Category: Events

Empty rooms, chocolate factories and kaleidoscopes

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

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 at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, April 14th:

13:30 Tea-Time with Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Hits

Illustration by Sidney Paget, in The Strand Magazine

As voted for by Seanchai fans, followers and listeners. This week: The Adventure of the Empty Room, first published in The Strand magazine, and later the 13 stories from The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Three years after the Death of Sherlock Holmes during his fight with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, John Watson investigates the death of Ronald Adair. The young gentleman had been found shot to death in a closed room at his home in Park Lane, with no possible exit through the windows. A quiet young man, Adair’s only hobby was playing cards, and he had just had won £240 with his new partner, one Colonel Sebastian Moran.

As he examines the area around Adair’s house, Watson encounters an old man who eventually follows him to his office – and reveals himself to be Holmes himself. Explaining how he survived his encounter with Moriarty to a shocked Watson, he further reveals that Adair’s card partner, Sebastian Moran is – or was – actually Moriarity’s lieutenant. He further reveals that Moran is aware of Holmes’ survival, and plans to kill him.

But knowing of Moran’s plan, Holmes has one of his own. Not only does he plan to survive the attempt on his life, he plans to thwart Moran and bring him to justice.

With Da5id Abbot, Corwyn Allen, Savanah Blindside, and Kayden Oconnell in the Library’s Fireside Room.

18:00 Magicland Storytime: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Have you heard? Willie Wonka is releasing five golden tickets in candy bars! Charlie Bucket may have a chance to find one as Caledonia Skytower continues Roald Dahl’s classic.

Monday, April 15th 19:00: The World’s Best Science Fiction 1969

Gyro Muggins read from this anthology of science fiction short stories, edited by Donald A. Wollheim, featuring nineteen authors, including such names as Brian Aldiss, Poul Anderson, Samuel R. Delany, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

This week, Dance of the Changer by Terry Carr. Are the aliens crazy or just alien? Is there a difference? ; and Fear Hound by Katherine MacLean. A detective novel, but this time it isn’t “elementary” it’s “psychic.”

Tuesday, April 16th 19:00: Kaleidoscope

When a brilliant young violinist dies in a horrific accident, Madame Karitska has only to hold the victim’s instrument in her hands to perceive the shocking truth. But when an insecure wife asks whether her husband will abandon her to join a sinister cult, Madame Karitska–as wise as she is lovely–chooses not to reveal all that she foresees. And when an attaché case is suddenly dropped into her lap by a man fleeing a crowded subway, she knows it’s time to consult her good friend Detective-Lieutenant Pruden.

A nine-year-old accused of murder, a man dying a slow death by witchcraft– for the hunted and the haunted, Madame Karitska’s shabby downtown apartment becomes a haven, where brilliant patterns of violence, greed, passion, and strange obsessions mix and disintegrate with stunning, kaleidoscopic beauty.

With Caledonia Skytower.

Wednesday, April 17th 19:00: TBA

Check the Seanchai Library website for information nearer the day.

Thursday, April 18th

19:00: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Part 2

With Shandon Loring. (Also in Kitely grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI).

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

Contemporary Sci-Fi Fantasy with Finn Zeddmore.

BURN2: Burnal Equinox 2019

Posted on by Inara Pey
Burn2 Burnal Equinox 2019

The Burn2 Burnal Exquinox event, which will run through until Sunday, April 14th, is now open. This is the traditional Burn2 event held midway between the annual October “big Burn” events year-by-year. For 2019, the theme of the event is Eyes to the Skies. Tied in with the annual global Yuri’s Night event, it is a celebration of space, “the final frontier” (or “great beyond”) and all that goes with it – science, mysticism and more.

The weekend kicked-off on Friday, April 12th, courtesy of a live set of electronic music by Hao Zaytsev, and the marking of Yuri’s Night. This is an annual celebration of the first human flight in to space, completed by cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin. He lifted-off from from Baikonur Cosmodrome atop his Vostok 1 booster on April 12th 1961 to become not only the first human to reach space, but the first to orbit the Earth in a flight lasting 108 minutes. On his return, he actually completely his flight via parachute, the mission calling for him to eject from the capsule prior to landing. Since 2011, the date of his flight has been celebrated as the “World’s Space Party”.

via Burn2.org

Gagarin’s flight is marked on the Playa by a model of his Vostok K rocket, steaming with vented gasses as if awaiting launch, the Vostok 1 capsule sitting within its launch shroud sitting atop the rocket. It is just one of a number of installations both on the ground and in the air directly over the Playa awaiting exploration, which celebrate space flight, astronomy, science fiction, extraterrestrials, and more.

