Month: May 2020

Second Norway: making the changes

Posted on by Inara Pey
Second Norway, March 2020

At the end of April I was able to confirm that Second Norway, after recent concerns about its future, would be continuing as a part of the Luxory Estates group, with Vanity Bonetto and her team taking over day-to-day management of things – land management and sales / rentals, etc., with Ey, Mialinn, SlaYeR, joining the Luxory team with responsibilities for the road and rail network, management of the Second Norway airport and for social / community elements within the estate. See: Second Norway: the future is bright.

In that article, I noted that as part of the change-over, there would be a certain amount of work being put into the estate, with the northern regions being re-worked to offer new island home spaces, together with a re-laying of roads and rail systems through the more connected regions within the estate.

Second Norway: one of the new islands, already occupied

So what has happened in the two weeks since the hand-over? Well, rather a lot. As Vanity noted to me as I dropped in to take a look at progress:

We are working our pixels off here!

The northern regions have now all been relaid to offer three or four islands apiece (although some have “mainland”elements running through them. These offer islands sized between (at the time of writing) 7,292 sq m through to 11,776 sq m (although there was one smaller parcel at 4,688 sq m still available). Prices for the parcels are in line with other Blake Sea estates, and can be found in the Second Norway sales office).

Second Norway: one of the larger island parcels awaiting occupancy

To the south, closer to the airport and the land around it, parcels with water and road access are in development, although it will be a while longer before these are ready of occupancy. At the same time, Ey and SlaYeR have been rebuilding the road and rail system, as Ey recently blogged:

We have been here before, SlaYeR and I. Hauling railroad tracks, getting them in place. Laying warm asphalt on new stretches of road. As the basic terraforming of the north-west is now done, the (rail)road guys can move in, as we have done many times before. New land will emerge connected to the road network. This is sort of back to the future for us.

  – Ey Ren, May 9th, 2020

Second Norway: the new waterfront district being developed by AustinLiam

South of the airport is a further development, this one being undertaken by AustinLiam, offering a working waterfront district, with further rental islands alongside of it.

Even with the work on-going, sales have started, and the new parcels are proving popular among former Second Norway renters who had to move out while the changes were made to the extent that Vanity informed me the Luxory land team are finding it hard to keep pace with demand. Despite all the changes, the open waterways have remained operational, and it’s possible to sail / motorboat around the new islands even while the work continues.

The rental islands come pre-formed and semi-landscaped with rocks and a small channel that cuts through one corner to provide a small, separate island reached via a connecting stone bridge. Moderate terraforming is allowed, providing that it is neither excessive nor spoils the overall theme for the estate – so no private mountains or fjords! Similarly, building and other structures must be in overall accordance with Second Norway’s temperate / northern latitude theme.

Second Norway: two more of the new rental islands, already occupied

There’s still a way to go with the changes, as both Vanity and Ey note; but considering it’s only been a couple of weeks since the hand-over occurred, a lot has been achieved, and it’s easy to see the Second Norway is well on the way to becoming a renewed community with a secure future that offers a lot to tenants and visitors alike.

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2020 Bid a Linden Bald for RFL of SL

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bid A Linden Bald 2020

Wednesday, May 13th, 2020, marked the start of the 4th annual Bid A Linden Bald event organised by the Relay Rockers in support of Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society.

First held in 2017 as an extension to the Relay Rockers annual Bid Me Bald challenge, in which people are invited to bid (make donations to RFL) to see a well-known Second Life resident go bald for a period of time in-world

For Bid a Linden Bald – as the name suggests – a number of teams from Linden Lab challenge one another to see who can raise the most in Linden Dollar donations for RFL of SL. At the end of the event, the team raising the least amount of money see their avatars get their hair shorn. Or as the event advertising puts it:

Top team gets the scissors – lowest team gets the haircut!

This year sees four teams from the Lab taking part in the week-long event. They are:

  • Team 1: Darcy, Jet, Oz, Spots, and Volo.
  • Team 2: Derrick, Kit, Patsy, TJ, and Wendi.
  • Team 3: Dottie, Kristin, Rocko, Vanessa, and Whitney.
  • Team 4: Izzy, Madori, Patch, Roran, and Vix.

For 2020, the team that is “bid bald” will have their avatars remain so through until the RFL of SL Relay Weekend of June 6th and 7th, 2020. They will receive their haircuts at a special events to be held at 15:00 SLT on Wednesday, May 20th, 2020, on the Relay Rockers region.

The team donation kiosks for Bid A Linden Bald 2020

Should you wish to place a bid, drop in to the Relay Rockers’ home region. The kiosks for the event can be found in the south-east corner of the region by the barn (just follow the signs). You can make your donation based on the team you’d like to see win – or against the team you’d like to see lose!

Additional Links

Thermae’s gentle beauty in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Thermae, May 2020 – click an image for full size

Thermae generally refers to Roman imperial bathing complexes featuring heated baths and that also formed a centre for socialising among the better-off. Within Second Life, Sage Allegiere – famed for Gardens of Absentia (see: The Garden of Absentia on Second Life) – uses the name for another of her public region creations.

