Victoriana, Bewitching Party, CNN Meet and Wetherbys

There has been lots going on and I have been doing a great deal of writing, it’s things that grab me so it’s been enjoyable.  Hibiscus has rented her own place in the Victoriana sim.  It’s just around the corner from friend Boye Jervil’s  wonderful gallery so she has a good neighbour.  I went over to have a look at Hib’s new house and I put on a Victorian outfit that I had got in the mad scramble when one of the shops there had given away their merchandise for free.  After being nearly trampled to death I got quite a few outfits and  there are a few nice ones.  I must admit to feeling a bit odd dressed in these heavy skirts and high necks, Victorian times aren’t really a period I would have picked, I like Regency stuff best, but the Victorian age is very popular in SL.

We are steaming ahead to Halloween and there are a lot of events and parties so I thought I would go over to Mayfair, putting on my best witche’s outfit, and join in the fun at the Garden Cafe. They had gone to a lot of trouble with the decorations and the place looked really good.  It was a great night and everyone was really having a good time.

I wrote about the party and put it on Virtually London (lite) and also decided to put it on CNN, with a little bit here and there added, as they are after Halloween stories this week.  I’d already put about the Burning Man festival on CNN this week,  as I had been lucky enough to visit the sim just as they set fire to the effigy.  I’d had no idea what it was all about until SL had made such a big event out of it. 

Then yesterday I saw in notices that a really beautiful clothes store, Wetherbys, had closed down.  It had looked like one of SL’s successes and it was a shock to hear the news.  As the afternoon went on, the lady who owns the store released some information as to why the store had gone.  It seemed that her ex-boyfriend had acquired the land she rented off  the sim owner and then deleted the entire shop, along with some other shops at different locations too.  She had paid her rent in time as well, so this should not have happened.  It was literally 30 minutes before I was due at the CNN meeting, but I decided to quickly write up the story, sort out the one picture I had of me and Hibs in the store (adding a picture of the pink notegiver box that Mrs Wetherby had sent around to everyone) and get it uploaded, which I managed with 4 minutes to spare before I went over to CNN Island to meet CNN Producer Nicole and the other ireporters. (see Store Owner Seeks Protection for Tenants).  The Wetherby group plan to hold protests in SL about tenant’s rights and good luck to them, in my opinion I think the sim owner should have a look at the events again and consider if she has acted unfairly, maybe she only had one side of the story from a man who appears to seek vengeance and perhaps this is a warning too about SL relationships.  As far as your own business is concerned in SL maybe it’s a good idea to make sure you protect all your own assets and are the key owner to the land and merchandise, but unless you can afford a whole sim, this is not easy, as people who own just a parcel on a sim are not really the owners at all, they just rent it at the end of the day.

Haunted Isle and Robbie Williams Live Concert

I went exploring with Hibiscus yesterday, over to somewhere called Erie isle, which is most unusual, as it’s a role play sim, a haunted one!   Being cowards me and Hib thought we would go in as observers to see what happens and we had a good old look round.  There were only a few people there and one of the role-players told me that it would be better later in the evening when more people were about.  It looks good though, it’s a well built sim with lots of places to explore, so we will go back and maybe this time have a go at the role playing!  

Tuesday I had been expecting to go to the CNN meeting, but there was no mention of it till the next day when Nicole the CNN manager had left a notice for the group saying it had been cancelled, but thanking everyone for putting their stories on that week.  By chance though, because we did not have the meeting I ended up at a really good event.  Robbie Williams was singing live in London and it was being broadcast into SL at the NAG sim at the same time.  One of the other ireporters Kiko Hunniton had sent out a group message to let us know it was happening, so thanks to her we had a great night.  Hibiscus and Ed logged on and we caught most of the show, which was fantastic!

Fun Exploring Sims, Queen Tribute Gig and Dodgy Dress

I’ve been going off exploring a lot the last few days and teleported over to a beautiful place called Mont Saint Michel, I’d gone on my own and climbed the staircases to the top of the amazing building there, I have never seen so many steps in SL and so much detail.  I saw Ed and Hibiscus come on line and as I was having trouble finding my way down, I called them over.

They too had trouble finding the right way down and Ed cheated and flew off, so Hib and I followed him in the end, admitting defeat!!  It is a lovely place to visit though, it’s in the showcase bit of SL and an astonishing building.  On Saturday night we had the Queen Tribute Concert that Brie  Janick, the Knightsbridge Manager of Virtual London had arranged.  Brie is really good at this sort of thing and she has many successes behind her, she knows just the type of events people love going to.  She even had a wall at the other end to the stage with all the Virtual London shops and businesses on, which you could touch to get the landmark to, and I am proud to say we had our ‘Virtually London (lite) and Our Virtual Trilogy’ shop which was advertised there.

