Love and Zwickies

Long ago, Around Rosh HaShannah 2010, I spoke with Thinkerer Mellville. A new Petable Turtle Market had opened up in Remek near There is No Adult in the Room, which was then the Honey Hut. I had new land on Utopia Portugal XVIII, and could support my first Petable Turtles. I asked Thinkerer if I should take the plunge into the world of breedables. He said NO! I did not listen.

It is not that Thinkerer's reasons weren't valid. Breedables are ALWAYS an ongoing committment. You pay more in food to keep them alive on someone else' server, then you do for the creatures yourself. You can't make money selling the young. Most breedables are too prolific and those that aren't are an exercise in frustration.

This last of course, IS NOT TRUE. Both my One Who Thinks She Knows and I fell in love with our shell babies, as we sometimes called our Petable Turtles. All that came to an end on July 11, 2013. Grimm Hathor pulled the plug on Petable Turtles, and two months later we lost our Lily Frogs. Zwickies are our one remaining breedable. They were a prsent from My One Who Thinks She Knows to both of us for her forty-ninth and my thirty-ninth birthdays. Yes, that was a long time ago, though she doesn't think that.

2013 happened just yesterday as far as my One was concerned. Thinkerer got it half right. The relation between a breedable owner and a breedable creator is one of trust. Grimm Hathor ended Petable Turtles with notice and as he promised when he withdrew support. We cried. Dragonesse Rage, who took over Lily Frogs, absconeded leaving the frogs to starve. And yes, Thinkerer, we did the math. Petable Turtles cost my One Who Thinks She Knows hundreds of dollars. We had a big donation of food at the end with the frogs, and they ate less.

As for the Zwickies, they have been voracious. They take up a full eight prims each (Land is a bigger expense than food when it comes to breedables) and they give the most amazing action and movement penny for penny and dollar for dollar and linden for linden. Lately, though we've received a lot of donated food. Donated food is a very bad sign. It's a creator's way to keep you in the game, and willing to buy more food, hatch out more young etc... Several times, my One has questioned whether Griderz was economically viable. If they're not, we will lose our Zwickies no matter how much we love them.

And my One and I love them because they are handsome. Even the simplest Zwicky is beautiful, and our Zwickies are NOT fancy like this rare female flying around the Zwickies Main Store on Photon Catchers. She is beautiful, but even (of course!) starter Zwickies are lovely. That is because they are capable of the magic of recombination, and can produce bi and tricolored hybrid young. I've seen it many times. My One has thousands of photos of the beautiful babies (Zwicklets) that reside in our inventory because we have no room to take them out of stasis. Only Nimrod, Bishara, and Protea were lucky enough to be F1 Zwicks. Land is the constraining factor.

We did get to paint two of our Zwickies and we did it with an eye to increasing the randomization and warmth of color in the offspring. We painted Yocheved white and Protea black. You'll see Protea at the end of the entry. The painting also made both Protea and Yocheved smaller. We never figured out why. Painting may not always shrink Zwickies.

My One thinks that part of the seduction of breedables is a faith in the future. You can see "what if" and try again and again in a way you can't in real life. You pay for the food, but not every creature you create can be or should be brought to life. There is no room, but as long as you pay for the food, your creatures live and can procreate. Bishara by the way is an Ice Zwicky, one of the first specials. Her mother is Yocheved and her father is Geronimo. She carries on Yocheved's blue coloring and phenotype. The Ice phenotype does not inherit.

Subira has fathered several males. Zwickies have a sex ratio of one male for every nineteen females. The males carry the babies The females fight. There is something sad and sweet in this virtual biology, and this lovely zwicky with a pink ruff, next to whom I stand in the photo is our next to last male baby, Oberon. My One named him that because she had just seen A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The second level of the Zwickies Main Store on Photon Catchers is a Zwicky Museum that a week ago, my One added to the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet. Part of having breedables is a kind of faith in the future. I wanted to explain that faith to others and so too did my One.

In this picture, Fortunata, a totally green, monocolor, starter, Flexus Zwicky shows the reasons behind that faith. She has big, black eyes. She flies forward, backward, turns someeraults, farts pointsettias for Christmas, and shoots stars when she just plain feels like it. She is beautiful. When my One has been out of sorts, which is quite often, watching Fortunata and the other Zwickies has lifted her sagging spirits.

A Zwicky, or any breedable's promise is simple: "Feed us and give us space, and we will amuse you and do what your real life pets can not do." That should be enough reason for love. That makes trust very easy. And yes, my One and I both fear we are about to be betrayed. On December 30, our Zwickies began "calling their home galaxy" and they have been unable to get through. Their server is not answering. We can not get their stats. We do not know if they are hungry. Does this sound familiar? My One has talked about Zooby babies, but she also says Zwickies will be our last breedable, not for any of Thinkerer's reasons. When you break faith, trust goes away. My One says she has no more trust to give any breedable creator. And it's not the money. It's the love, and in the end, though we hope this is a false alarm, the betrayal.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- December 31, 2014

No more NASP

You don't have to read farther than the title, but if that is all you read, this will only be a story to you like every other story we tell on this blog. Avatarim aren't really born, though we begin our lives some place. Technically, I started my life at Miramarare on the mainland, but I followed another One Who Thought She Knew's avie to NMC Orientation and I say I was born there. Idiots at NMC sacrificed NMC Orientation so Ars Simulacra could live. Fortunately, I have many other sims where I grew to being a full-fledged and knowledgeable senior avie.

