Explore Space in Second Life

In my SL travels I've come across lots of great stuff, most recently, a series of sims that have displays on science and space exploration, apparently in some cases sponsored by JPL itself...

Well, whomever sponsors and creates this stuff it's great.  I explored the area for well over an hour wearing a nice mesh pea jacket from Grumble along with brown jeans and pair of Grumble Aspen boots.  I plan on going back and looking around further when I have more time.  Here are a few snapshots to hopefully inspire you to swing by this great build and have a look around.

At left I'm standing next to full scale models of the Saturn and the Redstone.  When you are doing this in SL you get a real feeling of the massive difference in size.

Below is a partial, yes partial, view of the collection of other launch vehicles they have around a solar system simulator.

And here are just some random shots from a couple of the many many displays.

Northern Exposure, gone, but not forgotten.

Some of you might remember a TV show called Northern Exposure.  As I was sipping coffee out of my KBHR mug this morning, I was saddened by the fact that no one seems to re-run the episodes of this show.  It is, and was, one of my favorite TV shows of all time.  It ran for five years and had over 100 episodes, a ripe candidate for re-runs.  So...Why can't I find it in among the banal sitcoms, crass reality shows and endless re-runs of Law and Order?

Then it hit me.  It was about nice people.  Nice is not fashionable.  While all the residents of the fictional Cicely Alaska who were the regular characters on the show had their foibles and eccentricities, they were, essentially nice, well mannered, civil, well spoken and intelligent.

Wow, in this day and age, only 20 years later, to think you can have a funny entertaining show that doesn't revolve around a group of churlish selfish socially stunted self centered assholes...What a concept.  Who knows, maybe someday, it will be OK to have such a pleasant show on TV again and a new generation of people can see an example of what the world might be like if we just tried to be nice.

Sacred art, yet again.

My atheist and agnostic friends sometimes find it perplexing that I find churches fascinating, but I do.  They are wonderful buildings full of art.  And in SL I love finding examples of mankind's sacred works.  Most recently I found Saint Paul's Cathedral.  And excellent example of a more ancient style church, the mosaic images are stunningly gorgeous.  I just had to show you some images.

The outfit I am wearing is from SF Design.  It was a freebie in the Make Him Over hunt a year or two ago.  Still a fetching little outfit for the boys, don't you think?

Back to the party.

I've had some PC issues of late.  It's kept me out of SL a lot for several weeks now.  But things are starting to get better.  So I went to last weeks Friday night event at Stiletto.  It was a multi-themed event sort of...Sixties or "Far Out."  I didn't have time to shop, though honestly if I had I might have skipped it to wear my cat suit from SF Designs.  I do love that thing.  I added a mesh belt from another outfit, but otherwise, wore it pretty much as I did in the hair fair snapshot here.

That said, there were some great outfits, but mine was judged most "Far Out" I guess.  Anyway, here's a trio of snapshots from the event.  I was playing with the winlight settings trying for a black light sort of look.  Never quite got there, but the variations are included just so you can see what changing your winlight can achieve.

More Bare@Rose, this time for the girls.

I dug out a few of my girly outfits from Bare@Rose and made some snapshots to show you what sorts of things they have in that vein.  But believe me people, this is only the tiniest drop from the sea of selection you can find there.  And none of this stuff is from the new mesh line.  So, for your enjoyment, here are the outfits.  It is also worth mentioning that none of the shoes are from B@R, all the shoes shown are from Grumble.  Hair, glasses, jewelry are from assorted places.

The school uniform and biker outfit both include three colors, the sort of slave Leia looking outfit comes in two colors and has more bits not shown making it more a set of "bikini armor."  Last the shinny outfit is from the freebie pile, and that shiny effect is done with a texture on clothing layers, not mesh!

Bare@Rose - Oldie but goodie

I discovered Bare@Rose a couple of months into my time in Second Life.  And I've always sort of assumed everyone finds out about it within a few weeks.  But lately I've run into some long time residents who were unfamiliar with this institution.  So, I dug out some of my old Bare@Rose gear and fitted it to my current avatar.  Then posed for some snapshots.  I hope you can see that even though these items are old style clothing layer and prim, they are still very amusing.  I've got some girl outfits too I'll have to dig out and take shots of some time.  These are all boy stuffs.

The shoes shown are not B@R products.  The over the knee boots are from Blackburn, the spats are from the shared LL library.

