Day: May 15, 2020

RelayStock 2020 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
RelayStock 2020

It’s a weekend of Peace Love and Hope and great music as the 7th annual RelayStock takes place between Friday, May 15th and Sunday, May 17th inclusive.

Paying homage to Woodstock and hosted by the Relay Rockers, the event features live and DJ entertainment, dancing, vendors and the opportunity to help raise money for RFL of SL.

Activities are focused on RFL team camp sites set out around a 60s style festival stage. The camp sites, mixed between iconic VW camper wagons and tents, are occupied by RFL Relay teams who present kiosks and fund-raising vendors, while the event stage plays hosts to the performers and the ever-popular Celebrate Remember Fight Back (CRFB) Top DJ Competition.

The event is open to all residents of Second Life to enjoy and In addition, when visiting you’ll also be able to Bid a Linden Bald, which this year see four teams for Linden Lab participating – see 2020 Bid a Linden Bald for RFL of SL for more.

RelayStock 2020

The event’s activities line up as follows (all times SLT – check the official event page for any late updates):

Friday May 15th:

  • 13:30 – 15:00: DJ Stephanie – Bellisseria For Relay For Life.
  • 15:00 – 16:30 DJ DollEyes Barbosa – Too Tough To Die.
  • 16:30 – 18:00: DJ Evee – Spirit Of The Dragon.
  • 18:00 – 19:30: DJ Dredd Rocktatansky  – The River Rock Club.
  • 19:30 – 21:00: DJ Melina Firehawk –  Heroes Helping Heroes.

Saturday May 16th:

  • 12:00 – 13:30: DJ Angel Blossom – Seekers Of Hope.
  • 13:30 – 15:00: DJ Gem Sunkiller – Team Shadow.
  • 15:00 – 16:00: Max Kleene – Live Singer – Relay Rockers.
  • 16:00 – 17:00: Todd Rumsford – Life Singer – Cure Chasers.
  • 17:00 – 18:30: DJ Scott – Harmony Of Hope.
  • 18:30 – 20:00: The A Team – Friends For A Cure.

Sunday May 17th:

  • 09:00 – 10:30: Tommy James & The Shondells – Tribute Band – Rocking Sands.
  • 10:30 – Noon: DJ Holocluck Henley – Aether Chrononauts Tiny Steps.
  • Noon – 13:00: Turner Harborough – Live Singer – Relay Rockers.
  • 13:00 – 14:00: DJ Nuala Maracas – Relay Rockers.
  • 14:00 – 15:00: CRFB Top DJ Finalist – DJ Baggie.
  • 15:00 – 16:00: CRFB Top DJ Finalist – DJ Kayla.
  • 16:00 – 17:00: DJ’s Nikki, Sting, MamaP, Trader – Cancer Gets Stung.
  • 17:00 – 19:30: DJ Trader Whiplash – The Time Machine Show – Relay Rockers.
  • 19:30 – 21:00: DJ Kayla – Roos With A Dream.

So, let the age of Aquarius enter your life this weekend, don your kaftan (and galoshes!), put flowers in your hair and head on over to RelayStock for get music, great dancing, great fun – and all in a good cause!

Event SLurl

Pending the cloud migration, LL report limited availability of new regions

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Thursday, May 14th, Linden Lab reported something that may be a little unexpected: they’ve “run out” of land – or more correctly, they are at the maximum capacity of simulator servers they can host within their current co-location facility in Arizona. This means that for the short-term future, there is only limited availability of “new” regions directly from the Lab.

The primary reason for this is, according to LL, an unexpected increase in demand for “new” regions – possibly as a result of the result of former users and increased interest with / involvement in Second Life as a result of the current pandemic situation.

While the Lab could overcome the issue through the purchase of new hardware and previsioning it through a suitable data centre, this would still require a significant amount of expenditure and work. Given that we’re potentially mid-way through the work to migrate all of the Second Life services to AWS / Google cloud infrastructure (with the migration of simulators still to come), this is time, effort and money the Lab would – understandably – avoid, as it would only be for a relatively limited period of time.

