Your source of news about the people, places, things, and events across Second Life.
January changes to February this week, and there are more events coming with the new month, such as the whimsical "Give Peas a Chance" at Madpea and the surreal Mausoleum at the LEA sims. And this week is the special Friday broadcast of the "1st Question," with Will Wright among the contestants. And of course there's the usual variety of live & DJ music events, poetry & fiction readings, and talk shows.
On Saturday January 28th, friends and acquaintances of Lavendermist McTeague gathered to say goodbye at a memorial service in her honor. A few friends gave speeches describing their experiences with her, then a special song was played in her memory.
Grease Coakes recently sat down with the leader of the Passionate Redheads Relay for Life group: Sabine McGettin. Sabine had a few things to say about the Redheads' accomplishments, as well as a few of their challenges.
On Friday Jan 27th, the Passionate Redheads held their first meeting of the year. The official start of the Relay fundraising season “Time for a Cure” isn’t until March 10th, but it wasn’t too early to plan. Team leaders Sabine McGetting and Daaneth Kivioq presided over the meeting, of which about a couple dozen showed up in the hour-long gathering.
There were also a few recommendations. One was supporting other teams, such as the Steelhead Salmons. Another was getting events on the Linden Lab SL events calendar. Also mentioned was Bryanr Rickena’s RFL Passionate Redhead’s Museum in the Precious Dragons sim at (96, 32, 22), and that there would soon be a changing of Relay groups. The new chat group was “Relay for Life Volunteers,” the old SL Relay for Life being discontinued.
If you want to fight with piracy make a way to lower the prices of software, music and all the staff which is downloaded from the net now - as there is carrot and whip method of controlling - you should first try to use the carrot, not the whip. using the whip right now will only cause bigger uproar.
This weekend will have a special event at the WW2 New Bastogne RP. This battle will be going on all weekend, starting in Saint-Quentin. Both sides are more than happy to take in new players, but it is asked they take a few minutes to check the rules before storming in. Certain equipment provided for free is required to take part. For details on the real-life battle, Click Here.
Gemma Cleanslate recently went to the place of Mistyowl Warhol, where she had set up a small art gallery. She and two other photographers have their images up in an exhibition, including Gemma's philosphy teacher. 
The club is on a small island in the southern part of the sim, separating it from the rest of the land, accessible by bridge. Originally, the place was a dark building like a city nightclub, with separate dance floor, cocktail lounge, and a couple private rooms. More recently, the place has been rebuilt with a more “open air” look. The walls are gone, giving the impression of the place being open to the breeze, with overhead tarps to shield patrons from the sun. The dance floor makes up the center of the club, with the DJ’ booth opposite from the entrance. The private rooms are gone, but there are three corner areas where visitors can relax on the couch while chatting, plus the bar in a fourth corner where people can order drinks from the bot bartender.
The club is owned by Rich Mordly, with DJ Firefox Doghouse as a co-owner. It is one of the clubs in the FCA, but unlike most of the other club owners in the “Furry Club Alliance,” Rich usually sports a normal human look. Talking to Rich, he had worked at another club some months ago, before opening the Cocktail lounge. In it’s first locale, it offered a number of themed events, notably neko and rave.
Currently, the Cocktail Nightclub has events regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 11 SL time, with some special events on Sundays. Rich eventually plans for the club’s hours to be on a daily basis. DJ Firefox says he plans to DJ on every day as well, “I have fun DJing here. ... Everyone here is nice, easy to get along with.” Fire explained teammate Niterider could serve as backup if he was ever held up in real life. And of course they could always call on the FCA alliance. They plan a number of themed events in the future, such as “Best in Cyber,” “Best in Dragon,” and a special Crux avatar event, “I got quite a few.”
In my days hanging out at the STA sim as I was starting out as a journalist, one of the rougher-looking characters there was OtisDriftwood Vollmar. Following the end of the sim, I didn't see him as much, and eventually we lost track of each other.
