Reblogged from Serendipidy Haven's Blog:

We talk about them all the time; they get the blame for pretty much everything that’s wrong with sl and they have almost mythical status… but who are these mysterious people we call the Lindens? – Is it true they have laser beams for eyes?; Are they in league with the Undead in a ploy for world domination?; Do they covertly monitor your internet and steal your bandwidth for their own secret purposes? The answer to these, and many other equally scary questions is, of course, in all probability, ‘yes’… …

Humorous article by Serendipity Haven

LIONHEART AHADI – Now through the end of December, the city of Lionheart is celebrating the season with its Christmas Market and Winter Wonderland.

In addition to booths throughout the neighborhood, visitors are invited to a small carnival with rides, an ice skating pond, sleigh rides, and more. And of course, local businesses are nearby to welcome patrons. Whether or not you have Christmas shopping left to do, this is a great family-friendly opportunity to get out and have some fun and enjoy the winter weather here in Lionheart.

The market booths are available for free to members of the Lionheart Chamber of Commerce.

Visit the Market and Winter Wonderland today, or any time between now and Dec. 31st.

Second Libations, an immersive art exhibit by Haveit Neox, on display now through Dec. 31st.

Clover Windlow
Times Editor-in-Chief

You may have seen the message on your login screen lately, or seen the listing in the Featured Destinations. Presented by the Linden Endowment for the Arts, Second Libations is a full-sim exhibit conceived and built by artist Haveit Neox. The story behind it is as follows:

The great cosmic storm swept up the last of Earth’s water molecules. On the lifeless planet, the only remaining intelligence flickers on computer screens. In the absence of human maintenance, bot scipters, bot artists, and bot teachers scramble to rescue their resources before the impending threat of blackout.

Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, they begin flooding their world by rezzing buckets of virtual water, in the hope of rehydrating their users. Their strategy needs assistance. Not having been programmed for an unforeseen event of this magnitude, the bots plea for your solution in securing their virtual world.

The Second Libations await your offering. Will you be the one to rescue the world of the bots?

The visitor starts in an empty desert wasteland and then enters a pyramid. Walking down the long corridors beneath the pyramid, one reads the introduction in floating text. Gradually the viewer is steeped more and more into the eerily beautiful world of stationary bots in the form of mythical beasts, like centaurs and mermaids. Free clothing and accessories enable the visitor to participate all the more and become one of the bot characters as one stumbles upon surprise after surprise throughout the sim.

“Should I tell you, Clover, how nervous I was to compose a whole sim in two months time? Very exciting, but I was sweating bullets,” says Mr. Neox with a laugh. “I’m real happy that people are now walking thru it, and seeming to enjoy the displays. And a relief that I really got it done. I knew I could, but there are always doubts in the back of the mind.”

The whole exhibit took two months and over ten thousand prims. “The first ‘brick’ was lain on Oct 1,” Mr. Neox explains. “Having such a short deadline, I think I was pushed into certain territories that were new to me. There just wasn’t time to be careful with everything.. had to figure out ways to speed up the process… and it yielded some surprises for me.”

When asked if he has a personal favorite part of the exhibit, Mr. Neox ponders a moment before saying, “The Banquet is probably the most complex of my builds. The most atmospheric because it is built under water… oh, and the Librarynth… that is a special space because I’d asked people to submit stories about how THEY would help the bots. I printed their texts onto books and scrolls that visitors can read. The stories are highly imaginative.”

The exhibit is available for free to the public from now through the end of December. More information on it and future LEA exhibits can be seen at the LEA website, here.

Click here to visit Second Libations now.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. –from As You Like It

On or around October 29th, the 4-sim Globe Theatre and SL Shakespeare Company will make their final inworld curtain call. An artisitic and cultural institution in Second Life since 2008, the virtual Globe brought the works of William Shakespeare much like its historical RL counterpart did in days of yore. But now, due to lack of funding and poor communications from Linden Lab, the sims are forced to close by the end of this month.

“There’s always the mystery and the hope that what we do here would reach out and change the lives of our audience – whomever they are, whether rich and famous or a moviestar or just yourself,” says Artistic Director Ina Centaur in her blog. “For a while, we held onto the odd notion that the creations in Second Life might get to live on beyond its usual time… In Second Life, our ventures have survived many passings – from patrons to founders to prospective actors. But, we simply do not have the significant reach to be saved.”

