Caledon Oxbridge General Q&A for 2019-08-25

14:58 Frigid Cryotank Any ideas of why, when I try to sit in one of these chairs, that SL says there's no room to sit there?
14:59 lovejoy2199 Happens to me all the time.
14:59 Badass Fae (larkylouz) you kinda have to stand right in front of where you want to sit, face the bench and pray to all the gods.
15:00 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) has no hair left in RL
15:00 Carl Metropolitan Sorry I missed an interesting ISC conversation relating to D&D.
15:00 TinyNewSits New sitting animation: 14/BLAOslpSit01_4
15:00 Kara2016 *Purrs**
15:00 Carl Metropolitan notes the clock striking 3:00PM SLT
15:00 RainyDayRecess Hello everyone ;)
15:01 lovejoy2199 Greetings Rainy
15:01 Badass Fae (larkylouz) Hey Rainy!
15:01 Badass Fae (larkylouz) Hi all
15:01 lovejoy2199 Hello 'Badass' lol
15:01 Carl Metropolitan Welcome to Oxbridge General Q&A. This is going to replace (if useful/popular) the "Q&A With the Deans" for three out of the four weeks of the month for the foreseeable future.
15:01 Badass Fae (larkylouz) grins evilly at Lovejoy
15:02 Carl Metropolitan Andrea and I are here to answer any questions you have about Caledon, Second Life, Steampunk, Oxbridge, or whatever you can come up with. As this is NOT "Q&A With the Deans", we can't really answer any specific Oxbridge policy questions.
15:03 Carl Metropolitan We will do our best with everything that does not commit Oxbridge to something above my pay grade. Andrea can, of course, answer questions relating to her role as Dean of Development here, if she chooses to.
15:03 Carl Metropolitan So--any questions?
15:03 lovejoy2199 Ok. Just what is the 'Steampunk' era. Starting time, to end.
15:03 Badass Fae (larkylouz) Where are the newbies?
15:04 lovejoy2199 Hard to dress if you don't know when.
15:04 Carl Metropolitan Lovejoy, "Steampunk" fiction generally takes place in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Roughly 1850 to 1910
15:05 lovejoy2199 End pre-WWI
15:05 Carl Metropolitan Larky, can you be more specific? "Where are the newbies" is a very broad question for a number of reasons.
15:06 Badass Fae (larkylouz) Just commenting on the audience today vs. the stated purpose of this new kind of Q&A. Don't mind me; I'm just a bit mouthy today.
15:06 Badass Fae (larkylouz) I'm sure it will take a while for word to spread.
15:06 Carl Metropolitan No. Good point. I need to be more clear in future announcements. It was just "where are the newbies". I can talk for an hour on that, and have in the past. LL is not listening though :(
15:06 Carl Metropolitan Hello Steronum
15:07 Carl Metropolitan Welcome
15:07 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Well, he is one
15:07 Gronk Seriman I have always considered Steampunk to be a somewhat timeless thing. As if Victorian mores had never changed, but technology ran rampant.
15:07 Carl Metropolitan That's another valid way of looking at it.
15:08 Carl Metropolitan Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" is often considered a Steampunk novel even though it takes place in the future.
15:08 lovejoy2199 I guess what I am asking, any electric?
15:08 Steronum hi
15:09 Carl Metropolitan Certainly. Telegraphs, Phones, Electric Lights, Electric Trolleys/Subways all started in the Victorian era.
15:09 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Refuses to touch Stephenson after having to crawl through Cryptonomicon
15:09 Carl Metropolitan This was the time (in the US) of the "Current Wars" between Edison's DC and Tesla's AC
15:09 Carl Metropolitan Tesla won the war, but lost anyway.
15:10 Cynthia Farshore Basically steampunk occurs in the era of steam-power, which is brought in by Robert Fulton's steam ship and when the railroads began
15:10 Agatha Macbeth Yay Tesla
15:10 Gronk Seriman Electricity? Yes! The Victorians used to love playing parlour games with electricity. Kiss the electric girl. Drink a shot of electrically charged liquor..
15:10 Agatha Macbeth waves to Jorge
15:10 Carl Metropolitan Hello Jorge
15:10 lovejoy2199 More like Westinghouse lost to JP Morgan.
15:11 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) "electric" anything like "electric hair brush" to avoid getting bald....
