Lumenaria. I’d often heard the name. A beacon of hope and light standing against the world’s ills; a place I’d longed to visit but which seemed forever out of reach. Just now I stand on the stone streets beneath a golden sun and warm skies, bathed in colour, light and life.
Tall walls provide safety to those within, who paint the roofs of their houses and stores with gay colours which match the rich blossoms and flowers which grow alongside the paths and within gardens. Water splashes from fountains, and everywhere is the sound of mirth and good humour.
Luminaria, Fantasy Faire, 2013
Even the names of the stores suggest life and the warmth of dreams wrapped with a hint of exotic mystery: Solarium, Oran, Garden of Dreams, The Library, KittyCat’s Creations, Elysium, Pywicket’s Myths, Bare Rose, and more. Around me roam wonderful creatures the likes of which I’ve never seen and which the locals call “Meeroos”, and small, industrious folk who refer to themselves as “Dwarfins”. Overhead flies a great dragon, magnificent wings flung wide in the warm airs, a great sky-ship slung beneath it, from which at times I hear sounds of music and delighted revelry.
Weary from my travels, I will rest awhile here. Perhaps I will climb the nearby tower soon, and ride another skyship to that great dragon and see what it is that so delights all who visit it on high …
Luminaria, Fantasy Faire, 2013
Region designed by: Kayle Matzerath
Sponsored by: Solarium; featuring: Dwarfins; Garden of Dreams; Kittycat’s Creations; ND/MD Skins & Shapes; Mythos; Pyewicket’s Myths; and with themed stores: Old World; Oran; *~ Dream Things ~*; Panda Express; Luas; Quixote’s Dream; ~The Library~; ::{Elysium}::; 22769; Bare Rose; Meeroos.
Total raised on day 1: L$1,960,572 (approx: $7,842 USD)
It’s time once again for lovers of the spoken word to update their diaries for dates at the Seanchai Library SL, as storytellers there bring us a host of new tales to tell.
As always, all times SLT, and unless otherwise stated, events will be held on the Seanchai Library’s home on Imagination Island.
Sunday April 21st
13:30: Tea-time at Baker Street: The Final Problem
Professor James Moriarty as penned by Sidney Paget in 1893, for the Stand Magazine’s publication of The Final Problem
Join Caledonia Skytower, as she brings us John Watson’s telling of Holmes’ most famous encounter – with that of one Professor James Moriarty.
Holmes arrives at Dr. Watson’s one evening in a somewhat agitated state and with grazed and bleeding knuckles. He has apparently escaped three murder attempts that day – the result of his attempts to bring a criminal enterprise led by Moriarty to justice.
Despite the attempts, preceded by a visit from Moriarty himself warning Holmes to break off his attempts in order to avoid a “regrettable outcome”, Holmes is determined to stop the ciminal mastermind, seeing it as the crowning achievement of his career as a detective.
However, with Moriarty very much his intellectual equal, Holmes knows that the task will be far from easy; indeed, Moriarty’s own pursuit of Holmes forces the Great Detective, Watson at his side, to depart England for the continent where they eventually arrive in Switzerland. Here they rest at an inn, the EnglischerHof in Meiringen, a town in the canton of Bern and which is famous as a stopping place for those wishing to visit the nearby splendour of … the Reichenbach Falls …
18:00: Magicland Storytime
Gail Carson Levine is an author of young people’s fiction and perhaps best known her spirited updates to familiar folk tales starting with Ella Enchanted, her debut novel published in 1997, and stories like Cinderellis and the Glass Hill, which recently featured at the Seanchai Libary.
Join Caledonia Skytower, as she brings us more fairytales from the pen of Gail Carson Levine at Magicland Park.
Monday April 22nd, 19:00: Fairytales: straight up with a chaser
Join Crap Mariner and guest Taralyn Gravois, as they serve up a heady mix of fairy tales with a twist – and I’m not talking lemon or ice.
Tuesday April 23rd, 19:00: Mircofiction with Brokali
Wednesday, April 24th, 19:00: More adventures with Polar Bear the Cat
Cleveland Amory and Polar Bear the cat
Join Kaydon Oconnell and Caledonia Skytower as they bring us more tales about Polar Bear, the Manhattan cat saved from the streets by Cleveland Amory.
An animal rights activist, Cleveland Amory provided Polar Bear with a home after finding on the streets on Christmas Eve 1977. This incident led to Amory writing The Cat Who Came for Christmas, recently featured as a part of the Seanchai Library’s festive season of tales.
