop from the disk image, rename it, then move it to your Applications folder.)

Decoupling the UI from the SL viewer window

Would like to contribute to decoupling the user interface so that UI menus can move up to the Mac menu bar and allow windows to be moved out of the SL window and onto a second monitor. (This is the holy grail, IMO, for Mac users.) Of course, it would have to be done in a portable, cross-platform way with minimal Mac-specific code. Yeah, I know, "good luck with that."

Wiki Thumbnail Bug

Simon Nolan

Our wiki doesn't do thumnails right. Found out this is already in Jira as WEB-3. So I voted. [[Image:simonnolan.jpg|right|thumb|100px|Simon Nolan]] should produce a thumbnail linked to the full-size version and right justified. Docs at MediaWiki Help:Images.

Yay! It's fixed.

This template is no longer supported. See Template:ISO 639-3/cat-speaking for the template which replaces this one.

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 I'm learning about [[XUI]] and other parts of [[viewer architecture]].
-====Replacement Icons====
+====Replacement UI Icons====
 Working on replacing the oh-so-1995 stock UI icons (and wondering about the "right" way to do it), and trying to figure out how to skin the viewer. Read about what I've done so far on my blog in the article [http://simonnolan.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/modding-the-second-life-viewer-the-ui-icons/ Modding the Second Live viewer: UI icons].
+====Branded Application Icons for Mac OS X====
+<gallery>
+Image:SL_voice_beta_icon.png|Voice Beta branded icon
+Image:SL_windlight_firstlook_icon.png|WindLight branded icon
+</gallery>
+If you're like me, you keep the current general release viewer, a beta, and a First Look viewer all installed on your computer. Since it gets confusing having three identical Second Life icons in the Dock, I like to "brand" the beta and First Look so I can get to them easily.
+Just paste the PNG files below onto your SL application icons to make them easy to differentiate. You'll need to delete SL from the Dock and re-add it after doing this to get the Dock icon to update quickly. Here are the exact steps to get your SL applications branded:
+#Download the images above by right-clicking and choosing "Save Image..." or whatever your browser prompts in the contextual menu.
+#Open the image in Preview
+#Type CMD-C to copy the entire image.
+#Find your SL viewer in the Applications folder or where ever you put it, and type CMD-I to Get Info.
+#Click on the application icon in the Get Info window.
+#Type CMD-V to paste on the new Icon.
+#If you have the SL viewer in your dock, quit SL. Drag the viewer icon out of the Dock to delete the icon, then Drag the newly branded icon to the Dock.
+#Enjoy your new icons.
+(Before you copy three different SL versions to your application folder, remember they have to have different names or they'll overwrite. LL doesn't always give the beta or First Look viewer a unique name. When installing the viewer, copy it to your desktop from the disk image, rename it, ''then'' move it to  your Applications folder.)
 ====Decoupling the UI from the SL viewer window====
 Would like to contribute to decoupling the user interface so that UI menus can move up to the Mac menu bar and allow windows to be moved out of the SL window and onto a second monitor. (This is the holy grail, IMO, for Mac users.) Of course, it would have to be done in a portable, cross-platform way with minimal Mac-specific code. Yeah, I know, "good luck with that."