Year: 2016

A Snow Crash, magical necklaces and forgetful clowns

Posted on by Inara Pey

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

Monday January 11th, 19:00: Snow Crash

We all know Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash as one of the inspirations behind Second Life. Now Gyro Muggins opens the pages of this modern classic.

Snow CrashIn the 21st Century, Los Angeles is no longer a part of the United States, but is instead run by a variety of corporate and other factions, which much of the city divided into sovereign enclaves. Mercenary forces via with private security firms; drugs and the private vehicle reign supreme and where hyper-inflation is rampant.

Within this strange and complex world exists the Metaverse, an omnipresent 3D “Internet of everything” in which people can roam as avatars. It is in this world that the aptly named Hiro Protagonist (and former pizza delivery driver) operates as a sword-welding heroic warrior and bounces between the virtual and physical worlds as the self-styled “last of the freelance hackers.”

However, when his friend and fellow-hacker Da5id, falls victim to the mysterious new drug Snow Crash, which exists in the virtual world as a computer virus capable of infecting machines connected to the Metaverse and in the physical world as a viral infection which attacks the central nervous system, Hiro sets out to learn the truth of what is going on.  Working with his virtual business partner, the 15-year-old Y.T., Hiro  digs into the truth behind Snow Crash, leading him (and Y.T.) to the doors of  fibre-optics monopolist L. Bob Rife and his acolytes and minions, including the highly dangerous Raven.

Tuesday January 12th 19:00: Pearl

PearlFaerie Maven-Pralou opens the covers of the first book in Lisa Pinkham’s the Doll Collection series.

Everything changes for Addy on her 12th birthday, when she receives a mysterious gift of a collection of dolls and an opal necklace imbued with magical powers.

Soon, Addy finds herself transported to a beach where she meets a mermaid, Pearl, and where she can swim with and talk to underwater fairies and enjoy the company of min-reading dolphins.

But all is not as safe as it seems; when Pearl vanishes and Addy’s magic necklace is stolen, Addy is left with no way home and without a friend – and she must confront the thief on her own, trusting that the magic which resides in her is enough to put things to rights.

Wednesday, January 13th 19:00: LonnyDonny

Caledonia Skytower continues a journey through some of the writings of MJ McGalliard, bringing us LonnyDonny, Stories Told in the Dark Book 1.

What happens when identical twin Rodeo Clowns are afflicted with amnesia? All their lives they’ve been more or less one person. But, what if they can’t remember which is which? There’s also Frito Chili Pie.

Thursday, January 14th, 19:00 Time Travel Thursdays

With Shandon Loring – Also presented to be presented at Seanchai Kitely and Seanchai InWorldz. Check session post during the week for specific grid locations).

—–

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 January / February is Heifer International, working with communities to end world hunger and poverty and to care for the Earth.

Additional Links

“Project Sansar”: an Amazon ECS case study

Posted on by Inara Pey

Most of us are curious as to how “Project Sansar” will / won’t / might / might not work (with some already going to far as to pretty much write it off before even seeing it, which to me seems a tad premature).

In her own digging around, reader Persephone came across an interesting piece of information, and was kind enough to pass me a link to a case study from Amazon concerning the Lab’s use of Amazon’s EC2 Container Service (ECS) and Docker technology within Project Sansar.

Amazon’s ECS is a “scalable, high-performance container management service that provides cluster management and container orchestration”, which Linden Lab uses to run “the containerized web applications and back-end services of Project Sansar”.

Docker is an open-source technology that allows a developer (e.g. Linden Lab)to build, test, deploy and run distributed applications –  all the code, runtime elements, system tools and libraries, etc, – within a “container”, a method of operating system virtualisation. The upshot being it allows an application to be presented as a standardised package for rapid and consistent deployment, regardless of the environment in which it is to be used.

Precisely what “back-end” services for “Project Sansar” are being deployed in this manner isn’t clear; I’m certainly no technical expert and so am open to correction / other ideas.

However, we do know that a key element of “Sansar” is the ability for customers to build and deploy their own gateways (e.g. websites / web portals) to draw their own audiences into the experiences. So, is the use of ECS a means of achieving this? Presenting customers with a packaged environment in which they can build and deploy their own “Sansar” gateways? Or might it be the mechanism the Lab are looking to use to handle the management and scaling of support systems such as the chat, asset and other services  – many of which do appear to be of monolithic design with Second Life, and which sometimes don’t scale particularly well.

