The Second Life 18th Birthday event is almost upon us, and it promises to be a time of celebration, and also of remembrance and sadness following recent news.
Given all that has happened since the start of the year – the acquisition of the Lab by a new Board; the arrival of Board member Brad Oberwager as the management team Executive Chair and his long-time business associate, Cammy Bergren as the Lab’s Chief of Staff; the sad news concerning Ebbe Altberg; the on-going technical work on Second Life, the upcoming “new” New User Experience, and so on – many SL residents are doubtless a-buzz with questions.
To this end, and as announced on Thursday, June 10th, Linden Lab will be holding a special Lab Gab session, hosted by Strawberry Linden. She’ll be putting questions to the Lab’s leadership team of Grumpity Linden, Brett Linden and Patch Linden – and there is still time for people to submit questions.
If there is something you’d like to ask of the team, simply hop over to the submission form, type in in and send it off. But hurry – the form will be closed some time on Tuesday, June 15th, 2021.
The show itself will be live streamed via the Second Life YouTube channel. on Monday, June 21st, starting at 14:00 SLT. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have a summary of the session on this blog after the event.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week ending Sunday, June 13th
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: Love Me Render (LMR) 5, version 6.4.19.560171, dated May 27th, promoted June 7th – NEW,
Release channel cohorts:
Project UI RC viewer updated to version 6.4.20.560422, on June 8th.
Grauland Falls Art Park, June 2021 – click any image for full size
I first visited Grauland, the Homestead region held by by JimGarand and home (in the sky) to his M-1 Art Pose business in March 2019. At the time, I was immediately struck by its genuine uniqueness, offering an environment that expresses art as a landscape.
Since that time, Jim has continually revised the region on a regular cycle of iterations, some of which have continued that idea of art-as-landscape, others of which might be regarded as more “natural” settings – tropical beaches, oriental gardens, deserts – all of which have been highly engaging and kept me returning to the region to write about many of them.
Grauland Falls Art Park, June 2021For the iteration I visited in June, Jim has returned the region to what, for me at least, is its roots – a setting in which art plays an important role in expressing the overall landscape.
Rapidly dropping from eastern highlands marked by a high peak and a curtain of cliffs backed by high mountains, the region is immediately visually engaging; the peak giving birth to falls that in turn feed the streams that break up the lowlands as they flow out to the surrounding waters.
Grauland Falls Art Park, June 2021
Rugged and attractive, with western and northern bays watched over by a ranger’s watchtower to the north-west, two tidy woodland areas and a scattering of buildings, the landscape is highly photogenic. However, it is what is to be found within it that captures the eye.
From obelisks through the familiar concrete blocks to statues, tiered gardens and totems, the art to be found throughout the region fits neatly and elegantly into the setting, bringing it naturally to life.
Grauland Falls Art Park, June 2021
As an art park, the setting is laid out as a place one travel to in order to visit: the landing point is presented as a cark park, the road running from it vanishing into a tunnel that appears to pass under the mountains to connect the part with the rest of the world. It sits bounded on two sides by the remnants of what might have once been a complete costal fortification built during the last world war, but which now stand with gaping windows and walls that have in part started to lean somewhat as their foundations have settled.
Forming the entrance to the park, the great blanks walls of this ruin also naturally lend themselves as a part of the park’s artistic statement, providing access to the tiered gardens that form the starting point for explorations.
Grauland Falls Art Park, June 2021
From the gardens with their cobbled paths, visitors can roam where they please – as indicated by the static characters already in the region that add a further sense of it being a a popular place to visit. A single path does offer a route from the landing point, one that passes over the region’s three bridges – which also very much form part of the art statement. These bridges lead the way to the largest complete building on the region, a boxy unit offered as something of a meeting / relaxing space.
Jim’s designs are always engaging and a pleasure to visit, but I admit to finding this iteration particularly engaging. There’s that sense of returning to the focus of early iterations of the region whilst retaining a completely unique look and feel.
Grauland Falls Art Park, June 2021
With photographic opportunities can be found throughout, and the 3D art elements bringing a richness to the environment that encourages the visitor to remain, explore and appreciate, Grauland Falls Art Park is not to be missed.
