Day: November 19, 2017

Of Bears, aliens, Yankees and traditions

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, November 19th, 18:00: A Little bit of Pooh Bear 

Caledonia Skytower presents selections of stories by A.A. Milne about everybody’s Bear of Very Little Brain in a Magicland Storytime presentation.

Monday, November 20th 19:00: The Alien Dark

Gyro Muggins reads Diana G. Gallagher’s one science-fiction novel.

Out of the darkness of interstellar space…

The ahsin bey, a race of catlike beings determined to expand their territory, launch six vessels into deep space to search for an uninhabited world suitable for colonization.

Tahl d’jehn commands the Dan tahlni on a decades long mission to explore the Chai-te system. Studies show that Chai-te’s planets are rich in the resource the ahsin bey need, but will their signal reach their home world in time to launch the colony ship. And what is Tahl to make of the startling discovery of a dead civilization on Chai-te Three?

Tuesday, November 21st, 19:00: Hold for Crap!

Crap Mariner presents originals stories for your listening pleasure. 

Wednesday, November 22nd, 19:00: A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court

Bookended by the story of a tourist in England encountering a stranger who tells him part of his story, then gives him a manuscript that tells the rest of his strange tale, Mark Twain’s 1889 novel relates how a Yankee engineer from Connecticut is transported back to the 6th century court of King Arthur. There, he uses his knowledge of engineering and munitions to present himself as a “magician” – earning Merlin’s ire in the process – and becoming Arthur’s trusted “prime minister”.

Mixing humour, the legend of King Arthur and a touch of a Batman and Robin style relationship between Hank, the Yankee, and Clarence, his protégé, Twain weaves a tale of his own around love, the Arthurian legend and Romano-British history (who actually built the early roads of Britain?). But can Hank, ultimately, save Arthur from his fate?

Join Caledonia Skytower as she presents selections from this tale. Also presented in Kitely (hop://grid.kitely.com:8002/Seanchai/108/609/1528).

Thursday, November 23rd, 10:00: Alice’s Restaurant Massacree

A Seanchai Library Thanksgiving tradition with Shandon Loring.

via Wikipedia

You can get anything that you want
At Alice’s restaurant.
You can get anything that you want
At Alice’s restaurant.
Walk right in, it’s around the back,
Just a half-a-mile from the railroad tracks,
And you can get anything that you want
At Alice’s restaurant.

As Thanksgiving arrives in the United States, Shandon Loring presents singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie’s famous 1967 musical monologue, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree (also popularly known as Alice’s Restaurant, and the inspiration of the 1969 Arthur Penn film of that name, starring Guthrie himself).

Aside from the opening and closing chorus, the song is delivered as the spoken word accompanied by a ragtime guitar. The story is based on a true incident in Guthrie’s life when, in 1965, he (then 18) and a friend were arrested for illegally dumping garbage from Alice’s restaurant after discovering that the town dump was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

What follows is a complicated, ironic and amusing story told in a deadpan, satirical tone, which encompasses fines, blind judges, guide dogs, 27 8×10 copiously annotated glossy photos related to the littering, frustrated police officers, the Vietnam War draft and, ultimately, the inexplicable ways in which bureaucracy moves to foil itself, just when you’ve given up hope of foiling it yourself.

Also presented in Kitely (hop://grid.kitely.com:8002/Seanchai/108/609/1528).

Saturday, November 25th: The Dickens Project

Now in its fifth year, Seanchai Library presents The Dickens Project for Christmas 2017.

Celebrating the work of one of the masters of 19th Century literature, whose humanistic voice continues to be a relevant one in our everyday culture.

Featuring a period setting, performance art, music and – of course – readings from A Christmas Carol, Dicken’s seminal tale for the time of year – and for all of us.

I’ll have a tour of the setting and a preview of the programme later this week – so stay tuned!

 

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

The featured charity for August and September is Little Kids Rock, transforming lives by restoring, expanding, and innovating music education in schools.

