Late on the Monday Meme

Not only have I been slacking with my blogging, but I've totally blown off the Strawberry Singh Monday Memes. Until today, Wednesday. Here's the "Have you ever SecondLifed Meme" a few days late.

From the series of "Where's Uccie?" in the Bay City Post.

Meme Instructions: Copy and paste the following questions and answers to your post, delete my answers and input your own. Don’t forget to leave a link to your post in the comments so others can come by and read your answers as well!

I’ve done a series of “have you ever” questions pertaining to Second Life. So all of the questions will start with “Have you ever” and end with “in Second Life?”

Have you ever owned a sim in Second Life? 
No, but Angela and I rented a Homestead for a brief time.

Have you ever created content in Second Life? 
Yes, for retail sale, contract work, personal use, and for the Isle of Lesbos (many of which have been featured on this blog, like the Bath House.)

Have you ever driven a vehicle in Second Life? 
Yes. I'm fond of boats and planes but not overly fond of automobiles. I'm better with boats than cars iRL, too, though I've yet to try a plane.

Have you ever gone sky diving in Second Life? 
One of my first experiences on the Main Grid was taking skydiving lessons. For L$150 (a lot of money for me back then) a Canadian chap gave a parachute to me, took me up in a plane a few times, and taught me when to do what, including some tricks on how to find  the center of a scoring target.

Have you ever played a sport in Second Life? 
Not an organized one, but I have a vague memory of kicking around a soccer ball.

Have you ever gone clubbing in Second Life? 
If you mean going out dancing to live or DJ'd music at a venue created for the purpose, yes. If you mean beating helpless creatures for their fur, then no.

Have you ever fangirled/fanboyed someone in Second Life?
 Yes, though for the life of me I can't remember the name of the first person I fangirl'd. Of course, I'm a big fangirl of the LDPW Moles. What was a bit creepy was the first time someone fanboy'd me in public.

Have you ever taken a picture of your avatar in water in Second Life? 
More than a few times, like the picture above.

Have you ever taken a picture of a sunset in Second Life? 
Yes, more than a few. The one that comes to mind first was from my farewell to Lesbos blog post.

Have you ever taken a nude picture of your avatar in Second Life?
 You do know that many credit me with starting Topless Tuesday and you ask this question, right?

Have you ever dated in Second Life? 
Yes, and got married, too.

Have you ever had or attended a wedding in Second Life? 
Didn't I just answer this? Been to more than a few, including my own.

Have you ever drank, smoked or taken drugs in Second Life? 
Yes, no, and no.

Have you ever engaged in sexual activity in Second Life? 
You mean today? Really, you don't seem to read my blog.

Have you ever been to Bukkake Bliss in Second Life? 
Who hasn't been there? Sure, I can think of a few.

Terra Xplorer

Renowned Second Life builder and aviation expert Cubey Terra has released a new product after quite a few years of dormancy (or simply enjoying himself), the Terra Xplorer. Announced on his blog on 20 November, Cubey made everyone wait two days before they could get their hands on one. Not one to wait, I went ... um ... Xploring.

Look what I found! A full beta unit just laying around in Georgian! I posted about it here and here.

No, that's not a real product in the picture. Having seen the basic appearance from the blog, and being impatient, I mocked up a board with exhaust flame and mounted it on an invisible Linden 2009 Hoverboard for functionality. It didn't fool Cubey nor did it earn me an early production model, but I zipped out today and got one for myself and for my friend Xandah since I knew she had the Terra Z Transport, a vehicle that the Xplorer seems to be based upon. Here's what she has to say:

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Terra Z Transport, no longer available for sale.

To start, I refreshed my memory of the Terra Z Transport, one of the very first vehicles I bought when joining Second Life. If you rez one on the ground it asks to attach to you or you can simply attach one from your Inventory. Turn off your AO and use the same controls you would to fly. It is that simple. A HUD allows you to change the color scheme of the main body and the accents. The exhaust flame matches the color of the accents as does the HUD.

Terra Z Transport dashboard

The Z has a control stalk with hand grips and functional readouts for altitude and airspeed. Not that you can see them in use, mind you, but the HUD shows the same information and has a slider to control a speed boost. Otherwise your speed is the same as walking or running.

Terra Xplorer HUD

The HUD for the Terra Explorer is essentially the same but with one addition: The Eye Button will hide the attached board and disable the board's animations so there is no need to detach it for walking.

