SL Video: "Maxomar - Ocean"

 

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 From YKZSL on Dec 6, 

Announcement: Montecito Bay's Funabashi Station

 

"Huh, what's this? It looks like an alley full of little shops! Don't worry, nothing going on here that isn't- KSSSSSHHHH "

Funabashi Station has a little hideaway... right next to Studio 86! These little mini-stores are perfect for RP and photos! There's many different ones, with different themes and objects, and are just the perfect spot to explore~

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Montecito%20Bay/195/58/23

Come check them out!

Becky Nosferatu

 

SL Video: Club Livewire Ad

 

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From Arthur Turgeon/Whiskey (Thorrin Resident), a video commercial of the upcoming Club Livewire.
 

Three Shopping Events

There are a number of events this weekend. Two have been going on all week, and are ending soon. The third will go on to the end of the month. One is the "Art Walk 2020 At Gulls Wing Sailing Club." This is a Relay for Life event in which the money goes to the Gull's Wing Sailing Club team.

Art Walk 2020 At Gulls Wing Sailing Club starts on the 15th of March and runs through the 22nd of March. 100% of sales go to Relay for Life in Second Life!

36 (added 2 more!) RFL Limited Quantity kiosks featuring some of SL's best Artists have donated their art to find a cure for cancer. Come by and see Art in The Park gallery while you are deciding which artwork you have to have.

Dropping by, the artwork was not framed and on easels or on a wall, but in kiosks. One has to pay the amount of Lindens in to get the artwork. Clicking on the poster near the crosswalk one gets a booklet that tells you a little about the event. Among the artists whose works are for sale are Anibrm Jung, Slatan, and Silvermoon.  The event ends Sunday March 22.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Gulls%20Wing%20Marina/154/106/23

Another event going on, one featured in the official blog and Destinations Guide, is the Cyber Fair.

Transport yourself to the future with CYBER Fair by ACCESS, open March 5th to 25th. You will find sci-fi, tech, robotic designs, and cyberpunk items by amazing content creators in Second Life. The future is now at CYBER fair! For more information, visit: www.access-sl.com/cyber-fair-by-access.

There are numerous futuristic/cyberpunk-themed items up for sale. This includes a few gachas. With real life news full of stories about an epidemic and viruses, no surprise that among the items are a number of respirators and masks. The event ends Wednesday March 25.

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Galactico/128/133/1001/

And for lovers of gacha sales, the Gacha Guild spring event is taking place. The theme is "Spirited Japanese Festival."

Gacha Guild is back again this Spring, themed to honor one of the greatest Studio Ghibli movies of all time, Spirited Away! Get whisked away to a whimsical world in mythical Japan. Grab some gachas and even some gold when the bathhouse opens. Surely someone in there will trade you something good for it. Event is open from March 1st to March 31st. The hunt begins on March 14th!

The place has numerous avatars and accessories up for sale. As before, people can sell vouchers, rare ones sometimes selling for quite a bit, or giving them to friends. There is also a Halftime Hunt event that opened a few days ago. Getting the HUD for it, one looks for piles of gold which are worth points which can be exchanged for prizes. You can do this while exploring the area outside the market stall place, which has some trails and caves (which will tp you to other spots on the sim). Going about, I also found a mahjong table which looked playable. Although the sim is rated adult, the organizers have asked people to hide any exposed genitals. The event is open until the end of the month.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dew%20Drop/74/171/68

Bixyl Shuftan 

Hangars Liquides Fundraiser at 45%, "At 50% We Save The City"

In an update to the crowdfunder started last week to save the Hangar Liquides sims, it was recently announced that 43% of the $6683 USD goal had been reached. But Djehan Kidd's announcement suggested preserving it for the short term needs just a few more dollars.

Fundraiser is at 43% now. AT 50% we save the city.

Please donate, consider becoming a benefactor, you can give anything, any amount, we're almost there

The amount has since gone up to 45%, or $3032 raised. I asked in the group chat if just half the money was needed to save the city. Djehan had left for the night, but one of the group told me "50% saves the city, and gives more time to pay the rest of the funds needed."

The link to the donation page is: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-hangars-liquides#/

Stay tuned for further details.

SL Video: "Exploring Hangars Liquides, The World's Largest Cyberpunk City in Second Life"

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From Isabelle Cheren on April 19, "In today's vlog I am taking you exploring a sci fi cybernetic experience in Second Life. All details of the destination and what I am wearing from EQUAL10 in the blog post below. More information about this amazing place will be also found."