Janus II Gallery: Etamae and Imaginary Footprints – Variation
Saturday, June 12th saw the opening of Variation, a joint exhibition of art by Eta (etamae) and Imaginary Footprints.
Hosted at the Janus II Gallery at Chuck Clip’s Sinful Retreat, Variation is the second such collaboration by the artists I’ve visited, the first being Memories of a Forgotten Reality (see: A Foreign Reality in Second Life), which I found to be an absorbing exhibit both in style and its collaborative development – and the e same can be said of Variations.
Supplied without exposition by the artists, Variation appears to follow the approach seen with Memories, with each artist starting with a single piece before passing it to the other, the back and forth continuing as the piece gradually evolve in accordance with the perceptions and thoughts of the artists.
Janus II Gallery: Etamae and Imaginary Footprints – Variation
However, where there was a central theme to Memories that likely focused each artist’s thinking when working on an image, the lack of stated vision apparent with Variation has offered perhaps far greater freedom, with each piece becoming entirely framed within the individual thought processes and feelings of each artist as they worked with it. Thus, the focus of the art – and the exhibition as a whole, is the variation that marked the evolution of each piece.
The result is a collection of art that is broad in scope and potential interpretation. In terms of style and / or genre, there are pieces that might be said to have their roots in abstraction, others that lean towards expressionism or surrealism, and still others touching on abstract expressionism or digital etching. Not all are 2D or static; the added 3D elements presenting a certain depth, particularly those that are placed alongside 2D images they appear to reflect.
Janus II Gallery: Etamae and Imaginary Footprints – Variation
In terms of subject matter, the best place to start is to paraphrase a comment by Eta’s SL partner, Jos:
The only perspective that will be objective is your subjectivity.
That is to say, such is the depth to which these pieces speak, the only way to hear what they might say is to witness them for yourself and and let your own eye and emotions frame your perception / understanding of them.
However, with that in mind, I will say that I found Variation suggestive of a dream state – something enhanced by the overall environment in which Eta and Imaginary have framed the exhibition. A condition wherein the conscious mind is at rest and the subconscious is steady processing all that it has been a party to. Such processing can give rise to bright and dark moments (dreams and nightmares), and similar moments might be found within these piece, tugging and twisting our thinking and emotions into a state of variation.
Janus II Gallery: Etamae and Imaginary Footprints – Variation
Superbly produced and presented, Variation is a marvellously absorbing exhibition.
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.
Sunday, June 13th, 13:30: Candy Matson–YUkon 2-8209
“Candy Matson, YU 2-8209.”
These were the words spoken at the start of every episode of NBC’s West Coast radio show of the same name, which ran from mid-1949 through until mid-1951. The “YU 2-8209” referred to the telephone number for Candy Matson, a private investigator operating out of her apartment Telegraph Hill, San Francisco.
Created by Monty Masters and starring his wife Natalie Parks as the voice of the heroine, each week the story saw Candy pick up a case that would take her to an actual location in San Francisco – notably the Bay Area – possibly in the hope of attracting local sponsors.
Intelligent, tough and fearless, Candy rarely resorted to the use of her gun, but instead relied on her wits and intelligence, frequently dispatching her adversaries not with an uppercut, but with hard evidence and a caustic quip to see them into the hands of the law – which generally came in the form of Lt. Ray Mallard (voiced by Henry Leff), who frequently worked the same cases in an official capacity and was Candy’s understated love interest. Also helping out would be Candy’s best friend and assistant, Rembrandt Watson (voiced by Jack Thomas).
While the show only ran for two years, Candy Matson is generally regarded as the finest of all female PIs on US radio, and you can catch up with her adventures at Seanchai Library via the voices of Corwyn Allen, Gloriana Maertens, Elrik Merlin, Kayden Oconnell, and Caledonia Skytower.
Monday, June 14th 19:00
In 1914, the world is divided into Darwinists and Clankers. The Darwinists have evolved genetics to make animals more useful to humans. The Clankers have built their society on machinery technology.