Among these are Wengen and Niseko Hirafu/Niseko Annupuri where I really learned to ski. My One Who Thinks She Knows really wanted me to ski very badly, and you know there is a picture of me skiing on my profile inworld. Skiiing lifts my One's spirits. I don't know if my One can ski in real life, but it never gets cold enough where she lives so that she can do it. I have to ski for her. I don't mind. I really love to ski, but as you can see from the links Niseko Hirafu/Niseko Annupuri vanished, and all that was left was NASP

NASP was a sim where we went for recreation. We could have cared less about the freebies, but we loved the stores and clubs. NASP went through a variety of builds, most of them strikingly and wonderfully beautiful. In what would be its last build it was mostly water. That did not surprise us, since there had been a mermaid store there the last time.

I had a new bathing suit and was ready for some late season, seaside adventure. As you can see behind me, there are green tatami mats, and a woodcut on a string above me that never came into focus. The package next to me was an unending source of fascination. NASP never failed to surprise.

I think these things sitting next to me were individually wrapped rice maki. My One adores rice maki and picks them out of the Utz snack mix at kiddush after the kids have taken all the spicey wheat sticks, melba toasts, and pretzels. This is symbiosis according to my One. Unfortunately, I was trying to get my inventory down. I still am. I did not see if the rice maki were edible.

I did get to swim. There was nothing on the bottom of the sea. The Mermaid Store may or may not have still been in business. I did not go looking for it. There were buildings out in the ocean and I swam toward those. I also did not see if the buildings were for rent.

That these were new buildings was a hopeful sign. It meant change. Change is good. These are the latest thing in prefabs, hihgly meshy, but colorful. If they were empty, I reasoned it was only a matter of time until they filled up with tenants or commercial tenanta willing to pay inflated rents, because if you can't pay your rent in Second Life...

But there were plenty of establishments on NASP willing to pay their rent. There were stores, like the one with this window display. There were clubs. There were toy stores, wig stores, with no hair for avatarim of color. There were Gacha machines, which are like gum ball machines in the United States, but which in Second Life dispense all sorts of collectible objects that bloat inventories. Sorry, I'm still on an inventory reduction kick.

I'm not on a memory reduction kick. I cammed from the water and photographed Santa who was decorating what may have been a private home. I could not come out of the water because was not warmly enough dressed to handle real winter. This was as real as winter gets in Second Life. It was also the last Christmas for NASP. I wonder how quickly, this tenant had to gather up all his or her Christmas decorations when the landlord told her the island was going to vanish.

Maybe the tenant received no warning at all. This cake comes from the Rainbow Club which always said it was closed even though it was always open. I did not care if I was the only one there. Time zones do that and Japan and the United States are thirteen to fourteen hours apart. I loved the Rainbow Club. It is OK to be by yourself in a club. I try not to imagine the owner getting back this cake along with everything else that was part of this club in a ball because someone upstream did not pay their rent. Stuff like that happens in Second Life. I've dealt with disgruntled and displaced tenants. I've been one myself. It hurts. I hope the tenants had warning. My One thinks NASP may have changed names and become something else. It looked too well run to fail, but its land mass had shrunk, and for those of us not lucky enough to live off other people's tax dollars, we either find a way to pay the rent or a sim has to make money. That goes for sims we love too. My One and I will both miss NASP. When it vanished into the sea, a piece of me went with it.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- December 29, 2014

Unintended Lessons

This is NOT a snarky post. After being gone so long, you probably will be happy or miserable with anything you get, but I am going to try to be serious. The Inferno on Istania long ago made the Explore SL Spreadsheet even though it is likely to never be finished. That's just a fact of life. The person with the creative genius may have moved on to other things (nice euphemism) or the agency sponsoring the project may have lost interest. It is hard to say.

Paradise is the heavens and the solar system, while Purgatorio has lots of nice artwork with links to the Inferno in modern English. I don't fully undertand the artwork, but it was worth teleporting inside even if I had to use "cam and sit" to get back out again. Unfinished projects have their disadvantages. And the biggest disadvantage is that in the case of Istania, that is a Penn State production, is tax payer money going to waste.

This is of course an old trope on this blog. We all know how it works. Second Life is a niche application. Say that three times fast. It is also a walled garden. Someone or some group gets money to spend inside the walls and the chances of oversigt are just next to nil. Given that money is prims, and building is fun, it is easy to begin playing with prims or walking away from projects. This story happens over and over again. Of course it still looks like we're just picking up where we left off when we retell this old story.

