SLetiquette: My SecondLife Settings: Followers

 On the my.secondlife.com site, the privacy setting "Post on your feed" (Controls who can post on your profile feed) has 3 options: Second Life, Friends, Nobody. If you select one of the latter two, people who follow your feed and those just browsing the site cannot comment OR love your posts/photos on your feed. 

This is an often-misunderstood setting. People who have followers on their feed change that post setting to friends or nobody because they don't want random people posting comments on their content, and then wonder why they are receiving fewer reactions (love) to their photos/posts from friends and followers.  

Loving (reacting to) a photo IS posting on your feed. It adds their "love" to your photo or post data, so it is indeed posting on your feed, the same as posting a comment. 

Followers are not the same as friends. Friends are people you have friended in Second Life and are on your friend-list. Followers are simply people who follow your posts and photos on the "My Secondlife Life" website. 

If you do not want followers on your feed, you can change the setting "Follow info" to just friends or nobody. You can also change the feed so that only friends or nobody (just you) can see your photos/posts. 

Markham Weatherwax

Object Physics Shape & Optimization in Second Life (2023) (Vlog)

SL Music Streams and Windows 10

     I discovered that in the Firestorm Viewer (I didn't try it yet in the SL Viewer), if you've enabled the Spatial Sound (Windows Sonic for Headphones), you might find that music streams in SL don't play the music as good as before. You might hear what sounds like an odd compression, a lower volume, and hear echoing. Disabling this in Windows 10 can improve that sound quality dramatically. 

I cannot be sure if this true on all computer systems, but on mine, enabling that feature did do all of the above.

FYI

Firestorm Viewer - Chat Logs

     I am one of those people who saves all of my chat logs when I am logged into SL with the Firestorm Viewer. A few times a week I delete them from the folder, and also save some of them to a different directory/folder. There are many reasons I save my chat logs, one of them being for customer service issues, or rental property requests, or similar. 

I also save them so that when someone says they said this, I can prove that they said that. 👅

One of my pet peeves about Firestorm is the default location where it saves the chat logs: It is a directory/folder where other non-chatlog files are created and updated too. It can be very difficult to delete only your chat log text files because some other files are TXT files too. You do not want accidently to delete those and other data files when you are deleting the chat log text files.

On my Windows 10 system Firestorm stores the chat logs in:
C:\Users\MyPC\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64/Markham_Weatherwax/ 

Well, you can change the location of the chat logs folder by first creating a new folder on your computer, then changing the location inside of:

Firestorm Preferences> Network & Files> Directories: Conversation logs and transcripts location.

Make sure to save your settings after making that change. 

Now, me, I created a ChatLogs folder in the /AppData/Roaming/Firestorm_x64 folder: C:\Users\MyPC\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64/ChatLogs/

    You do not have to put your folder there; you can make the folder in your system [My Documents] folder if you want to. I created mine to be efficient and also so that I do not need to bother putting a system exclusion for my Firewall or Antivirus program so those won't scan that folder: I already have exclusions for Windows Defender and my Firewall for the appdata folder and subfolders. 

Inside of the new Chat Log folder, you create another folder with your SL login name (First underbar Lastname or Name_Resident). You need to do this yourself because Firestorm will not automatically create that username folder if you change the default of where the chatlogs are stored. 

Mine is: 

C:\Users\MyPC\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64/ChatLogs/Markham_Weatherwax/

If you use Firestorm to login to different SL accounts, Firestorm automatically creates a different folder for every username you login with under the default folder for logs and transcripts. So, if you create a new folder to store chat log files in, you will also need to create that username folder for each account you use to login with.

If you have chat logs already saved in the default folder, simply move them over to your new chat log folder(s) or delete them but leave the data files and the existing username folders alone. Don't delete them. Firestorm will still use that folder for work files and data files.

I recommend if you make your new folder under the appdata/firestorm_x64 folder, inside of that folder create a new shortcut, and then drag that shortcut onto your desktop. That way you can also easily access your Log files. 😁

NOTE:

Windows 10 hides tons of files and folders, and one of those it hides is the appdata folder (and roaming). You have to edit the Windows preferences to show hidden files and folders if you want to do or see things inside of those hidden folders. 

I hope this is helpful to those of you who save your chat log files, and for those of you who have tried in the past to change that location path before but ran into difficulties. It is not documented in the Firestorm Wiki that you need to make username folders if you change the default location for logs & transcripts. 