We had really looked forward to this concert and it was a shame Hibiscus couldn’t make it, but Ed and I went along.  Then poor Ed said he couldn’t hear the music and tried everything to get it going, then he kept crashing and he missed most of it.  I really hate that, just when you find something you really want to go to and suddenly you find you have difficulties and keep crashing or things don’t rezz.  Talking of things not rezzing, before the concert I had gone along to a shop that advertised in group notices that they had some evening dresses for only 100 Lindens.  I went along and from the picture showing the front, the dress looked really nice, glittery top with a full pretty flexi skirt.  I decided to put it on once I had bought it and wore it to the concert, which was a bit out of place really as most people had casual clothes on, but I soon realised that if I had tried to change, my other clothes might not have rezzed, and the concert was so packed I might not get back on the sim if I left.  To make matters worse the dress from the back had, well no back, just a thin strap and the skirt disappeared into the floor, thinking logically, I should have tried to rez a jacket to wear, but never mind, you live and learn.  The only good thing for Ed was that when he was there between crashes, the tribute Freddie Mercury came over to us to sing, so at least I managed to get a shot of that.

Brie may well have another Queen concert as everyone enjoyed it so much, well done Brie it was brilliant and hopefully both Hib and Ed can be there for the whole thing next time.  Yesterday I was off exploring again, this time with Drax, we went over to a brilliant sim where there is so much to see, it’s called Enchantment Island and there are two museums, caves, woodlands and lots of other places, the lady who created this is very clever. 

Enchantment Island needs a few visits to see everything, we looked around one of the museums and went to explore the cave which was only a small part.  Quite exhausted we collapsed onto the Salvador Dali style virtual sofa to have a rest.  The Museum is full of surreal art and very interesting.  Definately a return visit to this one!

Seeing Friends, a Wedding and Ireporter Nominations

It’s been a bit of an eventful week this week and a nice one too in lots of respects!   I had been invited to Roach and Garciella’s wedding which was on the 13th October.  It was a Neko wedding so the guests were required to wear cat’s ears and a tail.  I decided to make a tail, as I fancied doing a bit of building anyway, so I set about making this big bushy thing with red and purple feathers in it for a bit of colour, talk about fiddly, it looked ok when I had it in front of me with all the feathers joined, but when I put it on the feathers seemed to be dangling a foot above the rest of it, so I had to fiddle with it again to get it right, me thinks I should have just gone out and bought one after all!!  Luckily I had a pair of free ears in my inventory, so I just made some parts of them red and purple to match the tail, and they were scripted to twitch, which I wouldn’t have managed to make them do, if I’d had made them!

Before the wedding I went over to see friend Treasure Vhargon and she showed me her beautiful home.  Treasure is  very creative and has an eye for landscapes and furnishing and her place is breathtaking.  Treasure looked very stylish too, she had a Victorian outfit on and she is such a classy lady, she has the ‘it’ factor, something we say in the UK for someone who is always chic and glamorous and has a sparkling personality to go with it all!!  It’s no wonder that Roach and Garciella asked her to be their bridesmaid!

The wedding was absolutely lovely, it was a small group of Roach and Garciella’s friends and I really enjoyed it.  They seem so right for each other as they appear so happy in each other’s company!   I did take lots of photos and put their wedding story on both CNN and Our Virtual Trilogy   Treasure looked very pretty as their bridesmaid and she danced the evening away with the SL preacher after the wedding!!

After the excitement of the wedding I wandered about SL yesterday and for some unknown reason, picked on a sandbox to land in.  What a coincidence, just as I arrived I saw a little figure next to me and guess what?  it was my little friend Nazna who I haven’t seen for quite a while.  She looked great, cute little av and sucking a lollipop.  I’m glad to say she is still a little devil, playing tricks on people and very funny, don’t change Naz you are a star!!  It was nice to see her again!

