Wednesday, February 3rd marks the start of a new weekly music event at Holly Kai Park, and an invitation is extended for anyone so minded to join us.
Music with Anthony will take place on Wednesdays between 16:00 and 18:00 SLT, and will feature music provided by Anthony Wesburn, who has been a Second Life DJ for almost 10 years.
With a passion for music which is focused on, but not exclusive to, the blues, classic rock and jazz, Anthony describes himself as no walking jukebox. Instead, between playing the tunes, he loves to engage with his audience, sharing tidbits about the music and the artists he’s playing, and sometimes the eras in which they performed.
The venue for Music with Anthony is Holly Kai Park’s beach side Caitinara Bar, a cosy spot adjacent to the beach on the west side of the park, and with moorings available for those who wish to attend by boat (60 minute auto-return, and re-rezzing from the docks).
So why not make a note in your diaries and join us Wednesdays from 16:00 SLT through to 18:00 SLT, starting on February 3rd, for dancing, great music and great company? With Art at the Park just a short walk across the beach and along woodland paths, Holly Kai Park, Music with Anthony and the Caitinara Bar have a lot to offer!
On Tuesday, February 2nd, the Main (SLS) channel received server maintenance package 16.01.21.310177, previously deployed to the three RC channels, comprising Internal simulator fixes and a fix for BUG-1313 “LSL llSetPos in root prim of attachment behaves differently at high altitudes – viewer does not show updates”, which can cause attachments to fail to update correctly at altitudes over approximately 1500 metres.
There are no scheduled deployments to the RC channels for this week, and there are currently no plans for any deployments in week #6 (week commencing Monday, February 8th). Some suspect this is because nest week will see one of the semi-regular meetings those at the Lab directly involved in Second Life have to determine projects and priorities taking place.
Simulator Moves
The Tuesday rolling restart apparently included a number of simulators previously on the RC channels also being redeployed onto the Main (SLS) channel. There has been no word on why this is the case, although it might simply be a re-balancing of simulators between the various channels (Main, Magnum, LeTigre and BlueSteel), or part of a server load balancing operation (the Lab used to undertake periodic re-distribution of simulators by server, but I believe that process is far more automated nowadays).
SL Viewer
The anticipated Maintenance RC viewer arrived in the viewer release channel on Tuesday, February 2nd. Version 4.0.2.310545 includes some 38 updates and fixes for, but not limited to: memory leaks; viewer crashes; UI, permissions and mesh uploader bugs; visual muting issues, autopilot issues and duplicated calling cards (which should hopefully prevent people seeing some / many of the calling cards in their inventory duplicated each time they log-in to Second Life).
Outside of this, the current official viewers remain as:
Current Release version: 4.0.1.310054, January 15 – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer download page, release notes
HTTP updates and Vivox RC viewer, version 4.0.2.310349, dated January 27th
Quick Graphics RC viewer, version 4.0.2.310127, dated January 20th
Project viewers:
Project Bento (avatar skeleton extensions), version 5.0.0.310099, dated January 20th
Oculus Rift project viewer, version 3.7.18.295296, dated October 13th, 2015
Obsolete platform viewer (Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7), version 3.7.28.300847 dated May 8th, 2015.
Project Bento Bone Survey
Those involved in work with the Project Bento avatar skeleton extensions are reminded that the Bento Bone Survey, while currently open, but is liable to be closed soon. The survey intended to gauge the level of interest in various bone proposals for the Bento skeleton is now available. So if you are an animator or content creator with a vested interest in Project Bento, and if you haven’t already completed the survey, please make sure you do so sooner rather than later. The Lab will be using the results to help with prioritising which additional bones people would like to see added to the Second Life avatar skeleton as a part of the Bento work.
Now open at The Living Room, the delightful art and music venue operated by Owl, Daallee and Nora, is a new double-header exhibition, one I’m particularly please to see take place, featuring as it does the work of sculptress CioTToLiNa Xue, who is displaying her work alongside the equally eye-catching 2D art of Thea Maiman.
