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: 5.0.0.321958, dated December 1, promoted December 5 (no change) – formerly the Project Bento RC viewer download page, release notes.
Piers Sellers ( April 11th, 1955 – December 23rd, 2016): climatologist and astronaut. Credit: NASA
On Friday, December 23rd, news broke that astronaut Piers Sellers had passed away at the age of 61. His name might not be familiar to some, but British-born Sellers quietly achieved a lot both in orbit and here on the ground.
Born in 1955 in Crowborough, Sussex, Sellers held a bachelor’s degree ecological science and a doctorate in biometeorology. He was regarded as an expert on climate change, studying the relationship between the living world and the atmosphere for the better part of two decades starting in 1982, shortly after he and his wife (they later divorced) relocated from the UK to the United States. At that time he joined NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, working on climate change computer modelling. He then moved to leading the US team developing the multi-national Terra research satellite, regarded as the flagship Earth Observing System (EOS).
A qualified pilot, having trained as an RAF cadet while at college, he maintained his flight status throughout his first ten years in the United States, repeatedly applying for a position in the NASA Astronaut Corps. However, it wasn’t until 1991, when he gained US citizenship that he met all of the criteria to be considered for a place in the Corps, and he was selected for training in 1996.
After completing two years of training, Sellers was initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Computer Support Branch, followed by service in the Astronaut Office Space Station Branch, which saw him based in Moscow for periods of time, working with Russian colleges as a technical liaison for the development of computer software for the International Space Station (ISS).
Sellers on EVA during STS-121, his second flight into orbit, July 4th through 17th, 2006. Credit: NASA
In all, Sellers flew in space the times, starting with STS-112 (October 7th – 18th, 2002, Space Shuttle Atlantis), during which he logged a total of 19 hours and 41 minutes of extra vehicular activity (EVA) work, assembling elements of the ISS). In 2006, he flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery for the Return To Flight Mission, STS-121, of July 4th through 17th. This mission marked the first flight of the shuttle fleet following the tragic loss of the Columbia and all seven crew on board, on February 1st, 2003. Sellers performed three further EVAs on that mission, testing the 50-foot robotic arm boom extension as a work platform.
His final flight in space came in 2010 with STS-132, when he once again flew aboard Atlantis in what was to have been its final mission (although it actually flew once more, in July 2011). The mission delivered Russian Rassvet Mini-Research Module along with an Integrated Cargo Carrier-Vertical Light Deployable (ICC-VLD) to the ISS. In total, Sellers logged 35 days, 9 hours and 2 minutes in space, including more than 41 hours on six spacewalks.
In 2011, Sellers resigned from the Astronaut Corps to become Deputy Director of Goddard Space Flight Centre’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate, a position he still held at the time of his death, and later the Acting Director for Earth Sciences at Goddard. He was the author of 70 research papers, and in 2011 he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to science. In June 2016 he was bestowed the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, while shortly before his death it was announced he would receive e Gen. James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award, the highest award the Space Foundation can bestow.
Sellers (l) discusses the realities of climate change with Leonardo DiCaprio in the National Geographic documentary, Before The Flood. Credit: National Geographic
At the start of 2016, Sellers revealed he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and chose to do so by way of an article written for The New York Times entitled Cancer and Climate Change. Commenting on his diagnosis in the piece, he wrote:
I’ve no complaints. I’m very grateful for the experiences I’ve had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic night-time thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.
Despite his diagnosis, Sellers continued his work and research almost right up to his death. In October 2016, he appeared with Leonardo DiCaprio in National Geographic’s documentary Before the Flood. He described climate change plainly and simply:
Here are the facts: The climate is warming, We’ve measured it, from the beginning of the industrial revolution to now. It correlates so well with emissions and theory, we know within almost an absolute certainty that it’s us who are causing the warming and the CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions.
Commenting on Sellers’ passing, NASA Administrator Charles Bowden, himself a veteran of four flights into space, said:
Piers devoted his life to saving the planet. His legacy will be one not only of urgency that the climate is warming but also of hope that we can yet improve humanity’s stewardship of this planet.
Piers Sellers is survived by his ex-wife, his wife of 36 years, Amanda, their son Thomas and daughter Imogen and a grandson, Jack.
It’s time to kick-off the last week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library for 2016. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s Second Life home at Bradley University, unless otherwise indicated.