Finally I had a nice surprise last night, I had an email from an ireporter called TheWarden who informed me that I have been nominated in a couple of categories for a Fan based CNN ireport Awards event.   It seems the ireporters themselves have decided to do these awards and what a lovely idea and I would like to thank whoever nominated me for their vote.  It did make me laugh though, yesterday I had superstar status with CNN and today it’s gone again, Hibiscus lost hers too a few weeks ago.  I haven’t been doing anything different, a story once a week and stuff, so who knows why their computer nicks the status back.  I have the feeling that if you upload anything daily, i.e. next doors cat going out and climbing on the garden fence, you can retain the status.  This time I think I can live without it and not get upset like I did last time!!  Btw CNN, if you are reading this, maybe it would have been a good idea for you to take up this award idea, I think TheWarden and his people have filled a much needed gap in the appreciation of ireporter stakes, after all they all work for no money.  Good luck to all the great ireporters who have been nominated!!

Visit to Murray and the Virtually London Blog

I had been sitting chatting to Hibiscus and Ed in our office in SL Kensington and TD Reinard popped in to tell us about the Halloween setting he had just built further up the road, it’s a truly fantastic haunted church and graveyard and he had gone to a lot of trouble to make it creepy.  I mentioned to Hib and Ed that this sort of thing made me want to open Virtually London (lite) again, as there are so many people working hard like TD to keep everyone in Virtual London happy and it only seems fair  that they should get a mention in a blog, so everyone knows their stuff is there, (besides hearing about it in the group notices which some people miss).  I thought about it long and hard over night and decided that I would publish events in SL London again on the blog, as we can’t fill Our Virtual Trilogy with just London news, but only short news items that I think will interest SL Londoners of places to see and forthcoming events.

Clive and Pink came into the office for a chat as well, and it’s nice to get visitors, the office feels more like a proper base now and my little cat Max runs around when I’m not there too.  In fact when I am there, he quite often ignores me now and goes over to Ed or Hib, I’m not sure how this has happened as I haven’t programmed him to do that, scary or what!!

When I logged on today I suddenly got a fancy to go back to Murray, my original home, just to see what it was like after all this time.  When I arrived the place was totally empty and I left my av there while I went off to do something in real life.  When I came back I saw that Rubi one of my friends had arrived and it was really nice seeing her again.  As we stood there we were joined by some more of the gang, Roach, Treasure and Captive (and Asahi who I had not met before), it was just like old times as we stood talking. It’s one place that stays the same, a little grassy area by the sea and it’s been the scene for griefing, parties, arguments, joy and tears, and I think we are lucky that, as everything else changes in SL, our first home always seems to be there to go back to!

Win 100,000 Lindens!!!

I had a press release from Razi Semple of the Ministry of Motion the other day, and it is about a competition they are running there, which is just too good to miss.  When I read the prize money, I had to do a double take and look again, just to make sure I was reading right, the prize is 100,000 Lindens, which will be won by one customer on the 31st October 2009, the second and third prizes are fabulous too, with dance animations etc.  I’d met sim owner Nomasha Syaka a few months ago when I did an article about him, as he creates amazing Mocap dance animations and makes these fantastic guitars that you can play your own music on in SL.  So go over and see his sim anyway, it’s a great place to visit.  The competition is being run by the Ministry of Motion and Second Style Magazine,  you can find out more about how to enter in Our Virtual Trilogy blog.

Soho Vanishes And Now There Are Five

I’ve loved doing some stuff in Photoshop for our shop, we haven’t got many prims, so its a matter of putting up one prim posters and making the most out of the textures.  To start with there were three of us on the Our Virtual Trilogy, Hibiscus, Pixi and I, and we are growing fast, so it’s now Our Virtual Trilogy plus two.  We are honoured to have reporters Ed Follet and Boye Jervil join us, making us five. It will be nice to get some stories from the men’s angle on SL.  I have done some larger than life cut outs of us for the window and I am waiting for Pixi’s return so I can add her to the others in the picture.  I have also put a picture inside of Drax and I in a medieval sim, as I want to explore some role playing places to see what are the best ones.  It’s great getting dressed up in those lovely period clothes!

Being curious I opened my map to see that Soho was still displayed on it, but it looked different somehow, so  I teleported over to Mayfair,  the next sim.   There is actually no sign of Soho now, it has vanished completely and there is just the pretty sparkling sea at the back of the Eros statue at the edge of Mayfair.  There is always something really sad about the demise of a sim, to me it is a sort of living thing and a little bit of SL history that is over for good.  I think in a way it’s nice that we have written about SL as people can look back on what was there, as things change so quickly.  I get a fondness for places, but of course, they are all temporary and subject to people keeping them going or deciding to alter them completely.  So our SL adventures with Soho in the Virtual London sim are finally over and we only have our pictures to say it was ever there.

