Cartoon of the Day: Lion King Revisited

Taken at the Roma Coliseum. Following a match between two lion avatars and a crocodile, one rezzed a toy of "Lion King" character Pumba the warthog. Well, at least if the hunt is bad, they can have bugs for dinner.

By Bixyl Shuftan

More SL Newspaper Archived Articles Up

Over time, the Newser has restored articles from the old SL Newspaper of JamesT Juno and Dana Vanmoer, which vanished from the net a few years ago. The ones we've restored more recently are in the SL Newspaper Archived. Among them, the two articles I wrote about the Second Life Fifth Birthday (first) (second). So enjoy this little blast from the past.

Click here to go to the SL Newspaper Archived.

Caledon's Twelfth Anniversary Ball

On Monday February 26, the steampunk community of Caledon, officially known as the Independent State of Caledon, celebrated it's twelfth anniversary. A number of locals and their friends celebrated in a ballroom high above the Caledon on Sea sim. A number of people were there, including Caledon governor Desmond Shang, also known as "The Guv," or "Guvnah." Cynthia Farshore and Shockwave Yareach, neighbors of the SL Newser office and the owners of a shop in Caledon, were also there.

The party occurred despite the login problems people had been having that day, which seemed to subside in the evening. There was also a bit of confusion as at one point Desmond had his alt, Desmond Magic, take his place. But it was a fun time for all in this event to celebrate Second Life's largest steampunk area becoming another year older.

Cynthia would take a number of screenshots, which can be found in Events. 

Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life Hit By Large Scale DDOS Attack

Second Life has been under attack by trolls many times. But this time, hackers are the ones causing the trouble.

For the second day in a row, residents have had trouble getting inworld. People couldn't log in, or if they were already in, they'd be logged out. People had trouble bringing up the Second Life webpage as well as Marketplace. Yours truly couldn't get on until after 7PM SL time. Curiously, Firestorm was also described as being down. There was naturally speculation about the cause. One person wondered if one of the twelve employees Linden Lab recently let go had something to do with it. Others suspected a DDOS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack.

Finally just after 11AM SL time, April Linden finally announced the cause, an unusually large DDOS, one that the Lab stated were "at a level that we rarely see."

As I’m sure most of y’all have noticed, Second Life has had a rough 24 hours. We’re experiencing outages unlike any in recent history, and I wanted to take a moment and explain what’s going on.
The grid is currently undergoing a large DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Second Life being hit with a DDoS attack is pretty routine. It happens quite a bit, and we’re good at handling it without a large number of Residents noticing. However, the current DDoS attacks are at a level that we rarely see, and are impacting the entire grid at once. 

My team (the Second Life Operations Team) is working as hard as we can to mitigate these attacks. We’ve had people working round-the-clock since they started, and will continue to do so until they settle down. (I had a very late night, myself!) 

Second Life is not the only Internet service that’s been targeted today. My sister and brother opsen at other companies across the country are fighting the same battle we are. It’s been a rough few days on much of the Internet. 

We’re really sorry that access to Second Life has been so sporadic over the last day. Trying to combat these attacks has the full attention of my team, and we’re working as hard as we can on it. We’ll keep posting on the Second Life Status Blog as we have new updates.

As I am writing this, I've been hearing that various online retailers have also been hit with DDOS attacks. Although the Grid Status Report suggests there are still problems, some are telling me they can get on again. Hopefully the issue will be resolved quickly.

Image Credit: Spooked Dreamscape

Bixyl Shuftan

Events This Week at the Sunweaver, Montecito Bay, and Furry Fashion Clubs

It's a week full of events at the Sunweaver and Montecito Bay clubs and the Furry Fashion Lounge.

Club Cutlass: Best in 'T,' Really Red, Shorts and Ts

The Happy Vixen: Oddities, Pirates, Sci-fi, Villains, Under the Sea, Felines, Cute vs Creepy

Club Zero Gravity: Best in Safety, Best in Stripes, Dragon Crew

Montecito Bay: Atom Punk, Anything Goes, Nostalgia Time, Sci-fi, After Dark

Furry Fashion Lounge: Rainbows, Genderbend, Anime, Feather vs Fur, Memes, Bento Lion, Ladies Night, Pets

Read the schedules in SL Clubbin'.

Press Release: No Cottage Bizar

Another magnificent new build of M and M Creations. The story behind this one is very special.