Regular readers here will know of my appreciation of CioTToLiNa’s art, which I first encountered whilst visiting an exhibition of Mistro Hifeng’s work. I was immediately struck by her emerging ability to present emotive studies; so much so, that I was determined to have her display her work at my 2015 LEA installation, Impressions – and remain pleased that she accepted my invitation to so do.
Entirely self-taught, CioTToLiNa has been learning 3D and 2D techniques over the course of the last year, between intensive university studies in veterinary medicine. Extremely shy, she believes she still has a lot to learn and is hoping to further refine her skills. This may be true – creativity as always an evolving process after all; but I think it fair to say her abilities are already self-evident, as the pieces displayed at The Living Room demonstrate. For me, it’s an absolute pleasure to see more people taking an interest in her work and offering her opportunities to exhibit – long may it continue!
I am a little ashamed to admit that prior to visiting the Living Room I was nowhere near as well acquainted with Thea Maiman’s work as I am with CioTToLiNa’s – however, my visit has certainly rectified that! Thea’s work focuses on avatar studies, with those presented in this exhibition richly textured and evocative in both style and study.
Thea says of her work that she finds her inspiration in melancholy and darkness, although light and colours can also move her as well. All of these are evident in the works on display at The Living Room, where the idea of darkness can be interpreted through the use of her subject’s eyes being obscured by dark make-up or covered by a blindfold, while other images contrast this in the use of colour, whilst sometimes simultaneously conveying a sense of the subject being on their own, which pushes slightly at the idea of melancholy.
None of the above should be taken to mean the images are in any way depressing – far from it. There is a vibrancy and life within Thea’s work which contrasts strongly with her stated sources of inspiration, and which makes them a delight to see.
CioTToLiNa and Thea will remain at The Living Room through until Tuesday, February 23rd, depressing; when a closing party will be held, featuring the music of Lazarus Doghouse. And don’t forget the Thursday Music Party at The Living Room, which this month takes place on Thursday, February 18th, and features Agusto Napoli at 17:00 SLT, followed by The Vinnie Show! at 18:0 SLT.
Update: February 8th, 2016: Catznip 10.1 beta is now available. Functionally, it is exactly the same as the R10 release except is has a much updated openJPEG, If you are a Catznip user and are experiencing crash issues, this beta may help.
To find out if your issues are openJPEG related, go to Preferences > Crash Reports. and if you see openJPEG anywhere on that page, you should updated to the R10.1 beta as soon as you can.
Saturday, January 30th saw the long-awaited release of Catznip R10, the first update to the viewer in some 18 months, largely as a result of fate playing a very unfair hand to members of the Catznip team (and it’s good to see you back in-world Kitty, and hoping your recovery swiftly moves beyond the uncomfortable stage) .
Currently, the release is for Windows only, but it see Catznip come right up to date with the current release version of the official viewer, including support for Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF), for modern media support.
Lab Updates
Obviously, so long a period between releases means that there have been a string of major and minor updates from the Lab, all of which have had to be incorporated into Catznip R10, and which have all be covered to one degree or another in the pages of this blog. With this in mind, and to avoid boring people with a lot of repetition of information already available, I’ve summarised the cor Lab changes found in R10 below, together with links to additional information for those who need it.
Revised Log-in / Splash Screen
The first noticeable change is that Catznip R10 now uses the revised log-in splash screen as deployed by Linden Lab, which places the log-in options at the top of the screen. However, because Catznip is unlikely to be the first viewer new user to SL are likely to encounter, the “first time log-in” option has been disabled.
SL Share 2 and Unified Snapshot Floater
SL Share 2 capabilities, introduced in 2014, allow users to upload snapshots directly to Twitter and Flickr, while the unified snapshot floater provides an initial means of accessing the options to upload snaps to Facebook, Flickr and Twitter from within the snapshot floater, as well as adding a much larger snapshot preview panel.
