First to get five in a row wins!!
Second Life Bingo!
First to get five in a row wins!!
Month: October 2018
An Update: Leaving My Second Life Avatars to Other People Via My Will (and Why Cancer Is Still Part of My Life)
By the way, even though my recent cancer scare is over, I am still actively drawing up my list of acquaintances, friends and family to whom I will leave all my Second Life avatars in my will.
(If you have already responded, thank you! And I will be in touch with you before the end of October. So far I have had about a dozen people send me messages, by email or in-world.)
Here’s the alphabetical list for you to peruse. The following four avatars are already spoken for:
- Nada Nix (my goth girl avatar) I have decided to leave to Jenn (a.k.a. Xiola Linden), the Community Manager for Second Life at Linden Lab.
- Rose Queen (my Caledon/steampunk/Victorian older woman avatar) is going to Blush Bravin of the Second Life brand Blushed (a.k.a Debi Baskerville in SL and Sansar).
- Scarborough Fair (my medieval roleplay avatar) I am leaving to Solas NaGealai, co-owner of Silvan Moon Designs in Second Life.
- Vanity Fair (my fashionista avatar) I have decided to leave to Strawberry Singh. I know that she will take good care of her!
And, if you are hesitating because you don’t really know me, except through this blog, please don’t. I still need to find homes for most of these avatars before I shuffle off this mortal coil! Don’t get me wrong—I plan on living a long and healthy life, and reaching a ripe old age, but you never know what can happen! And I would hate to think that all my creative work will go into the pixel bin….
All I ask is that we have at least one good, long, in-depth conversation (via phone, chat, or IM). I simply want to know who you are (and what you plan to do with my avatar) before I leave you one of these avatars, on which I have spent a great deal of time, energy, and (in some cases) money.
And, if you don’t want me to publicize your name, I can certainly honour that request too; just let me know in advance. I’d much rather leave these lovingly-created and outfitted avatars to people who actually enjoy and appreciate Second Life, as opposed to people who never use SL. And I know from my blog statistics that I do get a lot of visitors from SL. Thank you for your consideration. Here’s my contact page.
By the way, cancer is still very much a part of my life. My best friend in real life recently underwent surgery for serious prostate cancer, and he has learned that this cancer has spread and that he will soon have to undergo testosterone suppression therapy and radiation treatment. I feel afraid, angry and sad, and I also feel guilty that I’m OK and he’s not. He was back in the hospital for a couple of days due to blood clots in both his lungs after his surgery, but he is at home resting and recovering now. Please keep my friend John in your thoughts and prayers.
Relay in Life for Second Life now has a very special meaning for me. Please consider supporting this annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. You can also consider making a donation to the Canadian Cancer Society. Thank you!
Aether City: A Brief Introduction
Well, whaddayaknow? I turned over a rock and discovered yet another blockchain-based virtual world!
Aether City is a new virtual world (city, to be more accurate) that uses the Ethereum blockchain to register property ownership.
The only way to explore Aether City is via their web browser, which is currently rather limited in functionality. You can buy units or entire buildings, such as this central skyscraper whimsically named “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”:
According to their website:
A unit is the smallest unit of property ownership in Aether. It is a property that is defined by its coordinates occupying an area of 10 m³. A unit is a part of a building and is adjacent to neighboring units. The owner of a unit determines its appearance, fills it with content, and has the ability to connect the unit to its own domain.
However, there doesn’t appear to be any way to actually build content within your units yet. All you can do is put in a link to the property’s domain page. Rather limited. (At least Decentraland already has a working command-line editor that allows builders to create and deploy test scenes.)
I bet that the team behind Aether City, Aether Labs in Waterloo, would just kill for the kind of media attention that Decentraland is getting. But sadly, it would appear that the project is moribund. There have been only two Medium posts about it (Feb. 4th and March 11th of this year), and not a word since. Their Discord has seen no discussion at all since May 11th, and their Telegram channel has seen absolutely zero chatter, with only a couple of company-posted pictures of their bland, rather uninspiring-looking city:
Frankly, I’m not sure exactly why anybody would want to spend their hard-earned cryptocurrency on this. The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace building is for sale for 10 Ethereum coins (approximately US$2,000) if you’re interested. I think I’ll pass.
Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: NEWCLOVER
If you’re looking for the latest in hipster clothing for your trendy male avatar, have I got a deal for you! The back half of the NEWCLOVER store is all marked down to zero! That’s right, everything is free!
Now, the sign says the sale is only until Oct. 17th, but I was still able to pick everything up for free today, so you might want to hurry down, just in case it all ends soon. If you join the NEWCLOVER group for free (there’s a sign at the entrance), you can also pick up a nice free group gift, packed full of men’s clothing.
Here’s one hipster look I was able to put together. Everything except the sneakers is from NEWCLOVER:
This avatar is wearing:
Bento mesh head: Keiji head by Akeruka (no longer available for free). If you haven’t yet joined the Akrueka group (called [AK] Heads News & Support) for L$150, you should really consider it. If you had joined the Akeruka mesh heads group a year and a half ago, you would have picked up no less than six fully-adjustable Bento mesh heads (three female and three male), all for a single group join fee of L$150. That works out to only L$25 per Bento mesh head, a truly outstanding deal!
Bento mesh body: The free Altamura Robert avatar from the Freebie Megastore at London City (see here for more details). One advantage of this body is that you can remove the head to use another mesh head with it (as I did here).
Hat: Fedora hat in black from NEWCLOVER
Coat and sweater: Neo coat in black check from NEWCLOVER
Pants: Neo slacks in black from NEWCLOVER
Sneakers: I’m pretty sure I picked this pair up from the men’s section at the excellent freebie store on the Ajuda SL Brasil sim; I’m not sure if they are still available, though.
Total cost of this avatar: L$150 (the group join fee for Akeruka)