Some of her talk has little to do with Second Life, but the camera shots are great. 

Interview with Hangars Liquides Creator: Djehan Kidd

Djehan Kidd is the artist behind Hangars Liquides, a cyberpunk-themed city in Second Life that unfortunately made news last week when she announced the place was in danger of disappearing. A few days ago, I had the chance to interview her. We would talk about how she came to Second Life, how Hangars came to be, and a few other projects she's worked on.

Read the interview in People.

Linden Lab Still In Talks With Djehan Kidd Over Hangars Liquides

Last Friday, the Newser reported on the five region Hangars Liquides urban sci-fi sims in danger of being shut down at the end of the month. This weekend, I had a few words with the builder and owner Djehan Kidd about the area, and it's situation.

Djehan told me it's looking unlikely Linden Lab will allow Hangars to rent out apartments and still remain a nonprofit. She felt it's not because they don't want to, but in her opinion they're "monitored" by the US Government more today than in the past. She's also gotten numerous offers of help to keep the sims afloat. But she feels their best chance lies with the Lab's sim preservation program, "So far I didn't get a no or a yes. All I know is that a commitee will visit (the sims) and decide."

Meanwhile, others are spreading the word about the sims. A concerned resident created a thread on the official forums about Hangars Liquides, and it quickly grew to numerous pages, some people posting pictures of the area. There were numerous pleas for the sims to be given a break and allowed to stay on. One commented, "I don't think I have been there before or if I had I didn't spend long there because the scale of it whilst immersive is also bewildering. Spent 30 minutes exploring it again and it is undoubtedly a work of art. Despite all its complexity it is well optimised, I had none of my usual problems with textures and objects not bothering to load. It is a fine example of what is possible to do here."

There's also a Flickr page full of screenshots of the sims (caution, not all safe for work).

The full interview with Djehan will appear later this week in the Newser.

Image Credit: Lawrence Celestalis

Bixyl Shuftan

Hangars Liquides Cyberpunk City Set To Close Soon

Some sad news for fans of sci-fi themed sims. According to New World Notes, the "Hangars Liquides" sims will be closing at the end of the month.



The area, now consisting of five sims of tall buildings high in the sky with a gritty, run-down theme, what owner and creator Djehan Kidd called "Cyberpunk City, Technopunk, Dystopian Noir," has been in Second Life since 2007. In 2014, it was featured in a video in The Guardian. But unfortunately, a change in the Terms of Service mean that as a nonprofit, the sim can't rent spaces to help pay for it's upkeep. “As a cultural nonprofit organization,” Djehan explained to Hamlet Au, “Second Life has become unsustainable for me. Several months ago, I was told that the new Terms of Service for nonprofits did not permit us to offer rentals anymore; as a result, the city couldn't pay for itself any more.”

According to Hamlet, Djehan has been in contact with Linden Lab, and there is talk about making Hangars Liquides an exception to their new rules. But as of now, there's nothing agreed upon. Unless something changes, the city will close at the end of the month.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hangars%20Liquides/136/138/2226

Source: New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

"Fade It To Black," Insilico Announces It's Sims Will Soon Close

For the second time this year, the Insilico cyberpunk region and roleplay community is facing the end. But this time, there may be no reprieve.

Insilico is not new, but has been around for over eight years. Last year, Second Life Newser did a review of the roleplay and area. But in March of this year, it's controversial owner Skills Hak was banned by Second Life by Linden Lab, and the sims offlined. Thanks to negotiations behind the scenes, the sims were transferred to administrator Abeus Madruga and had a new lease on virtual life.

Unfortunately, the damage was done, and the area which had been able to cover it's costs before began bleeding red ink, Abeus stating in the announcement, "a combination of losses that have slowly eroded away: Malls are drying up, Skills’ MP sales disappearing, fewer long term residential rentals, etc." While people in the roleplay were able to cover the deficits out of their pockets for a while, this month it was finally too great.

So, we had to make a decision. Either make a drastic reduction to just two sims (a full region and a homestead), or close InSilico as a whole while we are still in a position to do so on our own terms. After a lot of discussion and soul searching with the current staff and some players (and a lot of antacids), we’ve opted for the latter…to go out whole. 