Centaur goes on to describe in detail the lengthy struggle with Linden Lab to secure a future for the sims of Shakespeare, Primtings, sLiterary, and Skin City. It’s a tale worthy of The Bard himself, filled with mysterious disappearances, broken promises, and questions of whether a conspiracy or simply miscommunication are ultimately to blame for the Globe’s impending demise.

The soon-to-be closing of the four sims continues to raise questions about the wisdom of Linden Lab’s current tier pricing, and whether such pricing is realistically sustainable. If, after all, an educational, artistic, and cultural undertaking such as the Globe– which raised over 5 million lindens in funds (never mind the 10 million out-of-pocket lindens contributed by Centaur)– can not continue to live in Second Life with this current pricing strategy, what can?

“Many of you would cite the fashion empires of SL as successful, and they never ask for ‘donations,’” Centaur explains in her blog. “We could take such a strategy, but doing so viably would force us to resort to commercialism” such as charging outrageous rents, excessively high ticket prices to shows, and abandoning “Shakespeare for the strip mall.”

Perhaps Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice said it best: “You take my life when you take the means whereby I live.”

Linden Lab reports a stable economy for the third quarter of 2011, noting an increase in new user registrations (with August being their biggest growth month in four years), a slight increase in average monthly logged-in users, and a slight decrease in user login hours.

The number of residents that received or spent lindens (including tips or merchant sales) increased 2.8% this quarter.  The average L$ exchange rate remained very close to last quarter’s, and the amount of L$ possessed by residents went up from last quarter.

For more detailed charts and a detailed explanation of the figures used in their quarterly economic report, visit this page.

Catherine Farspire reports in her blog that the two millionth Meeroo has been born on the grid.  Created by Malevay Studios, Meeroos made their debut in Second Life earlier this year as a breedable pet.  Throughout their Second Life time they’ve been subject to intellectual property battles, troubles with counterfeit food, and what Firespar refers to as “growing pains”, but through it all, they have flourished and their population continues to thrive.

[POSTED 8:22PM PDT Aug 22, 2011] Rolling restarts for regions on the main Second Life server channel will be performed on Tuesday, August 23rd at approximately 5:00am PDT. Please make sure to save all builds and refrain from making purchases during this time.

Mesh: transformative? (w/thanks for Claudia222 Jewell)

With this simple notice, mesh commenced its roll-out to the remaining portion of the Main gird that has yet to see it (approximately 70%), as per the server release notes.So, assuming all goes well, the entire Main grid will be mesh enabled from today.

This isn’t the end of the mesh project, but really the beginning; thing’s are going to suddenly change overnight – it’s going to take time for mesh to make its presence felt, and as Linden Lab themselves admit, there will be further updates, revisions and improvements ahead.

As a result of this, we can doubtless expect the Beta “Viewer 3″ to go to full release status shortly (if not today as well), which brings with it mesh support with some added features.

For those wishing to see mesh, issues still remain: the code for rendering mesh objects has yet to be incorporated into a number of third-party 2.x Viewers, and it unclear as to whether the code can be backported into the 1.x code.

Read the rest of this article (and see an awesome video of mesh objects) at Inara Pey’s blog: Click here.

Jason Spingarn-Koff’s documentary, Life 2.0, is called “an intimate, character-based drama about people who look to a virtual world in search of something they are missing in their real lives.” This description, given at the website of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), is met with a mixture of skepticism, harsh judgment, disparaging anecdotes, and a few uplifting personal narratives.

“I was a stay at home mom with little contact with the outside world and I used Second Life as an escape,” says commenter BeatriceCerise, “but it taught me skills I needed to get out in the real world by letting me see how others in the world really were. I gained confidence from ‘acting’ confident. I learned to appreciate life more and it gave me courage to live the Real Life I wanted.”

Most commenters, however, seem genuinely confused about the sometimes-addictive appeal of life in a virtual reality. Many suggest that to do so is to ignore or deny actual reality. “SL is a waste of time for those of us who actually are capable of having a life,” comments one shadowx.

But those who have taken part in fundraisers for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life would beg to differ with the likes of shadowx. Over $300,000 USD has been raised for Relay for Life by Second Life residents.

Whether a proponent, opponent, or completely ignorant of Second Life altogether, one can watch the premiere of Life 2.0 on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on Thursday, August 25th, at 9PM Eastern/8PM Central.