A disappearance, an Alchemyst, and a walk through Wonderland

It’s time to kick-off a week of story-telling in voice, brought to our virtual lives by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s Second Life home at Bradley University, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, May 15th

13:30 Crazy Eights: Tea Time At Baker Street

Crazy Eights sees Caledonia, Corwyn and Kayden reading from The Return of Sherlock Holmes on Sundays from the living room of 221B Baker Street. This week: The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter”, Sidney Paget / Strand Magazine, 1904

Godfrey Staunton is missing. He’s the key player in Cambridge University’s rugby team (and also the heir of Lord Mount-James, his uncle).

With an important match against arch-rivals Oxford looming, Staunton needs to be found, and Mr. Cyril Overton of Trinity College, responsible for the university’s rugby team, has come to London to seek Holmes’ help.

Overton informs Holmes that Staunton had not been looking well and seemed preoccupied. Then, the previous evening, a bearded man had arrived at Staunton’s hotel with a note for him – and Staunton apparently vanished shortly afterwards.

Returning to Cambridge with Overton, Holmes and Watson set about their investigation, learning that the bearded man who delivered the note to Staunton appeared to be worried as well – the hotel porter noted his hand was shaking, and that he muttered something about “time”.

Staunton’s uncle is unable to provide information which may help matters. However an academic at the university, Dr. Leslie Armstrong, may hold the key to the mystery …

15:00 Crazy Eights: Storyteller’s Sandbox

The final Sandbox at LEA 9 featuring Eleseren Brianna with an original tale, and an original radio play from The Cold Shot Players, live in voice.

18:00 Magicland Storytime

Caledonia Skytower presents selections from the wonderful, imaginative world of author and illustrator William Joyce, including The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, Jack Frost, and Ollie’s Odyssey.

Monday May 16th, 19:00: The Alchemyst (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #1)

Faerie Maven-Pralou reads Michael Scott’s mystical magical novel.

AlchemystAccording to the records, Nicholas Flamel was born in Paris on 28 September 1330 and died in 1418. Only his tomb has forever lain empty, because Nicholas Flamel is the greatest Alchemyst of all time. Entrusted with the care of the Codex – also known as the Book of Abraham the Mage – Flamel found within it the secret of eternal life.

But there is much else in the Codex which, if used by the wrong minds, could very well bring about the end of the world. So, for 700 years, Nicholas Flamel has guarded the Book, keeping it from all those who might otherwise seek to abuse its secrets.

Until John Dee steals it. And John Dee has the desire to unlock the Codex and bring about the very cataclysm Flamel has always feared. Without the book, Flamel and his wife, Perenelle, will age and die, whilst with the book, Dee can thwart all attempts to recover it.

Enter 15-year-old twins, Josh and Sophie Newman. Prophecy has foretold of a time when the world would be threatened – and of the two youngsters gifted with extraordinary powers who will save it. Flamel recognises the Newman twins as those youngsters, and sets out to awaken their magical talents. So it is that Josh and Sophie find themselves cast into the middle of the greatest tale – the greatest confrontation – of all time.

Tuesday May 17th, 19:00: When Sisterhood was in Flower

sisterhoodThe writings of Florence King return to Seanchai Library as Trolley Trollop continues reading When Sisterhood was in Flower (1982),

Isabel, a conservative southern writer living in Boston, finds her life taking a number of strange turns. After an explosion brings down the wall of her apartment she is forced to share her living space with her neighbour, an ardent, humourless feminist called Polly Bradshaw. Then, between them, they take in nutty Gloria, who is fixated with all things medieval, including the lute, which she constantly plays, and the death of Edward II.

Things start unravelling further when Polly inherits a house in California, and unilaterally decides they’ll form a self-sufficient feminist commune there. Along the way, they collect Agnes, who is trying to escape her survivalist husband, and Martha, a widow whose estranged husband died after an unfortunate incident with an inflatable rubber doll.

Then Isabel has the opportunity to earn a living as a writer … of pornography …

Wednesday May 18th, and Thursday May 19th 19:00: Crazy Eights: The War that Saved My Life

War savedCaledonia Skytower reads Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s children’s story.

