London City in Second Life Remembers Queen Elizabeth II

Screen capture from BBC coverage of the Procession to Laying-in-State today

The State Funeral of Her Majesty The Queen will take place at Westminster Abbey on Monday 19th September at 11:00 a.m. BST (here’s a guide from the BBC which outlines all the events from today leading up the funeral). If I were a Londoner, I suspect I would be getting away from the city to avoid the throngs of visitors who want to witness such a historical event. However, for those of us who prefer to stay away from the crowds, virtual worlds such as Second Life (which has always had a strong British community) offer another way to mark the occasion.

Bixyl Shuftan of the blog Second Life Newser wrote on September 8th, 2022:

Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain [has] died…The reaction in Second Life has already started. At London City, a memorial was set up. It included a British flag at half staff, along with a crown on a pedestal with a flame at the base, a guestbook with candles, and three pictures that gave a slide-show of Queen Elizabeth over the years.

So I decided to pop into London City (website), a region of six sims which offers residential and business rentals, and has been a welcoming region for people new to Second Life for many years now. As you can see by the green dots indicating avatars on this map, it’s busy 24/7/365! People are commiserating with each other via both text and voice chat (I usually have voice chat turned off on my viewer; it’s much more common for avatars to use text chat to talk with each other in SL).

The memorial to Queen Elizabeth II (SLURL) is located in the northwest corner of the main gathering spot, opposite the long-running Freebie Megastore.

There are three large signs, each with a slideshow of images from the Queen’s life, a wreath, and a memorial flame.

Next to a set of votive candles (you can light one simply by clicking on it), there is a book of condolence which, if you click on it, you can add a message:

Nearby is a box where you can pick up a free memorial ribbon for your avatar to wear:

Like me, you may wish to come to London City, sign the book of condolence, and chat with other Second Life users around the world about the life and accomplishments of the Queen. Please check the official London City blog for updates on news and events in the region during this time of mourning.

A Forgetful Hotel Guest Leads to a Sneak Peek at the New Meta Quest Pro Virtual Reality Headset

Kotaku reported yesterday, in an article titled Meta’s Hyped VR Headset May Have Been Leaked By Guy In A Hotel:

It’s always worth rooting around down the side of the bed, or in the drawers, when you stay in a hotel room. Who knows what exciting items may have been forgotten by the previous guest? Like, for instance, a top-secret Oculus VR headset. That’s what happened to hotel worker Ramiro Cardenas, who claims to have discovered and revealed to the world that Project Cambria is most likely due to be called the Meta Quest Pro. Then he made an unboxing video.

While this is certainly embarrassing for Meta (somebody may even lose his job over this gaffe!), it does give us a sneak peek at the soon-to-be-launched Meta Quest Pro VR headset! Here’s the unboxing video mentioned in the Kotaku article:

It would appear from the article that this is an engineering sample, not intended for sale to the consumer, but I would suspect it’s pretty much identical to what you will be able to buy later this year. Personally, I wish Meta would just focus on building great hardware, instead of throwing money and resources into metaverse platforms such as Horizon Worlds, where it’s clear they don’t really “get” what makes social VR special—community.

Anyway, catch the video while it’s still up! It only about 7,000 views, and you never know when the legal team at Meta will have it taken down (in fact, the hotel employee who posted this might lose his job, as well!).

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: New Group Gifts from Nuve!

If you want even more news about fabulous freebies and bargains in Second Life than what I write about in this blog, may I recommend the Second Life group I maintain, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group? The group costs only L$50 to join; more information here.

If you have a LeLutka Evo X or an Akeruka ADVX female mesh head on your avatar, then do I have a sweet deal for you! Join the Nuve group (it’s currently free, for a limited time), and slap the vendor panels under the VIP Gifts sign to pick up a fatpack of Hailey skin, plus a fatpack of Hailey eyebrows, and a fatpack of lipsticks!

Nuve skins include both the head and body skin, in 15 different skintones, each in versions with and without the eyebrows (there’s also a box in the folder to unpack to get the matching ear skins). The Hailey eyebrow fatpack includes tintable eyebrows in six colours (white, blonde, ginger, red, brown, and black) to use with the browless version of the Hailey skin. The Hailey lip tint fatpack includes 16 shades of pink and red, plus two shades of grey, which you can tint any colour you wish!

