The Magic of Blank Space...

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Not everyday do you get hit by a creative cloud. In my case though it seemed more like a ton of bricks than the symbolic bright light bulb (with the slight sound of a chime hahaha). Like most people who can create wonderful things from a blank page, seeing a vacated condominium unit below the penthouse was no less the same for me. It was a perfect opportunity for me to creatively express and do one of the many things I love doing most: interior designing.

Back in the old days of yore when AutoCAD (Automated Computer Aided Designing) was still in its infancy stage. We were used to designing with our ever so reliable Staedtler Mars®Matic technical pens on Grade A Rotring drafting paper. God I love those things!

OMG Which reminds me, an old mate of mine borrowed the whole set and haven't returned them to me yet. Worse part is, I forgot her name.. (laughter). Those were given to me by my dad (pouts) and meant a lot to me, considering my dad hasn't given me that much hahahaha.

Typical empty tropical condo-unit with a 400 prim allowance. The main attraction of this property are its bay view windows and idyllic surroundings. A prime real estate even in RL standards.

Still the same floor area with an alternative design trip. One of the important points that inspired us to build a conservatory was for us to have a plausible pond for our (yep you guess it right) 7Seas fishing. It was a bit ridiculous fishing in the bedroom and in the seating area. hahaha


Same room... different floor and with a post modern-twist. Constant improvements have made us arrive to a point where in not much is left to do. Quite pleased with the outcome actually. What do you think?

Kidding aside, Second Life has opened a lot of doors for creativity to grow. No resident needs a technical degree to be able to create such wonderful things. The SL platform has made 3D rendering easy for most of us to manipulate, explore and enjoy - devoid of all the technicalities that comes along with stereotypical and traditional methods.

So far I have become my own furniture builder and designer, and the thousands of textures available to us makes rendering more simpler. I've heard that real life Architects and Designers have set up their own virtual office in Second Life. Indeed SL could be a perfect venue to demonstrate an almost real life presentation of your work to clients, albeit even drawn to scale.


So what's with the blank condo space?

Well I just chanted Mumford's magic word: "Ala peanut butter sandwiches" (poof), and a vision of what to do with the condo came to mind. Perhaps we needed a buffer below the penthouse to protect our privacy? hahaha Well perhaps, after all having had a very strange tenant below us before was a bit hair raising. Imagine her "bottom privates" whispering kinky and at times "grossly suggestions" of what that part of her body wants to do (raises eyebrows), not to mention a very-very noisy cyber bed (did I say noisy already?... try to imagine that hahaha).

Bay windows needing a bit of a Midas' touch. What do you think will happen next? Well looking at the lower picture is what's going to happen next (laughter).

Beyond the pond. Think pink and white tulips, think Dutch! hehehe Just our little private sanctuary when you just want to sit, relax and chat the day (or night) away.

Where a lot of ideas were built featuring my personal (but Lizzy-inspired) creations: The Mornington Aquarium; 2-seater Breakfast nook (in which the lower compartment can be converted into another fish tank or a fireplace); a Japanese dining table (sushi-time! oishi, kampai!); a converted fridge (formerly a static fridge, but with the help of invisible prims and object giver scripts made it possible to modify the appliance to my own preference) which gives out various meals, snacks and desserts.

While most tenants in the condo utilise the west-side as their bedroom, I thought a dining and kitchen would be more appropriate for this area which compliments the stairs leading up to the roof-deck and the mezzanine.

Nowadays, when I attempt to do designs (yeah coz' I don't do it as a profession anymore, I "is" retired with that hahaha... pardon the pun), it would take me a longer time deciding what to do next. I used to be faster and spontaneous in my younger years as a graphic designer. I guess I need some sort of a viagra for the brain then? hahaha

The last time I remember I had some sort of a designing breakthrough was when an investment brochure project came to my attention, about a year ago or so. Condo Unit 10 would be another one since then... and how good this one truly is. It's not everyday that you get brilliant ideas raining down from heaven you know.


Putting All The Pieces Together

The fun part was connecting the right pieces together: from scripted items, an ideal park bench down to flowering plants and the right type of grass. I was like a happy dog enjoying the fresh country air (from an open window of a speeding car) as I hop from one sim to another. Very adamant that I get that picture perfect vision in my head, presented in physical prim form... not satisfied until it would be good enough to live up to the name Lizzy's Secret Garden (smiles).