The full schedule for the weekend available on the Burn2 website. Highlights include:

  • Changhigh Sisters Fireshow – Saturday, April 13th, noon SLT
  • Burn/Fire Dancers, Sunday, April 14th, 10:00 and 16:00 SLT.
  • Burn2 Fashionistas, Sunday, April 14th, 14:00 SLT.
  • DRUM, Sunday, April 14th, 15:00 SLT.

And there will be live performers and DJ sets through both days. The event closes at 23:00 SLT on Sunday, April 13th.

About BURN2

BURN2 is an extension of the Burning Man festival and community into the world of Second Life. It is an officially sanctioned Burning Man regional event, and the only virtual world event out of more than 100 real world Regional groups and the only regional event allowed to burn the man.

The BURN2 Team operates events year around, culminating in an annual major festival of community, art and fire in the fall – a virtual echo of Burning Man itself.

Burn2 Burnal Equinox 2019

Related Links

Fantasy Faire 2019: nominations for king, queen and chancellor

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Fantasy Faire

One of the fun elements introduced to Fantasy Faire in 2015 was the opportunity to nominate and then vote for the King and Queen of the Fairelands and their (strictly non-human) Chancellor. Nominations came from across all realms of fantasy, with the top five for the positions of king and queen (human or human-looking nominations only) and chancellor, went forward for a public vote-off during the course of the Faire.

The event has since become a staple of the Faire, and it is once again back for 2019, with nominations now open. It’s important to note that this has nothing to do with avatars or people per se, but is a fun election purely for characters from works of fantasy, with the “winners” announced at the end of the Faire.

Nominees can be from written fantasy, graphical novels, cartoons, films, television or radio series, and from genres such as fairy tales, high fantasy, magical stories, urban fantasy, vampire sagas or steampunk, etc. The only major requirements are that nominations for king and queen must be human (or human-type) characters, whilst nominations for chancellor are restricted to non-human (or non-human type) characters, and that the winners from the previous year are no eligible for re-election.

How It Works

  • Nominations are made between now and the end of Saturday, April 20th, 2019 (23:59 SLT), using the form below.
  • The top five nominees for each role – king, queen and chancellor – will be selected for a final vote-off.
  • During the Faire, people will have the opportunity to vote for their favourites.
    • There is a fee payable for voting, but all money raised will go to Relay for Life.
  • The winners will be announced at the Fantasy Faire Live Auction on Sunday, April 28th, 2019.

Past Winners

  • 2018: king: Gandalf; queen: Galadriel; chancellor: Totoro (these three are not eligible for nomination again in 2019).
  • 2017: king: Severus Snape, queen: Leia Organa;  chancellor: Rhiow the Wizard Cat.
  • 2016: king: The Goblin King; queen: October Daye; chancellor: The Last Unicorn.
  • 2015: king: Havelock Vetinari; queen: Granny Weatherwax; chancellor: Greebo the Cat.

Additional Links

VWBPE 2019: Patch and Grumpity Linden

Posted on by Inara Pey
via vwbpe.org

On Thursday, April 4th, 2019, a public Above the Book events was held at the VWBPE 2019 event featuring Grumpity and Patch Linden, who answered questions about the platform and Linden Lab. The following is a summary of the broader points raised during the session, with the full video also embedded at the end.

A general Q&A session from the audience was held

Grumpity Linden

Grumpity Linden – Director of Product for Second Life

Grumpity originally came to Linden Lab while working for The Product Engine, a company providing end-to-end consulting and software development services, and which supports viewer development at the Lab, and she was initially involved in the development and viewer 2 (as designed by 80/20 Studio).

She became a “full-time Linden” in 2014. Her current position involves coordinating the various teams involved in bringing features and updates to Second Life (e.g. Engineering and QA), liaising with legal, financial and compliance to ensure features and capabilities meet any specific requirements in those areas, etc. This work can involve looking at specifics within various elements of the overall SL product, such as UI design and layout, etc.

Patch Linden –  Senior Director of Product Operations at Linden Lab

Patch Linden

Patch originally a Second Life resident, he joined linden Lab in 2007, after being invited to apply to the company as a result of his work as a community leader and mentor from 2004 through until the invitation was extended.

His role also encompasses Sansar, as he manages the respective support teams for both platforms. In this regard, he recently established a support centre in Atlanta, Georgia. For Second Life, his work also involves overseeing the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, the Linden Department of Public Works – LDPW, aka The Moles, and managing the account support team.

