Category: Second Life

Men in Focus: April 2019 edition

Posted on by Inara Pey
Men in Focus: Skip Staheli (photographs) and Haveit Neox

Men in Focus, the gallery owned and sponsored by Men in Motion in support of the Movember Foundation (donations to which are accepted at the entrance to the gallery) and curated by JMB Balogh, launched its second ensemble exhibition on April 3rd, 2019.

The gallery is somewhat unique in Second Life, in that while there are many featuring studies of avatars at work or play or simply relaxing, there are few that expressly and solely focus on the male avatar. For this exhibition, the artists are split between invited 2D artists, invited and returning 3D artists, and those responding to a call put out to the Men in Motion group for submissions. Together these comprise:

  • Invited 2D artists: Roy Mildor, Fenris Resident, Skip Staheli, and Artem Viiperi (NykVIIPERI).
  • Invited and returns 3D artists: Livio Korobase and Haveit Neox, and Mistero Hifeng and Reycharles Resident.
  • Men in Motion photographers: Antonio Atovio;  Alex Avion, Sebastian Bourne, Fafnir Kiranov, and Niecho Vollmar.
Men in Focus: Roy Mildor

The range of art offered is once again impressive, with a good mix of monochrome and colour avatar studies. I confess that I have started to find myself drawn more to monochrome avatar images of late, and this is certainly the case here, with Skip Staheli’s portraits in particular catching my eyes, as per the banner image for this article.  The 3D art is well placed through the exhibition space, nicely split between the  gallery’s levels, allowing it to break up individual display areas in a natural manner.

While I cannot say this with any accuracy, it seems as if the gallery may have grown an extra couple of floors in order to present enough space this time around; I have this thought in the back of my head that when I last visited – for the inaugural exhibition – the gallery building was four levels tall, rather than the current six. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been to bed since then 🙂 .

Men in Focus: Fenris

I understand from JMB, that the aim of this exhibition is to coincide with April being Testicular Cancer Awareness Month. However, there is little sign of this within the exhibition space itself; there is no graphic highlighting any connection between the two, no information giver on the subject of testicular cancer, so I’m not sure just how close the tie is intended to be.

Be that is it may, this is still a superb exhibition from a rich mix of photographers, not all of whom may necessarily be known on the wider SL art and photography scene.

Men in Focus: Fafnir Kiranov

About the Movember Foundation

The Movember Foundation is a multinational charity raising awareness of, and money for, men’s health and welfare, with a focus on cancer, mental health and suicide prevention. Its titular and widely known campaign is Movember, which encourages men to grow moustaches during the month of November. The foundation partners annually with the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride to also raise money for men’s health.

Founded in 2003, in Melbourne, Australia by Adam Garone, Travis Garone, Luke Slattery, and Justin Coghlan, the organisation attained registered charity status in 2006, and as of 2014, has raised over US $580m in charitable donations used to fund more than 800 programmes focusing on prostate cancer, testicular cancer, poor mental health, men’s health awareness and healthy lifestyles. It is active in 21 countries and has a global workforce of 130 people. In addition, Movember coincides with International Men’s Day (November 19th), which among its aims, shares the goal of promoting the health and well-being of men and boys.

SLurl and URLs

April 2019 Web User Group: Marketplace Store Managers

Posted on by Inara Pey
April 3rd Web User Group meeting

The following notes are taken from the Web User Group meeting held on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019.

These meetings are generally held monthly on a Wednesday at 14:00 SLT, and are chaired by Alexa and Grumpity Linden at Alexa’s barn. The focus is the Lab’s web properties, which include the Second Life website (including the blogs, Destination Guide, Maps, Search, the Knowledge base, etc.), Place Pages, Landing Pages (and join flow for sign-ups), the Marketplace, and so on and the Lab’s own website at lindenlab.com.

