Spring Clean

In an effort to try and jump-start Spring, I've been having a general tidy-up of my vendor presence in-world.

Well, it was kind of enforced upon me on account of my hippoVendors refusing to deliver two items from any of my vendors, even after I'd checked permissions, reset and re-uploaded everything. So after some deliberation - and cursing that I've now got a costly hippoVend system gathering pixeldust in my inventory - I chose to switch to the Caspervend system.

And so far, I've been pleasantly surprised by it; it seems a very easy system to set up and use. the in-world instructions from the server and vendor units are pretty simple and the layout of the webpages is extremely manageable, nice and uncluttered. I bought the free version, which pays Casper a small fee on each transaction, but seeing as my sales are so low, I couldn't have justified (at least not in the immediate short-term) to pay out for the full system, especially with only having bought hippo no more than a year ago. So I've replaced my vendors at the Tiny Outpost at Orbiuna, my single units at Cynister and Elemental Motifs, whilst also taking the opportunity to move around my main store layout at Heron Shire wharf.

Funny Bunny Store on Heron Shire Wharf

In addition to the new vendors, I've also put out a single prim vendor containing all of my previous Tiny Swagtastic Weekend exclusives; TSW is a $50L offer that Tia Macbain and Dorian Longstaff run, whereby participating store owners put out an item for $50L for the weekend. I had a load of stuff that I put out on offer but never transferred to my main range, so thought I'd make use of a spare wall and throw out a vendor just for those few random items.

I also took the time to replace the items in my two Lucky Watermelons - actually Shep Korvin's popular Lucky Chairs, retextured to look like giant cut fruit. So the extremely popular Tiny Aviator Outfit and the Tiny Glockenspiel have both been put into retirement to be replaced with...well, you'll have to go and find out yourself!

The Circus Rolls Into Town

Goodness, it's been a month since I last blogged? Sorry - that's just me being a lazybones!

I've been busy in-world though, especially over the past week: it's SL8B time! Second Life celebrates its 8th birthday soon and as usual, I determined that as one of the leading tiny communities on the grid that Raglan should have a presence here again this year.

This year's theme is 'The Magic of SL': now, almost everything that tinies do is magical in one way or another, so adding to that, we've decided to roll a little circus onto our plot at the sim Electrify. We have a HUGE merry-go-round made by the supremely-talented Marion Questi and Martini Discovolante; we have a tightrope; we have balancing acts; we have balloons, caravans, trees, tents - we even have bouncy pie trampolines! We've already had a number of visitors come and play and that's just fellow exhibitors! The sims officially open to the public on June 20th, so I hope that you, dear reader, make some time to come and see what we've cobbled together!



Then, you can come and visit the SECOND plot I'm working on, with Pyewacket to promote our Virtual Popcorn machinima review blog! More on that once I stop being distracted by having to pet Meeroos. Sigh.

SL6B

I made a chainsaw recently. It uses a very cool little animation-pose that Azelle Mavendorf made, a cool script that Catten Carter made and I threw in a sound effect I downloaded from the interweb. I am like a building leech; all of the important bits were made by other people! I suck! [However, I did make a cool lightsaber that changes colour when you touch the beam; it was really well detailed, and as I threw myself into making it, only took me an hour or so to build. Then I surprised a lot of people by giving it away free to my Funny Bunny group - FREE SWAG!]

Anyhoo, I have had literally minutes of fun going around with my chainsaw, chopping into the sides of folks buildings and around forests, etc. Then I popped over to the sims that will be used for SL6B (Second Life's 6th Birthday), ready to cause some unwanton destruction; but it looks as though someone beat me to it.

I can only describe the texture that LL have used for the land as though someone has dug up a field, then scorched the earth and then scattered manure across it. It looks like a really bad Glastonbury festival after 8 weeks of trampling. It's bad.

But in a strange way, that's good. Raglan Shire is a beautiful, lush cluster of sims, adorned with wonderful fauna and flora - which is what we're hoping to recreate inside the huge drab looking warehouse we've built for it. We could've built a magical-looking palace to hold our satellite Shire, but we thought a dirty metal can would fit better with LL's vision, whilst serving as a great contrast to our own.

Busy Bunny

Well, I didn't think I'd done much recently, hence the lack of update; but when I came to write about it, I realised that this week alone I've been putting the finishing touches to the new Shire Times issue, have been filming and editing a new Machinima piece for Raglan, have been trying to get the Shire's 7Seas fishing opportunities back up to speed and have made a Valentine's Walk freebie. So maybe I have been busy after all.

My Valetine's gift was designed to be the most tackiest, cheesiest thing you've ever seen for a tiny in Second Life. I hope I succeed!

My new Machinima has some brilliant moments in it; Kitti says it's inspired, I think it's inspired luck.

The Shire Times has again been great to do and soul-destroying to do. I wish sometimes I had better ways of making up a page.

Made some nice custom fish for the fishing though! Really pleased with how they turned out. Now I just need some other folk to come up trumps with another half dozen or so, and we're on the way!

The Funny Bunny Lucky Chair Fruity Tooty Top Hat

Officially the Longest Name For A Hat In SL (probably), this is the new prize in the Heron Shire lucky chair! I chose not to mention Frootcake in the hat's name, as it is technically a copyright issue - although not an issue to cause any major litigation, but I am aware and respectful of these things. I will replace the Christmas Hat in the Potterswick chair with the Aviator outfit (the DePaul exclusive PAD version - Potterswick Air Defence) too.

Plus, Eth has once again worked her animation magic for my banjo, so that will be going out for sale this weekend too!

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!

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!