Your source of news about the people, places, things, and events across Second Life.
If one wants to check out a good science sim, Space Destiny Island is among the locations you will want to check out. Like other places in the Sci-Lands, it is both educational and full of great builds. Unfortunately, today is the last chance to look at the land before it vanishes from Second Life.
Surreal Estates - commercial & residential land rentals
The Corner Cave Club has moved to the Community sim and is now known as Club Surreal. It ready for parties with St Patrick Day décor in place. Across from the Club the shop of freebies is already set up with terrific décor for St . Patty’s day that Saucy Loire , the manager has placed for the taking. Across from the Club the shop of freebies is already set up with the same décor free for the taking. COMMUNITY Events can be found at this link: http://www.my.calendars.net/
Surreal will participate in the Relay for Life this year and will have a team named Surreal for Life. If you have an interest to contribute contact by notecard to Jake Nitely, Oceanna Sands, Bamabelle Graves or Ashlynn Enoch. The Surreal Estates 10,000 linden weekly tier raffle is held every Saturday evening at 11:00 PM. This raffle is open to all Surreal Estates land owners and their housemates or business partners. For your chance to win put the Surreal Estates office pick in your profile and touch the raffle ball located in the Surreal office sim or in the Rivera land office. Win the 10,000 linden tier raffle at Surreal Estates! All these sims and more will make a visit to Surreal a trip to remember. Though we will miss the old corner on Relaxation - Corner members are happy to be joining the new locale and becoming part of the Surreal Community.
Yay! I was able to go to the bank today and make the final donation. Here's a full post about it, complete with pictures of the receipts:
The Podex Exchange at Moonbeam has gotten some odd customers, but this week they got an unusual client: a huge red dragon.
So how many Lindens did the dragon want? The clerk whom dealt with the dragon was a little too shaken to speak. But one of the others told that the dragon was at first interested in trading ingots of iron for gold. The clerk explained that Podex did not deal with gold, but was a place where one could buy or sell Linden dollars with US dollars or several other world currencies. The dragon then handed over an undisclosed amount of Lindens, making a comment about some knight giving them to him along with the armor then running away screaming. The dragon chose to exchange them for one of real-life world currencies, saying it would buy some gold later.
Xymbers Slade has been out on the Grid, looking around at places and chatting with residents. Thinking about how it might be to chat with an "old-timer," he soon found someone whom has been around since 2004. Xymbers struck up a conversation with the fellow, whom called himself "Seth the Husky," and soon had a "Man on the Street" interview.
Shellie Sands is back with an article on a scenic place: Second Life New England. With thirty-five sims, Shellie could get a look at only a small part of this vast location. But what she did see was very much noteworthy, places of sailing ships, recreations of historic places in real-life New England, and locations catering to merfolk. A place that, sadly, is in danger of disappearing from the Grid.
It was September 11, 2007 when I ran into Cheri Bing, and her New York City Block. Part of another sim at the time, she later got a sim of her own for it: NYC. A resident of Brooklyn, Cheri wanted to recreate the place where she grew up, as well as building a monument to the World Center Trade Center towers.
Thinking about the place the other day, I decided to take a peek. But my LMs would not work, “no information available.” And checking the map, there was no NYC sim.
The NYC was a good sim, with its memorial, a small photography museum, a small number of residents who called its apartment complexes home, and a few shops. In 2010, police and firefighter groups moved in to call the sim home.
... the Second Life Forums, Blogs, Knowledge Base and SL Answers are now temporarily in read-only mode. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site is available for you to read, but you cannot post comments--or contribute content--until we launch our new community platform (http://community.secondlife.com) on March 2nd. Get ready for a more robust self-help platform with powerful capabilities, including unified search, reputation systems, new community tools, and social media features. And, please pardon our dust while we transition over to the new system.
Today, reporter Gemma recently had a chance to visit an art gallery in the Alajuela sim, the Criss Museum of Contemporary Art. With three floors of pictures, residents with an eye for art will want to stop here.
February draws to a close, and this final week of the month has a number of events. From music and dancing, to talk shows, to politics, there is much to see.
A sizable demonstration against Libyan dictator Kadaffi took place in Second Life today. Taking place in front of a replica of the UN building, the crowd spoke out against the reported slaugther of civilians by mercenary troops hired by the strongman.
Grey Lupindo is back after an exciting African safari here in Second Life. At Cap Estel, Maurice Messmer has created a nature park very much worthy of a visit. Ride a giraffe, watch dangerous predators, cross rickety bridges, it's quite an experience.
Xymbers Slade, whom we recently interviewed about his fortune telling, has offered the readers of Second Life Newspaper his horoscopes. Done by tarot card, they're different from the ones usually seen in newsprint. These readings are for February 15 to March 15.
Last weekend, a benefit was held to raise funds for the National Epilepsy Foundation. A number of musicians gave their time for 25 hours of live tunes in this marathon. Reporter Any1 Gynoid was there to cover the event.
Nydia Tungsten recently announced the space club Club Zero gravity would soon be hosting it’s first “Tail Sale.” What is a tail sale? Nydia compared it to a flea market, in which volunteers put themselves up for bid offering activities such as drawing or building, or perhaps offer themselves up for a date with someone from the opposite sex. Winning bids will be split between the club and each volunteer.
In November, Universal Studios pressured Linden Labs to take down items and sims with names related to the “Battlestar Galactica” television show, of which the studio owns the copyrights. Various groups began renaming places and objects while trying to contact Universal to make a deal.
Nydia told Second Life Newser she had first got the idea when, “I had finished a marathon set of 8 hours and told Rita (Rita Mariner the Sunweaver Estate owner) would just let the stream go, and she told me ‘go ahead, hardly any of the radio tabs work anyways.’ And I started thinking since I stream to my parcels almost 24/7 anyways, might as well call it a radio station.”
During my travels in Second Life, I recently ran into Lauren Weyland, one of the more unique comedians on the Grid. We met up later at her comedy place and sat down for an interview, discussing her beginnings, a few happenings that became punch lines, and her current projects.
Valentines Day may be behind us, but the romance parties, and other events, continue on. We have a list of events this week for people planning ahead on what to do, or wish to see what's going on at a favorite place.
The crowd was raucous as usual but having lots of fun! I grabbed some free valentine lollipops! I had to leave but went back later to find more Lindens and a more outrageous group in the sims! Daniel Voyager was taking pictures everywhere . You can find lots of great pictures at this link:
Go take a look!! If you did not get there you missed a lot of fun! The only one I felt sorry for was a tiny, Hadley Metaluna, celebrating a rezz day. Wanted a kiss so badly and there were no kiss poses for tinies!! Maybe next year!! Simon , Oskar, Bacon , Alexa, Nya,Lexie to name a few , were Lindens that I kissed! And I got a few volunteers also!
On this Valentines Day, we offer a story of a wedding ceremony in Second Life. Pint Hoyes and Kram2593 Footman decided not to have the usual kind if wedding in modern American society, but a virtual Cherokee wedding ceremony.
This Valentines Day, don't forget to check out the "Kiss a Linden" holiday events at the Isle of View and the Isle of ViewTwo, where every year Lindens and volunteers show up to give residents a virtual smooch upon asking.
Events in the country of Egypt have taken some dramatic turns this week in real life. In Second Life, these events were reflected at the Egypt sim as people protested strongman Mubarak's refusal to resign one day, and the next were celebrating his departure.
Grey Lupindo takes a look at the Arctic Greenhouse. Not only can one look at the plants and flora in this refuge of greenery in a place of ice, but one can play the games as here as well. The prize: one gets to take home one of the plants.
After I did a commentary on the issue of the Teen Grid merger, one my my readers, Shockwave Yareach contacted me about the subject. He told me there was one thing he wanted to show me. We teleported to a particular sim that was mostly grass, near a corner which had one section of an “X” shaped structure that spanned the adjacent corners of four sims, “Anyway, this is the sim Idu. And there is the welcome center. This is one of the places teens can rez, and can play. Cool so far, yes?” Everything looked innocent so far.
This, Shockwave argued, was a clear weakness of Linden Lab’s teen grid merger, “I've tried to warn them. I begged for a PG continent. But this,” he pointed again to the adult store next to the PG sim, “this is what we got. Just wait until one of the religious nutjob Americana family groups find out. Geez! ... Oh, and the empty spot, that was a store. They closed the day the teens arrived. While I bear the teens no ill will, and I want them to be able to play, I don't want them to ruin our fun and endanger our real lives in the process. By the way, there are several stores around these four PG rated sims selling skins and the like. And the kids can cam in and buy anything they can afford, PG or not PG.”
What Second Life viewer is best? For about a year, the official viewer from Linden Lab has been Viewer 2. But more residents prefer the Phoenix viewer. Any1 Gynoid compares the two viewers, and takes a look at their applications.
On Sunday at 8 PM SL time, I was at the set of the Virtual Tonight talk show at the invitation of hostess Sam Nightfire for an interview. Of the several guests, I was first.
