CNN Aerdrome Outing!

It was a bit of a lively CNN meeting last night, gradually people arrived and quite a few including Nicole, the CNN reporter, use voice now and I’m not sure if this is good or bad, as you get mics breaking up a bit, or people who talk more than others, but then you always had that problem with text chat with everyone chipping in.  One of the guys who arrived said he was making a video of the meeting and wanted to interview Nicole and Henry the other real reporter.  I will be interested to see if this happens, as I’m not sure they would want to do an interview with ireporters.  The guy, Jason,  hasn’t even been in SL very long, and I’m not saying he shouldn’t go for it, because if thats what he wants to do, that’s fine, but will the real reporters agree to being interviewed by someone who is a complete novice at SL and reporting,  I can’t wait to see if they agree and what it turns out like!  I’m also looking forward to his video that he said he was filming.  We all went off to Abbotts Aerdrome halfway through the meeting, well a few of us did, and Nicole told us all to look around with a view to doing some ireports.

I looked around and plonked myself into a couple of nice planes there, to be honest it’s not my sort of thing, but it’s very well done and the models are lovely, I bet a lot of people enjoy themselves who go there.  I can imagine a lot of the men avatars would really like it.

One of the good things at the Aerdrome is the SkyDive platform.  I’ve done skydiving before and got my terrachute on all ready, took off on the platform, then couldn’t remember the word you have to type in chat to get the chute to open, silly me!!! started plummeting to virtual earth at a high speed.  Cheated though and touched my Fly button, so landed softly among all the others without making a complete fool of myself!! don’t think they noticed, hehe!!

Opportunity for SL Musicians

I was honoured to be invited to a great sim called TRAX the other day by Lilly Bracken, she invited me over to meet Bones Writer and Tangle Giano who are helping people to start a musical career by offering the best advice possible, Bones is a real life musician with 30 years experience playing with some of the top names in showbiz.  Read all about TRAX at http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-250386?ref=feeds%2Foncnn

Max settles in!!

Funny having the little cat Max running around the house, I didn’t realise at first that you have to look after him properly to make him grow.  Being a previous owner of a tamagotchi dog, the little keyring sized game where you had to keep the animal alive by feeding it etc on time, I should have realised that Max would need some loving care too!!  First thing I have learned is how to feed him, he has a massive bowl of cereal and eats the lot of it.

Then he has to have a bath, gets suds everywhere, but he does look cute!!

You can leave him in your home to roam free and he will sleep most of the time, but I just couldn’t shake him the other day, I set him to roam then teleported downstairs to the street only to find that he came with me!!  I decided to go for a stroll and he kept up with me, well I had to keep stopping, but there he was running along side me and it looked really funny.  I even crossed a sim and he still followed.  Also I couldn’t get him to jump into my arms the other night, but he has done this now so I can carry him if I need to.  He’s turning out to be a great little pet!!

Sweet Max

I had a lovely surprise from Drax the other night.  He teleported me to a shop and said he wanted to buy me a pet, what a lovely gift!!  There were little dogs and cats all curled up in baskets and waiting for people to take them home.  It was a hard decision to pick one as they were all so cute, but in the end I picked a little Siamese cat.  I have named him Max and he is the sweetest thing I have ever seen, especially for a pixel pet!!

Max is full of mischief and so funny, you can get him to play by chasing a ball of twine, he follows me about and sits at my feet looking up and talking to me (cat meows!!) and you can feed him from a bowl and even bath him. 

Max jumps up for a hug and looks really cute, he can travel on your shoulder or arm if you want him to.   If you set him down and let him roam he eventually falls alseep, so sweet!! even when I am off on my travels he just roams around the apartment looking after the place till I get back!!  Thank you Drax, Max is a treasure, I love him!!!

Aerobreeze for a little peace and solitude

I have been doing a bit more exploring on my own, as pals Hibiscus, Pixi and Drax have been very busy in real life at the moment, I’m looking forward to showing them some of the new places I have found!!  I have been looking down the Hotspot places and decided to pay Aerobreeze a visit, and to be honest I’m still not sure what it’s all about.   I arrived in a pretty desolate landscape up to my knees in water.  There was a nice ambiance about the place though and I decided to look at some of the objects scattered around the small sandy islands connected by water.  First thing I found was a bath with some lighted candles floating in it, so I got in, (fully clothed!!) and sat there trying not to catch my hair alight.  It was nice and relaxing though with the pretty twinkling light above adding some magic.

