Month: June 2021

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: A Quick and Dirty Guide to Gifts from the Second Life 18th Birthday Shop and Hop

The Second Life 18th Birthday Shop and Hop event is bigger than ever before—a whole sixteen sims of shopping! The event runs from June 17th to July 6th, 2021, and each store has a free gift for you.

Now, you could spend hours and hours fighting the crowds and lag, visit every shop, pick up every gift, then spend even more time unpacking it all. Or, you can save yourself some time and effort, and check out the bounty of SL18B gifts in two other, easier ways! This year, I am taking the lazier approach to plan my attack 😉

First, Naria Panthar has gone to all the trouble of picking up all the SL18B gifts, in the following two-and-three-quarter hour YouTube video, complete with her trademark hilariously snarky commentary as she unpacks and tries on everything! Just fast forward through the boring bits, and take copious notes on which sims and stores you want to hit, using this handy list of store SLURLs sorted by store name:

If a 2-3/4 hour video seems too onerous, Cat Pink gives you the highlights from all 16 sims in just fifteen minutes! Just remember to take notes and use the list of SLURLs sorted by store name:

Even quicker, bookmark this link, which contains brief descriptions plus pictures of each of the gifts, broken down by sim name. If you click on the date-and-timestamp of each of the 16 posts, you can see the images in a larger version. This listing is from the little-known-about SL Free and Inexpensive Items Russian-language group on Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, which often lists items I don’t see on other freebie blogs; use the Russian-to-English translator in your Chrome web browser.

See? Easy peasy! Much less wear and tear on those virtual feet 🙂

I don’t have time this year to cover all the gifts available to you, so I picked just a few to show you. (They are all from stores on the Snapdragon sim.)

From the TO.KISKI booth comes this Leah metallic party dress/top, which comes in either white or silver, plus the optional Leah pants in either red or gold. You’re all set for a night at the disco!

The Leah set from TO.KISKI

Next up we have two gifts: this lovely fawn-adorned crop top from Entice, paired with the patent leather pants, a generous present from ISON (which come in a complete fatpack of colours!):

Top by Entice and pants by ISON

Store Credit and Gift Cards

The following stores are offering gifts of free store credit or gift cards:

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATE June 22nd, 2021: I added three more stores to the store credit section (thank you, MizCarol!). In addition to the L$500 gift card, Monomania offers up this lovely pants and sweater set called Affection as a free gift:

The gift from Monomania

UPDATE June 24th, 2021: I forgot to mention that there is also a special area on the sprawling SL18B fairgrounds where you can pick up a whole bunch of free gifts from various vendors at one time (here’s the SLURL). Happy freebie shopping!!

Pandemic Diary, June 20th, 2021: Vaccinated, But Exhausted

Late yesterday afternoon, I drove downtown to the Winnipeg Convention Centre to receive my second COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer). This morning, I am feeling tired and have some muscle aches (a sign that my body is responding to the shot), so I am taking it easy. I have to wait two weeks for the shot to take full effect, and then I can relax my hyper-vigilance somewhat. I just want my pre-pandemic life back!

You will note that I have not been blogging much lately. I have been struggling with severe anxiety and depression these past few weeks. Also, I have barely left my apartment, thinking that it would be tragic if I were to become infected so close to the finish line, with the goal in sight. My self-imposed isolation only fed into my low mood. Overall, I am utterly exhausted.

So, please bear with me. I hope to be back up to full speed soon!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Another L$1 Female Head from Akeruka!

Akeruka has been giving away freebie or dollarbie Bento mesh heads (both male and female models) twice a year for the past few years. (In fact, if you had joined the [AK] Heads News & Support group for L$150 three years ago, you would have picked up no less than ten male and female fully-featured, fully-adjustable Bento mesh heads by now—which works out to only L$15 per head! Exceptional bargain.)

Well, Akeruka has announced yet another dollarbie Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible head as a group gift. Just teleport to the Akeruka store (here’s the SLURL), and pay one of the array of vendor panels one Linden dollar, and the W21 gift head is yours!

Here is what the W21 head looks like, with the included eyes, paired with the Kalhene Anya body and using one of the Bakes on Mesh skins in the Kalhene package (the Akeruka W21 head does not come with any skin):

The included HUD has a great many options, including the ability to set a range of full-face motion-capture animations (you can select more than one at a time):

This is a truly beautiful, fully-featured Bento, Bakes on Mesh head at a stellar price: L$1 if you are already a member of the Akeruka [AK} Heads News & Support group, and L$151 if you aren’t (the group costs only L$150 to join). The W21 head is only available until June 30th, 2021, so don’t delay!

Global Music Festivals Event at the LOVEHOTEL in AltspaceVR, 1:00 p.m. EST Sunday, June 13th, 2021

If you’re in the mood for music, you’re in luck! There’s an event taking place tomorrow, Sunday, June 13th, at 10:00 a.m. PST/1:00 p.m. EST/5:00 GMT in the social VR platform AltspaceVR, run by the Global Music Festivals (which had previously held events in Sansar).

Here’s the full text of the event from the AltspaceVR Events Calendar:

AN INNOVATIVE SHOW-PARTY WITH DJ’S AND FLYING CAM-DRONES. A LIVE VIDEO-ART IN WHICH YOU ARE THE SUPERSTAR!

Welcome to Global Music Festivals newest event in AltspaceVR. With Mad Paddy & DJ Celeste A music fest filmed by a professional camera crew.

Our party will take place in a surprising version of the famous LOVEHOTEL, created in a collaboration by SHUSHU & MATOcolori – with two dance floors, secret romantic rooms, online cameras with large video screens – you will feel like [you are] in a live video-clip!

Global Music Festivals runs an international festival within VR and IRL featuring DJ’s, with dedicated producer and camera crew in VR. Our best DJ’s will be playing EDM, TRANCE, GOA, TECHNO, PSY, HOUSE, NU JAZZ.

DJ Mad Paddy has been in the music industry since he was 11 and performed at many festivals, also a qualified sound engineer and light specialist. With his love for music and technology it brought him into the world of VR where he has performed for many VR events. 

DJ Celeste’s unshakable love for music and performance has led her to spend nearly two decades of disciplined study and practice to the art and science of music production, DJing and sound engineering in her continuing quest to be able to take her listeners on an irresistibly exciting and inspirational, next level …She is also one of the new generation DJ’s to be at the forefront of Virtual Djing.

Join the event in AltspaceVR, or watch the event live at:
https://twitter.com/festivalsglobal?s=11
https://www.twitch.tv/globalmusicfestivals

According to the producer of the event, Carlos Austin:

We have the two DJ’s and, four camera men in world there plus of course the public. Beautiful world created by Shushu and Marcello.. will be streamed to Global Music Festival twitch channel. Would you write a small post on your blog about it. We will start with AltspaceVR, then tour to other metaverses this coming year.

See you there!