15:11 Carl Metropolitan My rule of thumb for defining "Steampunk" is this: "If you can imagine the classic Sherlock Holmes popping by the story, it is Steampunk" (Ignoring, of course that Holmes & Watson have been endlessly reinvented for later eras)
15:12 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) There are Cthulhu stories with Holmes...
15:12 Carl Metropolitan Could be worse. The 20th century saw "Radium Tonics"
15:12 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) I have seen adds about "tachyon water".
15:12 Cynthia Farshore yes you will need to define your Sherlock :)
15:12 Carl Metropolitan Yes. The first "Call of Cthulhu" edition, game expansion was "Cthulhu By Gaslight"
15:13 Carl Metropolitan The Great Old Ones fit in quite well, as Lovecraft deliberately embraced a pre-twentieth century aesthetic for his stories and novels.
15:13 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) (me the 3rd edition CoC hardcover)
15:13 Carl Metropolitan (He embraced a pre-twentieth century aesthetic for pretty much everything)
15:14 Steronum Do in Caledon we consider steampunk as a science fiction based on Victorian style?
15:14 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Caledon has more fantastic mode compared to some other Steamlands, I think.
15:15 Carl Metropolitan In Caledon, steampunk is what you want it to be. There are no strict rules. Just generally keep your public builds sort of in period.
15:15 lovejoy2199 Showing my age. Haven't read, or played 'steampunk'. Would it be an 'alt universe' where the electronic computer wasn't invented?
15:15 Carl Metropolitan Avoid stuff that looks like it belongs on a California Beach.
15:15 Carl Metropolitan No.
15:15 lovejoy2199 Ok
15:15 Agatha Macbeth Has a steampunk laptop
15:16 Carl Metropolitan This is a huge topic.
15:16 RainyDayRecess :D
15:16 Carl Metropolitan But assume what you see in Caledon is close to a good definition of "Steampunk" by example.
15:16 Carl Metropolitan For a more detailed description, I'm going to send you to Wikipedia
15:17 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/337116.The_Difference_Engine
15:17 Carl Metropolitan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
15:17 lovejoy2199 Ahhh...ty
15:17 Carl Metropolitan The Difference Engine is one of the very early modern Steampunk novels.
15:17 Gronk Seriman A sleek Macbook Air is not Steampunk. Make it eight times as thick, with gears and a steam vent, it might pass.
15:19 Carl Metropolitan But there was steampunk stuff in the media before it was even named in the late 80s. For example the classic TV western, "Wild, Wild West" is pre-steampunk, steampunk. (Fortunately it was never made into any sort of horribly bland summer blockbuster movie)
15:19 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Space:1889 RPG appeared before Difference Engine, I think
15:19 Gronk Seriman Good point, Carl.
15:19 Carl Metropolitan I'm not sure
15:19 Carl Metropolitan I know I bought both when the came out.
15:20 Carl Metropolitan But The Difference Engine was far from the first "Steampunk" novel.
15:20 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter): Tried to sun Space:1889 with CoC
15:21 Carl Metropolitan Tim Powers and James Blaylock were working out the genre as we know it now in the 1980s.
15:21 Carl Metropolitan Space 1889 did come out before Difference Engine though; I just checked.
15:22 Carl Metropolitan So it would defiantly fit in as a genre pioneer
15:24 Carl Metropolitan However, Space 1889 really hearkens back to two older sources, the early 20th century "Planetary Romance" science fiction (such as Edgar Rice Burrough's Martian novels) and the slightly earlier "Edisonade" novels.
15:24 Carl Metropolitan To quote a quickly located online source, Ediisonade's were, "a paradigm kind of science fiction in which a brave young inventor creates a tool or a weapon (or both) that enables him to save the girl and his nation (America) and the world from some menace, whether it be foreigners or evil scientists or aliens; and gets the girl; and gets rich." (Jack Williamson, SF writer and scholar)
15:25 Carl Metropolitan Okay. I think I may have killed this topic
15:25 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) :-)
15:25 Carl Metropolitan Any other types of questions? Maybe some that Andrea can help with?
15:25 Steronum do Nemo is a steampunk fiction?
15:26 Carl Metropolitan Do you mean Jules Vern's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island novels?
15:26 Carl Metropolitan That featured Captain Nemo?
15:26 Steronum yes
15:26 Cynthia Farshore I would think so
15:26 Carl Metropolitan They are sort of retroactively steampunk, I guess
15:26 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Jules Verne did not write intentional steampunk. But steampunk writers may try to emulate Verne and H. G. Well, for example.
