Thanks to everyone who watched the first New World Video vlogast with SL YouTUber Isabelle Cheren last week! (Watch it here). We're preparing for our 2nd episode next week, and it will include a viewer Q&A mailbag. So if you have any burning question about Second Life, the Metaverse, and related topics, no matter how wild or goofy (and civil), please post in Comments below! We'll get to as many as possible. Please include your avatar name or social handle for credit, or make it anonymously as you prefer.
My Patreon Supporters
Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.
The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!
“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.
The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.
Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I almost did not blog about this lovely blush-colored dress and earrings because when I saw it was by Khitten Kurka, I was certain I had already blogged about her since she is an OG blogger. Just to be sure, I did a search. How in the world did I not blog about (k)iss (k)iss, her wonderful fashion blog? If you’re an OG blogger or photographer and I have overlooked you because you are so woven into my mental landscape, let me know. The dress is a winner for everyone since it is made with one of the four universal colors that suit all skin tones.
- dress – maria dress by beautiful dirty rich / b.d.r. (available at main store)
- earrings – kaya earrings by LaGyo
To see how Khitten dresses for success without being boring, click here:
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Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します。
Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.
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As news of Queen Elizabeth's death spreads across the globe, mourners in the virtual world of Second Life have been converging into London City, a sprawling island devoted to the UK's capital. I have tried over the last hour to take photos of the impromptu memorial, but as avatars keep teleporting into London, the surroundings continue to be a blurry as actual London in the worst fog imaginable.
You can see them in the screenshot here, green dots indicating users from around the world, piling into the town square, where the British flag has been lowered to half-mast, and the audio stream has been changed from the usual Britpop music to somber songs played on piano and pan flute.
"May she be in God's arms half hour before the devil knows she's gone," announces a mourner in chat.
"There is music on the stream now," says someone who helps manage London. "I hope it is fitting. I'm raising a glass to Her Majesty The Queen!"
As is often the case, the serendipitous mourning is basically SLers gathering and chatting together in the wake of monumental offline news at a virtual world location with some mirror relationship to that news. (See also: Mourners outside the virtual recreation of the Eiffel Tower, after a terrorist attack in Paris.)
And as also befits Second Life, the arriving mourners include Superman in a Batman helmet, a sentient dog, and a humanoid fox (not to be confused), along with various supermodels. Many or most are from the UK, but mourners and well-wishers from outside Britain are arriving too:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
When I saw this pic from Sparklebottom Lasertits I laughed and knew exactly her point. Flickr has made some unpopular changes in the past year to encourage people to subscribe. As she writes in a long comment attached to this image:
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Flickr will be making some changes to free accounts soon. Namely, free accounts will no longer be able to post moderate or restricted content. [I.E., images with nudity or porn. -WJA] That will now require a Flickr Pro subscription. There are other changes, but that is the biggest one driving Flickr’s business model from this point forward. This is the change I wish to address…
Flickr needs to make money. I get it. How? I don’t know. Will their current plan work? I very much doubt it. I’d like to see the data in a year or so from now to see the revenue they make from converted accounts compared to how much they lose from members quitting the platform completely. They may think that losing free accounts is not really a loss, but regardless of whether their customers pay or not, losing customers is never a good thing…
Read the whole thing here. I too hope Flickr finds a way to make money because it would really suck if they shut down. I think you can tell from her name that Sparklebottom is not shy. I love her stream but it took a while to find some Google-friendly pics.
For more thought-provoking pics, click here:
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Above: Whiskey's laptop running SL — photo courtesy Whiskey Monday
If you're looking for a new PC gamer laptop that runs Second Life well, acclaimed metaverse artist Whiskey Monday recommends the ASUS – ROG Zephyrus 16":
"This is my new laptop and it's light and ridiculously powerful in Second Life," she writes in Comments. "I can run Second Life and Photoshop at the same time and while the fans are loud, it runs like a champ."
It's currently selling for under $2000 on both Amazon and Best Buy so definitely worth a look. As for the loud fans, that's a frequently reported side effect of the Firestorm viewer grunting and groaning to process all those high end graphics. (For what it's worth, my Dell G5 15 gamer laptop runs the official SL browser pretty well without heavy fan action, but then again, I generally don't run it on maximum graphic settings.)
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Above: High-res image created on Whiskey's Zephyrus laptop (via her Flickr)
"Light" by the way, might be a relative term, because (as reader Mondy notes), the Zephyrus is just over 4 pounds. That plus the AC adapter may get you in 5-7 pound range. Which might not seem heavy, but if you're planning on taking it many places, I'd definitely recommend a good backpack that distributes that weight well.
Speaking of weight, longtime reader "dkronfeld" recommends (somewhat surprisingly) the MacBook Air, which weighs in at under 3 pounds. However, that comes with a graphics hit and settings to adjust:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Willow Cute takes pictures of Second Life landscapes. They are more than a little cute, though. They are stunning. They make our world come alive with beauty. Take “Flying High.” This is from The Trace [SLURL to teleport here]. I’ve been there. I’ve stood in the same spot, but did I see it like a “Wish You Were Here” postcard? You can almost feel the adiabatic breeze off the ocean, the squawking gulls. And smell that strange fresh, yet funky smell of salt water, ozone, fresh air, and dying kelp.
For more stunning landscapes, click here:
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- Watch: I'm Chatting About SL Puppetry, Meta's Avatars, Over-Consumerization Of SL & Other Fun Topics With Isabelle Cheren!
- Four Problems With The “AI Wins An Art Competition” Story — And Insights From Acclaimed Metaverse Artist Jeff "AM Radio" Berg
- When Second Life Goes Offline, Someone Wears Shrek Ears. Behind The Scenes At Linden Lab With Honeycomb CTO Charity Majors
- Open Forum: What Are Good, Non-Heavy Laptops For Running Second Life?
- Linden Lab Unveils Puppetry Project To Animate Avatars With Webcams & Mocap Equipment In Real Time
- Watch: Snoop Dogg & Eminem Perform In Otherside, A NFT-Driven Metaverse Platform With… Fewer Than 35K "Otherdeed" Owners
