Springtime in Marathon Caye

Tags

destinations, Marathon Caye, nature, Pearl Grey, Photos

There were blasts of winter precipitation that kept me awake last Friday night so I logged into Second Life and wandered around where it is always springtime somewhere. These are all photos from Marathon Caye. There is a lot more to see and do there than indicated here.

I wandered around until I got sleepy.

Yordie’s Excellent Adventures

Tags

Yordie Sands

Just a little over a week ago, I visited Yordie Sands at her very new place of business for Yordie’s Excellent Adventures. It was a great environment and I was interested in her plans, which were a work in progress at the time.

Yordie’s chosen to leave Second Life since then and move on to other things. 

It was the first time I’d seen the New England area where her office/shop was located.
While Yordie was gone for lunch that day, I went to a small nearby park to read.

I believe that wherever she is, she’ll soon be planning new adventures. :-).

 

Annual Light and Shadow Pleasure Faire ~ Photos

Tags

Darkmoon Isle, destinations, Medieval, Photos, RolePlay, Wren Alcyone

These are photos from a Faire I visited on a Medieval/Fantasy sim last weekend. I didn’t check out the jousting, hunting or games but I enjoyed looking around. 

It’s difficult to resist sitting down to a feast.

Sometimes I forget that without my LaRPs hud, I’m allowed to fly. Often flying isn’t allowed or appropriate for places I go but I ended up flying here because there’s a lot to see and I’d been falling into the water a lot.

This is an active roleplay sim, with the ongoing tension between light and dark. Here I’m lazily resting from my explorations while a kind resident is answering my questions about the roleplay and rules.

The Medieval/Fantasy sim I’d last played in, DarkMoon Isle closed on February 15th because of lack of interest from SL residents. It was one of the most beautiful Medieval builds I’d seen but the owner/builder has real life projects and didn’t seem to be able to justify continuing. I hadn’t been there for about five weeks because I had trouble with someone and didn’t care to make a big deal of it.

This photo was taken in the dark part of the realm but I found it to be beautiful. It’s tempting to consider playing here but there are other things I want to do with my SL time for a while and I’m still not up for learning yet another backstory, hud and rules. It’s been disappointing for me and I’m giving myself a break.   

Since this is an “annual” Faire, the sim might be fairly stable and hopefully will still be around when I once again feel like participating in a Medieval/Fantasy roleplay community.

Everydaydream Break

Tags

destinations, Pearl Grey, Photos, photos

having tea with friends

Sometimes residents are too busy to go into SL and enjoy the beautiful places they’ve created so they open them to visitors for a while. Recently in one of the blogs here I found such a notice. I’m not sure if this skybox is still available to the public.

I enjoy birdsong in both lives and here was a lovely spot to hear it.

There were some pin up poses that I had fun with. The medieval clothes with glitch pants aren’t the best choice for the effect but I wasn’t motivated to change. 2/24/13 edit:

Jasmine at Usually Blonde has just commented that the area is still open to the public. Her blog post has the SLURL and more information.

 

Shopping for Vintage Clothes

Tags

1920's Berlin Project, destinations, Old Time Prims, Pearl Grey, Photos, vintage clothes

This one is my favorite.

Shortly after I unsuccessfully looked through the marketplace for vintage clothes, I saw a blog headline about the new vintage shopping area near the 1920’s Berlin project. I went to visit and spent several hours looking at almost everything. I looked at what’s available at Old Time Prims and was surprised to find that I liked the 1950’s clothes for women, not my favorite time period at all.

Vintage Retro Historical Market Street

This isn’t a shopping blog, but I can tell you that I got these outfits at Bacidalucia Vintage, which seems to be a 1920’s burlesque shop. My favorite shops are the jewelry stores; one is Earth Stones. I’m lazy about changing jewelry and will often wear the same earrings, pendant and bracelet for as long as I can no matter what the type and period of costume I’m wearing.

location: Serenity Falls

This outfit is hard to see in the photo but I wanted to show the 1920’s Oldsmobile you can get for free in the landing area between the shopping area and the Berlin sim. It is drive-able and after I rezzed it here and took the photo, I got in and promptly crashed into a nearby tree and then careened into the sea.

Another surprise for me was how much I liked the hats, not being a hat person. They didn’t work with my hair so I got this shorter Truth hair. Truth hair has always worked for me and I trust the store; all the hairs I use now come from there except for a Wasabi Pills one that is shaved on one side for my datajack implant.  

At the arrival point to the 1920’s Berlin Project there is an area which has info and measurements regarding realistic avatar proportions and height that looks quite detailed. My avatar must be about 6’5”. The roleplay sim encourages realistic looking avatars. Since I was on a shopping mission, I didn’t enter but days later I watched the treet tv episode about it which was quite informative.

Height variations in a crowd is something I often overlook; in the Shadowruns I do with Trogs and Orcs, I’m often one of the smaller players. 

