What Changed in 8 Years?

Don't adjust your sets. CC Columbo is, indeed, orange. Thank the saints that our Irish-Catholic father can't see this. Coming back from visiting mom in Hospital today I took a wee nap after enjoying a Double Whopper and small fries and CC was at the computer. When I woke up, I found him tweaking his SLink hands and ears to match his new skin. Why the change, you might ask?

No change, really. This is the CC Columbo that I met up with when I logged into the Main Grid for the first time at very nearly the same spot in Nangrim. He was orange, wearing women's hair from Juicy La Jolla, free Linden clothes, and a dragon from Wynx Whiplash. This was known as his Eddie Izzard Period. Shortly after this picture was taken he transferred the dragon to me, gave me L$2000, gave me 16m² of land, and sent me off into the world.

As you can see, he's got a new(er) dragon, better clothes, men's hair, and that new orange skin. Same old CC, though. Best. Brother. Ever!

Photobombing Topless Tuesday

This is likely the only time you'll see my brother in the Topless Tuesday in SL Flickr group.

With Towel Day nearly upon us and Strawberry Singh's "Photobomb" blog challenge I thought I'd hit a trifecta for Topless Tuesday. This year I finally made a towel for men to wear on Towel Day so I arranged to have my brother (CC Columbo in SL) pose in a shower for a surprise photobombing while I was topless. Simple, right? No. I was going to skip this week's blog challenge due to a lack of creativity. Totally clueless as to where this idea came from, but I'm tickled pink about it and I hope you are, too.

Of course, I made towels for women, too, but wearing one would have defeated the purpose of this exercise. You can get either the men's or the women's (or both ... I mean, I have both so why not you?) towel FREE on my Marketplace store. Past year towels are still available and sell well, but I don't know why.

Happy Topless Tuesday and have a Happy Towel Day on the 15th! DON'T PANIC!!

Talamh Teaghlaigh, Nangrim

My home outside Bay City is Talamh Teaghlaigh, Nangrim. It's a 1024m² plot adjacent to my brother's smaller plot, the Lydia Rose Memorial Park. The two parcels are, in effect, one home big home for both of us. We both contribute to the general design and implementation of same with the family gardner Zyx Flux helping out, too. Here's what we did today ...

CC insisted on the cow chairs. He must be thinking of his on-going efforts to teach our RL cats to moo like cows.

I added a modified version of my big "ocean deck" that has often been a part of my various homes over the years. It was 32 LI but quickly became 19 LI when I converted it all to a Convex Hull physical shape then trimmed it a bit more as I changed to a sculpty ladder from an all-prim one. CC and Zyx did the plant work and I added some furniture.

A view from the Memorial Park side.

Somehow we wound up with a lot "prims" left over. And I see that CC added a memorial stone again (insert big smile here). If anything, our home feels warmer now, and more complete. The tall grasses make a big difference as does the elevation of the new addition. Drop in sometime (SLurl) and visit for a while. If you don't see us you might see others as we both have a habit of telling strangers and noobies to make themselves at home.

Introducing Splash - A Public Pool in Bay City

My beloved Pouloco Gas Station in Bay City Dennis is no more. Admittedly, I groused a bit when my brother, CC Columbo, asked me to build it for him but it gave me something to do and I enjoyed the challenge. His idea of giving me something to do long-term, however, failed. Neither of us took it seriously as a role play opportunity and I never took advantage of the retail space it provided. Basically it was just a pretty addition to Bay City, certainly (if I can brag) a step above the pre-fab gas stations that exist elsewhere in town. It might come back one day. I'm going to spend time with it in a sandbox to make it a better, more efficient build with better textures.

A combination of his trying to figure out how to put a swimming pool on our land in Nangrim but being stymied by Land Impact limits and his boredom with the gas station, CC decided to wipe the latter build and go for broke on a swimming pool. After watching him shop for pools at WaterWorks (SLurl) and reminding him that he had Siggy's PrimSwim water I offered to build a pool for him if he paid me half of what he'd spend on a prefab. Thusly, Splash – A Public Pool in Bay City (SLurl) was started.

These are CC's pictures. He used my computer since it has better graphics than his.

I don't know if that is a parking area or not, but anyone can rez things there (1 minute auto-return). That is his truck in Pouloco colors. The whole build almost had that color scheme.