General Updates

  • Resident-to-Resident Mainland Auctions: user-to-user auctions for Mainland parcels launched on March 26th – see the official blog post and my own report. The response has been exceptionally positive.
  • New Linden Homes: samples of the first types of new Linden Homes due to be released “soon” are currently available to preview through until Sunday, April 7th. The preview is open to Premium and non-Premium account holders (although the houses, once available, will only be available to Premium account holders. You can read more about them, and the preview in my article New Linden Homes Preview.
    • The Lab is currently working on the web site for the homes: the process flow for selecting and obtaining a new Linden Home, etc.
  • SL.com: work has been carried out to fix broken direct SLurls, and work is in progress to further improve the new user flow, including the new starter avatars.
  • Marketplace: it is believed the recent issues with Wish Lists and with gifting have been resolved.
    • The message received by a user blocked by a Merchant has been revised to make the situation clearer.
    • Issues with transaction histories not displaying correctly should be resolved.
    • Work is continuing in preparing the MP for the return of last names / name changes.
    • The most recent blog on Marketplace updates can be found in Second Life Winter Web Work, dated February 28th, 2019.

Animated Group Tags

I’ve covered the use of scripted tools that can make rapid and multiple changes to a user’s group tag display. These actually a) use a function in a way not intended; b) can put significant strain on back-end services (trying to propagate multiple group tag changes from multiple users across the grid).

As noted in my previous notes on this, Linden Lab indicated they would be making back-end changes to reduce this issue, and as per their March 8th blog post on the subject, these updates have been deployed.  As a result, many of these scripted animators have now been removed voluntarily by Merchants. However, those that have not been removed are going to be blocked.

Marketplace Store Managers

A long-standing request that is now just started to be worked on is Marketplace Managers – the ability for Merchants to appoint “managers” to help them run their Marketplace store.  Details are still being finalised, but broadly, speaking:

  • Merchants will be able to assign roles to their “managers” – what they can do, etc. So, for example, a Merchant can upload good to the MP, but assign a manager the ability to create and manage the actual listings for those goods.
  • Actions taken by managers will be logged and fed back to the Merchant, so they can keep track of what is going on with their store.

In Brief

  • Once the current tranche of work on the Marketplace is closed-off, the web team will likely look at Events.
  • This meeting marked the last for Alexa Linden as a Product Manager with direct involvement in the web services. She is going to be focused on the viewer and the server / simulator. Reed Linden will be stepping into her shoes with the Web services.

Welcome to the Hotel California in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Hotel California; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrHotel California – click any image for full size

Hotel California is a Full region designed by Lex Machine (Schmexysbuddy) that we were made aware of by Miro Collas. It presents “A war torn land fighting its way back to beauty” where, “Life always finds a way”; and it makes for a curious visit with its mix of influences.

The landing point sits in the middle of a broken bridge that attempts to span the region, rooted in a high table of rock to the north, and pointing south towards a lower hill on the southern end of the region. However, before it reaches that point, it dissolves into ruin, the paved road vanishing, leaving just the piers on which the road once stood – and these are leaning haphazardly, a mature tree sitting between them, suggesting the bridge has been in a state of ruin for decades.

Hotel California; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrHotel California

The table mountain with its small, rounded dome of a peak to one side, is home to the titular Hotel California – although unlike the song, it is probably not a place you can check-out of but never leave. Its dishevelled condition indicative that it hasn’t been in service for many years, the tree within its courtyard grown to a considerable size, the café within its shade suggestive wine hasn’t been served there for a long time.

Below the mountain, the region is primarily flat, sitting just above the surrounding water, the southern hills being the only other relief. This landscape is lush, with verdant grass and yellow rapeseed. deer roam here, although there are some signs of the war that apparently tore through the land at some point: the fuselage of a transport ‘plane, the shells of buildings, and the wreckage of vehicles, including a tank and a rather unusual flying … car.

Hotel California; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrHotel California

A large house, sitting atop a hill, stands apart from the ruins in that it is intact, as if spared from whatever happened. Lightly furnished, it is too large to be a farm-house, its kitchen is well-stocked, its conservatory a place of well-tended plants. Hidden behind the house sits a survivalists bunker; suggesting the house is still in use.

A very localised storm is in full career atop the remaining hill, marked by a shattered lighthouse. Here the rain falls in sheets and the lightening is violent. It looks out over the western lowlands, offering a view of both a ruined rotunda and a passing Predator drone, its weapons pylons empty.