Terra Xplorer in action. L$250 at Cubey Terra Aeronautics (SLurl).
You can also visit the Marketplace.

The Terra Explorer is essentially the same vehicle, sans the control stalk and with better animations. Turning or banking with the Z results in awkward tilting motions anchored to a strange pivot point. The same actions on the Xplorer give your avatar a delightful little hip sway as if your body is controlling the motion. Turning while flying with either unit decreases your altitude so be careful around water.

Up close. Exhaust shuts off when not moving. Stable enough for high heels.

This is a fun little craft and I look forward to using it more. The ability to hide the Xplorer rather than needing to detach for ground travel is a big plus. Be sure to box a copy of everything you get in the sales delivery folder for backup. Everything is full Copy.

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Thanks, Xandah! Good report! I should note for editorial integrity that I gave Xandah the money to buy the Xplorer.

My experience (or is that Xperience?) with the board was entirely pleasant. A 1/8th boost in speed is very comfortable. Anything more than that and you will easily out fly your Draw Distance and the speed with which objects near you rez. Save high speed for races or high altitude.

And the next Premium Gift is ....

Since September of 2011, The Lab has been giving gifts to it's Premium account Residents. Intially, the gifts were to be doled out monthly but that quickly went from plan to poo right away. Eventually, several gifts were given out, including what I consider to be a gift, the opening of some Premium-only sims: The Wilderness Area (Web) and very quiet Sandboxes (Web). Here's a quick review of the physical gifts, though (in no particular order).

The most recent Premium gift was a very nice biplane. I wrote about it here. Also introduced at this time was a Premium Resident-access airport in Orville (SLurl)

The second Premium gift was a pretty nice sailboat. I know a few Residents that snoozed and missed out on getting their copy and now they can't have one. I first wrote about this gift here.

The first Premium gift was a very nice furniture set. While folks eagerly awaited to see what the October gift would be many argued about free advertising being given to the non-employee creators of the gifts. Since then all the gifts have been made by the very, very talented LDPW Moles. My first post on this gift is here. Most of the free avatars and clothes you'll find in your default Inventory were made by non-Lab employees, by the way, and are very good.

An extremely popular Premium gift was the Dune Buggy. I very briefly wrote about it here. This gift also came with the introduction of new Premium regions like Salt Gulch (SLurl) so owners could race their new vehicles. Interestingly, the gift kiosks in the themed regions distribute the most current gift, not the one associated with the region. If you want the Dune Buggy now, you are out of luck but you can rez anything here. I see lots of folks riding horses at times.

One of my favorite Premium gifts is the Railroad Handcar. As with some of the other gifts, special Premium access regions were introduced so Residents could play. Visit Saminekim (SLurl) for some fun if you have any train. I wrote about this gift here and here.

I suppose that you could also consider having a Linden Home as a gift. I mean, you can have up to 512m² of land without paying tier costs or you can have the land with a home on it. That conserves the land's prim count for your furniture and whatnot. And having a cash stipend is something of a gift, too, plus Premium accounts have more support options and have a bit more pull if someone tries to remove you from Second Life.

But this post is about the physical gifts. Four of five have been about transportation. Do you think the next gift will be an automobile for the many Second Life roads? Maybe it will be a special mesh house for small plots of land. What do you think the next gift will be or what do you want to see? Feel free to leave a comment below and if I get enough, I might drop a line to some Moles I know.

Not a Second Life Resident? Click here to join. If anyone asks who referred you, tell 'em Uccello Poultry.

New Premium Gift! [Update]

The Premium Sandboxes also have Premium Airports like Limia (SLurl) and feature Mole Gas for your birds. 

The Lab has a new premium gift out today, a Lindy Premium Airplane v1.04, and you can grab it at any Premium gift spot such as the one in Sandbox Mirificatio (SLurl). The plane features seven texture schemes, 10 animations (mostly hanging off the wings), and customizable controls, all available via menus when you click the plane. Use the Help option in the menu for a note card explaining everything and a list of places to rez your new toy so you can go flying. This is just a quick post for now. I'll write more about this cool gift as soon as I get back  .....

Update 01:38pm SLT

Looks like there is a new Premium airport! Check out Orville (SLurl) with your new plane. More updates to follow.

