Month: December 2014

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Linden Lab Provide A Gift, Create A Contest & Concierge Support Get Christmas Day Off

Linden Lab have announced a new snapshot contest for the holiday season as well as news of a Christmas Gift : Celebrate the New Year & Pick Up Your Holiday Gift!

We want to know how you celebrate the coming of the New Year in our New Year Snapshot Contest. If it’s a whole new look for your avatar, or an inworld party to celebrate — share your snapshots for a chance to win L$10,000, L$5,000, L$3,000 or L$1,000.

To enter the contest you will need to go to the official Second Life forum post : 2014 New Year Contest. The rules seem to be on the Wiki and are worth reading, especially if you live in Canada because there’s a requirement for Canadian based Second Life residents to also perform a maths test.

The breakdown of prizes is :

  • Grand Prize – 10,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at US$40.00).
  • First Prize – 5,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at US$20.00).
  • Second Prize – 3,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at $12.00).
  • Third Prize- 1,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at $4.00).

As for the gift, that will entail making a visit to Portal Park.

Continue reading “Linden Lab Provide A Gift, Create A Contest & Concierge Support Get Christmas Day Off”

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Phaze Demesnes Set To Close Very Soon


Phaze Demesnes

Phaze is a magic land of water, dragons, fairies, demons, unicorns and robots. Follow the paths that lead to dozens of quiet, romantic spots in a colorful and relaxing landscape. Find the dragons to ride and the demons to fight in the arena. Chat with the animated talking trees, statues and paintings.

Visit in Second Life

Bay Sweetwater delivers the sad news that the magic land of water, dragons, fairies, unicorns that makes up Phaze Demesnes is set to close in Second Life in the next few days. However all is not lost, the creators behind Phaze,  Ferd Frederix (AKA Fred Beckhusen) and Wavingirlsav Voom ( AKA Debbie Edwards) are leaving a parting gift by giving all of their creations away for free.

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Change.Org Petition Calls For Second Life Avatars To Have A Facebook Account

Frijolita Avalira has created a petition on Change.org : Allow Second life avatars to have a Facebook page. ow first things first, pedantry. Facebook do allow Second Life avatars to have a Facebook page. However the petition is really about allowing Second Life avatars to have full Facebook accounts, as the petition explains :

So we ask this of you to keep our Second Life names, as our names and STOP deleting our accounts. It’s a real life business, complete with real life tax payments. Yes. It may seem to some like a game, but as far as our government is concerned–be it the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the Canada Revenue Agency or any other–money you make as an entrepreneur in Second Life or any other virtual world or online game is fully taxable. If the US Government can recognize this as a legitimate business, then you can recognize our avatars and let us advertise using Facebook. With our Avatar names. It’s a huge community, of many walks of life. It isnt by any means a “game.”

We are clothing designers & we ask for rights to conduct our advertising in Facebook.

I advise reading the petition in full. This is of course an old complaint and one that I’ve discussed many times before. Facebook’s arguments are that real names lead to more civility. The flip side of this is that real names also lead to bullying and people being reluctant to share their opinion because of the sheer amount of information linked to a Facebook account.

Then there’s the issue of advertising. I’ve never quite understood Facebook’s reluctance to allow people to use pseudonyms from an advertising perspective because people’s locations, ages and interests are what advertisers really want.

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Happy Gothmas


Gothmas by Gaslight

Gothmas by Gaslight follows a darker, more beautiful holiday season. The night air is cold and crystal, it is a time of velvet and lace, of jewels and silver. Gothmas runs through January 5th, for more information be sure to visit https://gothmasbygaslight.wordpress.com/.

Visit in Second Life

If you want a darker holiday theme, with stores, a really good music stream (I may be biased here) then you should pay Gothmas By Gaslight a visit. We’re talking steam/dieselgoth and dark Victoriana here.

Time For Gothmas?

Gothmas By Gaslight is now in its fifth year and by running the event in December they produce a more low key affair because Second Life concurrency in December isn’t great. This is obviously due to the fact that many of use are embroiled in holiday season mode outside the virtual world, which is a good thing, no really, it is!

Happy Gothmas

However, just because the event is low key, don’t be fooled into thinking nothing is really going on here. Well over sixty merchants have a presence here, including, but not limited to; Avatar Bizarre, House of Rain, The Dark Fae, Deadpool Fashion, Cherry Blossom Designs, DemotiK, Get Frocked and NSP Florals & [MUSE].

Some of those with a merchant presence are also sponsors of the event. The sponsors are : Beautiful Freak Cosmetics, Black Tulip, drbc – deathrocker bettie crocker, Eclectica,
Fallen Gods Inc., Gothika *, :{MV}:, Roawenwood, -{ZOZ}-, Atomic Faery, Bliensen + Mai Tai, Chaos, Panic and Disorder, Couture Rock, Dark Passions, Pin Me Down,
~*Souzou Eien*~ and Spyralle

For a full list of merchants and to view maps of where the stores are go to this Merchant List page on the Gothmas By Gaslight website.

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Firestorm Casts A Mighty Shadow Over The Official SL Client When It Comes To Photography

I’ve recently returned to using the official Second Life client. Well first of all, let me recap, there was a stage when the official client was the only client I really liked using, I was wary of those third party clients, despite all their bells and whistles.

I’d tried them, I didn’t get on with them and then one day I tried Firestorm, and quite frankly I never looked back when it came to taking photographs in Second Life. The photo tools, the sheer amount of windlight settings, I was as happy as Larry playing around with these and ramping up my graphics for the right shot, moving the time of day slider to cast shadows. Awesome sauce.

Then one day I noticed my AMD graphic drivers were a tad out of date and updated them, and Firestorm made a very sad face at me. However I saw some light on the horizon, a new version of AMD graphics drivers were released and I updated again. Alas, this was a terrible mistake as Inara Pey pointed out. However the investigative Inara Pey also points out that there may be hope on the horizon.

The thing is that may my main issue with Firestorm was not regarding rigged Mesh, well it is now, but the issue I had with Firestorm after updating my graphics drivers was that if I set my settings to Ultra, my scene looked like something rendered on the Sinclair Spectrum.

So I returned to official Second Life client and that’s where my head scratching started.

Continue reading “Firestorm Casts A Mighty Shadow Over The Official SL Client When It Comes To Photography”

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