Hotel California; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrHotel California

It is to the west that the region has – for me – its most interesting features. Just off the coast sits the ruin of a large, industrial-like building. It roof is gone, its walls and floors broken, the bare rusted metal of the smashed cement walls visible. A CND “shrine” sits within this broken building, but it is the scenes outside of it which hold the attention.

From the misted waters on one side of the building rise the great tentacles of what might be a Kraken, as if reaching to tear more of the structure down. Closer to shore, a group of statues are grouped, as if frozen in the act of fleeing to dry land. Or are they the petrified remains of people who once fled the now partially flooded building?

Hotel California; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrHotel California

An unusual design for a region, one that is not at all the kind of apocalyptic setting one might expect from the About Land description, but which is photogenic and somewhat prone to fancy, as per the Kraken and water scene. Those wishing to obtain rezzing rights can do so by joining the Shutter Thugs group at the landing point. Photos taken at the region can also be submitted to the Shutter Thugs Flickr group.

Altogether a somewhat different and engaging visit.

Hotel California; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrHotel California

SLurl Details

2019 SL User Groups 14/1: SUG; teleport disconnects

Posted on by Inara Pey

On The Other Side; Inara Pey, February 2019, on FlickrOn The Other Side – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for updates and news.

  • On Tuesday, April 2nd, the SLS (Main) channel was updated to server maintenance package 19#19.03.15.525315, comprising the simulator operating system update and EEP.
  • On Wednesday, April 3rd, the three RC channels should be updated with at least one server maintenance package (details TBA at the time of writing). Updates should include:
    • The removal of UDP Asset message handling across all RC channels – see below.
    • Some changes that might help with some disconnect issues older viewers have been experiencing, and which appears to be connected to some TCP message handling between the simulator and the viewer.

Removal of UDP Asset Message Handling

The removal of UDP message handing sees the removal of server-side support for asset (inventory) messaging via UDP. All maintained viewers should be using HTTP for all asset handling – and this has been the case for a good few years for several asset types, with the last few moving to HTTP in 2017; as such these viewers will not be impacted by this deployment.

However, it does mean that anyone using very old viewers still reliant on UDP messaging for assets will not be able to receive any updates for the following: animations, body parts, clothing, gestures, landmarks, meshes and sounds whilst connected to regions on any RC channels; this includes the two legacy viewers provided by Linden Lab, the Linux Spur viewer and the Obsolete platform viewer.

In particular, and since  some specific body parts are required to render avatars, user of these older viewers will see their avatar either as a cloud or the “Ruth” avatar, and will be unable to change from it.

SL Viewer

  • The Love Me Render viewer, version 6.1.1.525446, was promoted to de facto release status on Tuesday, April 2nd.
  • The EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.525808 on Monday, April 1st.

The rest of the viewer pipelines remain as follows:

  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Bakes on Mesh RC viewer, version 6.1.1.525409, March 26.
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.2.0.525404, March 25.
    • Teranino Maintenance RC viewer version 6.1.1.525401, March 20.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Teleport Disconnects

Teleport disconnects continue to be a problem. Some are pointing to the EEP deployment as the cause, and also citing the use of derendering the sky (Advanced menu > Rendering Types > unchecking Sky or CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-6). This seems to work for at least some of those experiencing the issue. However, Maxidox and Rider Linden have been looking into this, with Rider commenting:

The sky thing is much the same as putting a banana in your ear to keep the alligators away.

In other words, while derendering the sky my offer a workaround for the problem, it doesn’t actually resolve the issue.

Simon Linden added:

It’s definitely possible that any difference in network traffic might make the system behaviour change – but I don’t think changing the sky settings produces that much network usage.

The failures I’ve investigated seem to be falling into a middle-limbo where the first region thinks it’s handed you off successfully, but the 2nd doesn’t get all the data it expects and eventually times out.

One suggestion is to keep examinations of physical region crossing disconnects separate to TP disconnect, on account of the former tending to be more generally unpredictable due to the added data being transferred (vehicle as well as avatar(s)) and the manner in which the hand-offs are made. A further possible conflation of figures is the ongoing Singularity disconnect issue.

At the moment, the Lab believe that have one statistic that may show the issue, but as it is only recorded once a day, they are waiting to gather further data from it before determining if it is revealing a possible issue / cause.