Group Ban Functionality
Group Bans allow group owners and those roles provided with the ability within a group, to remove troublemakers from that group / prevent them from joining / re-joining the group.
HTTP Pipelining
HTTP pipelining enables the viewer to issue multiple asset fetches on a connection without waiting for responses to earlier requests. This helps to improve things like initial scene loading. In addition, the pipelining code includes improvements to inventory fetching.
Avatar Hover Height
Avatar Hover Height, developed as a direct request of a proposal put to the Lab by members of the Firestorm team, allows “on-the-fly” adjustments to be made to your avatar’s height with the minimum of fuss and without having to use the Edit Appearance Hover slider or use a modifiable shape.
Experience Keys
Also referred to as Experiences, this allows creators to build more seamless and immersive experiences in Second Life without the need to constantly ask users to grant permission to act on their avatar. Instead, permission is requested once when they join (or re-visit) the experience, and then revoked when they leave.
Viewer-Managed Marketplace
The Viewer-Managed Marketplace, or VMM, enables merchants to manage the creation and management of Marketplace product listing through the viewer, bypassing the need to use the Merchant Outbox (and have copies of items stored on the Marketplace inventory servers) or using Magic Boxes.
In addition, there has been all the maintenance, snowstorm and other releases which have all board improvements and changes to the viewer, and all of which have been incorporated into Catznip R10. These include, but are not limited to: viewer build library updates, interest list improvements, inventory handling updates, GPU benchmarking, attachment fixes, the ability for an avatar to wear up to 60 wearable layers – jackets, shirts, tattoo, alpha, etc. – in any combination, rather than being restricted to a maximum of 5 per specific layer type, and so on.
Notifications Floater Improvements
Caznip offer a means to filter received notifications as well as a drop-down list for displaying notifications by category
A further update made to the official viewer during 2015 was that of the Notifications floater, which appeared in the latter part of 2015.
For those unfamiliar with it, the Notifications floater allows incoming notifications (group, system, invitations and transactions, to be sorted and displayed for easier viewing. The default floater splits all such notifications using a tab system, with a tab for each category.
In implementing the feature, however, Catznip have made a couple of improvements.
The first of these is that rather than presenting received notifications under a series of sub-tabs, Catznip R10 allows the user to select which category of notifications they wish to view (or all of their received notifications) via a drop-down list, removing the need for any scrolling between tabs.
This has allowed the Catznip team to include their second improvement, in the form of a search filter. This allows users to filter notifications based on criteria such as originating group, sender’s name, etc. If, like me, you are someone who receives a lot of group notices, this significantly eases sorting through and finding those to which you might want to pay particular attention.
Calas Galadhon – Gulf of Lune (click any image for full size)
Monday, February 1st marks the official re-opening of Calas Galadhon Park after the New Year’s break the park’s owners, Ty Tenk and Truck Meredith, traditionally take following what is a hectic three months for them between October and December each year. Although truth be told, “break” is perhaps not the right word, because while the parkland may well be closed, Ty and Truck, together with Rmoie and Kerena, are rarely putting their feet up – they’re generally hard at work making changes and tweaks, and generally preparing for the new season.
For those unfamiliar with Calas Galadhon, it is one of the largest, longest-running privately held parks in Second Life, open to everyone to enjoy and offering a marvellous range of attractions and events throughout the year. The park is completely non-residential, and supported entirely by donations and out of Ty and Truck’s own pockets. And it is, in a word, beautiful.- and you can find out more through the park’s website.
Running an endeavour as big as Calas isn’t easy, and over the years there have been changes; some have been brought about by the economic climate, others for personal reasons.
The latter has played a part in Calas Galadhon’s new look for 2016, as Ty recently explained in a blog post. In sort, two of the southern regions of the park, Eryn Vorn and South Farthing have been “retired”, reducing the park to 10 regions. Glanduin had also been selected for retirement, but in the end, neither Ty nor Truck could bear to see it go, and so its pastoral setting has remained.