Update 03:48pm SLT

My first full flight in The Crate. I left from the Bay City Municipal Airport (SLurl) because no matter which direction I went, I wasn't able to exit the Premium regions to visit Mainland if I left from Orville. I noticed a few issues such as dramatic altitude drops upon region changes and as often as not direction changes, too. There seems to be no way to maintain consistent altitude in any case. Constant vigilance in the cockpit is required as it seems the SL winds will buffet the plane and force X,Y,Z direction changes. Combine that with controls that are far too delicate at the standard (Advanced) setting and the plane is a bit tricky to control. Beginner mode can be set to make this a wee bit easier, even in mid-flight. I'm working on figuring out the throttle, but I was able to determine that when you are taxiing that take off happens at 40% throttle whether you hit the flaps or not. Most notably, there is not food or drink service.

Happy Skies, y'all!!

Pay Ben Linden (!?!)

Look what I found in the Balance region (SLurl), a Linden-owned vehicle sandbox:

Maybe this is a test build, especially since it is in a sandbox. And maybe it refunds any monies paid, though I haven't tried it to see if that might be true. But paying a Linden for content? Besides, there are nicer motorcycles for less money available, including some on the SL Marketplace. Quickly found is a full-perms "street racer" for L$19 (click here) plus quite a few L$10 bikes and choppers from Black Widow Motors (click here).

For my use today, I grabbed at L$10 Bug Mobile from the near by Busy Ben's Vehicle Lot and Rezzing Area (SLurl), a Linden-owned parcel where in-world creators can market their wares, like the Bug Mobile (see below), cars, planes, boats, and the motorcycles priced from L$50 for a basic sculpty model and on up to spendy, very nice ones.

Later I popped over to the race track in the Georgean region (SLurl) and grabbed a free Linden Mole-made hoverboard. Remember, the Moles love you.

Sunday Drive, on Friday!

Whilst roaming about in search of a nice set of eyes that someone told me about I came across Saber's Cubcar Races & Fun Center (SLurl) and totally forgot what I was doing. It was a blast to rez one of these monowheel cars and simply race around the track. After a while I discovered a high gear and went even faster. Taking a break, I tried the Battle Boats but without an opponent to shoot at, it wasn't much fun so I went back for another couple laps on the track. Weeeeeee!

Eating Up The Sims

Something I totally forgot about until I helped someone get to the Beta Grid to test Display Names is the bonus space bux one gets there. On the Main Grid I had just under L$2000 and when I logged into the Beta Grid I had some L$13,000 in my account. No, you don't get to keep it, most stores are not accessible on the Beta Grid, and anything you buy is more of a rental since you can't keep it. So here I am in my L$1000 flying suit from Cubey Terra, hanging over a sandbox and wondering why a region doesn't seem very big at times.

A well-landscaped region can seem endless, like Misty Mountain (SLurl). A flat sandbox seems like a postage stamp, especially when you have a flight-speed boosted rig like I bought. Just about the time I hit a good speed I had to cross a sim border or I hit the sim wall. Since even the best sim crossings are still full of hiccups (though they have greatly improved, for the most part, lately), what we need are double-sized sims. Or maybe The Lab can market a single region the size of four sims at a special price. For folks like me who love flying that would be heaven. Or motor sports enthusiasts could go for a nice long drive without having that strange "flying in limbo" effect when taking a crossing in a physical vehicle. Look at the vehicle sandboxes sometime and you'll see that nearly all the courses require a sim crossing. I suppose that is good for testing purposes, but certainly not for pleasure trips.

Free Fun at Misp!

Recently I bought a bumper boat rezzer for the Isle of Lesbos so the ladies can have even more fun at the resort. No, that's a lie. I bought it because I wanted it and installed it at both the Isle of Lesbos and at home so I could ride a bumper boat whenever I wanted. So L$1500 later ...

If you don't have that kind of spare cash you can ride the bumper boats free in Misp, the home region of White's Works (SLurl), the store where I bought the rezzer. It was there that I test drove the product before buying it. I also considered the paddle boat and the jet ski, just two more of the many vehicles you can use for free. A large race track (see pic) fills the sim so you can try for free various motorcycles, scooters, and go karts, too. Other games and activities are available. Thank goodness the vehicles auto-delete when you are done riding them. While writing this post I crashed several, littering the sim with carnage.