But wait, there’s more! MUCH more! On the wall behind the front counter of the Nuve store are all the previous group gifts, which include human and fantasy skins for Catwa HDPRO, Genus, LeLutka Evolution classic, and LeLutka Evo X heads, plus eyebrows, eye shadows, eyeliners, and lipsticks. Among these gifts is the Amanda skin, which like the Hailey skin is a complete fatpack with 15 different skintones!

Please note that, according to the Nuve group notices, there is a notice dated Sept. 10th, 2022:

Our VIP group will be free for 3 days only. So if you have friends on a budget, spread the word.

So, hurry down, join the Nuve group while it is still free, and snap up the fabulous freebies! Also, in an earlier group notice, I learned that the store is giving away free weekly store credit:

Y’all keep forgetting to click the reward terminal! So, this is just a reminder. Reward terminal is at the reception desk (tablet on the desk). You can receive L$75 of store credit every week. Terminal resets every Monday.

Store credit accumulates, you won’t lose it. It can be used on every product at [the] mainstore, except products released exclusively in weekend sales.

Here’s where you can find that VIP reward terminal in the store, right next to an assortment of free gifts for everybody who drops by (no group join is required; they are mostly skin tints and Windlight/EEP settings):

This is what the Hailey skin looks like (this avatar is wearing the ivory skin tone, with the blonde Hailey eyebrows and one of the redder Hailey lip tints).

Looking this stunning for zero Linden dollars? Sign me up, honey!

Other styling credits:

TOTAL COST FOR THIS ENTIRE AVATAR LOOK: Only L$250 (for the Atenea Bakes on Mesh kit, but I’m pretty sure I bought it for L$197 back in the day).

So, as you can see, joining the Nuve store group is a no-brainer! The proprietor is very smart to find a way to get potential customers coming into her store every week. And I will definitely join store groups where they give out free credit to group members every week or every month!

Happy freebie shopping! 😉

Housekeeping Notice: WordPress and/or FireFox Blog Display Problems

I have been blogging, off and on, for twenty years now, and in that time I have used just about every kind of blogging software imaginable. In the 2000s, I tinkered a bit with Blogger and LiveJournal, and for a couple of years I maintained a personal blog using the Movable Type software, really getting into the customization of it. From June 2012 to February 2014, I wrote a Blogspot blog about a metaverse platform called Cloud Party, called the Cloud Party Bugle (sadly, Yahoo! acquihired the company making Cloud Party, and ended the project).

In 2017, when I started writing a new blog called the Sansar Newsblog, I decided to go with WordPress. There are actually two WordPress services. WordPress.com is a service that helps you build a website using the WordPress software with managed hosting, while WordPress.org is the source where you can download the software itself, which you can use to build and maintain a website on your own. I chose the managed hosting option and, by and large, I have been quite happy with my decision.

In February 2018, I renamed my blog to RyanSchultz.com, using a domain name I had purchased a decade earlier. One advantage of naming your blog after yourself is that, no matter what tangents I might head off in, I am always on brand! 😉

WordPress offers dozens of professionally-designed site templates, and I chose the clean and uncluttered look called Twenty Fifteen:

However yesterday, much to my dismay, I loaded up the RyanSchultz.com blog in my FireFox browser to see this monstrosity (see below). All of my serif fonts had been changed to sans serif, and even worse, my main blog text was rendered so small as to be almost unreadable! AAAAARGH!!!

In a panic, I rapidly checked how my blog looked on other devices and in other browsers. What is confounding me is that it only appears to be happening on my work computer; it displays correctly in the FireFox browser on my iPhone and iPad, and it also displays correctly when I use the Chrome browser on my work PC. Even weirder, when I go into edit mode on a particular blogpost, it displays properly, too!

This problem just popped up out of the blue, I have no idea what is going on, and I am NOT a happy camper. Yesterday afternoon, I did a quick text chat with WordPress.com tech support to see if they could troubleshoot the problem, but September is a very busy month for me and I had to log off and tend to more pressing matters than font display issues! They suggested updating FireFox to the latest version and I did—but it still didn’t fix my problem.

If all else fails, I might decide to drop the Twenty Fifteen theme and pick a different theme for my blog. After five years, this might be my sign from the universe to change things up a bit!

So I apologize if your view of my blog looks a bit wonky today. I am aware of the problem and I am trying to fix it! If you do see what I see in the second picture above, could you please drop me a line and let me know? Thanks!

UPDATE 8:44 a.m.: And, as mysteriously as the problem popped up, it now appears to be fixed! But please drop a comment or ping me on the RyanSchultz.com Discord if you should encounter it, thank you!