Second Life News Week #26

Getting the news out took a bit as I decided to include my own Meet the Lindens video. Pantera Północy posts his videos more quickly than I do. I get bored with his single camera angle. I also process the video to improve the audio… since my camera is moving around have to capture audio at my avatar’s location, not the more easily controlled camera location which has the audio level is all over the place if I move around. That single spot audio is not the best, so I think it still needs some help. But it is serviceable.

Other News

I’ll start off with this alarming bit of news showing where RL government is going with climate change, Climate Apocalypse? Ireland To Ban Private Cars, Import 1M Third-World Migrants. Whatever you think about Climate Change, make sure you aren’t just drinking someone’s Kool-Aid.

SL16B Crowd – The Meet the Lindens Tuesday event was attended by close to 200 people, 11 were Lindens, spread over four regions. Max per region was about 55. I didn’t crash and things worked well. People were a bit slow rendering, textures lagged, but no regions crashed. My FPS was in the 7 to 11 FPS (i5, 32GB, GTX-1060 High-Ultra Shadows + Projectors). – April’s mic was cutting out. – The video is a bit jerky. At 7FPS that happens.

Video Abstract

The video starts with Oz and April telling us about their history with Second Life™. Both were residents before they were hired by the Lab. I found this part of the video INTERESTING… Saffia is a good interviewer.

When we can get Oz or other techy Lindens talking, they always have interesting stuff to say and we learn things about the SL system.

In this Meet the Lindens meeting, April Linden confessed that 2 to 6 months ago they moved the SL inventory to the cloud. Not every detail has moved, but basic inventory (database) now runs in the cloud on much faster computers. And no one noticed, which is what the Lindens want.

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Second Life News – Week 25 Extra

Second Life Moles – These are people that are paid staff working for Linden Lab. I suppose from home or wherever. We know them as the people that build the Public Works of Second Life™. At the moment they are building Bellisseria and SL16B.

The SL News Extra has an account by Bixyl Shuftan of a sort of interview-encounter with Abnor Mole, who’s name you’ll find is a take on the word Abnormal.  Interesting article.

summer picnic
summer picnic

SL Complication – I follow Penny Patton’s blog The Digital Pasture. She mostly writes about the shortcomings of SL, what users are doing wrong, and how to circumvent the challenges or how the Lab could improve the situation. Not a frequent blogger. Her previous article was 9 months ago. The average, I think high, is one article per month.

She has another article in her series that focuses on creating NPC’s (Non-Player-Characters or bots). I hadn’t thought about it, but she makes a good point. See: Why Anticipated Second Life Features Go Unused Once Released.

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Second Life News Week #25

Other News

Today, Tuesday, was the Server-Scripting UG meeting with the quarterly music thing with Tukso this quarter.

TP/Crossing Disconnects – Lindens think they have most of the problem handled. They aren’t saying much as they don’t want to influence the bug reporting. I think additional fixes are in Blue Steel, but I don’t have any objective information to say so.

The Le Tigre and Magnum regions have the EEP fixes for legacy viewers… the ones we are using.

SL16B – Second Life’s Birthday Party opens on 20th June and runs to 8th July.

June 24 – This is the last day you can renew at the old rates for Premium Membership. Last Call.

Voice Maintenance – June 19th the Lindens will be pulling maintenance on the voice system. They will start at 8:00 AM SLT. People may have problems while system maintenance is in progress. Watch Grid Status for an announcement of completion. You may need to relog after that to get voice working.

Facebook’s Bitcoin – Facebook is planning to get into the cyber-currency game. Their block-chain coin will be named Libra… free? Does anyone think they are providing a free service from the goodness of their heart? I don’t. The concerns being voiced are based on FB’s history of privacy invasion. Now, they will have access to your spending and earning information. A FB alternative is MeWe.com.

FaceApp – This has recently become is a small thing in SL. It is an app for mobile devices to edit portrait images. It is quite fun. I just wrote a how-to on getting it to run on a PC or Mac: The FaceApp and Second Life 

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The FaceApp and Second Life

Browsing a Second Life™ Forum thread I was impressed with a photo by SL resident Opal Gustafson.

Opal Gustafson – The Smile

What a cute avatar (click to enlarge). CLICK… gotta like that one. A bunch of other people liked it too. Started a bit of a thing.

Seicher Rae saw it and commented none of her heads or AO’s had such a smile. Hmmmm… neither do mine. Seicher asked how she got the avatar to smile like that. The answer was FaceApp. The smile was made in post-processing, not in SL.

I have seen what I thought were SL avatars will big smiles. Even some profile pictures with smiling faces. Now I know where they come from.

So, what is FaceApp and where does one get it? It is an app for mobile devices. Google Play and Apple Store. Free and paid versions available.

If you know how to move images between your mobile device and your desktop the quick way to get these smiles is to put the app on your device and moves files back and forth.

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Where is the Porn? Erotic? Just Sexy? A view from Second Life

Whether in RL or Second Life™ people are interested in beauty and beautiful things. I am of the opinion SEX and the sexy can be beautiful… gorgeous, and/or stimulatingly erotic. Sex can also be crude, vulgar, and/or violent. While often being an expression of caring or love, flipping the coin over we know it can also be devoid of any caring for another and totally about self-centered gratification and control.

Gallant: Spring Romance (Photo 4)
Gallant: Spring Romance (Photo 4)

Whatever the case, it is hard to classify art as either erotic or pornographic. Those issues rage worldwide. You can decide what is which. I don’t care how you decide. Just don’t load your opinions on me. I just want to see what I consider titillating erotic art. Preferably without gallons of dripping body fluids. But sometimes that is just what I want.

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Second Life News Week #24

Other News

Server Deploy Posts – They are back… Last week speaking to Caleb Linden at the Beta Sever UG meeting I learned there was a problem and it would get resolved. It apparently has as there is a deploys posts this week.

Caleb posted the announcement Monday about noon SLT/PST. Yay!

June 24 – This is the date Premium Membership Rates increase. Until then you can renew for one more billing cycle at the current rate, US$72 per year, which is a deal. I just renewed. I am good until 2021.

Someday Soon
Someday Soon

With Premium, one gets a L$1,000 signing bonus (down the road) and L$300 per week. At the average exchange rate of L$250 to the US$1 that is L$16,600 or US$66.40. Net cost is $5.60. With a jump up to US$99 the net cost goes to US$32.60. That seems like a huge rise until one considers the cost of some other games.

Star Citizen with ships costing US$400 to $2,500 and EVE Online at US$15/month are particularly expensive. Other monthly games are often US$10 per month or US$120 per year.

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