Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Things about SL
Inara has an update from the last meeting that looks complete and has audio from the meeting. See: Project Bento User Group update 2 with audio. She has broken the audio clips up by topic, which is handy.
For those short on time, the meat from the meeting:
Here’s your chance to be in the movies. The Lab has posted a Second Life casting call for a Drax machinima (1/14/16). If you are interested in showing off what you are working on, be at Bento Island, ADITI January 19 at noon (SLT – PST). The region won’t open until noon.
While you cannot enter Bento Island early, I advise you to log into ADITI, the preview grid, early. The last few weeks have proven the log in process for ADITI is slow and flawed. I have yet to see my inventory update as the planned changes are supposed to. So, I’m pretty sure the new ADITI login process is not in place.
The notice advises those with avatars to show contact Draxtor Despres inworld. Provide him pictures and as much information about your creation as possible. I suspect he is looking for color and human interest and has less of an interest in the technical. What tools you are using will probably be pertinent.
Project Bento is one of the biggest changes to the Second Life avatar ever! More than 90 new bones have been added to accommodate features like subtle facial expressions, articulating fingers, smoothly-flapping wings, waving tails, and much more that was previously impossible or required complex workarounds.
If you’re a creator who’s testing out Project Bento, or one who’s eager to give it a try – now is the perfect time! We’re looking for creators to show off some of the possibilities of Project Bento for an upcoming episode of The Drax Files. There are detailed instructions on how to get started and how to get to the beta grid (aditi) on our wiki page. (TIP:Testing on Aditi does not cost you upload fees!)
Second Life™ is in the news again. It is mentioned in an article about pedophilia. So, is Morrowind, Elder Scrolls. It isn’t what you think. The article is about how those aware of their problem are sublimating (especially in psychoanalytic theory) divert or modify (an instinctual impulse) into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity) and controlling their desire using virtual worlds.
A Dr. Seto points out that “prosocial” pedophiles—ones who experience empathy for children or shy away from harmful sexual behavior—more often than not don’t know where to turn for help.
Historically we have been down this road with other differences thought of as illnesses. Homosexual preference is not a disease or mental illness. Their gender identity is different. We have learned a lot about what shapes gender identity.
Over on Mesh Body Addicts Lildaria has written an article with that title, Truth About Events (NSFW±). She touches on a pet peeve of mine, but her prime point is the problem we are starting to have… having… with events.
It seems that people are staying longer at events because they have a hard time getting in. If you leave, it may be a day or two before you can get in again. So, demos are downloaded and tried on while people are at the event. This puts a load on the region server and lags it more than their just being there.
Some time ago in the days (3/2012) when the Firestorm-Phoenix Viewer had its brand displayed in the avatar ID tag Jessica Lyon was surprised to learn Firestorm users were abusing those that used other brands of a viewer. (Text Reference TM 21:00± – Video Reference*).
Canary Beck has just written an article where she outlines her rules for blog comments. See: My evolving view on blog comments. In it she writes, “I’ve never in my life been the recipient of the vitriol I’ve received while blogging in Second Life.”
I blog and post in various places. I had to think about Canary’s comment. Is SL the worst? Since she used the word ‘vitriol’, I can agree with her, yes. Definitions of the word use terms like; abusive, cruel, and others that denote harmful caustic rhetoric. I’ve seen mean and abusive and what Canary is implying by use of the word vitriol does seem to be a significant characteristic of a considerable number of Second Life users.
This weekend I was learning how hard it can be to recover a Windows 10 system when the user has no idea what their password is… make your recovery disks, please. That saved me from dealing with Second Life’s problems this past weekend.
For a good description of what happened see Danial Voyager’s blog: A difficult weekend for Second Life. Or read the Lab’s post: Why Things Were Less Than Optimal This Past Weekend.