Bay City Post, Edition 79

WELCOME to the seventy-ninth issue of the Bay City Post

- Keeping you updated on the best city on the Grid!

Mole appreciation day

On August the 31st the Bellisseria community organised their first Mole Appreciation Day (aka First Annual Mole Day Party) to thank them for the work they have done so far for Bellisseria and it's growing community.

More then 70 people showed up including at least 7 moles, breaking the sim.

This means that the moles now have two events every year to go to, and get worms. Bay City celebrates Mole Day each year in the beginning of February.

The more mole days the better! Our critters deserve plenty of worms!

Editorial-

From the standpoint of Bay City it might appear that Bellisseria is stealing the best of Bay City. For parts that is true, but is it bad?

Bay City has grown a community from the day it was created. We share experiences that are hard to compare with other communities. The Bay City Alliance is the leading force behind our initiatives, including this newspaper.

Bellisseria is new and fresh. The community is fragmented into 20 groups with 20 different websites. It will take some time before things settle down and Bellisseria has a sustainable community. 

It is good that Bellisseria grows it's own community. I feel it can "borrow" as much from Bay City as they want to grow that community. Next to that, Bay City can not block initiatives from the community of Bellisseria.

One of the cornerstones of the Bay City community is it's relentless effort to support "good causes" most notably Child's Play. None of the actions of the Bay City Community has a commercial intent. I expect the same from Bellisseria.

There is much that differs between Bay City and Bellisseria. There much that unites us. When Bay City can help, Bay City will help.
Go Bellisseria!

Topaz Oasis

The furry community at Topaz Oasis has sealed a cultural exchange treaty with Bay City. Part of this treaty is the placement of the Bay City Post newspaper vendor as a gesture of good will. Bay City kindly supports this initiative and provides the newspaper completely for free!

Topaz Oasis is home to the United Furry Outpost (UFO) and AGRA racing.

Feel free to explore Topaz Oasis.

Hot Bay City Nights

The sad news is Hot Bay City Nights didn't make it this year. 

In previous years it ran a whole week and required a lot of volunteers. This year, despite best efforts (begging and offering slow cooked sweet marinated noobs), not enough volunteers were available.

Also there was that thing called RL, heavy overrated but a force to be reckoned with.

Please keep your agenda free for 2020!

The Experience Teleporter

We wrote about this a month ago. Please read it again as it is so fun to use! I am using it in trap-doors, ladders and the entrance into the castle made with a mega prim. Getting the key to work is a bit fiddly, specially on a different parcel. Try and try again and it will work.

Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest is supported and organised by the Bay City Brewery. Keep an eye out on the events in Bay City to find out when and where you can get your beer and do the polka. You can expect it at the end of September.

Your reporters have been hard at work to investigate all the news from our Fine City.

Police and Fire Blotter

The BCPD and BCFD have been extremely busy as T.J. describes

Epic Flights

Is it possible, four continents? Our explorers found out the hard way.

Molewatch Special Feature: The Road To Bay City Part 1: The Rig

Marianne McCann researches the deeper history behind our Fine City

About: Privacy

Privacy in this world is tough.

Bay City Cruis'n

Dakota Schwade discovers the origin of the moles in Moloch?

Experiencing a Bug, and BoM Obscurities

Qie Niangau zaps a bug and wears tights

Proclamation Emperor Michael I Re:Privacy

Our esteemed Emperor Michael the First rants about banlines

Epilogue

Previous Edition

Health and Safety Statement

The Bay City Post fully respects your microbiome. It is handmade by qualified authentic artisan journalists. The active ingredients have been studied by leading orthodontists without any direct harm to the environment.

• The owner of the Toxic Taco has escaped capture using a jet ski. Food and safety inspectors were left behind in a row boat.
• In and around the Docklands people with tires on their feet can be found zapping around at high speed, setting the tires on fire. Be cautious when you are around there.

Editor Vick Forcella

190902

Police and Fire Blotter

August 6th

Bay City Air Traffic Control tracks a vintage helicopter flight from Hau Koda to Lapera. After a successful flight, the pilot was challenged by the Mayori to repeat the infamous four region flight from Brindle to Almo Bay.

