It's been quite the busy weekend in Second Life. Friday was the "Yuri's Night" celebration held by the National Space Society. The anniversary of the first man in space was also one of the themes at the Burnal Equinox, which ran from Friday to Sunday night. There were also a number of Relay for Life events. Saturday had the Sunbeamer Air Show which launched Team Sunbeamers well into Gold level fundraising. On Sunday was the conclusion of the "Bid Me Bald" Team Challenge which raised a total of almost a half million Linden dollars in which the Cure Chasers team won and Mieville Steampunks ended up with bare scalps.
More information on these happenings, and more, to come.
Saturday April 13 was the Sunbeamer Air Show at Farshore Field in Sunlight Bay. This was the sixth air show hosted by Cynthia Farshore held by the Relay for Life's Team Sunbeamers. Despite some technical glitches related to the "teleport disconnects" issue that caused some planes in flight to crash, the crowd enjoyed the event The event also netted almost 50,000 Linden dollars for the team, increasing it's total almost fifty percent to a little past 150,000 Linden dollars.
And another successful air show, thanks to Cynthia Farshore. People were doing the blimp race, and taking Snowy's balloon tours. Not only did the team reach Gold level fundraising, it kept going to 150,000. We're well on our way to Platinum level.
What the Sunbeamers want for the long term is for the team to achieve last year's record-setting fundraising level once more: Emerald rank. One complication though is the amount of money it will take has been raised some. Achieving Emerald level will take a whopping one million Linden dollars. For now, the next goal of the team is Platinum level, or 250,000 Lindens. As an incentive, yours truly is offering "The Platinum Avatar Challenge," taking on an unusual look for a week. The first couple times I did so, I took on looks I had never been in public before. What will it be this time, I have yet to decide, though have heard suggestions such as being the Rita clone again, or a Crux hybrid.
Our next event will be this Saturday April 20 at the Happy Vixen Club in Purrfection Estates. The beach club will be host to a six hour event with three DJs, with all tips going to the Relay kiosk.
From a picture of Nydia Tungsten's office sent by JB Raccoon. There's been numerous jokes about Australia's wildlife, such as "the big effing spiders." When someone uploaded a video of one having caught a mouse, that made it even more so. While the meme "Everything in Australia is out to kill you" may not be true, the size of the spiders are enough to discourage tourists.
The Burnal Equinox, the spring spinnoff event of Burn2, starts today and goes on to Sunday. There will be art to see, and music to listen to. For more information about the festival, Newser reporter Marcel Mosswood went to talk to iSkye Silverweb, one of the leading volunteers. iSkye had a number of things to say about the event.
Last week on April 4, Patch and Grumpity Linden spoke at the VWBPE. Then answered some questions from the event host, Phelan Corrimal, as well as a few from the audience. Grumpity was in her stick-figure avatar. Patch had on mouse ears and a tail.
Of summarizing what Linden Lab has accomplished in the past twelve months, Grumpity commented there has "so much going on, it's hard to think back a full year." She touted general improvement in Second Life's infstructure, a fair amount of content and feature development, the introduction of animesh, the new Linden homes, new estate tools (still ongoing), parcel and estate management, and helping educators with their courses. Patch brought up Linden Lab's involvement in SL15B, "lots of gift stuff happening," and things coming up beyond Linden homes.
Of moving Second Life from current data centers to cloud-based servers, Grumpity stated the Lab was "very carefully moving things and not disturbing the way things are set up. ... with a 15 year old infrastructure, there's some complexity there." She hoped it would eventually lead to lower prices for residents, but "the migration from the data center to the cloud is quite expensive for us, taking a lot of resources and additional costs." So if there is an effect on what residents are charged, it will be "a few years into the future"
Work on a mobile client for Second Life was going on, Grumpity saying, "I'm looking forward to seeing how that impacts Second Life usage in education. ... There's not a lot to report yet. ... SL wasn't designed to go on a mobile." She stated the Lab was going in the direction of an IOS style viewer for now, "a robust text-based viewer."
Of the new Linden Homes, Patch stated didn't want to reveal too much. He called them a "complete redesign,' from the original ones. The "structure of the regions themselves designed more organically, less repetition, more choices," and more options to modify the homes. People will also be able to modify them from inside the homes themselves instead of "web-based tools" as they are now. Already, the land for the new homes was being placed, "The continent will grow as we continue to roll these things out ... it will get much bigger. We will .. expand continent connections, water pathways" for sailboats and flying.
