It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home in Nowhereville, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.
Monday, July 25th, 19:00 Dandelion Wine
The inventor who almost took the pleasure out of life by building a Happiness Machine; the young reporter who fell in love with an alluring lady of ninety; the old gentleman whose last act was listening to the clang of a green trolley car going round a corner, two thousand miles away.
These are just a few of strange and vivid people who entered the secret world of a twelve-year-old boy during one enchanted summer when he discovered the fact that he really was alive…
“The summer of ’28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma’s belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury.”
There lived a girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita.
But Petra’s world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children – among them Petra and her family – have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race.
Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet – and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity’s past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard – or purged them altogether.
Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?
Caledonia Skytower read Donna Barba Higuera’s 2021 winner of the Newbery Medal and Pura Belpré Award.
Wednesday, July 27th, 19:00: Seanchai Flicks
A special for Star Wars month as the Seanchai cinema space plays host to videos and throw popcorn around!
Thursday, July 28th, 19:00: Thursday Night Sci-Fi
With Finn Zeddmore. This week: Goblin Market by Robert R. Chase from, Asimov’s SF Magazine (July/Aug 2022) in a special 90 minute session.
In June 2019, Linden Lab released the Legacy Profiles Project viewer, the first step in moving user Profiles back into a viewer floater that does not utilise the web-based profiles that have been in place for the last decade(ish) – see SL Legacy Profiles project viewer.
At the time, it was hoped that the project to move profiles back “into” the official viewer would be relatively easy. However, three years have passed, and it is only now that the work has moved forward.
There are multiple reasons for this being the case: pressure of work elsewhere, the need for back-end updates that were interrupted by the migration to AWS, and so on. So, there was probably an enormous sense of relief at the lab when, on July 21st, 2022, the Profiles Release Candidate (RC) Viewer could finally be issued for users to take a look at ahead of it moving forward to de facto release status.
As with in-viewer profile floaters, this one presents a panel with a series of tabs:
Bio – for the user’s / avatar’s biography.
Feed – providing a view of the user’s web-based Profile Feed.
Picks: the familiar selection of 10 favourite places / other information the user wants to display in their profile.
Classifieds: for any classified ads the user has created.
Real Life: a further tab the profile owner can use to provide any additional information they wish (it actually does not have to be “real life” related, which is why I whish the Lab would follow the lead of others and call this “Additional Info”, or something, and let users decide how they want to use it.
My Notes: a section in which notes can be written about a profile and which can only be seen by the person writing the notes.
The new official viewer Profile panel. On the left: as seen b the account holder, with an editable description field. On the right: as seen by other users. Note the two Action drop-down menus as well. Click for full size, if required
Of these tabs, it is very likely that Bio is going to be the most jarring to anyone familiar with viewer-based legacy profiles, as it presents a very different layout compared to other profile floaters – and also includes some useful extras.
The basic info on the profile owner – picture, partner status and age are rather untidily squished into the top left corner of the tab. This is to allow more room for users to write something about themselves / their avatars. While this is welcome – the “traditional” legacy profile always seemed a tad limiting for expression. However, depending on whether or not this layout is adopted verbatim aby TPVs, I do have a small niggle.
People tend to spend considerable effort in getting their bio info laid out in their Profile, and such is the nature of this floater, such work tends to be lost. For example, in Firestorm, Cool VL, etc., my own bio is relatively centred within the provided window – but here, as shown in the image above right, it appears oddly ranged to the left.
This may sound like nit-picking, but it could actually carry some weight: people put great store by what they see in a profile almost as much as in what they read, and what may come over as a slapdash, hard-to read layout on account of different floater window sizes (again, assuming TPV don’t simply integrate this profile floater design into their offerings, rather than continue with their own) might lead to unfair judgements.
On the positive side, this tab includes up to three handy drop-downs:
Show / Hide: (visible to the profile owner only) – sets whether or not the profile is listed in Search, and is tidier than the old check-box.
Actions: a context-sensitive menu available to both the profile owner and those viewing a profile, with the menu options (shown left and right in the image above) dependent on who is viewing the viewing the menu.
