Cartoon of the Day

By Bixyl Shuftan

Click for full-sized image

Heaven's Sky Garden Village

All cottages have been placed with care and attention, none are within the 20 meter chatting distance to ensure privacy and all cottages have been picked based on their look and design ensuring beautiful homes for every renter. Prices vary on the size of the houses and prims allowed. After all it is *your* home and should look and feel warm and relaxing. The Village consists of various different styles of cottages and for one lucky person a gorgeous treehouse with its own pool.

 There is also different social areas, the main one being the waterfall area for residents to enjoy.

No premium account is needed for here as We pay LL ourselves and you pay us ensuring everyone in second life gets a home (providing you can afford it of course)

To rent here, check the sign in front of each cottage, the fantasy picture with the house number. This is the rental box too. If it is available, it will say so above it and if it is already been rented the tenant's name will be shown instead. Simply pay the sign to begin your rental and IM either Fortunas Sands, AngelKitten Dreamscape or Schism Kappler to be added to the Heaven's Sky group. Without this any objects you place will return you need your group tag on for things to place down properly and also to set your home position here. Rent can be paid from either one week up to a month.

We are a community  for all whether you be furry, human  or whatever , this place is friendly and open to all, no harassment to anyone because of beliefs/looks will be tolerated in any way.

Heavens Sky, Devoted, (131, 247, 21)

Mars Landing Broadcasted in Imzadi Sim

The Mars Phoenix Lander, the latest of NASAs craft to explore the red planet, was confirmed to have made a successful landing on the northern ice cap at 4:54 SL time. Besides at the ISM sim, the landing was also broadcast at the Star Trek themed sim Imzadi.

At the Star Trek Museum Drydock at Imzadi (133, 125, 609), a screen broadcasted footage of NASA TV. Some computer images simulating the lander were shown, but most of the broadcasts were of the control room and it's personnel. At 4:46 PM, the craft began its entry into the Martian atmosphere, and the controllers (and the audience in Imzadi) anxiously waited, knowing that more than half of all landing attempts end in failure. Seven minutes later, the craft activated it's retrorockets, and touched down in a smooth landing, much to the relief of the controllers who burst into applause. So did the audience watching from the Trek sim.

Wabisabi Matahari, the Curator of the Star Trek Museum, as well as her real-life mother, were among the audience. So was Wabisabi's "helper" Edconnect Gulfer, who explained a few facts about the lander.

The Phoenix Lander is considered the best effort to find evidence of life on Mars, designed to examine the soil for life-supporting conditions. It traveled 422 miles over nine months to get to the planet. The craft cost 420 million dollars, not counting an additional 37 million spent by Canada. It was originally scheduled to launch several years ago, but was delayed by budget cuts. The landing site is at 68 degrees north latitude, 233 degrees east longitude in Vastitas Borealis, the Martian arctic. Temperatures will vary from -73 C to -33 C (-100 F to -28F) in the course of the 90 day primary mission.

Bixyl Shuftan

Silverscreen: "Home of the Movies in Second Life"

 By Bixyl Shuftan

 One of my friends from the Second Life Tour group, Delaynie Barbosa, told me about one interesting sim, Silverscreen.

At the teleport point, (145, 147, 33), one finds a huge amphitheater with a four-sided media display screen, which dominates the central island. Currently, it plays media of a trailer for the "Iron Man" movie. Four other islands  make up the sim. Besides flying over, one can also take a tram to and from there to the main island, which can be called over by posts at the edge of the islands (don't forget to sit in them).

The island to the southeast has an "Iron Man" prim statue and a free Iron Man avatar and AO (which you can also find behind you at the teleport point), as well as another media screen for the movie trailer. The southwest corner has a scene from the "Transformer" movie of two of the robots in a fight, Bumblebee and Barricade, as well as two free avies of them.

