SL Pride, the event celebrating diversity organised by and on behalf of Second Life’s LGBTQ+ community officially opens on Friday, June 5th, 2020 at 14:00 SLT, and runs through until Sunday, June 14th.
With entertainment and activities through the week, this year’s event has the theme TOGETHER, which the organisers define as: Together in Unity; in Life; in Health; in Harmony; in Spirit; in Love; in Power; in Strength; in Mind; in Body and in Peace. Given the situation in the United States at present, the event also stands in support of, and in solidarity with, Black Lives Matter.
Second Pride 2020
Once again, the event is centred on a city-like region setting, a central park within it offering the event space. Surrounding this is an elevated train line designed by Jogi Schultz (yogijo), who also supplies the buildings below the elevated rails that house shops, galleries, social spaces, the Community Resource Centre. Among these can also be found further event areas (such as the Men in Motion stage), beyond which sits a façade of high-rise buildings representing the Manhattan skyline.
As with the 2019 event, a funfair sits to the west of the region, whilst to the north-east there is a Welcome Area for newcomers reaching the event directly from the Second Pride website and Community Gateway. This offers fun and comprehensive introduction to Second Life and the viewer. In particular, this Welcome Area offers a place where members of the LGBTQ+ community can find a home and a place from which they can explore the wider opportunities within Second Life.
SL Pride 2020
A full schedule of activities for the the event can be found on the Second Pride website, as is a list of sponsors for this year’s event. Note that while the entertainment schedule opens in List view, for ease of reference, you can change it to a Day view via the drop-down at the top right of the page.
In addition, the website also supports a Get Social option, which allows people to interact with one another. Those joining it can create extended profiles, upload profile pictures, join an activity stream (similar to Facebook), connect with friends, private message one another, and so on. Click the Get Social! in the website’s menu bar to get started.
Second Pride 2020
Donations from the event will go to the Trevor Project. Founded in 1998 by the creators of the Academy Award®-winning short film TREVOR, The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25.
So, be sure to make time to visit SL Pride during the coming week, share in the entertainment, see the art, tour the region – and donate to the Trevor Project.
The Beguiled Art Gallery and Studio, May 2020 – blog post
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, June 4th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
Unfortunately, Vir was on a replacement computer for this meeting, and the audio quality was exceptionally bad in the early part of the meeting, making comprehension both in the meeting and when playing back my audio recording very difficult.
Terrain
LL has long acknowledged that terrain texture quality in Second Life is not overly great by today’s graphics standards.
There is no defined project to update terrain textures as yet, but Vir took the opportunity to take feedback on ideas for what might be included. Some of this comprised:
Better texture density for crisper textures.
Texture layering to allow for roads / paths, etc.
Support for higher resolution textures.
Splat maps for textures and for normal and specular support.
Voxel support was requested, but this is seen as a much larger project than terrain texturing, we Linden Lab to go that route, and it is certainly not something on the cards for the foreseeable future.
Jelly Dolls / Avatar Rendering
Vir continues to work on this and has (I believe) a viewer with some of his ideas included available for internal testing or review at the Lab.
Project Muscadine (Animesh Follow-On)
Project Summary
Currently: offering the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.
Current Status
Still officially on hold.
Attach points support has been requested and could be a “next step”.
However, when work is resumed, the emphasis will be on fixing the identified bugs around the LSL parameter setting process
In brief
EEP: LL are still looking to correct:
Specularity (shininess) issues – see BUG-228781 and BUG-228581. One of these issues is now fixed internally to the Lab, the other is “in progress”. When deployed, should see behaviour return to pretty much how it was pre-EEP, how where the fixes will fit in viewer updates is still TBD.
Issues with the environment settings for Mainland. This has proven harder to fix. It appears that the wrong environment settings were baked into the Mainland regions, and the most direct means of correcting this is by manually correcting them.
The EEP issues – which arguably show things as they *should* appear, but which in doing so “break” content (hence trying to get the “fixes” in s that assets don’t have to be corrected & re-uploaded, etc.), sparked a discussion on how indicated changes to the rendering pipeline will be handled. Essentially these will be “opt in” for content created after any updates are deployed; old content will be “opt out”, to avoid breakage.
Update: Trader Whiplash-Ballinger dropped me a note to point out that those wishing to hear the music stream for the event, provided by T1 Radio, should visit the T1 Radio website and use the pop-out Relay Radio media player rather than using the in-world stream. The player will give lag / interruption-free listening enjoyment as visitors travel the Relay regions.
Friday June 5th through Sunday June 7th 2020 marks the Relay for Life of Second Life Relay weekend – and this year it’s a biggie! The Relay track this year covers some 40-ish regions, which are supported by additional event and activity regions so that the entire weekend comprises some 57 regions in all, with the American Cancer Society (ACS) region forming the 58th and anchor-point region.
In a year when the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has done so much to prevent people coming together around the world to raise money for ACS and global cancer organisations, Relay for Life of Second Life takes on added importance. It is, in effect, THE major grass-roots fund-raising series of events raising money for ACS and its projects in 2020. Already, Relayers across Second Life have accept the challenge by raising some US $260,000+, and this year’s Relay Weekend offers the opportunity for all of us to significantly advance that total.