Best of luck, everyone! Happy SLing!

Markham Weatherwax

Firestorm Viewer: Firewall and Anti-Virus

    Firestorm is a wonderful feature filled viewer, complex at times, but with a little time and effort you can get the most out of your Second Life® experience by learning the basics of the settings. Outside of Firestorm (and any SL viewer) you probably will have to do some tweaking too for optimum efficiency and stability. In this modern age of worry over hackers, trojans, worms, viruses, phishers, scammers, and probably aliens, everything is getting complicated. Operating systems and anti-virus programs can hinder, stymie, and block, communications and installations of the Firestorm Viewer. One of the primary adjustments you will probably need to do is to exclude your viewer programs and folders from your firewall and anti-virus programs.

Firestorm.org provides good instruction for accomplishing this [Firestorm Whitelisting] for many anti-virus programs and your firewall. Some of it does need to be updated to the current release, filenames, folders, and also made just a little clearer. You need to make sure you add the correct filenames and folders and not just add exactly what they have listed there. Those are general directions, and some of it is outdated (or was, when I wrote this).

HOWEVER, even if you have already done this in the past, go back and check to make sure the exclusions are still there and are still correct. Many things have changed over the many versions of both Firestorm and your Operating System, and you need to be sure that everything is still valid. 

For example, if your current version of Firestorm is installed in the folder "firestorm_x64" make sure the exclusion is not set to "FirestormOS_x64" or some other name. You won't be needing the Firestorm.bin or Firstorm.exe in there if you are using a more modern release of the viewer; The filenames have changed too.

You should have the following files excluded in your firewall:

• firestorm-release64.exe (or firestorm-release.exe)
• slplugin.exe
• slvoice.exe
• dullahan_host.exe

You also need to exclude the cache folders from anti-virus and security scans. The firestorm link above shows you how to do that for many anti-virus programs. Like I said before, some parts of it need to be updated and made clearer, so be careful and make the changes you make fit your system and installation.

Windows 10 is not as user friendly as are previous Windows versions. It can be maddening to locate where to make these changes. They are not exactly logically laid out to the average person but are probably completely logical to the Microsoft programmers. Let me try to show you where these settings probably are and how to add exclusions to your Firewall and Security - at least how I did it on my computer system.

My system is:

• Windows 10 Home - V.21H1
• Windows Security/Defender & Firewall
• Firestorm Release 6.2.4.57588 (64 bit):

The short way to do this is to click on your Windows Security Icon on the taskbar (probably on the right under the up arrow "Show Hidden Icons" or use the search to find Windows Security. If you do that you can skip steps 1-5.

The long way to do it:

1. Click Start
2. Settings (Gear Icon)
3. Choose Update and Security
4. Select Windows Security
5. Click Open Windows Security
6. Select Virus & Threat Protection
7. Under Virus & Threat Protection Settings click "Manage Settings"
8. Scroll down on the right panel until you see "Exclusions"
9. Click on "Add or Remove Exclusions"
10. Click + Add an exclusion
11. Select Process
12. Add Firestorm-release64.exe
13. Repeat to add SLVoice.exe, slplugin.exe, and dullahan_host.exe.

Now we add the Firestorm Cache folder exclusions. The username is the account name you are logged into on your Windows 10 system. It might be Markham, Yuna, Roger, VIP, Junior, or whatever. Change the username to whatever your login name in Win10 is. Let's say mine is "Markham".

• Click + Add an exclusion
• Select Folder
• Navigate to and select: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64
• (E.g.: C:\Users\Markham\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64)
• I also excluded the following folder just in case something changes later in Win10 security:
• C:\Users\Markham\AppData\Local\Firestorm_x64

Now we move onto the Firewall Exclusions:

1. Select Firewall & Network Protection on the left panel
2. Click "Allow an app through firewall"
3. Click "Change Settings"
4. Now you can click "Allow another App"
5. Browse in path to C:\Program Files\Firestorm-releasex64
6. Click on firestorm-release64.exe
7. Repeat for slplugin.exe
8. Repeat for SLVoice.exe (even if you do not use SL Voice)
9. Browse again and go to C:\Program Files\Firestorm-releasex64\llplugin
10. Click on dullahan_host.exe

Whew! You are done. Congratulations! Now reboot your computer and you are good to go.

Good Luck and Happy SLing!

Markham Weatherwax