With regards to both the cloud migration and this situation, the Lab notes:

As we’ve discussed previously, Second Life is in the process of migrating from our existing dedicated servers to a cloud hosting service. That migration has already moved a number of the most important services and databases, but we are not quite ready to host simulators in the cloud. We have a crack team working on that and are making lots of progress, but there are significant changes needed to make sure that we can provide the performance, stability, and security required. When that process is complete we will have a nearly unlimited region capacity, but until then we are constrained by the size of our existing server fleet.

While our migration project has been underway for some time, even our most optimistic business projections did not anticipate a surge of the magnitude we have seen in recent weeks for additional regions. While we planned for growth driven by improvements to Second Life and other factors, we didn’t expect demand to be created by a global pandemic.

As a result, we are in the unfortunate position of hitting the maximum capacity of our “old” servers until the “new” cloud servers are fully operational.

– Linden Lab, Limited Availability of New Second Life Regions, May 14th, 2020

The availability of new regions directly from the Lab will, for the time being be dependent upon the number of regions returned to them, and is likely to remain so until such time as the cloud uplift work has been completed – which the Lab estimates will be in early autumn 2020.

Note that this situation shouldn’t immediately impact things like parcels currently available for sale / auction on the mainland, or the sale / rental of parcel available on private regions already in-world, although it may come to do so if the demand for land (rather than entire regions, Full or Homestead), runs at a similarly high rate through the next few months. Elsewhere, it is liable to impact on any expansion plans private estates may have, and possibly result in a slow down in any growth of Bellisseria.

You can find out more about options for obtaining land during this shortage of new regions by reading the Lab’s blog post in full. There’s also a forum thread available for those wanting to discuss the matter and hear back from the Lab.

The 2020 Second Life SciFi convention touches down

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Second Life SciFi Convention

On Friday, May 15th, the 2020 Second Life Science Fiction Convention, raising money for Relay for Life of Second Life and the American Cancer Society, opens its doors to sci-fi enthusiasts from across virtual worlds.

Running through until Sunday, May 24th, 2020, the convention is spread across eight regions packed with all things science fiction, and offers insight into sci-fi goods and services, role-play, communities, and more, whilst also including a range of entertainment, talks, readings, hunts and activities to keep people engaged throughout the event.

Information on the event has been sketchy in places during the run-up when compared to other major RFL events (how to attend the blogger’s day was only published on the day, for example, which left some wondering that – while the date was known in advance – would it require registration beforehand, and if so how they might register in the run-up to the day).

2020 SciFi Convention – Electric Sheep, a suitably cyberpunk / Blade Runner settings, given the region name

Of course, now the event is rolling along, the core details are there, including a complete calendar of events (although information on hunts, etc., is best obtained from the information boards within the convention regions), and information on the region themes, the latter being:

Scifi Con 12 Hub (Time) – Abyssal Depths (Underwater) – Electric Sheep (Cyberpunk) – Orion’s Landing (Ancient Aliens) – Pangaea – Tesla Park (Steampunk) – Thunderdome (Post Apocalypse) – Tomorrowland

2020 SciFi Convention

Details of exhibitors / vendors participating in the convention can also be found on the website.

When exploring the regions, you’ll find the usual interesting mix of merchants and role-play groups, all with something to offer. All of the major franchises from media sci-fi are represented – Star Trek in its various forms, Docotor Who, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, etc., together with the likes of Gundam, Babylon 5 while there are some nice references to Buck Rogers, Space 1999, etc., awaiting discovery, with even what might be a nod towards the short-lived Terra Nova, with much more besides. In touring, I admit to particularly liking Waxen Works’ The Life and Work of Gerry Anderson.

2020 SciFi Convention – the Gerry Anderson exhibition

So, whatever your interest in science fiction, be sure to set your phaser on fun and head back to the future with a visit to the SL SciFi convention. So say we all!

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