Posh Office for the News Team and CNN with Popcorn!

I love the New London Village owned by Kat Kassner, I think her and her manager Laredo Lowtide have one of the best London sims, their buildings are exquisite and they are always doing something new and exciting there.  They let us have an office there too, which I really liked, we were in the older part of town and our windows were a little shabby and the roof leaked a little, but it was our base!  Then I got a call from Laredo saying did we mind changing our office to another location, and of course, we didn’t mind at all, but I got a shock when I saw where they decided to put us!!  We have moved into the Houses of Parliament and it’s fantastic, how nice of Kat and Laredo!  It’s a splendid building and the Big Ben clock tower is just amazing, so we are very happy!  Thank you Kat and Laredo!!

We have put our furniture in there and our posters, but we are still doing bits to it, so drop by and take a look!!   It was our usual Tuesday CNN meeting last night and when I teleported over to CNN Island I had a job to find the others as they weren’t quite in their usual spot.  Then I saw Nicole, Wolf and Any1 in the little diner by the car lot.   Nicole wanted us to sit down for a chat and we did, I handed some popcorn around and munched my way through the meeting.  Nicole says CNN may revamp the Island so that will be interesting to see what they do.

I told Nicole all about InWorldz and how in spite of all the bugs that needed ironing out, it was a pretty exciting place to be at the moment with all the people making a base there.  I had written an article about it, comparing it to SL, which I still love, but I’m happy to be in both worlds and I’ve even started a small business in InWorldz selling Christmas decorations.  We were joined by Hibiscus and Kake and we stayed on after Nicole finished the meeting to have a chat.

I went back home after the meeting and caught up on some writing, I had my visit to the Antiquity London sim to finish off as well as updating Our Virtual Trilogy, so I had plenty to do, as well as making Christmas decs for the shop!

Party at CNN and Exploring Some Role-Play

Virtual London has had loads going on this week, live singers and tribute bands and it’s a good job that I have Ed and Hib with me, Ed did a great job of covering the tribute Bon Jovi concert Saturday night, while I covered the live artists Friday and the wonderful Maximillion Kleene earlier on Saturday at the opening of the new Cafe in SL Knightsbridge.  I have been wanting to wander about the grid lately and try out new sims, both Drax and I thought we would look at some of the role-play places again.  We went to a Greek sim and got chatting with a lady there who was very nice and told us a bit about it,  There was actually a battle just starting in the arena so we climbed to the balcony and looked down at the clash between the Greek soldiers and the Ottomans.

After watching the combat we got changed and planned on heading into a Gorean sim, stopping off at Murray on the way and who should be there? the naughty but nice Nazna skipping around and still as cute as ever!

We did teleport over to a Gor sim from Murray and it took ages for the buildings etc  to rez.  I followed Drax and we ended up in a wooden building, when the man in there challenged me.  I told him in brackets that we could not see, which means you are talking out of role play, and it seems that the role I played is not allowed in taverns, and this is where I had ended up.  I apologised for trespassing and followed Drax out again, he could not see either on first arriving, however the guy was very snotty and didn’t respond ‘off stage’ so I take it he doesn’t take kindly to strangers entering his ‘patch’ .  I wonder sometimes if they want visitors to their sims as another one we went to had just changed meters (something you wear to tell you your health etc) and when we enquired about getting the new meter we were told we couldn’t, so no role play there then!  Perhaps they find new people a bit of a challenge, maybe they like sticking to the same storylines all the time, who knows!

We will still travel around looking, it’s a bit of fun and you never know what you will find, we had gone to an excellent Medieval one the other week and the people were lovely, all playing their parts very well.  Drax is good at the role play and I am catching up a little bit and saying more, even if I’m not sure what is going on sometimes!   After all the exploring, we had a meeting at CNN Island yesterday  and Nicole quickly ran through some of our week’s stories and then announced that we should party for the rest of the time.  She took us over to the dance floor at the back of the meeting area and we all started to dance around, drinks in hand and Nicole even had the Christmas card I gave her last year for some reason, I think she was really getting into the spirit of things!

Nicole, Ed, Apollo, Hib, Widget and me had fun and it is the last meeting of 2009 so there is a long break till after the new year. 

