RL and SL

Welcome to Suburbia!

This has been excruciatingly slow. I guess everyone who has done it will have their own stories about the difficulties of separating from a spouse. No need then to catalogue mine here. Today I got served notice by the government land authority to finalize the sale in 14 days or else. It's not my fault
sigh

Never the less! I am feeling optimistic! I think I should have things sorted before 14 days. I really do! And the builder isn't even going to wait for the land to be in my name! He has paint marks on the ground and an excavator booked to come dig my block.


My dining room is now more than 2 layers deep. I really am ready now. The time it will take to build will be exciting and agonising because I am so ready for the next thing.

SL is really about my 6th life these days. I check the bunnies and pay tier and that's about it. Taking this photo caused me to crash twice.
I gave another online game a shot. This is me as a wizard. It held my attention for a couple of days but honestly without the building component, it just doesn't ring my bells. I have run up and down streets fetching messages for the wizard world and casting spells but... it isn't SL My name in there is Grace Spellsomething or another. Should be Ghrace Spell Badly

Mr and Mrs Claws

more Moppets

School Girl Moppets

I was in the mood to build and was thinking about some of my cute biggee outfits...

Home

A lot of my writing over the last three years has been about home:

At the moment I feel like I am in my end days with SL mainly because I will have to stop owning land for financial reason. So for now i am throwing a bit more time and energy enjoying my SL homes properly before I have to leave them.

This is where my bunnies used to live. The bunnies have all but gone now, so finally i am moving prims, and getting myself comfortable.
This sim is amazing. Syn does wonderful deals with land and these prims cost me only 1.18L per prim per week.
I just might be able to afford to keep this one block when it is all said and done, but I am torn then because my Caledon land means a lot to me, even though it costs more. It means more for several reasons, and not the least has been the care that Des has taken of me at a few difficult times. I will continue to procrastinate over the decision for as long as possible. Fortunately, without those ravenous bunnies chewing up my money, rent in SL doesnt seem so bad.

Caledon Tanglewood

I have passed the Caledon Tanglewood property on to a new owner. With Bunny food and so many bunny prims to pay for, I needed to cut back. Tanglewood isn't one of my most expensive places... but with fewer prims it is less economical. Always those few left over prims that can't be utilized. Anyway, a parting photo of Bunyip Bend

A result!

So I bought the bunny warren...
and I fed the bunnies for weeks
I have given them all the surname Heath so I can tell which come from the warren quickly without having to remember. Heath because they sit on hay, which reminds me of Famous 5 who were forever making beds of heath...
Anyway I got a common gem here, the occasional half lop there... and a whole host of bunny genetic mess. And I was having to hatch lots of nests just to keep the boy:girl ratio sorted. I have been trying to give away all the boys i have accumulated but the action there is slow.
Anyway, a diamond eye came up a few days ago. Thats a bit better than the amethyst ones I had been getting.
Then yesterday I got a full lop, amethyst eyed, radiant amber dutch. Dutchies are my favourites.. but I have a trillion of them already... but still it was a good one.
Cute, huh?
I didn't dare think that my bunnies were warming up to anything but still I held my breath as usual today as I did the rounds....
Lexi Heath, a first generation warren bunny was sitting with a nest......
(that's Lexi in the front)


and nearby lurked a second generation bunny, Rusty. Clearly tuckered out form messing with his aunt!

I touch the nest... and...

Mother: Lexi Heath
Father: Rusty Heath2
Fur: Argent - Creme d'Argent
Eyes: Dark Pink
Ears: Half-a-Lop
Shade: Classic
Creme d'Argents are rapidly becoming common, but are the last rare-ish thing left now. And besides that! they are sooooo pretty.. don't you think?

Above Caledon Downs

A new space I have created-very restful

Bunny Mania

Now I explained that some rabbits are rarer than others?
Well I think the truth is.. nothing is rare enough! Or not long anyway!
I got keen to be ahead of things and bought the warren. I couldn't breed those bunnies fast enough and so far the best they have come up with is a bit of a lop and a diamond eye.
Quite unimpressive.