The northwest island is for the latest "Die Hard" movie, a scene of a fighter jet firing at a truck on a bridge. To the side are a few freebie items and teleports to other parts of the sim. The map shown suggests there were more "Die  Hard" exhibits in the past, but about all that is left of them is the free "Warlock Room" building under the central amphitheater. The northeast island is for the movie "300," a scene of some Ancient Greek buildings. One can find a free Spartan warrior outfit there, and look for the helmets, spears, and the shield elsewhere there. And like in the movies, I found a "blooper" there. On the floor was a smoldering cigar - not exactly something one is supposed to find on an Ancient Spartan set. ;-)

Silverscreen also has a group of the same name. The group charter says "Silverscreen is a multi-purpose event and exhibition venue developed and managed by Picture Production Company (PPC). Silverscreen opened to the public in March 2007, and has since hosted Q&As and expos for movies ..." The founder of the group, Danyboy Lightfoot, calls himself the manager of Silverscreen, "I've been involved in bringing movies including 300, DIE HARD 4.0 and Transformers into Second Life." He is also with the "Transformers" sim group.

*  *  *  *  *

Addition:

"When Second Life went to the movies" is what one might call this place and time. The place was made at a time when real life companies were looking to the virtual world as a place to advertise. Within months, places like this would be pretty much a thing of the past. Yours truly still has the "300" outfit and "Bumblebee" avatar, though the latter has become glitched.

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Second Life Tours Takes a Break

Some of you know about Sean Voss's Second Life Tours group, which once a week went to places in Second Life which got his attention from being unusually detailed, interactive, thought-provoking, or just plain odd. They have been a source of some of my "Explore" articles. I found them to be quite fun and enjoyable.

But on Monday, May 5th 2008, I got this notecard from him.

*****
My beloved tour group! Apologies for not getting a notice out to you earlier today. Spidey told me lots came by for the tour and she had to deliver the bad news. Due to an over active first life with work I'm not able to login to SL much these days. The ongoing technical problems have also been a major issue as well.

So I need to take a break for a few months and hope to return again then. I'm hoping you are able to stay in this group and join us again in the future. The tours have always been a great pleasure for me and want to thank anyone who has come along for one. I'll send a notice if anything changes and a tour is upcoming and when possible forward on any new landmarks that come my way.

Thanks again.

*****

I'll miss your tours Sean. I had other ways of finding out about new places, but you had the most enjoyable way of showing them.

Bixyl Shuftan

Thanks, Lindens

It seems there's been no shortage of troubles in Second Life. Griefers, lagging, blackouts, and all kinds of bugs have plagued the system from the time I first came here. And sometimes I've wondered if the designers, the Lindens, had lost sight of fixing the basics while pursuing fancy new viewers.

But what does one say when a problem that's been with you for months finally disappears?

For as long back I can remember, porting from one region to another had a chance of my avatar not messing up. Everything on me but my clothes would suddenly appear at my midsection, so my head appeared to be up my rear end, my feet were in the front of my pants, etc. It appeared on others, but for a furred avatar like mine, the results were more extreme. I called it "Porting Sickness" or "Motion Sickness." Others had a name for it more to the point, "Headcrotch Syndrome." So quite often, about half the time I ported it seemed, after greeting my friend, I'd say, "Oh, blast. Excuse me a moment, I need to clean up my avie."

It was annoying as heck, and pretty darn inconvenient. Not just for me, but those I went to talk to in-person (or is that in-avatar) other than chat through IM. But there wasn't much I could do about it other than re-rez my avatar and wait. And that's how it went for months.

Then a few days after the new version of the viewer was released, I noticed something. I hadn't had to re-rez my avatar in a while. No porting sickness. When you take a convenience for granted, one certainly realizes when it goes away. A nagging inconvenience that can pop up the next time you travel or not until several times later, well, you may not notice it for some time.

So thanks Lindens, thanks for getting rid of this darn nuisance.

Now, about my friend's inventory issues, could you get rid of the bug that makes her unable to wear her skirts?

Bixyl Shuftan