Come to the SL Opening of Drama Dolls!

My friend Honour is opening a new store called Drama Dolls. There will be two parties to celebrate the Opening tomorrow Wednesday July 1, featuring brilliant blues man Von Johin. The first show is at the Euro friendly time of 11:00 am SLT. The second party will start at 6:00 pm and rock on for 2 solid hours. Honour is a proud Canadian and tomorrow is also Canada Day so if you want to join us for that reason alone please do! TP from this link.

So what is Honour selling? You probably know her from her fantastic trees and plants which I have blogged about before and you will see at both of my parcels. This time Honour has taken her artistic eye in a completely new direction. Why don't I let her tell you all about it herself?

Welcome to Drama Dolls!

Please note that all of our dolls are multi-lingual and will operate in English, German, Spanish, Japanese, French, Portugese, Italian, Dutch, Russian and Norwegian.

Did somebody cheat on you? Were you insulted or offended by another SL resident?

Did you experience DRAMA?

It happens unfortunately.

Well Drama Dolls is here to help you get a bit of what you deserve in return - at the very least you are owed an apology!

Pick a Drama Doll that you can use to represent the individual who did you wrong. There are different price ranges, levels of detail, number of animations, types of dolls - something for everybody.

We have macho types, the girl next door, elves, vampires and more! We even have Fuginistas - you know .... those people who like to make fun of you on their blogs because they don't like your skin/shape/clothes. :)

We have the Doll you need to get closure move past this traumatic experience!

Take your Doll home - you will find detailed instructions and 4 copies of the Doll in your inventory. 3 of those Dolls are fully scripted and will give you the acknowledgement and apology you so richly deserve. Once the Doll has apologized it will disappear - quite dramatically! :)

The 4th Doll is not scripted but you can keep it as a reminder of your apology.

Now take a look upstairs! Do you know somebody who needs a hug?

If you are looking for positive Drama (because it does exist) we have DollCozies. You can purchase a Doll, name it and give it a message you'd like to pass to your friend/lover/partner/spouse. Your Doll will give them a Hug and your message.

Some DollCozies have flowers in their hands. Your folder will come with a pot of matching flowers you can also give your recipient.

Please enjoy your visit to Drama Dolls! Check back often for our new additions. :)

Cheers, Honour McMillan

The dolls are creative, funny and oh so clever. Here are some examples.

The doll above is one of the fuganistas that Honour mentions in her note. She is well proportioned, has no bling and if her prim toes do not match her skin I can't tell because her subtle earth toned gown covers them. She does have prim boobs which are a definite NO but at least she does not have a watermelon butt. Next time your photo appears in a blog with a strip over your eyes, now you can get a proper apology from your Drama Doll.


This doll cracked me up. A blogger! Watch out -- her camera is fast and she will not hesitate to name names. Behind the blogger is a kajira doll and next to her is a neko doll. You will find royalty, furries, vampires, elves, drows, dolls that look like the avatar next door and many more. I have one particular request for a Drama Doll. I want one that looks like a certain SLceleb blogger who really should apologize to about half the grid. I think it could be a big seller.

Anyway, come by the opening party and check out these dolls. I love them and I think you will too.

Finally! A healthy way to entertain your inner drama queen

I got the following announcement and thought I would share it here. If you like to act why not check out this opportunity? It looks like fun.

Mahana Machinima in conjunction with blacklashed.net is holding a casting call for a feature length film consisting of several 10 minute shorts and trailers shot inside of Second Life. This project is not-for-profit and will be funded through donations of private contributors and sponsors. Monetary compensation for actors will be modest but the reward of participating in a machinima production of this scale will be fun and provide a wealth of experience for those wishing to pursue this form of creativity inside of Second Life.

Our first casting call will be for the following shorts:

1. Title: Happy Birthday Mr. Christian

Genre: Dark comedy/Drama/Romance

Summary: Leigh Messner wants to break free of her overprotective home life. Will a new opportunity in the office of Stuart E. Christian be her ticket to freedom or will she get more than she bargained for?

2. Title: Eat Your Heart Out, Stephen Coppermine

Genre: Horror

Summary: Helen loves Stephen but after a fateful trip to Mexico on an Archeological expedition, an unexpected change of heart threatens their relationship and nothing will ever be the same.

Requirements

Cast members must be able to understand and speak standard English (in text and voice). This is imperative to communicating with the director and production team. You must be a team player, however voice actors must be able to work autonomously and meet recording deadlines.

Must have a clear speaking voice, a good microphone (preferably a headset or professional recording equipment) and recording software; we recommend the free software, Audacity.

Voice actors must be able to express natural emotion and voice control (ie tone-timbre, accent)

****************************************************

**Applications can be found here.

**Disclaimer: Although some content will be edited from it's original source material, this film will be exploring subject matter of a mature nature; if you are adverse to coarse language, violence, adult situations and mild sexuality then this is not the production for you.