We're not anywhere near where we were when this blog more or less collapsed in November. My One, who is still rather wretched, has been through a lot, and her search for fame and fortune has not made thigns better for this blog, though it probably has made things better for her. I don't get sick to my stomach, but I have watched her sleep fourteen to sixteen hours in real life. I have seen her IBS flare up to the point where it completely destroys her appetite. She tells me "I can take it on the chin but still get socked in the gut."

She also says "NO PROMISES!" It is not that we are NOT going to quit doing this blog. In fact, I am the one responsible for helping my One Who Thinks She Knows hold herself together. That is a scarey and responsible place for an avie to occupy, but I do my job as best I can. That my One still cares about her Zwickies and Kolis is a helpful sign.

That my One wants us bushwhacking again, is even better. Of course bushwhacking can make a sad One Who Thinks She Knows even sadder. But let's just say my One was thrilled when she found the Drug Endangered Child exhibit on the University of Kentucky sim. She had seen teleport links leading to it before, but always found that they led to a dead end. This time we got lucky...well sort of. The link to http://www.drugendangerechild.org leads to a parked domain. The site has been gone for several years according to the Internet Archive, which shows a July 2010 version of it. That means this exhibit, which is NOT, interactive, is a facility, and my One dislikes adding facilities to the Explore SL Spread Sheet.

My One also dislikes the Drug Endangered Child Exhibit for another set of reasons. Her first thought when she saw the white crystals was cocaine. That was after she looked around and thought: "Oh boy! Another scuzzy house!" My One loves scuzzy houses, but of course she had to ask: "Why do poor people always live like pigs."

"And many middle class parents get stoned in front of their kids. Heck, many states are legalizing recreational pot." The bong was what she recognized. There were joints and blunts everywhere in the trailer. Of course it had to be an old trailer with a discarded propane canister on the lawn. My One figured this was out in the country where there were no natural gas lines. Still, there was no reason a poor family in a trailer, even one who used recreational chemicals, could not carry the emnpty canister to the dumpster or garbage can corral. Poor does not mean sloppy, and sloppy does not mean evil. Say that ten times fast!

There was of course a baby in need of rescue in the middle of the trailer of depravity. He wasn't a prim baby like Baby Alex, but instead an imaginary baby. For a baby in a den of depravity, he was surprisingly well cared for. He had a nice crib (not pictured), toys, and there was food in the home which probably meant formula, though we did not see it. The rats had not yet torn open the garbage which was bagged and ready to go the corral or the dump if it was some distance away. Out in the country, my One told me. Things are different.

Then my One noticed the weapon, not even a typical K-Mart hunting rifle, or is that a WalMart special? This one meant business. And the handcuffs were a wonderful touch. My One did not even question the chemicals stacked up on the dresser. These people were after all slobs, and this was the den of depravity. My One instead noticed the handcuffs. They made her wince and then laugh. "Couldn't these folks employ a padlock! They sell those at the hardware store! This is too over the top!" she told me.

My One also though the MRI machine in the hospital was out of place and over the top. If you bring in a child who is neglected and her bones aren't broken or a stoned adult, you are going to do a physical exam, probably of the skin and lungs, and a psychological work up, but MRI's are for serious internal injuries. By the way, my One still thinks this MRI machine is out of place.

But my One Who Thinks She Knows had another question: "Isn't that trailer supposed to be a meth lab?" she asked me. Meth stands for methamphetemine, and making meth is risky business. It involves nasty chemicals that can explode or catch fire, poisonous chemicals. Now my One had noticed that there were a lot of seltzer bottles in the trailer of depravity. She wondered if people in Kentucky made their own soda. She knew someone with a Soda Stream, or maybe the water in that part of the world is so bad tasting, that they made their own seltzer as an alternative, and in the bedroom, the large jars atop the space heaters were to humidify the dry air. STOP!

My One figured out she didn't know squat about what a meth lab looked like. Well, let's just say the good folks in the trailer of depravity weren't making their own soda. My One thinks the picture at this site is more like what we saw in the trailer. Still my One was puzzled. Any high school kid learns you DON'T EAT in the chemistry lab. A meth lab is after all a chemistry lab.

Yet, this was what my One and I saw in the trailer, and this picture has her upset to say the least. "Are poor people and criiminals really this stupid!" she asked. "It's one thing to commit a crime, but where is good sense! You don't make any money and surely have the cops on your tail if you blow up the trailer or someone gets sick." My One said that if this were her lab, she would move all the sleeping into the living room and use the bedroom for the lab. She'd put up a padlocked door. Whatever went on in the bedroom would stay in the bedroom.

My One also said from what she knows about crime, the money coming in should be going to good use. There should be enough to eat, the light bills paid, etc.... My One said the sloppy, dangerous, conditions in the trailer (which by the way would still be dangerous even if the lab were confined to one room with a lock to keep the baby out) were a kind of stereotyping of poor people and the objects of social services. Stereotyping makes my One wince. By the way This PDF courtesy of the Oregonian belies the stereotype of the Drug Endangered Child Exhibit.

