Under The Sea Expo Opens Today

Me: “Avast Ye scurvy dogs and prepare yourself for an adventure with The Blake Pearl and ghost pirates, although not Le Chuck as he’s copyrighted.“

Organiser : “Psssst, It’s The Under The Sea Expo, not The Pirate Expo”

Me: “Prepare yourself for nautical adventures as you go under the Second Life seas in search of the mythical Jaguar Shark.”

Organiser: “Steve Zissou will not be making an appearance!”

Me: “Captain Nemo?”

Organiser: “Will you please behave!”

Me: “Prepare yourself for nautical adventures as The Under The Sea Expo allows you to explore the beauties of what lies beneath and above the Second Life seas!“.

Organiser: “We’ll let you have that one.”

Me: “Yarrr!”

From sometime around or shortly after 3pm SLT today until June 26th, The Under The Sea Expo takes place, with over twenty five vendors/participants taking part to celebrate the mystical beauties of like aquatic ……

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June 19, 2013June 19, 2013

Marketplace Billing Engine Changes And Materials Project Viewer Arrives

A rather bizarre blog post appeared yesterday: Marketplace to Move to Second Life Billing Engine. I say the post is rather bizarre because I’m bemused as to what other billing engine The Marketplace was previously using. This is probably because I’ve only ever purchased items from The Marketplace using Linden Dollars from my account balance, which were merged with Marketplace accounts quite some time ago.

I can only assume that when people purchased Linden Dollars for use on The Marketplace, they made the purchase via some sort of legacy system, if that was the case it certainly makes sense to update the system to use the same system the rest of Second Life uses. I guess we’ll see if there are any issues in the future, but off the top off my head I can’t think why there would be.

In other, and rather less bizarre news, The Materials Viewer Has Been Released! I haven’t yet looked at this, although I hope to shortly but the blurb tells us:

“This Viewer will allow content creators to build objects using normal and specular maps and will allow users to view the effects of this new feature set. The end result is photorealistic textured objects inworld, such as the SL10B Bear Avatar, which will look even better with this Viewer.”

There’s a video, which I will embed in traditional style at the bottom of this post … well it’s traditional for me to do that! There are some important things to note regarding materials, one is that you need to be using a viewer that supports Materials, which obviously the Linden Lab Materials Viewer will do and secondly, you need to have a system that can handle advanced lighting, unfortunately not all systems will support this option.

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June 18, 2013

Magellan Needs Help But Where On Earth Is Salazar Jack?

Magellan’s Grid Scavenger Hunt

Welcome, brave explorers and adventurers! Magellan Linden uncovered an evil scheme by the mad Doctor Talpa to build mind-controlling machines and take over the world. While Magellan builds a machine to counter this scheme, you are needed to gather materials and components — and to destroy every one of Talpa’s machines you find. Magellan has established workshops, a laboratory (even a bar) on the Isles of Ice; travel there to learn more, get equipped and start the hunt!

Visit in Second Life

Magellan Linden needs you! Well if you’re a Premium member he does anyway. Why does he need Premium members? I have no idea, but you can’t help if you’re not a Premium member, maybe Magellan is partying with basic accounts and hitting on girls, he has a reputation for booze and bawdiness. Wait a minute that would mean us Premium members doing all the work!

In the past Magellan used to write chronicles, but they ended around 2005. Magellan hasn’t been doing much since October 2008 when the infamous Nautilus City Investigation took place, you’ll find lots of links about the legend of Magellan Linden there. There you will also get some insight into the nature of Magellan Linden, as exemplified by one of the last known chat logs of the intrepid explorer:

Resident: Excuse me, but could I ask you please to move?

Resident: I mean, with that huge suit you’re wearing, it’s hard for people to walk around you in here.

Resident: Please?

Magellan: Hush, woman! I’m in three different IMs and they’re all more important than you.

Resident: But this is my art gallery. People are here for the opening party.

Magellan: Just tow it out to Weiland or Shenning. I’ll board it there, head south.

Resident: What?

Magellan: Damn it!

Resident: What did I do? Tow what?

Magellan: No, some arty-farty cow is making noise and confusing me.

Magellan: Damn it again!

Resident: Hey, wait, are you talking about me?

They gave Magellan a Mole Tank! I mean, letting Magellan loose in something like that!

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June 17, 2013

SL10B – The Shatoetry Project

You know how it goes, there’s a big event, you ramp up your graphics card settings, get ready for snapshots and watch in horror as you run out of texture memory, or the viewer crashes whilst playing about with windlight settings and then you forget all about the windlight setting you like. This is when you remind yourself that you’re living in denial about the capabilities of your graphics card and settle on looking at the parcel itself, which is what I did as I found myself at Crap Mariner’s SL10BCC Shatoetry Project.

The notecard informs us:

The Second Life SL10BCC Shatoetry Project

by Crap Mariner

(UPDATED June 9, 2013)

Shatoetry is a smartphone app that lets you create magnetic poetry with William Shatner’s voice.

“Second” and “Life” are available in the word packs, and that inspired this project.

I created a bunch of Shatisms about Second Life which explore the past, present, future, and quirks of this virtual world. Then, I embedded the sounds in this build.

When you arrive on the parcel you can listen to the Shatisms Crap has created, as well as user contributed ones. Details on how to add your own Shatism to the build are included in the notecard on the parcel, I’m not going to provide all the details here as that would not be fair on the exhibit, if this sounds interesting to you, go and visit the parcel:

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/SL10B%20Electrify/31/104/21

The build itself is nicely done and the Shatisms are very amusing as you hear William Shatner style speech with phrases associated with Second Life and virtual worlds.

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June 15, 2013June 15, 2013

St Vitus Day Festival In Progress Now

An Image Should Be Here — Isle Of Dee St Vitus Festival

My chief Elf poked me asking me why I hadn’t blogged about the festival on my sim where she’s the admin……. erm I was playing Diablo III and forgot isn’t a good excuse, so I tried to perform magic on her but she just glared and handed me some notes. Now first thing, this is on a roleplaying sim and medieval or mythical attire is required for this event, it’s not required for all events but it is for this one, however if you fancy popping along free avatars are provided. Now for some blurb.

Hear ye Hear ye!

Traditionally, the Isle of Dee Citizens celebrate St Vitus Day with a Festival of games, shows, competitions, wondrous wonders, surprising surprises!

WITH:

SILENT THE MENTALIST – GYPSIE FORTUNE TELLING – CALI SINGS SILENT SONGS – FERRIS WHEEL – TUG OF WAR – PLAY GAMES – WIN PRIZES – SHOOTING – FENCING – FISHING – ISLE OF DEE MARATHON – FOOD- DRINKS – MUSIC – WONDERS

So one of the surprises could be me forgetting to blog about it? Umm The Elf just shakes her head and tells me that’s no surprise. Ok so time to blog about what is happening. but first here’s what happened yesterday:

FRIDAY, 14th June, Opening Day

All the day: Games Carnivale Circus

All day on request – Madame Can Gypsy fortune telling

10 AM slt – Circus Tent Stage – The Mentalist

And here’s what you’ve missed so far today:

SATURDAY , 15th June

9 AM slt – 3 PM slt – Bath House Opening Party

11 AM slt – Silent Poems

However all is not lost, because there’s still stuff to come! Which I’ll list below the cut.

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