Three Sims and Only Half a Story

My One Who Thinks She Knows says that telling the truth is NOT snark! Say that three times fast. She also says that as long as we admit the parts of the story we don't know, when we complain and find badly built sims, we are benefiting everybody. Surely we don't benefit everybody all the time, but she says that when we expose derelict sims, badly built ones, squatters, and sim owners who "play around with prims" we are doing everyone a service. Most educational/nonprofit sims are paid for with grant moey, tax money, or a combination of both. Somewhere out there, someone in our audience pays for educational sims that are excuses for waste and theft, and you all know how my One feels about wasted money in higher education. She is a survivor of Bloody Monday. Need I say more...

And waste is waste whether it happens in the US or somewhere else. Someday we'll write about Graulhet Virtuel which was once beautiful, is still pretty beautiful but in rough shape. Voyageur Numero 1 looks a whole lot better. You don't end up up to your ears in parking lot tape or fall through soft spots on the stairs. And Voyageur Numero 1's web site still works, so no dead links. It takes a bit of observation to realize the sad truth abou the sim. For example, nobody has updated the travel posters which give dates of 2010. Sorry, your trip left five years ago. Don't ask me if htere will be another.

There is a lot of half finished construction hidden in various corners of Voyageur Numero 1. The build looks solid but one wonders how long these stores or spaces have sat empty. There are no rent boxes, so clearly these are not for rent. Clearly it would not be too hard to put posters in these stores, or a small link-giver, or some standard issue low-prim chairs and tables. It appears that everything on the island has just sort of frozen.

And my One and I both wonder who is renting or using this space. The sign translates as "space reserved." Will they ever finish their project? Did the money run out? Whose Euros built Voyageur Numero 1, and whose Euros pay the rent for this sim? This is a fairly solid and original build. It would not take very much work to bring it up to date. My One thinks that right now the island is just leaking rent.

If you are a New York State resident, your tax dollars fund the SUNY Learning Network. This island is home of the famous, Plattsburgh (as in SUNY Plattsburgh) Phantom Library, but it is also the home of some very good, as in economical and stable, academic builds. SUNY Stonybrook has a two story promotional building that is also a breakout space. SUNY Albany has an underwater classrom, that shows what someone with imagination but not a lot of skill, and almost no funds can make. Most of the colleges have 4096 plots or smaller. That should make the SUNY Learning Network a model of good educational sim stewardship (In spite of the Phantom Library). That is what my One and I both thought until we found a full parcel with nothing on the ground. This means there is a build in the sky. I flew up and found a prefab. It is more than possible to repurpose one of these mass-market buildings for academic use. This one is NOT repurposed, or this bar would be gone. The drinking age in New York State is twenty-one and a bar is not conducive to learning.

Also, even if a student's studies are so taxing that his/her avie needs to lay down, certain fun and games need to be somewhere a bit more private than a classroom building. Pink pose balls are for girls. Blue are for boys. These both come with quite a menu. I'll leave the rest to yoru imagination. I hope by now you realize that SUNY Learning Network has a small, squatter problem.

Clearly this is a whole family of squatters, two parents/partners and a prim baby or child avie. This is their mansion in the clouds, and my One Who Thinks She Knows' eighty year old mother in "real life" is paying for these dead beats to live rent free. Of course it would be very easy to send the squatters on their way. Just set a reasonable auto return and the beautiful mansion in the sky will wind up a ball of hundreds of prims in the poor squatters' inventory. Hopefully a few scripted objects will disappear in the process.

Of course I needed to do something to make my One Who Thinks She Knows feel better. Seeing one of our favorite sims taken over by squatters and another showing signs of neglect, meant we needed to go somewhere solid and strong. What better place then Central Texas College. The sim is old. The sim is stable. The build is old, but not all old builds are bad builds. It is possible to do a lot with a little. All it takes is some thought. This lovely, blue door is a great example. It's just got a nice texture and a fairly standard script.

Items purchsed off the shelf rather than carefully crafted, don't age nearly as gracefully. This prim bread in a prim basket...well they just don't make them like that any more... and with good reason. The basket looks clunky. The bread looks hard. Sculpties helped fix things. Mesh also sometimes works but you don't need to get that fancy.

Outdated links also make a sim look ill-cared for and ancient. Intute has been gone since 2011. Why has no one taken down the sign in Central Texas College's library. There were also signs around the sim advertising packages of links to various educational builds. My One insisted on testing out several of these folders. Over ninty percent of the links in each pile led to nowhere.

Truth be told, neither my One Who Thinks She Knows nor I know what is happening to Central Texas College. We found this stupid piece of plywood in the middle of an office in the Spanish language area some four hundred feet above the sim. The teleporter still works. The architecture if still lovely. I remember notecard givers and chatting objects. Those objects and givers are gone. Is this a half-hearted attempt at a remodel?