It is the Second World War, and when nine-year-old Ada’s little brother is evacuated from London to escape the blitz, she is determined not to be left behind because her mother is too ashamed to allow her to be seen in public with her twisted foot.

So it is that Ada, experiencing her first time in the world beyond the house in which she has always lived, finds herself on an adventure, adapting to life with Susan Smith, the woman charged with caring for Ada’s little brother, and who unexpectedly finds herself with a second ward in her care.

As time passes, Ada learns to ride a pony, watches for German spies, and finds a bond forming between her and Susan smith, a bond shared with her brother, but over which hangs the shadow of what will happen when they have to return to London and the cruelty of Ada’s mother.

Thursday, May 19th, 21:00: Seanchai Late Night

With Finn  Zeddmore.

Saturday, May 21st, 13:00: Crazy Eights: Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland – The Big Read

Saturday, May 21st
Saturday, May 21st

“All the words, all in one session from down the Rabbit Hole to Alice’s Evidence.  We begin and the beginning and go through till the end and then, we stop. Seven voice in rotation.”

—–

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

The featured charity for May / June is Habitat for Humanity, with a vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live – a safe and clean place to call home.

Additional Links

Bay City at Eight – and goes Silver with Child’s Play

Eighth Concert Poster (texture)Bay City celebrates its eighth anniversary on Sunday May 15th, and the Bay City community is marking the day with a another special time of festivities and fun to which everyone is invited!

Activities will kick-off at noon SLT with a parade line-up at the bandshell in Bay City – Harwich. At 12:30 SLT, the parade will make its way down Route 66, and proceed to the Bay City Fairgrounds in the North Channel region. GoSpeed Racer of KONA stream will be providing the music throughout the parade, which will be followed by at live concert from 13:30 SLT onwards at the fairgrounds.

The line-up for the concert this year comprises (all times SLT):

  • 13:30 – 14:30:  Zachh Cale. Influenced by Elton John, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, jazz standards, and many of the greats, he re-interprets rock and pop songs in unique way on piano/keyboards
  • 14:30 – 15:30: Maximillion Kleene. With a range from CCR to Foo Fighters and Train to Jason Mraz, he rings a vast repertoire of quirky, classic, and current covers to Second Life
  • 15:30 – 16:30: Noma Falta. Brings her own bluesy, soulful, music to Second Life, and brings the experience of fronting for numerous rock bands on RL concert.
Parade route and performers - click for full size
Parade route and performers – click for full size

Anniversary SLurls

Bay City Goes Silver

The event will be a cause for a double celebration. On Friday, May 13th, Marianne McCann announced that Bay City and the Bay City Alliance have received special recognition by Child’s Play charity, which Bay City has long supported:

Thanks in large part to our donations from our annual Hot Bay City Nights and holiday Tree Lighting & Silent auction Events, as well as the generous Linden Dollar gift from Ivan Suen, Bay City is snow listed as a Silver Level sponsor on Child’s Play’s website.

In addition, our donation kiosks are now transferred over to Child’s Play Charity. They have announced this on their website at www.childsplaycharity.org/misc/secondlife. You can learn more about the organization and their efforts there.

Congratulations to all at Bay City for their continuing efforts in supporting Child’s Play.

About Bay City and the Bay City Alliance

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.

 

Of outages and feedback

secondlifeI normally keep a close eye on outgoing communications from the Lab, but this week I’ve had other things distracting me, and so haven’t been keeping an eye on the official blog for posts and updates. My thanks therefore to reader BazdeSantis for pointing me to April Linden’s Tools and Technology update, The Story Behind Last Week’s Unexpected Downtime.

April has very much become the voice of the Lab’s Operations team, and has provided us with some excellent insights to Why Things Sometimes Went Wrong – a valuable exercise as it increases both our understanding of the complexities inherent in Second Life, and also what is likely to be going on behind the scenes when things do go drastically sideways.

April’s post refers to the issues experienced on Friday May 6th, when a primary node of a central database failed, with April noting:

The database node that crashed holds some of the most core data to Second Life, and a whole lot of things stop working when it’s inaccessible, as a lot of Residents saw.

When the primary node in this database is off-line we turn off a bunch of services, so that we can bring the grid back up in a controlled manner by turning them back on one at a time.