Calas Galadhon – the view along the revised coastline from Dimrill Dale towards Glanduin
This loss of Eryn Vorn and South Farthing means the southern coastline of Calas Galadhon has changed, and I confess I’ll miss winter walks through the deep snows of both, looking out over the narrow channel of water to the tall mountains of the region surrounds. but, in contrast, the broad bay which now replaces the two regions offers its own beauty and opportunities for photographs.
Other changes in the park, I understand, include some changes to Dimrill Dale, new landscaping for the Main St garden next to the Victorian Pavilion, a new Gallery Wine Bar and an updated balloon tour system. And of course, the favourites remain: horse riding, boating, kayaking, hiking, climbing, and discovering all the secrets of Calas Galadhon, spread right across the parklands.
Music and live events will also be taking place throughout 2016 at both OZ Nightclub and the Dolphin Café. In fact, music it will very much be a part of the re-opening week, with Reggie Sunset performing at The Dolphin Café from 19:00 SLT on Monday, February 1st, and OZ Nightclub hosting HammerFLA Magic on Friday, February 5th, 2016 from 19:00 SLT, and Samm Qendra on Sunday, February 7th, 2016, again from 19:00 SLT.
I’ve always loved Calas Galadhon. Ty, Truck Romie and Kerena between them produce a marvellous environment we can all enjoy. What makes it especially enjoyable for me this year is that I’ll be able to share the pleasure in discovering Calas for the first time all over again, as it is somewhere Caitlyn has yet to see in all its glory.
So, once again, thank you, Ty and Truck for your generosity in giving us so much to enjoy.
Onirica, literally meaning “dream”, is the latest exhibition to be hosted at the +Black Label Exhibition Corner+. It features the work of Italian artist Terrygold, who also curates the Art on Roofs exhibition space at Solo Donna.
It was at Solo Donna that I first became acquainted with Terrygold’s remarkable images, during her exhibition Ceramic Dolls, which I reviewed here. At the time I was struck by the exquisite beauty of her avatar studies, and I’m pleased to say that Onirica continues in a similar vein, further illustrating her skill and artistry with design, composition and imagery.
The majority of art is displayed with two rooms of an exhibit space which itself forms an overall part of Onirica, and which perhaps suggests different states of vision.
In the first – which forms the arrival point – is bathed in turquoise light and features 11 pieces arranged along two walls of a room bearing a subtle hint of science-fiction about it. Most of the pieces here are in colour, and feature Terrygold herself as the model. Two of the pieces, locating among the six lining one wall, carry an echo of Ceramic Dolls, offering something of a link between the two exhibitions, whilst two others have clearly been composed within the Onirica spaces, as is one of the pieces on the facing wall.
This room also features a sixth image, framed and hanging at the far end, relative to the landing point. This presents a dramatic study of a nude Terrygold standing within a room pock-marked with dimples in the floor, into which frozen drops of liquid appear to be falling, trailing long strands behind them, which disappear into the darkness overhead.
An arrow on the floor invites you to step through the picture. Doing so leads you into this room of drops, the turquoise space you have just left now framed on the wall behind you, suggesting a move from one state of dreaming to another. A single framed image lies in front of you, a further arrow inviting you to step through it. But before you do, be sure to try the poseball floating amidst the frozen drops, and become a part of Terrygold’s art yourself.
The third room contains a large colourful mobile surrounded by 16 further images spaced around the walls, the majority in black and white. Some of these images again carry faint echoes of Ceramic Dolls, featuring as they a porcelain-like Terrygold. At the same time the images here are all quite individual, standing distinct from her earlier exhibition, each of them an evocative study guaranteed to capture and hold one’s attention.
Terrygold describes herself as “a builder, interested in art”. I think she is being too modest. Onirica demonstrates that in both her images and her designs, Terrygold is very much an artist first and foremost; the blending of setting and pictures within this exhibition is simply exquisite.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 