The name is not in any way inappropriate; this is a place where visitors can literally bathe in a creation that reflects nature at her best – although the major structure to be found on the main island might admittedly at first be taken for a spa or similar offering. The setting is that of group of temperate islands  – quite where is entirely up to the imagination – with the outlying isles protecting this, the innermost of the group, as it sits lower and perhaps otherwise more vulnerable to the winds and storms that might otherwise pass.

Thermae, May 2020

The landing point sits just off of the centre of the region, on the slopes of one of its highest reaches. An inlet cuts into the island on the far side of this hill, a balloon supported bridge crossing the landward end of the the gorge it forms. Down the slope from the landing point sit a cosy cottage with a wild flower garden guarded by a wrought iron fence. find the opening in  this fence and a gentle grassy path will take you down to a shingle beach, one of four scattered around the island’s coast.

Most of the island is crowned by young trees – although there are some that have reached maturity awaiting discovery along the ruggedness of the island’s back. In fact, so rugged is the island, that there are few laid paths – exploration is a matter of finding the lesser slopes in the grass that lead down and around the rockier parts of the island.

Thermae, May 2020

This means that finding your way around the island is a matter of careful exploration – and given there are multiple possible paths, this adds to the richness of discovery through exploration. One of these paths leads to a rock arch that also passes over the inland end of the southern inlet to join with the bridge mentioned above.

The path from here leads fairly directly to the large house mentioned above. Sitting on a high, flat table of rock, it has a open garden and an inner terrace. The garden is set as if for a party, the terrace as well, although at other times it might make for shaded conversations. Inside, the long rooms of the villa are comfortably furnished, one wing forming a lounge, the other a bedroom, the corner between them a rustic-style kitchen.

Thermae, May 2020

A second garden sits below this villa, nestled into the south-west of the island. Further around to the north, a second inlet has been formed as a result of water breaking out from a table under the the rocks to splash down over the rocks. A further shingle beach runs around the far side of this inlet, lanterns floating gently over it and the the bay formed by inlet and falls, although reaching it is a case of finding more of the paths running between the trees and the islands cliffs.

The north side of the island is home to another beach, a broad swathe of grass rolling down to it from the uplands of the island, suggesting water may have also once flowed down it to the sea.

Thermae, May 2020

Off the coast from this side of the island are three smaller isles that form a line running to the north-west. The outermost of these three looks to be a private home, so straying by air in that direction is perhaps bed avoided so as not to risk invading privacy. A further knob of rock to the north-east is home to a light house.

Sitting beneath a setting Sun, Thermae makes for a high photogenic setting with much to enjoy and plenty of places to sit, in gardens, on benches, on the water and under the trees. In all, a highly pleasing visit.

Thermae, May 2020

SLurl Details

  • Thermae (Thermae, rated Moderate)

Second Life Premium Plus roll-out postponed

Posted on by Inara Pey

I was unable to get to the Web User Group meeting on Wednesday, May 5th, and it is taking a while to catch up with things. However, one item of discussion that I’ve been made aware of  – with thanks to Lucia et al – is that of Premium Plus.

This is, as most know, the new subscription level, placed “above”, so to speak, that of Premium, that Linden Lab have been working on.

No specifics as to what it might include have to date been released, making it the subject of much speculation in forums and at things like the Web User Group meetings, but it had been indicated that the roll-out of Premium Plus would follow some time after the deployment of Name Changes, which happened in early April (see Linden Lab announces “the return of last names”, and some notes).

Indeed, updated server-side support for Premium subscriptions – including Premium Plus – have already been deployed, and updates to more easily handle data relating to subscription benefits have also been made to the viewer, and will filter out to  TPVs over time.

However, the plans for the formal deployment of Premium Plus have now changed, as first revealed at the May 5th Web User Group meeting; the change, and the reasons for it were further confirmed to me by Grumpity Linden on Tuesday, May 12th.

We have made the decision to delay the deployment of Premium Plus based on two key factors:

  1. We want to be focused on our Uplift project (move to the cloud) and to minimize distraction for our development, QA, and Ops teams. While we’ve laid a lot of groundwork, quite a bit more still remains to finish Premium Plus.
  2. The pandemic has brought a lot of financial uncertainty to people all around the world and we know many of our Residents have been hit hard.

We are very happy that SL has provided an outlet for people where they can connect, escape, engage safely, and earn a living or supplement their income as well. But we also realise that introducing a higher-priced service level in this time would be really ham-handed.

– Grumpity Linden, May 12th, 2020

As to when might we see Premium Plus – or something like it – made available? Grumpity continued:

I don’t know that there’s a whole lot more to say. I can’t promise a time line, but early 2021 is reasonable to expect. If we find ourselves in a position to move up that time line, we’ll certainly explore that. Without any actual plans to that effect, we may find, for example, that a different type of service level than Premium Plus is a better offering for the times we find ourselves in come Fall.