My One hopes that whatever is going on is NOT half-hearted, and she feels that what is going on may not be good. We saw boxes like this in a lot of buildings. They reminded us both of the kind of boxes we used to help consolidate my inventroy. They may also be the kind of boxes that prevent large groups of objects from returning to inventory in a ball. My One believes that if they closed Central Texas College it would hardly be a bad thing. If the owners are no longer going to use the sim and are unable to keep the builds up to date or can't afford it, abandoning the sim and giving it back is the best thing they can do. Perhaps there is a remodel in progress. Perhaps it is time for a new crew to build from scratch, but we know that often doesn't happen in Second Life, especially when someone else' money pays the rent.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 22, 2015

Doing Well and Looking Good

Some sims in Second Life just leave my One Who Thinks She Knows consumed with bitter envy. She says...well I can't print what she says, but she both wishes her institution had the money and desire to build in Second Life, and a great building policy that realized buildings can go back into inventory and red tape is damage. Don't hold your breath. She is envious of any institution that can rent a whole sim, and that includes Stanford University Libraries. Not only can they afford to rent a full sim, but they have hired the best builders, with a build that is so beautiful that parts of it don't get old.

And the island's displays are rich in content. This is a picture of a kimono pattern that is part of an exhibit that is part of the Stanford University Libraries' archives in "real life," and inworld. Perhaps only Towson Innovation Lab comes close to this kind of art exhibit, and their displays are mostly students' original work.

Of course my bitter-hearted One insisted I take a very close look at Stanford University Libraries to see what dirt I could dig up, to make her just a little happier. Actually, I didn't have to dig far. We both knew that the lovely Redwood Pavillion has had the same exhibit since 2010. When you are as rich as Stanford you can afford to preserve old but beautiful exhibits. Of course this lovely sign says it in a far more articulate way. When you are wealthy you can afford to let land sit with the same project on it for six years as well.

Of course than I saw a new building. I flew up to it and entered. It was a dormitory of sorts. Each room had a bed. Ten students could build themselves rooms with the latest in prefab furniture. The rooms came without doors, so an ingenious student made one. That is what you see in the picture. Alas she forgot to set her door phantom or include an opening script, so the door is actually a barricade.

And then there was the student who forgot to put her bed in her room. She left it in the hall. It is a beautiful, mesh, scripted bed, one of the finest beds money can buy, though my One thinks the bed may have been a freebie. It looks distressingly common. That said, my One thinks the student may have had to run to class and left the bed in the hall to put inside or take back to inventory later.

My One also thinks that the students in the dormitory might be students at San Jose State, not Stanford, since SJSU SLIS has some of a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Stanford%20University%20Libraries/141/238/30" target="new">Stanford University Libraries' railroad track that at present leads nowhere. My One thinks Stanford is increasing its railroad, which is a great ride, just as San Jose State's School of Library and Information Science occupies and hopefully rents half of Bradley University. Such cooperation is a good thing when one thinks about it. Getting some one to pay the rent is also a good thing because if you can't pay your rent in Second Life... Let's not even go there for a minute! Fleet Goldenberg who owns the EduIsland Archipelago, has found tenants, private individuals rather than nonprofits or educational institutions and his archipelago has not disappeared. Some of the tenants are even rather clever in their builds, like these vampires who have done a rather elegant and traditional riff on traditional jungle walls. You can find their box on the ground on EduIsland 5.

And this lovely Japanese home on EduIsland 5 has an owner with a sense of humor. Instead of just buying and using a security orb, he employs a guard. He's a sweet tempered guard, and even let me pose with him. This even made my One smile, and we all know how rare that is. My One wished more landowners built with more thought and imagination. She said, it is not that hard, since houses don't fall down in Second Life if you do a poor job and you can try as much as you want.

And this builder on EduIsland 4 has shown effort with eye-catching results. He built a tree from several tortured toroids (hollowed and path cut most likely) and a sculptie and also textured his megaprim with something original. Second Life is after all, "Your World Your Imagination" combined with a cash outlay, but imagination can take you pretty far.

Alas, most land owners on the EduIsland Archipelago never take the first step toward travelling with their imaginations. My One Who Thinks She Knows has a saying: "Any one can throw up....a prefab." Not only can anyone throw up a prefab, they can throw it up with the latest and greatest of mesh furniture like this leopard skin covered bed. This couple (or single desiring to be in a couple) even had bassinets and other furniture for a prim baby. My One thinks that this is what potential adoptees at Never B Solo want from us. This prefab left my One feeling especially bitter. Our panel expired at Never B Solo, and we have yet to replace it.