Feeling a bit soggy I got up out of the bath and made my way over to a sand castle, clicking on the poseball I started to smooth the sandcastle walls and sat admiring my work. 

I spotted a few transparent orbs in the distance so went to explore and sat on them to look at the view.

I saw a hermit crab shell and a table and chairs in the distance too, so just walked across the waist high waters till I reached them.

Funny thing was, out of the 68,000 people on line at the time I bumped into Latok Neumann, a fellow CNN ireporter, at the site and I said hello. Latok told me that this site was an art thing, and I can see what she means, it is sort of a peaceful place to be and kinda nice, not too much going on, but then I may have missed some bits.  The Hotspot info says ‘Aerobreeze spend some time on the water in this beautiful fantasy land’  Go and see what you think of it!!

Easter Eggs Galore!!!

I should have gone over and looked a couple of days ago, but I decided to go and see what Bunny Jam 2009 was all about yesterday.  It was a grand display of the most  beautiful Easter eggs imaginable and you could go in for a contest to win a sim for a year.   I did fill out the contest form in hopes, well you never know, someone has to win it!  just imagine a whole sim for a year, goodness knows what I’d do with it, but it would be fantastic.  I had a good look around all the egg exhibits and it seem like a lot had been made by Mia Linden and she had loads of different designs including a little tower with an egg shaped middle that you could climb into.  If I’d have thought I would have asked her for one of her eggs as well as one of her bears, but she was nowhere to be seen.  I sat on the very wall Humpty Dumpty fell off of and even landed inside an egg only to be disappointed that there was no chocolate in there!!   I had a rest on a giant flower where they had kindly left a book for me to read, regretfully the contents were way above my head, so I moved on after a short while.   You could sit on the giant bunny rabbits that looked really cute and the whole thing was beautifully done.   There had been an egg decorating contest and it looked like they had had more than enough people going in for it, making the most amazing eggs.  Here are the pictures below, please excuse the amount of shots but it was all so lovely that I even had to dispose of some and not use them all as I took so many!!

My favourite egg was the last picture, the little fairy style carriage, so sweet, well I enjoyed having a look around and what a lot of work people had put into it all, I’m glad I went there!!

Crazy Golf and Police Gear

When I logged on yesterday I had seen a notice from the London team saying there was a ‘crazy golf course’ in Hyde Park that had just opened.  My mate Hibiscus had beaten me to it, she had already had a go on it and had written a story too (later to appear in Virtually London (Lite)), so I went over for a look.  Hib was still over there and she showed me how to play the game. 

What a laugh we had, it did take a bit of skill and I kept getting penalties for walking ahead of where the ball was, not that I had much choice in the little areas you had to hit the ball in.  I either hit it too hard and it ended up in the reeds or I hardly hit it at all and stayed in one place for about 3 goes.  It was funny and the sort of thing you could do now and again for a laugh.   Hibiscus had to go to rl and I decided to practice a bit.  The thing is though, that this is near where the newbies come in and straight away I got a newbie asking me how you play it. I tried to explain how he got the golf club and ball, but after a good ten minutes of him not getting it because of my lousy instructions, he gave up and went away and I did the same before the next newbie came along!!

After the golf I decided to look all around SL London, which I do quite a bit, to see if I can pick up any stories for the London blog.  There had been a wonderful shop in Mayfair run by Gerr Finesmith, he used to make all types of uniforms and it was the highest quality stuff you could imagine.  Gerr is busy with real life now and only pops back occasionally, so his shop closed, but I did buy a police woman’s uniform before it did close.  His stuff is truly amazing, you got the uniform with all the bits and pieces including police radio etc and even a female avatar if you wanted to use it too, all this for only 200 Lindens and then a discount on top for SL London residents.  I hope Gerr opens his shop again, as I would give him all the publicity I can.  Anyway with my posh uniform including reflector jacket I set off around London to enforce law in the rowdy streets!! (only kidding!!!)

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter to you all, hope you are having a lovely weekend!!  My friend Wheemzel DeCuir sent me a beautiful basket full of eggs and bunnies, thank you Wheemzel!! I hope you have a great holiday weekend! 

