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