Sheet music covers and lovely recordings of music of the early aeronautical age.
(hat tip to Robert from Abney Park on the Steamfashion livejournal group)
Fighting cancer
The relay portion of the Relay for Life in Second Life has now begun. For the next 24 hours, people will be celebrating, learning, mourning, virtually walking, and yes, raising money for the American Cancer Society.
If you have not yet made a contribution, you can do so in Second Life by paying any donation kiosk (and there’s a Team Elizabeth Blackwell kiosk at our team campsite).
You can also contribute using a credit card at my page on the ACS fundraising pages.
Social media
A wonderfully succint definition by CoyoteAngel Dimsum on Twitter:
social media are “presence by other means”, and that includes Twitter, IM, and SecondLife
For all you clever people
Jay Lake (author of Mainspring) has proposed creating a steampunk abecedary:
Let’s play a bloggy game. Per the above, put your suggestions for a steampunk abecedary in comments — next week I’ll distill them out, and we’ll have a poll for the coolest/funniest, with hardback copies of Escapement [ Powell’s | Amazon ] as prizes.
Only two suggestions up as of this evening, but hurry on over, I’m not sure how long he’ll be waiting.
Multiculturalism
Virtual worlds have the potential to create real and deep connections across many boundaries. Please consider voting to add Arabic language to SL.
No way to run a business
Our central database is sad, which leads to disruptions in several inworld services, such as teleports, search and profiles not working, logins and transactions failing.
Please do not attempt any transactions with non-copy items at this time.
Excuse me? “Our central database is sad”?
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How often have Google’s databases failed under their load, hmm?
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If Google’s databases did underperform, how do you think Google would describe it? As “sad”?
Child avatars . . . and BDSM . . . and Gor . . . and?
I don’t have any interest in being a virtual child, and I sometimes find child roleplay in virtual worlds even more annoying than how real children can act. I similarly don’t have any personal interest in BDSM (in either the virtual or the real worlds). And I actively disapprove of Gorean roleplay of slavery. But nonetheless, all three of these groups should have the right to be involved in any event that purports to be “Celebrating the cultural diversity of Second Life.”
In this instance, however, they cannot, except as spectators. Everett Linden, in comment 103, says “I’ll be working over the weekend with a few other Lindens on a blog post for Monday to help explain and expand on the SLBirthday.”
In the meantime, I’ll join my voice to that of Ordinal Malaprop, Marianne McCann and Loki Eliot, Dusan Writer, Daniel Regenbogen, Erbo Evans and many, many others in saying how utterly disappointed I am in Linden Research, Inc.
As ever, we owe a debt of gratitude to Tateru Nino at Massively for first covering the story.
Update: There’s now a JIRA issue for “missing cultures and communities from SL5B.”
Resolution: Linden Research, Inc., is now taking an active role as organizer. The entire birthday celebration is now PG, and everyone is welcome to submit applications.
Military costuming resource
Soldiers of the Queen – An Online Museum of Authentic Victorian-era British Military Photographs
Antique Images of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces Brought to You Through Great Peril From the Far Corners of the British Empire
(Tip of the hat to Hexidecima at Steamfashion.)
Victorian politics
So far it only goes back to 1885, but eventually the online Sittings By Decade (Hansard) will go back to 1805.
Hansard, the Official Report, is the edited verbatim report of proceedings in both Houses of Parliament. Hansard is not a verbatim account of debates in Parliament. It seeks to eliminate “repetitions, redundancies and obvious errors”.
Magnatune strings
I’m broadcasting on behalf of Radio Riel today, for our “Magnatune Mondays.” Today’s connecting thread is “strings.” Plucked, strummed, bowed, or beaten. Have a listen at http://music.radioriel.org.