Bunny New Year

So, I thought I'd take a few moments out to look back (as best I can) at some of this bunny's highlights of the previous 12 months.

It seems to have flown by, but then I have been fortunate to be involved in so much over the last year, that much of it seems like it happened so much longer ago!

Mardi Gras was fun. The whole Mardi Gras square seemed to spring up in a matter of hours, given all the hard work that Tea, Akay, Stillpink and Pan put into making the buildings. The parade of floats was a laggy, grinding affair, but seeing all the wonderful displays was an awesome sight. No two floats of a 30-plus strong troupe were remotely alike. All of them highly detailed and utterly brilliant.

Having our own Space Station, and being allowed to assimilate a level for my tiny Borg collective was awesome! Awor and Zayn did an increidble job constructing the thing!

The Summer Olympics in Beijing were heralded as a great success, due in part to the spectacular opening ceremony, but the whole thing had nothing on Raglan's take on it. From our fantastic torch run, to the whole host of tiny-centric events that took place. Seeing everybody step up and take part was brilliant.

Halloween is typically celebrated over just a single night, but we managed to stretch it out into something fun and exciting for almost a whole month! And getting to film the Thriller video was a joy that gave me an opportunity to try something different but equally creatively rewarding.

And I have watched with an envious smile as Winterfest - which was supposed to be a 'rest event' - has turned into a series of well-co-ordinated parties, activities and general messing about in the snow. I was sad to miss most of it, but incredibly happy to see how much fun it brought everyone else.

I got to make loads of things this year, as my confidence with my ability to do so greatly improved. I am always very happy to hear nice things being said about my stuff; I'm almost as happy to hear bad things being said about it too, because it makes me try a little harder the next time.

But overall, Second Life would be nothing to me without the people around. From long-standing pals like Bo, Etheria, Lani, Zayn, Xerxes, Panacea, Minea, and Awor (and many, many more), to the new faces around, every experience is only made better by other people's continual prescence.

I was so sad to see both Greta and Peaches have to leave SL, for their own personal reasons. They both brought so much joy to my experience, and I still miss them both terribly. Hopefully 2009 will see me become reacquainted with both of them in-world, but for now, I hope they both know how much I hold them in continual high-esteem in my heart and soul. Jaid Marsi has been in-world less as the year has gone on, and again it has saddended me, as she is such a brilliant, creative individual who always saw the beauty of SL and could capture it brilliantly in a snapshot; I have my fingers crossed that she is able to find her inspiration in-world once again. I have also been concerned by the disappearance of Merriwether, a tiny whose constant over-exubarant mood made my smile bigger every time I saw her. I hope she is OK. The worst thing about seeing someone leave is often not knowing why they have gone.

My good friend Sakurasnow has also been on less and less over the year too, but I have kept in touch with her by e-mail. I still miss her though. Another friend whose energy is infectious.

But I have also been blessed to meet so many new folk this past year. It would be impossible to name everyone, but it was fantastic to help Misa set up her Pumpkin Patch on Morning Shire; I am always pleased to catch up with Mutley (the only fellow tiny, other than Kitti, who I have met in RL!); my entire olympic Green Tigers team were a joy to meet, and from such were borne some wonderful friendships which I intend to keep ongoing; Eleanora, Awenbunny, Josephine, Eren, Teal, and Qyhat have all provided The Shire Times with more content and brilliance than I could have ever have hoped for; folk like Karmagirl, Azelle, Isis, Catten, Kul, Xandra, Summer, Sedona, Shady and so many more always provide me with much-loved company and inspiration; the whole of the Events & Activities Group, who challenge and help nuture my creativity, and offer constant support; and I made it a point, no matter what I'm working on or heading to, to give at least 10 minutes of my day to any new tiny I see taking their first few tentative footsteps around the Shires. Linden Lab keep going on about how they want new resident's first hour experience to be the best it can be - my advice, send them directly to ExtroVirtual and then despatch them off the the Shires. We know how introductions should be made, and I will continue to do my upmost to ensure that our community continues to grow and thrive.

Kitti joined me in SL this year too. It has been wonderful to see her develop friendships with my own in-world friends, but with a wholly different approach. The joy that she has enjoyed around the Shires is always a sight to behold.

Many times this year I have been asked by Zayn to contribute to events. As much as I respect everyone's opinions, when I know how deep the talent pool is that he has to dip into, to be asked to contribute anything at all is always a wonderful honour.

And then there is Bo. She is my longest-standing tiny friend. She has been through so much in her RL over the last 12 months. I don't know how to express how much her friendship means to me, but there have been times this year when the thought of SL without Bo would be like Wallace without Gromit.

If 2009 is half the joy that 2008 has been for me, I shall be writing a year review in a year's time that could be even longer than this one!