When asked if they were improving existing tools for users, Patch stated they haven't gotten new ideas or requests from the residents, going on to say his team doesn't make the tools regular users of Second Life put to use, but use them as well. Grumpity called it "eating our our dog food," commenting one can only put so much on a prim.
Of Sansar, Grumpity stated she and Patch have been "rooting for the success of Sansar" but they've been mostly looking from the sidelines with their attention on Second Life.
After a while, questions came from the audience. One was if the Lab was trying to improve Second Life's Search function. Grumpity answered that there was a project ongoing about that, adding a few years ago there was another for Marketplace search, calling it "painful and complex."
It was asked if having an app to get on Second Life via mobiles would affect age restrictions. Grumpity stated the introductions of mobile clients would have "zero effect on that." They were also asked if there were any plans for a new grid that didn't allow for adult content so educators could more easily use it to teach younger students. Patch stated that would require a policy change by the Lab, "the idea of a second grid isn't foreign, but it's not on the roadmap." He would go on to say Sansar pretty much handles that function and there's been much improvement there lately.
When asked about plans for artist development, Patch responded that the Linden Endowment for the Arts was in "hiatus." But people have come forward to the Lab to offer ideas to move things forward, so he told the audience to watch for developments.
Asked about why the number of groups residents can be in is limited due to a design issue, it was answered that the Lindens were able increase the number of groups after some infrastructure work, notably for Premium residents.
One question was how can Linden Lab overcome the impression that Second Life is a "seedy world." Patch Linden didn't think that was the case, and if so not as much today as yesterday. Grumpity went on to say the Lab welcomed Second Life's different communities with their different interests.
The last question to the Lindens was how would they like to see more interaction with the education community in Second Life? Grumpity wanted a more open forum for conversation, "We can highlight your work, and you can influence ours." Before leaving, the Lindens asked the audience to spread word about the educational resources of Second Life.
Even though motor vehicles have long been the dominant form of transportation for about a century, there's something about riding horses. In this week's Second Life Destinations, Linden Lab puts the spotlight on places and groups related to horses, or "Horse Riding and Enthusiast Communities."
This week, we shine a spotlight on the many virtual horse communities in Second Life. ... there is renewed interest in equestrian experiences across the Grid. Horse
lovers need places to saddle up and ride...and there’s no shortage of
destinations that cater to horse enthusiasts ... Check out the Pets & Animals category in the Destination Guide for even more options.
The Burnal Equinox art and music festival starts today, Friday April 12. From today at 10 AM to Sunday at 11PM, the Spring Spinnoff of the Burn2 event will take place with many sights to see, and much tunes to listen to.
Burnal Equinox is our traditional event that we hold midway between
our annual October “big Burn” events. This year the theme for the spring
event is “Eyes to the Skies”. Creatives are invited to start thinking
about tunes, writings and art to bring to the playa.
So, what is this “Eyes to the Skies” theme about? And when is the event? Glad you asked.
The next event of Burn2, Burnal Equinox, takes place the weekend of
12th through 14th April. As it happens, the opening coincides with a
worldwide celebration of the first human to enter space, called Yuri’s
Night.
So, how do we celebrate space, the Great Beyond, on the dusty dry
desert lake bed we call the Playa? That’s for YOU to decide! While
keeping playa aesthetics always in the forefront of your mind, you can
create art and music to celebrate space, human curiosity, and the
explorer’s spirit that led us to fly ever further “out there”.
You are invited to come and do this with us, explore with us, create with us, dance and play and … of course, BURN!
The Mainland gets something of a bad rap among Second Life residents, and not without reason. The land is cheap and there's lots of sims to explore. But there are the ban lines that put your casually going about to a halt. And there are the security orbs that give you just a few seconds before teleporting you back to your home location.
So it got my attention when Lia (Female Winslet) told me about some obelisks she found by the road on the Mainland. Dropping by one at Route 10 at Tangna (65/53/77), ir was marked "Good Neighbor Commandments for Second Life Mainland" on the bottom. On each of the four sides, there were suggestions for better Second Life living, written in the style of the Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not set thy security orb to teleport people without at least a one minute warning, lest thou beest a jerk.
Thou shalt not block roads or sea lanes with thy objects, nor shall ye set ban lines, for they are the suck.
Thou shall allow build and run scripts on thy land and use autoreturn to keep it neat and tidy, for it is thy friend.