Bare@Rose has recently gotten into producing mesh clothing, but the demos I've tried are all for Avatars much more generously proportioned than I ever get.  I have seen a new line of mesh for "flat" avatars, I might try one of these out, but sadly there appear to be no demos.

Bare@Rose (B@R from now on) has a few kinds of hair, some shoes, and even a bit of furniture.  It has a large random freebie pile.  But what they excel at is complete outfits.  To use a comparison my fellow American's should follow, but might puzzle our friends over seas...

If SF Design is Men's Wharehouse and Grumble is Target, then B@R is Dress Barn.

The expensive outfits are still under 200L.  Average price for a complete outfit, usually without shoes but in at least two variations, is 175L.  The texturing and prim styling are not always the best.  But if you are looking for a "costumey" outfit, especially something related to Anime, Cosplay, Fantasy or Scifi, you can probably find one or more examples here.  While most outfits are okay to nice, a few things you'll find are absolute jewels.

And for those avatars still struggling to find mesh outfits to fit them right, the traditional clothing layer and prim stuff that fills the literally hundreds, maybe thousand plus boxes, will fit nearly any size avatar with a bit of adjustment.

The one up, or down, side to B@R is all items are modify and transfer, not copy.  So if you really mess something up adjusting it, you are hosed.  On the plus side, you can easily give stuff from here as gifts.  And since most boxes contain 2 or 3 color variations of the outfit, you can share selected parts of the outfit with others.  There is almost always one clothing layer piece that is not duplicated, so you can't split the entire outfit.  But you can often say, for example, give the jacket of a suit in one color to a friend or alt for their use with different pants, while keeping another color and the pants for yourself.

Lastly, if you shop at B@R HQ in world, they give away door prizes every few minutes.  Given it takes a very fast shopper probably at least an hour, more likely two, to quickly browse the entire store, odds are you'll win something while you shop.  If you don't like shopping in world, they do have a website here.   And some of their inventory is in the SL Marketplace here.

More Ladyboy Looks

My goal from early on in SL was to have an Avatar that looked a lot like a Thai Ladyboy.  But one that was could also perhaps be of mixed race, or perhaps even from another place entirely.  Such as Brazil, another country known for having some sexy transexuals and a country where you would most likely find my SL last name.  I am born and raised in the USA, so while I know some things about other countries, I have never lived there.  Thus a desire to have a truly ambiguous, very mixed race, American appearance.  For edification and amusement, I've compiled a collage of four images of my avatar's face, surrounded by the faces of many Ladyboy models from Asia.  Most are probably from Thailand.  I think I've managed to keep to my aim and pay homage to these lovely faces.

The sexy secretary grumbles

I missed out on being able to attend this Friday's themed event at Stiletto's, but I did put together an outfit for it beforehand.  So, again, I wanted to show it off here even if I didn't get to do so in world.  Everything but the hose and tie are from Grumble, even the hair.  The mesh jacket is from a full womens business suit.  I had an issue with the sleeve alpha not working right around the cuffs, so I added prim cuffs from a Blakopal men's steampunk outfit.  I think it works rather well as an ad hoc cover up.  

The snapshot was taken in the library at Pair A Dice.  I actually looked around for a modern secretary sort of setting, but after a couple of failed attempts to find a good place, I used a desk in my good ole home sim.  You really can find almost everything you need at Pair A Dice.

Oh, I made the clipboard I'm holding as a prop.  And later, a pencil to boot.  Should you be in dire need of either, IM me in world and I'll send you a copy.

Lost and Found

It seems like about half the time I go looking for a specific snapshot from SL, I find others I had forgotten about.  So, here are couple of nice ones.  One is a collection of mesh gear from last years Glam fair.  The shot is taken in the Paris sim where my ancient profile image was also taken.  Still one of the kewlest sims in SL.  The other is a frilly mesh dress from Slave Dressing room and some color change boots from Grumble.  The background is the chapel at Pair A Dice.

A dreamy garden.

In my profile is says I like to see good builds and explore.  Every once in a blue moon someone will IM me with a suggestion.  That happened recently and I wanted to show you all a couple of images from The Garden of Dreams.  A nice fellow named Ruberboy had read my profile and suggested I visit this place saying, "It is like Rivendell."  Well, I agree, though I think it even more strongly reminded me of the Forrest of Lórien and/or the actual city Caras Galadhon.  But then I'm a Tolkien geek.  Not on par with say Stephen Colbert, but I know a thing or two.

All that said, I changed into one of my elven outfits and went for a look around.  The build is gorgeous.  You should check it out in person, because these 2D snapshots just don't do it justice.