Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, October 4th
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
Current release viewer Love Me Render #4 RC viewer, version 6.4.9.549455, containing just the fixes for EEP, released on September 24th, promoted, September 28th.
Release channel cohorts:
Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.10.549752, issued October 1st.
Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.10.549686, October 1st.
Project viewers:
Project Jelly project viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.10.549690, October 1st.
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, October 5th: Running from the Deity
Gyro Muggins reads the 10th (chronologically speaking) story of Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx series.
Continuing his pursuit of an alien weapon’s platform, the Krang, Flinx finds himself heading into the Blight. However, his ship, Teacher, announces it is in need of repairs and that while its autonomic systems can handle them, it will nevertheless need raw materials from a planet. Flinx therefore opts to land on the nearest world – the planet the “Arrawd”, place roughly equivalent in technology to Earth in 19th century – and therefore normally forbidden as a destination within the Humanx Commonwealth.
The planet has a lower gravity than more Humanx worlds, something that benefits Flinx physically – but things go awry when he injures himself and is forced into the care of a local couple, who find his abilities and technology – if the expression might be used – out of their world.
Despite his protestations, Flinx finds himself increasingly the centre of attention and the idea that he is some kind of deity – and while he finds himself drawn to the less complicated life on Arrawd and the fact it separates him from all the cares and worries he faces in the Commonwealth, he realises he must leave.
Unfortunately, by the time he arrives it this conclusion, three of the governments on the planet have decided to wage war in order to “earn” his blessings and claim him as their deity. And so, reluctantly, he has no other option but to both get involved in matters whilst simultaneously trying to escape the world view that he is some kind of god.
Tuesday, October 6th:
12:00 Noon: Russell Eponym, Live in the Glen
Music, poetry, and stories in a popular weekly session at Ceiluradh Glen.
19:00: Odd and the Frost Giants
Willow Moonfire reads Neil Gaiman’s story, originally written for World Book Day.
Winter isn’t coming – it’s refusing to go away, but no-one understands why.
Not only that, but Odd has run away from home, despite the fact he can barely walk and has to use a crutch. Nevertheless, he finds his way to the forest, where he encounters three animals: a bear, a fox, and an eagle, and they have a strange story to tell. Listening to them, Odd realises he must now embark on a strange journey, one he can barely imagine.
For he must now set out and save nothing less that Asgard, City of the Norse Gods. For it has been invaded by the Frost Giants, and while they hold it, winter will not pass away.
It’s going to take a very special kind of boy to defeat the most dangerous of all the Frost Giants and free the mighty Gods. A boy who is resolute, cheerful and infuriating and clever…
On All Hallows Eve, young Pipkin is due to meet his eight friends outside a haunted house on the edge of town. But as runs through the gathering gloom, Something sweep him away.
Arriving at the house in expectation of meeting Pipkin, his eight friends instead encounter the mystical Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, who informs them that Pipkin has been taken on a journey that could determine if he lives or dies.
Aided by Moundshroud and using the tail of a kite, the eight friends pursue Pipkin through time and space, passing through the past civilisations of the Egypt, Greece, Roman, the Celts … witnessing all that has given rise to the day they know as “Halloween”, and the role things like ghosts and the dead play in it.
Then, at length they come to the Halloween Tree itself, laden with jack-o’-lanterns, its branches representing the confluence of all these traditions, legends and tales, drawing them together into itself…
Thursday, October 8th
19:00: The Night Stalker – Interview With A Vampire?
Shandon presents another adventure into the unexplained from the canon of Carl Kolchak. Also in Kitely – teleport from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.
21:00: Seanchai Late Night
Finn Zeddmore presents contemporary Sci-Fi-Fantasy from such on-line sources as Light Speed, Escape Pod, and Clarkesworld ‘zines.
The start of October brings with it the opening – on Monday October 5th at 12:30 SLT – another provocative exhibition at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated by Dido Haas.
Nitroglobus remains one of my most-visited (and most written about!) galleries because month in and mouth out, Dido encourages some of the most engaging artists to display their work there, and to do so within the frame of a theme she – or more usually the artist – has set. The result is that each most, Nitroglobus plays host to art that can provoke, evoke, emote, and engage on a level that I personally cannot help but find magnetic.
For October, the gallery is playing host to an installation put together by two artists working together under the banner of Dreamers & Co. They are Nette Reinoir (Jeanette Reinoir) – who is exhibiting her work within a gallery for the first time – and Livio Korobase, and they are supported in part by drawings from the portfolio of physical world Dutch artist, Redmer Hoekstra.
