Month: May 2020

Revisiting The Eye Gallery in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Eye, May 2020

It’s been a while since I last visited The Eye Gallery, owned and curated by MonaByte. Originally opened in 2014 – although it has relocated since opening – the gallery offers exhibitions by invited artists as well as displaying Mona’s own work.

Currently, it is Mona’s work in both 2D and 3D that is on display within the gallery’s rooms.

My first steps in SL came through teaching: conducting various projects with my RL students. Then came Escuelita para Pekes, a place for friends where I shared beautiful moments lecturing to SL children. At the same time, learning to build became my passion and the sim 1+1 was my daily meeting place where true friendships were born. I also took art tours through different sims and galleries to help promote SL art. Then my sister and friend Duna Gant gave me the honour of managing Culture, the workshop responsible for poetry reading and other events at Artemis Gallery. My work with her was a wonderful experience.

– MonaByte describing her initial years in Second Life

The Eye, May 2020

Mona’s work a bold in tone and content, and red features heavily in the works on offer in this exhibition, with some of the exterior walls and spaces of the gallery coloured to match. Her 3D work is also rich in context, and emotion, each piece conceptual in is transmission of both: Balance, Freedom, Obsession, Conflict … Two pieces even celebrate her love of Red, which is also reflected in the 2D work in the main gallery building where as series of images of poppies and red flowers capture the attention.

The upper floor of the gallery annex offers a trio of landscape photos and two more fantasy-oriented images. They lean more to blue in their tone – a reflection of both the time of day at which they were taken and their subject matter.

An engaging and pleasing exhibition.

The Eye, May 2020

SLurl Details

Kintsugi: spiritual beauty and renewal in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

Having recently opened in May 2020, Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond has been garnering a lot of attention – and rightly so; it is a place of serene beauty, lovingly created by NorahBrent and Zalindah.

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-etechnique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

– Wikipedia

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

I include this description, because Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond grew out of a personal loss experienced by NorahBrent, as Zalinah notes in her profile:

Pulling her grief and transforming it into creativity was her only way of coping. She asked me to join her and I couldn’t resist.

– Zalinah

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

So it might be said that Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond that has a deep connection for both NorahBrent and Zalinah, and especially offers a means for Norah to mend her loss through creativity, making it a part of her personal expression, making it a part of who she is, rather than trying to disguise or hide it. This is turn gives any visit to Kintsugi a personal element, the visitor sharing not just in the creativity displayed in the completed region, but also in the healing process that is folded into its design and presentation.

The natural beauty of the region is evident from first arrival, but to help encourage exploration, a story as been added; those arriving are asked to find the nine spirits located throughout the setting, with each spirit found within a location: house, forest, water, garden, and more, there secrets revealed through local chat.

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

Thus, the best way to describe Kintsugi is as a subtle story told through a series of vignettes, each defined by a specific part of the region design, and knitted together as a whole by both the stories awaiting discovery and the natural flow of the landscape across the islands and water-borne elements reached via stepping stones that wind across the shallow, reflective waters that enfold the islands and their treasures.

The Japanese motifs found throughout the region  – Cherry trees, Torii gates, koi pond, raked zen garden, water lanterns and more – are used to marvellous effect, both adding to the spiritual feel to Kintsugi whilst also gently brushing it against the imagination sufficiently for the active mind to call forth stories of its own that might find a home here.

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

At the same time, there is much to capture and hold the attention of the more casual visitor: the natural beauty of the setting, the mystery of the deserted town on the high hill, the places to sit and appreciate each element within the region’s unfolding story. And obviously, there is much to commend the region to the eye and lens of the Second Life photographer.

Kintsugi is a truly bewitching setting, rich in detail and narrative, fully deserving of a visit. When you do, please consider making a donation at the landing point to help ensure its continued presence in Second Life.

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

SLurl Details

2020 SL project updates week #20: TPVD summary; mesh uploader

Posted on by Inara Pey
Silent Melody, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 15, 2020. These meetings are generally held every other week, unless otherwise noted in any given summary. The embedded video is provided to Pantera – my thanks to her for recording and providing it. Time stamps are included with the notes will open the video at the point(s) where a specific topic is discussed.

This was a very short meeting!

SL Viewer News

[0:47-4:27]

  • The Mesh Uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, was issued on May 15th. This both offers a number of fixes to uploader issues, as per the release notes, and incorporates improvements to the uploader layout, etc., as first seen in Firestorm and contributed to Linden Lab.
Mesh Uploader project: the revised LOD tab with the additional information outlined

The remainder of the official views currently in progress remain as follows:

  • Current Release version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.
The Mesh Uploader project viewer: the new Avatar tab with information taken from the upload options tab (blue) and new joint information panels (red)

General Viewer Notes

  • The Camera Presets viewer is in relatively good shape for promotion to de facto release status in week #21 (commencing Monday, May 18th).
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer is currently experiencing issues in merging with the EEP viewer code base, so is unlikely to be in a position to be promoted.
  • The FMOD RC viewer should offer a fix to one of the most common viewer crashes related to audio.
  • The Build Tools viewer still has some issues awaiting fixing before it sees the light of day..
  • Additional CEF updates are also in the works that will expand on the current CEF Special RC viewer.

New Simulator Chat Range Capability

[5:09-6:30]

A new ability is being developed to allow region / estate owners / managers to set chat ranges.

  • This will require viewer-side UI support, which has yet to be completed.
  • The range set for a region will be reported to the viewer by the simulator as a part of the region information.
  • The server-side support will be appearing real soon now™.

In Brief

  • [4:43-5:09] The RC deployment for Wednesday, May 20th should see a fix for Group notices all showing the same time stamp deployed across two of the RC channels.
  • [7:45-7:57] The fix for the issue off-line inventory losses from objects (see: BUG-227179 “All offline inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost”) should be deployed (hopefully!) in the RC deployments of Wednesday, May 27th.
  • [9:12-11:00] The question was asked if LL would skip using Visual Studio 2017 in he viewer build process and go directly to VS 2019.
    • The answer was no, not this close to deploying working viewers using the updated build process, but a project to update to VS 2019 will be started “at some point”.
    • This work should in theory be a lot easier, thanks to the effort up into updating the additional viewer build libraries as a part of this update.
    • This build process is currently using XCode 11.3.1 for OS X, but this may change depending on the frequency of updates from Apple.

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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