August 7th

Residents across the city tuned in to listen to the broadcast of ATC tracking local resident Vick Forcella as he attempted to repeat Ms McCann's historic four region flight. Mr Forcella successfully completed the flight on August 8th. A trophy was awarded to Mr Forcella and is on display in his office at the Bay City Post.

August 14th

Residents of Bellisseria fled to Bay City's emergency shelters after a nuclear device was reported being found at the Linden Three Meter Island. Bay City Civil Defense, along with the Sansara National Guard were on high alert. Several brave avatars were seen entering the area to diffuse the bomb.

Nuclear device

August 18th

Emergency workers from Bay City responded to a train derailment in Iridium. Rescue workers from all across the grid responded. Several avatars were injured, however, there were no casualties. Sources reported the train was carrying a shipment of prims for the new Linden Homes.

August 19th

Bay City Police received reports from all across the city of a strange fish like creature walking on two legs in the middle of the night. Several residents reported seeing the creature spewing water. The case was handed over to Special Agent Mulder with the Sansara Bureau of Investigation.

I tell you it walked!

August 25th

Residents at the Bay City Alliance meeting were surprised as the Mayori placed several sea mines around the meeting area after receiving reports of a boat intending to crash the meeting. The mines later exploded safely and no avatars or boats were harmed.

BOOM! (Kenny: Can you sea mine? :)

August 28th

A small force from Bay City attempted to invade Bellisseria. The attacking force made landfall, and was quickly distracted by a waterfall. The invasion plans were forgotten about. Reports have shown that the Bellisseria National Guard and Coast Guard are on high alert.

Invasion

Reporter Thomas Hooker

Images Kennylex, Thomas, Vick

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Epic Flights

In April, while your favourite newspaper, the Bay City Post, was coming out of hibernation important news didn't receive the attention it deserves.

Departure at dawn

On April the 15th, the very same day that the continent Bellisseria emerged from the void, one of Bay City smallest explorers, Marianne McCann, set out on an epic journey.

With her old but sturdy airplane, the PA-18, she set out to make the longest trip possible. From the Northern most tip of the Hetrocera Atoll, the region Brindle, to the Southern tip of Jeogeot, the region Almo Bay.

I will let her speak about that journey.

I crossed four continents!

I expected the trip to be harder, given the current issues with region crossings.

All told I face three disconnects from bad crossings (One in the Heterocera Atoll, one in Sansara, and one in Jeogeot) and four nasty orbs (Two in the Heterocera Atoll, one in Sansara, one in Jeogeot). Also tussled with a ban line when recovering from one of the disconnects.

Winterlands

Total flight time was nearly 2 hours all told. Unfortunately, I lost my number of regions due to a couple of the crashes, but "a couple hundred" seems right.

To replicate this flight, I highly recommend starting from the north: Filip has a Rez zone. Also, the PA-18 allows you to adjust the trim to give you more lift, too. Use that, cuz it's super helpful.

Also, be wary of the mountains in Heterocera and Sansar, and watch for monster-sized skyboxes in Jeogeot. Finally, open Rez is hard to come by yet in the new regions. Treasure it when you find some.

Arrival !!

After that record making flight Marianne received a valuable unique gold trophy from the hands of T.J. Hooker. Route 66 was closed for that ceremony, traffic was diverted.

Proud Mari

This news received just a small paragraph in the Police Blotter due to the closing of the road. Thanks to the magic of The Feed (when it works) we could revisit this epic flight and report about it.

Fast backwards, or forwards depending on the viewpoint, to August the 6th. Vick Forcella made a trip from the airport at Hau Koda to the airfield in the region Lapera in his SA Enstrom 280C helicopter. A challenge because of the altitude of 344 meters.

Marianne contacted Vick, one of the tallest explorers from Bay City, and gave him the challenge to replicate her journey from Brindle towards Almo Bay.

Vick set off on August the 7^th in the pooring rain. He found a place to rezz in Brindle and placed his Enstom there to start the journey.

Next to gaining sufficient height to cross mountains there were many other challenges. Banlines, security orbs, skyboxes and finding places to restart the journey. Though a helicopter can lift up from tight spaces, there should not be blade crashing objects near such as trees, houses and hills.