Entitled Animals on Earth, the installation is designed to encourage us to use this time of enforced pause in our lives courtesy of the SRS-COV-2 pandemic to consider what is happening to the world’s ecosystem – its flora and fauna – directly as a result of mankind’s impact on the planet.
Modern societies have been treating Mother Earth as if it was their property; extracting resources, polluting constantly, changing the landscape, killing the animals and destroying its natural balance.
Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has killed 83% of all wild mammals and half of all the plants on Earth. Two hundred species of living beings are extincted every single day. We collectively need to change so many things in areas such as the use of plastic, meat consumption, contaminating energies, day-to-day overconsumption and more.
– Statement by the artists
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Animals on Earth
Now to be sure, statistics and figures need context, and those relating to “daily” extinction rates can be called into question, as they tend to be inconsistent. For example, in 2015 the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that perhaps some 24 species of plant, insect and animal became extinct either regionally or globally every day – but the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity put the figure at “up to 150”, a far larger number, even allowing for the “up to”. Other models present further differing rates, and all appear to be distanced from the fact that historically, we have “only” seen around 800 global extinctions of animals (land, air and marine), during the last 400 years.
However, this does not negate Animals on Earth‘s thematic message. The current epoch – the Holocene – is regarded as encompassing the sixth mass extinction level event (ELE) this planet has seen, the Anthropocene extinction; and event that is still very much on-going, and potentially accelerating. It has its roots in natural climate change as the Pleistocene period, with its rolling waves of ice ages, gave way to the warmer, wetter Holocene period, leading to the extinction of many of the large mammalian species that had acclimatised to the cold, dry ice ages, and an a matching marine megafungal extinction event that brought an end to many marine reptiles and fish due to changing sea temperatures.
But this period of extinctions was influenced by another factor: the rise of humans as organised hunter-gatherers, which gave rise to the first wave of over-hunting, accelerating the demise of many species. It was the start of a trend of human intervention and meddling in Earth’s ecosystem that has continued throughout the Holocene period such that within a few thousands of years, humankind has had one of the most dramatic impacts the Earth’s biomass has witnessed.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Animals on Earth
From over-hunting, to disrupting natural environment as a result of increasing agricultural needs (notably livestock rearing) through to large-scale urban and other development and its associated infrastructure and waste, humans have significantly altered the world’s biomass in multiple ways, own of the biggest being the distribution of mammalian life on Earth, which in 2018 was shown to be 36% humans, 60% livestock (notably cattle and pigs) and just 4% wild animals (source: The biomass distribution on Earth, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Nor does it end there; as the pre-eminent apex predator, human kind is regarded as a megahunter due to our predisposition to hunt and kill creatures pure for “sport” – an act that significantly increases the risk of regional (and even global) extinction of multiple species.
Thus, through our actions, we are directly responsible for continuing the Anthropocene extinction, and thanks to our broader impact on the climate, we are pretty much its primary driver. Our actions are bringing multiple species of fauna and flora and biota dangerous close to the edge of global extinction, we have irrefutably been responsible for many regional extinctions (rendering portions of the world and its oceans no longer habitable by species that once occupied them, even if those species survive to some degree elsewhere) over the last several decades.
It is all of this that Animals on Earth tries to encompass, and it tries to do so not by brow-beating with facts and figures or by doing so by being unduly heavy in its imagery, but by presenting us with images and models and interactive elements that in places fun (do make sure you kiss the frog) and which also serve to get the grey matter working, even if subconsciously.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Animals on Earth
Flow with the thoughts and you’ll discover nature illustrates the Creator’s powers, whoever he/she is. Most of us, however, fail to appreciate nature because we’re entangled in our fast-paced lives, and life’s problems cloud our minds from grasping its beauty and lessons. Climate change, overpopulation, pollution, unfettered urbanization, and wars cause disasters to the natural environment. Little wonder we see less of nature and more of guns, nukes, and bloodshed in our cities.
Statement by the artists
Rich in colour thanks to Nette’s images, and very interactive thanks to Livio’s models and scenery (be sure to mouse-over things carefully – even Redmer Hoekstra’s drawing are more than they seem – Animals on Earth encourages the visitor to consider Earth’s biodiversity as represented by the creatures with who we share the world, and presses us to imagine what life would be like in general terms were we to lose them.
With much to see and do – and to mull over / research – Animals on Earth officially opens to music by DJ Gorilla on Monday, October 5th, appropriately enough, and will remain open through the rest of October.