Of course when you build exhibits with other people's money, you don't have to worry about making them realistic. Going over the top is a better teaching tool...well isn't it? Well, it's less expensive, and when the grant money dries up and the web site disappears... well your exhibit can stay there forever if those running the island aren't wise to you. Sorry, this is not snark. It is just a fact of life. Second Life is not the home of accountability or subtlety.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- December 25, 2014

Fire, Ice, Tears, and Someone Listened

This was going to be a simple blog about fire and ice. It is winter in Second Life, and in Second Life winter comes with violence, drafts, unheated buildings, and plenty of tacky Christmas ornaments. I get cold watching other avatarim dance nearly, naked in the snow. I am glad the dance hall on Dance Island is a toasty indoor space.

The CVL Reference Bunk on Imagination Island is unheated with an open roof and gaps for doors. Brrrr...... I did not freeze Monday night, but I figured out how to stay warm. I'll get to that.

You can see here, that the amphitheater on Imagination Island is completely out of doors and any avie watching a presentation... Well let's not go there.

Part of making winter bearable in Second Life making the most of it. Here at Dance Island there is an outdoor dance floor and a rink, though I saw no one skating there when I visited.

And I really do enjoy winter sports. Suddenly, there are a whole host of places to ski in Second Life including Imagination Island. I got in some slope time before my shift in the reference hut on Monday. One of the reasons this blog is so slow is that my One is once again seeking fame and fortune. This means I don't get time to write.

Of course you can't enjoy winter sports or dancing at most badly heated venues in winter without a winter wardrobe. That means thigh-highs, because in Second Life there are no panty hose or tights. Your dance pants have to go on the panty/panty hose layer. My One Who Thinks She Knows thinks this is strange. I'm used to it. If you notice in the picture of me modeling a dress at Cal State Northridge, I am barefoot and not wearing thigh highs. Well, that is because my One made the dress with me on a warm sim and also winter was just a few days away. Winter comes suddenly.

And it does not come uniformly. Istania, where my One helped me make this poke berry themed dress, probably won't see a gust of cold wind or a flake of snow.

Of course the best defense against winter's chill on a snow-choked sim is fire. This fire is for sale on SL Marketplace. I've not seen it very much inworld, because I travel to Arab sims, and like any one who lives in dry country where a stray spark means.... they are careful around fire.

This is typical of fire on an Arab sim. Notice the rocks surrounding the fire pit and that the flames have been banked and are not out of control. This fire burns carefully on Italy Land, a relatively new sim that offers skill gaming beyond Xyngo, and some camping as well. Camping is sitting around earning a very small amount of Lindens.

If my Arab friends want more flames, they use serious means to contain them. This fire burns in the horse market, also on Italy Land. I really do like the idea of protected fire.

In fact, I can do without the fire altogether if I have some heat. That is how I came to build the Magic Peacock Space Heater to keep the work space in the Reference Hut on Imagination Island at a reasonable temperature. Of course a space heater needs holes so you can see the heating element hard at work and know that there is heat radiating out.

A little texture changed everything. Here is the Magic Peacock Space Heater in the Kamimo Island Sandobx. Notice the small port hole that lets me view the radiant heat source, and the pretty, light and dark green enameled paint job, complete with decorative peacocks. What could be better!

Being able to build to satisfy your needs in Second Life is a real blessing. It means more than a life of just dancing, even dancing warmly wearing an old dress and thigh highs at the revived club on AlgarveSunset Portugal. I remembered taking this island off the DO IT BETTER 2013 Roster because most of it was just standard 4096's for rent. Most of it still is something other than it's old glory, but lately, avatarim have tried to make a go of the club. That club needs my meager support. Sims go but they also come back.

And some sims will never come back. On November 5, I checked on UDMercy Libraries to do some routine bushwhacking and saw a plain green sim covered with clutter on the map. Something had gone wrong, and when I teleported there, I saw that the sim was a zero autoreturn sandbox, full of assorted junk. I made a winter dress there.

And when I wanted to make another winter dress Wednesday night of this week, I headed to UDMercy Libraries again. The sandbox was even more cluttered. My One thought the island was either abandoned or under new management. She had me send messages to the management group.

Then she emailed the Instructional Design department the "real life" UD Mercy Library. She got back a reply. She said that if UDMercy Libraries was finished with it's sim in Second Life, they needed to keep it from being a squatter's paradise. "The sim should die as it lived," was the way she put it.

And the Instructional Design staff and UD Mercy Libraries listened to my One Who Thinks She Knows. You can see what UDMercy Libraries looked like this afternoon. It is over. I cried, but I stood on that raft wearing my newest dress, the one made at UDMercy Libraries. Second Life does not need more badly maintained sandboxes or paaradises for squatters. I wish the old UD Mercy Libraries was back, but like the school's football program, it was probably just too expsensive, and if you can't pay your rent in Second Life....

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- December 11, 2014

"If the Summer Changed to Winter..."