Thou shall beget privacy walls, screens, and shrubbery around thy land which please the eye of thy neighbor as they do thyself.
The obelisks were made by Abnor Mole. Besides the one at Route 10, I saw a few more at Marybank (55/211/51), Hae An (165/120/50), and Lippert (104/214/179). Lia told me of a few other locations I hadn't checked. So will these black stones get more people to clean up their acts, or rather their land, a bit? Hopefully they will, and we can go about Mainland a little longer before running into another yellow barrier.
Your welcome to the 6th annual 2019 Sunbeamers RFL Air Show and Fly In on Saturday April 13th from 8 AM to 4 PM SLT.
Included in the event is an Airship Steeple Chase. For a donation of 100L, or what you feel like giving, you enter and are given for free a bicycle blimp you pedal through a series of jumps above the ground. The fastest time at the end of the day wins 500L and a cheap trophy. We will be providing a pedal power balloon for the contest so all are equal. For those who wish to pilot their own airship may do so but will not be in the contest, it will be just for the fun of it.
There are more events for any donations around the field. One such is dunking your partner or other victim in a nice cool dunk tank, that is instead of a beanbag you fire a German 88mm shell into its target!!, Then there is being shot out of a cannon straight up to the moon where a provided special RFL 2019 textured parachute for free gently brings you back down.
In addition to the cannon bring your new tested parachute along to a parachute jump from an airplane from 2000 meters at scheduled times.
There will be planes on display with information about them. Some Pilots will be on hand to give rides and flight demonstrations or you can just BYOAP [Bring Your Own Airplane] and stunt around yourself.
A self-portrait by a skunk friend, it looked like he was mad at something. So I captioned it, and showed it to him. He chuckled, and told me it was okay to post it if I blanked out the name.
A few days ago, the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, or VWBPE, conference took place. Among the volunteers was the Newser's Gemma Cleanslate. Besides helping out, she also took the time to watch some discussions, look at some of the exhibits, and take part in the games.
If you're been having trouble teleporting across Second Life lately, you're not alone. Lately, a number of people in group chats I've listened in on, as well as friends and associates in private messages, have been complaining about various glitches on the grid. Besides the lag, probably the most frequent complaint I've heard has been crashing while trying to teleport from one spot to another.
Well, it seems things have gotten to the point that the Lab has to acknowledge there's a problem. In the "Tools and Technology" part of the official Second Life blog on Monday April 9, they posted that they're aware of the problem.
Many Residents have noted that in the last few weeks we have had an increase in disconnects during a teleport. These occur when an avatar attempts to teleport to a new Region (or cross a Region boundary, which is handled similarly internally) and the teleport or Region crossing takes longer than usual. Instead of arriving at the expected destination, the viewer disconnects ...
The Lab believes that the cause is "a timing-sensitive failure in the hand-off" between sims when a teleport takes place, and there doesn't seem to be a way to eliminate the chance of a crash. They have people trying to get to the root of the problem and get rid of it. "Quite unfortunately, this problem dodged our usual monitors of the behavior of simulators in the Release Channels, and as a result we're also enhancing those monitors to prevent similar problems getting past us in the future. We're sorry about this - we empathize with how disruptive it has been."
A few residents I've talked to wonder if Linden Lab's moving information of it's data centers to cloud servers has something to do with recent bugs. When Patch and Grumpity Linden spoke at the VWBPE last Thursday, Grumpity stated the Lab was "very carefully moving things and not disturbing the way things are set up." So if one takes the Lab's word for it, the problem isn't The Cloud.
In the meantime, it looks like residents will be dealing with the possibility of their teleports ending up as viewer crashes, and having to restart the viewers and slowly log back in.
Yuri’s Night is a global celebration of humanity’s past, present, and future in space. Yuri’s Night parties and events are held around the world every April in commemoration of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human to venture into space on 12 April, 1961, and the inaugural launch of the first Space Shuttle on 12 April, 1981.
Futuristic, space-related or early '60s fashions are encouraged, but in no way required...and there will be freebies available!
Friday, April 12th 2:00-4:00 pm DJ Aristippus spins space-themed tunes and songs of the Space Age.
Aristippus, The Sexy DJ, has been spinning tunes for roughly a decade, specializing in rock ’n’ roll. Some years ago, he began cleaning and recording his personal collection of vinyl records. Now, except for the rare special occasion, his sets include only the music that comes from his vinyl.