Another blank space needs a makeover! The condo's east-side, just the right size for another bit of magic. Like the rest of the condominium, huge glass panels gives it that fresh breezy feeling... something I would call "claustrophobic friendly" windows hahaha

I do have a confession to make though... the whole project may not be entirely for my babes (sticks his tongue out). Two-thirds of the project may have been all flowery and feminine but I had the urge to add a bit more of brute force in the third that remained. Just balancing the yin and yang in the feng sui of designing. And there is only one thing that would be perfect for that spot, none other than my beloved Ferrari F1 2008. I wish there was a way I could make the car rotate while on display, but sorry it's no modify (sighs).

Something I would really want to have in real life, my very own Ferrari Shrine (hey Barbie-gal eat your heart out hahaha). A Ferrari F1 2007 that won Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) the Formula One championship. Posters of former world champ Michael Schumacher (Ger) and the ever reliable Felipe Massa (Bra) are on display as well as official Ferrari F1 helmets and an Acer Ferrari laptop (though IRL I am more of a Dell follower) that will actually lead you to this blog when clicked upon. Make sure you don't read my personal MSN-IMs in there, yeah? chuckles


Would you be surprised if i told you that this part of the penthouse is my favourite? You wouldn't, would you? My favourite command would also be /1 hide (hahahaha). Lizzy and I call this area the "snooker room", and to why we call it that way is just between her and I (sticks tongue out). Lots of personally modified gadgets in here as well. Also top secret (smiles)

Now with the Ferrari shrine in place (as well as all the gadgets and gizmos to perk it up) and our secret garden built-up to appeal from all angles... I think it would be safe to say that my vision and mission is now complete.


Lizzy's Garden Up Close

Just to highlight some of the special features of Lizzy's Garden. All it took was putting together all the right flowering plants, textured materials and scripted objects. Now I've got something to really be proud of, I know Lizzy is too!

A bay window with a fantastic view. You can watch the sun rise from here, amazing even if it's just virtual SL. Sadly the last time Lizzy and I hung-out here was when a storm blew-up her router. Now that was one really nasty crash. Ugh!


Special features: Waterfall themed walls (with ambient water flowing sounds and water splash animation); Flexy fan-tail gold fishes (radial swim); Pond Japanese Koi; Flowing rock with 7Seas fishing server scripts (just transfer the contents of the official transparent server to your preferred object); and a Wishing Pond (utilising a Migizi North tip jar script).

What does this picture tell you? hahaha...

a) Lizzy fell asleep on me because it was already 1:30 am in Oz
b) Oh babes, I have to be honest with you, I'm gay
c) Sorry babes, I grazed your knee
d) Damn, I declined that new SUR
e) Read my mind babes, hint: I'm hawt!
f) Ewwwww babes, you farted!

Well the real answer is: I wonder what I will be doing next? hahaha gotcha mate

Happy New Year (2009)

New Year greetings from Liz and En!

How time flies so fast when you think that yesterday was 2008! Despite of the hectic and crazy festivities that seem to have taken over our limited SL time, a good number of residents still managed to go in-world. I was going on and off to check for any surprises that Liz may have left for her "c'est qui tom papa" (loud laugher), Lizzy apparently was doing the same. Nevertheless the time difference between our RL worlds didn't seem to be a problem for the both of us as "sweet nothings" never fail to greet our unexpecting AVs during logins. One of the reasons why we look forward to go in-world on every given opportunity!

Celebrating the New Year together! Plus all the chatter and updates from last week's (last year even) festivities. Never a dull moment when we're together.

CSI: New York Episode "Down The Rabbit Hole"

Can't help but reminisce all the wonderful events of 2008. Well discovering Second Life is one of them, thanks to an episode of CSI New York which opened a new door for me. After years of being addicted to my work (yep workaholic as I have always been for over 15 years until you know what...), it has made a big change in me of wanting to stay at home more often which caught a lot of my workmates by surprise! Could we say that SL has been good for me then? One thing for sure is that I don't spend as much GBP every Friday when I hang out with the lads.. Linden $ are far much more cheaper (spits out coffee for not being able to control his laughter). After all, it's the chatter we share on a Friday or Saturday night that makes the get-together party worthwhile... grub and booze comes second and while having some "take-home" buddy is optional, I don't carry excess baggage with me on the way back to my place (chuckles). Besides. if it's just chatter we're after on a work-week break (okay that means Friday in layman's terms duh), Second Life has lots of that and I am sure most if not all of you residents agree.