Monday, December 26th 19:00: Flight of the Phoenix
Gyro Muggins continues Elleston Trevor’s gripping 1964 novel which spawned two films, the classic 1965 version starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Hardy Krüger. Peter Finch and Ernest Borgnine, and the 2004 featuring Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi and Hugh Laurie
Twelve men survive the crash of their cargo plane when a blinding, unexpected sandstorm forced it from the sky in the middle of the Sahara. Stranded and alone and facing a slow, agonizing death under the unrelenting Libyan sun, only two of them have the skills to avert a terrible fate: the brilliant, obsessed engineer Stringer, and the tormented pilot Towns. Bitter enemies, they must now work together to build an impossible dream from the wreckage and fly it to freedom … if madness, rage, suspicion, and the merciless desert don’t destroy them first.
Tuesday, December 27th 19:00: How to Speak Dragonese (How To Train Your Dragon #3)
Climbing on to a Roman Dragon Rustling ship by mistake in your first ‘Boarding an Enemy Ship’ lesson is bad enough. But to then discover that Alvin the Treacherous is also on board proves to Hiccup he couldn’t have been more wrong, especially when he steals his copy of How to Speak Dragonese. Can Hiccup save the dragons and the day?
Caledonia Skytower reads the third How To Train Your Dragon book by Cressida Cowell.
Wednesday, December 28th 19:00: Faerie and Gina Take Off!
Stories for the season to uplift you with Faerie Maven-Pralou & Gina Pralou-Maven
Thursday, December 29th 19:00: Total Recall
Shandon Loring with Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Another book to have spawned two major motion pictures: the 1990 vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and co-starring Ronnie Cox, Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside, and the 2012 film starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, bill Nighy and John Cho.
Douglas Quail (Quaid in the movies), a simple and ordinary clerk, wishes to visit Mars. Unable to afford it, he visits a company, REKAL (pronounced “recall”) Incorporated, which promises to implant an “extra-factual memory” of a trip to Mars as a secret agent. The procedure involves administration of narkidrine, a sedative and truth drug, which causes Quail to remember and reveal that he actually did go to Mars as a secret government agent. His conscious memories of the trip have been erased, but are now slowly returning – much to the consternation of his handlers…
Friday, December 30th 15:00: New Year’s on Maeve Benchy’s Chestnut Street
journalist, columnist, playwright and author, Maeve Binchy began her writing career by accident, thanks to her father sending the letters she wrote to him while on a kibbutz in Israel during the 1960s to a local paper in Ireland, which subsequently published them. This in turn led to her being offered a job with The Irish Times on her return home, thus starting her on the road to becoming one of Ireland’s most successful and internationally recognised writers.
Through her career, she would often jot down short stories about an imaginary street in Dublin, where people would constantly come and go and experience the most diverse of times and situations. Once written, these stories would be put away for “the future”. That imaginary street was called Chestnut Street, located not far from the setting of her 2010 bestseller Minding Frankie. In 2014, these tales of the folk who live along, or visit that street were gathered together in a single volume and published posthumously under the title Chestnut Street.
Join Caledonia Skytower as she reads two seasonal tales from the volume, A Cure for Sleeplessness and One Night a Year.
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 November-December is Reach Out and Read, a non-profit organization that gives young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into paediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together.
This is the time of year when Second Life – as I’ve mentioned before – is awash with winter landscape, and many of us are out and about photographing and filming them (you can expect a few more in these pages when I’ve caught up with myself 🙂 ). But what about images of real life winter scenes?
Nils Urqhart is currently exhibiting a series of his physical world photographs at the Serena Imagine Arts Centre under the title Un Conte d’Hiver(“A Winter’s Tale”) present some 29 (including the one in forming the entrance to the exhibit images of snow scenes captured in the Bugey region in eastern France, where it forms a part of the department of Ain. If, like me, you’re a Tour de France fan, you’ll recognise it as the home of the Col du Grand Colombier, one of the most punishing climbs of the tour.
The Col doesn’t feature in these images, however. Instead, what we are treated to are marvellous winter landscapes. Snow lies heavy and deep on the ground; it gives a frosted finish to trees and lies centimetres deep on rooftops and piled atop fence posts. Skies are overcast such that the horizon softens into them, the snow encouraging a gentle merger where in summer, green hills might will stand out sharply against blue skies.
Across this landscape, Nils has pictured rustic houses and barns and a beautiful church, all of which seem to huddling down against the snow and the cold, holding their heat and warmth tight within. Elsewhere, young people walk hand-in hand, stand on skis or throw snowballs, their bright coats contrasting loudly with the white snow surrounding them.