For those out in the open sims of the Outer Metaverse, you can celebrate Yuri's Night (also Friday, 12 April) with a full cast of singers and DJs at ISM's Kitely facility.
3 pm pst Dj Rosa Alekseev 4 pm pst Dj Jahka Flowens 5 pm pst Dj Libra Tyrell 6 pm pst Dj Stone Lunasea 7 pm pst Singer Agatha Nowles
Here's what's going on at the Sunweaver and Montecito Bay clubs and Furry Fashion's Furscape
Club Cutlass: Best in "L", Black and Gray, Surf's Up
The Happy Vixen: Squirrels and Skunks, Space, Lapines and Vulpines, Blue and Green, Lizards and Wizards, Worst Superheroes, Slumber Party, Long Tails, TBA
Club Zero Gravity: DJ JB, DJ Snowbuns, DJ Naughty Nydia, DJ JB
Montecito Bay: Rainbow Rave Night, National Humor Month, Lem N Em, After Dark, Black and White
FF Furscape: CAYA, Cute, 80s, Horror, Sci-fi, Angels and Demons, Neon, Late Night Lewdness, Scales and Fur, Celtic, Metal
Linden Lab's "Second Life Destinations" from a few days ago is a small step to a time and place most of us have seen only in movies, downtown New York in the 1920s-1940s period.
Put
on your very best era-appropriate outfit (think Guys and Dolls, The
Great Gatsby, The Aviator, or Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) and step
through the Time Portal and into New York in the 1920 - 1940s. This
week’s Destination video takes a jazzy glimpse into the steaming
streets and humming hustle of New York during one of it’s most
interesting times. Sip a daring drink the speakeasy, cut some rug at the
Cocoanut Grove, and experience life outside our current timeline, as
you travel back to the noir time of an era gone by!
Please Help Us Save Our Hair and Support the American Cancer Society and Relay For Life of Second Life 2019 Bid Me Bald All Aboard Team Challenge
Chemotherapy and cancer treatments can cause many side-effects, most commonly hair loss. The Relay Rockers, in support and honor of anyone who has heard the words 'You Have Cancer', offer our hair to help the American Cancer Society Save Lives, Celebrate Lives and Lead the Fight for a World Without Cancer.
As part of the 2019 Bid Me Bald All Aboard Team Challenge our Team will be competing against other teams to raise funds in solidarity with these heroes of the fight against cancer. The team that raises the most in their special Kiosk will shave the head of the team with the smallest total
~~~~ Please Help Us SAVE OUR HAIR! ~~~~
Our Kiosk can be found at Arinultra Cay (186/46/27) from April 5th to 14th!
Please be generous!
And don't forget to join us on April 14th at 3 pm for a Hair Cutting party at the Barbershop
A few days ago, the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference took place. For three days, there were a number of discussions and other events. While the event itself is over, the exhibits will be up for another few weeks. During the event, Newser reporter Marcel Mosswood talked to Elli Pinion, one of the women behind the VWBPE. Elli answered a few questions about the event, and her motivations for taking part.
Wesley Regenbogen is a biker in Second Life. He's a member of the Cobra's Motorcycle Club, or Cobra's MC. But he also wants to raise money for "Be The Match," a group that helps people with blood donor matches. Deaflegacy recently met up with him, and gave him an interview. He had a few things to say.
Two big events in Second Life came to a close this weekend. On Saurday night, the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education had it's conclusion with the closing ceremony followed by a Dick Clark Tribute Concert, featuring performers representing various singers of the past from Freddie Mercury to Louis Armstrong to Aretha Franklin to (preteen) Michael Jackson. On Sunday, the Relay for Life's Home and Garden Expo had it's last shows, including a special appearance by Patch Linden at the Relay Rap.
The sims for the VWBPE will remain up for a few more weeks, allowing people to see the exhibits (and try out the underwater hunt). But it won't be long before those for the Home and Garden are closed. Later this month is the next mega-event for the Relay, the Fantasy Faire, which will be in temporary sims in the area.
Over the weekend, the Relay for Life's Team Sunbeamers reached a milestone. The total amount ot Lindens raised for this year passed the 100,000 Linden dollar mark.
Beamers: We hit 100K Lindens on the KIOSK, just 25K Lindens to go for GOLD! We can do this!
Team captain Rita Mariner, having just finished her "bubblegum crisis" following her "Bid Me What?" in which she had to be pink for a week, has volunteered for another Bid Me, though a less drastic one: "Bid Me Chipmunk."
