Veterans Isle Concert Raises 128,000 Lindens

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.

More more about Homes For Our Troops, click here: https://www.hfotusa.org .

Bixyl Shuftan

The Primtionary Games

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.

Read Marcel's article in Design. 

VWBPE Begins

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.

Bixyl Shuftan

RFL Team Sunbeamers Members "Subject To Change" Due to "Bid Me" Results

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.

Bicyl Shuftan

SL Video: "Love Made in Second Life: Meet Brendan and Morgue"

(Click here if the video does not play)

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."

Cartoon of the Day: Bizzaro Lag

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.

By Bixyl Shuftan

AGRA Racing

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.

Read the story in Design.

Reader Submitted: VWBPE - Bringing The Art From Isolated Region To The World Without Limit

By Marcel Mosswood

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!

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VWBPE%20Central%204/176/178/27

Marcel Mosswood

SL16B Applications Now Open, "We Are Excited To Return to Being More Involved" Says Linden Lab

Last Friday, Linden Lab announced on the official blog that applications for the Second Life Sixteenth Birthday Celebration, the SL16B, were now being accepted. They also announced that they would "return to being more involved in the organization of all the events."

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.

Exhibitor Application  - Applications close on May 15th, 2019  (Exhibitor Policies)
Performer Application  - Applications close on May 15th, 2019 ( Performer Policies)
Volunteer Applications  - Applications close on May 15th, 2019
Merchant Application - Applications close on June 1st, 2019
The applications to audition for the Music Fest are not yet available.

So after several years, apparently Linden Lab will once again be running "The Birthday." It should be interesting to see how things go.

VWBPE Is Tomorrow

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.

https://vwbpe.org/

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VWBPE%20Gateway/178/128/38

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

Here's what's going on at the Sunweaver and Montecito Bay clubs and Furry Fashion's Furscape

Club Cutlass: Best in "K", Neon Night, Yay Team

The Happy Vixen: Forest Critters, Skirts and Kilts, TBA, Canines and Cannids, Boots and Booty, Scalies, Sexy in Red, Cats and Mice

Club Zero Gravity: DJ JB, DJ Snowbuns, DJ Naughty Nydia, DJ JB

Montecito Bay: Kawaii/Pastels, Pretty in Pink, Amazing Eggs, Lem N Em, After Dark, Beach Spring Break

FF Furscape: CAYA, Celtic, Rainbows, Mythology, Party Animal, Pool Party, Flower Power, Leather n' Lace, Heaven vs Hell, 80s

Read the schedules in SL Clubbin'. 

Interview With Geerkil Ziskey, the Dragon DJ

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.

Read Deaflegacy's interview in People.

"Crazy Jazzies Gacha Resales"

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."

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Purrfection%20Estates/210/204/22

Breaking News: Linden Lab to Impose Complexity Limits on Avatars

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.

For the blog post in detail: Click Here.

Latest RFL Team Sunbeamer "Bid Me" Event Results

The latest three "Bid Me" events of the Relay for Life's Team Sunbeamers are done. Together, they've raised 23,001 Linden dollars for the team. The team total is over 88,000 Lindens, and well on it's way to the Gold.

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.

Go Sunbeamers! Go Relay!

Bixyl Shuftan

Scenes From The Relay

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.

Cartoon of the Day

From a picture taken by Jasmine Dawn. Somehow my Shiba Inu avatar glitched in her viewer, leaving me looking like I "crashed eyes wide-open into a beehive." But a more likely reason was coming upon "what was seen cannot be unseen."

Bixyl Shuftan

SSP/Bellisseria Update

The new landmass, the SSP land, or Bellisseria as the name has been recently been revealed to be, is starting to be placed. South of the Sansara continent, part of it appeared.

Many of the sims on the new land have been renamed.

Some of the sims on the southern part have yet to be placed.

From the continent of Jeogeot, there's a string of water sims. Currently one can almost but not quite fly or sail to the new land mass. It is still closed to the public.

At the Home and Garden Expo, it was revealed that the new continent will be where the new Linden Homes are.

Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Video: "Candolim"

(Click here if the video fails to play)

By Furry Alex in October 2018

Reader Submitted: The Second Life Name Issue

For several years, Second Life allowed everyone to chose from a list of thousands of last names with their choice of first name. It was without cost and without limit, as many if not most created alts over time who also had the same right or opportunity.

Then suddenly about eight years ago, they decided everyone should henceforth joining should be deemed "Resident."  This did two things. It made newcomers feel and look inferior, and it effectively created a permanent "Newbie" class of avatars.

They recently proposed bringing back last names, but only if people paid. This is highly unfair, especially to those who have been here five or more years and participated extensively in the economy. Should they pay when someone who logs in once a month and buys little or nothing for most of nine or more years got one or more for free?

Therefore I feel people who have been here several years and also made ample contributions to the economy, say for example at least fifty dollars worth in uploads a month and suffered under the Resident last name situation should be given a one time free name change, but future name changes could still be paid for everyone.

Kitacelia