Perspectives on Life

In my life outside the virtual world I am a manager. I run 4 departments and have a bunch of people who report to me. People say this all the time, so feel free to roll your eyes, but we are pretty close. We are a family, if you will. A work family. The work we do can be difficult, the people we serve are most definitely challenging. Sometimes our work is boring and tedious. It is one of those workplaces where people laugh a lot. When something horrible happens to one of us, we all feel it.

Recently a member of my work family got sick. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong despite poking and prodding and fussing for two months. The whole time this person got sicker and sicker, visibly declining before our eyes. She went into the hospital last week and by yesterday afternoon she was dead. She was 34 years old and a single mom. She leaves behind a 12 year old son and confused, broken-hearted friends and family. How can something like this happen without any explanation? No one is offering us an answer. Perhaps there is no answer.

So - an unstable grid, the configuration of the flipping pie menu, the location of adult activity on the grid, petty disputes between bloggers, claims of intellectual property theft because someone uses an idea you claim as your own, concern about lag caused by virtual chickens -- I am feeling a little perspective about it all today.

Sunday Sailing in Second Life

A few weeks ago my friend Delinda Dyrssen gave me this adorable boat called the Shelly Fizz. I am so impressed with how well it performs. The Shelly Fizz is dead easy to sail so if you ever wanted to learn to sail but were not sure you could do it, this is the boat for you. You can pick it up here for free. That is right. All yours for the price of a TP.

I am glad today is over

I could not get any decent photos in SL because the entire grid was a hot mess of f'd up so I looked through my flickr stream for a photo. This is old but reflects pretty accurately how I felt most of the day today.


Why you ask? Many reasons

Communication is hard under the best of circumstances.

Illness sucks

Unexplained, serious and frightening illness sucks even more

It has been raining so much here the ground is saturated and mold is growing on the mold. We have not seen the sun in ages.

People are killing people for reasons I can't comprehend.

Political fighting seems to be happening everywhere -- internationally, in my state, and even in SL. I see so much conflict and most of it is just stupid and unnecessary.

I could go on and on but you get the idea.

Tomorrow will be better.

G'nite

BBBC - The One Where Chestnut Says Nothing at All

Today has been a day. I will just leave it at that.

If you have not been to Drowsy, you should go. Great shopping, fun and unusual build with secrets to find. Go.

BBBC - Going for the Boss' Topic

Hamlet suggested the following topic:

Write about a great, under-appreciated Second Life sim that hasn't been featured in NWN (use the custom Google search at left), and explain why it deserves a visit. Include at least three screenshots and the SLurl.

Last evening I went to my very long list of "places I want to explore" and randomly picked a place called Da Vinci Isle on a sim called Kalepa. I have no idea if this place is under-appreciated. For all I know everyone and their cousin has been there already and is yawning right now. But this sim was new to me and was quite lovely so I will tell you about it.

The build is made up of a series of islands, large and small. There are gondolas you can rez and slowly paddle your way across the water. I enjoyed the slow pace of the boats as I found it made me slow down a little and relax. I tend to reinforce the stereotype that we NYers move at a fast pace. I often do many things at once so forcing me to slow down is hard but I am always glad when I take a little time to smell the virtual roses.

There are lots of little tucked away places to sit and enjoy the lovely views making Da Vinci Isle perfect for romance or a heart to heart talk with your close friend. There are caves with bats and the best stalagmite and stalactites I have seen in SL. I also found a really well done volcano and you can explore the interior caverns as well as the rivers of lava. Oddly there is a space ship with a mobile R2D2 who greets you as your gondola passes by. There are places to dive and to fish (although it is not 7Seas fishing), a pirate ship or two. The build is just packed with interesting secrets to find.

My one complaint is that Zha and I could not find a private place to dance and the sim is no build so we could not rez our own. I will admit it is quite possible there are dances and we just did not find them. There are plenty of places to sit and chat or cuddle so not being able to dance hardly detracted from our experience.

There were about 5 people in the sim gathered and hanging about in a group and then a few couples off by themselves so I have to say Davinci Isle is not undiscovered. At the same time it was not at all crowded so privacy was easy to find. I very much enjoyed my visit to this excellent build. Go have a look and let me know what you think.

Reflections on Two Years in Second Life

Two years is a long time. Bearing in mind that in SL there are 6 days to every RL day that means ...counts on her fingers....gives up and opens Excel....shakes her head and mutters....it means time moves differently in SL. Relationships speed up, hours seem to pass quickly and we find ourselves in world for hours longer than we intend to be, saying up late into the night. It is no surprise then that two years in Second Life feels all at once like a very long time and no time at all.

