Ciaran Laval

July 13, 2015

Second Life Footage Set To Appear On All New Dr Phil This Tuesday

Footage from Second Life will this week appear on All New Dr Phil, a daytime television show in the United States. The footage from Second Life will appear in an episode entitled Won’t Work, Won’t Go to School: “My Son Just Wants to Game All Day”.

The blurb for the episode on the Dr Phil website states :

Sarah says her 23-year-old son, Justin, is so consumed with playing video games that he dropped out of college, can’t hold a job and has lost more than 50 pounds — and she fears he’ll die if he doesn’t stop. Justin admits he can play 16 hours a day — sometimes lasting up to 30 hours straight — and says he would rather live in the virtual world than the real world. When Dr. Phil opens Justin’s eyes to the dangers he faces, will it have an impact?

The issue is a very serious one but there’s a bit of a twist regarding the Second Life footage. Justin, the man featured in the article, does not engage with Second Life. The usage of Second Life footage is to exemplify that digital experiences have come a long way since the days of Pac-Man.

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July 12, 2015

Hair Fair 2015 Now Open

Hair Fair 2015 in Second Life opened yesterday and runs until July 26th. As well as being a showcase for hair designers in Second Life, the event also has a charitable side with a portion of all sales being donated to Wigs For Kids, who help children who have suffered hair loss :

For over 30 years, Wigs for Kids has been providing Hair Replacement Systems and support for children who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy, radiation therapy, Alopecia, Trichotillomania, burns and other medical issues at no cost to children or their families.

There are a couple of thank you letters from Wigs For Kids on the Hair Fair 2015 website, including one from 2012, which thanks Second Life residents for raising over $10,000 for the cause.

Now as this is a busy event you’re likely to want to take a look at the official Hair Fair 2015 website for information. The Hair Fair 2015 Store Slurls & Map Guide blog post is an extremely useful resource because not only does it provide information about where the stores are, it also provides information regarding additional sims that will be available in the early days of the event.

I had to teleport to one of the additional sims to take photos for this blog post because the main four sims of Blonde, Brunette, Redhead and Noirette were all full. Now being as it was 4am SLT when I tried to teleport to the regions, it suggests that the first few days are going to be extremely busy.

Continue reading “Hair Fair 2015 Now Open”

July 11, 2015

Everwinter – A Post Apocalyptic Theme Park In Second Life

Second Life fashionista Rachel Price was the inspiration behind my visit to Everwinter Post Apocalyptic Theme Park. Rachel’s picture had been Second Life pic of the day back on July 3rd and the location looked interesting.

Upon visiting, I discovered that the location is interesting.

Everwinter is based on real events, as the notecard informs us :

Everwinter Is Inspired By The Abandoned Amusement Park In The Real World City Of Pripyat. The Pripyat amusement park in Pripyat, Ukraine is an abandoned amusement park. It was to be opened on May 1, 1986 in time for the May Day celebrations (decorations for this event are still in place in Pripyat today) but the plans were interrupted when on April 26 the Chernobyl disaster occurred a few kilometers away. The park was opened for a couple of hours on April 27 to keep the city people entertained before the announcement to evacuate the city was made. Today, the park, and in particular the Ferris wheel are a symbol of the Chernobyl disaster. The amusement park itself is located behind the Palace of Culture in the centre of the city.

The audio message you can hear in russian as you enter Everwinter is the actual recording of the evacuation message played to the city of pripyat following the nuclear disaster at chernobyl.

I’m not going to give everything away, but there are some interesting sound recordings being played here too.

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July 11, 2015

Ellen Pao Steps Down As Reddit CEO With Dignity And Humanity

I recently blogged about the problems at Reddit : Reddit – The Front Page Of The Internet, Bottom Of The Class For Community Relations. In that post I talked of the failures of Reddit management to engage with the community.

The furore over the direction Reddit was heading had already seen a petition created that called for the head of Ellen Pao. In the wake of the communication debacle the number of signatures on that petition ballooned from around 10,000 to over 200,000.

However, it was quite clear that Ellen Pao, who only took over as Reddit CEO on a temporary basis eight months ago, was not solely to blame for Reddit’s communication issues. The anger fired in Ellen Pao’s direction was misdirected. A communication breakdown such as the one Reddit faced was not due to events in the last eight months.

Ellen’s resignation letter, posted on Reddit, contains a human touch that far too many people on social media and even in virtual worlds, seem to forget about :

I just want to remind everyone that I am just another human; I have a family, and I have feelings. Everyone attacked on reddit is just another person like you and me. When people make something up to attack me or someone else, it spreads, and we eventually will see it. And we will feel bad, not just about what was said. Also because it undercuts the authenticity of reddit and shakes our faith in humanity.

This doesn’t just apply to Reddit. I’ve seen similar sentiments made when people are attacking Linden Lab, or attacking people on Twitter, or in below the line comments sections. I’m not sure why people are so quick to spread bile when we communicate by text. I do hope that one of the side effects of a more immersive virtual reality future is that we will get more clues from facial expressions and that we will then see less venom when people communicate at distance.

Ellen also pointed out how support can be inspiring :

What has far outshone the hate has been the positive on reddit. Thank you, kind strangers, for expressing your support. You gilded me 100 times. (For those of you who apologized for generating a wave of accusations that I gilded myself, please don’t feel bad. You did a good thing.) And thank you for sending cute animal pics and encouraging me to “Stay safe!” when the site overheated with expressions of hate in various forms. There were some days when your PMs inspired me more than you can imagine.

The reason Ellen is stepping down though is not because of a petition and fortunately, it’s also not because of trolling and abuse either.

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July 10, 2015

How To Fix Flickr’s Embedding Mess (Whilst We Await Flickr Providing A Solution)

Flickr have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to change the HTML code in their sharing photos option. They used to have an option to embed, or grab the HTML, now, if the new features has been rolled out to your account, you can only HTML embed by default, once the script has loaded properly, you’ll see a flickr logo, the name of the person whose photostream the image is from, the name of the photo and the description.

The reason for this is explained in a forum post, [Official Thread] New version of Flickr’s embed code :

Today we’re excited to start rolling out a new version of our HTML embed code, with more visible attribution of the photo owner and enhanced features.

This new code brings the features of the “iframe” web embeds and the compatibility of standard HTML image embeds together into a single code.

The way we’re accomplishing this is through “progressive enhancement.” This means that at the core of the new embed, we start with the same HTML image tag that has always been on Flickr, and if supported, we load the more sophisticated, enhanced embed. If the “fancy” embed isn’t supported or something goes wrong, the standard image will still load.

We’ve already been using the new embed code for months on the Flickr Blog… maybe you’ve noticed? Now we’re ready to roll this feature out to everyone, and we’d love your feedback.

The feedback has arrived, and the natives aren’t exactly jumping with joy. The problems are numerous, but they include images not aligning correctly, slowing down site loading, people complaining that it all distracts from the image, the fact that some people don’t name their photos and more. Do not despair if you have had these changes foisted upon you and you don’t like them, it’s only code and code can be edited. First of all, let’s take a look at that new code. Continue reading “How To Fix Flickr’s Embedding Mess (Whilst We Await Flickr Providing A Solution)”