During summer of 2017 the fundamentals of my life were destroyed by a devastating event and nothing but ruin was left over. Instead of mourning, grieving and falling into depression which often is very tempting when you encounter a loveshock, I inspired myself to build again on the old ruins. To build up with new materials and vision and make a balanced connection between what was and what can be. Seven months later, my soulmate is still gone but still deeply connected. But I am proud to show you what can be done if you keep on looking on the bright side. This new building, which isn't a cottage this time, is a symbol of letting old patterns go and to have faith that new ones will arrive.

In my imagination the old parts of the building are the solid base upon which can be constructed anything. The big massive stones will support anything beyond imagination, but will also force you not to move them around to much. Thick walls and tunneled stairs, massive windows and impressive doors radiate the force of eternity. A solid home to live, love and feed the spirit of life, forever it seems. Unfortunately time does not support static events and will always manage to crumble down what once was thought to be there forever.

The soul stays in the stones and new times bring new ideas and new materials. The old parts are reconnected again with modern bricks, the massive windows are replaced with steel frames and all the old rotten wood is removed to make place for concrete beams and supports.

Everything connected again makes a new place to live, love and let the wheel of time rotate again.

Old and new in balance with the present. Bizar isn´t it..................

- footprint 30x24 meter
- landimpact 96
- scripted doors and windows with sound
- handcrafted textures
- the sink can be placed anywhere (1 meshobject)

Isle of Paradise (206/102/22)

Help For Mental Wellness in Second Life.

After a hiatus, Kimiko Kanagowa (FoxytheJamie Resident) is back with the paper. What he wanted to bring up was the issue of mental health. Mental illness can be mild to severe. And people do not always simply "get over it" by themselves, but often need some help. So he raised the question: Are there places in Second Life where someone can get help for mental wellness? The answer is yes.

Read FoxytheJamie's article in Extra.

Marianne McCann's Twelfth Rezzday

On Thursday February 22, Bay City had a rezzday party for it's most noted resident: Marianne McCann. She turned twelve, "but only in rezz years" as the invitations she handed out stated. The party took place at "The Pen," a small diner in the Mashpee sim, at 8PM SL time.

I didn't count the number of people there, but it's safe to assume there were a few dozen. Besides some Bay City notables such as Uccello Poultry, there were also two Lindens: Evie Linden and Tommy Linden, whom had been at the Isle of View event just days earlier. There was a music performance by Erika Ordinary.

Besides the numerous "Happy Rezzday Marie" well-wishes, there was talk about the next big event in Bay City. April 1 will be the second annual "Everfest," named after the late Ever Dreamscape whom was known for her pyromania. Uccello stated, "A fire for her always burns at the Arboretum. Frankly, we have no idea how to put it out."

One resident stated before leaving, "I want to send a big thank you and happy rez day to Marianne McCann and all those at The Pen for having us today. and a special thank you to Vian.. it's a treat working in such a lovely place. Thank you everyone that made this show possible, thank you for loving music and thank you for being here."

Bixyl Shuftan

"Alien Invasion" on the Zeta Valley Club

Remember the Zeta Valley Beach Warf Club that the Newser wrote about last week? It seems the "open to all" invitation for one party got an unwelcome reception when aliens descended onto the place. "Bit busy fighting an alien horde," the Dragon Crew's friend Clockwork Jackal answered when asked to join the party on the dance floor, hunkered down behind a crate, "Help me. ... got grenades, tentacles, machine-gun fire." DJ JB Raccoon's response was simply "Oh my goodness. ... alien invasion ... xenomorphs with their eggs, tentacle creatures, you name it, we have it here!"

Initially a couple "Xenomorphs," which were bad enough, the invasion was soon joined by a mass of tentacles, and some glowing green machine, either a teleporter or some other alien device that would do heaven-knows-what to any Earther nearby. The aliens took over the top of the bowling alley, and threatened to march onto the whole club, and maybe the sim. Something had to be done to save Zeta Valley.

Finally, Clorkwork brought out a weapon of last resort: a small thermonuclear device. The response on the Dragon Crew's Discord channel chat was a prediction of doom, "Never give a canine nuclear weapons." I had been at the sim, but scurried away out of range while the others presumably took cover. Tech would later send me a picture of the explosion, which was much smaller than a conventional nuclear bomb, but still big, and with the tell-tale mushroom cloud. Someone in Discord remarked, "Y'all recreating Hiroshima over there? ... It's beautiful, enough to bring a tear to FDR's eye." He then sent a request for songs from the record "Blast Radius," though retracted as realizing some were very much "not safe for work."

Following the clearing of the smoke cloud, the aliens were gone, and no one else was hurt. By morning, radiation levels were back to normal, all damage had been repaired. Everything was back to normal, at least as normal as one can expect with a club run by a dragon.