Worse yet, many imaginationaless tenants on the EduIsland Archipelago have left their good manners at the door. Ban lines and jungle walls abound. Builders build to the edge of their property, and then there was this skybox, a real lesson in chutzpah. Most well run estates ask builders to keep crap out of the skies that one can see from ground level. That means boxes go above the cloud cover, above 500 meters. Only educators and builders in need of an education build skyboxes where everyone who looks up can see them.

Of course all of Fleet Goldenberg's EduIsland Archipelago tenants, both those with imagination and manners, and those who lack them serve a very important purpose. They keep the islands on Second Life's map and available for educational and nonprofit tenants who need something smaller than a full sim. VLCT in Singapore is one of those tenants, and their school was under construction last year. This year it appears ready for prime time. It is a lavish state of the art build, with a gymnasium floor so shiney you can see a reflection of the room above in it. There are classrooms with the latest in mesh desks, blackboards, book shelves...but....

The VLCT School is a sad, institutional, and sterile place. Chairs are attached to desks, and half the rooms have students sitting in neat rows. My One cringled. She told me of how her mother approved of this arrangement because it gave kids a "sense of security." My One said she would not find such an arrangement secure. Being in rows in the schools of her childhood was collective punishment. And authoritarianism was always just that to her. What is worse, the VLCT school lacks any inspirational posters or student art on the walls, stand up counters for students who learn better on their feet, comfy beanbag chairs for free reading, bulletin boards in the halls covered with exciting announcements. The school feels like a prison, and my One thinks that the atmosphere is worth the trip. The school has earned its place, albeit for its oppressive atmosphere on the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet!

Of course it is also possible to beguile with a much less skillful build. One night last week when my One needed to walk on an empty sim to relieve her wretchedness, we visited MK009 Nagisa Land and found jungle walls patterned with repeating, irridescent, mirror images in a geometric design, repeated in various proportions. With the right textures even simple megaprims become art, and so Club CDI's lovely jungle walls became Between the Walls on the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet. For some builders out there, Second Life still is "Your world. Your imagination" along with paying your rent on time.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 15, 2015

Transitional Time and Bitterness of Heart

Perhaps it is because Ones Who Think They Know are ruthless by nature, and my One Who Thinks She Knows for all her goodness of heart, is after all a One just as I am an avie, but my One Who Thinks She Knows suffers from bitterness of heart as well as being out of sorts. If I take my One anywhere, most of the time she gets jealous or angry or disgusted, if she is not already out of sorts to begin with, and sometimes if she is wretched too. For example, it was spring on VSTE but my One does not yet believe spring is fully here yet. You can see how this makes bushwhacking very depressing.

My One says her bitterness is at seeing whited sepulchres, waste of resources, her own lack of resources....and who wouldn't feel jealous! You've heard it before. We spared this sign's creator on the University of Hawaii in our last blog entry. My One says "Let's let the big mucky muck have it!" Look carefully at the sign. It says "bird flu." There have been a lot of flus since (Swine Flu, Asian Flu, H1N1, H1N7), but my One remembers doing an interview presentation with a live topic in 2006 in Worcester, Massachussets, and she says that the topic for which her audience asked was BIRD FLU!

And to rub salt in our collective wound, my One wanted to find out if the GET FIT (Educators with futures in technology) on UHawaii COE had expanded or was still in operation. My One Who Thinks She Knows scoured the net for UHawaii at Manoa GET FIT and found that GET FIT is defunct. It's time for whoever runs the University of Hawaii archipelago to take down the ban lines and repurpuse the GET FIT build because it is full of broken links.

As my One reminds all our readers: "We pay for our land at Stinky Stinky and put it to use." One of the reasons we put it to use is that my One wanted to stop making traditional flexi-dresses until we were closer to spring, so we built a boma. The zwickies love it. I at least love the garden and the roof. It's kind of unfurnished inside though my bed is there. I wonder how long before I drag the bed outside. I give the boma six months before we put up something else and put it back in inventory, but at least we will have the sense to retire it and try something better!

And no my One still does not believe it is really spring in Second Life. Maybe it has been cold in the "real world." Maybe it is because the Morrill archipelago is still under snow. Maybe it is because it is still winter in my One's heart. The snow is gone on Imagination Island. You can see for yourself.

Of course after we got done with the boma, we made more and more restort wear, fitness wear, and power dresses, until we ran out of what to wear. This is a retro bathing suit (1910's style) with a leaf and gypsy (orange) hyacinth pattern. My one has grown gypsy hyacinths in real life. Hyacinths are a very popular clothing motif. You can see why. She's especially proud of the backwork on this suit. Retro suits allow an avie to go from water to land without feeling naked or embarassed.

These sneakers, according to my One Who Thinks She Knows are pure fantasy. She says there are lots of glowing, colored sneakers in real life. They are a post-recession thing, a kind of nod to confidence. I'm not sure what a recession is since 250L equals one dollar. Life in the " real world" is quite expensive, which makes me glad I'm not a One. Anyway, these sneakers came out pretty good, and my One thinks the coral and tropical fish (the ikola) design is clever. I can wear them with teal which is a bonus. Now if I could have some dark teal hair. I made my newest clothes on SJSU sLIS which has lots of space and is always in transition. (See below.)