Nicole said goodbye and Drax arrived for the last few minutes and we had stopped dancing, bit of a relief really, as he likes to do his breakdancing and usually knocks people over with his spinning around!  The conversation went all downhill from then onwards, fish puns!  like ‘you fin you know best’ and stuff like that, so funny!  Anyway it was a CNN meeting with a difference and I would like to wish them all a Happy Christmas and Great New Year for 2010!

Interesting Chat at CNN, Riding the Big Wheel and Stilettos

I knew for certain that anything said against the holy grail of global warming would be met with lots of opposition from the ‘I’m better than you at saving the planet’ lynch mobs, as there are many commenters full of hatred and vitriol on the comments pages of CNN’s ireports, who like to try to beat each other with scientific evidence that they have ‘googled’ off the internet,  thinking it sounds good.  So I went over to CNN to see what they thought about the two sides of the argument, especially on damning evidence that the original scientists at Anglia University,who constructed the whole thing, had been manipulating their data and have even destroyed the original raw data on which it was based.  To be honest, I wasn’t really going to go this week, but friend Ed Follet had put his first report on and I wanted to hear about that, well done Ed, it was a great article about the Christmas Tree that Norway give to London each year, and had a nice piece of history included.  Virtual London receive a tree from Virtual Norway, so it’s becoming a good tradition within SL.  There were only a few people at the CNN meeting, Apollo Manga, Any1 Gynoid, Ed Follet, Hibiscus Hastings and myself.  Nicole arrived and took us through the week’s stories and didn’t really have a lot to say about global warming except that it was a ‘hot button’ issue and hard to take one side without alienating.  Nicole, being so busy in real life in the CNN office, had to rush off leaving us in the meeting area.  We normally get up and leave as the meetings finish, but this time we stayed around to chat for a while.  Apollo, who is an absolutely fantastic writer and has contributed quite a few ireports, discussed the global warming thing, and although he is a believer, he thought it was only fair to hear about both sides of the debate, which you can’t say any fairer than that!  We talked about American politics and it was interesting from my point of view as British politics is quite a different set up to theirs.  I think they feel more passionately about their favourite politicians then we do, but share the extreme dislike for the opposition just like us.  Sarah Palen seems a dicey person to talk about, people either love her or hate her, one to watch I would say.  I’m watching the SL global Copenhagen site with interest to see how it all goes this week, at the moment they just seem to be promoting green merchandise and really and truly they are not actually connected to the real conference at all, but quite independent.

Now I have bored you all with the global warming and politics, I will cover a couple of other things.  Virtual London has a brand new area that has been added in the last couple of days, the old Chelsea sim has been renamed Westminster and moved next to Mayfair and I’m really looking forward to seeing that being developed.  I had loved my apartment in Chelsea and Hibiscus loved hers too, we had lots of happy times there before the sim was altered and the rents increased so that the other tenants moved out.  They could not afford the 150% increase on the rent for less prim allowances.  Hib and I had our apartments rent free because we promoted virtual London on Virtually London (lite), but it soon became a bit of a ghost sim living there.  Once I decided to close the blog too (which I am glad to say is up and running again as matters have been resolved!), I thought it was best to move on, that’s when we rented out great little shop in virtual Kensington, a beautiful sim created by TD Reinard!  Last night there was a party in the new Westminster and they had live British singers appearing and a funfair outside.  Hib and I went over earlier and sat chatting on the giant ferris wheel, makes me wonder if they are going to include the London Eye wheel at some time too.

I didn’t know what to wear to the party, but opted for a skirt and top plus my lovely stiletto shoes that I got for free.  I had a call from friend TXBarbara Bailey one day, and she told me that Stiletto Moody Shoes, who sell the most wonderful shoes in SL, were giving a pair of their shoes away because it was their anniversary and I went over and got them.  I treasure them dearly, as they charge large amounts of Lindens for their shoes, prices averaging L$1,400, but they are very very nice.  I haven’t branched out and bought any yet, but may well treat myself one day, well I think I need at least a couple of pairs to keep me going!!

Swine Flu at CNN and Lively Week!