There’s an interesting point to note here. This is the same – or very similar – issue to that which occurred in January 2016, which again goes to show that given the constant usage it sees, Second Life is a volatile service  – and that the Operations team are capable of turning major issues around in a remarkably short time; around 90 minutes in January, and less than an hour this last time.

Both events were also coupled with unexpected parallel issues as well: in January,  the database issue was followed by issues with one of the Lab’s service providers – which did take a while to sort out. This time it was the Grid Status service. As I’ve recently reported, the Grid Status web pages have recently moved to a new provider. A couple of changes resulting from this have been with the RSS Feed, and integrating the Grid Status reporting pages with the rest of the Lab’s blog / forum Lithium service. However, as April also notes:

It can be really hard to tune a system for something like a status blog, because the traffic will go from its normal amount to many, many times that very suddenly. We see we now have some additional tuning we need to do with the status blog now that it’s in its new home.

She also points out that people with Twitter can also track the situation with Second Life by following the Grid Status Twitter account.

April’s posts are always welcome and well worth reading, and this one is no exception. We obviously don’t like things when the go wrong, but it’s impossible for SL to be all plain sailing. So, as I’ve said before (and above), hearing just what goes on behind the scenes to fix things when the do go wrong helps remind and inform us just how hard the Lab actually doe work to keep the complexities of a 13-year-old platform running for us to enjoy.

 

Silas Merlin at Visions of Beauty in Second Life

Silas Merlin - Visions of Beauty Gallery
Silas Merlin at Visions of Beauty Gallery

Open now at the Visions of Beauty gallery, curated by dj12 Magic, is an exhibition of almost entirely new works by Maître Pastelliste (Master of Pastels), Silas Merlin, aka artist Jean-François Le Saint.

I make no apologies in being completely smitten by Silas’ work; I was hooked the first time I saw it at Gallery 24 in January 2016, and I’m still deeply pleased Silas came to Holly Kai Garden to exhibit his work there as well. For those unfamiliar with his work, the exhibition at Vision of Beauty could be no finer introduction. It features 18 pastel portraits and studies, and presents a number of Silas’ mesh sculptures – mesh being a medium he has recently moved into as a means of presenting 2D art through the 3D medium.

Silas Merlin - Visions of Beauty Gallery
Silas Merlin at Visions of Beauty Gallery

The pastel images are in a number of different sizes, allowing the visitor to see their rich, layered complexity – and appreciate why pastels are such an ideal medium for portraiture; in my opinion outshining both water and oil for the life-line tone and feel they give to the subject being studied.

Silas’ work very much focuses on children, generally those in period dress and attending traditional or medieval festivals in Brittany, and this exhibition again demonstrates this. Created from the hundreds of photos he takes while attending the events himself, Silas has brought together a select of pieces which very much put us at the heart of such a gathering, surrounded by children in period dress, some sitting earnestly, others at play or participating in a traditional dance, while others simply sit and talk or laugh together.

Silas Merlin: Dancer at the Barre - Visions of Beauty Gallery
Silas Merlin: Dancer at the Barre at Visions of Beauty Gallery

The floorspace of the room is broken up by a set of Silas’ mesh sculptures, some of which are taken from his own studies, including Mock Fight, which made its debut appearance at Holly Kai Park.

However, of the sculptures on display, there is little doubt that Dancer at the Barre, located at the foot of the spiral staircase leading up to another gallery area, is the most striking.

A stunning 3D interpretation of the painting of the same name by Edgar Degas, Dancer at the Barre has beautifully captured Degas’ own unite style, his appreciation of his subject, the tone and colour of the original. In short the very essence of the original is marvellously raised in 3D.

Producing 3D versions of art is something that has long fascinated Silas; he’s previously voiced a desire to be able to produce such pieces, particularly with his own art, which he might then produce in the physical world via 3D printing. More recently, in discussing the idea, he’s suggested part of the fascination is to be able to see  – or at least imagine – what lies behind / beyond the core subject of a work of art, and present that as a part of a 3D piece.

