My photo doesn't do this av justice - it is truly the most appealing avatar I've ever seen.
I sometimes recommend to newbies that they look for non-human avatars if they are so inclined- think about it, no hair/skin/clothes/ao's to worry about. Has to be less expensive initially and less trouble to find (for those of us who hate shopping). They also get rid of the "I'm brand new kick me" sign that many get on their backs.
I have a few non human avatars - but I don't use them. It's just not the "me" I expect I think. But I do think many are just amazing - and I applaud the creators and the wearers both. :)
PS I forgot to mention that in this av's profile he says that the only happier av in SL is Torley Linden. :)
Last year, when my friend Wrath reached the first anniversary of his arrival in SecondLife, I celebrated by creating a Rez Day ad farm on his property.
As his second Rez Day approached I started planning my tribute. My first idea was to toilet paper his house - which would have been a real challenge given that, at the time, his house was a 34 story office tower. But I was working on it ........ until he sold all his land!
So I started trying to plan something assuming he had no house. And then he bought some land. Once again I ripped up my plans and started anew.
He obviously felt safe announcing the new land because, according to his blog, it only has 2 free prims. He probably doesn't think I can do anything with only 2 prims. :)
I guess I forgot to tell him about my new toy. It's one of Dedric's terrific particle generators. I really have very little idea what I'm doing, but I hit buttons and pull levers and then stick script into a box and stuff happens. :)
I could only use two prims but I made them "pretty". And I made them revolve .... cause movement just adds a je ne sais quoi element to it.
It was still missing something though. Something that would make it truly a Rez Day gift for Wrath. It had his name all over it but that didn't seem personal enough.
So I took a 6 second snippet from Morrissey (he has a thing for Morrissey) and put it into the box. It took a little while to make, but the loop of "Sing your Life" turned out pretty well. I'm really hoping he has "restrict spatialized sound to this parcel" selected or his neighbours might get a bit testy. :)
I took a "before" picture so you could see his peaceful pastoral setting before I invaded. :)
So that was it. It's not as big or extravagant as last year - but I had a smaller parcel to work with. I have to say that without being able to see the movement you can't appreciate his gift in all its glorious "awfulness". But this photo should give you an idea of the surprise awaiting him the morning of his second Rez Day.
It looks even better in the dark!
Happy Rez Day my dear friend. :) And I hope you have many many more!
And yes - once I got past level one support (and the responses which just said go away and look again), after re-opening the ticket 4 times; somebody actually went and did some research and discovered that I was, in fact, correct!
I was reading Crap's vent about the bug involving scripted objects so I turned on the script beacons at my sand box. You can't see them - but dozens and dozens of the red beacons showed up. I hope they fix it soon - this bug is probably responsible for even more lag in this region than the arms dealer is.
The upside to standing there waiting for my young french friend to fix some script for me (a good learning exercise for him) ........... gave me plenty of time to sort my inventory. :)
jk you know I love you scripters ........ it's scripting I don't like :)
although I'm not kidding about having plenty of time to sort my inventory :)
Aintree's two closest neighbours provide a study in SL contrasts. My good friend Jon is next door and I'll profile his shop once we get the path between us installed. Across the street is the arms dealer I mentioned. I actually got a glimpse of him in the "flesh" (so to speak) today. Just as I took this picture he changed outfits and tp'ed away.
There's a moral to the following (true) story and it is relevant to SL. Really! :)
Once, a number of years ago, I was at a conference at a high end Toronto hotel. Was given a beautiful room with a jacuzzi overlooking the lake. The only problem was that when I went to take a shower (in the gorgeous large glass enclosure with 4 water spouts) I could only get hot water. No cold water. So the hot water was really really really hot. Scalding in fact.
I phoned the front desk and explained that it was possible that I wasn't operating it correctly but there was no cold water. The man's reply was "that's impossible". wrong answer I said OK, but then I need somebody to come up to the room and show me how to do it properly. Nobody showed up.
