Enjoying the new Island and trying something new...

I'm really enjoying my new home and have been spending a lot of time on the new homestead. My mind is still set on making things to sell on SL and now with the new home and new family I want to keep for as long as possible I want to be making some money to help support. So while struggling with university work I had a think about what I liked in SL. The one thing that has always interested me since the new tattoo layer came along with viewer 2, making it possible to have face tattoos that aren't a dodgy prim that sometimes disappears into your face. I was so excited to get free guyliner from A:S:S then having to fork out L$1000 for another skin from Den-Duo. Don't get me wrong, I love Den Duo skins but I wasn't prepared to pay up that much for something I wouldn't wear that often. Now people can have awesome make up and designs without having to change their skins. This got me thinking on a little predicament I had when choosing my skin when I first created Derren. Facial hair. At the beginning I wanted facial hair but no skins I tried suited my shape. Then when I finally decided on a Den-Dou skin none of the facial hair on the skin I chose worked. They just looked odd. I do have a prim soul patch I wear from time to time but it's not insanly detailed.

So I decided to have a go at making facial hair as tattoo layer. It took me a couple of attempts to work out how big it should be on the template to work but for a first attempt it wasn't too bad.

If I can get the detail right I think it could sell well seeing as there isn't anything like this out there yet. After testing it on Garrett's Belleza skin it looked okish but needed a lot of work. Top skin brands like Belleza, Abyss, Redgraves etc are going to be most popular so will have to fit with them to look good. Plus also going to have some sort of generic male face shape so things like soul patchs and goatees fit properly. The plan is to work on goatees, sideburns, stubble etc. I'm hoping my skills in photoshop are enough.

Bed time for me now. Leave off like a usually do with a couple of vids. Firsts a funny and seems to be exactly how I play "I Spy".

Second dedicated to the lover cos I haven't for awhile and I love him so much for making such a wonderful home for us..and generally being awesome.

Holiday Happenings.

We currently have no internet at the moment but my Dad was nice enough to lend me this Vodafone connector so I can at least check my e-mails and such. Unfortunately can't connect to SL so hopefully the internet will sort it's self out soon.

Christmas Eve was generally a quiet one. I uploaded some christmas money I got and went crazy at A:S:S. With all the money to Amnesty International I wanted to donate some of my cash to this cause. Plus I got loads of cool new stuff so win win!

After shopping, Franzi sent out the final message from Tidra and the closing of the sim. I had taken some footage but not really any photos. I took advantage of the quiet moment I had and TP'd over to Tidra to take some final photos and say one last goodbye. Though I hadn't spent long on Tidra it was a big turning point in my Second Life. Ever since I joined SL back in April 2008 I never thought I would join anything like Gor. But after my short RP on the island I have more respect for it as a roleplay and how important it is to some people. Everyone at Tidra was so kind to me and welcomed me with open arms and though times, minds and situations have heavily changed over these last couple of months, Tidra will always be an important chapter in my Second Life. For one last time I got into my white silks, strolled around and took some pics.

 After awhile, whether I felt too emotional or felt I didn't really belong there, I said my final goodbye and tp'd home.

I spent most of the evening chatting with Rammy. I had only met him a couple of times but never really had any deep conversations. The one funny thing Rammy mentioned was a guy who obviously didn't speak english that started asking for the old pixel bumpage like most guys do. What he didn't know is the guy had asked me that very same day for sex while I was playing Sparkle at Spankies.

Rammy and I hanging round with big red balls

A evening talking of random nothings with someone new made me feel kinda refreshed and I was also lucky to catch a cuddle with Tel before I headed to bed. He had spent most of the night cleaning up his stuff from Tidra and I didn't really want to disturb him. I knew how close he felt to the place so wanted to give all the time he could before having to say one final goodbye.

Christmas day was pretty laid back compared to most Christmas days. I got up stupidly early which I didn't plan and just went about the day of family and festivities. Even know my brother peeves me to my limits it was nice to have him there that day. Only him can make me laugh from just two words like "big ones" when it comes to talking about hermaphrodites.