The Lab's diagram for using Amazon ECS for instancing
The Lab’s diagram for using Amazon ECS (images Linden Lab / Amazon) – click for full size

Could it be that the mechanism might actually be for more than just “back-end” services – such as the actual packaging and presentation of “Sansar” experiences themselves? We know that the Lab are wrestling with the issue of optimising “Sansar” experiences and their content so that they present a performant experience across a range of client platforms.  We also know the Lab intend to provide a means by which experiences can be rapidly deployed when needed (e.g. the WordPress  / You Tube analogy of build and then push a button to deploy) or rapidly scaled via instancing to meet the demands of large audience numbers.

Both of these requirement would seem – to my untutored eyes at least – to fit with the model being presented, although both would tend to suggest the use of ECS beyond the support of “back-end” services.

As it is, we do know the Lab already use Amazon’s services for presenting some of their SL-related services – so developing an existing relationship with the company for the benefit of “Project Sansar” would appear to make sense. At the very least, the case study offers the potential for further “Sansar” questions to be asked at the next Lab Chat.

Through a Blogger’s Eyes in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Through a Blogger's Eyes - Art on Roofs
Through a Blogger’s Eyes – Art on Roofs

Opening today, Saturday January 9th, 2016, and running through until January 24th at the Art on Roofs gallery, Solodonna Land, is a small exhibition of my images I’ve called Through a Blogger’s Eyes. In it, I present a series of images I’ve taken of the places I’ve visited over the years; some of the images have been seen before in-world, while others are new to in-world presentation, although they have been seen on this blog.

The images selected lean towards my more recent SL region travels, all of which are documented under my Exploring Second Life tag, and by year through the blog menu (Events-Reviews-Travel > Exploring Second Life > select year), although some stretch back as far as 2013.

Through a Blogger's Eyes - Art on Roofs
Through a Blogger’s Eyes – Art on Roofs

It’s the nature of places to come and go in Second Life, so some of the images are of places no longer with us, or as they appeared before more recent make-overs. However, most are still active today, and within the exhibition notes I’ve included a list of landmarks should anyone wish to visit the location depicted in a particular image.

Also, as a part of the exhibit I hope to be running a playlist of videos of the places, art installations and events I’ve filmed over the last few years. The playlist is set-up, but YouTube and SL were having a little bit of a fight during testing, so I’m seeing how that goes :).

Through a Blogger's Eyes - Art on Roofs
Through a Blogger’s Eyes – Art on Roofs

As I say in the introductory notes, I don’t consider myself in any way a Second Life photographer or artist; my images are purely produced for illustrating the blog (I use Flickr to simply save on using the limited disk space WordPress provides). I’m therefore genuinely flattered when asked to display like this – and my thanks go to Terrygold, Sniper and Elettra for inviting me to exhibit at Art In Roofs; I hope you will visit and enjoy it.

The opening is at 13:00 SLT on Saturday, January 9th, with music by the folk at Solodonna club, and I hope you’ll join us.

SLurl Details

Project Bento User Group update 1 with audio

Posted on by Inara Pey
Project Bento extends the avatar skeleton, adding a significant set of bones (e.g. 30 for the face, 30 for the hands (both of which can be seen inaction in the image above of an avatar by Matrice Laville), plus bones for wings, tails, additional limbs and ears / antennae
Project Bento extends the avatar skeleton, adding a significant set of bones, notably providing facial expressions, finger movement, and better support for wings, tails, additional limbs, etc. (model by Matrice Laville)

Useful Links

The first public user group meeting for Project Bento took place on Thursday, January 7th 2016, marking the start of what will be a regular event, although the exact frequency, particularly in terms of day and time, may vary, at least initially.

The purpose of the meeting is to provide an open forum for more direct and real-time conversations between the Lab and content creators about Project Bento than can perhaps be achieved through forum posts, etc. This, and the reports which follow from it are intended to provide a synthesis of these meetings, together with relevant audio of discussions and feedback, where appropriate. My apologies for the quality of the audio in places; these was partially the result of recording over voice and also due to the audio strength dropping out on me quite frequently.

