Just another unauthorised virtual world fansite
Raglan Shire, the community known for tinies, friendship, creativity and being powered by waffles has taken a turn to the dark side, as they often do at this time of year, with their Shocktober event.
Dare you visit the haunted hotel? How about The Dark Carnival? The Raglan Shire ride of horrors? There’s plenty to see and do here, with a haunted gesture hunt, pumpkin carving, broom races and the all new apawcalypse horror survival game also in the mix.
I was in a pub one Sunday afternoon a year or so ago. I was enjoying a pint or two and watching a football match on the telly when a woman entered the bar. There was nothing unusual about this, well not at this point anyway, but then I heard the woman say; “This pub is full of men, I haven’t been in a pub like this for years“. At this point I turned away from the telly and duly noted that the pub was indeed, full of men and that the newly arrived woman was indeed the only woman on the customer side of the bar. There were women behind the bar, men work behind the bar too. I should note here that the pub is not usually as male dominated as it was that day and that plenty of women attend the pub quite happily.
The thing was, it wasn’t until this woman had arrived in the pub and made her comment that I realised that the pub was full of men. I was reminded of this incident whilst reading a post by Hamlet Au over at New World Notes; How to Really Get More Women into VR: More VR Startups Founded & Run by Women. The post links to an article over at Digital LA; Women in VR: 26 Ways to Increase Women in VR.
A few points really stand out to me in terms of visibility :
Attend VR events such as VRLA Expo, Oculus Connect, and more to learn, connect, represent and increase visibility of women in VR.
Create documentary of leading women pioneers in VR. There are many women pioneers in VR who can be role models to girls or others who want to get into VR. The documentary film can be screened at VR events.
Create great content. Women need to start creating their own VR content. “I’m going to start creating my own content in addition to working on projects for others,” said Shannon Gans, founder of New Deal Studios which won the Oscar for Interstellar.
Get YouTubers, Viners and other influencers into VR. If top female influencers across various platforms started to do VR, that would increase women interest in VR. If iJustine (YouTube), Brittany Furlan (Vine), Amanda Oleander (Periscope) were invited to do a VR experience, that would be widely shared among their audiences and drive interest in VR.
That visibility is important and another factor to note is conformity, which leads me to another article featuring VR researcher Jenny Wu; Jenny Wu: VR researcher. Psychology grad. Social media dissenter.
Continue reading “Women Probably Don’t Want To Feel All Alone On A Crowded VR Island”
SLGoth in Second Life are currently holding a charity event : The Truth About Bats & Avies. The event is designed to raise money for Bat World Sanctuary. The event lead is Marsha Warwillow, editor in chief of SL Goth Magazine, which has its HQ in part of the home of Abel Dreamscape’s Morphe Inc., which makes for a very suitable setting.
The charity event opened on October 15th and runs until October 31st and whereas this isn’t a full on busy event it has elements such as supporting merchants, a hunt, cabaret and live storytelling.
More importantly there’s information scattered around about bats, including some myths & facts and posters informing us why saving bats is important. There’s also a bat cave and who can resist a bat cave!
Continue reading “The Truth About Bats & Avies – A Charity Event For Bat World Sanctuary”
Linden Lab have blogged; Second Life Improvements – What’s New & What’s Coming Soon! In this blog post they look to Asgard for inspiration in part with a really impressively named project, which has been entitled Project Valhalla.
So what exactly is Project Valhalla you may be wondering, well in short it’s an out with the old and in with the newish move, as explained in the blog post :
A new age of modern HTML5 content is upon us, and we’re overhauling the way shared media (aka “media on a prim”) works so that you can enjoy all kinds of modern web content within Second Life. Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is coming to replace the aging QTWebkit framework.
This is quite a big change, indeed it’s such a big change that the release notes tell us :
This long-awaited project replaces the aging LLQTWebKit system used in the Web media plugin with a shiny new one based on the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) that supports modern web technologies. In fact, we think this is such a big deal that we’re cranking the Viewer version number to 4.0.0.
Just to emphasise how big a change this is, the blog post tells us :
What does this mean for your Flash content? What about Quicktime? They may still work, but because both can only be viewed if the user has correctly installed a 3rd party plugin, we can’t promise support and you shouldn’t expect that it will work for everyone. Standard HTML5 is the way of the future and this Viewer will enable it for anyone.
Flash is no longer the saviour of the universe and this is also pointed out by the fact that the Second Life website will no longer be using Flash either.
The bottom line is that this should be a good move, if you’re interested in this then you may want to take a look at the Project Viewer that moves the Second Life viewer to version 4.0.0 and above, that’s how big a change this is. However please bear in mind that this is a project viewer, as the release notes point out :
This is the first iteration of a Project Viewer – which means that while a lot of the problems facing the old MOAP implementation should now become a distant artifact of the past, we are still cranking through the many new issues with our CEF-based solution. See a bug? If you don’t see it filed already – file a Jira! We look forward to your feedback. Thanks!
However this isn’t the only area where Linden Lab are planning improvements for Second Life.
Continue reading “Second Life Viewer Set To Move To Version 4.0.0 As HTML 5 Starts To Slay Flash”
I’m back from sunnier climes and straight into British Autumn, which today has been rather pleasant. I’ve survived the horror of learning that the Balearic Islands are planning to impose a quite frankly barmy tourist tax next year, which will only encourage another modern horror on the Islands, all inclusive holidays. Seriously, there’s no need for all inclusive holidays in the Balearics. The drunken debauchery is horrendous, and this is coming from someone who is no stranger to drunken debauchery, but there’s a thing such as moderation which all inclusive completely ignores.
I’ve also survived the horrors of the queues and prices of refreshments at Palma airport. However this was all balanced out by sun, sea, beautiful walks and very friendly locals who made my visit very enjoyable.
Now as I prepare to recover from my holiday excess I note that Second Life is preparing to get spooky. The Destination Guide has a haunted category where you can keep an eye on spooky destinations and Linden Lab are joining in the fun with a creepy crawl and a photo contest.
The creepy crawl call to arms went out on october 6th with a blog post from Xiola Linden; Second Life Creepy Crawl 2015 – Call for Venues. Alas entries had to be in before October 20th. Those who have applied to be a host venue should hear back from Linden Lab in the next few days, the plan is :
A-haunting we will go! This year we’re going to take inworld meetups and Halloween shenanigans and mix them together for a frightful mashup of mind-blowingly fun times.
The Creepy Crawl will be taking place on October 30th – more details to follow for those who just want to come along for the fun!
So keep your eyes peeled on the offical Second Life blog for more details. However don’t worry if you’re not part of the creepy crawl, there’s a photo contest that is still running and you have until November 12th to take part in this contest.