Randomize, RIP

I’m sure it’s hard to be LL, because everything you do gets relentless hindsight complaints from your loyal, yet picky fans. So, of course, many have said much about the horror of the “rushed out” 1.23 Adult Verification SL Viewer.

Amid all that hoopla, something most of us probably didn’t notice is that 1.23 removed a button from the Appearance Control Panel:
• APPEARANCE > SHAPE > RANDOMIZE

I imagine they took it off… because most peeps never use it.

(Is that true? Even if you don’t happen to be a performance artist, wouldn’t you like the unexpected on occasion? Look how often random functions are used in the Comp Sci world – is there a language alive without a RAND function? Isn’t that how fractals and complexity and life and all that stuff accrete? I’m not sure exactly what critter Eloh Eliot’s Another logo that I’m in front of in the pix below is, but if it is a butterfly or butterfly cousin… how fitting to think of the Butterfly Effect here…)

Anyway, we should all hit the Randomize button a little more often perhaps. But now we can’t. We can still spend countless hours making the tiniest slider adjustments to our shape… much like a Hollywood actor spending 6 relentless months in the gym before the big movie role… but we can no longer hit Randomize… sort of the way having babies, and Frida Kahlo accidents, and too much responsibility to get to the gym, and desk jobs, and eating too much because we’re bored or depressed, and spending too many hours in front of an SL screen… all… sort of hit our own personal Randomize buttons…

In the last couple of days, our company has been scurrying around the SL viewer world: hmm…. Emerald is 1.23-based, but Rainbow is 1.22-based… trying to find a last glimmer of the once great, if under-appreciated, Randomize button.

Randomize… we hardly knew you…