The book was followed by several more charting Polar Bear’s adventures and the proceeds from which were put back into his Fund for Animals, which in turn financed three animal sanctuaries.
Here Caledonia and Kaydon present A Difficult Matter and other selections from The Cat Who Came for Christmas.
Thursday, April 25th, 19:00: “Lost Coast” – more tales from the surf
In April Seanchai are inviting library guests to join them in supporting their featured real world charity Project Children! Have questions? IM or notecard Caledonia Skytower.
In a week where many eyes are going to be focused on Fantasy Faire, it’s worth remembering that April 20th through 29th 2013 also marks Bay City Fashion Week.
Now it its second year, the event is a week-long celebration of style and design in SL hosted at the Bay City Fairgrounds, North Channel. This year, the selected theme is The American Urban Experience 1940-1965, and will feature displays from a selected cadre of designers, together with fashion shows and other activities.
The designers taking part in this year’s event include Schadenfreude, Sonatta Morales, Misha Kerang Designs, FIN, Robin (Sojourner) Wood, Eclectica, Volstead, 1-800-BETTIES, Ingenue, Purplemoon Creations, Rhapsody, Vita Bella, Delicate Sensibilities, and Pure Poison. They were selected on the basis of their designs fitting the theme for this year’s event, which is perhaps best typified by Chicago circa 1950, and marked by a distinct deco influence.
In a week which is going to be dominated by Fantasy Faire, the Bay City Fashion Week offers a possible escape to a more intimate affair, and is certainly a must-see visit for those into vintage fashion designs – so why not pop over and take a look?
Further information on the event can be obtained from Marianne McCann in-world.
About Bay City
Bay City is a mainland community, developed by Linden Lab and home to the Bay City Alliance. The Bay City Alliance was founded in 2008 to promote the Bay City regions of Second Life and provide a venue for Bay City Residents and other interested parties to socialize and network. It is now the largest Bay city group, and home to most Residents of Bay City.
An updated beta viewer was released on April 19th (3.5.1.274264, with release notes here), which contains a range of updates, including several for SSB/A. Speaking at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, 19th April, Oz Linden indicated that the current plan from the Lab is that this is likely to be the last beta viewer release for the SSB/A code unless a major blocker shows up. Assuming this doesn’t happen, then it is more than likely the SSB/A will move to the SL viewer release channel and arrive as a viewer update towards the middle of week 17 (week commencing Monday, 22nd April), which should hopefully be an automated update for most users on the SL viewer, given the majority appear to keep that option active on their viewers.
Given us, it is liable that we’ll start seeing more TPVs updates appearing in the near future – and people using TPVs are going to need to start installing and using those updates rather than remaining with older versions of their viewer if they are to avoid the “grey people” syndrome as the server-side of SSB/A is deployed.
Users will need to update to a version of their preferred viewer supporting SSB/A as they are made available if they are to avoid seeing grey people once the deployment of the server-side of SSB/A commences
Server-side Deployment
The precise means by which the server-side will by deployed is still not absolutely clear. As noted a number of times in this blog, Nyx Linden is hoping that things will progress somewhat cautiously, possibly starting with a set of “carefully selected and constrained regions on Agni” as the viewer code reaches the SL release viewer. This still appears to be the case, but it is possible that it will not – as Nyx has previously hinted – roll through the Release Candidate channels.
“I don’t know whether it will go through the normal RC process,” Oz Linden commented at the TPV Developer meeting, “Because it’s not actually a server software change; it’s a configuration change, so they don’t need to deploy it through the RC progression. All they have to say is, ‘Yes, throw the switch!'”
If this approach is taken, it’s currently not clear whether or not it will require a region restart.
In terms of time frames as to when this might happen, things are similarly unclear at this point – a lot depends on how well the testing on the selected Agni regions progresses. However, Oz suggested that the time frame in which the “switch may be thrown” to be anything between 2 and 6-8 weeks from when the viewer-side code appears. His analogy was that of a bell curve, wherein the switch-over could occur at the top of the curve – but could, if circumstances dictate, occur at either end of the curve.
Communications
It is still hoped that there will be a concerted effort on the Lab’s part to communicate server-side baking ahead of any server-side flipping of switches. A blog post is apparently in preparation, which should go out when the SSB/A code is issued in the release viewer; whether this will be supported by other means of communicating the changes is unclear.
However, communications on the whole is not easy – even with the TPVs also liable to be spreading the word through blogs, etc., (as Firestorm have already). This is because even with the official blog, TPV blogs and blogs such as this one, the vast majority of SL users do not read blogs.