I was curious what I wrote on my first rez day last year so I went back to read that post. I wrote about being an introvert in a social world and the fantastic rez day party friends had for me. Somehow my first rez day was a coming of age -- something to celebrate. It demanded fireworks and a big gathering of people and dancing.

This year I spent my rez day quietly working on a NWN post. I was struggling, as I do every week, with the photo that appears at the top of my list. As I worked I thought about how I am blessed in so many ways. I have a long term partnership that enriches my life, many great friends, a fun job, a house and a park we built together, more interesting things to do than I can possibly squeeze into any day of the week. Life is good.

Today's BBBC challenge question is "If there was someone you could trade places with for one day in Second Life, who would it be and why?" My honest answer to that question after two full years in Second Life is I would not trade places with anyone. I love my Second Life exactly as it is right now.

One of the chicks is two...

Pssst. Don't look now. But, one of the chicks is two. No. No. Not the chickens in our park, tho they are about two days old. But.. Chestnut seems to have snuck on up on her second rez day.

I've been blessed enough to spend the past year and a bit with Ches. Its been an amazing year, and I think my Second Life, and lots of people's second lives are richer for her presence her in our world.

~ Zha

BBBC - A Free Sim? For Me?

Here is the challenge:

You've been given a sim of your very own to use for free for one year. However, there are 3 rules. It cannot be residential, it cannot be commercial, and it has to be open to the public. What do you do with it?

For me this question is dead easy. I would use the sim to display art of all kinds. I would include spaces for music and discussion and open the sim to the public. Hopefully I could make it a place where people would like to hang out and make it beautiful enough that talented SL photographers would want to work there. I would offer free workshop space to virtual artists.

I know it is hard to imagine such a place. Think of it as a mixture of AngelGate, Carleon, Chackryn, The Refuge and The expansion and the Freudian Slip all rolled into one. How would one accomplish this? I have no clue. But with a huge number of prims and the help of some creative minds I am sure I could come up with something.

On another topic I rezed my motor bike yesterday evening and had a run at some local roads. I enjoy riding this little scooter. It has realistic sounds and is easy enough to control that I only crashed once. It was a spectacular crash too. I hit the sim border and then flew under the ocean, then was up in the sky flying around and around in fast circles as if I were still riding but the scooter was gone. That crazy flying went on and on for what felt like forever. Finally I just crashed out all together. But, do you want to know the real problem with riding on the Linden roads? This.



ETA: The store is called 19 Motorcycle. The scooter I have is called [10MC] D-Hello and it cost $500L. There is also a super cool motorcycle for $1,900L. You can see them both here. The build itself is an amazing recreation of a RL bike shop. Its beautifully done so its worth popping over just to look at the shop.

My perfect SL Day - NOT

Funny enough the BBBC topic for today is "Describe what your perfect Second Life day would be like."

I am not sure I can answer that question. I will say that yesterday I had one of the worst days in SL I have had....pretty much ever.

Last evening was a performance of Musimmersion that I coordinated for the ImpIRL group. Just about every single thing that could go wrong, did. First I had a heck of a time selling all the tickets. So before the event I worried about being able to fill the seats, which turned out not to be a problem but was stressful. Then when I sent out a reminder with the LM I left off a digit which landed my audience in the water rather than at the landing point. Because they landed in the wrong spot many folks did not get the notecard with the proper settings for the show. We had a few people not show up or be late and since they paid for tickets we did our best to round everyone up, which took time and again was stressful. I said something unkind that was meant for IM in open chat during the show and finally one of the people who did not show up bitched me out in IM at the end of the performance, effectively ruining my experience. I logged off and tried to chill and when I came back the one person who I wanted to talk to was unavailable.

Thank god for a dear friend who talked to me in IM and reminded me what is really important while I was taking the photos below. What is important is the few people we can count on in our SLives, the creativity we can find here and the opportunities we have to learn. What*I* learned yesterday is I am better at finding interesting events and telling people about them than I am at organizing anything.

My perfect day in SL? Not too sure about that. I do know yesterday was pretty much the anti-perfect day. Because I am a "glass half full" person I am sure today will be better. Having said that, I don't think I will be organizing more paid events any time soon.

SL Blogger Challenge - I am going to try!

Alicia is repeating last years Big Bad Blogger Challenge. The idea is to blog every day between today and June 19th. It is a way to kick start a blogging slump (cough) and maybe introduce some new people to our blogs. I did not participate last year but this year I am going to try. Well as Yoda says "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." Well, ...umm....I am going to try.

The question for today is "How long have you been a blogger? How has it enriched your life?"

I started this blog in early November 2007. I started my Second Life June 16 of that year and yes, that means I am looking my second rez day straight in the face. By the fall I was spending lots of time inworld and reading lots of blogs when I could. I was a big fan of the Mean Girls blog and scoured the World of SL and the Fashion Feed, which were the only feeds I knew about at the time. I soon started to keep a private journal online and used it to try and make send of everything I was seeing and doing in SL. Eventually that private journal turned into Second Life of my Dreams.