Of course to make clothes, we had to keep our inventory clean. My One and I found a folder full of naughty pose balls. We tried them out and extracted the animations and elminated the duplicates. Taking things in and out of inventory creates endless duplicates. Only one pose was too degrading to keep. We threw it away. Most of them looked like the one I'm demonstrating in the photo taken in the EdTech sandbox. This would make a great picture anywhere since I'm smiling and you can see my hands and arms. Cute...huh?

And I'm also wearing my new Toasted Cinamon Fitness Pants, part of my transitional wardrobe. Earlier that day I wore them in the golden canyons of AndTheOscarGoesTo Fromme, a sim size sculptuure that should have made my One green with envy but instead left her fascinated. I guess good art can lift even the bitterest hearted One Who Thinks She Knows' spirits. We added AndTheOscarGoesTo Fromme to the the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet. Kudos to Patch Linden. I hope your creation lasts the year or at least a few good months. We always revise the spread sheet anyway.

While AndTheOscarGoesTo Fromme does not make my One envious or bitter, my One all but cries out with envy and bitterness when we visit SJSU SLIS. My One did not have Second Life when she was in library school. SLIS stands for School of Library and Information Studies. Library schools often have fancy names like that. My One did not have Second Life in library school because Second Life did not exist, but none of my One's institutions has ever had an investment in any MU**. You can see the source of my One Who Thinks She Knows' envy.

And what makes my One's envy paradoxically worse is that SJSU SLIS is a live sim, not a whited sepulchre like most of the University of Hawaii Archipelago. These library mockups, like the one in the picture, were developed enough to earn a place on the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet. Still my One regarded them with disparaging eyes. She said, that they were the best thing one could throw together with freebies and prefab crap. Yes, that is what she said. She said they were anachronistic. The chairs and hard tables are less than comfortable. The book shelves lack useful signage and don't contain a simple link giving script called bwb or Media Mixer. My One has used this script countless times, and it is very easy to put into use. In another mock up lap tops are captive on a counter, held by invisible chains, like books before the printing press. The libraries are also missing study carrels or two person carrels, and really inviting displays. My One realize building skill and lack of lindens limits execution, but a few original textures and maybe some original ideas (Sometimes PwoerPoints and posters have a place for obvious reasons) can still break through.

One very original idea that dissolves all my One Who Thinks She Knows envy is the train on Stanford University Libraries. My One says that Stanford University Libraries is ostentation at its best. Yes, the sim has content. It even appears updated. We are going to divide it into multiple exhibits on the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet, but my One still feels awful that Stanford in California has a huge sim just for its libraries, and other East Coast schools of distinction such as one of her alma maters have disappeared or are hiding behind secret names. Both Morrill and Rockcliffe have Cornellian connection. Syarcuse University is long gone. Only Stanford hides in plain sight, and my One's heart grows frigid with envy. It's going to be a while before I get any traditional summer dresses.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 4, 2015

If you Can't Pay Your Rent...and If You Can

A long time ago, Algarve Sunset Portugal was an I Can Do It Better list member back in 2012. This fall, I often went dancing at a club on the middle of the island, and then the location disappeared from invitations. I went back to check on the island and....you can see for yousrelf. If you can't pay your rent in Second Life....

But if you can pay your rent? Well, sometimes weird things happen. My zwickies have wandered off to a far corner of the island when an update went awry. Edde, my landlord, left this huge tree on Stinky Stinky. I sent the encroaching thing back. I need the prims. It's out of scale, and he should have asked. I feel a bit paranoid and wonder if Edde would like me gone. He doesn't even have to give me notice.

And sometimes tenants do nothing with their land and keep paying rent, for example, SUNY Plattsburgh, which has a 4096 on SUNY Learning Network. There they have a library that has been an empty shell for at least five years. There is no link to the catalog. There are no links to anything. The books are purely decorative. They made my One Who Thinks She Knows feel nostalgic, because she says that SUNY Plattsburgh trained the woman who taught her how to execute flawless and fast interlibrary loan.

My One said she was sure the photographs used to make the decorative book textures were law books, Corpus Juris Secondum and McKinney's (aka the New York State Legislative Code). Then she took a second look. The phantom library's books turned out to be: Handbook of Clinical Neurology,Advances in Virus Science, and Biochemical Journal. Neither of us have any idea where these selections came from or why the phantom library's builders chose them. What is not a mystery is who pays for the phantom library. SUNY stands for State University of New York.