The Beach Warf Club is at Zeta Valley (131/58/24).

Image Credit: Clockwork Jackal, Tech Adams

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at the Sunweaver Oasis hangout at SunWaterThree. For those who don't know what a Qwhilla is, check the SLARF review. ShadowRene has an animation that allows her to sit on someone's head. Alleara thinks she just looks like a funny hat.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Announcement: This Week at the Senchai Libraries

WELCOME TO THE SEANCHAI LIBRARIES
"We bring stories of all kinds to life, in VIRTUAL WORLDS."

--------->> COMING THIS WEEK:

All stories told in open voice. All times SL/PT

**SUNDAY, February 25th:

   ~at 1:30pm: TEA TIME MYSTERIES: They're Baaaaack!  With Detective Nero Wolfe and his charming assistant Archie Goodwin with Part One of "In Bad Taste."

   ~at 6pm: MAGICLAND STORYTIME:  Caledonia is back at the Golden Horseshoe with Betsy Byar's "The Not-Just-Anybody Family"
Magicland Frontierland, Bracket (181, 57, 30)

**MONDAY, February 26th at 7pm: Alan Dean Foster's SENTENCED TO PRISM Continues with Gyro Muggins
   
**TUESDAY, February 27th at 7pm: T. A. Barron's MERLIN'S DRAGON Continues with Faerie Maven-Pralou.

**WEDNESDAY, February 28th at 7pm:  POETRY THIS YEAR with Caledonia Skytower, as she shares the poems students have chosen for recitation in the program she coordinates in real life.

** THURSDAY, March 1st at 7pm: MONSTERS & MYTHS : Sirens concludes with Shandon Loring (also presented in Kitely hop://grid.kitely.com:8002/Seanchai/144/129/29)

Check out the stories and the storytellers at www.seanchailibrary.com

All times SL time, stories in Voice.

Unless otherwise noted, at Holly Kai Estates (215/44/277)

Scenes From Valentines Day at the Isle of View

Valentines Day had many events across Second Life. But one gave a chance for the residents to meet a number of Lindens. At the Isle of View, they could get a hug from one of Linden Lab's finest. But there were also dunking booths available, which allowed those with less charitable feelings to the Lindens to take out their frustration. Bixyl Shuftan was there, and took a few pictures.

Read the story in Events.

Music Track: DJ Tantari's "Newser 2"

(Click here if the above widget fails)

DJ Tantari's musical salute to the SL Newser, her "Newser 2" track.

"If I tell you a secret, will you promise to keep it keep it close to your heart and never tell a soul? Sometimes why you try, you fail, and you have no choice but to pick yourself up and try again.

I wasn't happy with how the Newser set came out, so I completely rebuilt it. The results are completely different. I think the flow is up to my normal standards at last, but it now has harmonic matching and key shifting. Once again, another set that is on the edge of my skill level. I hope you enjoy!

"I posted this once before, but by the third time I'd performed it, I realized I'd done some things wrong. So I deleted the original and posted this slightly later live set. Nothing but the best for you!

"Recorded live at the Happy Vixen, 8/15/2017"

Announcement: Roma's February 2018 Lupercalia and Equirria Festival

February Festivals Events

Saturday, 24th
10am - Lupercalia Ritual and The Running of the Luperci
In celebration of this most ancient of festivals we will be performing a Roman ritual for Faunus Lupercus, the God of Wild Things and Lupa, the shewolf who nourished the founding fathers Romulus and Remus. After the rite, we will have the Running of The Luperci - half-naked youths who bless the young ladies of the city. The women will run ahead of the Luperci, who will lightly flog them with the goatskin floggers in hopes of fertility (both of mind and body). Following the ritual, we will have our traditional Lupercalia dancing in the garden - and clothing is optional!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ROMA/180/131/42

11am - Venus' Truth
A variation on our popular Ask Venus event -- this time, Venus would love to hear your poems of love and romance. Come join our beautiful Goddess in the Baths of Caracalla, to lounge, swim, and share the prose and poetry of love!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ROMA/147/35/2

12pm - Lupercalia Gladiators

ROMA's Gladiators will perform a show based of the celebration of Lupercalia. From far Arcadia, Lycans and Satyrs will come to the arena. Luperci will face the goats and Roman legionaries the Barbarians from North. Come see the spectacle.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ROMA/127/61/27


***********************************************************

Sunday, 25th

10am - Equirria Legion Blessing Ritual and ROMA Chariot Races

The Legio, in a time honored military display, will present arms and come to be blessed for the new year. After the blessing, we will have chariot races in honour of Mars - all are welcome to try their luck at racing a chariot and prizes will be awarded to the victors!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ROMA/213/140/40