Matters are also further complicated by the fact that there are over 1700 different viewer strings which are used to connect to SL (even if not on a daily basis). These not only include the official viewer and current versions of TPV-registered viewers, but also many instances of older versions of TPVs, Snowglobe (1.x) based viewers, several versions of the official 1.x viewer (some of which date back over 5 years), viewers which are not registered with the TPV directory, self-compiled versions of various viewers, and so on.
As such, whatever the effort made to communicate the arrival of SSB/A is liable to be missed by a good number of users and people are going to find themselves facing grey avatars as a result of the switch to SSB/A, because many of these additional viewer strings will not have the necessary viewer-side code. This inevitably means that there is going to be some disruption and upset. While this in turn doesn’t mean that attempts to communicate the coming change shouldn’t be made – but it does mean that even with the best efforts of the Lab and TPVs combined in communicating SSB/A, there is going to be an outcry. So anything all those who are aware of the upcoming changes can do to communicate it to others – particularly when there is a visible log post from LL on the matter which can be referenced – can only help lessen the volume of that outcry.
Those of us who spend the majority of our time in Second Life are just starting to get our heads around materials and opportunities it presents for enhancing mesh, prim and sculpt builds and attachments. Now OpenSim may not be that far behind, as Marcus Llewellyn commented on this blog, and has himself explained on Bearly Written, where he tells us:
Dahlia Trimble, one of the core developers of OpenSimulator, has begun work on a module that gives OpenSim support for new materials on prim, sculpt, or mesh builds. The module that enables it is really more of a demonstration right now; it has issues setting materials, and they will only persist until a region is restarted …. Still, it’s a start, and an exciting one!
The work is still at a very preliminary point right now, as Marcus points out, with the server-side code still very much in its infancy. The work is also hampered by the fact that the only viewer currently capable of rendering materials is a project viewer from Linden Lab which isn’t actually intended to be connected to OpenSim (due to Havok licensing restrictions). However, this latter aspect should change once the code reaches a point where it is suitable for merging into third-party viewers.
Both of these point mean that there is still much more work to be done – but Dahlia, with assistance from Marcus himself and Nebadon Izumi has made a good start on things, and the simulator code is already available for those who want to give it a go or help-out with the work.
Marcus has more information on the project over on his blog, and I refer you to him for a good overview of the project. IN the meantime, here’s a video of Dahlia’s work. Kudos, Dahlia!
Fantasy Faire 2013 gets underway on Saturday, 20th April 2013 in a week-long celebration of all things fantasy and fantasy role-play in Second Life and in direct support of Relay for Life of Second Life.
This year brings together another set of stunning regions created by some of SL’s top designers and packed full of lots of goodies from content creators right across the grid. And the builds themselves really are amazing to see – so even if you’re not into fantasy or fantasy RP yourself, I really do recommend that you find time to go along and have a look at the eight themed regions as photos and words simply do not do them justice.
Fairelands by Saiyge Lotus
You can start your visit at Fairelands, where you’ll find a lush woodland by Saiyge Lotus, complete with teleports within tree trunks to whisk you to any of the eight themed regions. When you want rest and respite from the rushing around the Faire, come back here to sit and rest and renew among the trees or in the tall grass or sitting at the water’s edge…
Here’s an overview of each of the regions, together with a list of stores within them and some pictures I hope will whet appetites. I’ll be looking at some of the regions themselves in more detail over the next few days.
Lotus Valley Dream by Marcus Inkpen and Sharni Azalee
“The spirit world touches the material plane in this garden of bonsai trees and waterfalls surrounding an ancient pagoda. With such mystical elegance everywhere you look, this is a place to still your mind and connect with the magic within.”
Lotus Valley Dream
Sponsored by: The Looking Glass; featuring: Hoof It!; ezura Xue; Quest for the Golden Prim; FALCONROSE; Raven’s Heart; Demons & Angels; and with themed stores: SAKIDE; Pin Me Down; Caverna Obscura; Kouse’s Sanctum; Affinity Boutique; Ari’s Neko Retreat; NAMINOKE; 2Xtreme; Star Journey; Flecha Creations; TRU Textures.
Lotus Valley Dreams
Lumenaria by Kayle Matzerath
“A vast city with lots of colourful houses, shops and a huge castle where the main streets meet. A tribute to the sun and all the golden harmony it brings, the city of Lumenaria is a beacon of hope to any who seek refuge from the dark.”
Lumenaria
Sponsored by: Solarium; featuring: Dwarfins; Garden of Dreams; Kittycat’s Creations; ND/MD Skins & Shapes; Mythos; Pyewicket’s Myths; and with themed stores: Old World; Oran; *~ Dream Things ~*; Panda Express; Luas; Quixote’s Dream; ~The Library~; ::{Elysium}::; 22769; Bare Rose; Meeroos.
