Lazy Blogger :-)

Hi,

Time to post again... Yes, yes, I know, I'm not a good Blogger. Heck, it is probably because I spent way too much time in SL! I don't camp, so my counter is quite accurate. Yesterday I hit the magic 1000 hours on it. That means 1000 hours since the 1st of November (roughly) spent in areas where scripts are allowed to work. So it's actually quite a bit more (I joined SL on the 24th of October).
I just noticed it this morning. It is a copy, so this one won't change. :-)
How is everything? Lately I am spending most my time with my SL friends, talking about all the different sunbjects there are. I also help out new people who pass through the gallery to find my Money Tree. We also made a little private club on the top floor of the gallery to have some fun amongst friends.
Here is a picture of us having spontaneous fun!From left to right: Eclair, me, Akei, Anniette and Rave.
Of course these are not all my close friends, there are still some missing, but it was quite a nice moment to have 4 at the same place at the same time.

That's all for now, I'll do my best to write a bit more often. I'm a bit ashamed to have let it go for so long...

Building a Church

While I'm writing this, I just realised that I'm here 3 months. By approximation I 'played' in SL over 375 hours.
Just like any other newbie I had to learn the tricks on how to do things. Some things are easy to accomplish, others harder.
After building a couple of houses and being unhappy with each one, I'd set myself a new task. I wanted to build one of the -for me- most interesting buildings. Not only the outside, but also on the inside.


So here it is, Agios Nikodemos, currently being build in SL (SLURL) . I work hard on it to and try to be ready before Easter. Below is a photo of the church I took as a base to work from:


Yes, the church in the photo is real, it's on Crete. No, it's not Agios Nikodemos, I don't know it's name. The photographer of the church couldn't tell me either, it's taken about 5 years ago. I decided to dedicate this church to Saint Nikodemos (Agios = Saint), because he was one of the remarkable persons in history to write deep religous books and scripts. (See google: philokalia) For me it's inspirational, for others maybe too deep, too complex or just too far from the current thinking. That's ok, everyone his/her own. I love reading, I love learning and I'm open-minded, so I did read more than one religous book and am still reading.

I am just building this church so you can see, and partially experience, what a Greek Orthodox Church is like. Inside the church you will see the icon of Agios Nikodemos, conform the tradition. It was very hard for me to find one, especially since I do not live in Greece and have limited resources to get imagery over the internet from there. (Any good pictures are appriciated! See at the end for contact information.)
Here is another detailed example of what I managed to do:


So I try to do what I can. Probably after Easter I have better pictures, since I might be going to Greece to have Easter there, as I do every year. (Greeks will understand, and no, I'm -surprisingly enough- not Greek.)

Enjoy my work, as it is a continuous process of improvement and enhancement.
Feel free to leave me a tip, so far I have spend quite a bit of money on SL and don't nearly make enough here to cover the monthly costs. (I also run Gallery Anniette, nearby here.) One thing, if you visit the Gallery and you're under 30 days old, look around for the Money Tree. That's one of my ways of helping new people too.

Thanks for reading so far. You can contact me through IM if I'm online, but I prefer that you drop a note card in my inventory, those always arrive fine. :-)

Please enjoy my work and feel free to give any comments!

Ruadh Langwarrin

Future ideas:
- To be able to light a candle
- Animations for kissing the icons
- ???

Art and Travels

Hey! :-)

Sunday I was working on my Gallery, I'm about to open one together with resident artist Anniette Anzac. Still a lot of work has to be done, but the beginning is here.
The building stands, the signs are up (Anniette made them) and the gallery is named: Gallery Anniette.

Anniette has been very busy with converting her paintings from RL to SL and framing them. I must say the result is Great. She also suggested to place an installation in the center of the gallery and she will place it there. I can't wait to see what she's going to create. While she is working at that, I'm still thinking what to do about our garden in front of the gallery. I would love to place some statues there, but I'm afraid it's going to take too many prims (primary objects that count towards your usage on a piece of land). I've seen a very nice sculpture, but it was 104 prims and that is a bit too much. If needed I'll remove the house next to the gallery and use that part as prim land, unless it's rented. (I haven't advertised it, since I wanted to see how my prim count is going to be). Anyway, when the gallery is ready, I have some ideas to have a Grand Opening! :-) I'll let you know when it's getting closer to that time.