Some time while I was NOT writing blog, summer changed to winter in Second Life. I was still traveling inworld. My One Who Thinks She Knows was still making clothes for me, and we were still working on both the DO IT BETTER 2014 Roster and reducing inventory which now is a hair below 21,000 items. If you are wondering what happened, my One sought fame and fortune and her mother came to visit. My One will be seeking fame and fortune again and she has a presentation to give for which she needs to pressingly make a Prezi. Meanwhile, we finished the DO IT BETTER 2014 Roster! Note: there are large images in this blog. If you see an image with a border, it is a thumbnail. Please click it to see the full size version in another tab.

We DID NOT include a lot of fantastic sites. There's always next year, and it was a hard decision to pick those last two sites, but Africa Live made it after a lot of consideration.

First, Africa Live offers things to do. There is a flying machine. There is also wind surfing, swimming, and a club.

Africa Live solves the water problem by providing wind surfing and swimming balls for avatarim that do not have swimmers. They may have to swim in their underware or clothes, but that is not forbidden even if it is a tad gauche.

And the people at Africa Live seem friendly. Yes, there are people. Yes, there is a club with a good variety of music ranging from reggae, to world, to rhythm and blues. There is also a shopping mall with African fashions and photos for sale. The feeling is gritty, authentic, and warm. Africa Live is NOT a subsidized, academic project. It is self sufficient and created by Africans and those who love African culture.

And African culture (not schtick though there is not even a lot of the schtick if you come right down to it) in Second Life is in short supply. Bradley University lost its Kente exhibit. There is still an exhibit on kanga cloths atEmpire State College and Africa Illuminated somehow misses the mark, but at least it is there, and that is it. Africa Live offers links to African clothing designers, posters on how climate change effects Africa, African fashions for sale, and photos of Africa both on sale and on exhibit. Many of these pictures come from the coast of Benin, which is not effected with Ebola despite being in West Africa. Second Life never gets that far away from the "real world." In the case of Africa Live that is a very good thing.

In contrast, Momo Pet Land blasted on to the DO IT BETTER 2014 Roster pretty much of its own accord. My One Who Thinks She Knows and I found our way to Momo Pet Land while checking out old pet-related links. Any link that looked live got a visit, and both my One and I expected a sim that was similar to Nasp filled with lots of stores, cafes, animations, and tiny-related merchandise. That was NOT what we found.

The roller coaster was our first clue. I managed to run it off the tracks the first time. There is a train track switch you have to hit. This coaster is similar to the one on TOV Korea in that it does not follow the laws of physics, but in its large and ambitious size, it bears far more resemblance to the roller coasters that once graced Mirai and Hanako Land. And the ferris wheel is a classic, Japanese, slow dance confection, as much a work of kinetic art as a ride, and a lot less thrilling but a lot more beautiful.

But Momo Pet Land is NOT just an amusement park. There are two floors of "trick art," clever animated sculptures and optical illusions.

And high above ground level is a "Bath House Park/" Onsens are one of Second Life's joys, and this is the most authentic one my One and I have seen yet. No, you're not going to see me nude, thanks my One's pruderie and a crop tool. I wore a bathing suit for the photo shoot, but the pre-wash made a better picture.

Then there is the haunted house. That really is not a good name for it. It's the scene of a murder most vile, but seeing the poor ghosts and the lost children and the blood and all the rest brought me to tears as you can see, but unlike in most "houses of horror" this one let me have my own story.

I cried, but it was OK to feel sad. The haunted house included an altar to pray for the souls of the deceased. The Japanese don't kneel when they pray but I do. It is good to enter a house of horrors and have my emotions validated. My One also really appreciated that.

And you know the rest of the story. Well, you don't. My One and I visited a lot of great places making this board and some sad ones too. All the also-rans have their story. Our zwickies have their story. You're going to get our story, though I make no promises. My One knows that any day now, she is off in search of fame and fortune again. That means we probably won't archive this blog until the first of the new year, but we are going to try to write more frequently.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- December 3, 2014

Up to Seven and Down to 28,000

Like magic or Murphy's Law the wall has opened and let us inworld when we want to be. Alas, my One Who Thinks She Knows feels this is only temporary. I can't say why. My One has also been consumed by the quest for fame and fortune. It's a wonder I'm writing blog at all. But my One, she wants to get the word out. She is sure that the door in the fire wall won't stay open or that it could close at any time. If that is the case, Second Life is going to have to work a lot faster for us, so public enemy number one was and is my bloated inventory.

At first I was really scaird to reduce my inventory, and so too was my One. It turned out not to be nearly as bad as we thought. First, we had a lot of duplicate and useless items, a full lost and found and an even fuller trash. That took us from 53,831 items to about 44,000 items. "It gets harder from here," my One complained, but we knew we could box some inventory, and that is what we did with all our Petable Turtle and Lily Frog eggs and all our Last Week's Reference Statistics from Community Virtual Library. Now we are going through landmarks and getting rid of those that go no place. That is going to take longer, but our inventory stands at 27,500 items, and Second Life is working a bit better. At least it will be easier to clear cache.

