Is it too Late to Back Out? May 6, 2007

I made a scary decision today…I put my land and my tree house bar up for sale.  Yikes!  There were a few factors that led me to this.  One of them being that I just didn’t feel very creative in my tree house, even though I love it.  When I had my first simple bar on my bit of first land, I had constant ideas about how I wanted to improve it.  Ideas on expansion and dreams for the future.  I sold up because I didn’t like my neighbours’ ugly builds and moved to beautiful Arah to build my tree…and the ideas just dried up.  I loved the process of building something new  and the challenge of creating realistic branches, but once it was done, I didn’t know what else to do with it.  I hardly even spent any time there.  Weird?…well, maybe.  But I found a bargain piece of ocean facing property this morning and bought it on impulse.  Now unless I wanted to pay higher tier fees (which I don’t); and unless I wanted to manage two pieces of land at once (which I don’t), the only option was to get off my backside, see if I could kick my creativity mojo back into life and sell the land in Arah.  This could very well be a brilliant decision for me.  After all, creating an elven home beside the water is bound to be a lot of fun.  The tree may reappear one day (if I ever make enough lindens to afford more land!), but for now I’m going to pass it to another (hopefully) loving owner.  I’m selling the land with the tree house, bar, telepad, working swing, pose balls and furniture (including the nifty giant pose couch I’m currently flogging for L$30 a pop) all included.  Deal of the century!  Or at least I think so…  If you’re interested in living the life of a tree elf, check out the slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Arah/73/129/96.

Here I am surveying my new land.  As you can see, I’m surrounded by the usual crap that gets left lying around when a lot of land in an area is up for sale…let’s hope it all settles down soon!  I’m wearing a pair of boots from Nico Creations (slurl: Nico Island), which are my new favourite things.  And they only cost L$100, bargain!!

Elf in the City April 9, 2007

I got some good quality wandering under my belt this weekend (in between eating easter eggs…which blew the diet out the window, oops!).  I began by searching for any interesting classes to attend.  I tend to have a problem whenever I do this because being a UK Second Lifer, most classes begin when I’m fast asleep in the early hours of the morning.  Undeterred, I spotted a classified for a tarot reading class for writers at the Mystic Academy.  Specifically, it was about beating writers’ block by using the cards for inspiration.  ‘Great!’ I thought.  I have a rl deck of tarot cards (although my mum is far more adept at using them than me…spooky little lady…) and my goal in life is to be a bestselling author by the time I’m 35 (you have to have a dream, people!)  So along I toddled to the mysterious sounding Mystic Academy in Immortal Woman He.  It took me a little while to discover that I was early for the class (about 24 hours early, unfortunately!) and that I had stumbled into some sort of Academy committee meeting…oh dear!, how embarrassing!  Except that it wasn’t embarrassing at all.  I was immediately greeted and invited to sit down on a rather sumptuous sofa.  Everyone was really friendly and an Academy member called Zenny even gave me a tour of the building (thank you Zenny!!).  The Mystic Academy building is gorgeous!  It looks like a gothic castle on the outside, and the inside is full of comfy places to sit, beautiful classrooms full of particle effects and a club in the loft…where I had a cheeky go on some drums (hehe!).

Playin’ the skins at ClubMystik

What amazed me most about the Mystic Academy was the huge amount of classes on offer.  It’s like Hogwarts for adults!  Unfortunately, but as predicted, I couldn’t stay up late enough to attend the tarot class.  So what an incredible surprise it was to find a transcript of it waiting for me when I next logged in!  This was sent by Julie (whose class it was I’d missed), and was very, very appreciated.  If you’re interested in the more spiritual side of life, I strongly suggest you go take a looksie.  Here’s the SLURL: The Mystic Academy.

So, fresh from my successful wandering, I turned my attention back to the search button…and couldn’t believe what I found!  It’s finally happened, someone has recreated London in Second Life (or a small part of it anyway!).  I tp’ed into London Knightsbridge on Easter Sunday morning, right in the middle of their easter egg hunt (do I have good timing or what?).  The details here are incredible, right down to the underground station and the red buses and telephone boxes.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look!:

Been waitin’ ages for this damn train…

…I’ll have to catch the bus instead!

If you fancy a trip to ole London town, here’s the SLURLy goodness: London Knightsbridge.

Knightsbridge is also where I met Alf Korhonen, who kindly offered to show me London from the sky in his new helicopter…well how could I refuse?  Riding over the buildings in a chopper was a lot of fun, and gave me a really good view of the area.

In fact, Alf was so cool, I think it’s only fair to publish this excellent picture of him in front of his helicopter!  Who can resist a man in uniform?