Status Update

  • A lot of focus is on infrastructure work; making SL more performant for those in-world, and on moving Second Life services to the cloud.
    • The latter is especially time-consuming and difficult, as it requires moving services over without disturbing the way things are currently set-up.
    • As has been previously stated in public forums, there are currently no projections on whether this will lead to any reduction in region costs.
    • Currently, this work is taking a lot of resources in terms of staff, time and effort.
    • Overall, it is hoped the move will result in LL being more operationally streamlined and cost-effective, however, this could take time (a few years?) to achieve.
  • Feature work has obviously included:
    • The recent release of Animesh.
    • The continuing work to fully deploy the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) that will replace the current windlight settings for controlling the appearance of the environment.
    • The continuing work to deploy Bakes On Mesh (BoM), that will allow system layers (skins / clothing) to be directly applied to worn mesh items.
    • The new Estate Access Management (EAM) capabilities (see the Alternate Viewers wiki page for the latest EAM RC viewer).
    • See my Content Creation User Group summaries for information on Animesh, EEP and BoM.
The Estate Access Management update sees significant changes to the region access controls in the viewer
  • The work on a mobile solution (iOS) for accessing Second Life is continuing.
    • This will initially be text-based.
    • Should be able to take advantage of the naked accessibility options available in iOS.
    • Won’t be available for some time yet.
    • iOS was selected because there are already popular Android solutions (notably Lumiya and Mobile Grid Client – there is also MetaChat for iOS).
    • An official Android client will follow, however.
  • Linden Homes are progressing (there will likely be another preview at SL16B).
    • Work is progressing on the new continent; this will be more organic and natural than the old Linden Homes mini-continents, and will be water / air navigable.
  • There has been the re-vamp and re-launch of Linden Realms.

What Audience Does Linden Lab Try to Address with Features?

  • Everyone who uses the platform.
  • The roadmap is designed so the Lab spends time on features for home / land owners, features for content creators, features for new users, features for consumers, features for Premium members, etc.
  • Communities in SL tend to use the platform in a wide variety of ways and continue to surprise LL in how they use the platform. Thus, the Lab try to plan development of SL with as many communities as possible in mind.
  • For the education sector, a lot of work has been put into the RegAPI / Gateway programme to allow educational institutions to bring students directly into their in-world environments, and even brand user accounts specifically to their own institution.
  • Accessibility is always foremost in the Lab’s thoughts.
    • This can in part be addressed by communities themselves in how they take the RegAPI to build their registration process, and gear their gateways.
    • Accessibility options within the viewer are harder to build, due to the nature of the viewer, although some capabilities are presented through third-party viewers  – Radegast being the most obvious (although currently stalled in development).
  • When considering features and updates, backwards compatibility is also foremost in the Lab’s thinking, both because of content available in-world that may be in use, but no longer actively maintained / updated, and because users have become reliant on specific capabilities / content.
    • This isn’t always possible, simply due to the age of SL.

In Brief

  • SL Search: there is a project on the roadmap (yet to be started) to overhaul SL search. It’s too early to discuss specific changes, but Search is complex, and a similar project performed with Marketplace Search took far longer than anticipated, although it yielded positive results.
  • Age Restrictions and Mobile: it is not anticipated that the arrival of an official mobile app for SL will change the current age range access restrictions (just as it hasn’t for the current mobile apps). Any changes in age related access will be a policy change, not the result of any specific technology change.
  • LEA and Art: the LEA is on hiatus and being restructured, and LL are in conversation with the LEA committee and others for the arts community about ideas for moving things forward.

 

Holmes, sci-fi, poems and original stories

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

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 at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, April 7th:

13:30 Tea-Time with Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Hits

As voted for by Seanchai fans, followers and listeners. This week: The Adventure of the Speckled Band, which first appeared in The Strand Magazine in February 1892, and is notable for becoming the basis for a 1910 stage play written and produced by Conan Doyle, and which starred H. A. Saintsbury as Sherlock Holmes and Lyn Harding as Dr. Grimesby Roylott.

Dr. Grimesby Roylott confronts Holmes and Watson at 221B Baker Street (Sidney Paget, 1892)

Helen Stoner lives with her stepfather,  Dr. Grimesby Roylott, last survivor of what was a wealthy but dissolute and violent tempered aristocratic family. Roylott himself is known for his violent temper, and served time in India for the murder of a servant.

Miss Stoner’s visit to Holmes is prompted by Roylott’s demand that she move into a room at his country estate where her twin sister died under mysterious circumstances two years previously, her dying words being, “the band! the speckled band!” Helen is unwilling to occupy the room as there is something decidedly strange about it; thus she seeks Holmes in order to confide her fears in him.