Boxing day was lovely as I was surprised with a homestead! I really kinda hoped Tel would wait a moment a let his RL finances build a little but I also knew he couldn't wait for it. We now have a beautiful homestead to share along with his SL son Spanki who I hope I can get to know more. He even gave me only little private island to get some alone time when I need it.

Sebby and Murdoc love the new open space.

My own lil private island on the side of the homestead

Tel and I enjoying a cuddle as the sunsets.

Sharing a place and being part of a family is kinda scary for me. Especially after the year I've had and after the way I was treated by Callum. I see high hopes for 2011 and this is pretty much the perfect way to start.

So Christmas...

So it's Christmas eve. I know many who are excited and many who are not feeling it this year. Those who will be spending it with family or with friends and those spending the day alone. I can do nothing more then to wish you all the best wishes for the day and for the new year.

Oh yeah and have some Mr Bean!



Merry Christmas everyone :)

New CEO at LL

Looks like they announced the new CEO of Linden Labs today.
http://lindenlab.com/pressroom/releases/12_23_10

From what I've seen and what he's worked on it look like a promising start to the new year. Lets hope he can breath some new life into this little virtual world of ours.

Just some vids!

Just some vids that made me smile today!

Competitive? Me?

Sparkle (Which is the SL version of Bejewelled) is the lastest game from Ember Games and a rather good filler to my boring 'I can't be arsed to do anything else' moments. PJ got a copy for the club and I've been playing it from time to time to see if I could get onto the score board. Dell had completely ruled the board for awhile so enough was a enough. It took me awhile and many attempts but...well...I don't like to toot my own horn but!

http://www.embergames.co.uk/scores.php?id=e09cc505-b067-2363-368e-46f598aa9537

Not only did I..well..basically THRASH dl but I'm also in the top ten in the whole of SL. So yeah. Go me! :>

Frodo gave out a gift to everyone at Spankies. Including one of his awesome hologram boys and an outfit for which I will model for you.....now!

Christmas Card

Decided to do a Christmas card this year as I don't really send them out in RL.

Decided to draw it seeing as everyone send Christmas cards of their avies...usually wearing very little and usually in front of a fire place. *rolls eyes* Hehe I still like getting them.

I was filming some footage of Tidra last night when my internet decided to konk out. Lucky it's working this morning. Can't live without it O_O Will hopefully grab some more footage tonight and start editing.

Time for the feel good anthem of the year!

More reason to shop at this store.

A:S:S is one of a favourite stores in SL. I'll be saving up some lindens and buying out everything I don't have from this guy for this very good cause.

A:S:S - Another Stupid T-shirt Shop: Merry Christmas

Playing with Blender

As a head start to my plan to create things for SL I've been getting myself into Blender to create some sculpties. I've only really looked at very basic tutorials on youtube just to get a hang of the controls of Blender and have hunted down a couple of tutorials on how to make them into sculpty maps and import into SL. All needing my up most attention which is something I don't have very much of. But I've had a play around and I'm getting there.

This is my first object. I'm a big fan of Adventure Time and wanted to make myself a Finn hat. I think it's looking OK besides from the ear things. Need to be less pointy. Knowing it there's something I've missed out that is vital to making a sculpty and I'll have to start all over again XD

Snow and thoughts for the New Year

Heh, after a month of the news reporting of blizzards and snow storms we finally get some snow. I had some insane insomnia last night due to cold and a busy brain but didn't see a glimmer of snow until I woke up about half 9 this morning. It's laid nice a thick now which means 1) Not having to be forced christmas shopping so I can get over my cold and 2) the house is nice and warm because my dad finally has the heating on! Plus beautiful snow! So result! :D When you got no where to go it surely is a blessing. I took some pictures of the cats and the dog enjoying it so here's a dose of daily cuteness.

Lola wondering if the fish popsicles are ready.