When the Leviathan, a living whale flying ship, arrives in Constantinople, a city where Clanker culture and Darwinst principles intersect in the most intriguing ways, Dr Barlow and Deryn Sharp deliver their precious cargo to the Sultan as part of a peace-keeping mission, only for things to suddenly take a left turn. Now the only way to save themselves in this hostile, politically-charged city is for Dr Barlow to offer up the thing that matters most: Leviathan itself.
Meanwhile, Prince Aleksandar Ferdinand, the would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne following the murder of his father, escapes from his prison camp and once more goes on the run with his men and the Loris, while Count Volger stays behind to fend-off the pursuit, forcing Alek to take on new responsibilities.
Thus, fate once again sees to it that both Deryn and Aleks must re-evaluate their precarious situations in the world…
Join Gyro Muggins as he returns to Scott Westerfield’s alternate history of Earth.
It is the summer of 2013 and Abigail Kamara has been left to her own devices. This might, by those who know her, be considered a mistake.
While her cousin, police constable and apprentice wizard Peter Grant, is off in the sticks chasing unicorns Abigail is dealing with her own mystery: teenagers around Hampstead Heath have been going missing but before the police can get fully engaged the teens return home – unharmed but vague about where they’ve been.
Aided only by her new friend Simon, her knowledge that magic is real and a posse of talking foxes that think they’re spies, Abigail must venture into the wilds of Hampstead to discover who is luring the teenagers and more importantly – why?
Join Corwyn Allen as he reads Ben Aaronovitch’s latest novel.
Wednesday, June 16th, 19:00: Carl Hiaasen’s Skink
A native Floridian, Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist who focuses on political issues (notably corruption, environmental issues and other wrong-doings) within his home state. Starting his career in the 1970s , he became renowned for being exceptionally outspoken – even against his own employers.
Carl Hiaasen. Credit: Joe Rimkus Jr.
During the 1980s, he started writing fiction in his spare time, achieving initial success with three co-authored novels published between 1981 and 1984, as well as writing several non-fiction titles.
In 1987, his second novel, Double Whammy introduced the “trailer park star tenant” and private eye, C.J. Decker, which Hiaasen fondly refers to as “the first (and possibly only) novel ever written about sex, murder and corruption on the professional bass-fishing tour.” Among the cast of characters mixed into Double Whammy is one Clinton Tyree, the one-time governor of Florida, who abandoned his office and now lives as a outdoorsman (and partaker of roadkill cuisine) in the Everglades and the Florida Keys, using the pseudonym Skink.
Skink went on to become a recurring character in a further seven of Hiaasen’s novels to date, with all the books in which he features being gathered together under the general title of SKINK, with several of them being been among the 20+ works of fiction and non-fiction by Hiaasen to appear on the New York Times best-seller list.
Join Kayden Oconnell as he continues a journey with Hiaasen’s characters.
Thursday, June 17th
19:00: Little Fuzzy
Ktadhn Vesuvino reads the book by H. Beam Piper that spawned a series by him and other science fiction authors about a small, furry species dubbed Fuzzies.
Little Fuzzy charts the discovery of small furry species on the planet Zarathustra and the attempts by humans to determine whether or not they are sentient. If they are, then their planet will be declared a protect aboriginal world. However, The Company has desires to control the planet and its resources.
21:00: Seanchai Late Night
Contemporary Sci-Fi-Fantasy with Finn Zeddmore.
Friday, June 18th, 19:00: Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals
Football in Ankh-Morpork is not as we might know it. Rather than being comprised of rules and played within a recognisable ground, it is far more akin to the somewhat violent mob football of medieval Europe.
Not that this is a concern for the elderly, mostly indolent and (some might be tempted to think) somewhat inept old wizards making up the faculty staff at the city’s school of wizardry, the Unseen University. Until, that is, their very handsome annual endowment becomes subject to their playing the game themselves.
Thus, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully sets out a two-pronged strategy: to ensure the city’s version of football is restructured with proper (and favourable?) rules, and to put team preparations at the university in the hands of the talented candle dribbler, Mr. Nutt and his assistant, Trevor Likely, the son of the city’s most famous (if deceased – did I mention the game can be violent?) player, who are in turn supported by Glenda Sugarbean, who runs the university’s night kitchen and her assistant Juliet Stollop.
