Day: January 25, 2016

Windlight Magazine: Mardi Gras challenge: L$5k prize pool

Posted on by Inara Pey

mardigrasOriginally a religious festival, Mardi Gras (“fat Tuesday”), refers to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after the Christian feasts of the Epiphany (Three King’s Day) and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday.

This year Mardi Gras falls on February 9th, and Windlight Magazine has partnered with Riel Estates to help Second Life residents get into the party / festival mood with a photography challenge offering a total prize pool of L$ 5,000.

All you have to do is pay a visit to Riel Estate’s St. John’s Parish, where you can find old New Orleans circa 1916, and take your photos! Up to three pictures per person can be submitted to the official Flickr Group to be entered into the challenge.

On offer are three prizes to the lucky winners, who will be selected by an independent panel, who will select the winning entries based on originality, creativity, technique, incorporation of your selected location and adherence to the challenge guidelines. The prizes are:

  • 1st Place: L$2,500 plus a double page ad in Windlight Magazine
  • 2nd Place: L$1,500
  • 3rd Place: L$1,000.

Guidelines

  • All photos have to be posted in the official Mardi Gras Photo Challenge Flickr Group
  • No more than 3 submissions per entrant
  • When posting your photos please use the following naming convention: Mardi Gras Photo Challenge – Photo #1-Your SL Name (Do not use display names). Add a #2 or a #3 for the additional photos you wish to submit
  • All photos must:
    • Include the SLurl of the St. John’s Parish location that you used
    • Be new and original. You can add the photo to other groups (please do respect the covenant of any club or venue, and make sure you obtain the permission of the venue owner to use their location in your submissions)
  • Nudity or adult behaviour is not allowed
  • Editing via Photoshop, Gimp, or any other graphics tools is permitted.

All entries must be submitted by midnight, Friday, February 5th, 2016, and the Flickr date and time stamps will be used to assess whether or not entries meet this criteria, so check your time zones. Winners will be announced on Tuesday, February 9th, 2016.

2016 viewer release summaries: week 3

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending Sunday, January 24th

This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release version: 4.0.1.310054, January 15 – no change download page, release notes
  • Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • HTTP updates and Vivox RC viewer updated to version 4.0.2.310097 on January 19 – combines the Project Azumarill RC and Vivox Voice RC updates into a single viewer  (download and release notes)
    • Quick Graphics RC viewer updated to version 4.0.2.310127 on January 20 – provides the new Avatar Complexity options and the new graphics preset capabilities for setting, saving and restoring graphic settings for use in difference environments / circumstances (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • Project Bento (avatar skeleton extensions) version 5.0.0.310099 released on January 20 – adds 90+ bones to the existing avatar skeleton (download and release notes).

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V4-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer updated as follows: Stable version to 1.26.16.9 and Experimental branch to 1.26.17.7, both on January 23rd, 2016 (release notes).

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Lab Chat #2: Ebbe Altberg – transcript and audio

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lab Chat #2, January 21st, 2016 - Jo Yardley, Ebbe Altberg and Saffia Widdershins
Lab Chat #2, January 21st, 2016 – Jo Yardley, Ebbe Altberg and Saffia Widdershins

Update Wednesday, January 27th: The official Lab Chat #2 video is now on-line, and is embedded at the end of this article.

Thursday, January 21st saw the  second in a series of discussions called Lab Chat, billed as “an opportunity for you to ask Lindens your questions during a live taping that will be recorded and archived for everyone to view.”

As with the first show, the session featured the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg in his alter ego of Ebbe Linden. In preparation for the recording, Second Life users were invited to ask questions about the Lab, Second Life, “Project Sansar”, etc on a forum thread.

Over 80 questions were asked, all of which were reviewed by the Lab Chat production team, and from which the list of question to put to Ebbe was drawn. The questions select were those the production team thought would be of most interest to the attending audience, or represented those questions which were asked multiple times by different people.

The following pages offer a transcript of the show’s recording session, which has been split into three parts:

  • Those questions and answers those related to Second Life
  • Those focused more on Project Sansar
  • Additional questions & audience Q&A.

The first two sections are presented in chronological order – as the questions were asked during the recording of the show. The additional questions have been grouped together (where possible) by subject matter, for ease of reference.

The Quick Links below will take you directly to each of these three sections, or to any of the individual discussion points within them. Each question / answer includes an audio extract of that question and response for those who wish to listen rather than read.

Quick Links

Concerning Second Life

Concerning Sansar

Additional Questions

Closing Comments

Note: this is not a transcript of the entire recording session. The focus is on the questions asked and responses given. Also, the audio extracts are from a recording which was cleaned-up following the show to remove repetitions, pauses, trailing comments which otherwise break the flow / context of replies. However, no attempt has been made to editorialise or in any way alter the context of any response given to questions.