People arrive for the first public Bento user group meeting on Aditi
People arrive for the first public Bento user group meeting on Aditi

Translation vs. Rotation

As I’ve previously reported, there has been an ongoing discussion about providing bone translation rather than just rotation in order to better handle facial expressions (see BUG-1090, “[Bento] A formal method of bone-translating animations is vital for the creation of proper facial expressions”), with the initial disallowing of translations within Bento (where they had previously been possible by means of a workaround) being a particular point of contention.  Medhue Simoni was one of those particularly concerned at the lack of available translation capabilities, and as I noted in my coverage of the 100th Drax Files podcast, he has produced a fairly comprehensive video explaining the issue.

Given the amount of conversation that has been generated, it should not  be that surprising to learn that this was the first item up for discussion in the meeting. In particular, Vir announced that the Lab has revised its thinking on the matter pointing to a Bento forum posted providing more of the Lab’s original concerns. So with this change, animations using translations can now be uploaded to most regions on Aditi.

Vir on the rethink concerning allowing bone translations

So does this mean translations will be allowed going forward? Vir was cautious in his reply, noting that nothing about Bento will be finalised until such time as it goes to the main grid, so there is no definitive decision on the matter at present. However, based on the way things are going, it would seem likely that translations will be enabled and there is nothing the Lab currently has planned which might cause them to be disallowed. However, Vir did warn that were this to be the case, there may be bugs / limitations in how they work.

Vir on whether or not translations will be allowed going forward

Stretching and Scaling Bones

The current mechanism for stretching / scaling bones is via the shape slider, and Vir indicated that it is not likely that the Lab will be moving to support scaling in animations as a part of this phase of Bento, although they might revisit doing so at some point in the future (without any guarantee they would).

As a part of the explanation for why this is the case, Oz indicated that the Lab’s belief in approaching Bento was that for most non-human avatars and shapes, their expectation was that creators would do the basic repositioning of joints as a part of the mesh prior to upload, and then adjust them as needed, and so the need for translation  would be marginalised.

However, as several of those present at the meeting pointed out, effectively “baking” positions into a mesh in this manner prior to upload is itself limiting, and translations can help handle odd glithes in the avatar shape which can occur. Given this, and  the shift in stance on translation mentioned above, Oz indicated he’s very interested to hear back from people on what might be considered “best practice” for handling bone repositioning, scaling, stretching, etc.

Vir and Oz on scaling and stretching bones and the Lab’s initial approach to Bento

Avatar Deformation and Resetting

One of the things the Lab is trying to achieve through Bento is a means of more reliably providing a mechanism by which avatars suffering from deformations as a result of rigged meshes, complex shapes, etc., can be reliably restored.

One of the things the Lab would like to do is offer a consistent means of resetting avatars deformed by things like multiple joint repositions to a "default" state which includes adjustment to bones made via mesh and attachments
One of the things the Lab would like to do is offer a consistent means of resetting avatars deformed by things like multiple joint repositions to a “default” state which includes adjustment to bones made via mesh and attachments

As Vir noted in the meeting, the Lab has been working on trying to make mesh positions behave better, but there is still a lot going on under the hood, such as changes made by sliders or attachments or animations, or a combination thereof,, the initial values defined by the skeleton, etc.,  which can influence the overall shape / appearance in an unpredictable order which can leave someone in a difficult to resolve state.

In particular, and as stated by Oz, the Lab would like to be able to offer the capability that if a user experiences deformations as a result of running animations, they can be reliably reset to a default position that includes and joint position movements implied by any mesh attachments worn at the time the issue occurred (with the exception of those implied by animations).

To this end, he and Vir urged people to file bug reports on any issues of deformation they encounter when using the Bento project viewer (as well as any other issues they encounter), even if the issue has been previously encountered prior to Bento but has remained unresolved, and to provide specific examples of the problem with related models, etc., so that the Lab can use the project to attempt to investigate and resolve as many issues of this kind as they can. The Lab cannot promise that everything will be fixed, but by the same standard, it shouldn’t be assumed that just because something hasn’t been addressed thus far, effort won’t be put into trying to see if it can be resolved.

Vir and Oz on bug resolutions and seeking a means to consistently reset deformed avatars

Continue reading “Project Bento User Group update 1 with audio” →

Lab Chat #2 announced

Posted on by Inara Pey

Lab Chat LogoLab Chat is the name of the new series aimed at providing Second Life users with the opportunity to have their questions put to Lab management and personnel.