I have also started another BID ME. I will go CHIPMUNK for a week for each 3000L reached.
Rita is occasionally called "Captain Chipmunk" when gaming.
As with other "Bid Me" events by Team Sunbeamers, there are two kiosks. One is for those who want the volunteer to stay as is, and another for the change. To donate, head to Club Cutlass at Sunweaver Bay (114/117/757).
Besides the "Bid Me," there are two upcoming events for Team Sunbeamers. One is the Farshore Field Air Show this upcoming Saturday April 13. Another is a party at the Happy Vixen Beach club on Saturday April 20.
With less than 25,000 Lindens left until the Gold fundraising level, already people are talking about Platinum. That rank is achieved at 250,000 Linden dollars raised. Last year, the team pulled out all the stops and made it to the never before achieved Emerald level. Getting there this year would take one million Linden dollars.
The April Fools joke article that we at the Newser pulled last Monday got a bit of chatter. Some loved it, "Hilarious!" Many just gave a chuckle or "laughing out loud." And some didn't like it, "Bix. Yur courting getting murdered here." Thank you all for the comments. For those who loved it, we'll try to be just as funny next year. For those who didn't like it, well, feel free to offer suggestions.
But this wasn't the only April Fools joke around, even in Second Life. Nydia Tungsten made an announcement that she would soon be doing a special calendar, but instead of her usual 12 pictures of anthro females it would be of the new Yinglet avatars. There were a few chuckles, and there were a few asking what a Yinglet was, but everyone quickly realized it was a joke. Marianne McCann of Bay City told me she'd made a joke announcement of leaving Second Life in a group IM chat. Draxtor Despress posted on his Twitter that he was leaving Sansar, followed later by "April Fool."
In the world of online comics, two I follow had a couple April Fool strips. In "Freefall," cartoonist Mark Stanley included a number of cameos with characters of several other strips. Those going to "General Protection Fault" found a parody of a default page that basically stated "if you can read this, the webmaster needs to get a clue." "The Belfry," which is a list of online comics, had it's page upside down.
With online games, World of Tanks and World of Warships didn't have the joke games they had in the past. But they did have a couple chuckles. World of Tanks had a joke video about the first tank on the Russian field, the MS-1, with the narrator praising it in ways that a used car salesman would be making notes of. For World of Warships, their April Fool was "Skipper," a matchmaking system to assist in making more compatable teams that was a parody of current dating software, "the socially-alienating swipe-based system behind today's hottest dating apps will be your ticket to the perfect team!" As in previous years, "War Thunder" had another April Fools game: "Earth Thunder." In this special game, players fought air battles in flying saucers shooting energy beams at one another over an abandoned city taken over by the aliens (video). Probably the joke game of War Thunder remembered the most was one of their first, the "My Little Pony" fighters in 2013. Years later, I still hear pony fans say they wish the company would bring it back.
So there's April Fool's 2019 at a glance. Hopefully you the readers had a lot of fun, and we'll be back next year with some
On Sunday March 31, Veterans Isle held it's monthly fundraising concert. Several live musicians and one DJ performed for the crowd for the event that went from 11AM to 4PM SL time (2 - 7PM EST). The money raised goes to the Homes For Our Troops charity, which helps wounded veterans keep a roof over their head. The events are organized by guitarist Frets Nirvana
As the musicians played on, people donated money to two house-shaped kiosks on either side of the stage. I dropped by as Melenda got off the stage, and the singer Wolfie (WolfStarFire Resident) got on. The lady whipped up the crowd, living up to her name as she howled into the microphone, and getting some in the audience to howl themselves. She reminded everyone that Frets had pledged to donate some of his own money for every so much raised, and challenged her listeners to have him leave with a much lighter wallet. About forty minutes into her set, the event had raised a total of 100,000 Linden dollars.
The event would go on to raise a total of 128,000 Linden dollars.
While Veterans Isle usually holds it's concerts on the last weekend of every month, next month has Memorial Day weekend. So it may be the weekend before.
If you've been in Second Life for a while, you may have heard about Primtionary. Based on the real life game of Pictionary, instead of using pictures on paper or a whiteboard, people use prims on stage to try to describe a word to the audience, which tries to guess the word. One regularly scheduled Primtionary takes place at Creations Park and The Palace. Marcel Mosswood, the new reporter on the Newser team, recently wrote about the games.
