El Pueblito at LeLoo’s World, May 2021 – click any image for full size
LeLoo’s World is a place we’ve frequently visited over the years. Occupying a quarter Mainland Full region and held by LeLoo (LeLooUlf), it always offers some for the seasons as the year turns, and on May 1st, LeLoo re-opened it for spring 2021 with a trip into what might be Old Mexico.
A little Pueblo nestled in the middle of a forgotten desert patch. A place to wander as you take in the deserts beauty and simplicity.
LeLoo, describing her latest quarter region design.
El Pueblito at LeLoo’s world, May 2021
El Pueblito, which might be translated as “Little Town”, offers a box canyon setting in which a little corner of forgotten Mexico, a place where the horse is still an essential form of transport and Spanish-style haciendas sit alongside adobe buildings that carry within them a strong pueblo heritage.
Caught between the high walls of the canyon and sitting on the sands that have flowed in from the broader desert, is a ranch that appears to specialise in rearing horses. From the water towers and the growths of cacti, juniper and Joshua trees, it’s clear that there’s a sub-surface aquifer close to hand, helping to give life to this little corner of Somewhere.
El Pueblito at LeLoo’s world, May 2021
To the south, the sand gives way to a paved market village, a wall spanning the throat of the canyon helping to keep the sand from being more widely spread across the cobbles. This market offers a range of indoor and outdoor stalls and shops waiting to tempt casual browsers who may be in search of something a little different. The presence of this little market suggests that while this may be Somewhere, it is not so far off the beaten track it cannot attract tourists.
As with all of LeLoo’s designs, this is not a place that requires heavy descriptive prose – it is a place to be explored and savoured. And again, as with LeLoo’s designs, it is one rich in details waiting to be discovered, and places to sit and appreciate the view and the comings and goings of visitors.
El Pueblito at LeLoo’s world, May 2021
Most of the latter are outdoors – although if the heat and Sun get a little too much, there are some indoor spots to be found as well – such as the caravan that has managed to perch itself up on the rocks across from the main hacienda, which in turn forms the landing point for the setting and offers a refreshing glass of lemon-flavoured water for those need it.
Simple and elegant, photogenic and restful, LeLoo’s El Pueblito is another delightful location created by LeLoo.
El Pueblito at LeLoo’s world, May 2021
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El Pueblito at LeLoo’s World (St. Martin, rated Moderate)
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, May 3rd: 19:00 Saturn Rukh
In an unspecified time in the future, a team of astronauts is sent to Saturn on what could be a one-way mission. Financed by a multi-national consortium, their mission is to establish a factory in to upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere where it can “mine” Saturn’s abundant helium to produce “meta” (nitro-stabilised metastable helium), a powerful propellant.
If they are successful, each of the astronauts stands to earn a billion dollars on their return to Earth. The catch? They only have sufficient fuel to reach Saturn – they must use the factory to produce the fuel needed to make their return to Earth.
However, things go awry when the mission enters the Saturnian atmosphere – and crash-lands on the back of an enormous creature that “swims” through the atmosphere. Another of the creatures – which appear to be semi-intelligent and which the astronaut dub “Rukh” – swallows some of the mission’s equipment, leaving the team with no choice but to attempt to establish communications with the creatures and attempt to recover their equipment.
Join Gyro Muggins as he reads the last full-length novel by physicist and author Robert L. Forward.
19:00: Just Hand Over the Chocolate and No-One Gets Hurt
Caledonia Skytower shares selection from author Karen Scalf Linamen’s collection of essays, focusing on two topics that are rising to the top-of-minds these days: Gardens, and Vacations.
Wednesday, May 5th, 19:00: When You Trap a Tiger
When Lily and her family move in with her sick Halmoni (grandmother), a magical tiger straight out of her halmoni’s Korean folktales arrives, prompting Lily to unravel a secret family history.
Long, long ago, Halmoni stole something from the tigers and now the tigers want it back. So the tiger visiting has arrvied with an offer for Lily: return what Halmoni stole in exchange for the return of her health Halmoni’s health.
It is a tempting offer; but deals with magical tigers are not always what they appear to be. So Lily must, with the help of her sister and her friend Ricky, find her voice and her courage, and face whatever trickery the tiger may conjure.