If someone is outside with Sushi she tends to roll on the ground and want a belly rub. She tried but got up very quickly from the cold snow.

Maggie enjoys the snow too. She was bouncing around like a kid on crack. Wouldn't believe she was 15.

While my brain was ticking over time last night I had a thought as to what I wanted to do with my Second Life when the new year comes in. I spend a stupid amount of time just looking at random crap and sitting in my skybox. I feel I should at least spread my creative wings and do something with my time. Though it's still only in the talking phase, next year might require me to have a bit more money then I already have inworld. It's nearly been three years since I first rezzed as Manny and I feel it's time I do something with my Second Life. Get a business started, actually make and sell some things only if it's small store and I only sell a few items. Something to be proud of. That's the plan anyway and I'm feeling optimistic :)

Gonna leave off with two videos. One by a girl I've known for a long time inworld. She made an awesome little Christmas video I wanted to share.

Next is for all the grumpy people who hate snow...so you hate it more >:D

The most random sim in the world.

I'm back at my dad's house now for the holiday season. I thought I was cold before well I'm REALLY cold now. My dad is tight with the heating and will only have it running for two hours in the morning and about 4 hours at night and this is only at the bare minimum. He also has a gas heater which is only situated in the room he is in. So while I'm sat here shivering in the living room, he's got a nice heated kitchen (He works in the kitchen, why? Because his office is filled with crap he refuses to clean up!). Now I think I've got a little head cold from sleeping in freezing cold room. Mustn't grumble though. I'm having Gypsy tart for breakfast *nahm nahm nahm*

I continued on my christmas shopping last night and ended up...probably on the most random sim I've been on....EVER. It was called ELEMENT and it had EVERYTHING...and I mean EVERYTHING...besides stores, which is what I was looking for! There was a haunted house including haunted forest and camp site. Stage and performance area, Bordello, Alice in wonderland area, ballroom, superman's ice castle thing, Mermaid island, Starbucks, Charlie Brown...EVERYTHING!!! And everything pretty much had sex pose balls in them. The haunted forest alone was insanely kinky. Now I thought I was pretty adventurous in the sex area but I'm not too comfortable with Jason or Chuckie watching me while I do the dirty. Sey joined me after telling him about it. Here's some pics that I got of this strange place.

*Nahm Nahm Nahm*

Uuurhhhh...I don't like it D:

Hey there hot stuff, fancy jumping on some pose balls?

You're just in time for TEA!!

I wish I had three other people to get a pic with.

"Hey Santa! Gimme presents!"

He found out I had been a bad boy and got a spanking ;_;

Alright darlin'! Want some of my Starbucks?

This made me laugh for a good 10 minutes. I hate twilight but Jacob looks so chilled. He's like "Vampire lols"

"They're Heeeerrreeeeee"

Skeleton rape! D:

Romantic! *thumbs up*

I'm just gonna leave this here to end off with. No-ones fault and I hope he feels better soon....I just miss him.

Home for Christmas

I wasn't planned to go home till Friday but the fear of a snow blizzard has urged my mum to come and pick me up today. I would usually take the train home but I need to transport my big ol desktop back so I can do work over the holiday season. Oh what happened to those days where I just stuffed a laptop into a bag and went. Oh yeah they got replaced by awesome high speed and graphics >:D

So it's a busy day of picking up those final presents for my flat mates and family, making sure my room is tidy, packing clothes and helping cleaning the flat before my mum gets here to whisk me back to country land for two weeks.



This song isn't how I'm feeling I just really like it. Don't think I have a broken heart *feels around his chest*. Nope..it's still there!

Yesterday is nothing really to report on. I watch an anime called Hetalia which is basically a 5 minute animation about different countries and history but each country is represented by it's own character. The anime is funny but the fan base is huge and mostly nutso anime fangirls. I like it but not as much as they do!
I went to Audex while looking for christmas presents and found they had updated their Hetalia avatars.