After her departure, Roylott arrives and forces has way into Holmes’ presence, demanding to know what Helen has been saying. Failing to gain any information from Holmes, despite a show of brute physical strength intended to intimidate, Roylott leaves. However, his actions have now firmly established himself at the centre of the Great Detective’s attention…

18:00 Magicland Storytime: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Have you heard? Willie Wonka is releasing five golden tickets in candy bars! Charlie Bucket may have a chance to find one as Caledonia Skytower continues Roald Dahl’s classic.

Monday, April 8th 19:00: The World’s Best Science Fiction 1969

Gyro Muggins read from this anthology of science fiction short stories, edited by Donald A. Wollheim, featuring nineteen authors, including such names as Brian Aldiss, Poul Anderson, Samuel R. Delany, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

This week, Hemeac by E.G. Von Wald, the story about a student dealing with life in a university run by defective robots; and Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay by Robert Sheckley. Can an imperfect man find happiness in a perfect city?

Tuesday, April 9th 19:00: Two Houses

Caledonia Skytower shares another of her original tales: a young American couple on their honeymoon find their ties to Irish heritage are far more insistent than just a simple perusal of genealogies. As the past disturbs their future, Mark and Cate must unravel the mystery of two houses that suffered very different fates, but that are somehow connected.

Wednesday, April 10th 19:00: Bring Your Own Poem  Night

bring a favorite poem of yours, or one you like, to be shared fireside in The Glen.

Thursday, April 11th 19:00: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Part 2

With Shandon Loring. (Also in Kitely grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI).

Supporting Parkinson’s Awareness Month in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Oasis – via Creations for Parkinson’s

April 11th, 2019 is World Parkinson’s Day, intended to raise awareness of Parkinson’s disease, promoting a greater understanding of this condition and how it can affect a person. To mark it, many countries are marking April as Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month. In Canada and the United States, this is being supported by the Parkinson Society Canada and American Parkinson Disease Association. Other countries around the world are holding more focus events. In the UK, for example, there will be a Parkinson’s Awareness Week (April 10-16th), supported by Parkinson’s UK.

Within Second Life, Creations For Parkinson’s/Events For Parkinson’s have partnered with Miss Globe Universal Charity Foundation to also mark Parkinson’s Awareness Month, with The Oasis, which opened its doors on April 1st, 2019, and which will run through until Sunday, April 21st.

Over twenty merchants and creators have signed-up for the event, which is being held at a special Egyptian-themed setting. In addition, there will be two fashion shows to accompany the event:

  • Sunday, April 7th, 2019 at 10:00am SLT.
  • Saturday, April 20th,  2019, at 10:00am SLT.

There are also two fun hunts. In the first, look for miniature pyramids in the stores. Purchase them for L$15 each (all donations to the charity). In the second, visit one of the two Great Pyramids. The camel guide you through the dark entrance into the stunning treasure house of the ancient Pharaohs. Find hidden treasures among the gems. Don’t be fooled though, some of the jewels are a trap.

In addition, the second Great Pyramid contains a mysterious maze – can you find the hidden entrance and make your way around the interior and discover artefacts and locate magnificent Golden room at the heart of the tomb?

The Oasis

About Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition. In Europe, approximately 1.2 million people have their lives impacted by the disease, and in the United States it is the second most common neuorlogical disorder after Alzheimer’s.

“Neurodegnerative” is a term referring to a progressive loss of nerve cells (neurons) and/or their function. Neurodegeneration from Parkinson’s disease can give rise to a wide spectrum of symptoms which vary among sufferers depending on the severity of the disease’s impact, what’s more symptoms can be unpredictable and can vary on a time scale as short as one minute. As the disease progresses, symptoms can worsen; for example, over time a person may not be able to move, speak or swallow. This can often arise 4-8 years after the initial onset of Parkinson’s disease.

The cause of the disease is unknown, and there are no known successful treatments which can delay or stop its progression. To further complicate matters, because of the broad range of symptoms, Parkinson’s may be initially misdiagnosed. In addition, while it is most often seen as a disease affecting people of 50 or older, a form of Parkinson’s disease can strike people at a much younger age, and one in twenty of the 8 million Parkinson’s sufferers worldwide is below the age of 40. Known as Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease (YOPD), this differers from older onset Parkinson’s, both because genetics appears to play a stronger role in it, and the symptoms may differ, as does response to medication.

Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month is intended to raise public awareness of the disease, its impact, and to encourage people to help support those affected by Parkinson’s by encouraging them to donate to organisations carrying out research into finding a cure or adequate treatment for the disease. As noted above, these organisations include the likes of the Parkinson Society Canada, the American Parkinson Disease Association, and Parkinson’s UK.

The Oasis event in April, also as noted above, aims to raised funds to help with the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which has to date raised some US $800 million for research initiatives.

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