So I put my hand in my pocket and bought two Hotots.

The Eyeliner Bunny
So far my experience has been that buying without research has meant a lot of wasted money as bunnies have thrown random babies. So I chose bunnies with a good background. ~Foggy~ and ~Henrietta~.
These two little bunnies did what they should and after they turned 7 days old, they mated and I added Hot to Trot to my warren. He is a charming boy, just like his dad. No naughty recessive.
I placed him for sale and in a week I haven't had one single interested buyer. Sigh
Now his sister has arrived. I have decided to rent a place in a more populated place but I have this sneaking suspicion that all the markets are populated by people just like me.. people trying to sell bunnies that started too late.
As soon as I can gather enough strength of mind, I will gather my bunnies and pop them into inventory. No point giving them away at the poor prices that bunnies are now attracting.
The up side has been that in the last month I have seen more of SL than in the two years before.
Also I have seen a lot of better building. I think the places I have stayed have become complacent.
I am going to have to figure out how I am going to do better sculpties as the world is marching on!

So, anyway!
I have put Hot to Trot and Hetty Trot for sale together as sibblings.

When you mate siblings you can get mutants so it can attract a premium.
They are up for offers at Moon Rise.

I have a stall there and have peppered photos of the sim here.
It's a cute place :)

Not a Lot..Actually this gets quit long..but not Much of Interest

What's been happening?
Not a lot.
I have been away and working so my SL has been more like my 3rd or 4th

But I am holidays now for a few days, and while I still have to make a block for this month's MBOM quilt (it will have owls.. lots of them) I do plan to spend a good portion of time in SL.
Yesterday I decided it was time to work on some scripting.

I have made a tiny dress with flowing tentacles for the skirt and decided it needed something to wear with it on my head. So.. Googly eyes on curly eye stalks seemed the way to go!

More and more I am working on going a little further with my building. Keeping up with the crowds of people in SL making things. The people I admire are constantly moving the goals and while sometimes I don't feel in the mood to keep learning, essentially I don't want to be left behind.

So! If I am making googly eyes, simple balls on sticks are not going to be enough. I wanted them to wink.

Ahhhh well I could skip the bit where it took me hours. Looking up scripts in the wiki, going through all the scripts in my inventory and trying to see how I might do this. But then there really wouldn't be anything here to read.

A fun script I have used in the past has a torus close its hole on touch. What I wanted was a sphere that opened and closed its dimple on a timer. What I hadn't realised I wanted was for that to happen simultaneously for as many eyes as I chose to give myself.

So I needed a script to control the parameters and a script to act as a timer. And to work out how to put the two together as I don't understand the grammar of LSL. (Jo: if you are still reading this blog, scripts are the programs that make the chunks of graphics do stuff in SL).

I stared at a lot of scripts. Trying to find the patterns. Trying to see what I needed and where I should substitute. The change params was in the LSL wiki and was much more useful than the torus one I stared at for ages.
I needed that timer still. Finally after a bit of browsing I ended up at a site I have been to before

http://www.3greeneggs.com/autoscript/

that generates a script on demand. There are only a few options but one, "move an object" sounded like I would easily be able to identify the timer part of the script and the "move" part and swap in my "change parameters" script.

Blow me down! It worked.
I had a blinking eye.
I copied it.. I had two blinking eyes...... that didn't blink together.
sigh

I linked, saved to inventory and hoped that when I rezzed them, they would blink together.
Sure enough they did. Amazing!

Fiddled with the timing to get the blink faster and lost the synchronisation. Bother. Somehow I had deleted the saved working copy. And then spent another hour trying to insert a line of "reset script on rezzing". Which promptly killed the whole thing every time.
.........gnashes teeth.

I came back to SL a few times between domestic chores and finally decided to unlink and relink. One eye had been the prime prim just by accident. I linked it with an unscripted prim being prime, took to inventory......
...... and they are blinking together at last!