Celebrating van Gogh in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
ArtCare Gallery: Vincent van Gogh

Currently open at the ArtCare Gallery, curated by Carelyna Resident, assisted by Kurk Mumfuzz and Yany O’Real, is a celebration of art marking the 166th anniversary of Vincent van Gogh’s birth.

This is at first appears to be a most unusual exhibition, in that the gallery space is given over to large cubes, on four faces of which are reproductions of many of van Gogh’s paintings, while the inner walls of the gallery space carry a repeated reproduction of his 1888 painting, Starry Night Over The Rhone.

The reason for presenting the paintings on large cubes is presented at the landing point by a cube bearing a quote from van Gogh, “I would rather paint on big cubes, but I can’t carry them”.  Also at the landing point is a brief biography of van Gogh, that provides a broad thumbnail of his artistic output and the tragedy of his life.

ArtCare Gallery: Vincent van Gogh

Some of the reproductions include The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise (1890), The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing (1888), Olive Grove (1889), The Cottage (1885),  Still Life with Lemons on a Plate (1887), Pietà (1889), several of his self-portraits, and a two-walled reproduction of The Starry Night (1889). Between the cubes and walls are several settings suggestive of café spaces, possibly a reference to van Gogh’s mixed view of such places, of which he once said, “I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime” whilst referencing his 1889 painting, The Night Café.

It is the range of paintings present here that makes this an interesting exhibition: while some of van Gogh’s more famous paintings are shown (notably, perhaps, the Starry Night paintings), so to are perhaps lesser-known studies, such as from several of his collections: shoes, flowers, people at work, and so on, while there is a balance between his oil and watercolour works. There are also possible references to some of the less considered aspect of van Gogh’s life, such as his relationship with religion, as seen through Pietà.

ArtCare Gallery: Vincent van Gogh

My only complaints are that the use of the cubes, coupled with their size means that viewing some of the works on offer can be difficult. my second is that the paintings are presented without any supporting information – and given the selection on offer, some additional note cards / panels offering insight into some of the themes of van Gogh’s work could encourage a greater appreciation of his work.

Nevertheless, this is still an exhibition worth seeing for anyone with a love of van Gogh’s work. And I confess that while visiting it, I was once again reminded of another tribute to van Gogh’s work, that of Robbie Dingo’s Watch the World. Made far back in 2008, it takes viewers of on a time-lapse journey through the in-world recreation of The Starry Night. The build itself has long gone, but is commemorated in a couple of videos from Robbie, and I’m embedding the 2008 version, presented to Don McLean’s 1972 hit, Vincent, here.

SLurl Details

ArtCare Gallery (Prychek, rated: Moderate)

 

SL16B: applications open for exhibitors, performers and volunteers

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of Linden Lab

June 2019 marks the 16th anniversary of Second Life fully opening its doors to the public (and, as I’ve previously mentioned, Linden Lab’s own 20th anniversary as a company). As is the tradition, the anniversary will be marked by the Second Life Birthday event, marked by exhibitions, music, entertainment and more taking place across the SLB regions.

On Monday, April 1st, 2019 Linden Lab opened the doors to applications from exhibitors, performers, presenters and volunteers, with the blog post reading in part:

SL16B is coming this summer … This year, we are excited to return to being more involved in the organisation of all the events. In addition to the official Music Fests, costume parties,  and Shopping events, of the last few years, we’re also returning to our roots and participating more in the development and planning of the main SLB celebration.

The 2018 SL15B Auditorium

Those wishing to apply to be involved in SL16B as exhibitors, performers or volunteers should follow the links below.

Notes for the above applications:

  • When entering times in any of the above forms, please ensure you used Second Life Time (SLT).
  • The closing date for all of the above applications is Wednesday, May 15th, 2019.

In addition, on March 14th, 2019, Linden Lab announced the SL16B Shopping Event (read here for more). Those wishing to apply to be a part of this event as a merchant should complete the Merchant Application form, no later than Saturday, June 1st, 2019.

The SL16B Shopping Event: scheduled to run throughout the shopping period, this multi-region shopping event is now accepting applications from merchants. Those wishing to participate should ensure they have applied by June 1st, 2019.