The other thing my One and I feared about inventory reduction is that it would totally destroy our ability to have a normal Second Life and our ability to make me new clothes, and face it you know my One needs her "sandbox therapy." The good news is we can still make clothes. Here I am trying on my cocchineal dress in the sandbox at SJSU. The bad news, is we are not doing as much exploring as before and our bushwhacking has gone to the infernal reigions and won't come out.

And somehow in the middle of all of this, we paid a visit to the 109 Prim Circus on Drill Factory. The island just looked very interesting on the map, so my One and I had to go there. Do you know what it is like to hear your One gasp?

That was what my One Who Thinks She Knows did as I walked across the bridge to the round enclosure that feagured a starlight and cobweb carousel in a symphony of grey and mesh. The 109 Prim Circus is supposed to be Steam Punk. My One thinks that is NOT an adequate description.

Original art is a better description. There is some hanging in the sky along with two moons, countless stars, one heart, and a floating garden. There is a coach ride and two carousels, a dance floor, some items for sale, and countless surprises for any avie willing to fly, fall off the world, or be teleported. It doesn't really matter that you are inside a smoke, gray bubble one thousand meters above the surface either. It just doesn't.

And here is the magic coach. It goes nowhere, but somehow that doesn't matter. There is a garden in the sky, and the trees glow like jewels. Of course you have to be careful if you decide to step out of the coach.

Down you go! You fall below the water that is at the top of the sky. You fall all the way to the bottom where a huge, jigsaw puzzle sits in a chaos of colorful pieces. As you can see in the picture, the pieces are solid. They were fun to climb on and jump over. And yes, the109 Prim Circus reminds me of Electrobit City except you can fly here. A flight feather is a must, but that is a freebie and there is always teleportation for those who don't have the feather. It's hard to get hurt. Hard to get lost, and impossible to go outside what must be a sphere that contains the 109 Prim Circus.

That's OK, because there are even gardens, luminous conifers, trees with gems for leaves, electric grass, and lilies of the valley that made my One sing:

White coral bells
Upon a slender stalk
Lilies of the valley grace my garden walk.
Oh don't you wish
That you could hear them ring?
That will happen only
When the fairies sing.

And you know what happens when your normally out of sorts sings, well, it's not something an avie like me can resist. There is a time for patience and deliberateness, and a time for knowing "THIS IS THE PLACE!" Suffice it to say I did not argue. I was not beaten. I too was bedazzled.

But there is a time to be bedazzled, and a time to know you have a winner and 109 Prim Circus was and is a winner. When my One said "Let's add the 109 Prim Circus to the DO IT BETTER 2014 ROSTER," you don't have to guess my answer because you know it. Now we have only two unfilled spaces, and we're not sorry that it is taking so long.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- November 13, 2014

Two Adult Sims on Our Side of the Wall

My One Who Thinks She Knows says I have to be real careful when I blog, especially when it's about her. There is stuff we can't publish because a blog is a very public thing. That's why I have waited so long to tell you about the wall. It's a fire wall, though it doesn't keep the fires out of Second Life, and my One has fire in her world. In fact, a fire wall has nothing to do with fire. It is supposed to protect computers from malicious software, but like any flat, dumb, wall, it keeps out good stuff as well. I can't give more details than that, except that on Thursday, October 30, our time inworld got cut.

We don't know how much it got cut. My One is out to see that it's as little as possible, since this was clearly a choice she did NOT make. As far as the infamous, fire wall is concerned, we are collateral damage. Our problem is slow-loading mesh and crashing. Clearing the browser cache helps. Clearing temp files on Commodo Icedragon also helps, but we had a 53,800 item inventory. That meant we had to do something, so on Monday when we did our shift at Community Virtual Libraries on Imagination Island, we did a lot of inventory reduction. Our magic number is now 47,800 or so, and dropping. We are going inworld tonight, my One insists. My One also has a back up plan that I can not yet mention.

I can mention whether we have decided to put an adult sim on the DO IT BETTER 2014 roster. The answer is that we're not sure. One sim that was sort of a candidate was SLife or Sexy Life as it is also known. The island is a great place. It has been through about half a dozen builds since we came to know it. It also went from mature to adult ratings. None of this phases my One who says that college students are curious, old enough to see anything, and we both know the sim is safe. This is me near the Burlesque Club. The poles are not public, and this lovely towel which says "Reserved" is the only place I could find to sit that was not where someone would do a pole dance, not that any one was.

About half ofSLife is stores, almost none of which are empty! The island is Brazilian, which means that the shopping center/mall plus dance club (and in this case place of assignation though again, there really isn't enough privacy for that) formula works, or appears to work. Most of the stores, which are fairly large are rented out! Say that three times fast.

Alas, the stores are made with way too much mesh, not just for the cute objects like the chair above and the hatbox (Yes, I recognize that. My One's grandmother used to have a "round suitcase" as my One describes it.) below, but for entire walls and stairs and the result is a very slow-to-load sim. That is not good for those of us on ordinary connections.

