September in Roche

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Roche, virtual destinations

One of my favorite places in all of Second Life is Roche. A few days ago I made time to visit, to look at the little changes since I’d been there last. It was a quick visit and I chose sunset to view the place.

Well, maybe some were mid-day suns. I love this landscape. There’s a Windlight Magic_Hour region setting here on the LL viewer and I usually forget to use it.

My typist has been unusually efficient and productive and so I’ve gotten involved in several more projects. Because I was asked. I’ll do my best although some will not work out. Right now my mind is blank so I can’t even write about them.

This area above seems to have a few changes since I’ve been there. Months ago another blogger asked me about Roche and how to express appreciation. There are no tip jars around. I guess one could simply pay the owner through his profile. He’s there a lot and his profile states that he creates something inworld every day. It also states that he knows little English. I’ve never attempted to message him.

His avatar name is ddsm2 Mathy, called m2. His partner is hiyoko Mathy (mocha.bellic) who is often there as well. That biography says, “Leave me alone”, so it might be best not to tip there. 🙂

I wasn’t there more than ten minutes but it was memorable once again and seemed to expand time for me. This is one of the gems of Second Life and if you’re reading this and you haven’t been to Roche, I highly recommend it.

Towards More Quality Time

Tags

art, Placebo Gallery, Wendigo Lake

Life is a Force by Chris Attwell ~ Placebo Gallery in Second Life

Lately my life has expanded since my typist is having a roll of efficiency, synchronicity and flow in her life. She looks around and finds that the important things are done and since it’s rainy and windy out I get to do more things.

Today I went dancing at Junkyard Blues. My partner was great company, but I had to turn the audio back on every 30 seconds. I’m guessing now that it’s something to do with memory instead of my viewer. I used to watch hulu and be in SL at the same time; my overworked laptop!  Looking into it, I see that using a laptop and wireless, which I do, isn’t recommended. And I’m going to have to care a lot more to do anything about this.

The Wendigo Lake roleplay sim is still in beta. But some of us have been playing and whatever the character generator system will change later, I’ll just go with it. I have a werewolf boyfriend who is real life knowledgeable about World of Darkness and he’ll help me with my character sheet. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my room at the boarding house or my job as hostess at the Asian Tea House when the Vampires take over. I’m having fun now though.

Placebo Gallery in Second Life

So while I was mostly afk, I noticed that Seraphim Placebo was online. She is the curator at Placebo Gallery and I was hoping that she was placing Life is a Force by real life illustrator Chris Attwell up. I’d seen it recently on Attwell’s blog. Later I went to have a look and there it was; the cute little blue alien is still there as well.

I bought a copy and put it in my boarding house room.  I hope this thing about the new Linden Labs TOS gets sorted soon regarding textures and art uploaded.

art by Hamish Blakely from the Gallery in Calas Galadhon.

One of the ways I get to be in SL more is that lately my typist’s detector of what’s going to pay off for her and humanity and also what’s fake, shadowy, a sham and energy draining is way more acute. Just letting go of a lot of nonsense is freeing up her time and other resources.

Now she’s turning a gimlet eye to some of what I do but I’m counting on that meaning I’ll just have more quality time here.

Simplifying

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rez day

Sometimes I need to clear things out and let go. My typist has always been a natural collector. As a child she gathered leaves, rocks, bird nests and all matter of beautifully textured and colored things. Many things are like a trail of bread crumbs for her–possibly leading to the life of her dreams.

But that doesn’t work so well when you can’t find things. It’s been said that organizational skills can be learned but like so many learned things there’s no good one-size-fits-all way to do it.

My inventory is a mess and I blame my typist because she’s in charge here. She’s been randomly working on this issue a little at a time, in all areas of her life. These are some photos she played with from this year’s Hair Fair. By now there are no notes as to what stores and creators these are from but I’m sure they were gifts. It’s fascinating how hair can change an avatar’s look.

I’ve also let go of this London Skybox rental because I was never there except to change clothes. It seemed like I was living there a long time and I enjoyed furnishing it. My landlady was awesome–Chantal Eun, calling herself Milky Moo these days–and it was a good experience.

About a month ago I had my second rezday. Usually I can sense when something is up but this party was a real surprise. I didn’t consider that people still read profiles and pay attention to rez dates. This was a small group that I do Victorian roleplay with and a month later it still makes me smile.

New poseballs were tried to take a group photograph and it was like we really were drunk on champagne.

These days it’s so much easier to stay in the moment. The past and the future recede unless there’s something important to learn or understand.

A month later, this virtual rezday party seems no less real than my First Life birthday earlier this summer.

City of Roses

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Portland Connection, virtual destinations

A friend teleported me to look at something at Portland Connection yesterday evening. At first I thought I was on the mainland but later I walked around the perimeter. After we were done with the subject at hand I continued to explore on my own and it really did remind me of Portland, Oregon.