15:27 Carl Metropolitan Verne and Wells and other contemporary writers working in the same areas were writing Science Fiction set in their current times.
15:27 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Yup
15:27 Carl Metropolitan It is just that their times are far enough in the past to now fit nicely into the steampunk genre.
15:28 Steronum do the travel to the moon launched by cannon showing in the old movie are steampunk
15:28 Gronk Seriman It's all technology advanced to absurd levels from what the general time period was in.
15:29 Steronum Hmm. Metropolis?
15:29 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Metropolis depicted the future of its time.
15:29 Cynthia Farshore mm much as we see StarTrek and Star Wars today is what they saw
15:30 Carl Metropolitan I've always thought that for science fiction, a good dividing line for the end of the Steampunk setting timeline is the final disproof of the existence of the aether in physics.
15:30 Cynthia Farshore 0.o huh?
15:31 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Einstein kind of put one of the last nails to the coffin on luminoferous aether
15:32 Carl Metropolitan Yes. Up until the Michelson–Morley experiments of 1887, physics generally held that there was a Luminiferous aether filling empty space that light propagated through.
15:33 Carl Metropolitan The Michelson–Morley experiments failed to find it, and in Einstein's General Relativity in 1915 gave a sound theoretical basis for a universe without Luminiferous aether.
15:34 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter)Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) personally suspects that the same thing may happen to Dark Matter
15:34 Gronk Seriman I never knew aether was so tightly defined. I always thought aether was the explanation of what physicists didn't understand yet.
15:35 Carl Metropolitan Aether was a philosophical and later alchemical term that was later adopted by physicists and given more specificity as the theory of the Luminiferous aether.
15:35 Gronk Seriman Ah.
15:35 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) It was about as complex a theory as many "cosmic string" and similar theories today
15:35 Carl Metropolitan I think it started way back with ancient Greeks as a word for a fifth non-material element.
15:36 Carl Metropolitan There are sadly a lot of modern physics theories that are not currently testable.
15:36 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) And survives as a radio term later
15:36 Carl Metropolitan But that is getting way off.
15:36 Carl Metropolitan Does anyone have any questions about Second Life? Or Oxbridge?
15:38 Carl Metropolitan Andrea, do you know how much L$ was raised at the fundraiser last night?
15:38 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) not yet.
15:38 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) Wordsmith will let me know soon
15:38 lovejoy2199 Second life, only a couple of hundred. Oxbridge, just warping my mind around the right time period.
15:38 Steronum yes do we could station an airship an some place in Caledon for free
15:39 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Airships would be part of the virtual plot below.
15:39 Carl Metropolitan Sadly airships take up prims (LI) and the only way to get those is to rent land.
15:40 lovejoy2199 Georgian period would be to early?
15:40 Carl Metropolitan This is because LL is remorseless about collecting their monthly tier from Desmond.
15:40 lovejoy2199 too
15:40 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) That's how LL makes some of its money
15:40 Gronk Seriman Nothing in SL is really free. Every square inch is rented by somebody.
15:40 Carl Metropolitan Yes. Definitely too early, Lovejoy. But there is no reason someone could not make a Georgian SF/Fantasy story.
15:40 Carl Metropolitan Desmond = Desmond Shang, the owner of the Caledon estate.
15:41 Carl Metropolitan And the guy who has to ultimately pay LL rent each month on all these sims
15:41 Agatha Macbeth Which must be quite a bit
15:41 lovejoy2199lovejoy2199 thinks so much for my 'Count' look.
15:42 Carl Metropolitan It is
15:42 Steronum ok that meanz I could travel with my airship but not park them permanently in some place
15:42 Carl Metropolitan Though LL has lowered some USD sim rental rates marginally in the last few years.
15:42 Carl Metropolitan Right
15:43 Carl Metropolitan If you parked it, it would get returned by the person who's prims you were using.
15:43 Steronum ok in Caledon how long it is?
15:44 Kara2016 ?
15:44 Gronk Seriman And you can only travel over parcels that can withstand the prims you add. That is why the CATs airships take such careful routes.
15:44 Carl Metropolitan As long as you are just passing over someone's land, no one will normally have an issue. If you stop for any period of time and park, then you are abusing their resources without permission.
15:44 Carl Metropolitan Which is rude.