Now my One Who Thinks She Knows promised me new bathing suits, and I have two more suit patterns to go, but what good is a bathing suit without water, so it was off to the the University of Hawaii. The the University of Hawaii did not appear that different from the way it had on our last visit. The medical demonstration was gone. The music exhibit was unchanged, and had not aged badly, and the underwater exhibit on UH Aquaculture Program were as much fun as ever, but this tree was full of folders obtained years ago, never revised, and full of one third to one half dead landmarks.

And on UHawaii COE, ban lines blocked part of our way. By that point of course, both my One and I had realized that a lot of the build on the University of Hawaii Archipelago was out of date.

We swam round and round in circles. While this gave my new, crocus two piece, a good workout, we never did find the underwater volcano. Could someone have turned it off?

And someone never bothered to update all the web links or fix the videos that ran in the Brain Center on on UHawaii COE. And my One says: "You know who pays for all this?" She says it with a bitter and sad heart. She says that the monthly rent for one island is six cases of ten reems of copier paper, an extra toner catridge for a laser printer, or a week's pay for a Work Study student, and since the University of Hawaii has three islands and pays between $450 and $900 a month, you can see how this adds up. My One says the school should either upgrade and maintain its exhibits or downsize.

For those of us who have to pay our own rent or raise the funds and then use them accountably (My One and I fall into the first category), Second Life is a different place. Farazanah Eel and her partner have had to move the Illumination Library several times after its upstream landlord could not pay rent and after it got tired of mainland, but it is still in business and chock full of links to books, most of which are Public Domain. Say "mouldy oldy" or classics if you prefer.

My favorite room and my One's too is now in what is called the Illumination Library annex. It features pictures of and by Mexican Indians. There is something raw and primal, and it is good to see the memory of people who met with genocide at least partly preserved. For some reason, these pictures make both of us feel good as well as sad.

And for some reason, my One Who Thinks She Knows could think of no better name for this beautiful cat than Tortoise Shell Puss-Puss. She kept telling Puss-Puss how beautiful she was. All the while, she was also talking to Lysistrata, one of her "real life" cats. Purring cats lift my One's often sad and bitter heart. An eviction will break her heart. We will only have bad things to say about our landlord if he does evict us, and he will be doing it for no good reason. We've been excellent tenants for three years. Only academic inistitutions that waste tax payer money (and the few who also spend it wisely) do as well as we do. Oh well sometimes if you pay your rent in Second Life.....

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- February 26, 2015

What to Do When I Come Back

My One Who Thinks She Knows has been away in search of fame an fortune. My time inworld has been way down. Most of these pictures are one to two weeks old. This blog took the biggest hit of all. The odd thing is that my One is not sure how we can rebuild my shattered Second Life. Before everything bought a one way ticket to the Infernal Regions and caught a fast train going in that direction, we were waiting for spring. You can see the first leaves on Slow.

We were on Slow looking for a place to swim or bathe. There used to be a great onsen behind one of the stores, but right now the landscape is flooded, and too shallow for a swim and too cold for a relaxing bath. Why, you ask, were we looking for water. Several weeks ago, my One Who Thinks She Knows said: "No more winter dresses. Let's start working on our spring wardrobe." This sounded good to me. Spring comes early in Second Life, but before we knew it we had nine dress patterns, and the snow was still on the ground in a lot of places, so my One had an idea:

We could build a boma, an African style house with a sturdy fence, and replace our Ovi-Ring at Stinky Stinky. The boma would use up some of our dress graphics, and kill some time. It would also make us more attractive in the adoption market.

And yes, we are now registered at both Never be Solo and at Loving Hearts. Most of Loving Hearts' walls are still empty. The adoption business is a tough one. The agency though is modern, and lacks a loud speaker system. That is a big plus. Alas, the wild whale is back in the owners' inventory. They "redecorated."

Our zwickies though still keep me company at Stinky Stinky. They even like their roost under the eaves, though we had to dig a baby out from inside the roof. My One and I named her Lola before putting her in inventory. My One thinks our zwickies are the colors of Easter eggs.

Of course reactivating our panel at Never B Solo and setting up a panel at Loving Hearts meant new selfies, and there is no selfie like a candid selfie. Just take my word for it. Since we were still enjoying winter and at the time I had a new dress, we went to Semmering. The run is short. The lift is fast. The slope is steep, and you can see we took lots of pictures.

This is the selfie we got from the slopes at Semmering. We put it up at Never B Solo and have had eight views and four likes. You never know what will hit a sweet spot.

I wish we had the same luck with our selfie at Loving Hearts. We just happened to have this really nice picture in our out takes. I was inside a Salvador Dali painting in three dimensions high above Tejano Tech, actually I was trapped there, but while I was there, my One said: "Wouldn't this make a great selfie." Well I think it did.