Speaking of men in uniform…on Monday Alf took me to see the Britannic Virtual Airlines HQ, for which he’s the Press Officer.  So ladies, if you like handsome pilots…this is where they can be found!!  There’s even a club here (Top Gun, anyone?) although it was closed when we were there.

Cazzy wonders what an elf has to do to get a drink around here!

But personally, I think the very coolest thing you can do here is…skydive!  Alf gave me my very own parachute (wouldn’t wanna go jumping off anything without one of those!) before we tp’d to the jump platform…which was quite scary and had what looked like a diving board at one end.  Being an elf who will try anything once (well, almost anything…), I marched up to the end of the diving board and jumped…flailed in mid air for a bit before remembering that Alf told me to fly…hovered…and then…whoosh!  Out popped the parachute to ferry me safely to the ground.  Scaredy cats beware!  But if you’re more of a thrill seeker, here’s the SLURL: Britannic Virtual Airlines HQ.  I don’t know how long this SLURL will work because the HQ is moving soon to their own islands (with higher skydive jumps apparently, yay!).

Don’t look doooooowwwwwnnnnn!

Thank you, Alf, for a brilliant trip!  And now this busy little elf is all tuckered out…time to head back to the tree house for a bedtime tipple and a nice lie down.

“Ears” to the Memories April 1, 2007

I know I probably look like I’m obsessed with ears now…but I made another pair of elf ears.  Actually I made four pairs.  I decided that my flexi elf ears were looking a little plain…they needed a little bling….a little colour…they needed earrings!  So off I went on my merry way, attaching little prim hoops to my existing ears…but I hit a snag.  Inflexible prims (such as hoops) don’t seem to like staying attached to flexible prims (such as ears).  You can link them together easily of course, but as soon as you walk anywhere and your ears start moving about, your earrings resolutely refuse to move about with them.  They stay put and end up floating somewhere near your cheek, far away from the ears they are supposed to be neatly plugged into.  I’m sure there’s a way of overcoming this problem, but I couldn’t discover it.  Doh!, back to the drawing board.  So instead, I made a pair of inflexible ears; and curved them to get the same kind of slant that my other ears had.  Hey presto!, ears and earrings now link up nicely!  And because I couldn’t decide what colour earrings I wanted, (and because I own a stupid amount of hair, all in different colours, that I knew would look cute as hell if I could colour match it to my new jewellery) I ended up making the ears with gold, silver, amethyst and rose quartz earrings.  I’m pretty much loving the rose quartz earrings with some shocking pink hair at the moment…

All four pairs are now up for sale on SLBoutique (Cazzy Creations) and SLExchange.

And if you’re like me and love to colour-coordinate your wardrobe, you can also buy all of them in a bargainous megapak (“yay!” I hear you say…maybe). Now I suppose I’d better do some exploring…But before I go, I just wanted to mention a website I found today.  It’s called SL Profiles and it looks like a Second Life version of MySpace, right down to the ability to add friends and leave comments on their pages.  It looks like a really nice idea, and might prove to be a place to make new Second Life friends.  Anyway, I signed up and created a profile which you can view HERE. So if you’re a member, feel free to swing by!

So I Make Clothes Now… March 25, 2007

Thanks to the fantastic advice on Natalia Zelmanov’s blog and the free LoopRez script you can get at her inworld store…I am the proud creator of a flexi mini.  Even though it took me forever to get the rotation degrees of my panels just right…and even though for at least six hours I couldn’t understand why my flexi panels kept trailing out from my backside when I walked (I did fix this…eventually), I am so pleased with myself right now I think I may do a little dance in front of my keyboard (wait…there it is.  You obviously can’t see me doing it so you’ll have to take my word for it).  Here is what I made (in not one, but three different colours…you’re impressed, right?  Hehe).

I’ve called it the Punk Princess collection.  I also made the stockings and the little garters (stocking tops?) to match.  I had wanted a little tarten mini like this for ages…couldn’t find one anywhere.  I’d been scared of tackling clothing because if you go any further than fiddling with the appearence settings to make (really ugly) skirts and (weird shaped) tops, it looks so damn complicated.  But if you persevere, flexi skirts are really not that scary.  Not if you follow Natalia’s excellent tutorial anyway.  Here’s the link if you’re interested: Making Flexi Prim Skirts With Ged Larson’s LoopRez Script.  Ged Larson seems like a cool guy too, he made the LoopRez script and gives it away for free.  As always, my newest creations (babies…ahem) are available to buy on SLBoutique (Cazzy Creations) and SLExchange.

