Yuri’s Night Coming To Second Life And Kitely

Yuri's Night

On April 12th 1961 Yuri Gagarin, a Russian Cosmonaut, took the spacecraft Vostok into Outer Space. Twenty years later, April 12th 1981, NASA’s first Space Shuttle was launched. Celebrations of these events take many shapes and forms.

Yuri’s Night is very much part of those celebrations and even goes boldly into virtual worlds, Second Life and Kitely are two virtual worlds you should be familiar with.

Orbiting Planets

The Celebrations in Second Life are co-sponsored by the International Spaceflight Museum and the National Space Society.

They are planning a whopping five hours of celebrations starting at 3pm SLT today.

The event launches (sorry couldn’t resist) at the International Spaceflight Museum in Second Life :

  • 3:00-4:00 pm – Dance to our “Space Filk & More” audio stream.
  • 4:00-5:00 pm – DJ Aristippus spins space-themed tunes and songs of the Space Age.

SLURL : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aspen/200/120/3730

Then the party moves on to The Sagan Planetarium in Second Life.

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OpenSim NPC’s Are An Easy Touch Of Fun

In The Shadows With Nara Malone

I’m catching up with Nara Malone in OpenSim. Nara had told me that there have been some good developments with Non Player Characters (NPC’s) in OpenSim and had asked me if I’d like to take a look. I had agreed, a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn’t managed to login to OpenSim until today. Fortunately Nara was willing to forgive me for being late.

I did try and go off on my own to look at NPC’s but I ran into a few errors, which were more down to me not understanding how OpenSim works than problems with OpenSim. In order to create and use NPC’s in OpenSim the land needs certain permissions and so does the user. However Nara quickly came to my rescue and took me to a suitable location, where I was introduced to Neo Cortex.

Neo knows his stuff and rezzes a camera, which he asks me to touch, I do so and receive a notecard with some settings, this is somewhat important. Then I am asked to touch the camera again, at which point a double of my Avatar appears in NPC form. This is quite impressive, but it’s static and not doing much. However this was a very quick process, less than a minute for me to be able to rez a NPC version of me.

Double Trouble

However the new me isn’t doing a fat lot, it doesn’t move, it looks like a mannequin. However Neo and Nara want to shoe me more and they both suggest that I should engage in dancing with NPC’s.

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Don’t Get Twitchy, Look Forward To Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education Instead

Iris Ophelia has received a reply from Twitch regarding whether streaming of Second Life via their service is allowed : Update: Twitch Responds With Their Stance on Streaming Second Life. The long and short of it is, that Second Life streaming is indeed prohibited :

Second Life is not permitted for streaming and those accounts reported for doing so will be suspended. Content in this game is unrated and often sexually explicity, which is content we do not allow on our services. We also do not permit Adults-Only rated games and games where nudity is the core focus, feature, or goal.

Please read our Rules of Conduct regarding sexually explicit acts or content for more information:

http://www.twitch.tv/user/legal?page=rules-of-conduct

I could write a long rambling post about this, or point out that Grand Theft Auto, an 18 rated game, is happily streamed. However I’d rather just point people in the direction of The Drax Files : World Makers on YouTube, which is certainly not a series that exemplifies nudity being the core focus, feature or goal.

Another virtual world event that doesn’t have nudity as the core focus, feature or goal is Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education, which starts on Wednesday of this week and it’s a far more important topic. This is the 8th annual event and here’s a brief explanation of what it’s all about :

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a global grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments. This open conference is organized by educators, for educators, to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place in this community of practice. All educators are encouraged to present, attend and take part in this discussion of collaborative deeper learning and co-presence in virtual worlds and games.

The Opening Keynote speech will be from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg in Second Life, however this conference does go beyond Second Life, other featured speakers include :

Pam Broviak – Manages the Public Works Group, an online resource offering information related to public works, government, and social media.

Gord Holden – Recipient of the Virtual Education Journal’s Reader’s Choice Award as the Edovator of 2014.

Jeroen Frans – One of the three Founders of the Vesuvius Group, LLC, and functions as Executive Director and Virtual World Technology Specialist.

Sensuous Maximus – Co-founder of the renowned Builders Brewery within Second Life.

Susan Toth-Cohen – Professor and director of the post-professional clinical doctorate in occupational therapy at Thomas Jefferson University.

John Fillwalk – Serves as the senior director of the Hybrid Design Technologies initiative [HDT] and as the director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts [IDIA Lab} at Ball State University.

Jay Jay Jegathesan – Holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) from the University of Western Australia (UWA), majoring in management and marketing.

For more detailed biographies about these speakers go here : http://vwbpe.org/conference/vwbpe-2015-keynotes-and-featured-speakers

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2014 Reviewed Part 1 : January To June

In this post I will review 2014 from a largely virtual world perspective for the months January to June. This is part 1 of 2 as part 2 is still a work in progress but will hopefully appear tomorrow. I’ll combine both posts into another post for easier future reference once they are both completed. These posts will miss lots of big and interesting stories because the nature of the beast demands some brevity. These post may well look longer than they actually are at first glance because of images and pictures. The aim of posts such as these are to give a brief overview of the year, rather than an in depth review. An in depth review is too long for a blog post, it may make for an interesting book.

Anyway, on with the show, as they say.

January

January started with a look back to 2013 and the number of private region losses. The scores on the door from Tyche Shepherd displayed a slow down on the number of regions leaving the Second Life grid, something that would continue during 2014.

  • 2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
  • 2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)

The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.

Blackened Mirror poster should be here
The Blackened Mirror Poster

Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.

Linden Lab were Raising The Roof : The HTTP Project. This project, which had started in 2012 was aimed at improving HTTP communications to improve the end user experience. Linden Lab would continue working on improvements during the year.

Second Life users were getting frustrated by tax and account information requests from Linden Lab. They would continue to be frustrated by these requests throughout the year despite Linden Lab improving their communications and information on these issues.

Second Life got a mention in the comedy show, 2 Broke Girls.

Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.

Pirates? Ahoy?

This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.

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The Hypergrid Stories Project – Interacting With The Fiction

Nara Nook

Nara Malone greets me as I return to Nara’s Nook to start my quest on The Hypergrid Stories Project. Nara recognises that I’m a Hypergrid noob and tells me that if I want to keep my clothes on during this journey, I’m going to have to pack a suitcase. This troubles me but Nara simply explains that if I haven’t got a folder in my inventory entitled “My Suitcase”, then I need to make one and drag my worn items into said folder. This is how you keep your clothes when you travel to a different Hypergrid region. So suitcase duly packed I follow Nara.

Hypergrid Stories

Next up Nara points out the books and poetry offerings and almost dares me to walk through one. I hesitate but I’m not one to shy away from a challenge. I walk into Dear Charlie, a story by Tina Glasneck, who recently wrote about the project at Hypergrid Business. Without clicking anything, I’m teleported. However at this stage I haven’t left Greyville Writer’s Colony. However this soon changes.

I’m greeted with chat :

Dear Charlie,    You can’t change a monster into a man and I should have known that when Otto walked into the club and smiled at me.    [please proceed to Red Light Club in the provided teleporter]  [1 of 21]

Walking into said teleporter and again without having to click to teleport, I find myself in the mysterious universe of Hypergrid travel. I arrive safely at my destination and my suitcase was indeed packed, as I am still fully clothed. Phew!

Continue reading “The Hypergrid Stories Project – Interacting With The Fiction”

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