From Merryjest Starchild on June 27, "For those who missed the SL23B concert, we're doing a watch party on Youtube for it- this was recored on my computer so you'll get to see me frantically typing at people (or trying to) while singing, when things go wrong. And the hilarious reaction in the chat when thy get YEETED to another region in the middle of the finale XD starting at the top of the hour"
The Second Life Birthday celebration officially began yesterday. There were some technical difficulties as some, including exhibitors who had been in earlier in the day, found themselves unable to teleport over. But eventually the glitch would be repaired,and the residents could all head over to the SLB grounds.
The first of the events was Philip Linden's opening speech at the Orpheum Theater. But relogging after a crash, I couldn't see his area of the stage. I ended up getting a picture through Vic Morningon's youtube. You can also see a replay on the Second Life Youtube.
Brett Linden spoke first saying a few words then introducing Philip Linden. Philip gave short speech, complementing the audience on their avatars, saying "one of the coolest things that I think signals change in Second Life is the changing avatars that I see." He would give thanks to the creators, as well as the Lindens and Moles involved in The Birthday. He would also give his thanks to Patch Linden, "who was the one who initially created this event and helped us grow it to where it is today." He gave a few statistics, "nineteen exhibit regions with 240 exhibits built by over 500 exhibitors ... over 480 creators participating in the Ship and Hop ... 600 scheduled music and dance performances held across five different event stages ... and there are about 125 volunteers helping as stage crew and greeters, thank you so much."
"As I look at you and all your avatars, I'm reminded of the early days of Second Life," He would talk about how he and Leviathan Linden first imagined Second Life as an "artificial life garden. We weren't even sure exactly what role people would play in the whole thing. ... We didn't know what avatars would look like. ... But ultimately look at us all here today. This room represents an evolution and an enormous amount of content production and changes that you created in the very nature of Second Life. ... we are very much driven by all our collective work." He would comment that he felt one of the reasons Second Life was still around was because it's residents "collectively exist in a place here that can be shaped by all of us."
He would also comment that when Second Life first started, the total number of sims was smaller than those dedicated to the Birthday event. He would talk about some of the first areas the Lindens made for the residents such as a kind of "Coney Island" amusement park and a "giant black pyramid disco" called AltZoom, SL's first nightclub. Very quickly, the people got control, demolished the first builds, and created things of their own. Philip would also comment Second Life was like an alternative history, noting the social media was often known for it's nastiness and SL was in some ways what could have been in terms of people on the whole treating each other better. "Thank you for being part of this."
Philip then went over to a kiosk on stage, the "Golden Ticket," saying people would soon be able to click on five of them around the SLB grounds for a chance at a million Linden dollar prize that they could enter every day (more on this later). He stated he would take no questions today, but would answer some at the Meet the Lindens event next week, his being at Monday at 1PM SL time. "Congratulations everyone, it's wonderful to see you. And I hope to see you around the Birthday celebrations. Thank you."
Following the eight minute speech was a period of quiet, then Merryjest Starchild performed the first of the SLB's music events.
Sometimes he would sing alone, other times he was joined by dancers. But there was one point in which things hit a snag. There was one tribute to the 80s in which the dancers appeared over the stage on giant cassette tapes, then they just vanished. I would later hear the way the dancers were arranged, one cassette touched the sim border, which then cased them to be "yeeted" halfway across the SLB grounds. Some had a soft landing in the water. Some didn't. The short time that was available for rehearsal didn't reveal this possibility. For those wanting to see the performance again, Merry will be repeating it later this weekend at a favorite venue.
And the shows are going on today, this weekend, and next week. Two DJs familiar to the Sunweaver community where the SL Newser office makes it's home will be spinning some tunes. Today at 2PM, DJ Minty, aka DJ MTV, will be performing at The Salty Saloon stage at SLB Smoldering (20/252/23). DJ Scratch will be spinning his style at the same venue on early Wednesday June 24 at 2 AM. Another friend of the Newser, DJ Tantari, will be performing at the Golden Palms at SLB Mesmerize (76/184/25) at 3 PM SL time.
Stay tuned for more about the Second Life Birthday.
Many of you have recently noticed that YouTube videos embedded directly in Second Life no longer play. Here’s what’s going on, why it’s happening, and how you can keep sharing video experiences in-world. First, let’s clear the air: this change is not caused by Second Life.
YouTube has begun more strictly enforcing the policy around video playback inside embedded browsers. These policy and technical restrictions affect any platform trying to use embeds stripped from the iframe, not just Second Life. As a result, YouTube.com embeds often refuse to load or play inside parcel media and shared media surfaces.
Our underlying media system has not changed. What has changed is how YouTube allows its content to be displayed.
The embeds are breaking because Youtube has tightened various restrictions, so that the inworld media panels' inworld browser can no longer meet their requirements. So the videos are blocked.
What to do? Linden Lab stated they are "exploring ways to improve overall media playback resiliency." But for now, they suggest either using Vimeo platform videos, as it is "currently the most seamless drop-in replacement for in-world video playback," or using a self-hosted webpage with an iFrame, "Many residents already use this approach for theaters, classrooms, and event venues."
Second Life was affected as well, the Grid Status report showing "A service provider for Second Life is currently experiencing an outage which is affecting the Destinations page: secondlife.com/destinations/" Search was affected as well. A couple friends told me they had problems getting on.
Supposedly the data engineers have taken care of the trouble, though this is a reminder of how many companies use Amazon servers, and what can happen when something big goes wrong.