In case you are curious what Sweet Slut and many other stores on SLife sell, it's mostly shapes and ordinary clothes. No, this is not a lingere store. Sweet Slut sells curvaceous, large hipped, female shapes that may or may not (My One thinks that it is "may not" because the shapes in the sales images wear lingere.) have pubic hair and vulvas on the female versions. The male shapes do NOT have penises. In Second Life, men buy their phallsuses separately, and yes, they are detachable.

None of this is particularly ADULT. Body parts are for sale all over Second Life. There are also clubs all over Second Life, like this dance club. It has been rebuilt for the twentieth time, but none of the DJ's I know has played here recently, which is why my One and me thought SLife might not be around any more. It's still going strong. In addition, there is also a burlesque club where I could not find a place to sit. That is tough. I felt more threatened there than I did on the nude beach.

And yes, I skinny dip on SLife, though you won't see that on this blog. I don't really have modesty issues I guess, and I've never been harassed, kicked out, sent home, cat called, etc... on SLife's nude beach.

My One says you have to understand something about Brazilian culture in Second Life to understand the sign. At most Brazilian clubs, the women wear pretty much fig leaves, bikinis, shorts that are more rips than denim, and crop tops. Sometimes they wear long skirts or very short dresses, or lingere. You alsmost never see pasties or full nudity! The other reason for the sign is to keep out gawkers and voyeurs.

This is important because there are places of assignation both on the beach and in various buildings. Of course with the low privacy I doubt very much actually happens there. What I like about SLife's nude beach is that it is open to everyone. There are those who like to dance. Those who just want to lay around, and those who enjoy swimming and diving. Here you can see both a lounge chair, and a ladder that goes up to the high dive over one of the pools.

And here I am diving into the pool itself! No, I'm not naked. My One insisted I wear a bathing suit for the photo shoot. No one was around to enforce the nudity rule, and no one was walking around naked on the beach. And my One has a rule, NO NUDE AVIE PICTURES ON THIS BLOG! And she means it.

There is of course a problem with nude beaches. Some avatarim and Ones have modesty issues of course, but nudity in Second Life is not as easy for newer avatarim as it has always been for me. The default skins besides Ruth, all come with painted on underwear. This means that to obey a nude beach's strict dress code or undress code, not only must an avie-One team have payment on file (not an issue at all since this costs nothing and is easy), but they also have to obtain a strippable skin. They either have to know enough to rip their avie apart and use Ruth, or find a demo skin, or if they are more than thirty days old, purchase a skin.

Having half the island as a nude beach with a strict dress code, pretty much knocks SLife out of the running for the DO IT BETTER 2014 List. A much better candidate for an adult destination is Brasil Podium at KSA Prestige KSA. KSA is Arabic for island, and yes, there are stores, a club, a beach, and also a playground for child avies and children at heart. Brazil does not proof those entering dance halls or even bars, and even on Brazilian, adult sims, it is possible for there to be child avatarim. Usually these children are female and part of a mother daughter pair. In fact, the large hipped avatar shapes sold on SLife are quite popular with the potential mother avatarot who frequent Never b Solo. Having some cultural context does wonders for cleaning up a dirty mind.

And unlike SLife's Club, the one at Brasil Podium seems to be busy most of the time. So why not list Brasil Podium on the DO IT BETTER Roster? My One Who Thinks She Knows has questions about Brasil Podium's financial stability and permanence. The area (It's a 4096, NOT a whole sim) is busy, safe, and fun, but most of the stores that support the club and pay the rent are empty. That is a very bad sign. Were this the spring of 2015, my One would think differently, and she desperately hopes she is proven wrong. She says that even though Brasil Podium and SLife may not make the DO IT BETTER 2014 Roster, go visit them anyway.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- November 5, 2014

Eileen and Bradley Again

It's no secret. My One Who Thinks She Know's first name is Eileen, and we all know that even on her best days, Eileen is out of sorts. On her not so good days she is wretched, and last week... This was not why she was wretched. We did after all find the Zandbank at Zakelijk Nederland, and we liked that well enough.

The rest of Zakelijk Nederland, however, left a whole lot to be desired. There was a club all done-up for Halloween. 'Nuff said. There also was a Protestant church in an unfurnished castle and a huge sandbox, the Zandbank, but the rest of the island was empty rentals. I remember running around a whole Dutch village here, but most of that village is gone. If you don't pay your rent in Second Life...and you know the rest because you've heard it enough.

Anyway, my One was really retched for other reasons. Then of course she found the a sim that had her name on it, and of course we had to visit. So it was off to Eileen where we eventually learned that one quarter of the island is a private residence. Half is behind ban lines, and the remaining one quarter is Exile de Guarida, a bloodlines, Vampire castle. Fortunately, I'm not superstitious or scaird of vampires.

If one of them wanted a bite, I'd tell them I'm a bit stale and then let them have a snack. Heck, I warned them! Anyway, the reason I'm crouching under the stairs is because I wanted to check out the crawl space. This castle has three floors and you can go almost everywhere from the basement to the roof, except behind a few locked doors.