Oddly enough there were no bad region crossings.

The Enstrom isn't the fastest machine in the world so Vick took two days (approx. 4 hours) to finish the challenge in Almo Bay.

Half way Vick slept in the light tower in Bellisseria. On departure he discovered his helicopter loaded with boxes given to him by ZZ bottom (foneco.zuzu). Thank you ZZ!

Vick ordered one of the best goldsmiths to handcraft a personal trophy to commemorate the flight, and placed it in the Bay City Post offices.

Reporter Vick Forcella

190902

History: The Road To Bay City Part 1: The Rig

Part I: The Rig

Bay City did not appear out of nowhere, and the roots behind the formation of our little corner of the mainland run deep into the core of Second Life itself. In this series, I want to give you some of the history behind the city by the bay, and the predecessors that led to its existence.

Linden Lab -- really called Linden Research, Inc. -- didn't initially set out to be a company known for virtual worlds. Initially they were busy studying haptics, or methods of providing physical feedback to people using virtual objects.

To learn more about such, this fledgling company then located on Linden Street in San Francisco, created "The Rig," a virtual space that could be navigated around in. Thing is, the virtual space contained in the rig was actually kind of fun.

Before too long, the rig -- and more importantly, the software on it -- started to take further form, eventually morphing into a virtual world of its own. This initial prototype was known as LindenWorld.

LindenWorld had a lot of similarities to what we know now as Second Life, as well as many unusual differences. Terraforming was not the simple tools of today, but was done using actual grenades to blow up parts of the land. An ecosystem existed of rudimentary birds and snake-like "Ators" that roamed the land, reproducing and eating. Avatars were also simple, created out of primitive shapes.

As things developed, it begun to look more like the world we know today. While the ators and birds faded into history, the world started to form. Those early "Primitars" were swapped out for a simple avatar mesh that still lives under the bodies of today. We gained better building and terrain forming tools even as we lost the reactive water of those early days.

Meanwhile, in the heart of LindenWorld was a city, which sat in what is now the Natoma region.

Linden City

Learning Center City

The city was developed in part to test the then very new rendering engine behind LindenWorld, and see how well it could manage a fairly dense environment. The city, with a central park featuring a fountain, a learning center, and a city hall, had no specific name, but was known as Linden Town or Linden City by some of the few on hand.

Linden City is seen in the photo above at night in what may be one of the first snapshots ever taken by a Resident. Steller Sunshine took this shot on her first day inworld, and she was the first non-Linden to visit the grid. Note Peter Linden hovering to the left in the image, as well as the central tower seen in most pictures of Linden City.

The city was erased not long from when LindenWorld became Second Life, replaced by Newbie Corral (our first welcome area), a store named Avatar Central, and the only remaining portion of that first city: the statue of Man that once lived in a square behind City Hall.

City

You can still visit that statue, now living on a hill near Natoma's Ivory Tower of Prims. It remains one of the oldest pieces of content in Second Life, still here long after the rest of the city vanished.

In Part II, we'll explore what happened when early Residents decided to form the very first city in Second Life.

Reporter Historian Marianne McCann

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About: Privacy

If you travel around our word, more specific mainland, you will be in for a troublesome journey. Most mainland explorers can show you the dents in their vehicles. Wrecked airplanes and cars hanging high in the sky, scars, blood and broken bones.

Banlines

The suffering is so great that most explorers stop after a few journeys.

As an explorer there isn't much you can do to prevent the hurting. Get a good HUD that shows where you can expect banlines and try to fly above 150 meters. It won't stop being send home by some ill-configured security orb.

Nooo orb!

If you can, inform the land owner, in a friendly way, that you think the land is configured wrongly. I have discovered that some land owners have no idea that their land is an explorers hell and were glad to be informed.

Some are less friendly, but that's ok.

People want privacy in a world where privacy is hard to find. They want to display the pictures of the grandchildren, they want to use poses and dance a tango, without others peeking in.

When people want some privacy they click the most obvious things. About land: Access => stuffs.

It becomes worse when, after they discover that landsetting have limitations, they buy a security orb to throw everybody out without notification.