CC asked me to put my vending machines in the snack shack. They are free so grab a Slurpee®, a soda, or some popcorn. You can also get a free copy of the Bay City Post, ride a flying bunny around town or hop on the ducky.

The pool I gave CC was smaller and square-ended with basic Linden textures. He modded the heck out of it and added the rest of the infrastructure including a small water slide.

There's a kiddie pool though no animations. I think he's shopping for some kid-sized ones. Plenty of seating for parents so they can watch their little sea-rats kids in comfort.

Plenty of towels around the pool and the one with the octopus has couples cuddles. Totally G-rated, of course. Be sure to read the pool rules about the sim rating and other necessities.

If you have The Swimmer from Siggy's (L$400; see here) you can swim in the water. Without it you can still use the poses or toobs or even the water slide. Good luck sitting on the lifeguard chair. He has it linked funny so it doesn't fly off into space but it's just for show anyway as we can't afford to hire someone to nap in it.

CC did a great job of filling the gas station's footprint without disturbing his grave yard or my teeny shack-home on the backside of the big wall. He tells me that he's still working on bits and tweaking, but isn't that the fun of building anyway?

Year in Review: MySL

For the last however many days – it seems like forever, but Internet time is like that – the My Second Life feeds have been down and few people have been able to post pictures. As a means of keeping our community together it is nearly dead and just waiting to be buried. As with the year 2012, though, I spent a good part of my 2013 posting pictures and sharing my Second Life with friends and various hangers-on. Here's a sampling of my snapshots. I hope you enjoy them. Click the titles over the pictures to see the original posts.

Mole Day!

Dancing with Angela at Mole Day, an annual Bay City event honoring our friends the Moles from the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW). Tons of Moles turned out and a good time was had by all.

One Billion Rising (OBR)

Yes, I misspelled my name on my own shirt. But I was Greeter Lead for OBR, a worthwhile event iRL and iSL.

Modeling

My friend Kaelin makes some wonderful mesh avatars and I was thrilled when she asked me to model some of them for her. Check out my blog (here) for entries about her and the avatars.

Merlin and Death in the Forest of Kahruvel

On a couple of my several visits to the Forest of Karhuvel to do what I could for the investigation into the disappearance of Salazar Jack (see here for more info) I ran into Merlin (yes, that Merlin) and one time watched him talking to Death (I had a pic ready to post here but lost it).

Topless Tuesday

Apparently, I started Topless Tuesday.
The main thrust of this blog post was to point out that I hadn't accomplished anything of note in 2013. It seems, though, that I inaugurated the MySL feeds tradition on February 19 with the above image and this blog post.

Caturdays!!

I also used the MySL feeds to document Caturdays (sometimes Fursdays, too).

The Pouloco Station

My brother's Pouloco gas station in Bay City - Dennis (SLurl) was often featured on the MySL feeds by me and others. He's thinking of doing something different for 2014, with fewer dinosaurs, I hope.

Holidays

Holidays would often find me zipping around The Grid in some sort of themed outfit. Easter 2013 was Cabbit Time.

Griefers

My friend Marianne was often the target of griefing, sometimes intentionally, but like when the birds attacked her home lots of us rallied around and held Abuse Report parties. As a community, Bay City residents will do the same whenever ne'er do wells strike Our Fair City. Sometimes there's dancing.

One for the Guys

Not too long after Topless Tuesday started the guys started Wiener Wednesday. I helped.

Bay City Alliance Meetings

Lots of Bay City Alliance meetings. We start with Metrics, Moles, Servers, and Events. Then we move onto Food and sometimes Dancing or Food Fights.

Miss Bay City

My loving wife Angela reined as Miss Bay City for a year and was featured in the town's anniversary parade. With the help of Anthony, I put together a parade car for her and hired Kato to drive her. Sadly, I crashed and my account was locked so I couldn't actually be in the parade.

Towel Day!

May 25th was Towel Day, celebrating the life of author Douglas Adams.

Rodvik Sneaks Into Bay City

Filmmaker Drax helped Our Fearless Leader Rodvik Linden sneak into Bay City but a crowd quickly formed. By the way, Rod? You still owe me a bear.

Fireworks!