I was going to write something on the latest Linden viewer release, but something went wrong with the official blog and forums, at least at my end. Trying to get to them, all I see is what's on the picture on the left.
Why this is, I don't know. Others I've chatted with in SL aren't having this problem.
Been crashing a little more lately, and coming back, it sometimes looks like this. So bear with me for the next few days. It'll resolve itself, I hope.
Taken at the Newser office in HV Community. No, this isn't Christmas in July. In December, we at the Newser put up some Christmas decorations, including a few trees, this one going on the ground floor. And in January, they were picked up. But there was one small problem. The ground floor Christmas tree returned.
We kept trying to pick it up, and it kept reappearing. It was as if the Ghost of Christmas past was determined to haunt our office.
So the tree remains, for now. Maybe one day when we try to pick it up, it will stay picked up.
Well, a recent small meeting at the Newser office in HV Community had a slight snag. I'd gotten some new chairs to go with the new building. While they seemed to work well when I got them, on the day of the meeting there was a snag. We couldn't sit in them right. It seemed out of the early days of SL in which you needed a poseball to sit properly.
Thankfully Gemma had a solution. She rezzed a dinner table with chairs. While a bit unconventional for an office, it was certainly welcome especially with lunch available.
Hopefully we'll have the chair situation taken care of soon.
Linden Lab just announced there's a glitch in the PBR (Physical Based Rendering) code that affects mirrors in Second Life. Part of the glitch is that bumping into mirrors, touching them with an object, or dropping a mirror onto the ground can result in them breaking.
And when the mirrors break, the person who caused it will go through a number of glitches, such as trouble rezzing, teleporting failures, crashing at sim crossings, difficulties in shopping at Marketplace, and more, for a period of several days.
Supposedly for most involved, the period of time is seven days. Then the issues all clear up.
Every Thursday, the Relay for Life's Sunbeamer team holds their weekly Moon Dance. On the one around St. Patrick's Day, they do a special one by making the moon green, which gets it's share of jokes of green cheese along with the green beer. But on the one for Thursday March 14, there was a problem. Much of the set just up and vanished, notably the lunar surface. This left new arrivals arriving via the Moon Cannon plummeting back to the ground, at least until Shockwave Yareach inserted a temporary floor.
Cynthia Farshore, who hosts the event, had been knocked off, but was soon back, and the normal lunar surface was restored, and she was playing the tunes. Somehow Yogi Bear snuck in (perhaps looking for picnic baskets?)
But this being the St. Patrick's dance, it wasn't too long before we had the green moon back.
People were saying the reason things fell apart was because of leprechauns. But no one saw any.
At the end, team captain Rita Mariner, along with Shockwave and Cynthia, thanked everyone for coming.
The Moon Dance is every Thursday at 6PM, and is BYOK (bring your own kiosk) with all Relay teams, and everyone else, invited.
If you had some trouble Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night inworld, from appearing as a cloud to inventory issues. You weren't alone. I saw in several groups inworld saying that they had problems rezzing, finding items in their inventory, seeing others, logging in and staying logged in, and other troubles. In the Sunweavers community group, it's leader Rita Mariner would post about it, "Technical Issues With SL Tonight."
Seems LL broke SL. No one can rezz anything. I have a club of invisible people. If the issue isn't cleared by start of dance, I will cancel it.
We are currently conducting an unscheduled maintenance & investigating an issue impacting logins. You may experience issues logging in or with rezzing items from your inventory during this time. Please monitor this blog for updates.
At 6:32 PM SL time, Linden Lab declared the issue resolved. But that wasn't the end of the troubles. Up to late morning the following day, people would continue to have issues with rezzing and seeing others. Various residents had things to say about it, including Rose Redfoxx (Rose Evans), who sent the Newser one memefied picture (left).
Taken at the "Love Train" on February 14. With all the avatars there, not even Tommy Linden was immune to being unable to rezz. So what else could be the cause of his predictiment?
On Tuesday March 7, the staff of the Happy Vixen Beach Club in the Purrfection Estates sim got a nasty shock when following the scheduled rolling restart of the sims by Linden Lab, those dropping by found the venue gone.
THV is GONE trapped in inventories, so it may take a complete rebuild
Most of the structure was gone, the dance floor, the seats, the stream and contest boards, the games, the movie theater, the calendar boards, and more, gone. While some of the objects were located in "lost and found" inventories, some items, notably some no-copy ones, have yet to be found. And even if they all were, the incident represents a loss of many hours of work.
The beach club was not the only item affected in the sim. There are reports of other items and structure parts lost in the glitch. One resident told me her skybox home was also "gone."
Sim owner Nydia Tungsten filed a ticket with Linden Lab, hoping they'll be able to roll back the sim on their own to clean up the mess. While residents can always request rollbacks, lately they've been charging a $25 fee to do so. Considering the Linden rollback was the cause of the glitch, it was commented that in this case it would be like paying someone to clean up a mess they were responsible for.
For now, Happy Vixen events have been moved to the Bouncing Bunny Beach Club in SunWater Three.
Addition: I've had a couple people tell me that the reason for the glitch was not the rollback, but something else. So stay tuned for an update.
Taken at the Christmas Expo. Once again, a crowded event resulted in a few avies not fully rezzing. While looking at this picture, it was fairly obvious what this guy would want for Christmas, and a certain Christmas song came to mind.
Logging in yesterday, I found myself staring at the screen in surprise. Not only was I clouded, but my name was replaced with a bunch of question marks. And only a fraction of the location was rezzing.
Fortunately, all it took was a relog to get things right.