Caledonia Skytower reads the 2021 2021 Newbery Medal winning story by Tae Keller.
Thursday, May 6th
19:00: Antues, Part 1
Shandon Loring tells the story of the monster and anti-hero from Bernard Evslin’s compendium of lore. (Also in Kitely).
21:00 Seanchai Late Night
Late night contemporary sci-fi and fantasy with Finn Zeddmore.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, April 29th 2021 at 13:00 SLT, and the TPV Developer’s meeting of Friday, April 30th.
The Eau de Vie Maintenance RC viewer version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23rd, was promoted to de facto viewer release status on Thursday, April 29th.
The remaining viewers in the pipeline comprise:
Release channel cohorts:
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 viewer, version 6.4.18.558365, dated April 22.
Maintenance 2 RC viewer – Fernet, version 6.4.18.558441, dated April 21.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
The Legacy Profiles viewer should be getting an update that will include some cosmetic tweaks to the UI, but will be functionally identical to the current project viewer version.
The LMR 5 viewer is being readied for promotion to release status, and work on LMR 6 is continuing.
The revised Simple Cache viewer is back with LL’s QA team, and should be re-emerging fairly soon.
The improved UI viewer that is primarily intended to help new users looks like it will be issued during summer.
A viewer with a fix for the Mac notarisation fix (currently OS X users have to jump through some additional hoops to get the operating system to run the viewer) should be appearing Soon™.
Voice viewer: the Lab has been working to try to address the more annoying aspects of voice cutting out when someone is speaking. A viewer with various fixes / tweaks is currently being tested by Lab staff, and may be available for wider use also in a Soon™ time frame.
A further viewer in the works will include further updates / fixes for the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF – used in media playback and streaming into SL).
One of the issues LL are running into is that thanks to the SNAFU following the release and roll-back of the original Simple Cache viewer, there is a growing number of official viewers stacking up waiting to enter the RC and project viewer pipelines.
RLV/RLVa and Experiences
Most people are familiar with the RLV and RLVa protocols / API functionality that is available in various third-party viewers. Whilst originally developed for more adult-oriented activities in Second life, these API options do have a wide range of other potential uses, some of which might be said to now be matched by Experience functionality (for example: automatic teleports).
While there is currently no specific project in the works to extend Experience functionality, the Lab has actually had internal discussions about the potential to provide various RLV-like options that could help improve Experiences. As such, the suggestion was made that if there are various (and generic, rather than adult-specific) use cases that might be achieved using RLV but would be useful to have as Experience functionality, these are noted in Jira feature requests so that they might be considered in due course.
Note: it was brought to my attention that not everyone is aware of the Soon™ joke. It is a play on the use of “Soon™” by Blizzard Entertainment, and the fact that, given LL’s preference not to present what might be taken as “tablets of stone” dates for the delivery of any given feature or bug fix, Oz Linden would refer to upcoming features / capabilities / fixes being available as “Soon”, “Pretty Soon” and “Real Soon / Real Soon Now”, which all become generally defined by the catch-all idea of “Soon™”.
I recently had occasion to drop into the Inspira Gallery of Art operated and curated by Mark Uladstron. At the time of my visit, the gallery was advertising itself as being in a “new waterside location” – although I have to admit, it is not a gallery I’d previously come across, so my apologies to Mark for not having done so sooner.
Occupying a two-storey building, the gallery also presents itself as a museum of art, combining exhibitions of art from both the physical world and created through the medium of Second Life, the Former coming in presenting reproductions of works by some of the most influential artists – east and west – of their respective ages, These are all presented on the lower floor of the gallery, and at the time of my visit featured Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso and Gu Kaizhi (Changkang).
This is the first gallery museum I’ve visited in quite a while that offers an audio tour of some of the works on display (the very first art museum I visited that did so was the Vordun back in 2016 – see: The Vordun: a new art experience in Second Life). Here, the audio tour is provided for the exhibits of Picasso’s and da Vinci’s works. It is facilitated by a HUD which should be offered as you enter the gallery, but if not, it can be obtained by clicking the blue globe at the reception desk, and while not a necessity for a visit, I would recommend using it.