Festive Mint Spies

I finally managed to get in-world over the festive period, courtesy of someone else's machine and connection. I finally got to carol sing! I finally got to pay my rents! I got to send out a Christmas gift to my group! I got to look at all the wonderful gifts I had been given (including Eth's fab puppy hat). I even managed to attend a party (admittedly, I started the party by talking too much to an increasing number of new tinies and old friends, but we got ourselves a DJ and a couple of dance balls and made the most of it!), and I even managed to build something!

When full connection is restored, I will release a new musical instrument, one I managed to knock up in a couple of days. But as proud as I am to have made the most of my time by building it, I am just as proud that I got to see, chat and message some friends at the time of year it was most important.

Blue Winter

Well, I have now been off-world for over a week, and after seeing all the fantastic pictures and hearing about all the little events that have been going on around the Shires, I do feel genuinely sad. I'm glad I didn't commit to the Ice Sculpture contest that Eth is running again, but disappointed that I have missed out on being able to give away the gift I had been making for the Sekret Santa event, and also for the Winter trek.

Kitti is very sad that she isn't able to get in-world either. She feels as though we're missing out on so much.

If any of my fellow Raglanites are reading, I do genuinely miss you, and don't forget about us until we return.

Cold...stop

Well, I didn't win the Coldplay contest (not really surprised). Oh well, I have a video I'm still very proud of, and has had some lovely comments made about it!

I really want to do some more filming, but lag is off the scale at the moment. I couldn't film a single shot of someone walking without it becoming a virtual world equivalent of a flick book.

Coldplay Coldpause!

Gah! The winner of the Coldplay 'Lost?' contest was due to be announced today, but a blog post on their official website has said that the announcement has been postponed to Monday! Apparently the shortlist for consideration wasn't that short after all, and the final decision needs some more time devoted to it..

The Most Expensive Hat In Second Life?

So, Yasmine Koala and Wolfear Clawtooth, along with some other very friendly and lovely folk held a charity auction in aid of AICR this past Saturday night. Lots of folk very generously donated lots of fantastic prizes. I donated a hat, kinda based on my new Christmas Hat, but modified to be a kind of 'life garden' on a hat brim. Some grass, some rolling water, some stars, birds, apples, flowers, etc. And a big glowing heart, and surrounded by pink/yellow particles. And when you click it, it fires off an explosion of golden stars.

For Violet Faulds, cancer charities are a cause very close to her heart, after having suffered very personal experiences as a result of cancer. She and Lani Heron engaged in a bit of a bidding war; Violet trumped Sarah Irling's previous bid of $151L by bidding $1000L. Lani upped it to $2000L immediately. Violet countered with a $5000L bid. And so it went on. Until Violet threw in a bid of $60,000L. Lani bowed out. Violet won.

Now, according to the LindenX Exchange, $60,000L amounts to about $220.59 USD. That's about £143 or 173 Euros. I rarely see hats in RL cost that much!

I'm so pleased that the charity gets such a great amount of money (in addition to this was lots more from the dozens of other gifts on offer), and am so pleased that Violet won the hat. Maybe I need to go back and reconsider my current pricing set-up on everything that I currently sell!

Violet is now in possession of the hat, which I have made Copiable (so she can try and reduce the risk of SL eating it by making copies...maybe up to 60,000), but No Modify and No Transfer. I have also kept good to my promise of deleting and purging the copy of the hat I have from my own inventory; Violet paid a lot of good money for that hat, and I do not want to cheapen her overwhelmingly amazing gesture by wearing a copy myself.

Talented

Photo by Teal Freenote

The Raglan community once again pulled out all the stops on Sunday evening, when the second annual Talent Show was held. I once again volunteered to emcee the shebang, primarily because it would get me to the show without having to demonstrate a distinct lack of talent - talking is not a talent!

Impossible to pick a favourite act, because no two were remotely alike. Yes, there was more than one dancing act, but the range in the spectrum between them was so far off the scale, it couldn't have been more different. Two poems: one by a ninja kangaroo, one by a well dressed white rabbit.

All in all: extraordinary. Makes me proud to be part of the community, and made me all the more proud to know that each act trusted me enought to introduce them to the world.

Making A List, Checking It Twice

Have had a fairly productive weekend! Managed to figure out what I would make for the Lucky Chair over the Winterfest period - the Christmas Top Hat will come in 5 colours - and also updated my Buddhist Robe outfit to reflect new locations for vendors: one at Adelebsen and one at a secret location to be announced soon!

Lost In The Rush

My Coldplay contest entry video rating has been knocked down to just 2 1/2 stars. *sobs* I can only assume that it's the competition who are deliberately rating it low in order to try and make it seem less appealing to watch!

Or else it really is rubbish!