Besides myself, Sam had several others on the show, from fashion expert and host Tempest Hennesy, to Thinkerer Melville, a "retired Professor of Psychology, community advocate and promoter of virtual worlds," to stand-up comedian Elron Priestman, whom he and I traded witty comments in group chat, and a KISS tribute band from Canuck entertainment. While not a KISS fan, I have to say the musicians put quite a bit of effort into their performance.
Virtual Tonight is still a new show, with a new crew learning the ropes and the routine. But Sam picked a group with talent. It won’t be long before their ratings start giving Paisley Beebe’s “Tonight Live,” a serious run for it’s money.
There are a number of events to experience each week in Second Life. We have a variety listed from live music to talk shows, to politics. Two new listings are Tuna Oddfellow's Odd Ball and the East Coast Conservative Podcast.
Back in the fall we had a series of very productive meetings to share ideas about how to make this year's RFL the best ever. Now, with just five weeks to go before we start the 2011 season, lets have a few more. 
It's been about seven months since Second Life Newspaper closed and Second Life Newser began. We at the paper still remember our times at the paper we used to work with, and our mentors. Since their farewell in June, I've had a little contact with them. Dana expressed her sorrow at not being able to come back more than one short brief time, but has not yet recovered from events in real life.
Teams’ registration for the seventh annual Relay For Life of Second Life opens on February 14 in preparation for fundraising from March to July, culminating in a 24-hour walk around a virtual track.
MamaP Beerbaum, the RFL of SL 2011 Event Chair, said: ‘We’re ready to go! The 2011 committee has been busy working behind the scenes and we have an amazing group of passionate volunteers who are going to make this the most fun and successful Relay For Life that Second Life has seen.’
In a few weeks you will see the new logo rezzing across the grid alongside the familiar fundraising kiosks. This year’s theme is Seasons of Hope. Because every season – Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall – is a season of hope.
After 16 weeks of fun and fundraising, the teams will build campsites for the main event which will take place on July 16-17. Team members, volunteers and members of the SL community will walk a track for 24 hours to Celebrate survivorship, Remember those we have lost, and Fight Back to save lives by making a personal pledge to fight cancer.
To set up a team, please go to the website www.relayforlife.org/
The 2011 RFL of SL Committee consists of:
Event Chair - MamaP Beerbaum (mamapbeerbaum@gmail.com)
Event Co-Chair - Dwen Dooley (dwendooley@gmail.com)
Teams and Mentors Area Chairs – Panza Eilde and PrettyKitty Gumbo
Sponsorship Area Chair – Samara Barzane
Public Relations and Marketing Area Chairs – Poppy Zabelin and Breezy Carver
Special Projects Area Chair – Katina Magic
Event Day Area Chair – Nikki Mathieson
Sim and Track Design Area Chair – Charlene Trudeau
Technology and Security Area Chair – Belle Loll
American Cancer Society representative in Second Life - Stingray9798 Raymaker
Please note these key dates:
Feb 14, 2011 – Teams’ registration opens!
March 12, 2011 -- Kick-off Party and start of fundraising
March 12-22, 2010 -- Fashion For Life
May 7-13, 2011 -- Paint SL Purple!
May 13-22, 2011 - Home Expo
May 14-15, 2011 -- Half-Way There Fair
July 16-17, 2011 -- RELAY WEEKEND!
To keep up to date, please join our SL’s RFL Volunteers Group in Second Life, follow us on http://twitter.com/
______________________________
About Relay For Life of Second Life
Relay For Life® is the signature fundraiser of the American Cancer Society. Relay For Life of Second Life (RFL of SL) is an annual activity that takes place in Second Life® in July each year. Volunteers form or join teams to have fun while fundraising and raising awareness from mid-March through mid-July. In July teams build campsites and walk a track, just like in a real world Relay. The main RFL of SL track event this year will take place on July 16-17. We will walk a virtual track for 24 hours, just like in a real world Relay For Life. Team members build and gather at their team campsites, enjoy live music, participate in fun events, and explore the many Relay sims and the incredible builds by some of Second Life’s top designers, as the event runs overnight and into the next morning.
In 2010 Relay For Life of Second Life attracted more than 120 teams with participants from over 30 countries, held over 300 team fundraising events between March and July, and raised over US$222,000 (that’s REAL US dollars) for cancer research and education. The funds raised go to research, advocacy, patient services and programs, with 12-15% going to international projects. Just as in the real world, RFL of SL is an international event.
For background information see https://wiki.secondlife.com/
At 8 PM tonight, SL time, I'll be at the Virtual Tonight talk show, hosted by Sam Nightfire. Instead of doing the interviewing, yours truly will be the one interviewed. Knowing Sam, it will be an interesting experience for certain. She promises "a shocking surprise."
