Month: April 2014

Of signs, superheroes, dreams and new worlds

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s time to kick-off another week of fabulous story-telling in Voice, brought to Second Life by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library SL.

As always, all times SLT, and unless otherwise stated, events will be held on the Seanchai Library’s home on Imagination Island.

Sunday April 27th

13:30: Tea-time at Baker Street: The Sign of Four

Sign-of-fourTea-time at Baker Street sees Caledonia Skytower, Corwyn Allen and Kayden Oconnell open the pages of the second full-length novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, which was originally published under the title The Sign of the Four.

In 1888, Mary Morston come to Sherlock Holmes seeking his assistance in two matters. The first is with regards to her father. Having returned safely from India in 1878, Captain  Arthur Morston had arranged to meet his daughter at the Langham Hotel, London – but he had vanished from the hotel prior to ber arrival, and no trace of his whereabouts has ever been discovered. The second relates to a series of pearls he has received, at the rate of one a year, every year, from 1882 onwards. The pearls started arriving after she had responded to a strange newspaper query inquiring for her, and the last one had come with a letter, indicating she had somehow been wronged, and asking to meet with her.

Holmes discovers that the pearls started arriving shortly after the death of Major Sholto, a colleague of Arthur Morston’s from the army in India, and he is certain there is a connection between the two  – a connection which appears to involve an Indian fortress and the names of three Sikhs and a man by the name of Jonathan Small. Then the subject of a treasure and links between it and Arthur Morston, Major Sholto and Sholto’s sons are all revealed …

Find out more by joining Cale, Kayden and Corwyn.

18:00: Magicland Storytime – Spring into Spring

With Caledonia Skytower at the Golden Horseshoe in Magicland Park.

Monday April 28th, 19:00: More Sci-Fi Adventures

Gyro Muggins reads Shipping Clerk and The Available Data on the Worp Reaction.

Tuesday April 29th, 19:00: The Raven and the Storyteller

Aoife Niphrendil reads from A. Gouedard’s novel, an enchanting tale of the travels of a Raven called Wilf and Moon the Storyteller, both of whom are immortal, and of the people and events they meet on their journey. The stories told are set within the book as their journey unfolds, and in the tradition of fables and stories within a story.

Wednesday April 30th, 19:00: Flora and Ulysses

Kate DiCamillo’s second novel to win a prestigious Newbery Award (the first being The Tales of Despereaux in 2004), is at its heart, a comic superhero tale.

“The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him.

“What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry—and that Flora will be changed too, as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart.”

Join Caladonia as she begins to chart this lighthearted tale of eccentric, endearing characters, engaging illustrated by K. G Campbell.

Thursday May 1st

16:00: First Nation Tales

Sorties from the Ozland Gallery with Llola Lane.

19:00: The Dream of Rhonabwy

Set during the reign of Madog ap Maredudd, prince of Powys (died 1160), Breuddwyd Rhonabwy is a Middle Welsh prose tale long associated with the Mabinogion since its publication by Lady Charlotte Guest in the 19th century.

Framed in a narrative wherein Madog sends Rhonabwy and two companions to find the prince’s rebellious brother Iorwerth. Seeking shelter with shelter with Heilyn the Red, Rhonabwy and his companions settle down for an uncomfortable night’s sleep, only for Rhonabwy to have a most unusual dream about the time of King Arthur …

Join Shandon Loring as he reads this most curious tale, the ultimate meaning of which has long been debated without a clear consensus being reached.

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

With Finn Zeddmore.

Friday May 2nd, 18:30: Seanchai Library At Kitely

A special inaugural event marking Seanchai Library’s expansion into Kitely, where the Library has established  a 4-sim megaregion for storytelling in the on-demand grid, together with 8 standalone single region worlds.

The event will kick-off with an estate tour commencing at 18:30 SLT, and which will be followed by  ghost stories to be told at the Campfire Ring, one of twelve story-telling venues in the Seanchai Library Kitely megaregion.

Seanchai Library Kitely Links

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Please check with the Seanchai Library SL’s blog for updates and for additions or changes to the week’s schedule.

Related Links

SL projects updates 17/3: TPV developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday April 25th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.

