Day: December 5, 2024

Previewing The Dickens Project 2024 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Dickens Project, a seasonal celebration of the life, times and work of Charles Dickens with a focus on what is perhaps his most famous story, A Christmas Carol, officially opens to the public on Friday, December 6th, 2024.

Now a tradition within Second Life – the first edition of the event was held in 2012 (and which itself grew out of a special presentation originally made in 2008), the Dickens Project offers a mix of reading, storytelling, music, events and activities. It is organised and presented by Seanchai Library and offers visitors an immersive environment across two regions evocative of Victorian England in Dickens’ time. Within this settings, Seanchai Library and friends will be hosting a variety of events and activities, including readings of A Christmas Carol.

This year brings with it new features and tools to help visitors feel more immersed within the setting. These include:

  • A Personal Audio HUD (developed by Shandon Loring) and a Map HUD: (developed by Arrehn Oberlander) designed to assist guests in connecting the words of Dickens’ novella with the created environment and sorting through the many “Points of Interest” across both regions of the setting. Both will be available at the Welcome Centre and various locations around the Project. The Map HUD required accepting the Caledonian Studios SL Experience which is also used for the regions’ teleportal system.
The Dickens Project 2024 Feature Markers
  • Feature Markers to help guests discover points of engagement including task animations. These comprise:
    • The red hammers icon: indicating that here you can perform a task such as baking a pie, hammering out a horseshoe, chopping wood, weaving baskets or making gingerbread.
    • The blue camera icon: indicating a pose scene is available for you and your friends to use and take pictures.
    • The green people icon: denoting that there is a sitting action available including things like drinking tea and cakes in a shop, playing a game. There are also scenes available where you can mind a store, or a market stall, or tend a fire.
The Dickens Project 2024

Readings and Events

The Dickens performing community is back in force this year, including opening weekend performances by Angelicus Boy Choir, the opening celebration of the Hermes Kondor art show, and a reading presentation by Poet Klannex Northmead from Dickens’ “Little Dorrit.”

These are all in addition to the live story reading programs which Seanchai Library is known for.  The popular Carol Week will begin on Friday, December 20th with a section of Dickens’ novella presented live each day in a Story Tour presentation at the sites on the estate inspired by the story.

Also returning for 2024 is the Community Virtual Library, once again providing research and information on Victorian life in the time of Dickens’ works; the Angelicus Boy Choir; the Raglan Shire Tiny Carollers; the Seanchai readers and friends, and, of course a broad range of entertainment and parties featuring DJs and live musicians from across Second Life.

The full calendar of events for the Project is provided below – note all times are SLT.

To keep up-to-date on daily events and updates, be sure to keep an eye on the Seanchai Library website.

Important Note: The Dickens Project uses several Experience-based systems including Caledonian Studios, Quantum Products, and MetaHarpers Interactive Theatre for teleportation and to enhance guests interaction. If you are prompted to join any of these Experiences during your visit, please ensure you accept them.

Dickens Project Art Show

Returning for 2024 is the Dickens Project Art Show, which is currently open (until December 16th, 2024) to submissions from artists wishing to participate.

This is a non-juried show which will formally open on December 22nd, 2024 with a special opening celebration at 11:00 SLT on that day, and will run through until January 5th, 2025. Artists are invited to submit 2D art (some 3D art can be accommodated by arrangement), with the organisers given priority to art with the following themes:

  • Elements of The Dickens Project.
  • Victorian Christmas.
  • Winter beauty.

Multiple submissions are allowed, but the number of works shown per artist may be limited in order to allow as many artists to be represented as possible.

Submissions (and enquiries about the Art Show) should be made via notecard to Stevie Basevi, with submissions no later that December 16th, 2024. These notecards should include: the artist’s full SL Name (that is, Display Name and account name); the artist’s physical world time zone or best SL times when they can be contacted; a brief description of the piece + an artist biography; a *preview* image of the art to be submitted (i.e. a lower-resolution, thumbnail copy in order to provide the organisers with an idea of the work – not the art itself); and optional links to a related website, Flickr page, etc., for the artist.

The Dickens Project 2024

About Seanchai Library

Seanchai Library (pronounced Shawn-a-kee, which means “Storyteller” in Irish Gaelic.) was founded in March of 2008 in Second Life. The program remains dedicated to promoting the power of stories to transform and inspire through live voice presentations: “We bring stories of all kinds to life, in Second Life and other virtual worlds.”

The Dickens Project was created for Seanchai Library by Da5id Abbot, Dagmar Kohime, Gloriana Maertens, Stevie Basevi-Morane, Iniry Vaher, and Caledonia Skytower, in presenting it, Seanchai Library acknowledges the support and sponsorship of Linden Lab.