The crab nebula: the remnants of a supernova that occurred some 6,500 light years from Earth, and was first recorded by Chinese astronomer in 1054. This is a composite picture made up of 24 images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1999 and early 2000. Credit: NASA / ESA
Life on our planet faces many threats. Cosmically speaking, the three biggest threats life on Earth faces, are solar flares an coronal mass ejections, Earth-crossing asteroids, and locate supernova events – the violent explosions of stars as they die.
Of these three, Earth-crossing asteroids tend to get the most attention, as they are regarded as the most immediate n terms of potential threat and what we can actually do to actually mitigate that threat if we’re given enough warning. Solar activity is a risk, but fortunately, when even at the peak of its cycle, our middle-aged Sun is rarely viciously violent, and when it does get angry, it’s rare that Earth is directly in the path of an lash-out – although as I noted in my previous Space Sunday article, we have recently come close.
Supernovas are also a mixed bag – we certainly can’t stop them, and if one occurs that is sufficiently violent and close enough to us, then we could be in a spot of bother no matter where we are in our orbit around the Sun. If close enough, supernovas of Type 1a or Type II could go so far as to be extinction level events (ELEs). Fortunately, in order to do so, such a supernova would have to occur in a fairly massive star that’s within a few hundred light years of us – and there are precious few of those. And if if one did explode as a supernova, that are all so far away, we’d see them long before we’d feel the effects.
Take Betelgeuse for example, a star that has caused much speculation among some due to its recent behaviour. Even if we witness the light of its supernova explosion tomorrow, it would be another 100,000 years for the “hard” radiation of the explosion’s cosmic rays to reach us.
But what of smaller stars – white dwarfs – that are also given to going out with a supernova bang? There are a couple on our neighbourhood, but they are nowhere near that stage in their lives, nd by the time they are, we’ll pretty much be beyond the distance from them at which they could do us a mischief.
While supernovae – the violent explosions of certain types of large star at the end of their lives – can leave richly colours clouds of gas and material, like the Veil Nebula seen here, some 2,400 light years away (and some of the earliest of which go on to be the birthplaces of new stars), this is not always the case. Some can leave “bubbles” in interstellar space, regions with very little material in them at all. Credit: NASA / ESA
So, does that mean supernova are not a threat? No; leaving ELEs aside, a local supernova could still trigger long-term havoc with things like the Earth’s climate. In fact, a new study indirectly points to this possibly being the case around 2-3 million years ago, when the Earth was subjected to the effects of a nearby supernova.
The basic evidence for this comes from concentrations of 60Fe, an iron isotope, found in deep ocean sedimentary rock layers called the ferromanganese crusts. What is significant about this is that 60Fe doesn’t naturally occur here, but is a by-product of supernova events, thus leading some to conclude the remnants of such an explosion once washed over us. However, it has also been pointed out that 60Fe can also be synthesised by AGB stars as they approach the end of their lives without ever going supernova, so it is possible the deposits found on the ocean beds were purely the result of distant interaction with one or more AGB stars far back in the time of Earth’s youth.
Because of this ambiguity, a team from the Technical University of Munich gathered several dozen ferromanganese crust samples from four widely separated locations on the floor of the Pacific ocean and at depths of between 1.6 km and 5.1 km beneath the ocean surface. They subjected all of these samples to extensive analysis to see if they could find traces of other elements that could be tied to either a supernova or the output of an AGB star. And they were successful, finding concentrations of the manganese isotope 53Mn. This is significant as this isotope doesn’t naturally occur on Earth, nor is it a product of AGB stars – but it is a product of supernova explosions.
Not a slice of chocolate cake but a slice of a sample of the ferromanganese crust layers drawn from the floor of the Pacific Ocean and shown to contain isotopes that were most likely created by a supernova event.Credit: Dominik Koll / Technical University of Munich
Further, the team’s analysis of both the 53Mn and 60Fe concentrations revealed that both are present in similar amounts and the same ratios throughout all of the samples studied. This suggests that both were present in the Earth’s biosphere at the same time, and were deposited on the ocean floor in similar quantities over the same period of time, again pointing to them having a common origin in a supernova event. What’s more, because 60Fe has a half-live of 2.6 million years before it decays into nickel, said supernova could not have occurred more than about 2.5 million years ago.
In addition, the concentrations of both isotopes proved sufficient for the team to estimate the like size of the star the caused the supernova: between 11 and 25 times the size of our Sun. That’s of a sufficient size for the supernova to create what’s as called a “bubble” or “cavity” in space: a region that appears to be almost completely devoid of matter. Interestingly, for the last 7-10 million years, our solar system has been travelling through just such a “bubble”, called the Local Cavity. It is believed to have formed as a result of number of supernova events that occurred between 20 and 10 million years ago – which creates an interesting overlap with the idea of a supernova affecting Earth some 2.5 million years ago.