I know this stuff is easy for some folk. And I am not writing these things from scratch so I am not any version of a genius. But I do take quite a lot of pride in these achievements. When I went to Uni, the computer sat down the hall in a few rooms by itself. It was a DEC-10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10

Truth is I had the very slimmest of understanding what I was doing. We were programming the simplest adding of columns of figures. And I was way out of my depth. To me, it was a very inefficient calculator.
After that the nearest thing to a computer in my day to day was an autoteller. I left work after a while, had kids and returned to work which had been transformed in my absence.
Fortunately... very fortunately.. I had got into quilting while out of the workforce, which has a very strong on-line community. So I started playing around on a computer at home. I published patterns which required me to teach myself Word and how to use a graphics program.
So slowly I have been exploring and learning this world that my kids have grown up in and take for granted.

It feels pretty good to make eyes blink.

oh

I am sitting stunned
sad
relieved
something
not sure what

I moved into Southend in 2008 when I needed somewhere to hide from the troubles I was having in Fathom. The first block was bought by my alt, Heppi Swashbuckler. But as the end days of Fathom played out, I kept my ears to the ground and heard that Wrath was selling the two blocks on the corner. One of them was originally owned by an avatar called Cogsan. Cogsan had been a fairly horrible episode in my life and so it was odd to end up with a plot of land some how connected to her.

Anyway, in a farcical moment, Heppi and I met with Des, while Rory dropped in to bother Des and Brioni came over to say "hi" ....I ran through my house between computers while the two girls swapped land holdings til it was all sorted and Auds owned the three blocks. Rory got kicked out for good, Brioni must have thought I was crazy and I dont know that Des has ever quite trusted me since!

Time passes and I have been pretty much a model citizen since.. But time has come to make some decisions and one is that it would be better to have a smaller commitment for my credit card to have to manage. A while ago Muse asked me if I was interested in selling. At that time I wasn't but it did plant a seed so the next time I heard some one was looking, I mentioned to Mr Edward that I might be able to tear a bit off my parcels.

That much achieved without too many tears, when Alastair asked me if I was willing to sell him a piece.... well I said yes before I could change my mind. He was quite kind, realising the emotional ties I have there and offered to include a small parcel of his from Southend. A drastic downsizing.
But it will save me quite a bit per month and will hopefully mean that with my little sales of houses and moppet stuff, I may actually be able to run Second life cash neutral. Which in the long term is the only way I will be able to do it.

Don't ask me how I feel about it right now though, as I may cry

Too Much Fun- this should be illegal

I have finished
Heels puff, ankles spin, and fruit, heart and prims whirl in the Belly of the Bunneh. Cunning bunny goggles sit on my head and my bunny tail lights up all behind me!
I bought myself the sheep tiny last week, and she looks completely gorgeous in a rose dress.. but a lot more funny when dressed as a Bunneh!

Another night

I have wasted a colossal amount of time. Making houses is sooo much more time consuming when compared with tiny dresses.
I have hunted for a nice round brick window texture without success. I have played with getting a texture onto the gable wood texture. Am annoyed.
Lifted the roof, lowered the wall, lowered the roof, lifted the wall and so on... arrggghhh
But I think you will be able to see the movement...

News!

I have bought a plot in Victoriana Forrest! I told you I liked it there!
Now I have a little slice!
I like that Victoriana is a bit tidier than Caledon and I like that there are dots around in the ozzie hours! I like that it is smaller. I like playing in the games room in my ozzie evening. I like having a new project that is just for the fun of it, nothing commercial.

Fogwoman Gray and Vivito Volare

I met Miss Fog and Mr Volare while helping to build the Caledon exhibit for SL5BD. Mr Volare was the coordinator and Miss Fog his right hand woman.
Since then they have treated me to a few snippets of the story of their relationship which began in SL and is to continue in RL with them being married this week.
Two kind, generous people meeting and sharing interests.
It is something I watch with interest, the blossoming of an Internet friendship into a RL relationship.
It isn't something I find much acceptance of in the "real world" but I think that really it is only a matter of time before it is sufficiently common that people forget that ever there was a doubt about the validity of these relationships.
The Internet, like RL is full a mix of people. That part isn't different. Meeting and getting to know someone via TXT and not physical appearance is different. And the moment when you meet the physical person you think you already "know"... that has to be nerve wracking!
Vito and Fog have been there, done that! And on Thursday they marry!
I think anyone who knows them would agree it couldn't happen to nicer people. I wish them every scrap of happiness!