Tools drop-down (person viewing a profile only): provides access to “action” options the person viewing the profile may wish to take in reference to the owner of the profile, as shown below:
The additional options available from a user’s profile for those viewing it
The remainder of the tabs in the floater are really straightforward and require no real expansion here. As per current legacy profiles, when editing your own, editable fields are show in white for text entry.
What one thinks of the overall layout / appearance is subjective; outside of my little niggle on how information is displayed between different styles of profile floater (again, assuming some TPVs keep to the more “traditional” profile floater design rather than adopting this layout), I’ve no issue with this approach. And like I noted above, the additional drop-down options presented through it are handy to have.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week ending Sunday, July 24th, 2022
This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Release viewer: version 6.6.1.572458 – formerly the Maintenance M(akgeolli) RC viewer, promoted June 29 – no change.
Release channel cohorts::
Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.2.573282, issued on July 20th.
Profiles RC viewer, version 6.6.2.573372, issued on July 20th.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 6 Project viewer version 6.6.2.573263, issued on July 21st.
Gz-13, as seen by the James Web Space Telescope, one of the earliest known galaxies in the universe and seen as it would have appeared just a few million years after the Bi Bang. Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI
The above image may not look to be much, but it in fact a glimpse at one of the most distance galaxies from our own, a place called Gz-13. It is so far away, the light captured by the image departed it about 300 million years after the universe itself was born.
Gz-13 is a part of a cluster of galaxies seen within one of the first set of images released by NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and which I covered in my previous Space Sunday update. So far away are these objects, that they can only be seen via the effect of gravitational lensing – using the gravity of an object much, much closer to our own solar system to “bend” the light from them and focus it so that JWST can capture images.
Gz-13 lies tucked away in the SMAC-0723 grouping of very distant objects. Originally imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the grouping has been given sharp, new high-definition exposure by JWST. Some much definition, in fact, that GZ-13 hadn’t been seen by Hubble.
While it may seem like a blob of red-shifted light, massively distant objects like Gz-13 (and Gz-11, another far-distant galaxy that was seen when Hubble viewed SMACS-0723) are important targets for study, as they represent a period of time literally just a blink (in cosmic terms) after the universe went off with its Big Bang; thus thus represent an opportunity for us to understand what was going on very close to the origin of literally everything there has ever been.
SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. Tucked away inside this cluster sits Gz-13. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Centre / STScI
What is particularly interesting about the likes of Gz-11 and Gz-13 is that despite being formed just 150-200 million years after the first stars are believed to have started forming, they still have masses that suggest they are home to several billions stars with a mass equivalent to our own Sun. Thanks to them being so bright in the infra-red, they offer an unparalleled opportunity for astronomers to carry out extensive spectrographic analysis to help us to discover more about them and the nature of the stars they contain – including, potentially, whether any of their stars might be surrounded by disks of dust and gas that might have gone on to form planets.
Given the nature of the expanding universe, Gz-11 and Gz-13 are liable to be just the tip of a massive iceberg of galaxies far, far, away that are waiting for JWST to find. This is turn will massively increase our total understanding of the nature of the universe, and the formation and growth of the galaxies within it. In fact, it is very possible that JWST will look so far out that we are looking almost back to the very edge of the Big Bang itself.
China Launches First Space Station Science Module
China has launched the first of two science modules to its nascent Tiangong Station (TSS).
The Wentian module was lifted into the sky atop a Long March 5B heavy-lift rocket at 06:25 UTC on Sunday, July 24th, the launch taking place from the Wenchang spaceport on the southern island of Hainan.
Measuring 17.9 metres in length and with a diameter of 4.2 metres, the module has an operational mass of around 23 tonnes, putting it on a par with US and international modules on the ISS. At the time of writing, the module was due to make an automated docking manoeuvres with Tianhe-1, the core module of the Chinese space station.
Chinese Space Station supplemental module Wentian. Credit: Leebrandoncremer via Wikipedia
Wentian, which literally means “quest for the heavens,” is the first of two science modules intended to join with Tinahe-1 to complete the currently-planned elements of TSS and bring its all-up mass to around 66 tonnes (the ISS, by comparison, masses 460 tonnes). In addition, operations aboard the station can be added-to through the use of Tianzhou automated re-supply vehicles.
