A Visit To Bookstacks Isle


Bookstacks Isle

Bookstacks Isle is a place all about books and the people who love them — you know, readers. The group holds regular book clubs and readings, and the activities board is a wonderful resource for keeping up on all the literary events in SL.

Visit in Second Life

Bookstacks Isle is a place where readers can discuss books. Kghia Gherardi and JJ Drinkwater, director of The Libraries of Caledon seem to be the main driving force behind the place, although Second Life’s Queen of Storytelling, Seanchai’s very own Caledonia Skytower, also has a presence there.

Don't burn books!

Inside The Hobby Horse pub we see bookcases and posters. One poster tells us that Books cannot be killed by fire and that books are weapons in the war of ideas.

Inside The Hobby Horse

Other posters advertise science stories. This is a place for discussion, I’m not sure how well up to date the informational notecards are. One from Simeon Beresdord advertises Science Fiction Saturdays :

Jago Constantine organises hour-long event I list as Science Fiction Saturday in Events.

Which we now host at Bookstacks giving people a chance to talk about science fiction in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

It meets every Saturday at 2pm SLT in the pub on Awen.

Got something to say about the book you’re reading? Share your insights with us! You’re welcome to come and just listen too!

We’ll happily discuss sci fi books, television and movies … but mostly books!

If you think you might come along, bring some thoughts on the last science fiction you read, what you’re reading now, and what you want to read next!

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Linden Lab’s Excellent Promotion Of The Destination Guide

The movie Mary Poppins turned 50 this week, which is an impressive milestone. A less impressive milestone is Linden Lab’s refusal to allow people to mention Dick Van Dyke in all his glory on the Second Life forum. I’ve mentioned him in his full name here in this blog post, I haven’t been struck by lightning, I haven’t been stampeded by a rampaging mob! Well not yet anyway. Come on guys, apply some common sense with those word filters and ditch the Dick Van **Bleep** silliness.

However one area where Linden Lab are doing a superb job is with their excellent promotion of The Destination Guide. The Lab have been regularly promoting the destination guide and this month is no exception as they blog : Highlights from the Second Life Destination Guide 8/27/2014. I’ll ignore the arse about face date format, I still don’t get the reason for that in a numerical sense.

One of the really nifty features of the Destination Guide is the ad widgets :


Hot Bay City Nights

Now in its third year, Hot Bay City Nights has hot roads and cool cars. Come see established vintage automobile designers in the Bay City Fairgrounds from August 23-30 as they present the best in vintage and retro vehicles for all avatars. Additional events provide plenty for all to do, including the crowning of 2014’s Miss Bay City and a number of charity car washes. The event will raise funds for Child’s Play, a charity that provides toys and games for children in hospitals around the world.

Visit in Second Life

It’s a shame these widgets can’t be used for promoting events. However the destination guide, now that Linden Lab pay it plenty of care and attention, is an excellent resource and Linden Lab are to be commended for promoting, updating and utilising it.

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High Fidelity Take Us Behind The Easy Scene

Back on August 14th High Fidelity’s band, AKA, that’s their name, published a video of the band performing a cover of the Commodores song “Easy”. The original video was accompanied by a promise that executive producer Ryan Karpf would provide a behind the scenes follow up post.

That behind the scenes post appeared this week : “Easy” Behind the Scenes. Inara Pey has eloquently covered this and Ryan’s hypnotic eyebrows already. However I’m going to cover it too, although I may pass on mentioning Ryan’s hypnotic eyebrows. That doesn’t count as mentioning them!

First of all, the production of this video involves a lot of peripherals. The actors used PrimeSense or Asus 3D cameras. PrimeSense were acquired by Apple just over twelve months ago. Faceshift software was used for the expression tracking.

Emily (0n vocals) and Ozan (on guitar) used PrioVR upper body suits.

Camera man Grayson was using, to quote Ryan, something like the Elgato capture unit. Audio editing was done in Logic and video editing done in Premiere. I’m assuming these are products from Apple and Adobe as those are the companies I know produce products with those names.

Ok so first of all, the average user is not going to have access to all of those peripherals and pieces of software. However we should bear in mind that this video and the follow up one are aimed at demonstrating the capabilities of High Fidelity. At this point you may be thinking that the future’s so bright I’ve gotta wear shades.

However that’s not all that was involved, far from it. Next came a Javascript script to utilise nine different camera positions. The beauty of the script was that it mapped to different keys on the keyboard, therefore camera 1 may well have been mapped to key 1, camera 2 to key 2 etc.

However they were far from good to go, whilst building the set they ran into a bug that High Fidelity’s Alpha users had reported. Basically having too many models in close proximity caused the server to crash. A technical explanation of the issue is provided by rad Hefta-Gaub. At this point I should warn you to beware of geeks bearing gifs. This is all in the video, well not the part about geeks bearing gifs.

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Second Life Avatars Should Create Facebook Pages

I’ve recently suggested that Second Life Should Cut The Facebook Cord due to the fact that Facebook is not Second Life avatar friendly. Back in July I suggested that Linden Lab Should Embrace Google+. This was based on the fact that Google + had changed their naming policy to one where people can now use any name they like. Prior to that Google + required you to use a name you were known as, which did allow Second Life avatars to have a presence of sorts, but was still a grey area. There’s no real grey area with Facebook, they want people to use their real name only for accounts.

A good way for Linden Lab to encourage people to embrace the better fit of Google + would be for them to include their Google + page in their connect with us or follow us sections on their website. The Google + page isn’t as popular as the official Facebook page but has had over 4 million views, which is none too shabby.

However like Second Life in virtual world terms, Facebook is where it’s at in terms of social networking. Personally I’m not a fan, I mean I’m really really not a fan. However I do have a Facebook Page. Why do I have a Facebook page? Well because it’s not a breach of Facebook’s terms of service to do so, whereas using my Second Life name as a Facebook account is a breach of the Facebook TOS.

Many Second Life users have tried to use Facebook under their Second Life name and many have found themselves having their accounts deleted, due to that TOS breach. So if you absolutely must use Facebook with your Second Life name, then create a Facebook page for your avatar.

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LL Issue Reminder And Warning On Skill Gaming Policy

Linden Lab have issued a reminder : New Skill Gaming Policy in Effect September 1, 2014. The blog post also contains a warning that the new policy will be enforced. Skill Gaming in Second Life is basically defined as :

  • A game where the outcome is determined by skill, rather than by chance.
  • Has the option for payment to participate in Linden Dollars.
  • Pays out in Linden Dollars.
  • Is legal according to United States and international law.

That’s pretty much the gist of it, so if the game allows you to pay in with the option of paying out if your skill allows you to win, then it’s a skill game. Now if those criteria aren’t met, say for example you can pay in but there’s a random chance of the game paying out, such as a traditional fruit machine style game, then that’s gambling and is strictly forbidden.

Now if you haven’t been paying attention then you may be wondering how on earth Linden Lab know if the game you play or create meets this criteria. Well that’s what the Skill Gaming Policy is for. Games of skill will only be allowed to be played on approved sims. Only approved games, created by approved creators are permitted and they can only be operated by approved operators. This means that if your game meets the skill gaming definition, you will still be breaching the rules of the new policy if the game, the land or the person operating the game have not been approved.

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