The next day I complained again - to a different person. This time somebody showed up - 8 hours later.
When I opened the door the maintenance guy pushed by me (he seemed a little miffed to be there) and went into the bathroom. I heard water come on and off. Then I heard some mumbling. Finally I heard a lot of swearing. Then he left.
An hour later I got a phone call that they were moving me to another room.
There is a moral to this story. And I want the LL CSR who has been dealing with my ticket for the past 3 days to learn this moral.
Do not dismiss me as a moron. You can think I'm a moron. You can believe I'm a moron. I'm even willing to accept that I might be a moron. But until you have proven to both of us that I am a moron - do not dismiss me as one. You have closed my ticket 4 times with solutions that are not valid. Accept the fact that I might be right. And note - if I am correct you have a much bigger problem than one bitchy resident in Canada.
Although nothing is ever really finished, the new Aintree Gardens is now open. The only major item left to take care of is a logo and sign. But everything else is done - well, until I change it of course. :)
Crap did this really cool new poster for the Tunes in SL project - it fits in like it was designed for the place. :)
The only niggling little problem with the location is the arms dealer across the road. He uses a gazillion scripts and so things get a little laggy. I'm hoping he'll leave eventually. He does get the most interesting customers - although I don't think they're the gardening type.
I've been working hard (I'll post the results of that tomorrow) so I needed a rest. Rather than continuing I got my chair and went to watch Crap blow up the Tunes in SL build in Prancer.
There was a rather disreputable looking gang at the bottom of the tower. So I made sure I stayed in my comfy chair in the air.
It was more like one of those implosions you see on TV when they take down an old casino in Las Vegas.
Unfortunately that meant that all the debris landed on the ground at the base. On top of that seedy looking gang.
Search and Rescue operations have begun.
I told them to wear guns and not actually touch any of the victims. Never know where they've been!
I lucked into some inexpensive land on Taylor Bay and decided to consolidate the two store fronts and add some more product. Once again I started a build without a plan and so I have no idea why it turned out like this. But I like it. :)
It will look different once all the plants and birds etc., are placed. But so far, building the bones has been fun!
I made only a brief trip inworld today - I'm getting worse rather than better so I'm going to try and rest more. I did have enough time for Dedric to teach me how to fish though. :)
People seriously nag in SecondLife - I kept getting im's asking about trees so I finally went and rented some land today and put them out. There isn't a lot of room but there are lots of prims so I think I'll add a sky platform and put out the flowers as well.
So welcome to the new Aintree Gardens! It's a purely functional nursery - no extra landscaping or anything. But it feels good to have the trees planted again. :)
You can see the press release on Siggy's blog and see the pilot episode here. I think there's a lot of potential here and I'm sure they'll smooth out some of the rough spots. But I really really hope they get rid of the laugh track. :)
It seems to have taken me an exceptionally long time to get this store front finished. I think it's partly my inability to make 125 prims look as attractive as I'd like and still have more than 2 things for sale. :) Also I got the "I'm going to hit you really hard out of nowhere and make you feel lousy" bug. But having said that Patina is finally open and now all those people asking me where my boxes are have a place to go. :)
I was going to use Lyncean Luminos' suggestion and call it Obsession - but there's a shoe store with that name so better not. I like the word Patina and this lets me hang on to the name for the future as well - I do have other plans. :)
I had this really finicky job to do in my photo editor ............ so I left SL open in another window, put on my headphones and listened to the music stream at my place. I hadn't listened to it before - it was there when I moved in. Turns out it's a new age stream. I figured it couldn't hurt - and I wouldn't be bopping to the music so my hand might stay steady.
The music was mostly really enjoyable - melodic, not offensive. There were a few pieces where I'm sure the chorus was grinning and elbowing each other ..... "Can you believe they're paying us to do this?" At least, I assume they got paid. But then I think the same thing about a lot of pop groups.