Expanding

I opened a branch of Funny Bunny on Adelebsen today. A load of folk have already set up shop there for a while, but I knew nothing about it until very recently. Anyway, here it is with the new style branding!

This now makes three full stores (Heron Shire, Potterswick and Adelebsen), vendors at Raglan Shire, Hug*Mart and Mousemart. That's almost a chain!

Schweet!

Finally released my Marshmallow Stack Seat! Only 6 prims, I managed to get hold of a nice sculpty cylinder, and then made my own texture to go on it. Finally managed to get the multiple sit scripts working properly too.

Also re-did some of the branding on my vendors in Potterswick, and on the treetop vendors. I figured the 'olde worlde'-look works great at the wharf, but elsewhere looks a bit too old-fashioned. So I changed them.

Emergency Waffles!

Released a new useless toy today! Emergency Waffle Pack! Basically, it's very much like my old Jaffa Cakes and Oreo packets - wear and click and bounce out the contents! In this case, a juicy toasted waffle!

Also sent out a green version to the Funny Bunny group (after sending out two previous dud versions). Notices expire in 2 weeks from today, and I made the green one non-transferable, so within a fortnight, it will be a collector's item!

Or maybe not.

Also need to mention, I added one of those funky capsule machines to the shop on Heron Shire. I have begun to discontinue my pacifier/dummy collection and collars collection, and have put them into the capsules; I also added the aforementioned Jaffa Cakes, Oreos and Jammie Dodgers, as well as my Chaffbolia flower and my set of Brass Knuckles! All for just $5L per random capsule, I thought that was cheap enough!

Highwaybunny! The Movie!

Have been taking a few minutes here, a quick opportunity there across the past few days to film some random shots for a not-coming-to-a-cinema-near-you movie based around the Shire's notorious Highwaybunny, and in the process reinventing him as an action hero!

Turned out pretty well overall. This was actually one of the hardest to do because I needed the shots to become livlier as the trailer went on, but I hadn't got a clue where it was going. I ended up filming loads of stuff that didn't get used. Was pretty pleased with how the effects shots (the rope swing towards the end, the skulls into the pit, the fast Chinese junk boats across the water) turned out.

However, when it came to uploading the video, the first zoom shots and a couple of others part way through turned out much, much darker than they appeared to me in the edit (and still do when I play back the movie file as a whole now); that meant I had to go back and add lightening effects to those shots, which in my opinion kinda affected the quality a little. Oh well, if I can find somewhere to host an 80MB zip file with the AVI file in it, I'll let folk know and they can download it in it's original glory...

Tiny Thrillers!

The Thrill The World project saw people all over the globe doing the thriller dance at the same time to the strains of MJ's 1982 classic. And residents of SL were not exempt from the fun either! On Saturday 25 October, over 60 tinies flew up to the graveyard stage on Raglan to particpate in our own contribution to the cause, and I was on-hand to film it all!

Well...almost.

Just before it was due to start, I crashed. Then I crashed about 30 seconds after my relog. And when I finally managed to get back for the third attempt, the dancers were either gaseous blobs, dead zombies or out-of-sync with their moves. So the filming on the day went out the window.

However, I persevered. I managed to round some tinies over the following few days and do some smaller bouts of filming, and here are the results!

Many, many plaudits should be given to the brilliant Peaches Latrell and Apollo Kronos for their efforts in making the dance in the first place. Without them, this would never have happened.

Kitti Gets Lost

Coldplay are currently running a contest through their website for people to make an original video to their song Lost? taken from their new album. I grabbed Kitti and a few tinies (to act as mer-folk!) and went off and shot the above.

Thanks to everyone who helped and took part (including those who got cut from the final version due to necessary reshoots)! And thanks to the sim owners of the respective locations for letting me film there!

Fuzznutz - The Music Video

Fuzznutz, Second Life's leading tiny cover band, perform to The Ting Tings 'That's Not My Name'

Fuzznutz are Minea Auer (vocals), Awor Blabbermouth (guitar, bass, backing vocals), Sedona Sparrow (keyboards), Zayn Till (drums, backing vocals) and Chaffro Schoonmaker (guitar, backing vocals)

In addition to performing shows of their own, Fuzznutz have played as back-up musicians for numerous SL artists including Robie Bloch, Ganjo Mokeev and MichelleD Ecksol

Also featured in the video are AlohaLani Heron, Josephine Planer, Karmagirl Avro, Kitti Dumpling, Lulee Babenco, Morticia Uram, Mutley Latte, Panacea Pangaea and Peaches Latrell

Particle chamber effects by Summer Seale

Filmed entirely in Second Life

'That's Not My Name' by The Ting Tings, taken from the album We Started Nothing released by Columbia Records (c) 2008 Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited