A 2017 photo from my space station. The view of space here is created by a photosphere generator, which makes a 256×256 spherical bubble around the generator, with the unit at the center point. Imagine if I could set the environment on this level to space without needing to use a generator. This can expand space role-play tremendously — just one new use for EEP.
What looks like excellent news from Linden Lab, put up on the Community Blog, and brought to my attention by Daniel Voyager’s plurk today. LL has released the Environmental Enhancement Project to the main Grid. For users of the Linden viewer, at least, the new abilities will be available to all Residents on all sims. And that includes, as I’m seeing this, sims that you rent, even if you don’t have owner environment privileges. (Third-party viewers don’t have this yet, as it will take a code revision. However, I think we can expect a scramble to integrate the new code into Firestorm and other top TPVs. Firestorm users such as myself should probably expect an update notice at some indeterminate point.)
Some possibilities:
You don’t need to be an estate owner to change the environmental settings.
New environmental settings panel
Custom day cycles
Changeable textures for the clouds and moon
Different settings for different altitude settings
Changeable locations for sun and moon
Save settings in Inventory instead of an XML file, and import existing XML files to the new settings
Creators can set permissions for next owners
Settings can be applied at the parcel level, for everyone to see
Here’s a really nice aspect to enhance your possible revenue stream: the new settings can be saved as Inventory assets — and given, shared or (ka-ching)sold. This could result in a whole fresh category on the Marketplace, or new stores for EEP files. (That’s E-E-P, by the way, not “eep.” Which, of course, means everyone will promptly ignore the Lab, just as they do by calling them “Linden Labs.”)
It appears people are beginning to remember Second Life … and, hopefully, for better reasons than as a “den of debauchery” — Oh, you mean there are some parts like that …? (Grin)
According to the Second Life Grid Survey the maximum daily concurrency in #SecondLife reached 56, 148 on 22nd March 2020. The median daily concurrency average at the moment is around 42, 000. It’s getting a little higher every week but no huge peaks in the max daily concurrency yet due to the current Coronavirus crisis.
If things get worse in the next few weeks and months then I think the Second Life daily concurrency levels will go up due to the strict lockdowns across the world. If any new huge peak occurs soon then I will blog about it.
Second Life Grid Survey Data
What do you think the concurrency levels will be in the weeks and months ahead ?
This is good tidings for the ACS, the creators, for us as individuals, and for us as a community as well. Not only will the annual tradition continue, but this will give us as a community the opportunity to socialize and relax from the stress we are currently under. Remember to be patient this year, as the Faireland sims will probably be under a lot of strain for the first days. Keep your costume as gentle on the regions as you can, and don’t grouse if you find yourself walking around like in a cooled vat of treacle fudge.
The above was posted by SmugMug on the Flickr Blog on December 19. You can read the entire letter on their site. It outlines a situation that I’ve wondered about for some time — how Flickr pays its bills to pay for what is probably thousands of servers and thousands … if not millions … of terabytes of storage. Clearly, they’ve been having problems, and they’re still having problems, even after being purchased by SmugMug. Nobody can afford to pour water out a flagging-open window forever.
Some fast (and not necessarily authoritative) thoughts —
The concern is not absolutely immediate, but it’s something we users of Flickr need to be aware of, especially if we have photos on the service that we haven’t backed up in recent years. As I’m seeing it, SmugMug has a few options open to them:
Let Flickr eventually go under
Find outside backing
Sell the service to another company
You may see other options I don’t.
We also have choices we can make. The ones I can see at the moment are:
Buy a Pro subscription
Locate to another service — many did when SmugMug changed Flickr’s terms of service, moving to Instagram
Moving our galleries to our own blog spaces
I advocate none of these in particular. I do point out that, whatever choice you as an individual make, you have to do it with your bank account and future purchases in mind. We’re each probably going to end up paying for a service at some point, no matter where we end up if Flickr goes under. We can’t keep on getting something for nothing. (That’s one reason why I eventually bought a premium subscription to Second Life.)
What you decide to do is up to you. I’m probably, since I have a Pro account, going to offer exhibit space to my blog-sisters and -brother again, as I was doing a year or so ago, as I know they can’t or won’t buy a Pro account for various reasons. That’s not a guarantee for the future, though, and we’ll need to discuss this together at some point.
There’s one thing all of us should do, though: back up any photos we don’t have copies of, if we want to save our archive of work. I’m fortunate; I’ve kept an archive of everything since the start of 2013 on an outboard terabyte drive. (Frankly, most of my earlier stuff was trash by current equipment standards, anyway.) The others are so recent (or do so little work in world) that they have their entire archive already safe. Your mileage may vary on what you want to keep; if you do want to preserve all the work you’ve done, whether Flickr survives or not, I’d urge you to get down to it.
And now, as my professors said on the exam papers at the end of an essay question or two, “Discuss.”
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart …?
Psalm 13:2, King James Version
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An open letter to the lawmakers of the United States of America:
You are accused, and stand convicted in our eyes, of moral cowardice and of shirking your responsibility to govern this country for the good of its citizens.
We the people you are supposed to work for … something you seem to have forgotten … stand aghast before you on the day following not just one, but two more mass shootings.
We see the blood beginning to paint our streets with greater frequency, but we see nothing of substance done to stem or reverse the flow. All we detect are the pious, if not sanctimonious, expressions of sympathy to the families of the victims, and the accusations of each political side against the other before microphones and cameras. You are again revealed as hollow, shallow and venal, spouting words of intent, and yet bowing before the money of the National Rifle Association and its antiquated idea of “gun owners’ rights.”
None of your empty posturing and “profound sympathy” and calls for prayers and support will drown out the anguished wails of the parents and families of the dead and wounded. Neither will it silence the angry cries of the ghosts whose once-living blood now soaks our soil … blood that itself accuses you of immobility on solving the problem, and of corruption of moral intent. You have lost even the remotest knowledge of what constitutes good government … if, indeed, such has ever been your intent.
In a country where you so often invoke faith and “family values” to bolster your images, we more and more hear instead the words of Thénardier from the sewers of the musical Les Misérables:
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It’s a world where the dogs eat the dogs Where they kill for the bones in the street And God in his heaven He don’t interfere Because he’s dead as the stiffs at me feet I raise my eyes to see the heavens And only the moon looks down The harvest moon shines down!
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The only thing that keeps us from surrendering to that philosophy is our faith in a God or deity that does care for us … seemingly more than the people we constantly and mistakenly elect to hold temporal power.
We tell you now, you shall listen to the cries of both us and our children — in our lives, in our beds, in the graves you have helped dig with your own bloody hands — and you shall find a way to right the vast wrong you have done in the name of power and greed. If you don’t, then the future you create, whether it lies far away or just around the corner, will fall at your feet; and it may be a future all of us wish to avoid.
The blame will be another matter. That must be shared by us all ….
There have been some changes in my real life that I wanted to share with you and be completely transparent about. I have been hired by Linden Lab as their …
This is going to be an exciting time for Berry. We’ll miss her in the regular blogging trenches of Second Life, as I’ve already told her on her article; but I understand her feeling that, as an employee of the Lab now, she needs to put a firewall between roles.
As she notes in her article, please don’t contact her directly to solve any problems; that won’t work, and will load her down with unfulfillable requests. File a normal ticket. Be a nice avatar.
Hamlet Au has written up an interview he’s done with Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab’s CEO, and posted a video of the talk as well. I’ll leave you to link to the article and read (and watch) it there, but I’ll interject: it’s my belief we were lucky that the Lab, which was thrashing for direction five years ago, managed to get this man. There may have been some jokes about the “IKEA CEO (some assembly required),” and I myself did a version of that:
But I think he’s been a godsend to Linden Lab and Second Life, and sounds committed to growing what’s old as well as supporting what’s new (Sansar). Hopefully we’ll have him for some time to come.
Bay City in Second Life will be hosting its 2018 annual tree lighting event between 1- 4pm SLT on Sunday 9th December 2018.
The event will be taking place over at the Bay City Fairgrounds in the North Channel region where there will be live music, ice skating, refreshments and much more.
I’ve attended this event in previous years and I have to say it’s great fun generally during the Christmas festive season.
Here is the full press release…
Bay City — Annual Tree Lighting 2018
Sunday, December 9, 2018
1-4 pm SLT
It’s that most wonderful time of the year!
Once again, the Bay City Alliance will host its annual Tree Lighting event, now in its eighth outing, on Sunday, 9th December 2018 from 1-4 pm SLT.
The event will be held at the Bay City Fairgrounds, in North Channel (SLurl) and will feature DJ GoSpeed Racer as well as…
I’m not happy about the closing myself; but hopefully they’ll be reopening as soon as possible. Second Life isn’t just about fashion and sex, I promise any non-Residents who read this blog, no matter the reputation gained back in the Era of the Great Hype. Many of us try to just plain create something beautiful out of this world we can shape to our skill and desire, and the LEA has been instrumental in fostering this.
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The Linden Endowment of the Arts (LEA) was established to help create a center of arts activity in Second Life. It is a collaborative venture between Linde…
This statue honoring Fred Rogers is more formally titled “Tribute to Children.” Rogers would have preferred it that way …. It stands on the North Shore area of Pittsburgh, near where the Allegheny River joins the Monongahela to form the Ohio River.
Google has a new Doodle today, one that I take personal pleasure in for one or two reasons. I used to live in Pennsylvania, several counties north of Pittsburgh; and, when I lived in Florida, I attended Rollins College. How connected, you ask?
They’re connected via Fred McFeely Rogers, of course. Google’s Doodle celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first taping of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (back then it was actually “Misterogers”).
Second Life® with Harper, Conan, Jem, Diana and Morgan
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