The skies of Livingtree caught fire every week over the Summer and I attended whenever I could if only to see if "this time" Marianne would finally burn down the school building.

Relaxing

MySL was a great way to document all the times I just hung out. Which was often.

SL10B

Second Life's 10th Birthday Party was amazing, at least what I saw of it. I was banned for doing mySL10B job someone who claimed to be a good friend. The same person who trained me to do what I was doing that got me fired. Really made the whole event suck. But I visited some highlights like this history walk by Marianne McCann.

Boobies!

During 2013 I upgraded my "implants" in SL because I like the look and I'm this big iRL, too, so I wound up taking lots of pictures of me and The Girls for the MySL feed. Look for more next year, of course.

CC Columbo

My brother CC pops in as himself now and then, though usually he hangs out in Caladon in his other avatar. We have one computer that runs SL fairly well and one that is rather poor at it but sometimes we can hang out together.

A Nice Pair

Lots of boobies pictures from me on MySL in 2013, but I tried to keep them funny.

Hot Bay City Nights

Another event in Bay City is the annual Hot Bay City Nights. It's a car show, a car wash, a dance, and a Miss Bay City Pageant, too. Money raised at this and many other events in Our Fair city go to childsplay.org

There are about a dozen more pictures I singled out from my snaps bin, but this post has gone on long enough and you can review my blog (here) and on Flickr (here) to see lots of what I might have posted on MySL because I'd often put the best of them in other places. What you should really be doing is going out and making your own memories in Second Life.

Exploring Second Life Meme

Alright, it's Wednesday and the ever talented Strawberry Singh was far more punctual with her Monday meme challenge this week: Exploring Second Life (original post here). Sue me. Regular readers of this blog know that  I often write about places to visit (heck, explore and exploration are among the mess of post tags I mishandle). After a hectic start to the week I've finally found some time to dig into my Landmarks so here goes ...

Meme Instructions: Share 1 to 5 of your favorite places on the grid. I feel like exploring and discovering new places. Share places you think everyone should visit and also tell us why they are your favorites.

Cripes! How to choose? My Cool Builds, Recreation, and Really Scenic Places landmarks folders have so many great locations. Here is a more or less random list because some I'd like to recommend are down for maintenance (The Calas Galadhon regions, for example), private access only, or no longer exist (I miss the Isle of Lesbos).

The Lydia Rose Memorial Park - SLurl

One place I often write about (like here) is the wonderful space my brother built in Nangrim, The Lydia Rose Memorial Park, one of my homes in Second Life. With just a few gaps, The Park has been here since before I came to the Main Grid, my brother (CC Columbo in SL) having set aside a space to remember the passing of his Real Life daughter. Today, a simple flowered cross is the only indication of the land's purpose. As I mentioned, it is our family home. CC lives in the cabin, my pixy characters live in the gardner's barn, and there's a family apartment not-so-cleverly hidden well up in the sky for all of us to use.

The "Las" Islands - SLurl

This simple archipelago of five regions represents what I believe to be the best tropical islands in all Second Life so I visit often and have frequently featured them in this blog (like here). Goodness knows that Our World is rampantly populated with tropical spaces, but these are executed so well and feel so natural, I'm drawn here with great regularity. Well worth a visit if you haven't been here and if you have, it's time to go back. Today.

Mhindepinde Rez Zone - SLurl

This location outside Bay City is a surrogate for all those wonderful Linden Department of Public Works "Mole" builds that fill Our World. Search my blog for LDPW and you'll see post after post of such places. Whether you want to launch a boat, fly an airplane, have a thrilling adventure, relax on a beach, explore a seaside village, or most anything you can think of doing, our Mole friends have built something for you.

And with that all-inclusive entry, I'm going to end this post so you can stop reading and get out exploring! I'd love to read your recommendation in the Comments sometime.

The Drax Files: World Makers 7 - Rod Humble

Right. Skip all the stuff with Drax and Rod Humble (AKA Rod Linden; AKA Fearless Leader) and zip up to 4:49 where you'll see ME, all close-uppy and personal with my wife on my head.

Seriously, it's a nice interview and well worth five minutes to watch or ten to watch it twice. I am in the video and the bear that Rod is holding is my bear... hay! He owes me a bear! Dang you, Rod! I want my Rod Linden Bear!!!

Speaking of bears ...

