Steelhead Shanghai Rentals Available – Light Industry, Horrible Working Conditions, and Charming Slums #SecondLife

Here’s an opportunity – there are a couple of plots in Steelhead Shanghai available that are already set up to be light industrial slum-like factories with horrible working conditions complete with worker “housing” nearby. It’s like the future site of Foxconn, but they’re still stuck making the iSteamphone.

Contact Moon Elf, Mad Builder, and Reluctant Slum Lord TotalLunar Eclipse inworld for more information.

Steelhead Shanghai  Factories for rent

Available light industry/factory buildings in Steelhead Shanghai (a couple of 1024s, with housing for workers?)

via Available light industry/factory buildings in Steelhead Shanghai (a couple of 1024s, with housing for workers?) – Second Life

Southwestern Swallows Pot — $L30 #SLMarketplace

How strange that something as simple as a clay pot, created to store food or grain or water, can now be appreciated as decor.

If our artifacts survive for hundreds or thousands of years, will they become art?

  • Southwest Indian pottery
  • Tintable – white base color
  • Low prim decor for your Southwestern or Western themed build

$L30 via Second Life Marketplace – @DF@ Southwestern Swallows Pot

Gently Used Persian Rug — $L25 #SLMarketplace

Works with many kinds of decor. Backed with woven jute, which could be used as a door mat. Antique style, classic timeless feel looks nice with Victorian, Edwardian, or any eclectic traditional setting.

  • Uni-dimensional!
  • Shows very little wear!
  • Looks very well on rough or polished floors.
  • Easy to clean.
  • Adds genteel style to your Victorian, Steampunk, or Edwardian roleplay

$L25 via Second Life Marketplace – @LC@ Gently Used Persian Rug (c/m/nt)

Southwestern Thunder Mountain Pot — $L30 #SLMarketplace

How strange that something as simple as a clay pot, created to store food, or grain, or water, can now be appreciated as decorative art.

If our artifacts survive for hundreds or thousands of years, will they become art?

  • Southwest Indian pottery
  • Tintable – white base color
  • Low prim decor for your Southwestern or Western themed build

$L30 via Second Life Marketplace – @DF@ Southwestern Thunder Mountain Pot

Jade Walking Stick with Simple AO — $L100 #SLMarketplace

“Without my walking stick, I’d go insane…
I can’t look my best, I feel undressed without my cane.”

  • Simple, elegant walking stick – 4 prims
  • Suitable for either males or females (add female anims)
  • Compatible with Posture is Everything’s Gentleman Jim LIGHT and FULL GJ Cane AOs
  • Now with FREE ZHAO-II MB2 with simple cane-friendly walks, stands, and sits.
  • Adds debonair style to your Victorian, Steampunk, or Edwardian roleplay

If you attach this to your right or left hand, it will work with the free-to-new-residents Gentleman Jim AO in the Hall of Avatar Customization at Caledon Oxbridge University. (The paid version for older avatars is available from Posture is Everything). Just make sure the stick is pointing straight down from the hand as described in the AO notecard. It can attach to either hand or forearm, in case you have other attachments (rings, shirt cuffs).

NEW: a simple AO is included with 2 default animation notecards, and it is modifiable. Instructions included.

It is modifiable, and ladies may note that it is slim enough to make it work as a female walking stick as well.

Please feel free to look me up and let me know how you are getting around your Second Life. Walk with pride!

Please note: Anyone who received the no-mod, no-copy version that was uploaded in error, please contact me inworld. I will re-deliver the corrected version to purchasers.

And also please visit one of our shops:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tweddle/229/221/82
(Froobert’s Further West Outlet, Tweddle)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Steelhead%20St%20Helens/73/146/39
(Steelhead St Helens Dry Goods)

$L100 via Second Life Marketplace – @DF@ Jade Walking Stick

Blue “Chagall” Glass Wall Fountain — $L75

Blue “Chagall” Glass Wall Fountain
with scripted sounds on/off and volume controls.

You can reduce the sounds to 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 volume as well as mute by touching the glass. Turn on projector lighting by touching gold lamp (one side only, other side is normally lit). Turn it into a nice window by hollowing a wall to the right size and stretching the fountain to fit.

10% of the price of this product will be donated to support the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life on Epiphany Island.
$L75 via Second Life Marketplace – @LC@ Chagall Wall Fountain w/Projector Lighting
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Kokua team provides an alternative to FMOD streaming audio. at Kokua/Imprudence Blog

As streaming music on Second Life is a huge, huge part of my preferred immersive experience, this may be a useful issue to track:

Rumors have surfaced that the owners of FMOD have pulled from their website archives the zip files used to build FMOD libraries.

Recent attempts to build 3p-fmod locally seem to confirm the rumors.