I’d put in a couple of stories to CNN last week and went over to the meeting last Tuesday and Nicole Saidi the CNN Producer was already there waiting for the others to arrive.  Nicole is usually very pushed for time, as she meets us in-world while she is at work at the CNN Headquarters in Atlanta, so she often has to dash off if a story breaks.  She told me that she was actually at home ill, as she had swine flu and a bad throat, so it was good of her to make it into SL at all, being that she was not very well.  As the others arrived it was quite a good meeting, however, I think most of them thought that the meeting slot was 2pm SLT like it used to be, and not 1.30pm SLT, so many arrived late.  We thanked Nicole for giving us her time in spite of her being at home, and I hope she is feeling better.

You might wonder what it’s like working with a very rowdy bunch of virtual reporters in SL, well I can tell you it’s not easy!  I have to keep Ed and Hibiscus in check all the time or they run riot!!  Things came to a head the other day when they decided to have a medieval duel in our office in Virtual Kensington, I just ducked out of the way as Ed swing his hammer and Hib drew her lethal looking sword!! 

Max the Siamese kitten is used to Ed and Hib sparring in the office, he knows they are only joking around and he loves them both, Ed sent me a picture of Max who had found a warm spot on his shoulder to go to sleep, awww cute!

I went over to the Jazz club in Kensington to see what was going on and there were some people enjoying the evening there.  I met up with Gerr Finesmith and we had a bit of a dance, it’s a nice club with some good music and I hope it’s a big success for Almo Skytower who runs it!

Been chatting to Debs Regent a bit this week and I told her about Johnnytreadlightly Nightfire’s castle so I met her over there and we had a little look around, she was amazed at the detail.  I could imagine a copy of the Tower of London would be really great in Virtual London, complete with ghosts, lol, but the Tower of London is in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a long way away from the areas covered by Virtual London, shame though!

Debs had to return to real life and I went back to chase some more stories for the coming week.

 

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.

CNN Repoter Nicole’s Dance And Travelling By Helicopter!

It must be pretty hard for the CNN reporters Nicole Saidi and Henry Hanks to take the in-world meetings seriously sometimes.  After all they are not really SL’ers as such, they just come in as part of their job, so perhaps the lunacy of the avatars must be a bit strange for them at times.  Nicole took the Tuesday meeting this week and there were a few of the regulars there to hear about articles that have been reported on and what is of interest for the next few days.  As we talked we were joined by a couple of new people who did not sit down with the rest of us, but hovered overhead.  As Nicole tried to start the meeting one of them came down and started to dance in front of her and I have no idea what Nicole must have thought, more nutter avatars no doubt!!  Well she surprised me, she went right along with it, while I sat there thinking how rude the person was to do this to her, she said she would dance as well and invited any of us to join in.  We just watched, but it was so funny to see Nicole dancing around and even doing the splits at one stage.  I questioned the dancing man a bit, but he wasn’t saying much, they did give us a video link to watch, but it may have been better if they had just come along to the meeting to tell us what they wanted instead of griefing poor Nicole.  Well I say poor Nicole, she did really well and wasn’t going to be put off.  I expect when she logged off back into the real world she thought to herself ‘what the hell was all that about’  I wonder too as it happens!!

In SL Chelsea where I have my apartment, the Jazz Club across the road has a helicopter on the roof that anyone can fly if they want to.  I took it out the other day and was not very good with it.  I tried it again this morning and found I could control it a lot better.

Like SL Chelsea manager Rails Bailey says, (who put the copter there), it’s a quick way of getting around the sims, and it is.  Ok you still have the sim crossings to contend with, the out of control bit where you are pulled across the new sim and then dragged back before proceeding, but you can safely cross with the copter and it’s a lot of fun.   I even got good and landed it on the top of my apartment block before docking it back down on the Jazz Club landing area.

I wonder if I can talk Hibiscus into coming for a spin in it with me, I know how much she loves being a passenger in my car, so I expect she will jump at the chance to fly with me!!

I came back down through the Jazz Club and was surprised to see they have taken up the nice red carpet that they had down.  I wonder why, perhaps there were problems, but it’s a shame as it was dead posh before.  It will be nice when they get their times sorted out as well, as it’s set in SL London, all us Londoners are missing out so far, as all the Jazz Club sessions seem to be set in the middle of the night for us.  If they left some great music playing like the romantic stuff by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra in between the dj events, I’m sure people would still go along for a dance whatever time of day or night.  It’s a nice venue and brand new so I hope they do well!!