Check out this short clip of that CSI:NY episode, and I wish that changing clothes and editing your appearance would be as lightning fast! False advertising of SL? You be the judge (laughter):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbxwtEKpEL4&feature=related

.. so what do you think? Even the gladiator role play made it look like a game from a Playstation. How I wish that were the case in real time SL hahaha. Oh oh.. and the super duper panoramic screen? I want one! Some animations were probably CGI generated, don't you think?

Now check this one out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaqiUUlyEYg&feature=related

hrrrmmm walking hand in hand? The one me and Liz got was horrible! I wish there was really one that we could get which mimics real life "holding-hands" while walking (grumbles).

Another question, what's wrong with the pick-up line "I love waterfalls" anyway? Bah! hahaha. Watching those CSI:NY clips again really brought back good old noobish memories! sighs...


Cheers for 2009

What would be an even more better way to wrap up 2008 than visiting my first hang-out spot as a noob... Miramare! And what good timing that was with all the fireworks already in place. Good old memories also lit up my subconsciousness like a roman candle, as pleasant memoirs came flooding in. To see the folks that help mould my virtual alter-ego there with me was just enough for me to be thankful for I wouldn't be to where I am right now in SL without them.

Her "hotness" Lisa, the queen of Barcola and her royal loverly-hawtest Lizzy, the queen of my heart celebrate the New Year with the Brickies (a Barcola institution).

So what to expect in 2009 with all the gloominess the world is experiencing right now in RL? I guess it's still going to be the same for us all in SL... status quo. Whoever said the party should ever end? The only thing missing though would be our dear friends Drei Dragonash (one of the three SHB founders.. guess who the other two are..) and Sammie "Mew" Benoir who I think won't be with us for the coming year (cries). But who knows, after all anything and everything is possible in SL right?


The only way to move is forward...

And I hope that's exactly what we're all going to do. With so much going on in SL, upgrades and new features popping up occasionally making the virtual experience getting even more closer to real life, the future seems bright! Who knows, maybe we get to actually experience the reliability of Second Life like in the scenes we saw on CSI:NY.... omg that would be pure virtual heaven, wouldn't it? Then maybe I'd probably be getting me that super huge HD monitor. Think about how huge those "pink and blue" balls would be hahahahahahaha...

The future looks bright for me and Lizzy-babes, a new year... a new chapter!

To everyone who had made my adventures in Second Life pleasant (apart from Lizzy-babes of course!), Prospero Ano... Bonne Année... Buon Capodanno... einen guten Rutsch ins Neujahr... oh oh, and how can we forget... nanu nanu eeepuy nuayee ahree... that's alien for you peeps hahaha

Experiencing Windlight

It was just a matter of time...

... replacing my old graphics card from 128mb to 512mb was the only way for me to truly enjoy virtual life in-world. Most of my mates in SL (who were either having the high performance GCs already or have upgraded their machines to the latest hardware) were unanimous in saying that moving up the capability of your graphics card is the best thing for SL-addicts like me to enjoy an amazing Second Life experience.

Trouble in paradise! All of a sudden, I can't access Second Life from my computer? Disaster! Oh no!....

My practical side tells me to hold on to my 128mb Radeon X300 (hey it was the best during its time yo!), since getting a new machine is not too far away while I anticipate the news when Windows Vista would be stable to run Second Life (no reaction from Mac users please, at least I get an F key to play around with hahaha). Thinking that having 4GB worth of installed memory as well as a properly tuned-up PC is enough would only proved me wrong, upon realising that Linden Labs wouldn't let me in~world for (probably) using an older version of the SL Viewer (theoretically speaking that is). Having been the only one who wasn't able to log-in among other Brit-residents (with the thought that UK users might all be having the same problem like me... vis-a-vis US-based servers) prompted me to investigate the root cause of this madness. It was starting to stress me up to be honest. Questions like:

Have I been booted out of SL?
What For?

Has my account been cancelled?
Why?

Has my account been hacked into?
How?

... have started to bug me. All these questions and with no immediate answers made the veins on my temple throb like crazy, and it was giving me a headache.

I went to check on my SL web account and found out that it still could be accessed with the same username and password. COOL!

