Exploring The Dirty Grind And Jasmine’s Hollow

The Dirty Grind

Second Life is at its heart a social platform and that means engaging in social activities such as lively debates, the arts, music and more. Fortunately The Destination Guide has a section to help us find music and from there I decided to head off to The Dirty Grind overlooking Jasmine’s Hollow.

There I found a delightful steampunk inspired sim that ticks a long very nicely, this may be in a large part due to the cogs and clocks that are scattered around the location.

Steam Engine And Ship

The Dirty Grind describes itself as an Independent Artist Community. When you land there a notecard is offered, which provides some information on the region. There’s also a website and from there we learn :

Open to the public 24/7! The Dirty Grind™ is a steampunk™ haven for music and visual art. Come for over 30 hours of eclectic live professional recording artists that span from heavy metal and rock to folk and jazz and explore the venue’s many surprises and games. Enjoy our family of musicians featured on our 24 hr radio station, Radio Grind™ and explore our artists and buy their work at Radio Grind presents…

They also offer in Jasmine’s Hollow shop and home rentals as well as having options to hold events or rent gallery space. Independent musicians are not the only artists here, there are quite a few independent artists displaying their wares.

Bear in mind though that this is a moderate rated region so you are likely to be chased out of town if you want to commercially run anything adult. This isn’t a place for overtly adult activities and they make this clear in their information.

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Virtual Churches And The Challenges Of Online Worship

Anglican Cathedral

I’ll be honest, Christian Today isn’t on my regular reading list. However an article by Martyn Casserly entitled “What happened to online churches?” caught my eye as it relates to Second Life and communities. The article makes for an interesting read.

Martyn hadn’t logged into Second Life for several years and the first issue he ran into as he stood outside The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island was cloud syndrome, that is, his avatar appeared as a cloud. Although Martyn eventually resolved his avatar issue, Helene Milena (Aisla Wright outside the virtual world) , Lay Pastor at the Cathedral explains to him that his situation isn’t unusual, Helene also explains that avatars of many different shapes and sizes visit the cathedral :

“There’s one person who attends the Cathedral who I’ve only seen as a non-cloud once. We used to have a hippo that worshipped with us quite a lot, the church warden’s a mermaid…and another regular’s favourite avatar is a parrot. There’s a perch over there, that’s for him.”

Virtual world worship appeals to avatars of many variations it seems.

Notices

There is an interesting issue regarding virtual worlds that Martyn says, would make real life church services 100 times better, that is the ability to turn down all the other extraneous noises. There are many scenarios where this would be advantageous to us all and it goes beyond church services. However there are some aspects of the virtual world experience that aren’t as engaging as the real world.

One aspect is with people who no longer come to a church service. Martyn points out that if a friend doesn’t attend a physical service, then someone may call round to see if they are ok. Online this can be far more difficult, we often don’t know where people live, emails are asynchronous communication and are often not replied to quickly. However that’s not to say that online communities don’t miss people or wonder if they are ok, it’s just that online communities can be more detached in some areas.

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Twitch Bans Second Life as Adult-Only Because Twitch Do Not Understand How Second Life Actually Works

Over at New World Notes, Hamlet Au has posted : Twitch Bans Second Life as Adult-Only Because Twitch Understands How Second Life Actually Works. I disagree, strongly. Now before we get into this, I want to ask people to not abuse Hamlet (or me) for having differing opinions. I was most disappointed when I returned from my holiday to read a blog post from Canary Beck entitled “Please Stop The Social Shaming Of Hamlet Au“. I fully support Hamlet’s right to an opinion, no matter how much it differs from mine.

The Second Life community can at times get heated, but generally, they are far more tame than other communities I’ve been part of. Hamlet and myself should be free to disagree without name calling, insults, or twitter abuse.

Now on with the show. I disagree with Hamlet on the Twitch issue, rather strongly and one of the main reasons I disagree with him is that the idea that something can unexpectedly happen in Second Life whilst streaming is something that can also happen when humans are involved, and yet Twitch aren’t silly enough to decree that no humans should be on screen in case something unexpectedly adult appears on the screen.