I could appreciate the vision and the way the place has a cohesive feel, if that makes sense.

I was most taken by the the Asian area of the place and it helped soothe some irritation that an astute reader might pick up on.

I’d been doing one of those add-on-to-my-already-too-long-list things when I got the request from the friend. Sometimes I do like my privacy or am feeling unsociable because I don’t feel well or am sorting through things but really, if we don’t ever have time for our contacts what are we even doing here? So I went, partly out of reaction to some of the selfish, me-in-a-bubble-of-self-importance that I’ve been witnessing lately in SL

Lovely garden.

It looked to me that the creator of this place has maintained it for five years now and somehow that felt comforting since most of SL is way more transitory, including the way I change homes.

My typist is remembering 9/11 and how the presence of the Rocky Mountains and the Flatirons near her former home in Boulder County, Colorado strengthened and reassured her. She spent a lot of time hiking and just sitting out in nature all along the Front Range as well as parts of the Western Slope. It’s painful for her to see images of the flooding there and to be aware that so many people she knew are overwhelmed now.

So she takes time to grieve and then turns her attention to effective action. Life is a gift to engage with.

While I was getting the photos ready and had written most of this, I noticed Sylvia Ashbourne on the map so I messaged her to express admiration of the sim and let her know I was going to blog about this place. Usually I don’t do that because…..well…..many builders and sim owners and administrators just want to be left alone.

She was very gracious and gave me information, so now I have actual facts which I can share with you. This place is Sylvia’s vision and was mostly built by Garnet Trilling who had done most of the work on the 21st sim, which was a Portland based sim on the Mainland.

This was founded as a place for the community that had been there to call home and to do research in education in SL. (I’m quoting much of this). I let her know I really liked the Asian area and she mentioned a Japanese Garden in the foothills of Portland. There was a virtual zoo before the garden so things do change at Portland Connection.

I asked about Halloween; her picks indicated they had done something last year–she said they’d had zombies and a haunted house and wasn’t sure about this year yet.

She told me that Grif Bamaisin does live music every Thursday at 10:00–11:00 p.m.; that explains the “Electric Brit” stuff I saw around the sim as I was exploring.

Sylvia wrote that this place is a work of love by the people who built it and who still visit and enjoy it. That is evident to me.

So how about at least one more photo:

There’s a pub, coffee shop; also retail and residential rentals.

I flew to get a final shot and noticed some trees in the distance. It’s an area I’d overlooked before.

There’s a beautiful beach to the right of the photo but that will have to wait for another day. My typist was feeling more uplifted by the time she logged off.

Happy Equinox

Tags

art, autumn, virtual home

Happy equinox, dear readers, whatever part of the planet you’re on. One of the pleasurable things about this blog is seeing that people from all over the world stop by.

I got an adorable little art cabin from Scarlet Creative. Two generous and dear friends have each offered to let me set a copy on their land. When I’m not roleplaying (or dancing) lately I’m moving furniture around and around. I’ve got five little places that I call home right now. Many avatars have more but they don’t check them at least once a day like I do, something my typist keeps a secret.

In one of the cabins I put a chaise, a rug and a table for hot cocoa and books. I’ve left the walls untextured but have recently resized paintings to more reasonable proportions, which is growth. 🙂

In the other cabin I’ve moved the Toronto Arts and Crafts set. I love having a studio.

My typist is thrilled to have found a way to begin working with encaustic in a professional studio that’s set up for it and is shared by scheduled workshops. Yesterday she had her first experience with the medium and finished four pieces. They are the least disastrous of any first-time thing she’s ever played with.

A new season and life is great!

Balance ~ Give and Take

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shopping, United Designers 5

When I saw Designers United 5 listed in the destination guide I wasn’t sure what it was. I teleported to take a look and wandered around while pondering thoughts of life and such.

There was a board showing the script amounts of scanned avatars near the landing. Mine was 0.1. There’s a script scale in the home where I change clothes, not really attractive but quite useful.

This seems to be a collection of designers and a few of their creations. It’s more artistic than just a group of vendors. Most of them I hadn’t heard of—not an area of expertise for me at all. But I saw some fascinating things. One of my favorites were koi bags with a wiggling tails. There’s also a dress with moving clouds in it and a hat that looks like a beaked skull. It comes with a unique dress and bird-like legs–I didn’t check it out really closely but these things are worth taking a look at.

It was a relaxing visit, not mentally taxing as I took in the visuals and thought about give and take in relationships.   The above picture is included simply because I like the clothes and the room.

Anyway, I’ve listened to the relationship woes of people lately in Second Life as my typist has in first life.  While the power sharing in relationships can’t always be 50/50, some people seem oblivious to the fact that their partner is getting crumbs while they are going on as though everything is about them.

