Ciaran Laval

March 1, 2014

Fantasy Faire 2014 Scheduled For May 1st – May 11th

Sonya Murmarek announced on February 17th that this year’s Fantasy Faire is scheduled to take place May 1st – May 11th. However due to the success of Fantasy Faire, there are not yet any open applications for merchants to display their wares, as Sonya explains:

There are currently no applications for merchants. The Faire is old and established and there are plenty of creators who are as much an integral part of it as the Fairelands themselves and we will first scribe in those registrations.

The first invitations to the merchants will be sent out by the end of February.

The open applications for merchants will begin some time after March 15th.

Obviously it will be disappointing if no new merchants get a look in, but it seems as if they will. I’ve blogged Fantasy Faire for the last three years, it’s a magnificent event, truly magnificent. During that time I’ve met the weird and wonderful creations and characters in the Second Life fantasy scene. I’ve met baking gnomes:

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March 1, 2014

Realm Of Usk To Close

Daniel Voyager has already spread the news that dieselpunk sim Seraph City will soon be closing. Inara Pey has informed people that Anita Witt’s full region art gallery of Dryland is closing down. Over at SLUniverse, Naseby Girl has posted that Realm Of Usk is closing down.

Realm Of Usk is a roleplaying sim and community, which is the sort of project that is dear to my heart so it’s disappointing to read that they are closing their doors.

I don’t know why Realm Of Usk is closing but I do know about the difficulties of helping a Roleplaying sim in Second Life make its own way. For some the tier is too damn high, for others it’s the amount of time managing the project or keeping content up to date.

Others find getting enough others engaged to help with storylines or management difficult. There’s a lot of work that goes into a roleplaying sim and community, much of it in the background and away from the roleplayers themselves.

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February 28, 2014

Jira Wars Episode VI – The Return Of The Jira

In a galaxy far far away Darth Linden and The Empire had dealt The Jira Knights a crushing defeat. Removing their ability to effectively collaborate and greatly nerfing their powers.

The Jira Knights tried to protest, they tried to reason, but The Empire were having none of it and cackled into their bug fixing. The Jira Knights went into hiding, licking their wounds and wondering if they would ever be able to return to their old haunts.

The Empire held firm, until very recently when The Emperor resigned and a new Emperor arrived. The Jira Knights now had a new hope … wait that was episode IV, the Jira Knights saw this as a new opportunity and secretly sent a droid to greet the new Emperor in his office. The arrival of a droid certainly surprised the new Emperor, however he was even more surprised when upon touching a button on the droid a hologram of Princess Inara appeared with the message “Help us Ebbe Wan Kenaltberg, you’re our only hope“.

“I haven’t been called that for … well I’ve never been called that” muttered Ebbe.

Princess Inara’s hologram frowned, which was quite impressive for a recorded message “You’re in Ciaran’s blog, play along.”

“Oh!” said Ebbe, looking around nervously, “How can I help?”

Princess Inara informed Ebbe of the problems the revised Jira had caused not only the Rebel Alliance, but also The Empire and convinced the new emperor that it would be best all round if a compromise was made. The new Emperor agreed and was soon publically responding to questions about the Jira : “Funny, both engineering and product heads here also didn’t like that jira was closed and want to open it up again. Proposal for how is in the works! I hope we can figure out how to do that in a way that works/scales soon.”

The plan was now in full motion and today, the rebel alliance scored a major victory when Linden Lab announced : Changes To Our Jira Implementation.

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February 28, 2014

The Drax Files Episode 17 – Zachh Barkley Oh Ho Ho It’s Magic

Oh ho ho it’s magic, you know, never believe it’s not so, was a suitable introduction to my post looking at the work of master Wizard Zachh Barkley during the wonderful Fantasy Faire 2013 and it’s a suitable introduction for this post too because Draxtor Despres’ latest edition of The Drax Files features Zachh Barkely. Zachh is the owner of the Second Life store The Arcanum. I’ll embed the video at the end in traditional style, along with a bonus song!

The episode opens with Zachh, who is much younger than I realised, in his room. Behind him a sign reads “Wizards Only Beyond This Point“. Zachh told me he’d been participating in Fantasy Faire since 2009, which was the first Fantasy Faire. He admits to have been pretty young when he entered Second Life as an apprentice wizard.

The episode features action of The Wizard in action, casting spells, flying … on a broomstick, might be a question mark over lore there! Zachh claims that his brand is the biggest producer of magic in Second Life and if you don’t agree with this you may find yourself under a spell until you do agree … ok I made the part about the spell up!

Zachh explains his early exposure to game development, how he collaborates with other users in Second Life to bring his ideas to life and he also uses the LSL Portal, which is a much under promoted resource when it comes to Second Life scripting. Seriously, the LSL portal is choc full of goodies for people who want to script.

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February 27, 2014February 27, 2014

Is There More To Project Zipper Than Meets The Eye?

The Linden Lab blog post about Project Zipper has so far met with an underwhelming response. Project Zipper, for those who don’t know, is a new Second Life project viewer that apparently improves the installation speed of the Second Life viewer.

My initial reaction to this news was “?!?!?!?! WTF!” I must admit that was my second and third reaction too. I’m not alone in this, others have expressed bemusement as to why this is an important improvement.

The Second Life client download and install times have never been something that has struck me as being problematic. Some third party viewers have larger download and install times, and I have never found that problematic either.

The largely bemused response is pretty much summed up in Inara Pey’s blog post on the subject, Inara tested the install times of Project Zipper and the official Second Life client on her system and the results were:

Second Life release viewer 2.7.2.286707: 35.6 seconds
Second Life Project Zipper viewer 3.7.2.286810: 16.4 seconds

Now you could look at this and say that Project Zipper installs in less than half the time of the current release viewer, which put in those terms is an impressive achievement. However it amounts to just over 19 seconds difference, which in reality is neither here or there. People on other systems may see better or worse results, but I’d imagine in most cases, people aren’t going to be blown away by this.

However a couple of folk have added a bit more detail, which makes this sound a bit more interesting.

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Author: Ciaran Laval

Fantasy Faire 2014 Scheduled For May 1st – May 11th

Realm Of Usk To Close

Realm of Usk

Jira Wars Episode VI – The Return Of The Jira

The Drax Files Episode 17 – Zachh Barkley Oh Ho Ho It’s Magic

Is There More To Project Zipper Than Meets The Eye?