The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference officially started yesterday, the Kickoff event at 8 AM SL time. The Keynote was at 9:30, given by Tom Boellstorff.
There would be several events that day. Among them was one in which Patch and Grumpity Linden were talking about recent developments in Second Life, and near the end answered a few questions.
The VWBPE goes on until late Saturday April 6, with a schedule of events here (link).
It was a long day yesterday, and yours truly needs to rest before writing more.
When the results of Team Sunbeamers' last three "Bid Me" fundraiser events were calculated last Friday, two of the volunteers, Shockwave Yareach and Cynthia Farshore, were out of town. Both are back, and when they showed up at Club Cutlass last night, they were sporting their new looks. For the next few weeks, they will be each other's respective avatar type, Shockwave a goat and Cynthia a wolfess. "Nobody use the teleporters, except one at a time," Shockwave mused. Cynthia had the title "Subject to Change" over her name, commenting this felt like a bigger change from when she was a fox last year.
The "Bid Me" time periods for Shockwave and Cynthia, as well as Liska Fuchs and yours truly, end on April 19. Rita Mariner, whom is stuck as a pink bunny only until April 5, may do another "Bid Me" soon. As of now, the Relay team has raised over 89,000 Linden dollars.
The latest "Love Made in Second Life" video, featuring Morgue McMillan and Brendan Shoreland, "Was it Madonna who once sand that music makes the people come together? Well, in the case of Morgue and Brendan, it was music and Second Life that crossed their paths! Having met in Second Life in Spring 2011, the two quickly made plans to bring their offline lives together by the following summer (watch their airport 'meet-cute' recreated in Second Life in the video) "Morgue was involved with the poetry
scene, and Brendan was playing live music across the Grid - so it was
fate that the two should come together. Their initial spark began when a
poem that Morgue had written caught the attention of Brendan’s music
manager, who knew these two could make beautiful music together."
Taken at the Home and Garden Expo. With the lag making skin color taking a while to appear, this Superman avatar is looking more like the hero's flawed and often villainous doppelganger.
Second Life isn't really a "game," though one can play games inside it. Among activities one can do are races, and one can find a few racetracks around the Grid. But how about one in which your car goes up and down walls? At the AGRA racetrack, you drive a car out of a sci-fi setting, and race on a track that not only offers challenging twists and turns, but takes you up and down the walls. I had a few words with two of the people behind this unique race in Second Life, at United Furry Outpost, as well as seeing it in action myself.
VWBPE 2019 re:Vision will be started soon on April 4th. This year my exhibition is about “Bringing The Art From Isolated Region To The World Without Limit”. The VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education) main theme is to bring education through the virtual world. Here in my exhibition, I emphasized the role of the virtual world to art education.
Education is about entering information into the students’ mind, about training students' skills, and about the reveals of the student's self-confidence in developing their knowledge or skills. Art education also involves those three components. But in this remote area where I live, we lack the third component: self-confidence.
I started to teach kids here to painting since 2017, the main obstacle is that I couldn’t found such an event to exhibit their art in our area. For an artist to have self-confidence they need to participate in an art exhibition, that way artists can get exposures for their artworks, and also gain the compliment and criticism from the audience.
At 2018 I log in to SL again after six years hiatus. And then came the idea in my mind: I can bring art from the remote area to the world through SL! Then all happen as my presentation at the VWBPE.
My exhibition consists of two parts: the ground and the skybox. The ground is the welcome area, where I introduce our remote area conditions to the audience, the main presentation, and my RL photos about our beautiful region. In the middle, there is a teleport to take you to the skybox. In the skybox, there are my art installations about the success of our artworks traveling around the world and empty easels that represent artists in the remote area who is waiting for the chance to go worldwide.
The
welcome area
The ground
The Skybox
Through Through my exhibition, I also ask for collaboration from everyone who cares about the comprehensive art education of artists in remote area everywhere in the world. Together we can make a change!
As we blogged earlier this month (Announcing “SL16B” - Second Life’s Sweet Sixteen!)
SL16B is coming this summer - and part of the celebration means we will
be opening applications for Volunteers, Exhibitors and Performers. This
year, we are excited to return to being more involved in the
organization of all the events. In addition to the official Music Fests,
costume parties, and Shopping events, of the last few years, we’re
also returning to our roots and participating more in the development
and planning of the main SLB celebration.