Hibiscus and I went over to the tribute Guns N Roses concert last night in SL London and it was a brilliant evening, the sim was crowded with nearly 70 avatars at one point and everyone enjoyed themselves.  Seany1235 Blinker, one of the sim managers even set some fireworks to go off at Big Ben, near where the band played, so it was a very colourful event.  Thanks to Brie Janick for arranging it all and thanks to the band.  I got to interview them for Virtually London (Lite) and what a nice bunch of people they are!

Girl Pests Hit Town

Things are never quiet for long in SL London and yesterday at the apartments two girl avatars decided to be a thorough nuisance.  Funny when you think of griefers, you tend to think of men doing all the damage, but there have always been lady griefers too, and sometimes they can be worse.  I can’t really call these two griefers though, as all they did was let themselves into all the apartments and dish out verbal abuse.  Their names were Jenn and Hannah, Hannah being the one who looked like a child avatar and when I heard her voice she sounded as if she may have been about 12 years old. What was a shame about Hannah though, was she thought it was funny to swear, and I mean the worst, the c word over and over, I hope her mum wasn’t watching what she was typing into her computer.  Jenn said she was Hannah’s real life friend, and seemed ok in comparison.  I thought about ejecting them, but then decided to call Seany as he was back after having trouble with his internet over the last few days.  So he came over and then I realised that Elizabetta and Jaine across the way had also been invaded my these two little demons.

Seany did see them out of the apartments and they went over the square where I followed them out of interest, just to see what they were getting up to.  They played on the swings for a while and I had a little chat with Jenn and asked her if she had another avatar and she told me that both her and Hannah had.  Jenn said she had been in SL for 5 years and Hannah for 1.   Well I doubt she was telling me the truth as she could not fly properly and seemed quite a novice at that, but I would say they probably did have other identities as their rez day was the same day on their profiles which was yesterday.

Well back they came to the apartments and Jaine called Clive over to get rid of them.  Clive did try to eject them and they were gone for a short while, but back Jenn and Hannah came and I had a bit more of a chat with Jenn.  I think it’s a pity that Jenn can’t ditch Hannah and think for herself, although I have a feeling that they should both be on the teen grid.   A little later it was a little more intriguing as they assembled on one of the boats below with an older av called Mikael and another newbie called Mark, now as I was a little way away I could only see that they were communicating in a friendly sort of way and Mikael in fact, did not bother even looking at them but scanned the apartments as they stood at the back of him.  A little later Mark and another newbie girl similar to Hannah started to try to annoy people in the apartments again, so it looks like a little gang of people who all know each other.  I love a bit of intrigue and I suppose life would be pretty boring without these stupid avs, but we will wait and see if they come back again.

Dance Envy!

Going to the Underground Club so often I get to see the different dances used by the hosts in there.  Brie Janick, who dj’s as well, has some great moves and I kept meaning to ask her where she got them. Brie always looks the business too with her converse boots and leg warmers, typical rock chick character.  I usually join in the line dance bit that has a dance called caramel, which is quite a laugh as we all do the same moves together until one or two of us fall out of sync with slower computers.  I finally got around to asking Brie the other night, where she went for her dances, and she gave me the landmarks.  I went off and tried them all out and bought one called ‘beat one’  a very fast shuffle type dance.  Coming back to the club I couldn’t wait to try it out.

I was enjoying myself as Boone was dj’ing and playing some old stuff, of course you got the usual newbie who thought he would come in just wearing underpants, but it’s all part and parcel of SL and quite funny.  He went straight over and stood next to Seth for some reason, Seth asked him to take a step back but he seemed oblivious, supposed we should be grateful he had his underpants on.

Hibiscus came on line and I was about to call her over to the club and they changed dj’s for the night and the music isn’t really our taste, so I asked her if she wanted to go and try the dances to see if she wanted to get one.  Well what a laugh we had, I’ve never seen Hib move like that before, or me either come to that, we did cartwheels, got our legs up as high as our ears and all sorts as we lept from dance pad to dance pad trying out the variations.

We had such a laugh, both creasing up as we sat at our computers.  Hib didn’t actually buy one, saying she will have a think about it, there are so many to choose from.  I spotted a pole dance thing and even had a go at that, well so funny, so agile as I swung around and around on the pole.  Although I think I’ll leave that to the hosts in the clubs!

We never did find the exact dances Brie uses, but had fun trying them all out!!