One of the most surprising points Hamlet makes in his post is :

Twitch, which actually has former Linden Lab staff working for it, knows how Second Life actually works.

How on earth can a company with a former Linden working for them be so wide of the mark when it comes to how Second Life works? Yes, there’s adult content in Second Life, but there’s a hell of a lot of non-adult content and when this furore blew up initially, it was over a stream where someone was scripting, not stripping.

Look, it’s possible to roam Second Life without seeing anything overtly adult for hours on end. Can adult content appear unexpectedly? Absolutely, but Twitch’s rules of conduct make allowances for the unexpected :

Sexually explicit acts or content: Nudity can’t be a core focus or feature of the game in question and modded nudity is disallowed in its entirety. Occurrences in game are okay, so long as you do not make them a primary focus of your stream and only spend as much time as needed in the area to progress the game’s story.

I’ve stated many times on this blog that I’ve been to an adult region whereby I’ve witnessed no overtly adult content. Having an adult rating on your region does not mean your region is full of porn and it gets tiresome seeing this myth about Second Life being about nothing other than adult activity repeated time and again.

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1920’s Berlin Project Starts Sixth Anniversary Celebrations

1920's Berlin Landing Point

Frau Yardley’s 1920’s Berlin Project has started to celebrate its sixth birthday in Second Life. There will be six days of festivities, which started today with an open door day. That is a day when homes within the project that have a sign stating “Open House” can be explored inside without the owners chasing you out on to the streets.

Entering Berlin

Further activities are planned for the forthcoming days too, including (but not limited to) :

  • 6th Anniversary Dance at the Pariser Platz (At the foot of the Brandenburger Tor) with a show by Fraulein Sonatta Morales and with DJ Myron Byron.
  • Unveiling of the Community Quilt at the Library.
  • Miss Berlin pageant!
  • Relaxed Rules Day: All day.

For a full list of planned activities, times and dates go here.

The 1920’s Berlin Project is without any shadow of a doubt, a Second Life success story and one that warms the cockles of many a heart, and also makes others scratch their heads at how Frau Yardley has managed to get this all to work, thrive and grow. I really should ask Frau Yardley about this at some point.

Frau Yardley has had some assistance with the project of course, most notably from Mila Edelman. However the way this community has thrived is certainly something to admire.

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Second Life Premium Members Can Now Join 60 Groups

Linden Lab have blogged about a new perk for Premium Members : Premium Membership in Second Life Just Got Better! The perk? Premium Members will be able to join 60 groups, instead of the meaning of life 42.

There’s an interesting part of the blog too, which shows that Linden Lab have thought the consequences of people downgrading through :

Premium members can immediately take advantage of the new limit. Downgrading from Premium membership will not remove you from any of your groups, but it will mean that you cannot join any new groups until you remove yourself from enough groups to get below the Basic account limit, which remains at 42.

Therefore if you’re a premium member today and you join more groups, if at some point in the future you downgrade, you won’t be forced to leave any of your groups. However it will mean that you can’t join any new groups unless you shuffle the group pack until you are below 42 groups again, which may involve some advanced and painful juggling. I also assume that this means if you’re a member of say, 53 groups, and then you downgrade, you won’t be able to join more groups, you’ll have to shuffle the pack until you are below 42 again.

When it comes to groups, there will never be enough. This is one of the reasons why I’ve been a fan in the past of web based groups, whereby you would read the information on a group page, rather than the current system where all the messages, notecards, landmarks and messages are sent to you. Another idea I’ve been a fan of in the past is the idea of different types of groups. Social groups don’t always need land, so why include them in the land system which creates overheads when checking things such as group access.

However both of my proposals would require a major overhaul of how things currently work, so I can understand why Linden Lab aren’t keen to tinker too much with the current system. Whereas the system has flaws, it does to a large degree work as intended. However concerns will remains regarding group chat.

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