Inspira Gallery of At, April 2021 – Leonardo da Vinci
Once added to your screen, and unlike other tours of this nature, the HUD isn’t tied to a local experience, but is triggered by simply entering a hall where the tour in enabled. When you have done so, the palyback buttons are activated, and you just need to tap ESC on your keyboard a couple of ties to ensure your camera is free, then press the central Play / Stop toggle button in on the HUD. Doing so will trigger the HUD’s scripts and focus your camera on the first image within the exhibit and trigger the associated audio track, together with a text display in local chat. In addition:
Clicking the “fast forward” or “rewind” buttons on the HUD will position your camera at the next painting in the sequence (or the previous, if moving back through an exhibit), again, triggering an audio / text exposition.
Clicking the Stop / Play button will re-centre the camera on your avatar, halting the audio / text. Providing you do not leave the hall, clicking the PLAY / STOP button again will centre the camera back on the last painting examined by the HUD and resume the audio / text expositions from there.
If you prefer, you can disable the text display or the audio by clicking either the Closed Caption or Audio toggle buttons directly under the main playback buttons.
Two further buttons will invite you to join the Inspire art group or receive a landmark to the gallery respectively.
Inspira Gallery of At, April 2021 – Pablo Picasso
The audio files appear to be drawn from a variety of sources, with some sounding slightly artificial / electronic in nature. The alternate between various male and female speakers, and the provided information strikes a good balance between being informative whilst avoiding going on too long.
As the audio doesn’t extend to the hall featuring Gu Kaizhi’s work, traditional museum-style information displays are provided for in-world reading. It would perhaps be nice to see these information plinths also offering a note card when clicked to help thought who might find reading such in-world text difficult, but again the information that is provided in informative and adds to the experience of a visit.
A noted politician, painter, poet, calligrapher and author – he wrote three influential books on the theory of painting – Gu is most noted today for his silk scroll paintings, which form the focus on the exhibit at Inspira.
Inspira Gallery of At, April 2021 – Gu Kaizhi
Stairs hidden behind the reception desk offer the way to the upper floor of the gallery, where two halls are devoted to Second Life artists. At the time of my visit, these were showing landscape images by the always captivating Rachel Magic (larisalyn) and pieces by Thomaz (Thomaz Blackburn). Between the halls is a cosy café / venue area, where images by Mark’s SL partner, Lisa Cruise (lisacruise), might be appreciated / purchased.
I will admit to being surprised that the reproductions of the images by da Vinci, Picasso and Gu are offered for sale. While I appreciate galleries, etc., in-world need to cover the cost of tier, seeing the images available via right-click buy did raise concerns (e.g. the potential for transgressing copyright on owned works or contravening any established Creative Commons (or other) licence that might be applicable, etc).
Inspira Gallery of At, April 2021 – Thomaz
However, this discomfiture duly noted, I will say that the Inspira Gallery of Art does makes for an engaging visit, and I particularly enjoyed becoming acquainted with Thomaz’s SL art, and the opportunity to see more of Rachel’s work on display.
Ten of the animations to be found in the new Hug & Kiss 3.0. Via Meike Heston
There’s likely to be few in Second Life of a certain age who do not have, or have not encountered, Meike Heston’s Hug & Kiss animator. I’ve personally been using it for well over a decade – generally with the “mini” version tucked into a corner of my screen.
For those who have not come across it, it’s a HUD that allows you to select an avatar around you and offer them a hug or a kiss – in greeting, in farewell, in comfort or simply just because. If accepted, the system will animate them and your avatar so they will come together in the selected greeting – the vagaries of Second Life animation system allowing.
It’s a HUD that hasn’t been updated in over a decade – in part because Meike herself has been absent from Second Life for a fair amount of time, but also because it has always simply worked. However as Meike has once more been semi-active in Second Life, she’s been working with Chance Strike (ChanceStriker) on a completely new version of Hug & Kiss, and they gave me the opportunity recently to take it for a test drive.
Called Hug & Kiss Animator 3.0 ReAnimated, the most obvious difference between version 3.0 of the HUD and earlier versions is in its appearance, as shown below.
Left: The Hug and Kiss 3.0 (top) compared with the Mini Hug & Kiss 2.02. Right: the Hug & Kiss 3.0 buttons explained.