Of course registering with two adoption agencies and building a boma, still did not solve the problem of being between fashion seasons, and having too many not-yet-useful spring clothes patterns. Then both of us, who were also very sick of winter, came up with a group idea: RESORT WEAR. There are plenty of beaches, pools, and onsens in Second Life. Some onsens require bathing suits. Some beaches require nothing, but I could enjoy the water right away.

Of course we'd have to find the water. Sad to say, a lot of beaches in Second Life are built too close to a sim's edge or have water too shallow for bathing. Some are cut across with ban lines. Siggy's Waterworks was an obvious choice. We also added SLife, though of course you aren't supposed to wear a bathing suit there.

Of course if you want to swim at Japan Resort you need a bathing suit. That's me from the back staring at the signs trying to decide if they were just a joke. IT turns out there is plenty of deep blue water beyond them, so someone has a pleasant sense of humor. I wish my One Who Thinks She Knows would laugh at herself. We finished three bathing suits, and I have not yet had a chance to swim thanks to the pursuit of fame and fortune. My One and I have moved on to FITNESS WEAR, even though my One hates gyms. She says I'll be the most elegantly dressed avie trying to get in shape. I think I am fated forever to be just a little bit round. We'll see. My One has a Second Life to put back together with me. Let's see how she does.

Iyoba BatOni with minimal help from Eileen H. Kramer -- February 23, 2015

A Sad and Dirty Secret

The dirty secret is NOT why we haven't been around to blog. I haven't been around because my One Who Thinks She Knows has been rewarded with a task that will bring her fame and fortune. That cuts back our inworld and more importantly our blogging time. Second Life is a "sanity break" for my One. I don't understand it, except that she has often been out of sorts and still is that way much of the time. We need to make things and explore new places to make her feel better. We made this painted pigeon dress on Black Bear Island a couple of weeks ago.

Then we dragged our sorry selves to Never B Solo to touch our panel, see what was up, and go through the somewhat soothing routine of checking things over. That was where we met Savita. That's not her real name. She was somewhere between the age of two and five. She had a Swaa Dollz, mesh avie like the one in the illustration. Only she also had gold earings. Whoever created this avie did not know that well nourished toddlers don't have salt sellars on their necks. Anyway, instead of saying "hello," and treating me like a nice older lady, Savita began with "Lady you all messed up. Lady, you could scare somebody." Now children, and Savita's One was playing a child, can be blunt, but there is a line between blunt and rude. I tried a few witty rejoinderse. They sailed over Savita's well coifed head. My One was so far gone that she felt any attention was better than none. Now we both feel sad about Savita. How do you go through Second Life pretending not to know you are a store bought creature? Even your own poorly made self is still you. Hopefully, you understand your poorly made self as well. You'll see where all this is getting soon. I promise.

While we were at Never B Solo we noticed an advertisement for the Loving Hearts Adoption Agency. It's fun to check out the competition. The agency wants 200L for parent panels, but it's a one off payment, and potential parents and children can use their names. Best of all, there is no pesky public address system. The center is beautiful, mesh with games that include the tricky Wild Whale. You'll have to try that one out for yourself.

My normally stingy One Who Thinks She Kows contemplated jumping ship. "We could write up a storm on our application. We could make it like poetry." I reminded her that most adoptees want a three story house, you there all the time, have a mesh habit that needs feeding, and really don't have much imagination or what my One Who Thinks She Knows' former colleague-supervisor called depth of soul. "Well," my One answered. "We're kind of at the end of the season for winter dresses, and we have way too many summer dress patterns ready to go. Maybe we should try making a huse. Having a house might make us more attractive." I reminded my One that I've never been good with houses. Even when we had a house at Stinky Stinky I always preferred to sleep outdoors.

Fortunately, my One had another and better idea to keep both of us busy. We had recently been to Youth for Christ but none of what we saw looked anything like the region's map. What was that thing in the center of the sky? We'd have to return to find out. Of course, neither of us had high hopes. The reason that Youth for Christ fascinates us is that it used to be on the the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet and it may some day return if its owners install some notecard givers, link givers etc... The technology to make a library is not that advanced. Alas, it looks like construction on Youth for Christ is moving at a snail's pace. Here it is about seven to ten days before Valentine's Day at the time we took this picture and the Christmas tree is still sitting there, looking sad and forlorn. Too bad nobody in Second Life makes Christmas trees that turn brown and shed their needles. But then again, nobody makes house fires in Second Life either.

My One and I took to the sky and at about 400 meters, barely above the cloud cover, and too close for comfort. We found our secret. It was a bowling alley. Now my One says that to be charitable, one can make a case for a bowling alley, a dance hall, and not much else on a Christian or other religious sim. The sim gets used for fellowship, the occasional meeting, and good clean fun that is a distraction from racier fare. My One does not have to pay the bills for this sim. If she did, she probably would be less than happy.