Except Mr. Nutt soon discovers he has problems of his own to deal with, and Trevor has promised his Mum he’ll never get involved in the game. Meanwhile, Glenda has the daily responsibility of baking the Discworld’s best pies, and Juliet is about to find herself whisked towards the heights of fame as a fashion model, thus potentially leaving the team a little short on practical advice…
Join Caledonia Skytower as she presents the 37th novel in the Discworld series, and possibly one of its greatest satirical undetakings encompassing football, academia, traditions, the fashion industry, politics, love, fandom, and which mixes in more serious themes of identity, crab mentality and self-worth.
Mousehole, June 2021 – click any image for full size
Tolla Crisp contacted me recently to extend an invitation to visit her new region holding, Mousehole, located to the south of her famous Frogmore, a place I’ve covered numerous times in these pages due to it’s sheer beauty. The two are connected to it via footbridge, with Mousehole expanding on the Cornish theme folded into the current iteration of Frogmore (which you can read about here), making both regions ideal for a joint visit, as well as each one standing on its own.
A Full region using the standard 20K land impact, Mousehole takes its name from the Cornish fishing hamlet of Mousehole (pronounced maʊzəl, orPorthenys in Cornish), located in the far south-west of the English county, on the shore of Mount’s Bay. Like Frogmore, the overall design is the work of Dandy Warhlol (terry Fotherington), whose hand and eye helps to give that flow of continuity between the two regions.
Mousehole, June 2021
With a population of around 700, Mousehole has a long history as a fishing village that dates back to the 1200s. However, in modern times it is noted more as a visitor / tourist destination and for its many festivals and community events that are held throughout the year.
Whilst taking its name and a lot of its inspiration from the hamlet and Cornwall’s rugged coastline, the design also offers and inland setting that offers a mix of hints of Mousehole village and the wilder aspects of the county. Combined, these give the region a unique look and feel whilst also giving a hint why almost a third of Cornwall’s coast and some of its inland areas are designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (ANOB) – giving them the same status as a national park.
Mousehole, June 2021
The main part of the region is open to the public, encircled by a broad beach broken by rocky outcrops to form smaller coves typical of the kind that might be found along the Cornish coast. Along these sands are places to sit, bars to by found, opportunities for swimming or simply floating on the water.
Sitting within this are two upland areas which might be seen along the upper reaches of Cornwall’s rugged coast around Mount’s Bay, but which equally bring to mind the wilds of Bodmin Moor. Separated by a sandy divide that offers a shortcut between the north and south sides of the island, these two uplands are rich in greenery and home to individual scenes.
Mousehole, June 2021
The larger of the two offers a setting that might have been lifted from the village itself – most notably the famous Mousehole Pub, which shares the hilltop with a stone-built house and a country church. No roads are visible here, however; instead, the buildings stand surrounded by moorland grass grazed upon by donkeys (Cornwall and neighbouring Devon are also noted for their donkeys), with visitors free to wander across the hilltop and perhaps cross the bridge spanning the shallow gorge to touch the second upland.
This smaller hill is home to an abandoned house (I admittedly found the motel sign outside to look and feel out-of-place), its garden overgrown and nature starting to reclaim its interior. Forlorn and decaying, it has the feel of a place that one might come across deep in the Cornish moorlands, once home to a farm or the retreat of a wealthy tin mine owner and his family, now long abandoned and forgotten.
Mousehole, June 2021
Further touches of Mousehole and its surrounds can be found within the region. Just off the southern coast, for example, is an islet that is mindful of the small island of St. Clements sitting just off the entrance to the village’s harbour. Be mindful that the in-world island is actually a private residence, however, so do be wary of trespass.
Also, just off on of the beaches lies the entrance to a cavern. Find your way inside and you’ll discover a little homage to the tale of a hermit who was said to once lived along the coast at Mousehole.
Mousehole, June 2021
Rich in detail and touches – off to the west is a smaller island, home to another little bar and also what might be an abandoned military facility of a kind that can be stumbled across around the English coast – Tolla’s Mousehole is another delight to explore and photograph – and a delight to explore.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 