Linden Lab – Page 68 – Ciaran Laval

April 17, 2015

Huckleberry Hax, Second Life Related Author Releases New Book

I saw a tweet from Canary Beck the other day about a forthcoming book from Huckleberry Hax. This may well sound like the start of a work of fiction, but I promise you it’s not because Canary has now blogged : Second Life Is A Place We Visit (2015) By Huckleberry Hax. One of the reasons Canary has been tweeting about this is explained in her blog post :

Huckleberry Hax has published a new book and it’s now available for download. I’m especially happy that Huck asked me to design the book cover typography for this work, a second time! And as a bonus, the cover image – taken by Huck – is a scene from my beach at Basilique!

However what is the book about? Whereas Canary explains it very well I think it’s only fair to turn to the author for some explanation :

Huckleberry Hax has been writing about the virtual world of Second Life® for eight years. This volume collects together 42 of these articles, including his monthly column for over two years at the celebrated AVENUE SL lifestyle magazine.

This is a work of non fiction, even if it is virtual world based. However what Canary’s tweeting (no pun intended) has also opened my eyes to is the fact that Huckleberry Hax also writes fiction, and a lot of that fiction is based upon Second Life.

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April 15, 2015

Cecilia D’Anastasio’s Article On Avatar Identity Hits The Spot

When the news broke that VICE reporter Cecilia D’Anastasio was looking to hear from Second Life residents regarding avatar identity I was somewhat sceptical. My concerns were largely due to the way the wider media have reported on Second Life in the past and the way the wider media seem to like to be economic with the truth all too often these days. A glaring example of this is the current nonsense going on with the Hugo awards, which has left me despairing about how the media seem more interested in sensationalist clickbait than the actual issues.

However, my scepticism was definitely misplaced as Cecilia’s article is actually quite touching and respectful. The article, simply titled, Avatar IRL, looks into what Lisa Nakamura called, Identity tourism. However as we see from Cecilia’s article, avatars are not merely a mirror of ourselves, they can also be taken away from the keyboards with us.

In the article, Cecilia talks to Veronica Sidwell and we learn that Veronica has adopted the name of her avatar outside of Second Life, and by this I mean that Veronica has legally changed her name. Does this suggest that Veronica was so encompassed by her avatar that her real self became her avatar? Not at all, the article explains that the name change was due to Veronica transitioning from male to female in real life and the name change was a mark of respect for the sim that had given Veronica the confidence to make that transition :

Originally, Veronica was merely an avatar. Now, Veronica Sidwell is a 37 year-old transwoman working as a picture framer in Atlanta, Georgia. Veronica, who would not disclose the name she lived most of her life under, changed her legal name to match her Second Life avatar. It was a gesture of respect to the sim who lent her the confidence to transition IRL from male to female. Veronica’s experience as a female-bodied avatar in a virtual world, she told me, convinced her that she would live a fuller, happier life in womanly form.

The issue of avatar identity and roleplaying are well covered here and it’s not just about Second Life either, World Of Warcraft also gets a mention with regards to the story of Laura Kate Dale : How World of Warcraft helped me come out as transgender.

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April 14, 2015

Fantasy Faire 2015 – Hunt, Ballet And Literary Festival

Fantasy Faire 2015

Fantasy Faire 2015 is still over a week away but things are hotting up over on their website with news of a hunt a ballet and literary festival starting to creep out. Fantasy Faire, as we all know (unless you want to be hit by a curse of agony) is the best event in Second Life by at least one country mile.

This year’s hunt is entitled : The Lost Lands and as with all good things Fantasy Faire related, it involves telling a story :

This year, we have a rich story to tell, of a lost land, a forgotten Princess and her ten missing Champions. A Queen will share her most precious possession with you, the Hunter, in one last desperate bid to recover her lost child. But is everything as it seems, or are there layers of mystery, magic and compelling characters for the Hunter to discover?

However that’s not all, a teaser video has appeared.

Save The Fairelands, Save us all! More details about the hunt will appear soon, including the cost of the Hud and where the hunt will be taking place.

However if a hunt isn’t to your taste, how about a bit of ballet?

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April 13, 2015

Bright Canopy Beta Testing Frame For Second Life Streaming In A Web Browser

SL Go from OnLive is of course going, but the ideas behind it and the fact that there are Second Life and OpenSim users who would like to see a similar service developed has been discussed. In my previous post I looked at the work Nebandon Izumi had compteted with regards to getting the OnLook Viewer working with Amazon AppStream for OSGrid.

However there are other people looking at options regarding this too and one of them is Bright Canopy who state :

We render SL on powerful machines and stream it straight to your device

Android, iOS, Chromebook, Mac, Linux, anywhere

Say hello to freedom

Bill Glover of Bright Canopy, has been commenting on Inara Pey’s recent blog post. Bill has also setup a blog : Bright Canopy Blog. The blog so far has a total of two posts, but both of them are absolutely fascinating when it comes to streaming Second Life.

His first blog post was : Notes on Streaming SL With Amazon AppStream, which contained a report of trying to get Second Life working with Amazon AppStream. Although it did work, Bill summarised the experience as :

I’m in a hotel room in Reno for a conference, but I’m grabbing what time I can to do some quick proof of concept stuff.

I setup a stream with the Firestorm and was able to use it from both a Chromebook and an Android phone. It was really very responsive over a hotel wifi network, but there are many caveats.

tl;dr: It works, but it’s expensive and nowhere near being useful for just casually streaming SL without some custom client development and viewer integration.

The link to the blog post has a lot more information and is definitely worth a read. However Bill didn’t hang up his pen there, he’s actually moved on to a second experiment : And Then There Was Frame.

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April 11, 2015

Amazon App Stream And OnLook Viewer Used To Stream OSGrid

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes recently pondered Could Linden Lab Replace SL Go With Another Service – Say LiquidSky, Leap Computing, or Amazon App Stream? The answer it seems, is possibly, because in the comments Diva Canto says :

Today, Nebadon and I have set up OnLook (a derivative of Singularity) on the Amazon AppStream. It was surprisingly easy to set up and it works amazingly well. I’m still in shock.

This changes everything.

To demonstrate this, Diva shared a video that Nebandon Izumi had created :

The video shows a stable looking experience running really smoothly. However for more details on this, it’s time to turn to our favourite Delicia Whipsnaps lookalike, Inara Pey, whose original post of Could the Lab use Amazon AppStream to “replace” SL Go? provided the basis for Hamlet’s question.

Inara has followed this up with another post, Using Amazon AppStream to stream a viewer. In that post Inara talks to Nebadon Izumi about the process of using Amazon AppStream. The process is not straight forward, it’s not like using SL Go where you just login and, well, go. However it is feasible.

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