Seeing me online, he asked me to teleport over where he was. There in a skybox next to a now empty house, a small memorial had been set up with Lavendermist's avatar picture, with a few flowers around. The man whom I remembered as a tattooed "gangsta" now sported a scruffy-looking child avatar. People continued to arrive over, mostly women whom were Lavendermist's friends. They soon held an informal wake, chatting about her and their interactions with her, one saying she had chatted with Lavendermist the night before she passed away.
Otis/Ote told me the memorial would still be up at least until this weekend, and invited anyone else whom might have known her to come by. Until then one can still see it at Dallas Highlands (29, 36, 3014)
Frets Nirvana, the premier guitar artist in the virtual world Second Life and the US Military Veterans Group announce the first Wounded Warriors benefit for the year 2012.
Grey Lupindo had a little celebration to report on from her home region Syzygy. The owner of the land, Samantha Glume, had her 5th rezzday in Second Life, and her friends threw a big party for her in the Syzygy Space Station.
One whimsical simwide store will sadly be closing it's doors soon. Cartoonimals, a place with a number of cartoonish critters and a number of amusing novelties, will be closing in February, and residents have until then to see the funny sights for themselves.
It's a week full of events in Second Life as we close out the month of January. From the Ski Trail Gift Tour to the Caledon Quest, there are a number of special events. And of course we have our usual variety of regular events from parties at clubs to live music, to book and poetry readings, to talk shows, and more.
Second Life Newser has a new writer, Grease Coakes. For his first article, he wanted to honor a favorite DJ at a club he hung around with. So here's his interview with AX DJ Aurora Avila.
On Saturday January 21st, Netera Landar held a cooking show at her coffee lounge, "What's Cookin?" Chef Jorden Andrew used the Grid and virtual ingredients to show the audience how to cook up a great dish.
Jorden had gotten her start with Second Life cooking a few months before at KK Food & Pastries, " I always wanted t odo something like this," and when she saw the announcement, she auditioned. As it turns out, she used to cook at a San Francisco restaurant. But she doesn't cook so much in real life at the present time. Nor does she grow ingredients, "I don't have a green thumb."
Check the schedule at Netera's Coffee Lounge for event times at Terric (43, 137, 28).
On 3PM SL time yesterday on Sunday January 23rd, The Sunweaver Estate's owner Rita Mariner called a meeting at the Cutlass Club to discuss a problem. There wasn't enough income coming in to cover the costs of the sim, and the one with the most unrented space was Sunweaver Air. She couldn't afford to hand onto it.
By now, most readers have heard about the SOPA and PITA bills in the US Congress. Their sponsors claiming the intent was to stop Internet piracy, the bills were badly written, and would have left the Internet subject to severe censorship. Fortunately what began as scattered protests online soon grew and became too much for the politicians to ignore. So the bills were shelved, at least for now.
Jacek Shuftan of the Podex Exchange decided to do something about ACTA by joining the protests against it, “I want to announce that Podex joins the international protest movement about government attepts to censor freedom of speech on the Internet.” Today, Monday January 23rd, several pages on the Podex site, plus his new secondmovie.com and second-bay.pl would go dark, replaced with a page denouncing the censorship, “Keep the Internet free!” After 24 hours, the pages would return to normal.
While SOPA and PIPA made headlines last week, there were other events of note on the Grid. Among them was news about noted artist Bryn Oh and her artistic Immersiva sim. A Crowdfunder - type project to fund the place reached it’s goal after only a day after it began.
To everyone’s surprise, Bryn got a large donation from film director Peter Greenway. As it turns out, Greenway’s a sponsor of art in Second Life. He donated six months worth of teir for Immersiva. Hamlet Au quoted him as saying, "In the exciting new arena of immersive Art which offers so much to the future of communications, Bryn Oh is an important, fascinating and innovative pioneer and should definitely be supported."