Release Candidate Status

Interest List, Sunshine and Maintenance RC Viewers

[01:02] All of these RC viewers have been rebuilt during the week to use the current release viewer code base (version 3.7.6.289164, formerly the VoiceMO RC), and all look to be performing reasonably well. However, none have been in the release channel for long enough for significant stats to be gathered.

SL Share 2

[01:26] The SL Share 2 viewer was issued as a release candidate viewer on Friday April 25th, version 3.7.7.289497 (download and release notes). This viewer provides options to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr, and includes optional post-process filter capabilities which can be applied to snaps being uploaded to Flickr, Twitter and / or Facebook. See my review of the project viewer for further details.

Snowstorm Viewer

[02:30] The next Snowstorm viewer, featuring third-party code contributions from the open-source community (including Ima Mechanic’s BUG-1831 LSL syntax highlighting work, developed with the help of Cinder Roxley and Oz Linden), is now with LL’s QA team, and it is hoped this will be appearing as a project viewer in week 18 (week commencing Monday April 28th), assuming no issues are uncovered during the QA process.

Oculus Rift Viewer

[04:05] Other than bug fixes, the  current Oculus Rift closed beta viewer is not expected to go through any significant updates for the time being. However, it is anticipated that there will be further work on the viewer once the Lab has access to the new Rift SDK, and that this may well be “very significant”.

Zipper Project Viewer

[04:30] It is anticipated that the faster installation “zipper” viewer (currently version 3.7.5.288507 – download and release notes – dated March 28th) will become a release candidate viewer “very soon”.

Mac / Cocoa Update

[06:48] There is still no single project at the Lab which is focused on Mac Cocoa issues. However, fixes are being developed and are starting to appear as a part of overall viewer development and release process.

The current release viewer (version 3.7.6.289164), includes a Vivox update to the 4.6.x libraries, and so should resolve Mavericks-related voice issues (among other voice issues). Also, the Maintenance RC (version 3.7.7.289405) has a number of Mac / Cocoa fixes, including: MAINT-3135 “Cocoa Viewer: Mac Maximizing the viewer leaves garbage on the screen”; MAINT-3288 “MAC – Fullscreen mode issue in Viewer 3.6.7 (281793)”; MAINT-3506:  “Copy & Paste on mac viewer often generate undesired special characters at the end of the pasted line sometimes leading to crash “; and MAINT-3642 “Mac viewer can no longer export textures to TGA format”. However, as there is no over-arching project for Mac / Cocoa fixes, it is a case of checking the release notes for new RC and project viewers as they appear.

The infamous ALT-camera Cocoa bug (see FIRE-12241 (MAINT-3171) is an issue the lab has been looking at but have so far been unable to work out  why it is happening. Oz Linden invited TPV developers to consider poking at it and contributing code if they felt it is something they might be able to resolve.

Webkit Update

[12:01] Webkit is a third-party library used within the viewer for a number of tasks. For example,  it powers the built-in web browser, and is used to display profiles (unless you’re using a viewer supporting legacy profiles). It is also used with Media on a Prim (MOAP) and many in-world televisions.

There have been an increasing number of issues with webkit. The libraries used within SL are out-of-date, for example, something which has caused the Lab and TPVs a considerable amount of pain (see BUG-4763 and FIRE-12642, and FIRE-11057). Given these problems, Monty Linden has been focusing on trying to improve matters, notably by creating a new lqtwebkit library repo, which he describes as “extremely experimental”.

Firestorm have re-worked webkit for themselves, updating to version 5..2.1 for Windows, which seems to be resolving issues. They’re working to do the same with Linux and Mac, although there is a problem with the latter where buttons embedded in a Flash video will not work.

As reported last time, a further problem here is that the qtwebkit (on which lqtwebkit is based) has been deprecated by QT, so the Lab is faced with a decision as to what to do going forward. One option may be to go with CEF, but which direction the Lab will take has yet to be decided.

Fantasy Faire: a call to machinima makers

Posted on by Inara Pey

Following-on from yesterday’s blog posts on Fantasy Faire 2014, we now have news of the filming opportunities being offered to five machinima makers to gain access to the Fairelands ahead of the opening in order to create their films.

Given the popularity of the event and the number of visitors it attracts, filming machinima at Fantasy Faire can be fraught with difficulties. For this reason, five film-makers will be granted early access to the regions so that they can film their pieces without having to worry about frame rate issues, viewer lock-ups or people wandering into shot unexpectedly.