While the Relay Weekend doesn’t formally kick-off until 10:00 SLT on Saturday, June 6th, you can learn about ACS, Relay for Life and the weekend on Friday, June 5th at noon SLT when Strawberry Linden interviews Stingray9798 Raymaker, Trager Alter, MamaP Beerbaum, and Nikki Mathieson on Lab Gab
The theme for this year is Game On Cancer, and in reflection of this, relay teams have come together to present a whole host of parcels along the route of the track the take games as their theme – many of them interactive in nature (you can engage in a giant game of Mahjong, for example, or enter an avatar-sized setting based on Clue – or to use its original name (I won’t say “proper”! 🙂 ) Cluedo; while several of SL’s popular communities – science fiction, the road / driving community, role-play groups, sailing / surfing / water communities, and so on – provide region-wide installation focused on their activities framed within the overall theme.
This means there is a huge amount to see and do within the regions as a pert of the overall aim of raising funds for the American Cancer Society’s world-wide efforts to bring treatment, care, support and (eventually) cures to cancer sufferers world-wide.
Relay for Life of Second Life: 2020 Relay Weekend
With the regions, there’s also room for social commentary with subtle reminders that those from poor backgrounds are often more prone to the effects of cancer, simply because they do not have the ease of access to care and support. In this the “Las Vegas” region is quite effective in showing two sides of the coin. May of the teams participating also appear to be running their own events throughout the weekend, with numerous stages and event areas to be found along the track, all of which further helps encourage engagement and participation.
Also to be found through the region are informational displays about cancer and its treatment, parks in which to rest and reflect on life, and places to share in the stories of Second Life residents who have survived cancer, offered as a means to provide hop to those caught within its shadow.
Relay for Life of Second Life: 2020 Relay Weekend
The weekend officially kicks-off at 10:00 SLT on Saturday June 6th with a formal Opening Ceremony. However, as noted above, you can catch up with some of the people behind Relay for Life of Second Life by tuning into Lab Gab on Friday, June 5th, and 12:00 noon SLT.
For 2020, laps around the track are themed as follows, all times SLT.
Saturday, June 6th
Sunday, June 7th
11:00 Survivor/Caregiver Lap
sponsored by the Relay Rockers
00:00
Toga Party / Food Fight
cream pies at the ready!
12:30 Teams Lap
sponsored by Grid Play
01:00
80’s Hour
C&V’s House of Rock
14:00
Roller Skating Hour
don your skates and roll around the track!
02:00
PAC Man Hour
gobble, gobble, gobble!
15:00
Walk with a Friend
two’s always company!
03:00
Monopoly Hour
Go!
16:00
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
sponsored by Attention to Cancer
04:00
Ahoy Matey!
get yourself ship-shape!
17:00
Your Favourite Sports Teams
show your colours!
05:00
Heroes Hour
sponsored by Heroes Helping Heroes
18:00
Nerds and Geeks Unite!
grok you geek!
06:00
Fight Back Hour
sponsored by Gavin Dionysus
19:00
Your favourite video games
sponsored by Friends for a Cure
07:00
Wear Your Coffee and Drink Your Curlers
sponsored by Relay Rockers
20:00
Camping Hour
sponsored by Camping for a Cure
08:00
Hawaiian Hour
Aloha!
21:00 Luminaria Ceremony
09:00
Purple Power Hour
sponsored by Team shadow
22:00
Candyland Hour
sponsored by SHB Gems
10:00 Closing Ceremony
23:00
Las Vegas Hour
11:00
Victory Lap
dancing with your sparklers!
Luminaria Ceremony and Lanterns
At 21:00 SLT on Saturday, June 6th, the track will be in darkness and silence, with all those in the Relay Regions are asked not to engage in open text or voice chat but to walk the track in silence or stand to one side, as the names of those to be remembered are read.
It is a time for each of us to reflect on how this disease has touched us personally. And it is a time for us to look inside ourselves with quiet reflection and find hope. Because no matter what our experience has been with cancer, we all share the hope that we will one day live in a world where our children, and their children, will never have to hear the words “you have cancer”.
– Relay for Life of Second Life event web page
If you wish to have a name read out during the ceremony, please complete and submit the Luminaria Dedication Form.
Relay for Life of Second Life: 2020 Relay Weekend
Along the sides of the relay track are the Luminaria lanterns that can be used to commemorate and / or honour someone you know who has succumbed to or survived cancer. Lanterns can be lit for a minimum donation of L$50 (all proceeds to Relay for Life of Second Life). Donations can can be made by clicking a lantern and then either selecting a set amount or typing in an amount of your choice. You can also optionally enter whether you are lighting the lantern in memory or in honour of someone, and also add their name and / or a message.
Lanterns will be available for donations from the opening of the weekend through until the weekend ends. They will display different colours, depending on the amount donated: Yellow: L$50-499; Green: L$500-999; Blue: L$1000-2499; Orange: L$2500-4999; Pink: L$5000-9999; Purple: L$10,000 and above.
Relay for Life of Second Life: 2020 Relay Weekend
The Spirit of Relay Award
The Spirit of Relay are annual awards presented to the individual and the team that embodies what the community calls, the ‘spirit’ of Relay, from Kick Off to Relay Day. It is not representative of just the amount raised, but takes into consideration the spirit of the individual or team: how they embraced Relay For Life and the American Cancer Society’s mission, their enthusiasm and their participation in Relay activities as a whole, not only in their own but other team’s events as well.
Nomination can be made via the 2020 Spirit of Relay Award form, which will remain open until Sunday June 8th, and the recipients will be announced at the 2020 RFL of SL Wrap Up Party on Wednesday, June 10th.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 