The first such event, which was recorded and made available as a three-part video, took place on Thursday, November 19th, with guest Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. I have a full transcript of that event available, complete with audio of both the questions asked and Ebbe’s replies.

The second on the series have now been announced through the Lab Chat blog and via an official blog post from the Lab. It will take place on Thursday, January 21st, again at the Linden Endowment for the Arts Theatre, starting at 10:30 SLT.

Ebbe Altberg, in his alter ego of Ebbe Linden, will again be facing questions on Linden Lab, Second Life and "Project Sansar" as put forward by SL users
Ebbe Altberg, in his alter ego of Ebbe Linden, will again be facing questions on Linden Lab, Second Life and “Project Sansar” as put forward by SL users

Once again, the guest under the spotlight will be the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg.

As with the first event, people are being invited to submit questions via a Lab Chat forum thread they’d like to see asked during the show for consideration. The deadline for such questions is Friday, January 15th

Questions to be asked will be selected by members of the Lab Chat production team (of which I’m listed, although my role is focused on producing written transcripts of recordings, rather than being hands-on with the actual production). Those submitting selected questions will be invited to attend the recording of the session, and put their question directly to Ebbe in voice if they wish; otherwise questions will be asked the Lab Chat hosts, Saffia Widdershins and Jo Yardley.

As per the first Lab Chat, I will (hopefully) be recording the event, and will certainly be providing a full transcript a few days after it  has taken place.

Images and sculptures at The Living Room

Posted on by Inara Pey
Jan-6_001
Faith Maxwell and Mareea Farrasco at The Living Room

Opening on Thursday, January 7th is the latest exhibition at The Living Room, and this month, it’s a double-header featuring the work of Mareea Farrasco and Faith Maxwell.

In About SL People and Places, Mareea presents a series of images of people and places from within Second Life. some of these have a distinctly photographic finish to them, while other lean more towards paintings. All of them are uniquely personal in both subject and the effect they have on the observer, drawing you gently into them, presenting glimpses of lives as they unfold, or places which seem both new and yet familiar.

Jan-11_001
Mareea Farrasco at The Living Room

This is particularly true of the images depicting rooms and places of work: an art studio, a bathroom, a desk on which sits  typewriter; each carries the hint of places we may have seen or visited , but it at home or when out and about, whilst at the same time offering a glimpse inside the lives of people when they are otherwise engaged elsewhere.

“The pictures I create are small steps in the indefinite journey to myself. Join me and, who knows, you might find yourself,” Mareea says of her work; a comment which perhaps gives some of the images here an even deeper personal perspective in the suggestion that some of the spaces depicted in the image might be her own, and thus we are sharing in her world as much as in her view of the world.

Jan-4_001
Mareea Farrasco at The Living Room

With Sky is the Limit in SL, Faith Maxwell presents a series of her sculptures which reflect the theme of her title. Several of the pieces have a distinctly astral / cosmos / space feel to them – witness Cosmic Reaching Out, Astroid 2, and Time Marches On. Others have a strong aerial / avian flavour to them, as is the case with Lifting Spirit, Pureness of Doves, Hummingbird in Flight, and Turning Point (with its suggestion of a gyroscope).

Within the free-standing works are framed or mounted pieces which hold their own fascination. I particularly found myself constantly drawn back to the elegant simplicity apparent in Fallen Leaves and its suggestion both of time passing and the promise of open horizons, together with the hauntingly powerful In Mask, which suggested new themes and feeling each time my camera passed over it.

Jan-8_001
Faith Maxwell at The Living Room

Like Mareea, faith pours a lot of herself into her work, noting, “When I came to SL I wanted to try my hand in sculpture. All my work is totally a work of me; my mood, my feelings.” Thus, both are ideally suited to sharing space at The Living Room.

About SL People and Sky is the Limit in SL formally open at 12:00 noon on Thursday, January 7th to music by The Vinnie Show! The exhibition will remain open through until Tuesday, January 26th, when there will be a closing show with music by Aminius Writer at 12:00 noon SLT. And don’t forget the Thursday Music Party at The Living Room, which this month takes place on Thursday, January 14th, and features Bat Masters at 17:00 SLT, followed by Lyndon Heart at 18:0 SLT.

Jan-5a_001
Faith Maxwell at The Living Room

SLurl Details