I'm also intrigued about the heads. I think they're kinda cute. So deciding that I had the money to treat myself. And who would I go for seeing as they didn't have him there when I last came to the store.

ENGLAND OF COURSE!

I probably would of picked for a Germany if they had one. He's my favourite T_T 

Mmmmmm Germany......

*AHEM!* I wore the avie for the remainder of the day. Taking it to the London sim that was being advertised on showcase. Besides from just getting a picture with a Big Ben...the sims pretty rubbish.

Time for getting on with today's busy day and my tummy is grumberling. Sure I'll be on SL later...you know...if anyone wants to know >.>

I'll just leave this here.

 

lol stereotypes

SL and RL happenings.

For some reason I didn't sleep too well last night but had to get up to do some voice recording for a friend. This song was in my head when I got up. Beautiful animation.


Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

The sad news of this week is the planned closure of Tidra at the end of the year. We had always been told that if there wasn't enough people using the place by the end of Christmas that Franzi wouldn't be able to hold it open financially. I've haven't been there really since I gave up my spot as a slave which I feel bad about. I enjoyed the time I got to RP there but being a slave really wasn't for me and I don't think I was a very good one anyway. What mostly makes me sad is the time and effort that was put into Tidra that now seems to have gone to waste. A long summer of sweat and tears went into that place and to see the efforts not become fruitful is a sad thing to witness. I don't know the full story to everything so have no right to comment really. I'll be sure to head there to take pictures and videos before anything happens.

We lost another DJ at Spankies. Seo usually has a hissy fit at something and then comes back a couple of weeks later but this time however it's due to RL busyness and that can't be helped. Rustie and I talked about replacements and said we will ask around after Christmas. At this time of year no-one really wants to commit to anything and I can only REALLY commit to any day besides Fridays and Saturdays. Something that did get me wondering was when Rustie questioned on why I hadn't been told but he had. I'm meant to be PJ's right hand man, at least that what we were told to believe. I didn't receive any im about another DJ disappearing. Rustie got one because he helps manage for the American time zones. It makes me wonder why PJ ask me to help him manage the club when really all I do is stand in for DJs who can't make it. I went on and on about decorating the club for Christmas and one time I even got the reply "We'll do it a week before Christmas". I was looking forward to decorating the club and when I tp'd one time to find he had already done it I felt my heart sink a little. It's his club, he can do what he wants but don't ask to help if you don't really want me to!

As for RL the only thing thats got me ranting is my flatmate Lucy. I feel I'm going to say words soon that will upset her but seriously...she is being a twat at the moment. She found out just over a week ago that he boyfriend had cheated on her and a little after that that it wasn't just the once. If you want to give someone a second try then that's fine. However don't come to me saying you're making sure you take it slow then the next time I see you see you draped all over him. Talking about the nice things he's bought you and say things like "I told him he couldn't buy back my trust but....(insert something here involving flowers or crystals). It's just made me lose all respect for her. Another of my flat mates has gone on anti depressants and she NEEDS those. She's in a bad place right now and I'm happy to see her get her getting help and am extremely proud of her even though she really doesn't like putting drugs in her body. Lucy on the other hand DOESN'T NEED anti depressants. But still as soon as she saw my other flat mate go on them she had to have them as well. I had to bite my lip yesterday when my flat mate asked her jokingly "What flavour are your pills?" and the temptation to say "placebo flavoured" was very hard to hold back but I did. She's feeling down and could probably do with someone to talk to professionally but she's a drama queen. She has to have something in her life happening for the attention from everyone else. When I got counselling I didn't want anyone to know. I told my close friends but that was about it. She feels she has to let the whole world know it facebook statues, livejournal entries etc etc. She revels in having hardships in life and makes sure all of us know that her situations are unbearable...until her cheating boyfriend buys her roses and suddenly she's all dandy. I just don't want to talk to her any more. I just want her to grow up. Or maybe these pills will help her calm the hell down and make her think sensible besides from just 'me me me' all the time.