1pm - Legio Half-naked Harpastum

A standard harpastum (Roman football/soccer) game with a Lupercalia twist! Participants may be topless for this event! Be careful out there - don't let the other players distract you with their charms!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ROMA%20Transtiberim/82/233/42

Zeta Valley Beach Wharf Club

Geerkil Ziskey has DJed in a number of places, such as at the Happy Vixen and Club Zero Gravity. But lately, he's been wanting to put some new life into where he started out performing music: Zeta Valley. Recently, he and the rest of the Dragon Crew have rebuilt a club in the area, renaming it the Zeta Valley Beach Wharf Club, hoping to attract numbers of people to the sim.

Read more in SL Clubbin'.

Linden Lab Lays Off Twelve, VP of Product Leaves

Linden Lab is a little smaller as a small number of employees have been dismissed. Also, one of the people higher up has left to accept a new position elsewhere.

Hamlet Au recently stated in New World Notes that, "A highly reliable source tells me Linden Lab recently made workforce staff reductions. ... this most recent layoff impacted about a dozen employees: 'It was like one person from each department, totaling 12 ... mostly shared staff ...' "

There were also two recent former employee reviews of the Lab on Glassdoor, which may or may not be two of the twelve. One who called himself a software engineer remarked, "Massive layoffs, but got rid of the wrong people." While he felt, "Some of the people I worked with were smart, passionate and really wanted to create something amazing." He had a mediocre view as a whole of the company, "Leadership has no vision and don't have the skills to run something as ambitious as Sansar. ... The same old people have been there for the longest time. (They) keep hiring the wrong people and putting the wrong people in positions of power."

The other review from an anonymous employee, "Make LL Great Again" was less critical. But he still had a negative outlook, "Company is too focused on its new product; those who work on the mainstay feel set aside and taken for granted. HR is nearly non-existent; most team members are remote or barely in the office. Too many org changes lately have left folks feeling insecure, morale is low and sinking. I hope they can turn it around." His advice to the Lab's leaders, "You have some really awesome people there; get out of their way."

In June 2010, Linden Lab had a massive layoff, or "restructuring" as they called it, in which about a third of their staff was given pink slips. Followed by the CEO then stepping down, it was a sign of a company in trouble. This news following the Lab's decision to raise fees for it's users a few months ago can be considered a sign the company is more pessimistic about it's long-term profitability. Part of the reason may be Sansar having a small base of regular users, despite Linden Lab's large investment in the next-generation virtual world.

One Linden whom left the company recently did so on his own. Bjørn Laurin, who was the "Vice President of Product, turned in his resignation. Joining Linden Lab in March 2015, Laurin was most associated with Sansar. Inara Pey described him as "one of the popular Lab reps (alongside Ebbe Altberg and Jason Gholston (Widely Linden) ) for his willingness to offer broad-ranging views and comments on Sansar’s direction, upcoming releases and ideas being discussed for the platform back at the Lab." Laurin left to pursue a job at HTC Vive.

Sources: New World Notes, Modem World, Glassdoor

Bixyl Shuftan

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle: "Discrepancies" and "CRISPR"

“Discrepancies in the Measured Expansion Rate of the Universe”
Saturday February 24 at 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM SLT
by Rob Knop

The most basic parameter in our description of the expanding Universe is the current expansion rate, given by the Hubble Constant.

A mere two decades ago, the value of that constant was uncertain to a factor of two. Since then, the face of cosmology has changed, and we are now in an era of precision cosmology. We are able to measure the value of the Hubble Constant to within a few percent. The problem is, we now have two measurements– one from nearby objects such as variable stars and low-redshift supernovae, and the other from statistics of fluctuations in the early Universe. The two measurements are different at about the six-percent level, which is greater than the uncertainties on the individual measurements. While astronomers of two decades ago would dream to be in this situation, we find ourselves questioning whether there is something going on in the expanding universe that we haven’t figured out, or whether it is a matter of systematic uncertainties that we haven’t yet identified.

In this talk, I will discuss the history of both the Universe and of our dominant model of the Universe. I will describe how the Hubble Constant went from being extremely uncertain to relatively well known… well enough that we can see a discrepancy in two different measurements. I will describe the two ways we measure the Hubble Constant, and talk about possibilities for resolving the discrepancy in their results.

Read more information here.