That was how I found the prison. You can see it's awful. There are no beds or chairs so the avatarim or bots locked up here have to sleep on the floor or else stand all the time. Worse yet, they totally lack toilet facilities. My One thinks the guards let the prisoners out to pee. I was not so sure. I knew I had to complain. You see me here quite upset.

Fortunately, my One who has a good heart some days, understood. Off we went to track down the castle management. They are here even when they are not home, and they have a huge conference table, one of the few pieces of furniture in the huge maze-like castle. Here I am complaining about the condition of the prison. Even if only bots get locked up, they need to be treated well, after all one day you could land in the prison and wouldn't you want a mattress to lie down or sit on and toilet facilities that worked!

Anyway, seeing me stick up for justice on the island that bears her first name lifted my One Who Thinks She Knows' spirits, and she wanted to bushwhack. She had seen some new construction on Bradley University. Bradley has downsized its presence in Second Life, but it has rebuilt on its now half a sim, that still bears its name. Here I am on the porch of the gym looking out at the ocean. The ocean, which is impassible between islands, goes on forever in Second Life. And yes, my One remembered the gym.

She also remembered the library, a field house, a house that belonged to the University's benefactress, and several exhibits. She did not remember the gorgeous, temperate forest, set for autumn. My One wonders whether snow will come to the sim this winter. She thinks if they have paid for the right kind of trees, they will have snow.

The trees are beautiful for sure, but the Philip J. Farmer exhibit, the kente exhibit, and an art gallery are gone, part of the downsizing. The one remaining photo exhibit is five years old. The trees are easy to buy. They are an improvement because the old sim was starting to show its age and two classes actually use the sim to meet. That means Bradley University needed to hang on to at least some property in Second Life, and really did not have enough action for a whole sim.

Let's get started by saying that textures cost only 10L (.05 in "real world" money) to upload, and you can make them in freeware such as GIMP. That means, you can take a photo or draw pretty much anything you need. There is no excuse to use this awful, book texture that is around everywhere. Also, the bwb script is free. I got it for free. The bwb lets a prim connect to a variety of web pages including a library catalog, LibGuides etc... There is no reason for there to be merely decorative book shelves covered with this godawful texture, like the ones we found in the library. Bradley gets an A for a reasonably clean looking, modern, build. Their library gets a D or F for real effort.

The Lydia M. Braadley mansion on Bradley University is similarly threadbear. Yes, there is a notecard giver outside, but it is the only notecard giver. Inside, the same pictures repeat in several rooms, and evn I, who know very little about furniture, know that this window treatment came from WalMart or K-Mart. My One thinks KMart. A real Victorian home would feature ornate lace in the summer, and beads, flounces, or velvet in the winter. Also look at the wallpaper...

Yes it looks like what people find in old homes, but what is in "old homes" in the teens and aughts (and that's not the aughts that included World War I!) is probably nostalgic, mid-Twentieth Century stuff. People in the late Nineteenth Century would NEVER have papered a home all in one pattern of flocked damask. They would have said it was: "boring!" They also would have found this black way too mournful. Certainly after the Civil War in the Midwest, a wealthy woman and even lesss wealthy folks had access to machine made, paper dyed with synthetic dyes in a host of bright hues and interesting patterns. Remember what we said about textures. Bradley University, you are now able to pay your rent, but you know that is not enough. Try harder!

Iyoba BatOni helping Eileen H. Kramer -- November 3, 2014

Eileen and Iyoba's Do It Better 2014 Roster
Name of Place	Why it Qualifies
TOV Korea	Ride the Witch Coaster. "Shop" in Korean stores. Visit a Korean museum and memorial.
The Grand Canyon	So much to do in a great setting. Climb ropes, rapell, canoe, or just relax. Who knew the great outdoors could be this great, and Mt. Everest is right next door (no kidding!)
The Adventure of Ruin	Indiana Jones meets a Japanese, Second Life, orientation course, but somehow it all works and it is gorgeous, scarey, and simply great fun.
Plusia Ars Island	Music, sculpture, architecture, furniture, and romance, all on one island. Give newbies what they want...and more.
Hokkaido Japan	Where retail and entertainment meet art and stay just inches clear of kitsch. Fly it. Ride it. Walk it. Puzzle it. Enjoy this authentic introduction to a different culture on an island that welcomes visitors.
SL Israel	Israel's "official presence" in Second Life. Learn about Middle Eastern and Jewish culture and religion while visiting, museums, the sea shore, the souk, and two synagogues.
The 109 Prim Circus	High above the Drill Factory is a fantasy realm where it is always steel, grey night. You can ride the carousels, walk under crystal trees, shop, or just explore the puzzles at the bottom of the moon.
Momo Pet Land	One sweet, peach, of a classic, Japanese amusement park. There is an onsen, an art museum, pig races, a haunted house and more.
Africa Live	Celebrate African music, culture, and textiles in a club and shopping mall. Learn about African ecology on a beach next to a mangrove forest. Swim, wind surf, or ride a flying machine.