Sansar Product Meeting 2017 week #46

Posted on by Inara Pey
Creator Academy: Hall of Materials – location for the Friday, November 17th, 2017 Product Meeting

The following notes are taken from the 4:00pm PST Sansar Product Meeting held on Friday, November 17th. Product Meetings are usually held every Friday at 9:30am PST and 4:00pm PST, and are open to all. There is currently no set agenda, and the meetings are a mix of voice and text. The official meeting notes are published in the week following each pair of meetings, while venues change each week, and are listed in the Meet-up Announcements. and the Sansar Atlas events section.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the Friday, November 17th morning meeting, hence these notes only covering the one meeting.

Store Release

The November release will, as previously noted, focus on the Sansar Store. It will include a redesign of the Store’s main page.

The Sansar design team is working on the mean for designers to update store listings and to be able to distribute updates to customers, determining the likely workflow, etc. However, it will still be a while before this appears, and it won’t be part of the Store Release

Fashion Release

This is still on course from a planned December release. Invites to the “alpha test group” are due to start going out to designers. This release should also hopefully include non-fashion elements as well, such as the events information being added to the client Atlas – see my notes from week #45 for more.

Experience Access Control and General Security

Upcoming capabilities for Sansar will include the ability to control access to an experience. Initially this will be restricting it to Friends only, but further control abilities will be added, and the Lab is seeking feedback from users on what they would like to see. ideas thus far include:

  • Blacklist and whitelist access (i.e. those on a blacklist are permanently blocked from accessing an experience; or access can be contained to a whitelist of people, regardless of whether or not they are on the experience owner’s Friends list).
  • Ability to appoint “experience officers” (similar in notation to Second Life estate managers), with the authority to keep an eye on an experience and those visiting it.
  • The use of a maturity ratings system similar again to SL, which could be used within experiences and in the Sansar store to both help indicate what might be seen within an experience, and also what is permitted to be worn within an experience (e.g. anyone with an Adult rated attachment would be barred from accessing a General rated experience until the attachment is removed).
    • How straightforward this would be to implement is unclear.
    • It’s worth noting that Ebbe Altberg has in the past suggested that experience owners may eventually be able to define entry by avatar type / dress mode defined by the experience owner (so for, example, a merfolk-centric experience would require all visitors to be a merman or mermaid).
  • Abilities to deal with griefers, again, like SL, not jut ejection / banning, but ability to freeze them, indicating their actions have been observed and could result in a ban.
  • Overall account security is something the Lab is looking at, particularly given the means by which accounts can be hacked / abused within Second Life.

In Brief

  • The events section of the Web Atlas: when active, has been updated to present information a little more clearly.
  • Community Meetings: Sansar Community meetings are now being varied, visiting different experiences on different days, rather than the one experience being used for a whole week of meetings. Venues will continue to be announced via the web Atlas Events section and the Community Meet-up page.
  • Creator Academy: Hall of Materials: the first of Sansar’s experience-led learning facilities, the Hall of Materials opened on November 14th, 2017. You can read my review here. Apparently, the audio section of the experience utilises incorrect sounds, and will be updated soon, as well as capabilities being added (e.g. as noted in my review, better Desktop mode interaction).
  • Building and Design Collaboration: the groundwork for collaborative design within Edit mode is being laid, with particular emphasis on how the capability will work with Sansar’s upcoming permissions system. A suggestion put forward by Jenn is to see if edit spaces can simply be shared – so that if someone is working on a scene, they can invited a friend in to Edit mode with them so they can chat, etc.
  • Identifying Lab Staff in Sansar: in Second Life, Linden Lab staff are easily recognised by the use of the “Linden” last name, and the use of blue in name tags, text chat, etc. A means to similarly recognise Lab staff in Sansar is being considered. This may not involve the use of the “Linden” last name, but could be something like their names showing up in blue when highlighted by the mouse / controller. It might also include the means for Lab staff to turn it off if they wish.
  • Next Product Meeting: due to the US Thanksgiving holiday, the next Sansar Product Meet-up will be on Friday, December 1st, 2017.