The module’s docking will be overseen by the three crew of the Shenzhou 14 mission. It will initially dock with Tianhe’s forward docking port, where it will remain during initial tests and check-out by the crew to confirm its overall condition. The crew will then commence initial science activities, which will include a live broadcast via Chinese state media.
At some point in the future, Wentian will be relocated to a side port on Tianhe’s forward docking hub to form one arm of an eventual “T” that will be made by the core module and the two science modules, leaving the forward port free for visiting crews, and the after port at the far end of Tianhe available for visiting Tianzhou vehicles.
Whilst classified a science module, Wentian is actually a multi-purpose facility. It includes an airlock of its own to enable crew members to complete space walks, it has an external robot arm of its own to assist with such spacewalks, and additional living space for 3 tiakonauts, allowing up to six to live in comfort on the station during hand-over periods. The first such hand-over (similar in nature to ISS handovers) is due to take place in December 2022, when the crew of Shenzhou 14 pass the station over to the 3-person Shenzhou 15 crew. However, prior to that event, the second science module, called Mengtian (“Dreaming of Heavens”), is due to be launched to the station in October.
NASA Sets Artemis-1 Launch Dates
On July 20th, 2022, NASA announced they are targeting three dates at the end of August / beginning of September for the first flight of their Space Launch System (SLS) super rocket which sits at the heart of their plans for a return to the Moon.
The Artmis-1 mission will launch an uncrewed Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) on an extended mission to cislunar space. Each of the three launch dates has different launch windows and mission durations:
August 29th: the launch window runs from 12:33 to 14:33 UTC, and would result in a 42-day mission ending with a splashdown on October 10th.
September 2nd: the launch window runs from 16:48 to 18:48 UTC, and would result in a 39-day mission splashing down on October 11th.
September 5th: the launch window opens at 21:12 UTC for 90 minutes, and would result in a 42-day mission splashing down on October 17th.
The Artemis-1 Space Launch System rocket, seen during the initial Wet Dress Rehearsal test in April 2022. Credit: NASA
Splashdown for all three launch opportunities will occur off the coast of San Diego, California.
The dates themselves have been defined based on the need to complete post-Wet Dress Rehearsal test work on the vehicle. They all represent “long-class” flights for the Orion, with Artmis-1 originally being planned around shorter 4-week flights in order to test out all of its handling characteristics in cislunar space. However, given all of the delays thus far experienced with Artemis-1, NASA opted to push for these launch dates rather wait until the end of October when windows for shorter-during flights would open, together with a further rick of slippage of the launch back into 2023.
Luane’s Underwater World, July 2022 – click any image for full size
It might not seem that long since I last wrote about LuaneMeo’s Luane’s World – largely because it isn’t; I covered the spring look to the region just a couple of months back, in May 2022 (see Spring 2022 at Le Monde Perdu in Second Life).
However, I have good reason for returning so quickly to the region of Le Monde Perdu (The Lost World), because Laune, again working with Gorba McMahon, has made the Summer 2022 build a place to be enjoyed by both land lovers and those who enjoy dipping under the waves in either human form or as merfolk, as she presents Luane’s Underwater World.
Laune’s Underwater World, July 2022
With this iteration, the setting presents a south-facing arc of land sitting with its back to the rest of Luane’s estate, which embraces a wide and relatively deep bay within its protective arms. The south-facing arc of the land forms a sweeping curve of sun-bleached sand with many places set across it for people to sit or cuddle as gulls wheel and turn overhead, and waves break gently against the sloping sand.
Behind the beach, the land rises sharply but not precipitously or to great height; just enough to present stepped uplands sliced into from the north by a tight inlet, and whose grassy hills carry a suggestion of this being a Mediterranean setting, courtesy of the Tuscan style villas, houses and outlands scattered across them. Furnished within and showing outward signs of being occupied, these are actually public spaces as well, offering further places to sit and pass the time – and, as with the beach, plenty of opportunities for photos.
Luane’s Underwater World, July 2022
However, do be aware that behind the villa occupying the north-east lowlands, there is a trail and bridge leading into the neighbouring regions of the estate. These regions do have private residences scattered across them, so do please take care to avoid trespassing when wandering in that direction.