I’m not sure if this works for a club setting like the Basilique but I like it. I look more matronly than usual but have no problem with that. This wasn’t the most attractive look for me but I feel like my shopping expedition was successful.

Of course I got distracted by the furniture and especially the radio shop. Store owners in at least one shop have done some amazing things with music and mixing it up with real life.

The Berlin sim accepts child avatars, something that isn’t available everywhere in SL, and the Old Time Prim shop has vintage children’s clothing.

I explored the shopping area for far longer than I intended but enjoyed the visit and will check back in a few months.

Virtual Lunar New Year Feast

Tags

Arcachon, Grey, learning, Lunar New Year, RolePlay, roleplay, Shadowrun, treet tv

Fried nian gao. Lu rou fan. Ramune and Blueberry cheesecake. I knew what blueberry cheesecake was but not the other meal items before I was treated to a meal for the Lunar New Year over a week ago in Second Life.

I’ve gradually made my own holiday traditions and I like to mark the Lunar New Year in real life but I wasn’t expecting the delightful roleplay I became engaged in. Many of the players on this particular sim have businesses as a sort of front and also for a sense of living in a community while most of our nuyen or credits are obtained through Shadowrunning. I manage the Golden Dragon Tea and Bath House. There’s a diner, a strip club, a pawn shop and also a bakery which usually just sells pastries. Most of the food is of synthetic ingredients in the year 2080.

But on this day when I went into the bakery, the manager made me a virtual meal of traditional Taiwanese food made of “real”, not synthetic ingredients. It came complete with Wikipedia and google links for info and photos of the fried nian gao and Lu rou fan. She described the textures to me and I very much enjoyed the roleplay.

I actually learned about ramune, which is a Japanese soda,  a few weeks ago when  the bakery manager requested it in the Golden Dragon.  It comes in lots of flavors and she requested kiwi. The internet is overwhelmingly full of information and this was a more memorable way to learn something new. It reminded me of the treet tv show about Arcachon which I viewed recently, having visited Arcachon myself several weeks before.

I’ve only recently discovered treet tv when one of the blogs mentioned the show about griefing. The sim Arcachon, like others, is in trouble. I found my visit there to be delightful with many activities to explore and the show really demonstrated the wonderful ways the sim is available to be used as a learning tool regarding language and the culture of the lovely French region.

I eat a very healthy diet and have been experimenting with ways to add a few more Asian foods into my cooking. It’s easier when something gently arrives unexpectedly on my radar instead of my trying to take in a bulk of information.

For me, it’s heartwarming when someone has the time and patience to share what they know in Second Life, which is oh-so-much-more than a game. When you do that, when you can, you might never know what that sort of kindness means to another human being behind a pixel avatar.

OBR Walk Stage

Tags

destinations, One Billion Rising, Photos

looking great at night!

I’m back after a sim restart and just gave my thoughts in answer to a student sent here on a field trip from Ohio State.

earlier this afternoon

This afternoon I got to chat with adventurer and fellow blogger Yordie Sands.

Now back to the great music and fun for me.

Dance!

Tags

awareness, destinations, One Billion Rising

morning on the One billion Rising stage

earlier during the wee hours of the morning

About 60 avatars within range of me and I’m not having any difficulties which is amazing in Second Life.

A Few Corrections for My Previous OBR Posts

Tags

art, One Billion Rising, Photos

Interactive; use the float ball as I am here; by artist Gracie Kendal

The One Billion Rising folks have given an opportunity to preview the art builds until noon SLT today. I went back to play with the interactive art this morning. Yesterday I walked towards this one above at the wrong angle and missed the float ball. Even walking around inside it had looked amazing but then I wondered why the photo wasn’t so good.

I became disoriented in the Respawn one again and walked out into the sea but simply teleported back to the landing point.

by artist Nessuno Myoo

I had taken a photo of the work above for a previous post and after I took this one, realized that I just had to stop fretting about my photography skills. There isn’t likely to be any improvement in that area soon and I’m fine with that. ;-).

I noticed new landscaping on the already beautiful sims. I feel really fortunate that I got to preview this project where such amazing creativity happened in a short amount of time. Thanks to all who are bringing this about.

One Billion Rising Art in Second Life ~ part three

Tags

art, creativity, destinations, One Billion Rising, Photos

artist Solkide Auer; Italy

Walked around in this one too.

artist Daco Monday; Italy

I took a photo of his work for a blog post several months ago. Again, photos do not do these justice.

artist Maya Paris; UK

This was fun! You’re instructed to set the sun at midnight, turn local sound up, and “sit” floating way up where you can dance. There’s also a fembot avatar you can have.

artist Nessuno Myoo; Italy

Yes I ought to learn more about photography, but why don’t you go see these for yourselves.

artist Haveit Neox; USA

These all look amazing when you’re right there.