Then this woman started to sing. Now according to the lyrics, she must have been on some really interesting drugs ......... for a long time. See - she just realized that "we are all earthbound". And this was a really traumatic realization. It was so traumatic that she had to repeat this fact over and over and over and over and over again.
It's just one song right? I can survive that. Except it was followed by an instrumental. An instrumental with a melody almost exactly the same as that woman's cry of angst. So of course the lyrics to the first one fit the second one exactly. For the entire instrumental I'm hearing in my head "we are all earthbound" over and over and over and over and over again.
One of the fabulous things about the internet - and SecondLife, is the opportunity to connect and communicate with people all over the world. Luckily there are bright people who have facilitated the communication with inventions such as Babbler, Universal Translator and even Google Translator. More often than not however, I find my self having to use my limited language skills without benefit of outside assistance.
I recently met (in SL) a nice young guy from France anxious to learn to build and script. I took him around to the College of Scripting, Music and Science and the Ivory Tower. Whenever we both have time we meet and discuss what he's working on.
Which brings me to the point of this post. I speak french - albeit not as well as I used to because I haven't used it in so long. My spelling has suffered the most but it seems I can still make myself understood. :) I've discovered however, that in this virtual world we inhabit, just speaking the "language" isn't enough. You have to learn all its variations.
Think about how many different versions of the english language we speak or read everyday. There's im and/or text message speak (tyvm bbl), there's LOL Cat (which I can read but cannot speak) just to give you two examples. People who don't have english as a first language, and manage to navigate SL and communicate in it, have in fact learned multiple english languages. And yet there are idiots who make fun of them - or castigate them for not knowing it perfectly.
I encounter the difficulties involved everytime I talk to my young friend - because the french have their own variations. A few I've learned:
"c" pour "c'est"
"slt" pour "salut"
"g" pour "je suis"
I only have to try and understand and utilize these new versions of the language when I talk to my friend. I can't imagine how tough it is for people like Raul and Cris to do it most of, if not all of, the time they're in SL. And they do it well and they don't complain. It's possible that the jerks who make fun of them are just jealous ........ with good reason. :)
I admit that when it comes to casual clothes I'm in a rut. Formal wear I can do - but for casual clothes I stick to jeans and a shirt, or shirt and sweater.
Early on in my Second Life, when I finally started to look for clothes, I got really really frustrated. Everything seemed to lack only an "I Want Sex" sign - skanky was an understatement. I don't like shopping enough to be willing to spend hours looking for something I like. My solution was to buy men's clothes - good jeans and nice tailored shirts. In fact I'll read men's fashion blogs to find the right shops to find the good stuff. :)
I've been trying to expand my casual wardrobe and I'm finally buying a few things like the outfit above. I'm not going to wear skirts for casual wear - but I will pick one store every now and then and devote enough time looking around to find something. I can grow - even if it involves shopping. :)
PS I know that sort of looks like a sweater - but it's actually a leather jacket. Really, buttons and everything! :)
I've been wanting to visit the neighbouring islands and see what's there - Grumpus seemed like the best first step. I had some time today so I waited at my dock and jumped in when it arrived.
It whispers information about what you're passing and shows you the name of the next stop.
Dusan Writer has written an interesting post about identity. Although I'm still smarting from the phrase "one of those dreaded augmentationists". I may have to come up with another adjective to describe myself. :)
I love to add birdsong to the forests and parks I build. But I have to collect all these birds before the islands disappear - no copy items are not automatically returned to my inventory. The problem, of course, is searching an island which looks like the one above .......
for bird houses which look like this and are hidden in the branches of the trees.
The solution is an object finder. If you own land and don't have one of these I strongly suggest you get one. I'm sure they all work, so just find something you like. It'll pay for itself over the years - really! :)
I put the Gypsy Dock out so people could use the canoes to paddle around the islands. Turns out Grumpus can use the dock as one of its stopping points. :)
A lot of work went into this - but it was worth it. Easy for me to say because it wasn't my effort! Very cool! :)