Given the current global economic  / income environment,  delaying the deployment of the new Premium level is a sensible move, for the reason Grumpity states. As and when there is further news on Premium Plus, I’ll endeavour to provide an update – and in a more timely manner!

2020 Simulator User Group week #20 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ostoja, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, May 12th. Not a lot was discussed (again), so just a short update on server deployments / official viewer updates.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the simulator deployment thread for updates.

  • On Tuesday, May 12th, the majority of the grid was updated to server maintenance release 541440, comprising:
    • Updates to fix issues with the Name Change feature still calling avatars by their “old” names for up to a week (see BUG-228565).
    • Internal logging changes and improvements to how the simulator accesses internal servers.
    • A a fix to llBase64ToInteger, the colour space LSL functions.
    • This update could exacerbate issues with group notice time stamps failing to accurately report, which has been an issue on at least one RC channel (see: BUG-228562 Group Notice Timestamps don’t report accurately Server Channel 540369/ now 541440).
  • Updates are planned for the three RC channels, but at the time of writing, had yet to be announced. Commenting on the updates at the meeting, Rider Linden stated:

LeTigre and Magnum are getting competing fixes for the experience purchase problem [see Bug-228676]. BlueSteel, Snack and Preflight [two small-scale RC channels] are all getting an update that just internal fixes and extra logging.

Please refer to the deployment thread for further information / updates.

SL Viewer

On Monday, May 11th:

  • The Camera Presets RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541639.
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541651.
  • A new FMOD Studio update RC viewer, version 6.4.2.541570, was issued.

The remaining official viewer pipelines are currently unchanged from the end of week #18:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • CEF Special RC viewer, version 6.4.1.541204, dated April 30th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

Of twins and lock downs in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Carbone Gallery

The Carbone Gallery is a new gallery venture by Milena Carbone that opened at the start of May 2020, offering a venue in which she can display her own work and that of invited guests.

Milena is a relative newcomer to Second Life, having joined in mid-2019; as an artist, she is not afraid to use her work to stimulate the grey matter and challenge perceptions. In doing so, she draws inspiration from a number of sources: science, psychology, philosophy and religion chief among them. I became enamoured with her work after visiting Agape in Pace, a fascinating exploration of art, love, hate, religion, politics all offered with reflections on quantum field theory (see Art and quantum states in Second Life). As such, her art is not intended to be seen so much as experienced.

For me, art is not just about aesthetics or fashion, but must open reflection to the questions of our chaotic time. Art can help for a better world. An artwork addresses an important question with more questions. Otherwise, it is decoration.

– Milena Carbone

For the opening of her gallery, she offers two installations: Twins and Locked.

The Carbone Gallery: Twins

Twins, as the teleport board to the first of these installation notes, have long been the subject of many myths, with artists using them as symbolic representations. Describing itself as an expression of “four mythical aspects of twinship”, Twins is a layered piece that, while couched in in studies of twins, though the use of eight images, is equally an exploration of self. The four story elements of the installation  – Identity (also routed in the onset of puberty via the use of the “character” of “ephebe”), The Opposite, Replication and Fusion – all being as much about people as individuals as it is about the notion of twins sharing their lives.

Within this structure are also commentaries of conformity in the modern age, together with questions on whether the desire  / need / pressure to conform really offers happiness; philosophical musings on the the deals of love and partnership; and observations about outlook, human nature and the need to understand ourselves if we are to achieve balance.

Carbone Gallery: Twins

Locked is a four-part story focused on the trials and tribulations the world-wide lock down that has resulted from the rise of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

As with Twins, it is reached via a TP board from the foyer of the gallery space, and takes for form of a four rooms opening off of a central hallway. Within these rooms are the four parts to a story. These can be visited in any order, although I’d personally recommend following them in the order Breakdown, Sideration, Glimmer and Amnesia; doing so allows the narrative threads and themes within the story to naturally grow in complexity as you progress.

The Carbone Gallery: Locked

Each room contains three images by Milena, a sculpture by Mistero Hifeng, and a “chapter” of the story; a seat in the middle of each room offers visitors the chance to sit and read the story and reflect on it through the presence of the images and sculpture. Again, while the core of the piece offers  reflection on isolation as a result of the pandemic, so too does it fold in many others aspects and thoughts – up to, and including a question on the nature of God him / herself.

This layering is nuanced and subtle. in the central hall, for example, is a wall of photographs carefully selected by Milena over a period of days that both reflects our natural inclination to be close to others. However, interwoven with these images are others with a dark edge – reflections of both the darker sides to life and the anger and frustrations that can grow out of enforced isolation.

The Carbone Gallery: Locked

Also to be found within these rooms are question and musing about the current politic climate – notably the jingoism espoused in the petty nationalism / totalitarianism exhibited by the extreme right, the kind of future we are leaving to our descendants, and the choices we face for our own immediate future. All of which makes for a compelling, provocative piece.

As a first guest exhibition, the Carbone gallery also presents The Privilege of Ageing, a meditation on the subject by Harbor Galaxy, and which itself is a captivating study of eight images.

The Carbone Gallery: The Privilege of Ageing by Harbor Galaxy

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