But a new look is only the start. Version 3.0 of Hug & Kiss has:
16 completely new animations, twelve of which retain the names of their predecessors from earlier versions or which offer similar styles of animation under a new name, plus four brand new animations unique to version 3.0 of the HUD.
An improved height matching capability that automatically attempts to more accurately compensate for differences in avatar height of +/- 60 cm for a more realistic hug / kiss / pose (the vagaries of the SL animation system allowing).
The 11-step automated height adjustment system should help to better account for differences between avatar heights. Via
Ability to add your own animations / run your own configuration of animations – details are provided in the *config note card in the HUD itself.
Automatic update service – the HUD will notify you if / when an update is released, and present you with the option of receiving it.
Given the nature of SL animations, the HUD still requires some basic preparation when wanting to greet someone – most obviously the avatars need to be face-on to one another – but otherwise the operation of the HUD is simple and direct,particularly for those familiar with earlier versions:
Use < and > to page through the HUD’s animation until the one you wish to use is displayed in the centre black button.
Click the centre black button to select the animation, and then click on the desired avatar name from the dialogue box in the top right of your screen.
Providing your target accepts the request, the animation will play, bringing both avatars together.
By default, animations will play for a set length of time, but if you would prefer great manual control,the the padlock button on the HUD can be clicked to set it to “locked”. Animations will now only end when the centre black button is clicked a second time.
And that’s pretty much it. As noted above, the configuration notecard within the HUD includes instructions should you wish to add couples animations of your own. I confess to not having tried this, simply because I don’t have any suitable animations, so I’ll lave that to others to explore.
General Observations
Overall, a nice update with animations potentially suited to a wider set of uses than previous versions (round-and-round might be used by a parent greeting a child, for example). In my testing, the height adjustment seemed to work well, and animations on the version 3.0 of the HUD looked more natural as a result.
At L$750, the HUD isn’t expensive, but it will be interesting to see if those with an earlier version opt to purchase it (no update path is available because both the animations and the control scripts are entirely new). I suspect this will come down to a combination of how often the HUD is used and which animations in particular are used / appeal. And, of course, there are other options available through other creators, some at a lower price – so weighing-up which might be the better comes down to personal taste.
I do wonder if the “transparent” option might cause confusion, given it leaves the HUD on-screen (but “invisible”) so that it might come between a user and something they are trying to click in-world – but this is really more of a passing thought. That said, if making the HUD transparent doesn’t suit your needs, it will allow a certain degree of re-sizing should you wish it to have a smaller on-screen footprint – which is actually what I opted to do with it.
My thanks to Chance and Meike for the opportunity to try out / test the new Hug & Kiss HUD.
Memories of Us, April 2021 – click any image for full size
Occupying a quarter of a Homestead region that goes by the same name, Memories of Us is a corner of Second Life that Shawn Shakespeare (once again!) pointed me towards as a place to visit.
Designed by Candi McCulloch (Candi Melune), this is a setting that is easy on the eye, centred on a lake ringed by land that is mostly low-lying, but which does rise to the north-east, where broad waterfalls feed a stream that in turn curves its way around to feed the lake.
Memories of Us, April 2021
The landing point sits alongside an open field, where a lean-to stands and what looks like a Romany camp site has been established. From here, a path winds its way around the lake, and visitors are invited to follow it on foot or by bicycle – although by warned that as the path does climb into the north-side uplands, getting all the way around on two wheels might be a little difficult! Those who have wearable horses are invited to use them and ride the path if they wish.
As well as the camp site, there are various places to sit waiting to be found, ranging from an old camper trailer to picnic tables and benches at various points around the setting, as well as the more esoteric – a blanket suspended from the branches of a tree or an upturned rowing boat on the lake’s shore.
Memories of Us, April 2021
Those who would like to spend time on the water can do so via the rowing boat that is sitting on the lake. Oars will be offered on sitting, so you can row yourself/ves out into the middle of the water, and the rezzer will leave a further boat for others to use. Note the boat you’re in will de-rez after you stand up.
Memories of Us is a simple, natural setting that really doesn’t need much in the way of exposition as it speaks for itself. There are one or two little points where the landscaping could do with a small amount of tidying up, but nothing that actually glaringly pokes you in the eye. Certainly this is a place where time can be whiled away peacefully – just be sure to have local sounds enabled to be more fully immersed!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 