This is a very hard choice for us, and not one that we’ve come to lightly. Even though it might be possible to survive as just two sims, the technical aspects of that were daunting. ... we just weren’t entirely confident ourselves that we could make it work in such a short amount of time. We also didn’t want to have to keep turning to the community for donations to keep us afloat during that process…but certainly the one thing we didn’t want was to go through all of this, and then find ourselves back in this same position 2, 3, 4 months down the line. We don't want to wither away, slowly or not.

Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times, the state of things in general, or our age and reputation that have brought us to this point. Maybe we should have dropped a couple regions from the start…Either, any, or…it doesn’t really matter now. We have chosen to come to a close with InSilico as it is now, intact and committed to our memories in the same way. It’s a sacrifice, but not one of compromise.

As I said in my previous (albeit premature) Goodbye/Love letter to InSilico during the lockout…We’ve had some good times, even some great times. 9 years’ worth of stories that will continue to transcend the sims on which they were told…I couldn’t ask for anything more than that as a legacy.

We still have the sims until the end of their respective tiers. Central and South will be dropped on the 28^th/1st, but East and South East will remain until November 17^th …after which they too will go their separate ways. The Ning will hang on for a while longer after that, but for how long I cannot say as we don’t have access to the creator account. In the meantime, continue RPing and taking in the sites. Enjoy it while you can. Take pictures, tell war stories, have a party. ICly the city isn’t going anywhere, even if the sims are. We aren’t blowing it up or tanking it…we’re just going to fade to black so it can continue to exist in your imaginations and stories.

There were a number of comments following the post, among them, "it was always nice knowing Insilco kept on. It’s been real, but even the best parties end…or get broken up by the police…or burn down when Mike accidentally sets the curtains on fire." "I dare say it was never perfect, and it had its bitter moments; but my time here won't ever be forgotten. I have memories here that I am truly truly fond of and are the prime reason cyberpunk has blossomed to become my favourite genre. For my first and most cherished experience with role-play and story-telling, for helping me discover cyberpunk, and for the friendship when perhaps I needed it the most, ..."  "The city will always represent something beautiful, like a distant memory that is not easy to part with. I've met a lot of amazing people here, as Cora stated as before me, and we built a very nice community that kept going for a while. It was my first SL RP and it helped me see a great many things. My experience here is unforgettable, unique in a way, every angle I was involved with was truly an inspiration, it helped me go deeper into my own development and I know it helped others to do the same. I'll miss it, for that memory it is, for that one time years ago that made me smile... And even to this day, continues to do so. ... Thank you for the memories."

And so, another noted region and the home of a equally noted roleplay, is facing the end.

Hat Tip: Hamlet Au 

Bixyl Shuftan

Torley Island

Torley Linden is a familiar name to many longtime Second Life residents. This popular Linden was known for both his watermelon-colored avatars, outfits, and other creations, and  his helpful videos, which always began with "Friendly greetings!" BloodyKitty came across his sim, "Torley Island," which while in a cyberpunk theme, had much of it done up in his trademark pink and light green.

Read more in Places.

SL Video: "The Drax Files World Makers - Episode 29: Insilico "

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From Draxtor Despress, " 'I was raised in the Native American tradition to never lose my awe of the world' says designer and storyteller Stark Osterham who runs the sprawling cyberpunk city Insilico together with a handful of other managers. Stark honors this tradition by expanding on a world within a world: the universe of Second Life has hosted Insilico on 4 sims since German artist Skills Hak originally created it in 2008.

"Role-players from all over the globe continue to expand the already complex backstory of Insilico with its colorful races, cyborgs and a political system dominated by corporate corruption every day by contributing to the archives. If you work in Insilico as a security guard, battle the cruel D'naa on Mars or dwell as a homeless half-human somewhere on the lower tier of town, the intensity of the immersion is powerful.

"As general manager and city reporter StarRavenSAT puts it: 'Everyone has a different interpretation of the future. This one is real because it is ours!' And everyone is invited to participate: SL photographer Harlow Heslop for instance is a frequent visitor to the city and Stark's own teenage daughter is inspired to continue the family tradition of actively shaping reality rather than passively accepting it.

"Question: What is better than reading a book or watching TV? Answer: writing your own story, creating your very own world!"

For more information about Insilico check out http://insilico.gemini-cybernetics.net

"Big thanks to Marianne McCann and all the great extra actors who participated in making this episode."