Soho Is Gone!

“We regret at due to the stringent way that Age Verification is enforced in Second Life, that running Soho as an adult sim has become no longer viable. With regret, we have decided not to renew the Soho sim as part of the estate.  We ask that you contact management with any questions.  Until the tier payment comes due, we will open the sim up for everyone.  Thank you for your understanding. – London Team”

And there it is, how quickly things change in SL, there had been lots of hard work, lots of passion put into building Soho in SL London, we all waited eagerly for the opening of this most unusual sim and were given a preview just before it opened.  It’s very sad for all concerned and there were some nice buildings there.  Maybe people weren’t as eager for the sex side of things as was anticipated, but then it needed other stuff going on to draw people in and more publicity, it’s very hard though with a new sim, getting regular traffic and I’m sure it would have grown gradually.  I always thought that as Soho was seemingly only about the Phoenix Club, that they could have built it into the corner of an existing sim, one that has Mature rating, as the rest of Soho seemed empty. 

I wondered back over to Chelsea where I had my lovely apartment and looked in at the Jazz club, which had closed a few days before.  It looks like they opened the doors again and there is piped music going on, surely this would be a great place to concentrate on after the closing of the Phoenix, people love romantic places, but who am I to say!!

 Oh well, onwards and upwards! lets hope some happier news is waiting just around the corner!!

Happy RezDay Hibiscus

Happy Rezday to the beautiful Hibiscus Hastings, it’s two years since she first came into SL and what would I do without her, my best friend as well as a fantastic writer!!  It was really nice today as both Boye and Drax came into SL and we managed to spend a short time at Phat Cat’s Jazz Club to celebrate Hibs day.  Hib had a lovely red gown on, looking like the Belle of the Ball!!

May there be many more Rezdays Hib!!!

New Beginnings and What Fun!

It was the second time I had cleared my apartment out, meaning to leave the Chelsea sim, the first time after I had been taking the micky out of the Daily Mail reporter after he was making out he was Peter Mandleson in Virtual London, when I had told him his fortune!  That didn’t go down too well, so I had packed up then, only to return later, but this time it is for good and Hibiscus too is leaving the Chelsea sim.  Not that we won’t go back there for a wander around, it was always one of my favourite places, but it appears to be a ghost town at the moment, they put the rents up from 600 Lindens to 1600 Lindens a week and it’s not surprising people just moved out.  Also the sim is in bad repair at the moment and I’m sure Seany, TD and the others can make it beautiful again.

I went over to the Kensington sim to clear the office out, after all Virtually London (lite) is no more, and it’s sad but when things end, but you need to remove any trace so you can start anew!  TD Reinard has been doing lots of building in Kensington and I was absolutely stunned at how lovely it is, right down to the road markings and street furniture, and the buildings are to die for, it is looking so much like the real thing it’s just amazing.

I took myself off shopping after going into Kensington and wanted to see if I could buy a blue and gold macaw that I had seen when I had been talking to lovely Cerise the little green witch, when she was showing me around her home.  There was one flying around and he really looked good.  I found the sim that sells them and went over.  Drax joined me and we had a long chat about what had gone on, I can always rely on him to be level headed about everything and he gives me good advice, so it was nice to talk about stuff.  I tried to buy the parrot, but SL was playing up and I couldn’t get the transaction to go through, so I will go back again later.

Kensington had been playing on my mind because it looks and feels so nice there, so I wandered back over, I started looking at the shops and thought that both Hibiscus and I needed a base in SL London (after leaving the apartments) as lots of our friends are there too, and we love the Underground Club.  Also we needed somewhere where we can get together as our little reporter team with friends Ed and Pixi, so it would be a base for them too.  Thats when I started looking at the shops and realised we could afford one in Kensington.  Hibiscus was on line so I called her over and we both really liked a corner shop, which comes with another floor as well.  There are only 30 prims, but I can do quite a lot with that, so we decided to rent it.  I always fancied having a shop, we can keep everyone informed about Our Virtual Trilogy news and if Ed wants to, he can sell some stuff there later that he makes.  Who knows I might make some things to sell too, no idea what, but it’s something to think about. 

I always have believed that things happen for a reason and that if things finish it’s an exciting opportunity to start something new, new beginnings!  I am sad that the Virtually London (lite) blog is over and I can look back on it with great affection,  as I loved writing it, but who knows what the future holds, I will certainly enjoy whatever SL throws at me, so stick with me and find out what happens next………………