This doesn’t mean that only the five selected film-makers will be allowed to film in the Fairelands – just that they will be the ones receiving the advanced access; anyone else will be free to film once the gates have opened.

Why only five in advance? I’ll quote the official blog post:

People are still building, and each film-maker will need to work with us to ensure that they are filming what is finished (or certainly ready to film!). And as this is the first year we have done this, we want to ensure that we are able to help you to the best of our abilities.

Those interested in applying for a slot should:

  • Contact Saffia Widdershins in-world or via email at saffia.widdershins@gmail.com
  • Provide a brief outline of their proposed film (e.g. whether it will it be a story with actors, or something like an abstract from a travelogue, or something else)
  • Supply a link to a previous film or machinima they’ve made.

But hurry – applications need to be made by midnight SLT on Saturday April 26th.

In the meantime, I’ve included a couple of videos from last year’s Fantasy Faire, to hopefully serve as inspiration.

Keeping up with Fantasy Faire

You can keep-up with Fantasy Faire preparations and activities a number of ways:

Related Links

Videos by Designing Worlds (top) and Kara Trapdoor (lower).

Virtual Ability: Quality of Life speakers and presentations

Posted on by Inara Pey

Mental Health SymposiumOn Saturday April 26th 2014, Virtual Ability will be holding their 2014 Mental Heath Symposium, which I’ve been helping to promote via this blog.

With 24 hours remaining, before the event kicks-off on the 26th, this will be my final pre-event update.

The symposium, which this year has the theme “Quality of Life” will be held at the Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability island, with presentations running from 07:00 SLT through until 16:00 SLT on Saturday April 26th. Attendance is free, and anyone wishing to attend will be extended a warm welcome.

Here’s a round-up of the speakers and their presentations, courtesy of Virtual Ability.

07:00: Dr. Hillary Bogner, MD – Insights from Research: Depression Among Older Adults

H.BognerDr. Bogner is both is both a researcher and a practicing physician focusing on family medicine. During her presentation, she will discuss current and emerging research about depression among older adults, offering insight into identification, diagnosis, and management of this significant mental health issue. She will also explore how biopsycho-ecology can illuminate our understanding of depression and healthcare, and seek to answer questions such as how might healthcare processes be redesigned to reflect the specific principles identified in this research, and how might changes in practice have significant impact at the patient, clinician, and systemic levels?

Dr. Bogner currently serves as an Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and as an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She is also a Fellow in the American Academy of Family Physicians. Her experiences and expertise as a clinician, researcher, and educator, as well as her success as a peer-reviewed published researcher, offer a rich background for her presentation.

08:30: Teresa Goddard – Employment Equality Through Accommodation and Self-Advocacy

Teresa Goddard will discuss workplace accommodations and methods for advocating for oneself and others using the protections afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  Ms. Goddard will explain the stages of the accommodation process and will provide tips for navigating important steps, including making or recognising a request, exploring options, and obtaining medical documentation in support of requests.

A Senior Consultant from the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) at West Virginia University, Goddard fields questions from employees and employers regarding their rights and responsibilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act and assists in identifying accommodation solutions for employees with disabilities. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology and a master’s degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology from West Virginia University’s College of Human Resources and Education. Her professional experience includes work as an Educational Speech-Language Pathologist and as an English as a Foreign Language instructor in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, where in addition to classroom teaching, she led continuing education workshops on collaborative instructional techniques and cross-cultural understanding. Her research interests include assistive technology and cross-cultural perspectives on disability services.

10:00:  Dr. Nicolas Rüsch – Well-being Among Persons at Risk of Psychosis: The Role of Self-Labeling, Shame, and Stigma Stress

RuschDr. Rüsch is a consultant psychiatrist and Professor of Public Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry II, University of Ulm, Germany. He received his clinical training in Freiburg, Germany, and Rome, Italy, and spent two years working with Prof. Patrick W. Corrigan on mental illness stigma research in Chicago.

In his presentation, Dr. Rüsch will share insights from his recent research, which focuses on young people at risk of psychosis who may label themselves and may be labeled by others as mentally ill due to early signs of the disorder or due to interventions.