I noticed a piece online about the elderly couple who do the Swiffer commercials. They’re in their 90’s and at first the advice they give might seem simplistic. It goes something like–every day each person in the relationship needs to feel loved. Each one. Both of them. Let that sink in.

That seems to be an effective guideline for all relationships, both in first and second life. Each person needs to feel they matter in the interaction. The one-sided thing is a bore and it becomes tedious to overlook the ignorance. My typist has heard sad tales of loss lately simply because the person who left never knew they mattered. They weren’t told or shown. They began to feel like fools. Or worse.

We’re all under stress and we all have important goals regarding growth and even survival. But if it’s working for you to keep your head up your ass and continue to take for granted the people who are there for you, putting up with your quirks and trying to please you, go right on doing it.

This isn’t directed at anyone in particular. I have fine, caring friends in Second Life. I’ve just observed attitudes and behavior by bewildered people who just don’t seem to get it that when they’re at the table it’s difficult to keep friends when acting like pigs while others get the crumbs.

And these were my thoughts as I looked at the creativity of designers yesterday evening.

Quick Shopping at A Clockwork Spiral

Tags

A Clockwork Spiral, shopping

A Clockwork Spiral is only open for five days so I made a quick dash over to look around. I love Steampunk and the build looks great; photography not being my first priority at all on this trip. This is it.

I happened to be wearing Medieval/Fantasy peasant clothes at the time; I enjoyed seeing some very unique and stylish avatars roaming about. In the above picture I’m resting on a Steampunk contraption; these photos make the event appear empty of avatars which was not the case.  There was some lag for me but SL had been giving me difficulty everywhere I went.

At the landing there were the usual residents standing around talking about how bored they were. Out of all the regrets I might have, I’m grateful that one of them won’t be living in the most dynamic, amazing time ever so far and not having the eyes to see the treasures all around me.

The above is a Nevermore Set by Senzafine that I’ve been admiring for a while but I have so many unused furnishings in inventory I’m still wavering.

Actually when not roleplaying lately I’ve been scouting shops, helping several people who are planning sims. Many of my suggestions and recommendations are not taken, but I’m finding the exercise to be worthwhile. I’m observing many changes in the way we create things in first life and the different ways people approach and navigate these processes. It’s fascinating to me; what people see as failures and false starts, I do not. It is rare we can have all our ducks in a row. The energies are making some appear more extreme in their quirks to the point of almost becoming caricatures of themselves.

The same in Second Life—the very real emotions people go through as they work on projects, have expectations and all that. With practice, I’m sure it will get easier. It’s just a new level to adjust to.  So, I did shop, being somewhat healed from the seemingly overwhelming mercenary aspects that had begun to grate on me in virtual reality as well as first life.

Above I’m wearing a Steampunk outfit by Pale Empress. It’s in Velvet Green which is kind of hard to see in this photograph. I will likely be wearing it as much as possible for a while. I also got an Abney Park t-shirt. It’s only available at this event and is approved by Captain Robert which is really cool. One of my favorite songs of all time is The Wrong Side. Anyway, 100% of the t-shirt sales goes to The National Kidney Foundation.

I’ve been doing things and collecting photos; just not blogging them and that’s all right with me. Cycles and all that.

Gulf of Lune

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Gulf of Lune, virtual destinations

Gulf of Lune

The day after the Calas Galadhon Park System re-opened after hiatus in August, I revisited one of my favorite places, the Gulf of Lune. I was more focused on enjoying the experience than taking photographs.

Later, I walked around in the water as I like to do here.

But when I first arrived I spent time looking at the new information and rules.

I wandered past the shops that are display only and was greeted by Truck and Ty who both looked handsome in their park ranger outfits. It wasn’t until later that I thought about a picture; I was focusing on my typonese at the time.

 The home from Sea of Nurnen is now located here.

And there are other additions as well.

In the art gallery just past the shops near the Calas entrance, I enjoyed looking at the new pieces by Hamish Blakely, which look right with the era. I bought one for my boarding house room in Wendigo Lake.

It’s great they found a way to keep the ship.

I checked on all the wildlife and felt I’d been on vacation when I logged off for the evening.

Gratitude

(away) fake Phillip Linden

My typist and I have way too much to do lately, mostly because we don’t just say no.

I was feeling harried since my plate is too full; then I saw (away) fake Phillip Linden cleaning the lot of a grungy area. Now I feel grateful that I have so many options here and that I’m not important at all so people won’t be having fake me clean dirty lots when I’m gone.

Toru

Tags

Toru, virtual destinations

I just visited Toru and took photographs using region settings except for one set to midnight to show the lights.

I got really thirsty after all that walking around.