15:45 Agatha Macbeth Would the same rule apply to Yavanna's pods?
15:45 Badass Fae (larkylouz) Just out of idle curiosity, what happens if an airship passes over a parcel that *doesn't* have enough prims?
15:45 Carl Metropolitan Larky, it can't enter
15:45 Carl Metropolitan It is like hitting an invisible wall
15:45 RainyDayRecess Didn't know that
15:46 Agatha Macbeth Oh my
15:46 Carl Metropolitan Agatha, I don't know what Yavanna's pods are.
15:46 Badass Fae (larkylouz) make sense. Okay. Yeah, me either, Rainy
15:46 Agatha Macbeth Oh
15:46 Agatha Macbeth Never mind
15:46 Steronum ok that means I will not be welcome to park my airship for few hours over a land owned by the estate owner
15:47 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) AT least without express permission from the owner.
15:47 Badass Fae (larkylouz) you could park it over empty land, or over the sea, perhaps.
15:47 Carl Metropolitan You can get away with it, but if you make a habit of it, you will be asked to leave. As in leave Caledon.
15:47 Cynthia Farshore As one who has an open sim, if you came in and stopped but still present on the sim as you walked about then no problem. But if you log off and leave it there then it may be returned to you.
15:47 Carl Metropolitan It is polite to take vehicles you are not using into your inventory
15:48 Carl Metropolitan Leaving them parked over someone else's land is essentially using their land resources without paying for them.
15:48 Badass Fae (larkylouz) many lands have auto-return enabled. It isn't mean; it is just how SL works. If we allowed everyone who dropped a box in the dressing rooms to leave them there, it would be a mess. As an example.
15:48 Agatha Macbeth Agreed
15:49 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) And many people do exactly that...
15:49 Carl Metropolitan If you want to be a squatter in SL, go out into the LL-owned mainland and look for parcels that reverted back to Linden Lab and never had auto-return switched on.
15:50 Carl Metropolitan Don't do it in Caledon.
15:50 RainyDayRecess Sneaky ;)
15:50 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) not without permission to be there
15:51 Steronum ok then if I use my airship as house over empty land or sea only when I am login and take back to my inventory when I logout it's ok/
15:51 Gronk Seriman Yes. The Mainlands. Rules for thee, but not for me, LL.
15:51 Carl Metropolitan It is no okay in any way to do that in Caledon
15:51 Carl Metropolitan All the land in Caledon is owned by someone, whether is it the parcel renter or Desmond.
15:52 Carl Metropolitan If you are using the land without paying for it, you are taking resources that other people are paying for.
15:52 Kara2016 I love my rent spots.
15:52 Carl Metropolitan If you want to rent land here, you are welcome to. You can park your airship in the sky over land you have rented.
15:52 Gronk Seriman Caledon is a tightly balanced group of sims that Des has to maintain actively. Des puts huge parks in sims to counter the heavy prim use of the renters, for example.
15:53 Badass Fae (larkylouz) Lots of stuff in the skies over Caledon!
15:53 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Airship skyboxes are not unusual.
15:53 Carl Metropolitan You can get a small parcel for as little as 475L$ per week.
15:53 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Which amounts to a couple of bucks
15:53 Badass Fae (larkylouz) That's the reason Calas has so much water; so that they can balance the lush vegetation on the land.
15:53 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) Desmond does ask that you put something on the land, a tree or something to keep it from looking abandoned
15:53 Carl Metropolitan If you are interested in renting here, there is space available in a number of sims, from small to large lots.
15:54 RainyDayRecess Didn't know that either Andrea :D
15:54 Cynthia Farshore also talk to Des about custom size, he has done so
15:54 Kara2016 uumm..down in front..
15:54 Carl Metropolitan Most people here just institutionally put something on the ground on land they own as a matter of pride in their place.
15:54 Carl Metropolitan Hello Dusty
15:54 Kara2016 i am not a welcome mat..
15:54 Carl Metropolitan Welcome to the tail end of Oxbridge General Q&A
15:55 Carl Metropolitan I'm about to call for last questions, so if you have one, let it go.
15:55 Carl Metropolitan (Steronum, if you are interested in land in Caledon, I can show you some regions with open parcels after the Q&A concludes)
15:55 Cynthia Farshore I see the parcel by my Emporium is rented now because there are 3 large trees on it
15:55 Carl Metropolitan Final questions everyone?