Until now, empirical data on the link between labeling, stigma and well-being in this group were lacking. Dr. Rüsch’s research assessed self-labeling, stigma variables, well-being and psychiatric symptoms among 172 young people at risk of psychosis in Switzerland. Results suggest that perceived public stigma, shame about having a mental illness and self-labeling are associated with increased stigma-related stress and with reduced well-being, independent of age, gender, psychiatric comorbidity and symptom levels. In addition to clinical early intervention programs, the research suggests a need for strategies to address the shame and stigma associated with at-risk states and early psychosis.

11:30: Dick Dillon – Super-good: Why People Serious About Addiction Recovery can become “Weller than Well”

DillonThe CEO of Innovaision, LLC, Dick Dillion has been in the mental health field for over 30 years in a variety of clinical, management and administrative positions. He was the co-founder of the Substance Abuse Services Department of a large Missouri hospital and developed that project to be one of the premier medically based programmes in a multi-state area.

His alter-ego, avatar Coughran Mayo, has spent more than seven years actively involved in Second Life, working for the NonProfit Commons initiative and building and hosting the Preferred Family HC region. He has made numerous presentations and been interviewed on Metanomics,  Rockcliffe University’s “Inside The Avatar Studio” program and other in-world news and issues programs. Innovaision LCC is dedicated to helping nonprofits realize the potential of using virtual worlds and other technologies and assisting behavioral health organizations to leverage their abilities using innovation and social and digital technologies.

In his presentation, he will offer information and ideas on how addiction recovery can offer a “super-good” outcome.

Continue reading “Virtual Ability: Quality of Life speakers and presentations” →

SL projects updates 17/2: Group chat, group bans

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments week 17 – recap

There was only on server deployment in week 17, and that was to the Magnum RC. It comprised the same server maintenance package as deployed to it in week 16, but with an additional fix for BUG-5763 (“AGENT_MOUSELOOK flag is often incorrect when llGetAgentInfo() is called within control() event”). There have been no reports of further issues, so it is anticipated that this package will be deployed to the other channels in week 18 (week commencing Monday April 28th).

SL Viewer

Updates

On Thursday April 24th, the Sunshine / AIS v3 RC viewer updated to version 3.7.7.289441, (download and release notes), while the SL Share 2 project viewer updated to version 3.7.7.289468 (download and release notes).

LSL Support for Materials

This has been an oft-requested feature, and has been under informal review within the Lab. However, some confusion was caused when the release notes for the SL release viewer version 3.7.6.289164 (promoted on Monday April 21st, and formerly the VoiceMO RC), apparently listed MAINT-3531 (“Feature Request: LSL support for material texture maps”) as resolved.

However, this is an error. So far, there has still been no actual work on the capability.

Group Chat Optimisation

There was a further test of Simon Linden’s ongoing group chat optimisation work at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday April 24th. This followed the usual pattern of multiple messages being sent by those at the meeting across two chat groups, with people sending message from different regions as well as Morris, where the Server Beta meeting is held. From my own perspective, I had no noticeable issue in switching between local chat and one of the group chat sessions, even with a lot of messages passing through the latter, and didn’t appear to result in any message loss or significant delay.

However, the second group did cause the viewer to lock-up for up to 20-30 seconds at a time when switching to it, and appeared to be linked to the fact that one test participant was repeatedly pasted a veritable wall of text in to the group chat (which, while pushing the viewer, was probably not representative of how most people engage in group chat sessions). Both Simon and Maestro Linden believe the extended pauses were viewer-side, rather than anything in the back-end chat servers, with Maestro observing, “My guess is that the typesetting of all that text, profile icons, etc., is taking a lot of time.”

There’s still no news on when testing with larger groups will commence on Agni, although Simon hopes this will be “soon”.

Group Bans

Baker Linden, ironing-out the remaining issues with Group Bans
Baker Linden, ironing-out the remaining issues with Group Bans

Baker Linden has been working on the group ban functionality – notably the viewer-side code, although there have been some server-side updates as well. He had a new test viewer available for people to poke at during the Server Beta meeting, and which includes the latest updates found in the release viewer, as well a various fixes.

One of the latter is a fix for the issue whereby only the first name on a list of people being invited into a group would be checked to see if that person had been previously banned (and thus prevented from joining); anyone else further down the list would had been previously banned would be allowed to re-join on receiving the invitation.