Lumenaria
Magnificat by Alia Baroque
“The Relay Royales kindly invite you to their summer palace and gardens for a week of diversions, plays, games and leisure to celebrate life and magnify your souls.”
The Magnificat
Sponsored by: Fallen Gods Inc; featuring: Evie’s Closet; Lilith’s Den; Living the FantaSea; MacMoragh & Muse; House of Rfyre; Wasabi Pills; and with themed stores: Frippery; Balderdash; Ankle Biter; Yabusaka; Musa; Skinthesis; Sax Shepherd Designs; Decadent Courtesan; Heartistic; Gwen’s Hearth; Forest Feast.
The Magnificat
Ravenshard by Mayah Parx
“Where beauty has lost its perfection to a collection of twisted shards reflecting the wondrously literalistic minds of Burton, Pratchett, and Dahl. The lands will be distinct. The shops anything but square, and some may even have feet! Be warned. It’s funky, it’s fun, and it’s anything but straight!”
Ravenshard
Sponsored by: Epic Toy Factory; featuring: F*cking Ninjas; Epic; United InshCon; Bentham Manor; Fae Fantasy Creations; FuubutsuDou!; kisetsu; Simply Fae; and with themed stores: Lupoaica; Almost Wonderland; Grim Bros.; Stuff Xavian Made; Madpea Productions; .:CoLLisions:.; ~SWAN~; Feyline Fashions; [europa]
Ravenshard
Titans Hollow by Elicio Ember
“The cliff city of Caras Calar dangles high above ground, suspended from the fickle rock formations. The Structures are made of a filigree of crystal, wood and metal, and hung with gigantic chains from the columnar cliffs giving the appearance from below of huge floating lanterns. The sunken valley over which the city hangs is forested with strange vegetation and irrigated from waterfalls plunging from the sheer cliffs. Legend has it a battle between ancient gods created this strange scenery.”
“The field of Oblivion will be built as an homage to Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series, and will feature a central, gothic and ominous dark tower, in a wide open field of overgrown thorns and scarlet red roses. The store builds will hint at the long-gone remains of similar gothic structures, roof-less, with time-eroded stone walls entwined in overgrown rose thorns.”
Crimson Fields
Sponsored by TRIDENT; featuring: lassitude & ennui; [ContraptioN]; Satyrs Moon; FallnAngel Creations; meadowWorks; Unzipped; and with themed stores: The Muses; Vengeful Threads; Psst…Here Kitty, Kitty; Kishi Creations; ImpWerks; – NaLa –; MysticHope Design; TempT; The Elegant Goth; De La Soul.
Crimson Fields
The DragonSpire by Khyle Sion
“A barren land of stone and crystal, hiding its lavish secrets beneath the shell of the earth. The native Goblins, Drow, Dwarves and Nixies reside in the fruitful tunnels, lorded over by a Dragon and his horde. Veined with phosphorescent ores, freshwater streams and exotic fungi, these deep caverns hold remnants of a lost civilization.”
The DragonSpire
Sponsored by: The Arcanum; featuring:Dark Goddess Designs; Curious Kitties;Favourite Genes; Black Veil Outfitters;The Golden Thorn; ~Refined Wild~; and with themed stores: Niekra’s Dreams; Wilds of Organica; Tayren’s Fantasy Fashions; Sparkle Skye Designs; Elvenbreath; Dysfunctional Designs; *.:!Completely oBVious!:.*; Talevin’s Designs; Whatz; Analog Dog Hair.
Evensong Woods by Searlait Nitschke
“Resting in the treetops of is the elven enclave of Yuale Nura. Bathed in moonlight, the homes glow warm in the deep blues and purples of a winter’s night. A light dusting of snow gives the impression of undisturbed slumber, but perhaps all is not as quiet as first impressions suggest.”
Evensong Woods
Sponsored by Roawenwood; featuring: Boudoir; ~*Star Kindler Designs*~; Illusions; Mystique; Mindgardens Creations;ThatChick; and with themed stores: Swings Paradise Furnitures; Unique Obsession; Kotori; +Half-Deer+; {Lemon Tea}; An Lema; EagleHeart Designs; ~Sa-eela~; ~ Mystic Sky ~; .:EMO-tions:.
Luminaria, Fantasy Faire, 2013
Luminaria, Fantasy Faire, 2013
Luminaria, Fantasy Faire, 2013
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 