Silas Merlin - Visions of Beauty Gallery
Silas Merlin at Visions of Beauty Gallery

For my part, I can say it has been a privilege and delight to see Silas realise this move into 3D art, and to witness his ideas for the medium evolve. I certainly look forward to seeing more of both his 2D and 3D work – and do genuinely encourage you to visit his exhibitions in-world, perhaps starting with this one, and to visit his studio space, should you wish to see more

SLurl Details

Benefit for Bri in Second Life

Starlight-Benefit-Poster-02
Benefit for Bri at the Starlight Ballroom, May 14th-31st, 2016

Commencing on Saturday, May 14th and running through until the end of the month is Benefit for Bri, a fund-raiser being held at the Starlight Ballroom to help the daughter of Second Life resident, artist and photographer, Tomais Ashdene.

Bri is currently studying at Purdue University, Indiana, to become a teacher, and is doing well. However, due to corporate downsizing, her family have hit some financial issues. So, to ease the burden on them of paying tuition fees, Bri launched a Go Fund Me campaign to raise the money she needs to continue with her education and obtain her qualifications.

Benefit for Bri has been organised by those close to Tomais, notably RickJ Ewing andr Kahvy Smith, to help raise funds to be put into the Go Fund Me campaign. The  shopping event featuring Consignment, Ex Machina, StoraxTree, Blue Balls, Powerdesgin, Fix Auto, Atelier by Stephano, Yer Old Gacha, Ohiomike’s Kilts, Lilliput for Tinies, Rosa Fashion, The Grey Goose, RickJ Designs, Sophie’s Choice, L.Querrien, Cake Fox, Photography by Tomais, Regimade, and Lazy Day Designs.

There will also be a benefit gala on Saturday, May 21st, featuring from 13:00 SLT, Samm Qendra, followed at 14:00 SLR by Reallymad Morpork, with DJ Kahvy spinning the tunes as well. Formal attire is requested, and the event is powered by JJ Goodman Event Photography.

Samm Qendra and Reallymad Morpork: singing at the Benefit for Bri gala, Saturday, May 21st
Samm Qendra and Reallymad Morpork: singing at the Benefit for Bri gala, Saturday, May 21st

Commenting on the event, the organisers  state:

Bri is an amazing young woman who found herself in a bit of a problematic financial situation as she is working hard to become part of the next generation of amazing teachers to our kids. All proceeds of this Benefit will go towards her Go Fund me Page after converting the lindens into USD and will be published there after the event.

SLurl and Additional Links

SL project updates 16 19/2: server, viewer, Bento Agni deployment

Rosemoor; Inara Pey, May 2016, on FlickrRosemoorblog post

Server Deployments Week #19 – Recap

The RC server maintenance package deployment planned for Wednesday, May 11th was postponed as a result of the 3-day Aditi outage delaying testing. The update, which comprises minor internal improvements which present no visible functional changes to Second Life, will now most likely go ahead until week #20 (week commencing Monday, May 16th.

Viewer Updates

The Quick Graphics RC viewer updated to version 4.0.5.315117 on Wednesday, May 11th, brining it to code parity with the current release viewer. Providing no major issues are uncovered, this might be the last RC update for this viewer prior to its promotion as the de facto release viewer.

Project Bento

As noted above, the Project Bento meeting was severely disrupted by continuing Aditi issues, which left people unable to reach the meeting either via direct log-in or via teleport.  As Vir Linden was also unavailable (due to an unrelated matter), Troy Linden steered the meeting, fighting against a slowly deteriorating region condition.

A pile-on test had been planned for immediately after the meeting with the intention of stress testing a region with a large number of animated Bento avatars all with active animations. The test was to have been an internal Lab test, but members of the Bento user group were invited to join-in as well if they wished. Unfortunately, the continuing poor Aditi performance force the test to be postponed.

Agni Test Release Deployment

Allowing for things like stress testing and unforeseen issues, the plan is for a test release of Bento on Agni (the Main grid) to be made during week #21 (week commencing Monday, May 23rd).

The release will be the current server-side support for Bento, plus the project viewer. It has not as yet been decided to make the deployment grid-wide, or restrict it to an RC channel  / dedicated channel.

The deployment is to gain a broader audience testing Bento assets and content and using the viewer. This does mean that if you wish to see or try Bento content, you will have to be using either the Bento project viewer, or a TPV which has the Bento updates.

Continuing voice issues rendered recording the meeting impractical, so hopefully normal reporting will resume  next week.