To call these images picturesque would be perhaps demeaning of them; they are quite stunning in their composition, so much so that one feels it is possible to step within them and scoop up the snow or leave fresh tracks across its pristine blanket. But there is something else here as well. Such is the refinement in these pictures, it feels they are further blurring the line between the physical and digital, as if some of them are of locations which can be found not only in Bugey, but also in Second Life. My only disappointment is that the space in which they are displayed really doesn’t do them the justice they deserve.
However, if you are looking for images of winter and snow of a different nature to those reflecting regions of Second Life, I recommend this exhibit. Be sure to find your way to the centre of the exhibition and Nils’ Christmas greeting.
Far back in the mists of time (by Second life standards!) I visited and blogged Sethos Lionheart’s beautiful quarter region of oriental design, The Snow Lion, which offered harmony and serenity in a tiered garden setting. Such was my appreciation of the build, I missed it when it vanished from Second life.
So it was with the delight of receiving a Christmas gift that I accepted an invitation from Sethos to visit his most recent creation in Second Life, which forms a home for his growing furnishing design business – and more importantly – an interconnected set of locations open to the public with a special purpose.
“I decided to try a region,” Sethos told me, “not for the business – that exists there purely to help fund the region – but because I wanted to dedicated large parcels to the meaningful aspects of my life (both physical and SL), with the hope that others will find solace and comfort in it and come away feeling spiritually refreshed.”
Currently caught in the depths of winter, the region has four potential starting points for people’s visits. There is Namaste (after which the region is named), which for me offered a direct link back to the Snow Lion, and thus a natural place to start my visit. Within it sits a small Chinese style house, perfect for meditation, facing a low pagoda occupying a curl of land which wraps itself around a facing turn of water.
Observe these from above, and you’ll see they form a yin-yang, echoing one of the centrepieces of The Snow Lion. Here, as with that design, the use of water and land to form the symbol perfectly encompasses the philosophical concept of opposites being complementary. The best place, perhaps to appreciate this yin-yang, is by climbing the stone steps up to another pagoda, occupying a rocky promontory and offering further opportunities for reflection and meditation. Whilst there, do note how the pagoda and fountain are positioned to complete the yin and yang symbols.
“I’ve been meditating every day for the past year and I’ve never felt more integrated with life or more at peace with myself,” Sethos told me. “My hope is that this parcel offers as a quiet place for meditative contemplation and conversation while presenting a visual metaphor for the long process of self-discovery.” To help visitors relax and free their thoughts, Tai Chi balls and yoga mats are offered for visitors to use.
“I’ve spent most of my life as a practising pagan,” Sethos said in introducing Gaia’s Grove, which can be reached from Namaste via the footpath winding through the trees – take the left turn where it branches – or you can follow the snow northwards along the water’s edge. “So Gaia’s Grove is meant to offer a place where one can commune with nature through long walks in the woods, a small temple, and even a version of Stonehenge. I’ve also included an outdoor ballroom for good times with friends and family.”
The temple sits shaded under trees, reached via a second left turn in the path, its back against the wall separating it from the outdoor ballroom area. It also presents a place of quiet contemplation, with a balcony overlooking the water presenting a place for soft conversation. A short distance away, Stonehenge is offered as it might have looked to those who built it, and sits as a peaceful location amidst the snow. Open to the air, the ballroom allows plenty of room for dancing under the sun or stars, in a romantic setting.
The eastern half of the region is home to Sethos’ store, OM Namo, and The Old Stone Church. “I spent some time as Friar Sethos in Tintagel,” Sethos said of the latter. “Teaching basic Latin to the village children and giving mass each Sunday was some of the best moments in my Second Life. I finally understood in SL what I’d not seen in real life. That the church often is the heart-centre of a community. So I offer this build as a reflection of that, and a place of sanctuary. If you do go, visit the graveyard to the right of the church. I find it particularly serene.”
Connecting the church and store is the second of the regions two large dance venues (a smaller third dance area is located to the side of the church), and a frozen pond awaiting skaters.
Caught within the snows of winter, with trees frosted and white and rolling snow-dusted hills surrounding it, Namaste made for a perfect seasonal visit this Christmas Eve. My thanks to Sethos for extending the invitation to drop in – Caitlyn and I will be back for certain!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 