Enough assurance for me that I wasn't booted out of Second Life nor was my account cancelled by Linden Labs. WHEW!

My linden dollars were also intact which could mean my account wasn't hacked into. But unfortunately it was still impossible for me to go in-world! SIGH...

Lizzy had suggested that I upgrade my viewer with the thought that it may have been outdated. And it did make a lot of sense as I was using an earlier version, v 1.19.0 (5). Linden Labs did not MANDATORY REQUIRE us to update to the latest viewer. Something which still baffles me even up to this time.

Why not upgrade viewer to the latest one?
Somehow when I install and use the updated viewer be it the Dazzle Release Candidate or the standard version, I get these pixelised lines streaking out of in-world objects making everything look distorted as well as the lack of lighting making the view seem dark! It seemed more like a step backward for me rather than a jump forward with all the glitches and bugs I was experiencing with the new viewer. It left me no choice but to keep my outdated viewer which was still okay for me to use prior to my logging-in problems...

Or so I thought...

Remembering Lizzy suggesting that the root cause might be my outdated viewer. I have decided to upgrade my graphics card to at least one that is four times more powerful thinking that it would be compatible with the new viewer versions.

Having gotten bored and impatient for trying to win a 512mb nVidia GeForce on eBay for under a tenner (postage included hahaha, it was obviously impossible to get one with that price! But what the heck, there's no harm in trying "innit"?), a visit to our local computer shop might just solve my dilemma! I surrendered to the idea that being practical isn't always the solution and using more of my sentido común might just do the trick. The hassle though didn't stop there, I initially bought the wrong type of graphics card having a socket (that's what you get when you don't check your machine's specs first when you buy hahaha) incompatible to my PC's motherboard. It would seem like fate was playing a bad joke by not make things easier for me hahaha. Nevertheless, I was able to return the graphics card and get myself the right one! Finally...

Eventually I got myself one!
The new nVidia GeForce found itself a home and took over the reigns of my tired and haggard ATI-Radeon (which still looks perfectly fine by the way.. hrmmm I think I'm gonna sell it on eBay... over a tenner postage not included hahahaha).

Installing the new driver and upgrading to the latest viewer had made me see Second Life in a different light... make that in WINDLIGHT! It was like experiencing everything for the first time! The waters were almost realistic viewing it from above as well as underwater. The colours are so vivid and the AVs textures amazingly real~like. Making me realise that I should have upgraded to 512mb a lot earlier, I have been missing a lot!

So far so good...
The experience was just so pleasant. It pumped-in new blood like the feeling of having a new lease of life after each dialysis session (not that I have any kidney problems, knock on wood). I've never felt this excited since the time I tried Second Life for the first time (meeting Lizzy-babes and all the things that followed after when I'm with her of course hahaha). Taking pictures was even more exciting with each shot seemed better than the previous one!

OMG! OMG! I'm having an orgasm... yes.. yes.. yessss! The sun reflecting its rays from the water? Crystal clear seas that make you even see the swimming fishes below? Smooth edges of objects and texture details at its best? I must be in Second Life heaven!

Somehow not being able to log-in earlier was sort of a blessing in disguise. Like in Real Life, we get so contented in our comfort zones that we refuse to move on to something better. I guess that's just human nature..

A blissful dawn at our Penthouse rooftop... a romantic moonlit evening cruise at the picturesque Loch Lomond, Windlight teaming~up with a very good graphics card has so much to offer! We've only just begun...

Sometimes we all need a little bit of a nudge for us to move forward. Helping us see clearly what great opportunities may await us outside of our comfort zones. And in my case, it opened a bigger and better Second Life. Was it a good investment putting quite an amount of Sterlings for a minor upgrade? You bet! And I wish I had done it sooner than later. So I guess it will be smooth sailing from now on, and of course tons of snapshots for every new adventures which me and my babes will be doing in~world from now on. Kudoz to all!

Oh by the way... the next time you try to look for something in eBay, try finding out if there is something better than the one you are looking for. I had found out that a 1GB graphics card sold on eBay shops was much more cheaper than the one I bought in a computer shop which sadly has half the power and capacity! Oh well... I guess this will serve as another nudge to upgrade to 1 gigabyte. Who knows what viewing pleasure it may offer. That of course will be relayed to you in my next blog! hahaha