Throughout the landscape, there is a gentle sense of peace and of time passing slowly; a vibe that this is a place where nothing seems to happen as the minutes and days tick one to the next. But dive into the waters of the bay, and it becomes apparent something has happened here at some point. Caught in the arms of the land and sheltered under the waves is a world which at one time lay above the waters that now guards it.
Luane’s Underwater World, July 2022
This is a place rich in colour, with corals and anemones bloom, oysters hold great pearls, shark, fish, dolphin and turtle swim – and the ruins of an ancient civilisation stand in silence, the wooden wreck of a once proud sailing ship close to hand.
Exactly what caused this place to drown and when it happened is unclear – and actually unimportant; for who is to say this place was ever once above the waters of that bay? Perhaps the ruins and statues here were not carved by human hand, but by those of the merfolk they appear to celebrate?
Laune’s Underwater World, July 2022
What is clear is that here, among the corals and anemone, watched over by sea creatures great and small, are many more hiding places where lovers can rest in one another’s arms, photographers can find ready to be used within their arts, and those who simply want to sit and pass a little time can find peace. Some of these may well be out in the open and easy to spot, but others are tucked away and may require a little effort to find – but it will be time well spent, and are welcoming to both human and merfolk.
As always, Laune’s World offers much to see and appreciate with this Summer 2022 build, and I recommend that rather than reading my twaddle, you go see for yourselves!
Currently open through to mid-August 2022 at ArtCare Gallery, curated by Carelyna, is Formless, a collection of 24 monochrome collages by Traci Ultsch, built using photographs and paintings, some or all of which might just be unfinished – hence the title: Formless.
Traci is typically self-effacing about the art on show, stating:
This exhibit follows on from the ‘Crash’ and ‘Overdose’ works from 2021 in being concerned with more personal subjects, this one specifically dealing with more recent events … They are not what they are. Or maybe they are, who am I to tell anyone what to think about any of this. Maybe it’s just a self indulgent ego driven attempt at getting attention in some over dramatic way.
ArtCare Gallery: Traci Ultsch – Formless
For those who may not have witnessed either Overdose (reviewed here) or Crash (reviewed here) these were very personal pieces (Overdose dealing with the two faces of addiction, Crash a exploration of the nature of art and its relationship with both the artist and the observer); heady and rich subjects for exploration. Here, the pieces are – on the surface – more esoteric in nature; but they are far from being merely an attempt to gain attention, offering as they do a richness of expression and reflection on the likes of life, love, human nature, age, and relationships.
To start with, let’s take the manner in which they images have been set out; a huge amount of consideration has been given to theme, point and counter-point. Grouped into sets of three, each set with its own collective title. These triplets have then bee set out in pairs, two sets of three per wall, each pairing linked by their respective titles, which offer a mix of counter-point to one another (e.g. Just Like Heaven / Just Like Nothing) or a continuation of a central idea (e.g. Don’t Wake Me Up / I’m Dreaming of You).
ArtCare Gallery: Traci Ultsch – Formless
Within the individual sets of three is a richness of metaphor that helps direct one to thoughts on the ideas of love and life, age, relationships, and so on. Some of these are richly expressive in their simplicity of approach, yet deeply layered in potential meaning.
The left and centre pictures within I Wish You Were Dead, for example, with the twisted shape (shrivelled leaf? slug?) offer both an evocation of the central wish in the most visceral of ways (assuming the object is a slug), and also – with it’s shape mindful of female genitalia – a cruel twist on the wish focused on barrenness / loss of sexuality.
ArtCare Gallery: Traci Ultsch – Formless
However, there is a risk that in saying this much, I an artificially constructing a framework around these pieces outside of the artist’s core intent – which may equally be to offer a series of pieces we can chose to interpret through the lens of our own life experience and the events that have most recently affected us. As such, I’ll close my ramblings here and encourage you to visit formless via the SLurl below.
The inventor who almost took the pleasure out of life by building a Happiness Machine; the young reporter who fell in love with an alluring lady of ninety; the old gentleman whose last act was listening to the clang of a green trolley car going round a corner, two thousand miles away.
There lived a girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita.