The Science Circle (61/126/32)

*  *  *  *  *

"CRISPR"


“New Advances in Genetic Engineering: The Nuts, The Bolts, Frankenstein Monsters?, and Ethics”
Sunday Feb 25 at 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM SL Time
by Stephen L. Gasior 

In the last 150 years we’ve had an amazing advancement in our understanding of the genetic code that programs life. While some technologies for manipulating genes have developed in the last few decades, new programmable systems have been discovered in the past few years. Developed from bacteria, the CRISPR/Cas systems allow a new level of ease for genetic changes in cells. This presentation will describe the origins of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, how it works, applications for its use, and implications for the future.

Read more information here.

The Science Circle (61/126/32)

Samedi Gras: New Toulouse Pulls it off Again

Mardi Gras was last week on February 13. A few days earlier on the weekend before "Fat Tuesday," the New Toulouse sim held it's yearly parade and party: Samedi Gras. Klaus Bereznyak was there, and wrote about the occassion.

Read Klaus' article in Events.

Press Release: Homes For Our Troops Benefit in Veterans Isle

Frets Nirvana and US Military Veterans Group announce the 2018 January benefit for Homes For Our Troops in Second Life! 

Frets Nirvana, the premier guitar artist in the virtual world Second Life and the US Military Veterans Group announce the 2018 February benefit on February 25, 2018 in Second Life for the Veterans Support Organization  Home For Our Troops . 

Frets Nirvana states:  “HFOT is a privately funded 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization building specially adapted, mortgage-free homes nationwide for the most severely injured Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these Veterans are multiple amputees, paraplegic, quadriplegic or suffered severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).  Since its inception in 2004, over 90 cents of every dollar spent by Homes for Our Troop has gone to directly support Veterans. DURING THAT TIME HFOT HAS BUILT OVER 240 SPECIALLY ADAPTED HOMES NATIONWIDE FOR WOUNDED VETERANS.”

In 2017 the community in Second Life sent over $10,000 to Homes For Our Troops, thanks to may kind hearts and great Second Life performers. 

Home for Our Troops benefit concerts feature premier Second Life talent monthly at Veteran’s Isle.  The concert on February 25, 2018 is scheduled from 9 AM - 3 PM PST.  Featured artists will be DJ Waya Snowpaw, Jon Regent, Savannah Rain, Erin&Satin, Toxie Darkmatter and Melenda Mikael.

ABOUT HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS  - HFOT builds homes as a departure point for Veterans to rebuild their lives, and once again become highly productive members of society. Despite their life-altering injuries, many Veterans have embarked on new careers, completed their college degrees, or started families. Empowered by the freedom a mortgage-free and specially adapted home brings, these Veterans can now focus on their recovery and return to their life’s work of serving others. Many have embraced their roles as motivational speakers, sharing their messages of persevering through tragedy with groups and classrooms around the country; others take to a national platform to promote awareness of veteran suicide, homelessness and PTSD. Their incredible stories are the driving force for the work for HFOT.  HFOT has received Charity Navigator’s highest rating of 4 Stars for six consecutive years. Charity Watch has awarded HFOT an A rating and included us on its list of Top-Rated Military & Veterans Charities. To learn more about the Homes For Our Troops visit https://www.hfotusa.org

Cartoon of the Day: Crabby Linden

Taken at the Isle of View. Bender Linden, whose title was "Destroy All Humans," was sporting a hermit crab avatar at the "Hug a Linden/Dunk a Linden" event on February 14. Obviously, he didn't come for a hug.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Interview with Nydia Tungsten about "Switched Destinies"

How many people can call themselves an author of a published novel? Probably not that many. But among those who have, Nydia Tungsten recently joined their numbers. She recently finished her sci-fi/fantasy story "Switched Destinies," and it's available for download on Amazon. I sat down with Nydia, and she had a few things to say about her tale.

Read the interview in People.

Hippo Technologies Announces Closure Due to "Infrastructure Failure"

Those whom have been around Second Life for a long time are probably familiar with Hippo Technologies, or at least it's products HippoVend and HippoRent, particulary merchants and renters. But the sight of the HippoRent cubes will soon be a thing of the past. On their blog on February 16, Hippo announced they were closing due to "infrastructure failure" of Rackspace Cloud Servers, which they had been using to hold their data.


On Feb 12th Rackspace Cloud Servers collapsed and took down the legacy Hippo web services which Rackspace supported. Rackspace admits service degradation to cloud orchestration and cloud servers. Surely in due time the long established server technicians at Rackspace will rebuild their cloud infrastructure, but for the time being there appears to be an unsafe amount of dust and smoke around the Rackspace Cloud server collapse to extract the backup databases to migrate to another server host.