There are some things to remember in this world.

On the mainland everybody can look in from the outside. Your valuable pictures can be seen by everybody. No security setting can prevent that. The only way to prevent it is to get your own region and disallow access to anybody.

To prevent others seeing you dancing there is a better option. About land=> Options=> Uncheck “Avatars on other parcels can see and chat with avatars on this parcel”.

When you want to dance you can set a banline for the duration of the dance. No need to keep the banline up all the time.

Most banlines only work below a certain height. 150 meters is seen as a safe height for aviators, others speak of 75 meters above ground level (AGL).

Below 150 meters is also the zone where you want to make an appealing parcel. A nice house, a few trees, access to all. You want a world that is pleasing to the eye, this is your contribution, this is how you will go into history.

Your private dance is best done in a skybox above 1000 meters. Banlines don't work here. Get a good security orb and set it to protect around the skybox, not the whole parcel. Set it to protect only when you are around, no need to eject people when you are not around, the balls can't get dirty.

Most important, set a reasonable warning time. 15 Seconds is ok for a very small parcel but don't forget the blimp that flies much slower. For larger parcels, set a time of 30 seconds or more. Also, do not eject Home but to the nearest parcel. That way the voyager doesn't have to examine the map to find where the ejection took place.

Always test your security settings, use an alt that isn't member of your groups or get someone in you don't like. Walk outside your parcel. There are expensive orbs from a good maker that try to eject people from the neighbouring region.

On the ground the best way to keep your privacy is to expect none. When people arrive you have plenty of tools ready. Rightclick on an avatar and use Freeze or Eject.

Another, more fun option, is to set damage and keep a gun near. If there is harassment, shoot. That scares the most persistent griefers.

In short. If you are a landowner, use the correct tools to keep your land tidy and clean.

But please do not use banlines. Be gentile with the use of a security orb. Test your security.

Be friendly, be neighbourly.

Reporter Vick Forcella

190902

Bay City Cruis'n

Last month I gave Vick Forcella, the Editor of the Bay City Post, a ride to his interview with Mitch Merricks in Bay City - Moloch. As I attempted to return home I was distracted and turned into Rotwang Alley, just off of Ulysses Drive in Moloch.

It was a dead-end.

Deftly performing a U-turn I saw what appeared to be some sort of glowing equipment through a broken doorway. I just had to investigate. After all, finding things is what I do!

 

Who: La Mole

What: A Mysterious Laboratory

Where: Bay City- Moloch

The laboratory appears to have been abandoned long ago. Cobwebs can be seen in most places. There are pipes bringing in water from the canal system. Test tubes of various liquids are strewn about. There are larger liquid-filled containers with something inside that I just can't quite make out. Pages torn out of some sort of journal can be seen on the floor.

And, the property is full of holes. I recognized them immediately. Mole holes!

The local residents tried to tell me stories about this place.

One resident said it was the former research lab of a Linden who went crazy trying to perform "sekrit" experiments that failed spectacularly. Experiments involving what? That was the unknown portion of the story. I don't believe it.

Another resident talked about hearing the pitter patter of tiny feet at all hours of the day in the neighbourhood, along with seeing shadows of creatures carrying what appeared to be, ridiculously, cotton swabs. I don't believe it.

Reporter Dakota Schwade

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Experiencing a Bug, and BoM Obscurities

Some folks with their own Experience scripts may have noticed a particularly nasty bug that's a real head-scratcher when first encountered. It seems that with some recent server update, all rezzed-in-world scripts compiled to any Experience lost record that they were compiled to that Experience. The scripts keep running using the Experience for which they were compiled, but they can't be recompiled (nor shift-drag copied, etc.) unless re-introduced to that Experience.

Turns out this doesn't really affect that many end-user scripts because most folks just use whatever Experiences are already compiled, and a lot of Experience scripts (such as the AVsitter auto-attach scripts I often praise) are usually embedded in object inventories, not rezzed-out on their own, so they weren't affected.

New objects don't seem to be affected now, but currently it's not clear whether there's any way for the Lab to fix the already damaged objects. If you're interested you can watch developments at https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-227526 for updates.