Kokua uses an open source solution, openal and gstreamer010, for streaming audio.
We have provided this solution to Linden Lab for inclusion in the SL viewer. The changes can also be applied to third party viewers.

via Kokua team provides an alternative to FMOD streaming audio. at Kokua/Imprudence Blog

I haven’t tried Kokua in a while – it’s still in beta, for good reason: they’re working on it continually and working on different aspects. If they locked in a final version, they’d have to start to nail things down in a particular way. May have to give it a whirl again soon.

Major Upgrade Touted by @rodvik in interview. Does he mean other than Pathfinding? Mesh?

UPDATE: Linden Labs CEO Rod Humble commented on Inara Pey’s post on the new products and the “major upgrade” tease  – twice – and seems to be hinting that there may be more virtual worlds (the plural is deliberate) on the drawing board. It was kind of Inara to mention me for pointing to the Venture Beat article; the only reason I spotted it is merely the Power of The Google at work.

More virtual worlds? Well, there could be some wiggle room there. Patterns (yes, yes, current obsession, yes) is not quite a world, but it’s touted as a universe that needs building, after all. That’s one virtual world that might be planned. Also, there’s the “Linden Realms” adventure game within Second Life; that could be a preview of a possible spinoff. And there’s at least one independent inworld immersive game-within-the-not-a-game-that-is-Second-Life that could be developed into a STEAM-friendly gamelike environment. I’m just pleased to see the press, but agree with many that in the eyes of the tech press, Second Life is kind of like that embarassing old relative that shows up at family dinners, embarrassing the youngsters with boring stories about the Glory Days.

On a second read I didn’t mean to diss the efforts of the Pathfinding and Mesh working teams, it’s just that in my limited time inworld, I probably won’t be learning how to work with them – that’s for other content creators. I am not worthy to do more than torture a few hapless torii, let alone tie up their mesh sandals.

Meanwhile, for the first time in a long while, I was working on something new and not just sorting inventory and textures. Go me.


Yes, I played Patterns some more tonight and didn’t go inworld to Second Life, even though I meant to when I got home from a rather dire RL event:

Today, Second Life survives with 1 million monthly active users. The world generated $75 million in revenues last year and it is operating profitably. That has allowed Humble to expand his team to 175 employees and go after the markets beyond the virtual world.

Humble came aboard in December, 2010, replacing Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab. Rosedale stepped in on an interim basis after Mark Kingdon left in June 2010. During 2010, Linden Lab shaved about 30 percent of its staff and eliminated its enterprise team.

For the longest time, Humble, a former Electronic Arts veteran who ran The Sims business, stayed quiet. But he invited creators such as SimCity creator Will Wright to join the board. Besides Patterns and Creatorverse, Linden Lab will soon release an online app dubbed Dio. In each case, Linden Lab will allow users to monetize their own creations. Wright said of Humble, “Rod has a great sense of player communities and the forces that drive them. At Linden Labs I know he’s focused on trying to evolve a very established community into something much broader and more inviting.

”Humble says that Second Life is also getting a major upgrade this year.

via Linden Lab grabs its second life with creativity games | VentureBeat

Oh ho! Major upgrade? I hope he doesn’t mean Pathfinding, or Mesh, or taking away the ability to track bug reports in the JIRA, or [snark mode]deleting the Marketplace and demanding everybody do it over?[/snark mode]

Still, it’s not a bad thing that Humble is doing interviews and getting press. This story is pretty glossed over, and there are a lot of unhappy residents wanting more and better communication from the Lab who won’t be very impressed with it. But I’m wondering just what @rodvik means by “Second Life is getting a major upgrade this year.”

Meanwhile, on to Patterns!

As previously blogged, an upgrade is coming next week with new shapes and stuffs.

At this point I have 2 saved games. The first one has been pretty much stripped of useful materials and I can’t get the forge to accept any new shapes, even if they seem to hang together.

View from underside toward the "Spawn Island

This shows Dorita (or whatever) standing out on the edge of a ramp that hangs off of the extreme farthest reach on the underside island, looking toward the “spawn island.” After this, I worked my way back carefully and took all the jasper (some I let fall). Only died twice, not bad. The useful stuff for building is jasper (heavy and strong) and bonestone (light and strong-ish). I’m holding a block of bonestone ready to throw down if needed. The “nacho chip” character has a few animations; one of them is a kind of “magic spell throw” when you place a block.

From this angle you can see the rebuilt spawn bridge; in this world I added some white bonestone edging. It ties the heavier jasper more strongly to the impermiable sheeny steel stuff (which I dub “impermium” for now). Also it adds contrast. All the trees, all the bonestone, and almost all of the jasper has been stripped now, and I’m wondering if it’s worth stripping the one rickety bridge to the lower levels or if I’ll need it for the upgrade. I was fooling around trying to rebuild it from a different starting angle above tonight, to use less jasper (it has huge blocky support columns).