What else have I been up to, I have been TP-ing (TelePorting) around SL (Second Life) in search for something nice to see. I visited Svarga (see the Dragon below or in Archive) and that's where I met Marion. (See her blog too, links on the right side). We went for a walk there and fed some birds. I haven't taken a screenshot there unfortunately. It is really funny, you buy seeds for L$1 and place it on the ground. Hang around for a bit and after a while the birds will come to eat. Anyway after the birds finished their seeds we went to take a look at the gallery and the house. I guess Marion likes the house, since she's been in touch about it, so she might become my neighbour. :-)
After visiting the house we went to Bliss Basin. Visit it through this link. It is really a very beautifull place. Walk around and discover the beauty yourself. :-)
Here is a little preview:
Eventhough this picture is great, it doesn't do it right. You have to be there to judge it properly. After we walked around a bit, Marion had to leave unfortunately. So I went back to the gallery and started working on some things that needed to be done.

I hope you enjoyed my little travel-talk.

Always running out of time

Hi,

Those of you who slip into their Second Life know the feeling all too well. Always running out of time. Just when things get interesting or cozy you happen to glance at the clock and oh shock horror it's getting very late. Like with me last night, I was involved in a discussion and it was very interesting to hear peoples views and participate. Until I happened to look at the clock and noticed it was getting very late. I should have gone to bed a lot earlier, 5 hours of sleep isn't good. Certainly not if you keep doing that for a couple of days in a row.

I just read Marions Blog on her SL adventures and she mentioned that she had to travel manually to discover places. There is an alternative and I found out that a lot of people don't use it.
Instead of searching for places, you can search for keywords in All. So you get hits from Classifieds, Popular Places, Places, Land for Sale, People and Groups. Usually that should give you enough hits to find something interesting. According to a message on the log-in screen the search should be working again, I haven't had the time to test it. I did have some other urgent things to do. And again I run out of time...

In SL time passes in a different way than RL.

Unusual sighting

I do have to say this up front, I did NOT take this picture! A friend of mine in SL took it and she told me the following about it:
"You see the guy on the dragon? That's one person. See the Dragon? That's another person!
They were doing a photoshoot (I imagine for the Dragon)."
The area where this was taken was described as Myst-like (if you know the game you'll understand). Kind of Alien, yet very familiar.

I can't wait to see for myself. I haven't got the LM (Landmark, as in bookmarks for locations), so I can't travel there myself.

Anyway I didn't want to keep this picture from you. And yes, I have permission to post it. :-)
Click on the picture to see it full size, it's worth it.

Start of my Blog

Hi,

Thanks for reading this... Well, at least that's what I (like other Bloggers) hope to have, someone reading my writings.

About me, or rather my persona in Second Life:
I'm a regular guy, shy, friendly, curteous and so on. Or am I?
Actually I don't know who I am, maybe I should rephrase that, I don't know what I am.

The thing is that in Second Life (further referred to as SL) you can be anybody or anything. You want to be a man or woman, fine no problem. You want to be a cat, dog, furry, alien, box, ball or whatever comes to mind, you can be just that. Just a little warning though, don't change too much all of a sudden, you might shock your friends or worse. Always remember that behind every Avatar (SL-persona) is a real person, with real feelings.

So back to my previous statement about myself, "I don't know what I am.". At the time of signing up for SL I decided to pick a male character, not knowing much about what SL really is. Now (after nearly 200 hours in the game) I do know what it is about, at least for a part of it. It is a very big world after all. Since in my opinion you always represent a little bit of your RL (Real Life) self in the game, people will know what you are unless you're a good actor (Role Player). So because I'm mostly myself in the game I sometimes confuse peoples expectations. Everybody has some expectations when they see someone for the first time.

Anyway, when I started (22nd of October) I had little idea of all the possibilities and unfortunately due to me being in Europe there were no Mentors or Newbie helpers available when I was in game. So I figured out a lot by myself. I don't mind that at all, but I can imagine it's rather daunting to some people. So when you do start out, keep that in mind. Also I noticed that lots of people are too lazy to read information. There are lots of note-cards in the game handed out to you that answer frequently asked questions. Or if it's related to an item it will describe how to use it or set it up.

So far SL has been good to me and I have been good to my fellow SL users. I do help out new people when I see them and ask for help. Sometimes they are thankfull, sometimes not, but that's (Second) Life.

Next time I'll show you some pictures of places and describe more about the game itself.