2.5 million years ago also marks the start of the of Pleistocene period, a time of considerable climate change that saw repeated cycle of ice ages that in turn saw dramatic shifts in the flora and fauna, with multiple mini extinction events, This cycle then repeated in the late Pleistocene through early Holocene (11,700 years ago), and the planet started to warm up again, leading to further cycles of extinction (notably those mammals that had developed to level in the cold, like the woolly mammoth).
What triggered that sudden cooling is unknown, but while the Munich study doesn’t point it it directly, it has been shown that severe interference by cosmic rays can cause dramatic shifts in climate, particularly towards the colder extremes. So again, the time link between that ancient supernova evidenced in the ferromanganese crusts of the seabed and rise of the ice ages of the Pleistocene is interesting.
Climate change during the early Pleistocene period – possibly the result of atmospheric interference by the supernova – may have given rise to the glaciation periods that occurred throughout that time. These in turn spurred the evolution of species such as the woolly mammoth, the European Cave Lion and woolly rhino (both to the right of the painting above), all of which became extinction as Earth’s climate once ago changed over the late Pleistocene and into the Holocene, with some extinctions (such as the mammoth) likely accelerated by over-hunting by primitive humans. Image: painting by Mauricio Antón, “What Killed the Woolly Mammoth?”
Starship SN8 Set for Pressure Tests
The core hull of the SpaceX Starship prototype SN8 was moved to the test stand during the pas week to undergo tank pressure tests. Fitted with the aft aerodynamic flaps that will help the vehicle “skydive” through the atmosphere, but sans the upper section, nose cone and forward aerodynamic surfaces, and currently without motors, the core section was due to undergo a pressure test as this article was being written.
Starship prototype SN8 with aft aerodynamic surfaces in their folded configuration sitting on the test stand at the SpaceX Boca Chica facilities. Its flight to 15 km altitude should take place in the next couple of weeks. Credit: RGV Aerial Photography
This test involves the tanks within the section being filled to operating pressures with inert liquid nitrogen. A hydraulic ram under the stand the exerts pressure on the base of the structure to simulate the stresses the three Raptor engines that power the vehicle will place on the structure in order to verify its fitness for flight.
Should this test be successful, SN8 will have the upper sections added, and its engines mounted. It will then go through further tests, including actual fuelling and a static firing of it motors. Once all these tests have been completed, the vehicle will be ready for its 15 km high “hop”, which is likely to take place before the end of the month.
At the same time as SN8 is undergoing its tests, prototype SN9 is also being readied for its first flight.
Rock Your Rack is the annual fund-raiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) opened its doors on Saturday, October 3rd, and remains in full swing through until Sunday, October 18th, 2020, offering shopping, music, fashion shows, entertainment and art.
Some 1.7 million women – and men – were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, the year in which Rock Your Rack was founded by Jamee Sandalwood and the team at Models Giving Back. Today, the figure still stands at around 1.6 million world-wide. NBCF’s mission is to help women in the United States by providing help and inspiring hope to those affected by breast cancer through early detection, education and support services. NBCF is also joining hands with organisations around the globe to provide breast cancer education, and Rock Your Rack aims to raise funds to support all of these activities.
Located on a single region, the event this year has a distinctly tropical theme, and is sponsored by Digital Farm System, Dark Betty, Darkstar’s Speakeasy, Designs By Soosy, NY NY Piano Lounge, Rapture, and Swank Events. and has more than 60 designers and merchants taking part.
As with previous years, supporting designers have been asked to provide a limited edition item, of which 100% of all proceeds of sales go towards Rock Your Rack. In addition, and to encourage visits to the event, designers have been asked to offer an exclusive item their customers can only purchase via Rock Your Rack. You can find out more about the limited edition and exclusive offers at the event here.
Rock your Rack 2020: art show
Entertainment will be on offer each weekend of the event and features bot DJs and live singers. Special performances by Terpsicorps Artwerks are also a feature of this year’s event. Just under 40 artists are participating in the Rock your Rack art show this year, presenting a rich mix of art covering SL avatar studies and landscape and physical world art created by the the artists involved. And, of course there will be the event fashion shows.
The complete event schedule can be found in the calendar below – all times SL. However, be sure to check the Rock Your Rack website for concise schedules for things like the weekend entertainment schedules.
Those so minded can also take part in the Rock Your Rack hunt. Many of the designer and other booths at the event have a L$10 item available as part of the Rock Your Rack Hunt – look for the heart-in-a-clothes hanger objects. Then can be found all over the event region – including the art show!
