In a fit of total instanity, I decided to check outthis whole Social Networking thing, so I will be playing arounf with options of interfacing with Facebook and eventually Twitter.

I expect to be testing several WordPress plugins and will do my best to keep this post updated with the results.

Current Plugin: Wordbooker

This is a short how-to on creating a nice desktop launcher in Ubuntu 10.04.

Desktop launchers act as convenient shortcuts to starting programs which do not appear in the main menu.

For this example, we will create a shortcut for an installed viewer.

1. Right-click on your desktop. This opens a blank launcher creation window
   

   Empty desktop launcher window

2. Leave the drop down set to Application
   

   Leave Type set to Application

3. Enter the name of your program as you would like to see it on your desktop. This is handy for programs that have rather obscure sounding names so you can name the launcher as something memorable. I chose “Awsome Viewer” for my example.
   

   Enter the name you want for this launcher

4. Unless you know the exact file path to the program you are launching, you will need to hit the “Browse” button and navigate to the directory which contains the executable file.
   

   Select your program's executable file

5. If you have any notes or comments feel free to enter them in the Comments field.
6. To select an icon, click on the “spring” looking thing to open up a selection window. This will initially open up a window in a default desktop icon set. The exact icons may vary if you have a different desktop theme and not all programs will have an icon. In our example, we know our Awsome Viewer does have an icon, so we navigate to the appropriate directory and select the icon.

   

   Click this image to choose an icon

   

   Example icon image

7. Our new icon should replace the “spring” thing (ok…technically it is a “panel-launcher” icon)
   

   The new icon should appear in the launcher window

8. Click the “Ok” button and enjoy your new desktop launcher.

NOTE: Programs in the “/usr/bin” directory can often, but not always, be launched using just the file or program name without needing the full path. Your mileage may vary, so if it does not work one way, try it the other.

Since one of my personal favorite viewers is Henri Beauchamp’s excellent Cool Viewer, I thought I might give a short how-to on installing it on Linux, as it sometimes seems to cause some confusion.

You will need to download the Second Life Viewer and the current release of the Cool Viewer diff files.

Zip Files in directory

My recommendation is to create a directory to hold your Cool Viewer as the diff files are updated frequently. Since I test out multiple viewers, I call mine “Viewer bases”and make a separate Cool Viewer directory inside, but feel free to organize yours any way you like.

The viewer and the diff files are both normally in the first Linux section on the official Cool Viewer website. I strongly suggest you only download these from there for security and in order to be sure you have the most current files. It is very likely the version numbers on the diff files you download and those in my screen shots will be different.

Now that you have both of those, we need to extract them and get the files copied over correctly.  As I want to make this is painless as possible for new Linux users, I will be using a file manager.

In my case, I am using Nautilus in Ubuntu 10.04. Your file manager may vary by the desktop and Linux distro you are using so a few of the menu options I reference may be slightly different.

Here we go!

1. Right click on the Second Life viewer .zip file. In the pop-up menu select “Extract Here”. This can take a few seconds so be patient.
2. Once that is done, right click on the Cool Viewer diff .zip file and extract that the same way.
   

   Extract the .zip files

3. There are a couple of options now. If your file manager supports it, you can open an extra pane (pressF3 in Nautilus) and then open the newly created diff file directory in one of the panes. Otherwise, just open the diff file directory in the current window.
4. Select everything in the diff directory. You can use the menu (Edit -> Select All) or keyboard (Ctrl+A).
   

   Select everything in the diff directory

5. Now we need to copy these files. You can use the menu (Edit -> Copy) or keyboard (Ctrl +C).
6. Once everything is copied, move back up a level and open the Second Life viewer directory.
7. We now need to paste those copied files. You can either use the menu (Edit -> Paste) or keyboard (Ctrl +V).
8. In Nautilus, you get a pop-up telling you that certain directories already exist. In this case, you select the “Merge All” button on the pop-up. If you just select “Merge”, hightlighted by default as shown below, you will have to keep hitting the button until all the directories are done.
   

   Folders already exist, so Merge All

9. Once the Merge completes, you should again get a pop up telling you about files which already exist. In this case, we select “Replace All”.
10. Once that completes, you are done. The installation is completed.

Updating your Cool Viewer is as simple as getting the new diff files, extracting and copying just like we did above. It is generally a good idea to also check the version number on the official viewer, just in case it changes.

In order to start your new Cool Viewer, you have several options.

1. You can double click on the “snowglobe” executable file and choose your options or
2. You can open a teminal in the appropriate directory and type “./snowglobe” to run it, or
3. You can create a desktop launcher.

Any of the above will work to run your awsome new Cool Viewer so you can sit back and enjoy all the Cool goodness.

I know that “Hello World” is the default sample post of new WordPress installations, but I decided to leave it because it is also the most common “first” program that gets written in many scripting tutorials.

Unlike my previous attempt at running a blog, this time we are focused and have a renewed sense of purpose.

What purpose you may ask?

In my last several years in SecondLife and other virtual environments, I find myself answering the same questions a lot. Additionally, I find I have a lot of knowledge I have picked up along the way I want to share in the hopes of possibly making someone else’s life a bit less frustrating.

In that spirit, I have moved to a leaner, cleaner layout, dumped all those old boring random posts and decided to focus on things related to virtual worlds, my experiences with Linux, share some opinions of things I think need to be opined upon and just generally have fun.

Since web hosting is not free, I will also be putting some advertisments in various locations around my blog. I hate to do it, but I have to pay bills somehow. I do promise to make every effort to avoid random advertisements and try to keep on track with items of interest to my visitors.

That’s all for now. Please enjoy reading as much as I will enjoy writing.