Clean the mean Machine

Last week my machine had a crash.Windows locked up, and i got a bluescreen at restart. No need to say this made me slightly uncomfortable, as last time it did such thing i lost a 1 TB HDD with 25 sims and all backups. Since the bluescreen just flashed ( no chance to read it ), safe mode wouldn't work, and resetting BIOS to default didn't help too much either, i figured to open up the casing and see how things were.

I opened the sidepanel, and found a dead cat... or something hairy dusty and filthy.
So i disconnected all, took all the drives RAM and cards out, and had fun for an hour with some swabs, an old toothbrush (very handy), a can of sprayduster and the vacuum cleaner. Geez the thing was Nasty.
After I reconnected all cabling and re-inserted the RAM and all cards, the bluescreen was no longer there. Good fix, although it took a while.

Anyways, my tip of the day to keep your simulators up and running : If you never opened your casing in the last 3-6  months, you might want to consider doing the same. With warmer weather coming, it's not a bad idea to cleanout your machine a bit. Mine is almost 17 degrees cooler, now the fans generate airflow rather than dustflow.

I know it's a dirty job, but it gets worse if you wait. Go give your machine some love, so it can keep serving you, and me, and all others in the metaverse.

OSgrid Map purges coming up

Some interesting news from the townhall meetings ( Read here ). The map is about to be cleaned.
Regions will be tested with a "ping" ( read : OSG will try and retrieve the maptile from your sim, which should work if the region is up and running).  If the region does not respond for over 2 weeks, it will get purged from the map. In total it tests about 28 times, and if not found in any of those tests, it will be removed from the map. You can just boot it up again, and unless someone took that specific map coordinates, you should not suffer any impact from this. Worst case scenario is to have to use different region coordinates.  Appearently, the 19th of february is "cleaning day". If you want to be sure not to be "wiped" off the map make sure your sims are up and running. ( A few posts down you can read how to enable the Warp3d module for cooler maptiles).

As this will improve the accuracy of the map greatly, its a welcome new feature (it was there, but broken). Now it's automated. No more TP's to sims that appear to exist, but are not there.

Osgrids homepage now displays their twitter feed, and Nebadon cooked up a new splash screen for the viewers,which includes the OSG newsfeed.
Voice is working fine on the Plaza's, only the "push to talk" button appears to have a mind of its's own. So if you use it, might want to check if your romantic intermezzo's are not blasted through open Mic connections.

Nice users on the OSG Forum pointed out a nice (temporarily) free 3d software suite. Havent played with it yet, but figured to share it anyways. If you drop in to LBSA plaza, grab a fresh copy of the OSgazette for more news.