After finding all the blue, explody “starene” stuff (some is easy to get to, most is either hidden in pyramids or hard to reach) and stripping the place, I started building more decorative stuff.

My first attempts at palm trees, using the musical "Nak" stuff

And this shows the rebuilt bridge and spawn island area. Still more stuff to do there. It took me three days to figure out that the cube blocks weren’t the best choice for that first bridge, but you have to get the 4 sided pyramid and the “wedge” triangle to do it right. When I started the second “enviro” world (trying not to take trees or green stuff) I got those first of all (they’re handy in the second pyramid) I rebuilt the second bridge during my first session.

The second pyramid before I cut the last supports to take all the bonestone

I used this image before. The second pyramid has a base of impervious but unstable stuff. I cut around the base of the bonestone upper half and dropped the whole thing inside, then Hoovered that up. Same with all the jasper pyramids.

This is in the “enviro” world, so the view is less strip-miney looking. I played around with materials testing tonight before we left for the concert: bonestone doesn’t want to go more than about 6 or 8 blocks high with Dorita on it (depends on the footing, can’t be mud or clay). Jasper can go pretty high, although it’ll start cracking ominously. I think I got up to about 30 blocks (base was set on the paving stone impervium). Surprisingly, the woods (limewood and coralwood) got pretty high, too. I think their physics allow for the wood to compress without shattering for a longer than expected time.

This is looking toward the second pyramid in my enviro world… left all the trees in sight alone, and still have plenty of jasper and bonestone left to harvest if I need it. Haven’t wasted any starene blowin’ stuff up (that shit will even blow up the unstable gold impermium at the base of that pyramid).

And back toward the upper island peninsula, and toward the “back and lower 40” island with the rickety bridge.

It’s an interesting game/activity/whatever. You definitely have to learn to work the the angles (literally). I’ve gotten pretty good at triangular bridges; generally build out as far as I dare, adding support farther back (and weight as a counterbalance), until I can start to throw triangles down on the far side. Once the bridge meets in the middle, I add edging to tie the ends together strongly and add support. Sometimes in the middle I use bonestone instead of jasper, especially if I sense I need something lighter out on the raggedy edge.

Looking forward to whatever comes with the upgrade. I haven’t logged in to any community boards yet, and I’m definitely getting interested in the ability to at least chat with other builders.

Yet Another Streaming Radio App: TuneIn Is Pretty Awesome, Actually.

UPDATE: had to go hunt down a valid URL again for WXRT’s HD “New Music” stream to load into another Internet radio player. I don’t have TuneIn on my old laptop; for that I use Clementine, which is kind of twitchy but works on desktops like WinAmp did, but also scrobbles tracks via Last.fm or Audioscrobbler.

I went looking for yet another Internet radio app for the iPad, and had to track down the URLs again for one of my favorite stations:

20121010-222456.jpg

For example, WXRT Chicago plays directly on a computer (without any login) using this link: http://www.thestreamcenter.com/STW.asp?URL=947 but I haven’t had the chance to check these links on my Roku lately… … Some have asked on this and other forums about the WXRT Chicago internet stream – but…it appears there are two streams, and only one plays on the ROKU.

The one people have been successful with is their “New Music Station” – which is a DIFFERENT station than what they play on the regular WXRT (it is a HD radio station). This is the URL for the New Music Station (edited because it’s changed again).

via Roku Forums • View topic – StreamTheWorld stations

Actually, there’s a couple more valid XRT streaming URLs. Even more info here.

WXRT:  http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/WXRTFM.pls
WXRT:  http://5483.live.streamtheworld.com:80/WXRTFMCMP3
WXRT HD2 feed: http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/WXRTHD2DIALUP.pls

Some players work with different ways to access WXRT Chicago’s 2 feeds. I tried this latest app today because Radio Riel put all six of their streams on it: TuneIn.

This after painstakingly (or not so painstakingly) adding all my scattered, hard to find music URLs to Clementine (desktop and laptop) and failing to save them correctly. Up to now, Radio Riel has hosted their streams on several different sites, using different kinds of URLs, some of which didn’t work with inworld radio tuners (reminds me, need to get a copy of my working list out of Second Life and update it). Music is essential for me when building or sorting inworld, and of course any socializing I do is usually has music too. It’s also becoming essential during my RL workday, and while messing about with triangles in Patterns. So that’s why I keep on searching for the perfect music app.

TuneIn is a pleasure to configure. It has a TON of streams and it suggests other similar stations. Custom URLs can be added at the bottom of the favorites list. I even found podcasts galore, including some to do with Second Life (this one was blogged by Bryn Oh in 2010). Mostly I was tickled to find a bunch of public radio shows I don’t always catch when they’re originally broadcast, such as RadioLab or On the Media. There’s a lot of other content to explore; I even found a Sci Fi podcast from Krypton Radio, which is run by people from Second Life. Much music to Tune In to, so my workdays will be a lot more pleasant.