Not.... lonely

http://tinyurl.com/yh2sp3s

My sl has changed
No two ways about it
My rl is busier. And my SL is spent mostly on my own building.
Chatting in IM I hear from Xavier and Jayleden. I listen to ISC and throw in my few bobs worth at random, but I am not where I was 12 months ago when I felt myself in the depths of good friendships.
Is it my fault? have I isolated myself? Is it just the nature of things? Is it a change throughout SL?
I don't know, but it isn't the same anymore.
I miss the people who used to pop by to say hi.
The neighbourhood feeling of Winterfell has never eventuated in Caledon.

It seems the Southend corner is being visited often enough by strangers looking at my homes. But not my friends looking for me.

Not about to launch into a valley of tears as there is so much more going on in my life besides SL but I do pause and reflect and hanker for some aspects of the good old times. Only some mind you :P

Tinytoriana

I have fallen in love with a new collection of sims: Victoriana. I visited there first over a year ago when the first sim was fresh and new and haven't had time to go back to investigate. I went off to to see the Frankston house that was bought and placed there and i am quite taken with the place.
I roamed around in the Forest sim completely lost. i have gone back again and again and i still have no way of telling where I am. I would love to own a little place in that sim.

Meanwhile, I cant afford to. I would have to sell off one of the 4 in Caledon or the shop in Raglan and i cant quite decide to do either of those, so I have rented a small shop in Tinytoriana. I am really enjoying both the scenery and the company I have bumped into there.

I have rented the shop on the corner here and have filled it with tiny clothes. I have been having fun with tiny Halloween. This is me in my Bloody Erzsebet Moppet outfit

Dress making once more

I have a completely meaningless way of filing textures.... by month. It is hopeless if I need something unless I remembner when I made it, however, i do know when i made them if I can find them :)
So I happen to know that I haven't made any dress textures for a month. Amazing!
Well today, without actually feeling like I have been stuck into it, I have been stuck into it!
I have made two styles for Halloween. A punkin dress and a spider dress so far.
The spider dress is called Charlotte Moppet, as I was thinking of Charlotte's Web and the punkin one has a little punkin beret on her head :)

Progress Report

I have been building. Naturally.

Well I had to, there are only so many skins a girl needs and my income in SL isn't so large I can be buying dresses everyday... Anyway, I am currently putting some furniture into it. Hunting through inventory, making and buying stuff. I do have the Baron's suite which I pop out any time I need a comfy chair and prims to spare.

I have photographed the two ground floor rooms.

Walk in the front door and you walk straight into the lounge. The lounge can take you through to the study on the same floor, up the stairs to the first floor or out the back through the french doors.

If you look back into the room, you will get this view of the front entry. I have since added a coat rack to the front hall.

The room off the lounge could be a formal dinning room.. but I have set it up as a study.

Tomorrow night, maybe, I will furnish the upstairs rums.

Red Sun

I have been walking around SL in the Changeant dress that I bought from Cutea of Grim Bros. I cant tell you how many compliments I have had since i have been wearing it!
So I sent Cutea an IM so that she would get the kind of positive feed back she deserves. Silly sausage sends me another dress!!
Here it is!
Gorgeous!
Harder and harder to know what to wear with new favourites...

Athena Zepp, Victoriana and the Frankston Villa!

No time to blog really, I need to get in to work as I am to fetch coffee for the workers... but briefly...
Athena is the first person to buy the Frankston Villa as it has been named ( some one really needs to give me a hand with names for things...looking pleadingly at Taz.....)

She sent me a photo of the newly erected building and I had to go and have a look.

She has done a magnificent job. It looks wonderful and she has furnished it tastefully and appropriately. I am really thrilled!
While I was there admiring her gardening she arrived and I gave her a hand and I have fixed the patio to suit her location too.

I guess in a sim built by Littleblack Duck, another Ozzie, I should hope to find an empathetic neighbourhood for my little Edwardian :)