Much wider attention is on the new "Bakes on Mesh" (BoM) feature for attached mesh bodies and heads. This enables direct wearing of skin-tight textures and alpha masks, just as the old system avatars used, rather than the much more complex and limited "applier" scripts and "alpha cuts" HUDs that mesh attachments needed until now.

Much has been said about BoM already, but some things I think have been under-reported. First, in addition to the oft-cited improvement in rendering efficiency, the feature overcomes a constant source of user frustration and support problems: the unpredictable interaction of multiple layers of blended alpha textures. This comes up all the time when people try to wear makeup and tattoos, say, on overlapping layers of their attached mesh. All those problems go away when those overlapping transparent layers are simply baked on top of each other into a single displayed surface texture.

This also completely eliminates a problem inherent to how Advanced Lighting is implemented, limiting how many projected light sources affect a blended alpha surface. If you've ever noticed make-up, for example, looking weirdly coloured depending on where it is in a scene with complicated lighting, you've seen the problem -- which you WON'T see anymore with baked-on textures.

Finally, a note about BoM and Materials: if creators of BoM skin, make-up, tattoos, clothing, etc. want to include "Materials" effects, they should simply supply the normalmaps and/or specularmaps directly with their products, so folks can manually compose their combined normal- and specularmaps for the baked surface layer. These assets have zero value as "stolen" content, so the creator loses nothing by doing so, however much they may have been trained to "protect IP" at all cost. Mesh avatar makers understand this and provide a way to apply those manually composed material maps (at least this applies to Slink, which was "first out the gate" with BoM so I could test the existing built-in Materials applier on the skin layer, and a single-layer Omega applier for Materials will also work).

The reason this process still involves manual composition is that there's no simple rule for combining the "bumpiness" of normalmaps layered on top of one another. An under-shirt might be tight enough to reveal skin-layer bumpiness, but its own ribbed collar may not be revealed under a tight jacket, for example. It's still up to the user to decide which bumps should show through, and that means combining the normalmaps individually. (Most end-users may not want to do this themselves but creators of quality assembled outfits will surely follow this process for their customers.)

Reporter Qie Niangao

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Proclamation Emperor Michael I Re:Privacy

==

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

date: June 20

contact: vickforcella (at) gmail (dot) com

==

PROCLAMATION

==

"Explorers in this world face the greatest dangers! Merchants, trades people and shipping companies suffer great losses!

Ban lines and security orbs, used to conceal things that the world has no interest in, swallow complete vehicles, occupants and valuable cargo to spew it out far away in random counties that are unprepared for falling debris, causing lethal deaths.

With the trust and authority given to me by all the citizens of Bay City (except a few that are sharpening cheep steel, booh to them) I herewith proclaim

that each one that encounters ill configured- lands or -security orbs is 
to identify the owner and write the experience on the sticky note on it's profile.

When you meet that person face-to-face

you shall remind that person with the horrible experience you had to go through, in a reasonably loud voice, and

that those ban lines and security orbs do not serve a real purpose.

You can reference good written articles about this subject.

Thought it is suggested to use a pillory or similar public shaming methods I do not support those. The ban lines by themselves can be seen as a pillory of shame for perversions unseen.

This is what I proclaim, this is what loyal citizens in my name will do!"

signed,

“Michael I, Emperor of Bay City"

==

Disclaimer: The bay City Post is not responsible for statements made by Emperor Michael. We publish the proclamations as a service towards the citizens of our Fine City.

Reporter Vick Forcella

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Epilogue

The older old people get the less the younger people know. It is a moral obligation for the old people to share their wisdom and experience with the young so that they know where they come from and can avoid the pitfalls the old people have found.

At the end of the school year our teacher asked what we wanted for our last lesson. How to make gunpowder. Before the lesson was over the school was evacuated. The batch of made gunpowder ignited by accident, smoke entered all classrooms. After opening doors and windows the fumes went away and classes continued.

I hope you enjoyed reading this edition. We gave it our best.

A big Thanks to the reporters Qie Niangau, TJ Hooker, Marianne McCann, Dakota Schwade and Georgiana Florence.

Thank you Roc for all you do for Bay City.

... there is something in the water...

Editor Vick Forcella

190902

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