Hit up the Marketplace (here) to get your FREE SL10B commemorative bear avatar. It uses new texture technology to look extra realistic when you use the Materials Beta Viewer now and future viewers with the new tech installed. No need to be a Premium member so grab this freebie now as it goes away at the end of June. My brother, CC Columbo, was playing with the new viewer this morning and you can see his pictures here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

A Lame April Fool's Post

Yesterday's post on this blog, "Linden Realms Upgrade!," was an April Fool's Day prank. Apparently a lame one as no one believed it. Well, win a few and lose a few. Last year's prank, "Announcing Correspondent Mole," caught a few and made still others research a bit to debunk it.

I'd like to thank my brother, CC Columbo, for participating this year. I was watching him run about in Linden Realms and got inspired so I had him take a screen shot then I 'shopped it to paint some pink gems purple. After, he uploaded the pic and made a HUD with it so he could take a snapshot in-world and post it to his MySL feed with the proper Visit Location coordinates. He even faked some dialogue between himself and LR Linden, the avatar that you sometimes see running around Linden Realms. You can see it here then if you check the rest of his snaps here you'll see that he posted other pix as cover.

Maybe the gems I painted weren't realistic looking enough. Maybe the premise was too far fetched. It is hard to judge what makes a really believable prank. Hopefully I'll be better next year. Until then, keep having fun in Second Life!!

By the way? Kennylex Luckless pulled off a really good Linden Realms prank yesterday. See it here.

Linden Realms Upgrade!

In an effort to revitalize Linden Realms, the in-SL game where Residents run about completing quests and capturing gems to trade for in-world currency, The Lab has recently added signs with note card givers that explicitly review the game rules and, according to LR Linden, juggled about the ratio of gem colors, increasing the number of orange gems in play while decreasing the number of pink ones. Regulars know that the orange ones are worth more L$ when trading in gems at the Portal Workshop.

From what I learned in a chat with LR Linden this morning, other changes are in the works, too: new quests and increasing the number of ultra-rare blue gems, among other (read: Secret) updates. Blue gems, like the generally rare green ones, aren't involved in quests but are traded directly for cash. What I find more exciting, however, and is totally denied by LR Linden, is the introduction of purple gems as seen in this screen shot of an in-world snap my brother made last night:

I bet they'll be used in one of the new quests. Or maybe gathering them will provide some way to appease the Rock Monsters so you can pass them more easily. Not that this challenge is very .. er .. challenging to start with so I could be wrong. Maybe they will be extremely rare and have a high L$ value since the blue gems are changing. Maybe someone far more creative than I can come up with something far more creative than I can. LR Linden admitted that the game is being almost completely refreshed and that they had hoped to have it out for the first of the month, but like other LDPW projects, the work has fallen behind schedule. In any case, I'll keep you updated as I find out more.

Lydia Rose Memorial Park

Too many things happening in Real Life to even notice that I've neglected my blog. To rub more salt in the wound, the pictures in this post aren't mine. Sitting down after folding some laundry, I found these ten pictures on the computer desktop. Looks like my brother, CC Columbo, has been busy, not just rebuilding the Lydia Rose Memorial Park in Nangrim (SLurl) but taking pictures, too. As well he should. He has artfully decorated some 1536m² of land and added a home for himself, the first in years (he lived in a cave for a while). I hope you enjoy these while I attend to even more Real Life tasks.

The land is also our family home, only a portion of it being labeled as the park.

It seems much larger at ground level. To the left is the park proper, but this layout blends it with the family land. Cleverly hidden like all other skyboxes in SL is our family apartment.

When I saw the barn I figured it was a good place to put out my hay stacks cuddle and one of my unscripted horses. I need to find a nice mesh one to save prims.

The Full Bright trees in the distance belong to a neighbor we've had for some six years.

My pixy alt, Zyx the gardener, snuck in some plants and pots.

A fairy statue for Lydia, letting a bird fly free.

I have to ask about the Celtic knot outside the cabin. Probably just decorative.

CC's cabin. My wife (Angela) calls it CC's Study. This is exactly what he'd have iRL if he could, I imagine. He's always favored this sort of setting when building in Second Life.

Books, a fire, and comfy furniture in a rustic cabin. 

The rare picture of CC himself. He almost never snaps his own image.