Rack Your Rack 2020: fashion show stage
About Rock Your Rack
Rock Your Rack is the annual fund-raiser for, and officially endorsed by, the National Breast Cancer Foundation in the United States. launched in 2012, the event has been held every year since then, operating on the basis of complete transparency. All documentation relating to the funds raised at each event from screenshots of totals raised, through the Lindex credit processing of US dollar amounts out of Second Life to donation receipts from the MBCF, are posted each year directly to the Rock Your Rack website.
Paradise on Sea, October 2020 – click any image for full size
Paradise on Sea came to our attention via Shawn Shakespeare (who has perhaps the most unique talent for finding regions that are open to photographing / writing about). A Full region held by Bellita (Belle Onedin), it offers a home for her SL business, Heart Poses located on a sky platform high above the region, and a ground level that is open for visitors to explore and appreciate.
Set in summertime, the region offers a warming visit for those of us sitting in the northern hemisphere, where the weather seems to have decided to skip autumn entirely, and settled on scowling, rainy, winter-like days. Given this lean towards summer, Paradise on Sea is a bright, lush setting, full of greenery and with flowers – wild or potted – in full bloom to offer bright splashes of colour against the rich greens.
Paradise on Sea, October 2020
Although offering the “on Sea” in its title, the region has the appearance of being located within a landlocked lake, verdant hills cut by a single serpentine river surrounding its three islands. The largest of these, forming the bulk of the region, is home to the landing point – which is not enforced (in fact the coordinates found in About Land’s Options tab are actually off, and will drop you into the waters of the region’s east side) – is located in an old stone ruin that offers a teleport disk up to the Heart Poses store.
The landing point sits at the feet of a tall, blunt-topped peak of rock that rises from a broad base that mixes grassy slopes with pools of clear water fed from numerous falls that tumble from multiple points in its sheer faces. It’s a distinctive rocky mass, vying with the huge form of a wooden windmill sitting on its own rocky upland to the south, and a nearby cedar of Lebanon for recognition as the tallest object on the island.
Paradise on Sea, October 2020
From the landing point, a cobbled path points both north and south – the former direction leading to the open fields that wash tall grass around the base of the windmill’s rocky foundation, while the latter direction winds its way to the north side of the region and the shallow cove of a beach.
Here wooden platforms rise in individual tiers from the narrow lip of grass between the beach the the walls of the high peak, ladders linking them to provide the means to scale the heights, passing water that drops to feed the beach-side pools that don’t reach the lake but instead offer places for birds and ducks to take a drink. Climb the ladders and platforms, and they’ll take you to a point just below the summit where a hot spring resides – or for the daring, a hang glider can be launched for an aerial view of the region and its surrounds.
Paradise on Sea, October 2020
The windmill is not the sole building within the region: four houses await discovery by explorers, with three of distinctly Tuscan design, suggesting the region might be somewhere inland in central / northern Italy. Two of these are to be found on the smaller islands that lie to the north-west and on the east side of the main land mass. Both are furnished and offer much to see both indoors and in the grounds around them The third and largest a villa occupies a south-west headland that is just a jumble of rocks away from becoming separated from the rest of the landscape as it dominates the flat sandstone slab of rock on which it sits. Again furnished, and with an inviting courtyard within its walls, it calls to visitors to come and explore it.
A surfaced, single-tracked road curls outward from this villa’s humped bridge. Passing around the shoulder of the windmill’s table of rock, the road ends close by a gabled cottage with an air of rural France about, it neatly juxtaposed by the very British presence of an old red telephone booth facing it over a parked car. Sitting within its own gardens and grounds, this cottage lies just above the waters of the lake and shares its location with a charming little painter’s studio and a small houseboat linked to the land by a wooden pier and deck to offer something of a floating summer house.
Paradise on Sea, October 2020
This is a region packed throughout with detail and many, many opportunities to sit and relax as well as for taking photographs. As noted, all of the houses are furnished – as is the windmill, while the outdoor sitting spots can be found in their grounds or gardens, along the beach, up on the tall peak and elsewhere. Cars (roadworthy and not) add a further sense of human life to the setting, whilst the birds overhead and the horses in fields and close to houses add their mix of life and presence to the setting.
With so much going on within a region that uses the private region land capacity bonus, there is a lot for the eye – and the viewer – to take in, and it would be remiss of me not to note the fact that the volume of mesh and textures can take its toll on older systems, and disabling shadows for those that use them might be advisable when moving around. Nevertheless, Paradise on Sea is a rewarding and engaging visit, and photos taken within the region can be submitted to its associated Flickr stream.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 