For the last several years increasingly abandoned land through Second Life has also led to lack of new customer demand for the legacy web service. It marks a best decision for Hippo Technologies to step away from that legacy web service.

Hippo Technologies will certainly be keeping a keen eye to future trends in virtual worlds.

The statement is somewhat vague, as Hippo doesn't use a clear term like "shutting down." But the talk about "lack of new customer demand" and "will ... be keeping a ...eye to future trends" isn't the kind of words a company uses if they're keeping their product going.

Caspertech, perhaps Hippo's biggest competitor, would post about Hippo's close later that day on their own blog.

Today is a sad day for some, and a frustrating day for many, as Hippo Technologies has finally bit the dust. Hippo's services (including HippoVend, HippoRent and HippoUpdate) were extremely well respected and well established within Second Life for a long time. HippoTech pre-dates CasperTech by a few years, and although their presence in Second Life has slowly been in decline, many users heavily depended on them right up until today.

It's unclear exactly what happened - the blog post alludes to a catastrophic failure at Rackspace Cloud services, but Rackspace's own status page mentions no such failure (I have contacted Rackspace to ask for clarification). What is clear, however, is that it leaves a lot of users in a very unfortunate position - their vendors, rental units and update systems are suddenly non-functioning, leaving their businesses high and dry.

Aside from these two blog entries, there's not really anything to go on. A look at the two Hippo groups I found revealed no recent announcements. Their products are still on sale in Marketplace. When I talked to Casper Warden, the head of Caspertech, he didn't have a greal deal to add, "From my understanding, they were taken offline by a technical fault.  Given that their business was dwindling it was not worth the technical effort to invest into getting it back online." He did want to make it clear, " that it's only my understanding, i don't know anything about it for certain."

In any event, places that once used HippoRent are now having to decide what to replace them with.


Bixyl Shuftan

Events This Week at the Sunweaver, Montecito Bay, and Furry Fashion Clubs

It's a week full of events at the Sunweaver and Montecito Bay clubs and the Furry Fashion Lounge.

Club Cutlass: Best in 'S,' Black and White Night, Fantasy

The Happy Vixen: Robots and Battlesuits, Disney, Denim,

Club Zero Gravity: Best Sweater, Best in Horses, Dragon Crew

Montecito Bay: Atom Punk, Oldskool, Vampires and Werewolves, Fantasy, After Dark

Furry Fashion Lounge: Fairy Tales, Forest Creatures, Magic, Jungle, Anime, Dragons, Creepy vs Cute, Fursonas

Read the schedules in SL Clubbin'.

SL Video: "There's Nothing To Do In Second Life"

(Click here if the video fails to play)

From Luca, who also did a "Just how big is Second Life" video, in Nov 2015, "Spoiler: The video's title is a lie.

"There's nothing to do in SL? It's dead and is like a ghost town? Suuuuree. What were shown in the video is not even close to a fraction of the amount of things that you can do in Second Life. Whoever goes into SL, spends some time in abandoned sims, then write about how SL is dead, is like going out, spends some time in abandoned or empty places, then write about how the Earth's dead. Do anything you want, be anything you want, create whatever you want, and join the fun :) No, like, seriously, create whatever you want, use the built-in object creation tools, import your 3D objects that you made on some 3rd party software, script it, whatever, you can do whatever, seriously. Use them, share them, sell them."

Scenes from One Billion Rising

Last week, the One Billion Rising event took place in places around the world, Second Life being one of them. The event is an annual demonstration in support of women's rights and against violence on women, and the virtual world has been a part of it from the first. Gemma Cleanslate and Bixyl Shuftan were both there, and took a number of pictures.

Read the story in Events.

Creations for Parkinsons

Creations for Parkinson's stands out as a location in Second Life in a number of ways. One is the place is very detailed in it's design, not just on the surface, but also it's skybox and underwater locations. It's also the location of many events that feature some good talent. And then there is the purpose of the place. Creation for Parkinson's is the location of Team Fox in Second Life which raises money for research on the disease for better treatments and one day a cure. Deaflegacy recently went there, and had a few words with Barbie Alchemi, the owner.

Read Deaf's story in Places.

Reader Submitted: "St. Valentines Day Massacre Revisited"

From Jessicabelle Dayafter. Jessicabelle was trying to do a an animation that was a playful tribute to the St. Valentines Day Massacre done by Al Capone's men in 1929. But it didn't quite come off right. So for now, she settled for a screenshot, with a pink "tommy" gun that shoots hearts, not bullets.