Links and SLurls

December 2024 SL Web User Group summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday December 4th, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available. Table of Contents

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

General Update

[Video: 1:59-3:59 and 6:18-8:45]

  • Marketplace UI: work on updating the marketplace with a new user interface is described as being in the final stages of internal testing and thus “very close”.
  • Second Life Dashboard (secondlife.com): this is also being updated to a new design, and there is a chance it may be deployed in the next month / during January 2025.
  • Web Log-in and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): this is ongoing work to update the Second Life web log-in splash screen to a new design which will will work better on all devices, and will support MFA.
  • Marketplace MFA: work is continuing on adding MFA to the Marketplace.
  • Also in the works:
    • Changes to Linden Home store, adding some UI updates.
    • Updating the Second Life web maps – described as “still in early design”. Some of this work was mentioned in the November meeting – also see below.

Single Sign-On

  • [Video: 5:28-5:58] The subject of single sign-on (SSO) – allowing a user to log-in with a single ID to several related but independent services (e.g. SL dashboard, the Marketplace, (possibly) the viewer, etc.), just once (and possibly with unified authentication factors) Has often bee requested  – and looked at – by the Lab. In response to SSO being raised at this meeting, Sntax Linden responded:
SO and Federated login is something we have been looking at doing in the future. The MFA on web login and marketplace will just be reusing the existing MFA we have on viewer and mobile.

Gifting Marketplace Items

[Video: 7:09-8:45 and 11:44-24:06]

  • This has been discussed at past meetings. Gifting is seen as confusing for some (having the Add to Cart as Gift and Buy Now buttons so close together suggests Buy Now must be clicked when gifting); plus the Shopping Cart is often used as a means of storing things people might be interested in purchasing, but as gifting is tied to it, carts must be cleared of anything stored therein.
  • As such, requests have been made for a direct means of gifting items in a manner similar to the Buy Now button (e.g. an “Gift Now”) button.
  • Commenting on this,  Juniper Linden said:
We do have some updates to the gift UI coming out soon-ish; minor changes to that flow that might be better but nothing like “gift now”
  • Sntax indicated the MP team will get to gifting as soon as they can.
  • The basic requirement for this was seen as a simple button within listings, per above.
    • However, maintaining the ability to still add gifts to the cart as an option was also seen as useful – so having the “Gift Now” button present the current steps for gifting (enter recipient’s name + an optional message) followed by options to send the gift directly or add it to the Shopping Cart was seen as the optimal solution.
  • The main pressure from the meeting was to have some form of “band-aid” solution for direct gifting, and then refine things after-the-fact. This was seen as the preferable course of action.
  • This conversation also spiralled into use of legacy (user) names over Display Names and mis-gifting people.

Second Life Web Maps

[Video: 28:09-54:59]

  • As noted above, LL are looking at updating the Second Life web maps (https://maps.secondlife.com/), and to this end, a series of questions were asked on the functionality they provide:
    • Do people use the web maps or just the in-viewer World Map. Probably fair to say the if a broad audience were asking, there would be a reasonable split between “viewer” and “both”.
    • Is the Create Your Own SLurl option in the viewer World Map a useful option?
    • Do people use the Destination Guide element of the web maps to find places?
    • Do people use the Search option on web maps?
A Second Life web map (https://maps.secondlife.com/) showing: 1. the Create Your Own Map Link option (opens a dialogue box), 2. search bar option and 3. the  Picks Destination Guide 
  • That those at the meeting assumed that these questions were focused on the viewer’s World Map (with ensuing confusion as to the Search and Destination Guide questions) is possibly indicative as to how often the web maps are directly used (although eight people at a meeting is far too small a sample from which to draw meaningful conclusions).
  • Web Maps are frequently used, however – and possibly without people realising they are a map system – when clicking on SLurls included in things like blog posts, etc., in order to locate and teleport to the region / location in question.
  • The above spread to a discussion on sharing SLurls and how people go about it (including the misconception that the viewer World Map does not allow for the copying / creation of SLurl, despite the large button at the bottom of the Map legend).
  • A request was made for possible information to be added to the SL maps. Replies focused on the viewer World Map and included:
    • A “show rez zones” option.
    • A “show Set Home locations” option to help new users to find regions where they can set their home position.
    • Ability to find out more about  location via the map. Fore example, clicking on a location on map.scondlife.com gives a default dialogue (which LL have stated will be updated to actually reflect the region information) – having this available for regions / parcels on the viewer World Map was suggested (on a mouse-over hover?).
    • Whether or not a location is open to public teleporting  / a user’s ability to teleport (e.g.  whether there is a minimum age set for access, or access is controlled by having Payment Information on File).

General Discussion

  • The last 10 minutes of the meeting focused on issues around links to outdated videos on web properties such as Where Next? the Support portal, etc., and the potential negative impact they have on new users / incoming new users.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, January 8th, 2025.