Fortunately, we had more places to explore. There was a new sim, established February 1, called Trigger Warning. My One laughed at the name. A trigger warning is something that might upset someone. Trigger Warning is the home of a University of Social Justice. Mostly it is just fancy, somewhat meshy, and not too laggy buildings. The buildings include this Picturesque Cottage. The cottage gave us both a sense of deja vu. There used to be one just like it on Sense, and there was another clone of it on Youth for Christ. My One gave a sniff of disgust. "Prefab!" she spat. "Any one can throw up...a prefab."

"How long do you think it will be before those who bought the prefab get sick of it?" my One asked. "It can't be satisfying to live in a clone. I mean this house was great the first time I visited it, but what about the tenth time! I mean a good build has to last six to twenty-four months. This one won't do that. Also there's something wrong here." Look carefully and you can see it too. Next to the sink is a candle. Look at the illustration above. The cottage has electricity and usually running water. My One said that you'd have a lantern or electric lights.

Actually the level of technical sophsitication in the cottage is quite high. This is a wood stove, but it is not just a wood stove. It has an oven and if you look above the dishes you will see vents. These are to allow the heat to return to the room and let in air to make for good combustion. Look at the size of the chimney as well. My One calls this kind of stove a wood n' wood (Like the gas 'n gases found in older homes in northern New York). It is both a stove and furnace. IT is a big step above a fireplace, and in regions that don't have gas lines, it is a smart way to keep an entire house warm. And yes, the idiots on Trigger Warning have put in a gas stove when they have a perfectly good wood n' wood. Clearly many people who buy this Picturesque Cottage don't understand or apprecaiate what they buy. That is sad.

But if you buy someone else' dreams and imagination, you are bound to get a bad fit. And yes, this is my One's and my creation. These are scarlet banksia. We're not sure if any one has them in Second Life. There is a good chance no one does. Actually, there are protea but none in bright red or yellow, the two colors we have. When it's your own imagination and sweat you stand a good chance of getting what you want.

And there are times when my One's and my hearts and imaginations sync so well with a content creator that the result is bliss. Also, there are some very creative minds in Second Life. Whoever built this dovecote on Trinity nearly made my One cry as she told me stories about her father telling her tales about an animal that would one day come and be pets with her. The stories were about a dog and a cat and a pigeon. There were no canaries, hamsters, or gerbils in the menagerie. My One loved these pigeons, and so did I.

And sometimes a creator's understanding of the meaning of what she builds, makes for an object that is just transcendant. The little bits and bobs on a lot of Japanese builds glow with sweet stories. This basket with an emerging plant tells the story of incipient spring. My One says she could visit it every day, and while she might not make it or want to own it, she loves the photograph she took of it. We found this lovely plant and many other photogenic objects on Slow which is one of our favorite sims.

And finally, after seeing some wonderful things, and thinking about that cookie-cutter, Picturesque Cottage we've seen too many times, my One said: "I can do it better. We'll build an African castle, since we both love African themed stuff." Actually, it won't quite be a castle. Boma is more like it, and will be genuine wattle and daub dyed light green and decorated with beads and buttons. Why not? My One may even make an outdoor stove/oven. Our parcel is tropical so we need neither a wood n' wood nor a gas n' gas. And, my One thinks if we have room in the boma, we might just be able to adopt a child, one who is blunt but not rude, and one who takes us as we are.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- February 11, 2015

Three Sims Three Stories

It's settled. We are going back to Never B Solo. Our panel died after twenty-one days. We need to upload a new selfie and rent another panel. In the course of a year Never B Solo has become a habit instaed of an experiment. We miss the place when chat goes silent. We know we probably can not sustain an adoption. We are like Romeo Faith/Clark Kent/Zeus Winslett, perpetual applicants, and that in a way is just fine with us, and no that is not Never B Solo. The picture is me sitting in a bed in the one finished and beautiful building on Youth for Christ.

We'll get there, but as my One Who Thinks She Knows was deciding whether we'd go back, we went bushwhacking and it just seemed right to follow up EduIsland 2 with Do You Tell on Seminole Island 9. The exhibit is about five years old, and has moved from EduIsland 5 to its current location. I keep following it from one place to another.

It's current location, Seminole Island 9, deserves a place in the educational sim Hall of Shame. There are ten Seminole Islands in the archipelago, and either grant money or Seminole County, Florida sales and/or property taxes pays their rent. If the islands are tax payer funded, they are funded regressively with the poor paying more out of their rent and food money than the wealty, and both poor and rich's tax money is going to waste! This has nothing to do with the quality of the exhibits, as much as the fact that eight out of ten islands in the archipelago are locked down. This means that taxpayers can't even walk on virtual land their local school district rents.