Baker also noted a message has been added as well for these situations, “so you should get a notice saying some people in your invite list are banned from the group and weren’t sent an invite,” he said prior to testing. “I’ve noticed this to be a pretty sporadic thing, but I don’t think it’s something I can easily fix — the code showed that it was sending every time.”

While no formal testing was carried on with the latest updates to the viewer, it was noted that there appears to be an issue with the people picker option, in that it failed to locate people for banning – even when they were standing alongside the person with group ban powers. This will doubtless be looked into further.

Those wishing to test the group ban functionality can do so by downloading the test viewer and running it on Morris on Aditi.

Fantasy Faire: come gather and tell your tales – or join in with others!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Towards the end of Fantasy Faire 2013, a story competition was held, inviting people to weave a tale of their own focused on one – or all – of the Faireland regions, with the winners appearing in a special edition of Prim Perfect magazine.

This year will see another short story contest  – with the addition of a poetry competition as well. Full details have yet to be announced, but if you feel inspired to weave a tale or compose a verse (or more) on this year’s Fairelands, then your words might well be immortalised by the balladeers and storytellers from the Kingdom of Prim Perfect magazine!

Lumenaria, Fantasy Faire 20134 by Inara PeyLast year, the Faireland regions were used as the inspiration  / settings for a short story competition run is association with Prim Perfect magazine – will this year’s region inspire you to write a story or verse – and perhaps see your work appear in a future edition of Prim Perfect magazine?

Machinima Opportunities

At Fantasy Faire 2013, Draxtor Despres produced some special preview videos of the regions, including this one of Mayah Parx’ Ravenshard.

This year, there will be special advanced access granted to the Faireland regions for five machinima artists, allowing them to film in peace ahead of the Faire opening. Details on how to be involved in this unique opportunity will be announced soon.

Role-play

But if story writing and verse or machinima are not your forte? Then how about joining-in with the tales started by others? As noted in my last update, this year there will be three role-play groups located in the Faireland regions, and each one is inviting visitors to join-in with their various tales and goings-on.

The Revenge of Professor Timmons

A renegade aristocrat and an evil scientist with revenge on their minds are using illicit Strand-world technology to create a murderous clockwerk automaton.  After damaging the power-center of the NeoLondon Cathedral, they decamp to Planet Asperatus and the NeoVictorians follow to bring them to justice! Beginning on 1 May in NeoVictoria SIM, they will be bringing the story to the Fairelands on Monday, 5 May when their intrepid band of roleplayers land in the sky-city of the Fairelands: Asperatus!

Presented by the NeoVictoria Roleplay Group.

Trade Wind Pirates

A group of desperate pirates have found themselves stranded in Blackwater Glenn, desperately seeking funds to repair their ship. What lengths will they go to accomplish their goal? You’ll certainly find a warm welcome in their impromptu tavern – but will you also find your pocket lightened?

The Rickety Weasels

In Wiggenstead Mooring, between the lagoon and the tavern, live a group of feral kids who call themselves “The Rickety Weasels”. They ferociously protect the four Guardians of the Elemental Stones, which keep the balance of the Fairelands.

(Don’t forget as well, that the Sanctuary RP Community are this year sponsoring the Fairelands Junction region, and Safe Waters Foundation are an event sponsor.)

And There’s More …

As well as the story and poetry competition and the role-play opportunities, this year’s Fantasy Faire will see a number of other special activities, including:

  • A special ballet production: in advance of the opening of the Faire, a special ballet will be staged and recorded. You’ll be able to see this on Fantasy Faire blog and elsewhere in the days leading up to the Faire.
  • A photography competition: the Faire organisers are looking for the photographs that best capture the spirit of each of the eleven regions of the Fairelands, which will be included in a RL calendar (with credits for the photographers) to be sold to raise money for Relay for Life. But … eleven sims … eleven months. What of the twelfth? That one will be the photograph that – in the opinions of the judges – best encapsulates the spirit of the Faire. Not only will it be the image for the twelfth month – it will also appear on the cover of the calendar.

Details of all these activities can be found in the Fantasy Faire blog.

Keeping up with Fantasy Faire

You can keep-up with Fantasy Faire preparations and activities a number of ways:

Related Links