Cartoon of the Day: Flower Power

Taken at the Happy Vixen's "Flower Power" event.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Scenes From Ark: The Hotel Bunnytickle

It's been about a year since I've written about my friends' misadventures in "Ark Survival Evolved." Since then, the game itself has continued to evolve in more ways than I can describe here. Among the changes is a new map: "Ragnarok." Nydia and her friends quickly established a main base in a cavern. But some of us wanted our own secondary bases. Among them is this one in the east side of Viking Bay, which came to be called "The Hotel Bunnytickle." It's grown to be about a dozen stories in height.

Besides the new map, there's a spinnoff game called "Aberration." In this game, players deal with an Ark gone bad with radiation and powerful monsters on the surface, so they have to start underground. I may write on the game soon. But for now, here's a picture to show the hijinks with the dinosaurs continue.

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Video: "Annabel Lee"

(Click here if the video fails to play)

From Amelie Marcoud on February 12, "A melancholic love story, written by Edgar Allan Poe.

Based on the poem 'Annabel Lee.' Filmed at: Bella Pace in Second Life. Music by Monica and Sara Gil.

Hat Tip: Hamlet Au 

SL Videos: "How Big Is The Map of Second Life, Walking Across the Map"

There's a man on Youtube who calls himself "How Big is the Map?" What he does is record himself walking across various gaming worlds such as "Ark: Survival Evolved," "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds," "Elder Scrolls Online," and many others. Most take a half hour to ninety minutes, though "Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall" boasts the biggest map he crossed, which took him about 70 hours in total.



Recently, WATM decided to take on crossing Second Life., in an avatar appropriately named "HowBigistheMap." But he ran into one complication obvious to it's residents: most of the place is private regions by themselves or in groups that are isolated from one another and accessible only by teleporting. But there were the continents. So he decided to talk across those, starting with Sansara. The journey took him an hour and a half. So crossing just this continent alone took more time than crossing most of the game worlds he'd spanned.



HowBigIsTheMap didn't stop there. He would go on to cross the continent of Jeogeot, which took him slightly less than an hour and a half. Then came his third and longest challenge, traversing the triple continent region of Corsica, Nautilus, and Satori. That took him almost three hours, which got him wondering how long would it take to walk across the whole Grid if it was possible.

Luca Grabacr came up with a kind of answer in her video in November 2015, in which she stated if all the sims were lined up end to end, it would take over 23,000 days to walk across them. Obviously that's not the same as crossing the map from one corner to the other. But these videos from these two people show when it comes to ground area, especially ground area with unique content, Second Life has the MMOs beat hands down.

Hat Tip: Hamlet Au
Bixyl Shuftan

Redwall Abbey at Sunny Beach

At the Sunweaver Estates, the home region of the SL Newser, there's a new building going up at the Sunny Beach sim, the "Redwall Abbey."

"Heads up on news from Sunny Beach," Becky Shamen told me, "We have begun building Redwall Abbey on the SW corner of the sim. The build will take time, but should generate interest in the sim and Sunweaver Estates. It's from a feature length animation about a Medieval fury community. I'm piecing together floor plans and building the whole abbey complex on Sunny Beach."

Taking a look on Youtube, and Wikipedia, I found the Redwall Abbey is from "Redwall," a series of Fantasy novels aimed at older children and young adults, written by Brian Jacques, of which an animated TV series was based on. Twenty-two novels were published, the first in 1986 and the last a few years ago. The TV series first aired in 1999.

Sunny Beach, also known as Mythica Woods, is owned by Erik Mouse, with Becky Shaman as an administrator.

Image Credit: Becky Shamen 

Toontown MMO Back: Toontown Rewritten

What happens when a multiplayer online game is closed down by the company that owns it? For those with devoted fans with time and money, some may take matters into their own hands to keep it alive. In 2013, Disney pulled the plug on it's "Toontown" MMO after ten years. But shortly afterwards, a fan-made version of it appeared: called "Toontown Rewritten." Five years, and many updates, later, the game is still going. And it's completely free to play.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Press Release: "Burnal Equinox 2018: H2O = Water but H2+O -> Fire"

Creative Burners near and far, we call you to sign up and participate in the next event to take place on the virtual playa on Deep Hole: Burnal Equinox.

"H2O = Water but H2+O = Fire"

What does this mean? It is in two parts. The first we all know, that H2O represents WATER. But...the second part is not a chemical formula; rather it is an attempt to describe the process of combustion that results in FIRE. Both utilise hydrogen and oxygen, but manifest in different ways.

This excerpt from The Urantia Revelation may inspire ideas for creativity in building, art, and music for this event:

"Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance—liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

"Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn."