Demons, Knights and Leprechauns March 21, 2007

On Sunday night I attended my first fashion show.  It was showcasing sports wear which isn’t really my style, but I hadn’t been to one before so I thought I’d check it out.  There was a very mixed crowd, as you can see from the picture:

The guy behind me looked quite scary…hehe.  Unfortunately I got there too late to see most of the show, which featured a lot of UK football strips, but it seemed well put together.

This was in the Dublin sim, one of my favourite places because of the friendly people…although it’s popularity sometimes makes the lag unbearable.  But if you want somewhere fun to go, search for Dublin and check out the Blarney Stone pub…there’s nearly always something happening there and I spent one of the best nights of my second life dancing away to one of their DJs (I wish I could remember her name!  I think it was Cher something…)

Anyway…this brings me onto the subject of tonight’s adventures.  I can’t decide if I want to get involved in a roleplay sim or not.  I love the idea of being intricately entwined with a passionate community and creating elaborate storylines for myself; and most of the fantasy themed places look incredible (see Avallon Mist for example).  But I just don’t know if I can let myself go enough to really get into character.  I wandered around several sims including Second Earth (which is pretty strict on dress code…you have to wear medieval clothes and a vistor’s name tag at all times.  Everyone calls you “maid” and will randomly spring into action at a cry of “Orcs!  To the battlements!”) and Toxian City (which I just couldn’t get a feel for…although the bleak landscape of brooding buildings was impressive).  Everywhere I went, I couldn’t help feeling out of place.  I just didn’t feel comfortable.  The people in these places take everything a little too seriously; and this can become a breeding ground for the ridiculous.  Take this little incident I witnessed in City of Lost Angels, a dark roleplay, combat and sex community:

Now what you’re looking at is the result of a heated debate between a group of demons (I think they were demons!).  From what I gathered before I got embarrassed by my own blatent eavesdropping and tped away, the unfortunate demon pinned to the floor with it’s multiple arms and legs waving in the air (the one that looks like a spider) had had some kind of restricting collar placed on it by a fellow demon.  Now this is all part of the roleplaying fun, right?  Or so it should be, except that the scene became quite uncomfortable when the inflicted demon begged several times to be released, only to be struck down (I don’t know if they were stuck to the floor, I suppose they could have tped away…), all watched by the group of demons.  This too, all sounds as if it was part of the roleplay.  But I didn’t get a sense of that.  I felt that the real person behind that demon avatar was actually becoming destressed.  Now I don’t know much about the City of Lost Angels community.  I don’t know squat about that particular group of demons.  I may have just spouted a load of ignorant crap that should be deleted immediately.  What I do know is that whatever the situation was, it put me off exploring any more roleplay sims (for a little while anyway!)  I just don’t want to take a fantasy environment that seriously…and I suppose that’s why I feel I wouldn’t fit into communities like this.  But if we were all the same, the world (virtual or otherwise) would be a very boring place, right?

On a side note…City of Lost Angels wasn’t all weird cliques turning on eachother.  This considerably brightened my experience:

The woman in white (the one bending over) danced into the middle of the demon scene, swigging from a beer can and careering into anyone who got in her way…priceless!  She obviously couldn’t take roleplay seriously either.

I Love My Ears! March 18, 2007

I have often wondered why, in a world teeming with elves and fantasy creatures, it is so hard to find a pair of pointy elf ears in SL.  Yes, you can make your ears look long and pointy simply by dragging the slider in Appearance around, but your normal ears will soon get lost under most types of prim hair.  I finally found some ears I quite liked nestled away in a shop in ElvenGlen’s market, but they were a little too straight…a little too upright…There was nothing for it, I had to try and make my own ears!!  So today I finally got around to giving it a go, and I am really happy with the results.  I made my ears flexi ears to make them more realistic; and they’re a little longer and more tilted than my previous ones.  I’ve put them up for sale on SL Boutique (http://www.SLBoutique.com/Cazzy_Ewry/) and the Exchange if anyone wants a pair of their very own.  I’m so pleased with them I think I’ll have to go now and find somewhere to show them off!

“Ears” lookin’ at you, kid (sorry, that line was truly terrible!)

Empty World…Pt. Two March 10, 2007

I just wanted to add briefly to last night’s post.  I finally got Quicktime installed on my computer, went back to Life 4-U and watched their news programme.  I wanted to mention it because it was awesome!  It was very impressive and well put together…looked just like a rl news programme in fact.  The only thing I didn’t like was the help sections, they had someone demonstrating how to use avatar poses and how to build.  This is slightly boring if you’ve already been in SL for a while and know the basics; and I’m certain this information can easily be found elsewhere.  But apart from that, I highly recommend it.  Very exciting.