Except for the SL3B, Linden Lab ran the first eight Second Life Birthday events. Then on April 2012, they announced they would not be organizing one that year. It was up to the residents to organize one, and eventually a team led by Doc Gascoigne did. "The Birthday" was saved. Although the Lab would slowly get a little involved with the Music Fest and a shopping event, Doc's team would continue organizing the main event up to the SL15B. The Newser would declare them "Persons of the Year" for 2018.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, or VWBPE. The event is "a global grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments." They show how virtual worlds can be used to further adult education.
Saturday March 30 was the Press Day of the event, in which some of Second Life's media got an early look. Phelan Corrimal and Beth Ghostraven addressed the small crowd.
The Kickoff event is tomorrow April 4 at 8 AM SL time. Check the calendar for a list of events.
DJ Geerkil has been written about before by the Newser as part of the "Dragon Crew," part of a team. Lately though, on occasion he's been "the dragon alone" as schedule changes mean he's sometimes without a co-DJ, which for a while helped him inspire conversation and banter between songs. Recently, Deaflegacy met up with him and had a few questions about his music playing.
Next to the Happy Vixen Club in the Purrfection Estates sim, a shall shop has sprung up: "Crazy Jazzies Gacha Resales." It's owned by Jasmine Dawn
Talking to Jasmine, she told me it was a place where one could get vouchers for some of the Chibi Noodle Avatars that were on sale at the Gacha Guild Spring event last month. Getting a voucher is fairly easy, she explained, "Simple really, click the yellow tags and you get the item name and the asking price, pay the tag, get the item."
In an announcement in the official blog, CEO Ebbe Altberg. Ebbe Linden announced that due to increasing complaints about lag, Linden Lab has decided to put a cap on avatar complexity, at least for those on standard accounts. Starting tomorrow, users without Premium accounts will be limited to a complexity rating of 40,000. While this seems like a lot, popular skins such as Maitreya can use up 80-100,000 with just the base body alone.
We at Linden Lab have strived to encourage improvement for this virtual world. However, the improvements on detail on certain avatars have come with a complexity that is more than two or three times that of characters in leading computer games. This increased complexity multiplied over many avatars has made attending popular events difficult to close to impossible for many without frequent graphics card crashes. So we are encouraging designers to be more creative and are putting a limit on how complex in polygons an avatar and it's accessories can be.
For regular residents who don't change from a high complexity avatar, when logging in tomorrow they will appear in the old default avatar, or "Ruth." Avatars under Premium accounts are unaffected, and still have no complexity limit, yet.
In the forums, one skin designer accused Linden Lab of trying to run her out of business, "Unless you're a pony or furry, you need lots of detail to look good." One fashion blogger felt Linden Lab's real reason was money, "There's an old joke it takes real money to look real beautiful. It seems The Lab wants a piece of that money and is once again reaching for our wallets."
Details are still coming in about this latest move by Linden Lab that is sure to generate no shortage of discussion.
The bids were closed on Friday March 29 at 8PM SL time at the end of Club Cutlass' party that night, and an announcement made by team captain Rita Mariner shortly afterwards.
Beamers: The current BID MEs have ended and here are the totals.
RITA: Bunny: 0L Pink Bunny: 5001L. I go pink for a week, due to the evil, nasty, vicious Bixyl, since that is what he picked.
SHOCKWAVE: Wolf: 50L Goat: 9000L, so goes goat for 3 weeks
CYNTHIA Goat: 50L Wolf: 9000L so goes WOLF for 3 weeks
Yes, a certain, usually foxy, reporter did make the last substantial bid into Rita's kiosk. And since Rita would be "tickled pink" to see the 'beamers reach 100K and then Gold soon, well, the avatar seemed appropriate.
In the near future, the team will be having an Air Show event. The date has not yet been announced.
Besides the Sunbeamers "Bid Me" events, there have been others. On Tuesday night, March 26, at the "Blarney Stone" pub in Dublin, there was a performance by "DJ Kayla and the Roos" from 7-9 PM.
Roos with a Dream and the Blarney Stone Irish Pub present DJ Kayla and the Kangaroos for Relay For Life from 7-9 pm tonight. Come and party with us as DJ Kay treats you to her favourite music.
The following day, there was a surprise rezzday party for Gem Sunkiller at the Home and Garden Expo, "Lets crash the Sim for Her REzDay!"
The Expo is still going on for a few more days. Later on will be the Sci-Fi con, and the Fantasy Faire, which in recent years has started to rival the Relay Weekend in attendance.