The event will officially open with a walk-on by the Lamplighters at 10:00am SLT on March 24th, and Burners are welcome join us in the fun. A fashion show will be featured at the stage during the event. A schedule of performances will be available closer to opening.

In the meantime, we come together as a community to prepare for this event. You are invited to PARTICIPATE, because no Burner is a mere bystander on the pixel dust of BURN2's Deep Hole playa that is our virtual Home. There are several ways in which you can do this.

Build on a Plot! 
Plots are free, but limited in number. Begin planning your creative build - plots on the playa will open for building starting the 27th of February. Placement will contact you starting then for you to choose your plot.

Sign up early! First come, first served get the plots!

Perform on the Stage!
The stage, a quarter circle, will be specially built for this event, where many can gather to listen, to dance and to enjoy this opportunity to celebrate the Equinox that brings the change of seasons and sunlight.

Sign up on this form and a member of the Performance Team will contact you to schedule your performance.

Become a Fashionista!
Sign up to be a model in the fashion show at Burnal Equinox!

SHARE the News About This Event!

Want more information? Connect with us through our networks::
Website: https://burn2.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BURN2BURNER
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/BURN2BURNERS
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Burn2.SL/
Google+ Community: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/114073732445186160592
Regional Page: http://regionals.burningman.com/regionals/cyberspace/second-life/

BURN2 Inworld Contacts:
BURN2 Communications: iSkye Silverweb communications@burn2.org or contact inworld
BURNING MAN Regional Contact: sl@burningman.org

Cartoon of the Day: Cupid's Favor

By Bixyl Shuftan

Grand Opening Ceremony for the Sunweaver Railroad

After months of planning, landscaping, bridge-building, and track laying, the Sunweaver Lines Railroad is finally operational. The creation of Cynthia Farshore, the railroad's track spans one end of the community land to the other, going through the main sims. On Saturday, there was a ceremony attended by a number of the locals to officially open the line to travel.

Read the story in Design.

Valentine Dance by the Safe Waters Foundation

With Valentines Day this week, there's been quite a few Valentine parties. But how many can boast being a mermaid party? On Sunday February 11, there was a Valentines Day dance organized by the Safe Waters Foundation, held at Antiquity MarieGalante, at the Water's Edge Merhaven.

Tonight, Antiquity and Safe Waters Foundation present a Valentine Dance!  Bring your special someone, or meet them here!  Music by DJ Cynthia Maine, the Gold Mermaid.  All are welcome!

The party was held over a heart-shaped dance floor underwater on the sea bottom. As the announcement stated, not everyone whom attended had a tail and fins. And some who were, it was for the occasion, "This is a fun event.  And I do not get very often to be a mer." DJ Cynthia played songs like the theme from Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On," and Elvis Presley's "Burning Love."

I was there only a brief time, but was around long enough to hear some of the conversation. "ala everyone." "... how have you been?" "Just as fine as frog hair, how about you?" "Frogs have hair?" "They do but its very very fine." "Only if they grab it from somebody's comb." "They buy little froggy wigs."

The Safe Water Foundation. led by GraceSWF Wrigglesworth, is the largest group of mermaids and mermen, or merfolk as they're sometimes called, in Second Life. For more information about them, check their website: http://www.goldmermaid.com/SWF/ .

Bixyl Shuftan

Events This Week at the Sunweaver, Montecito Bay, and Furry Fashion Clubs

It's a week full of events at the Sunweaver and Montecito Bay clubs and the Furry Fashion Lounge.

Club Cutlass: Valentines Day, Pretty Purple, Taking Wing

The Happy Vixen: Flower Power, Formal Party, Pink and Red, Hollywood, Candy, Vampires, Alice in Wonderland, Mice

Club Zero Gravity: Best in Blue, Best in Hearts, Dragon Crew

Montecito Bay: Dieselpunk, Prom Night, Vampires and Werewolves, Satanic Panic, Sandstorm

Furry Fashion Lounge: Formal, Rave, Romance, Sealife, Goth, Swing, Horns, Genderbend

Read the schedules in SL Clubbin'.

Announcement: "Prom Night at the Magnum Opus"

"With Valentine's Day coming up, Montecito Bay is throwing our annual PROM NIGHT! And this year, it's a John Hughes inspired Valentine's Day Prom featuring The Lem N Ems! Prom Night at the Magnum Opus - Feb 14th 7-9SLT"

Montecito Bay (60/128/23)

Addition: Later in the day, BekNos (Becky Nosferatu) announced that Magican Productions is going to be raffling off two new colors of an avatar at the event.