Empty World…But not so Empty Comments March 9, 2007

I call myself a wandering elf…and so I am, traversing the vast landscape we call Second Life and often leaving the haven of my tree house for hours at a time.  I came upon a fantastic premise in world today….Second Life’s first TV station has apparently arrived.  It’s called Life 4-U and promises to deliver SL news.  I loved the concept…and tped in straight away.  As I’ve found is common in SL lately (maybe it’s down to time zone differences, or maybe I’m just unlucky), the place was deserted…but I was impressed by the sight that greeted me.  An entire TV studio, complete with cameras.  Unfortunately, even after following the instructions and switching my preferences to view streaming video…no magical TV channels or functions materialised.  It took me a little while to realise that I no longer had Quicktime installed (one of the perils of sharing your rl computer with someone who hates Apple), which you need in order to view the stream.  I did, however, get to snatch a quick sit down at one of the nearby computer terminals.  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing at said computer, but my tired feet thanked me for it all the same. 

 

Go see it for yourself (or not, as the case may be, hehe): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Big%20Bit/72/72/26

On a separate note, after reading Imstill and Hybel’s extremley flattering comments about my tree home *blushes*, I’ve realised my failure to provide a slurl (slaps head and says doh! several times).  So here it is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Arah/73/129/96  Please feel free to drop in and grab at drink at my tavern…elves and non-elves most welcome!  Hint: When you hit the landing coordinates, fly up!

Tonight We Dine in Hell February 25, 2007

Although they annoy me when I’m trying to build, more often than not I find griefers hilarious.  I remember being in stitches when a fat, naked silent woman continally assulted my welcome area when I was a newborn noob.  On more than one occasion, she appeared and ran around, handed out sex toys to bemused bystanders and humped people while playing sex noises.  I’m sorry…but every time it happened I laughed so much I almost fell off my chair.  Damn, I wish I’d thought to take a picture.  What I saw today though, just made me shake my head and say “WHAT??”  I was happily flying over some furry territory when I was stopped in my tracks by some (now famous after the whole Anshee Chung debacle) floating penises.  People on the ground below were shouting obsenities at each other…along the lines of “yo furry mama is sooo fat…etc. etc.”; and it was basically obvious that I had stumbled into a furry war zone.  But what left me really scratching my head was this: Someone shouted “Tonight we dine in hell”, just before I was unjustly imprisoned in a giant box.  The inside of my cell was tastefully decorated with photos of real penises.  There were penises with pus coming out of them and penises being snapped and cut in half.  Why would some one have invested time and money (for uploads) to make this??  Bizarre and unsettling…I preferred the naked humper.

Anybody order a penis?

My Enormous Couch February 19, 2007

So I’ve created a big couch for my new bar (because everyone wants somewhere comfortable to sit while they’re drinking!).  I scoured SL Exchange first, to see if I could buy one.  Nothing there really took my fancy…but I did get a good idea after seeing a large square sofa.  I wanted my couch to be similarly big and squishy looking….and I would build it myself.  I was so pleased with the results that I made it in three different colours, with a view to selling them myself.  I’ve been trying to make it in the fickle world of SL retail for a while now.  Interestingly, I’ve never sold anything on the Exchange.  I have two prefab bars I’ve built on there, one is in a celtic style and one is a vampire/gothic type affair, and now of course I have the three jumbo couches up for sale.  Today I thought I’d try out SL Boutique.  I loved that you can set up your own page for your store…you can also change the colour scheme and upload a banner…very cool!  But what I loved even more was that less than an hour after uploading my items, I had sold one celtic tavern and one couch.  Woo hoo!  My first sales ever!  Makes me wonder if I should continue paying L$75 a week to rent retail space at the Beach Comber Mall in Hundertwasser…from which I’ve never sold anything either.  SL Boutique rocks!  Oh, and if you’re bored (or curious), here’s my store page: http://www.SLBoutique.com/Cazzy_Ewry/

This is one of my newest friends, Elena, who kindly agreed to model my couch for me (hehe!)  You definitely meet some very nice people in sand boxes.  Granted, sometimes you also meet griefers who are only interested in covering you with annoying green mist, making it impossible to continue building there because you can’t actually SEE what you’re doing…but thankfully that doesn’t happen every time.

I had fun positioning my freebie pose balls on the couch (I’m being sarcastic by the way).  I’d never used pose balls in my builds before and getting them into places where the sitting positions looked natural…hmm, that was hard!  I finally had to sit on each pose ball and then move it into position with me on it…which must have looked very strange to everyone else in the sand box.  LOL!