Lastly the race for Christmas No.1 goes on. Last year the usual X Factor bollocks was pushed to number 2 because of a campaign to get people to by 'Killing in the Name Of' by Rage against the Machine. Not very Christmassy but a sweet sense of justice. So wonderful that downloaded singles are counted in the charts.



This year there's been plenty other songs that are trying to achieve the same affect along with X Factor giving it another go with the same rubbish cover they release every year. This one however is getting my vote this year.

All I wanted was a music box!

GIGA PUDDI!

While trying to sooth my hangover I decided to just hop to random stores and window shop. While I was searching round Sadistic Hacker (I like their hair but none of it suits me) I heard this mysterious and enchanting little song being played. I searched the whole store till I found this cute little music box sitting on a table. "Aww that's cute." I thought to myself "I wonder if I could buy one?". So I take a look into the creators profile but of course....she doesn't SELL any of her items. Bah! Must of been an old item, a gift or a commission for the store. I continue looking at her profile and TP to her shopping sim in case I might find anywhere that would sell the lil music box.


I ended up on the meow shopping sim http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meow/66/152/32. Just as I was about to explore Tel came on and he's a pretty good distraction. We had a little explore around but neither of us were really in the mood for it. So went backs to his to cuddle until he had to go to work and I had to catch a train back to Bristol.


I came back online a few hours later. I was insanely tired but decided to wait it out a few hours and then just get a good nights sleep. I went back to meow just to explore the shops as there were a lot of nice stores. The thoughts of finding the music box were long gone.  Until...*gasp* I FOUND IT. I had explored the whole of the sim and prepared myself to head to bed before I saw it being offered as a gift with something else. I squeed and clicked the prize.


meow. Rewards - Lion Dress Boxed: Unfortunetaly, you do not have all 5 tokens required to redeem a prize.


Five tokens?! What the hell! I look around a lil for explanation to this and find out their is token hunt for the prize. You go around the stores, buy an item (all priced L$75) that has a coloured coin next to it, get the coin and load it onto a hud. Once you have all 5 coins you can have the prize. Fuck that! I'm not wasting about £400 just to get loads of crap I don't want. I was about to log off...when Garrett IM'd me.

[2010/12/11 12:44]  Garrett Ceriano: come play with meeeee

[2010/12/11 12:44]  Garrett Ceriano: :P

So I take his tp annddd...

FUUuuuuuuuuuu! Caught in another bloody match game. I ignored the group im earlier because I just wanted to have a quiet evening to myself and get an early night. Oh well...ONE match shouldn't harm. Urg! I ended up playing two games which took about 2 hours! Too many in jokes and people going afk randomly for my liking. 

Afterwards I tp'd back to meow and decided sod it! I was past tired now and was going a bit loopy so decided I would collect all the coins! I would buy shit! Hey..I would of probably spent L$400 on that music box anyway. Lucky for me not all the items on sale where girls things and grabbed myself some new static poses, some trousers and other shit which I'll show you in a minute. All my coins where collects and I grabbed the lion dress which, most importantly, came with the music box. I took it home and unpacked it. It took me a whole day...but I finally got my cute little music box. 

I'm not sure on the sad little lion but it plays 6 little music box songs which I *think* are anime or jpop songs. I play it every time in my skybox now. But what other crap did I pick up! Well!

The lion outfit was the main prize for coin hunt. It's kinda cute and will probably come in handy to weird someone out with. The glasses were one of the items I had to buy to get a coin.

Unpacking more stuff.

Lol! Had to pick this costume up for a coin. The t-shirt was L$25 and the cookie was a different hunt freebie. All from the same store that I've forgotten the name of.

Another item for a coin. I bought a couple of poses sets for the other two coins. One I'm showing here. The goggles where part of another hunt freebie.

[Avoid] have their christmas items and group gifts this year. Got me a lil hat and a sleeping basket.

Finally getting that sleep I needed!

This is all from saturday. Lots of other things have happened since then but maybe for a later post. I got RL christmas shopping to do!