Crowd At CNN With Special Visitor

It had been a busy night last night, I was writing a couple of articles and editing some photos ready for the Trilogy blog and Virtually London (lite) and it was also the evening for the CNN meeting as well.  Just before that I had seen a group IM asking for someone to help with a couple of griefers over at the UGC, so I dashed over there to see what was happening, nosy as ever!!  I couldn’t take a picture as there was an av running about nude with a big attachment, but I arrived in time to see DJ Mike booting the guy out of the sim, he did come back once, but Mike booted him again and this time he stayed away!

I went over to the CNN meeting and met Hibiscus who was already there and Nicole the CNN reporter had already arrived as well. 

To my surprise there were over 20 people there with others still arriving.  I think Nicole was quite surprised and also she suddenly spotted one of the audience had a Linden tag.  It was Christa Linden who had come to sit in, she told Nicole she was part of the marketing group in the Linden Labs and she sat taking some pictures while she was there.  The meeting went ok with quite a few people asking bits and pieces and at the end when Nicole had gone I asked Christa if she had anything we could report on and she mentioned the SL conference coming up shortly.  Silly me, I forgot to ask her for one of her bears, it was only Drax asking me later if I had got a bear that made me think of it, I missed my chance there!   After the meeting I found myself a great little coffee bar in Chelsea to sit in and finish my writing and I managed to get it all done.

Do It Yourself CNN Meeting!!

I logged onto SL tonight with my evening planned, I dropped into the office and did a bit of picture editing, then thought I would go to the club for half an hour to have a dance before the CNN meeting.  Well I should have stayed at the club!!  There was some chat in the messages asking if the meeting was going ahead and a few of us decided to go over to CNN island anyway.  I’m not sure if they had an earlier meeting with reporter Henry, but no one left a message saying the meeting had been cancelled.  Anyway, there were six of us there and Vickie took centre stage, but for some reason she was walking on the spot again, she has done this a couple fo times before and says she looks normal on her screen.  Anyway Nicole never turned up but it was quite a lively discussion anyway.  Latok turned up with a funny little Martian av and it did look funny when she was typing as her head wobbled!!  I threatened to put a post on CNN about how we were abandoned, but I won’t, as there is probably good reason for CNN’s absence.  Went back to the club with Hib later on for a dance and then said goodnight to everyone!!

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!!

St Patrick’s Day in SL

I must admit I don’t normally do much about St Patricks day as I’m only a quarter Irish so St George’s Day is more prominent for me.  However, people had gone to lots of trouble in SL for St Patrick’s day and oddly people in other countries seem to claim it as their own too.  I went over to Knightsbridge with Hibiscus, and Seany was showing me the Underground club that they were kitting out for the evening with shamrocks and all sorts, it looked very pretty.  Elizabetta Westland and Seany both had great St Patrick’s day hats on and Seany asked if we wanted to go over to the sim and get one, so we agreed and off we went.

We got some hats too, they were well made for the money.  Hib had to go off to rl and Elizabetta decided to buy a new outfit for the evening instead of her long dress.  She looked very sweet when she came out of the shop, she had a short little skirt with a country type theme to the costume.

Seany passed around a gesture called ‘riverdance’ and we all jigged about to the sound of riverdance music stomping our feet, it all looked hilarious.

Later that evening Hib came back on and we went over to the Underground Club which was really packed out, almost everyone was dressed in green and had got in the mood for celebrating St Patrick’s Day.

Hib and I left half way through to go to a CNN meeting.  There were a few people there and some people who were trying to get on, training as real life journalists, so I suppose it’s a good place to start talking to the CNN reporters.  Nicole led the discussion and then decided we should all take a field trip out to an Irish sim.  She sent the landmarks all around but missed Me and Hib and a couple of others, leaving us stranded!  She hadn’t done it on purpose, but it was funny, I have no idea how she keeps up with things as she does the meetings while in work at CNN and you can hear lots going on around her there, as well as trying to hold the meeting together, it can’t be that easy.  Anyway I got in touch with Martyn from the group and he send me the landmark which I gave the others and we joined them in the sim.   It was very laggy there with all the celebrations and I didn’t stay long, but it was quite an interesting day with all the Irish celebrations.