Now to the exhibit itself. Do You Tell, is based on seventh or eighth graders reading of Robert Frost's "Road not Taken" and applies the theme of that poem as to whether to tell (I'm not sure whom they would tell, but let's say a teacher or a school nurse, both mandatory reporters) an authority figure that Jen, a close friend has anorexia. Jen is skinny and frequently throws up in the school john according to the chorus of gossips throughout the experiment. The pro-anna picture on the cafeteria wall (one paragraph up) is there to shock. Pictures of actual students have their faces blurred which makes the whole exhibit rather creepy.

Lunch boxes in the cafeteria have links to sites explaining the evils of anorexia and bulimia, but not obesity (Hey , this is an older exhibit), and there are video screens that presumably teach about anorexia. I don't know what is in the videos, because they have vanished. I'm not sure they add much because Do You Know gets its facts wrong in a lot of places. The facts tell a nuanced story.

This is what Do You Know says happens if you choose to keep Jen's not-so-secret, secret. What this exhibit tells you, but what those building it haven't digested is that anorexia nervosa is NOT the same thing as a suicidal ideation. A poster within the exhibit claims that five to ten percent of anorexics die within ten years. Subtract ten percent from one hundred and if you do nothing, Jen has a ninty percent chance of living for ten years. The five to ten percent figure comes from this study and the exact figure is a mortality rate of 6%, some of which comes from actual suicide. In other words, if you don't tell you have plenty of time to change your mind.

And if you do tell.... this is what Do You Tell says will happen, except this is probably not true. If Jen has a health crisis of some type, or attempts suicide she will end up in an emergency room like the one pictured, but if Jen is walking around school, skinny as a rail, and puking in the john but basically pretty hail and hearty, she is going to end up if she is lucky and her family has insurance in a psychiatrist's office at best, and a locked ward, at worst. There is also a possibility that the adults you tell may do nothing. I'm not sure being a mandatory reporter covers possible anorexia. Loss of appetite, throwing up, and losing weight also happen under stress, with no body dysmorphics. Mandatory reporters don't report anxiety.

An interesting experiment is to substitute smoking, also a dangerous, life shortening behavior but not immediately fatal for anorexia. I'm not sure teachers will do anything to pack-a-week smoking Jen other than give her lectures and suspend her if she is caught smoking on school grounds or with cigarettes in her locker. Do you tell if a friend is in trouble? The answer is complicated. And there may be no good choices. And sometimes my One Who Thinks She Knows wonders about the kids who helped design (They could not build this exhibit since they had no access to the adult part of Second Life). They are seventeen or eighteen now and can visit the exhibit if they like, or if they even remember it. Probably it embarasses them. The world has changed, and so have they.

TejanoTech has changed, and for the better. TejanoTech is the last surviving University of Texas -- San Antonio island, part of a grant-funded University of Texas archipelago that failed spectacularly for a whole host of reasons. I went to TejanoTech to take selfies, and found new building everywhere. This chair is new.

So too are these sculpture trees. Yes, you can walk on the ramps. Beware the softspots. You can also visit the domes, but there is no way back to ground level. The island is under construction, but what there is looks very promising.

TejanoTech's energy exhibit is gone, but the library upgraded from a "facility" on the Explore Second Life Spreadsheet. There are links to the library's discovery service (Catalog plus access to articles) and to its electronic archive collections. There is also a nine panel photo exhibit that keeps changing and showing photos of "real life" UTSA.

There is even a new sculpture dome called Mobius that presents interesting kinetic art including a modern day, Circe. As she looks at her mobile phone, a recently transformed sailor, now a pig, trots at her heels. Behind her walk the other sailors who have not yet figured that they await the same fate.

Of course TejanoTech was not enough for my One Who Thinks She Knows. She said she wanted to see how Youth for Christ which has fallen off the Explore Second Life Spreadsheet when it under went destructive construction. Lately the island has been wearing winter garb. This coffee and hotdog stand sits near a volcano atop a mountain that now dominates the island.

There is also a sledding run where I went skiing. I have skis I can wear and an animation so why not. One of the skiing pictures became my selfie for Never B Solo. We're saving that picture for another entry. There is also a very modern, and utterly lovely, mesh house on the island. You saw a picture of me in the bed in the loft at the beginning of this blog post. Here is a lucky bamboo that grew by the door. It's little touches like this and what my One calls biophilia that make Second Life houses and land lovely.

My One and I wish we knew the story behind Youth for Christ. It could be that someone bought the island and didn't pay to change its name, or that a private Christian group just wants to have fun and hold meetings. There is something in the sky far above the island we can see on a map, which means we will have to go back. My One hopes someone is not paying for education, proselytizing, or whatever, and not getting back a single, red cent. Even religious folks can succumb to the temptation to play with prims. The island for now is open to the public and a lot of fun. Two out of three are not bad as far as doing an educational sim right. Maybe some day Youth for Christ can return to Explore Second Life Spreadsheet.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- February 1, 2015

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. This sim vanished in January, 2015.
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.