15:56 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) could be Cynthia, might be decoration.
15:56 Gronk Seriman What is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything?
15:56 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) 42
15:56 Carl Metropolitan Dusty. If you have a question, please ask it now.
15:56 RainyDayRecess :D
15:56 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Rent meters show if it is rented
15:57 Gronk SerimanGronk Seriman smirks
15:57 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) Keep in mind a parcel might have something on it, but be unrented
15:57 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) Des sometimes leaves it. until he can get to it
15:57 Carl Metropolitan That happens. Look at the meter. If the meter is blue, the parcel is unrented.
15:57 Steronum do they have flight restriction ?
15:57 Cynthia Farshore also if a rent meter says available you best ask Desmond BEFORE you put money in as it may be the renter is behind
15:58 The Dusty Kid (snitter1) How do I place trees and shrubs near my build project in a sandbox?
15:58 RainyDayRecess Rez them and move them, maybe
15:59 Carl Metropolitan Are these trees and shrubs made of prims or mesh? Or are they the Linden trees and shrubs from the build menu or library
15:59 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) STuff does not stay in sandboxes
15:59 The Dusty Kid (snitter1) OK Usually the sand box won't allow it.But I've seen other builds with plants near them
15:59 Carl Metropolitan There are a few special things about Linden trees
15:59 Steronum you have to be in a sandbox who allows you to editing the land
15:59 Carl Metropolitan Like you can't generally rez them in land you don't have rezzing rights in.
16:00 Carl Metropolitan Which is why I assumed that might have been what you were talking about
16:00 RainyDayRecess I thought you could work on a build, then link everything, then take it into inventory?
16:00 Carl Metropolitan You also can't link them to anything
16:00 The Dusty Kid (snitter1) OK I'll look into that
16:00 Carl Metropolitan You can link any other mesh, sculpt, or prim object in SL that you own, but not Linden trees.
16:00 Carl Metropolitan It is a weird SL quirk
16:01 Carl Metropolitan Okay. We've hit 4:00 PM, and I'm all questioned out.
16:01 RainyDayRecess Wow, I'm learning so much today :D
16:01 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) And Carl means Linden system trees, not trees depicting RL Linden trees...
16:01 The Dusty Kid (snitter1) Thank you
16:01 Gronk Seriman Thank you Deans!
16:01 Carl Metropolitan Thank you everyone for coming and listening to me pontificate on the history of steampunk and also answer a few questions.
16:01 RainyDayRecess Thank you Deans ;)
16:01 Carl Metropolitan ((I'm not a Dean))
16:02 lovejoy2199 Thank you, Carl
16:02 Agatha Macbeth Pontifex maximus...
16:02 Steronum Thanks for the course
16:02 Carl Metropolitan will bring a gavel to the next session so he can gavel it closed :)
16:02 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) just here for suppoort
16:02 Gronk Seriman You were, at some point, I thought.
16:02 Gronk Seriman smirks
16:02 Badass Fae (larkylouz) Thank you for a most interesting meeting Carl, Andrea.
16:02 Carl Metropolitan No. I was never a dean at Oxbridge
16:02 lovejoy2199 Chancellor emeritus.
16:02 Cynthia Farshore Thank you Chancellor
16:02 Agatha Macbeth Good to see you back anyway Mr Carl
16:02 Carl Metropolitan I was Chancellor, Co-Founder, and general volunteer :)
16:02 Carl Metropolitan Bye everyone!
16:03 Gronk Seriman The Deaniest of Deans.
16:03 Agatha Macbeth TC
16:03 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Bedtime for me.
16:03 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Hold the fort
16:03 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) night all
16:03 RainyDayRecess Take care Carl ;)
16:03 Badass Fae (larkylouz) G'night Mr. Elfbiter
16:03 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Be seeing you
16:03 Carl Metropolitan grabs his set
16:04 Carl Metropolitan Steronum, do you want to see some land that you might be able to rent here?
16:04 RainyDayRecess Sleep well Elfbiter ;)
16:04 Steronum yes sure thats will give me some idea
16:05 Carl Metropolitan Okay. Do you want to start small?
16:05 Carl Metropolitan Let me check in Port Caledon first.
16:05 Steronum yes I do
16:05 Carl Metropolitan Goodbye everyone
16:05 Steronum ok sure
16:07 Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) night all
16:07 RainyDayRecess Night Andrea