Sylvannas Zulaman has just posted a wonderfully detailed introductory guide for those new to Second Life, about how to get a job to earn some money. (And yes, there is no free money. Girl, you betta work!)
Here’s the link to her post in the official Second Life user forums. I think it’s a wonderful service to SL’s userbase. (I added my own comment about how to meet the requirement of many public-service type jobs such as host, DJ, customer service rep, stripper, escort, etc. for a modern mesh avatar without spending a fortune.)
UPDATE Feb. 25th: It would appear that there was a miscommunication from Altamura about when this promotion would end. I was told Feb. 27th and I originally wrote that in this blogpost. However, today I learned from the Altamura Design/Mesh Avatars discussion group that it actually ended at the end of the day yesterday, February 24th. George Stickler, their customer service rep, said:
I was wrong. It was until Sunday, last night.
SECOND UPDATE Feb. 25th: Due to the number of unhappy customers who believed they had until Feb. 27th and still wanted to pick up the Romeo and Juliet group gifts, Altamura has posted the following notice to their group late this afternoon:
Due to a miscommunication, Romeo & Juliet gift was removed. It WILL be back tomorrow until the 27th as was originally expected. So make SURE to bring yourself and friends along before they’re gone!!
ROMEO and JULIET fullbody GIFTS with NEW HUD are available again, in the main store. Turn on the tag ALTAMURA GROUP. Do not miss this chance!
UNTIL THE 27TH DAY OF THIS MONTH
Here’s a SLURL to take you to the Altamura mainstore, where you can find these vendors:
These are not the usual sort of freebie Altamura full-body (i..e head and body) mesh avatar which I have often blogged about before, which is limited to one skin tone and where you cannot remove the head. These are fully-featured, fully-adjustable, Omega-compatible mesh bodies, with Bento heads and Bento hands! Romeo comes in 4 skin tones and Juliet comes in 8 skin tones. You can also remove the included head. (Full details and pictures here.)
Romeo and Juliet are easily the equivalent of what you would usually spend L$4,899 on at the Altamura store (or L$7,750 if you spring for the standard-issue Maitreya Lara mesh body and a Catwa Bento head, and that’s before you buy skin appliers). All this is yours for just the group join fee of L$50 to join the Altamura Design/Mesh Avatars group, which is less than 1% of the Maitreya/Catwa combination.
Needless to say, THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING DEAL WHICH YOU SHOULD NOT PASS UP.
Even if you already have a mesh avatar with all the bells and whistles, why not pick up another full-featured mesh avatar at this price, as a backup? And the Juliet avatar is beautiful, as you can see in this picture I took of her and posted to Flickr:
Vanity Fair Wearing the Altamura Juliet Full-Body Avatar
In this picture, Vanity is also wearing the stunning Franceline gown, an SL Frees & Offers group gift from Brii (more details here).
However, several people pointed out that simply creating a user account on a particular platform did not necessarily indicate that it was actually being used. So today I am launching a new reader poll, asking:
What Social VR/Virtual World Do You Spend the Most Time In?
Last time, you could (obviously) pick more that one answer. But this time, I am asking you to narrow it down to one choice. Which single social VR platform or virtual world do you spend the most time in?
If you need more information about any of the platforms listed in this poll, please refer to my List of Social VR/Virtual Worlds.
I have deliberately not included those platforms which have not yet launched, e.g. Decentraland. I realize that there can be a somewhat fuzzy line about what constitutes “launched”, what with alphas and betas and such, but I’m pretty confident that this is the most comprehensive list of currently-available social VR platforms and virtual worlds out there. In the unlikely case that I have forgotten about a platform, readers will be able to type in their own answer in an “other” field.
Please note that, this time around, all OpenSim-based and OpenSim-spinoff-based (e.g. Halcyon) grids are ONE SINGLE CATEGORY in this poll. Please do NOT put the specific name of your OpenSim grid (e.g. Kitely, Discovery Grid, Amaryllis Grid etc.) in the “other” field! I am seeing a lot of this already!!!
This time I will keep the poll open one week, closing it at midnight on February 28th, 2019, after which time I will release the poll results and post to the blog about the results. Repeat voters will be blocked by website cookie and IP address. You will not be able to see the results of this poll until March at the earliest.
UPDATE Feb. 22nd: I have decided to change the deadline for this poll from a whole month to just seven days (mainly because I cannot block repeat voters for longer than a week). The new deadline for this poll is now midnight, February 28th, 2019.
I was feeling rather depressed this evening (for reasons that I won’t get into), and to cheer myself up I decided to do a styling challenge on one of my Second Life alts (i.e. alternate avatars), a medieval minstrel named, appropriately enough, Scarborough Fair.
And when I saw this beautiful Marisol gown at La Bella Boutique, located on their Group Gift wall, I knew exactly how I was going to pull a look together. Joining the La Bella Boutique group was free, and the gown was also free! And it’s not just a gown. It also comes with six attachments of clusters of 3 or 4 butterflies each, all arrayed as if in flight around you!
It even comes with a HUD so you can change the colour of the gown to one of seven different shades, and all the butterfly attachments to one of seven matching colours as well. (There’s also a bouquet of roses that comes in six colours, but I left that out.) And… the best part is, if you click on each of the individual butterfly attachments, it will start to flap its tiny wings! The overall effect is quite magical.
And so, to match the gown with all the fluttering butterflies, I dug through my inventory and pulled out a very old hunt gift by Evie’s Closet from the 2012 Crazy Hair Hunt, where I had spent at least an hour painstakingly retexturing each individual hair prim from brown to blonde hair textures (because Scarborough Fair is a blonde). This hairstyle also comes with many tiny animated butterflies flying around amidst the flowers and even a couple of tiny landed butterfly attachments slowly fluttering their wings! Here’s a short video of the effect, which I think is quite lovely. Very Disney princess!
Unfortunately, the hairstyle is truly a one-of-a-kind item, and no longer available. But you can still pick up this lovely gown with the butterfly attachments for free, and style your own Butterfly Queen.
(All these pictures were taken on the Lost Unicorn sim in Second Life, which is well worth an explore. It’s gorgeous!)
Note that I first found out about this fabulous freebie from the Midnight Magpie blog, which is a good source for information on various freebies to be found in Second Life.