Fairly soon after I started blogging I worked up a little bit of courage and shared what I was doing with Jellybean Madison. She liked my blog and talked it up some on her blog. Shortly after I met Crap Mariner who also supported my blogging. Having some positive feedback from people who wrote blogs with big followings I stuck with it, learning to write better posts and improving my photography. I started to meet people through blogging and I soon started to identify myself as a blogger, which was a change. I had never written anything besides a grocery list before blogging and the positive feedback I got was really affirming.

Fast forward to January 2009. Hamlet Au announced on New World Notes that he was looking for an events writer. I was terrified to try to write on a deadline and have my work on a blog that has so much visibility. At the same time I really wanted to give it a try so I emailed Hamlet and he offered me an audition post. After my audition post appeared Hamlet asked me to write the events posts on NWN and I am having a great time writing doing it on a weekly basis. The feedback I get is very positive so people actually read Chestnut's Choices and appreciate my work. Thank you to everyone who reads me here and over on NWN. I am grateful for every pair of eyes on my words.

So, how has blogging enriched my life? Blogging has introduced me to some of my best friends. It has allowed me to believe in myself and develop new skills. I always wanted to be a writer and now I guess I am one.

Since every blog post must have a photo I will share a picture of me that was taken right around the time I started this blog. I don't think I have changed too much, outwardly at least.

Fly Away

Today is rainy and grey, except for the trees which are covered with new leaves which are that bright lime green that only shows up in the early days of spring. My office is quiet and my motivation level is remarkably low, despite the pressing list of things I really ought to be barreling through.

Instead I am thinking about my treasured Second Life. I am focused on the build I worked on late into the night and again early this morning. I am planning an event for ImpIRL and a rez day party for a friend so my mind is racing with plans for organizing responses and lists of attendees. I am thinking about how to achieve an abundance of flowers, without resorting to sculpted prims that will take forever to rez when the number of avatars on the sim jumps. I am pondering music -- should I find a DJ or get someone to play live? OMG I need to photoshop an invite? That is something I should probably delegate, no? Sigh.

My mind is fully occupied with things I need and want to do. I am just not focused on the things I ought to be doing right now. I really want to fly away from this grey, dreary office.

The one about events search, wherein Chestnut bitches about how it is hard to do her job

My job writing for New World Notes means I spend a lot of time on the SL Community Events web page. Every week as I do my job I compose letters to Linden Lab in my head. They go something like this:

Dear friends at Linden Labs

Your search function sucks. Big time. Can you please do a few things to make it better? Please? My suggestions are few in number but would have a huge impact. Please consider them.

1) Can we have meaningful categories for events? Pageants? Really?

2) Can you somehow keep commercial advertising out of events? Please?

3) Can you prevent event spam? By that I mean when people post the same event over and over in multiple categories.

4) Can you somehow make sure that events go in the right category? (Your dress rehearsal for your fashion show is not a public event and really does not belong in search. Your super sale on your BIAB goods is not an event either.)

5) I am not even going to get into the DJs vs. Live music debate here in this short letter but there is a huge issue there and we as a community need to address it sometime soon.

6) There must be more but I am tired and my eyes are bleary from sorting through the crap in search to find 20 or so quality events so that is it for now.

Sincerely
Chestnut Rau

PS. This photo is of me standing on a stinking pile of garbage taken at CONSUME which is a super cool event I did not find in LL search. You can read all about it on New World Notes later today.



PPS. My dear Lindens, if you want to get a group of residents together to talk about ways to improve search please let me know. I am really very willing to help solve this problem. Of course no Lindens ever read this blog except for that one time when about 25 of you did and I got scared that I was going to get banned for some offense I was unaware of committing. In any case, I feel better now. Until next week when I dive into search again.

Paint the Grid Purple Today!

We all have our cancer stories. Both my parents died from lung cancer very young. My children never knew their grandparents. Thanks cancer.

My neighbor Donna died from cancer a few months ago. When I see her sons waiting for the high school bus it breaks my heart. Thanks cancer.

I personally had a cancer scare a few short weeks ago. Fuck you cancer.

I am doing my part in the fight against this terrible disease by giving generously to RFL and working in my own home town by cooking meals for people who are sick. Give what you can. If money is a problem go hold the hand of someone who is ill or run errands for a friend caring for a sick relative. You will feel great and these small efforts mean a great deal. I would say doing something for a real live person with cancer is probably the best thing you can to to help.

One more thing. Please, please if you smoke. Stop. I know its hard. Harder than I can even imagine never having smoked. You know you should. I bet you want to stop too. I am looking you in the eye and telling you that you can quit. I know you can.

Show your support for RFL and wear purple on June 1st!