Xymbers Slade recently took a look at the Timber Wilds area. Besides being the main location for the Timber Wilds Industries feral avatars, the two sims are well detailed and visually pleasing wilderness areas and the setting for some roleplay for those enjoying taking the part of feral wolves.
This Sunday at Noon SL time in the Mystery sim, the moment that a number of live music fans finally arrives, the return of Debi Latte to the "Queen of Hearts" at Mystery
The Wikipedia blackout is over — and you have spoken. More than 162 million people saw our message asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge. You said no. You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet. For us, this is not about money. It’s about knowledge. As a community of authors, editors, photographers, and programmers, we invite everyone to share and build upon our work.Our mission is to empower and engage people to document the sum of all human knowledge, and to make it available to all humanity, in perpetuity. We care passionately about the rights of authors, because we are authors. SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. The Internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine, and as Wikipedia went dark, you've directed your energy to protecting it.
Nydia Tungsten, whom has been helping to run several clubs in Second Life, posted the following in several of her groups:
According to a recent post by Daniel Voyager, the virtual world Inworldz recently hit the 50,000 mark in the number of it's registered users. Considering this is double what it was thirteen months ago, reaching 25,000 in Dec. 2010, this would suggest the future of the alternative virtual worlds is a bright one.
Exactly why this many have stopped using OpenSim one can only guess, although this place lacks an inworld currency, and therefore has a limited economic potential. It should be noted that OpenSim is just one of a number of worlds that fall into the list of "Open Simulator" based worlds, including Avination, which although is currently the second-largest of these grids is thought to have a stable, if not growing, population. And this world, like InWorldz, does have an in-game currency, as well as boasting combat systems, and has been attracting events. And there's that Avination's viewer has a Macintosh version. One needs a PC to get to OpenSim.
Gemma Cleanslate recently took a trip to a interesting Steampunk sim. It's not truly Victorian, but rather Central European. The place is maintained by mechanical men, and there are a number of things to do from games, to shopping, and of course exploring.
And it isn’t just SOPA people on the Internet are worried about. Like many other bills in the House, a similar bill was sent to the Senate, the “Protect IP Act” or PIPA. Considered just as big a threat to the Internet and Second Life, it is due for a vote in the Senate this January. Sponsored by Patrick Leahy, the bill is described as having bipartisan support among 40 Senators. Senator Ron Wyden has spoken out against the bill, as has the “Tea Party Patriots” organization.
It's a week full of events on the Grid. From book and poetry readings to music and dance parties at clubs, there's no shortage of things to do. This week brings the return of a live music singer to Second Life. Debi Late returns to Mystery after a long hiatus.
Xymbers Slade has his horoscopes up for. What do the stars have in store for us? Xymbers has a few answers.
Gemma Cleanslate just got a note that "The Path," a multiple artist build, is about to come down, "Visit 'The Path' in LEA2 soon if you have not seen it, or to revisit it before it is lost."
Grey Lupindo went to a place in Second Life that is truly for the birds: the Indigo Aviary. This location has more than a hundred virtual birds. She met up with the owner, Owly Indigo, and talked about her interest in birds and how the aviary came to be.
There’s been still more developments on the SOPA bill. More and more people have been speaking out on the issue. Some of the people haven’t really been known for computer issues before, such as the comic critic “That Guy With the Glasses.” Others are, such as the social media website Reddit by blacking out their site for 12 hours on Wednesday January 18th, some of the people having opinions on the matter short and to the point (image not safe for work). The games Firefall and Minecraft are also planning protests by shutting down their websites that day. Wikipedia “appears to be very close to announcing a blackout or something like it.” Google is supposedly planning some kind of protest other than a blackout.
After my visits to Virtual Ability and the set of "The 1st Question" on Sunday Jan 8th, I stopped to check out a Second Life rendition of "The Nutcracker" I got a bulletin about, "Nut about the Nutcracker" by Ballet Pixelle.
