Aug 19, 2015 | Chatter, Images
Relaxation level: 100%
For the majority of my Second Life I have been extremely fortunate to be associated with Kannonji Zen Retreat, a beautiful little sim that holds daily meditation sits, occasionally hosts talks from RL Buddhist teachers, and is home to two live music venues. Over the years I watched with great joy as my late husband and his close friend, Kannonji’s founder, shifted prims around, reshaped the landscape, occasionally battled over some feature one of them wanted to add that the other kept returning, and did their best to make Kannonji a beautiful place to visit. When the current owners, whom I’m lucky to count as my best friends in Second Life, gave me a free hand to do any updating I wanted I was delighted.
Life’s a beach \o/
Much of the sim remains as lovely as ever, and I admit there is still a lot of reluctance on my part to delete anything that my husband did before he passed, but it was fun to add new little touches. In the past couple of weeks my offline life seemed determined to throw stress at me right and left, and SL has been a refuge. Coming in world and having the opportunity to create spaces where others can hopefully escape a little of the daily stress of their offline lives has just been wonderful. Landscaping has to be one of the best forms of relaxation I have ever found. It will always be at the top of my list of things I love to do in world.
Finding the quiet spaces
I wouldn’t begin to put my efforts in the same category as those of SL’s many well known, talented sim architects, but I’m still quite proud of my modest little spots. Creating a hidden beach here, a quiet little camping spot there… bliss. Hopefully others will stumble across these little spots and it will erase a little of the stress of RL for them as well. 🙂
Visit Kannonji Zen Retreat at Snowlion Mountain
Apr 20, 2014 | Chatter, Images, Monday Memes
I’m almost a week late in keeping up with Strawberry Singh’s Monday Meme, but life was tossing me around a little and I just didn’t get in world. On a bright note, I have finally been reunited with my wayward laptop, all repaired and ready to let me explore again, and, more importantly, take pics. Yay! Of course the first thing I did was grab Flat Ebbe from the marketplace.
Since he’s had an entire week to hang around with lots of bloggers I thought he might be tired by now, and I didn’t have a good plan for sims to tour, so we just stuck close to home at Kannonji Zen Retreat. We started off just chilling by the pond so he could unwind after all that traveling.
He still seemed to be feeling a bit stiff, so I suggested taking a few moments out of his time to have a quiet sit at the main zendo. There wasn’t a scheduled meditation going on when we stopped by, but it’s still a great place to find some peace and rest.
I’d originally hoped to check in on Flat Ebbe from some fun location via SL Go, but unfortunately despite trying at least a half dozen different places in town I can’t find any free WiFi that has a high enough download speed. These are all national bookstores, or restaurant chains, so I don’t know if it’s part of a general policy or just bad luck in my city, but in every case but one the On Live app advised that the speeds were too low and it refused to even connect my account. The one time the speeds were sufficient there was apparently some sort of firewall in place to stop On Live. Oh well. I still think it’s a pretty cool service, even if I can only use it in my house.
Ms. Berry also asked us to include three things we’d like to communicate to Ebbe, so we sat at the coffee bar for a few moments before he set off on more adventures around the grid and I tried to think of what I’d like to tell him. I’ve read through what others have said and really I think I just want to echo some of the suggestions:
- Please work on the public relations issue. I couldn’t agree more with all of those who wish SL wasn’t regarded by the media as that virtual porn game. It’s also so frustrating that people who use SL are so often portrayed as stereotypical friendless losers who need a “second” life because they don’t have a “first” life.
- Tier prices. While I probably won’t be in a position to own land again anytime soon it would be nice to see some reworking of the tier structure to lower the fees and make land ownership more attractive.
- Keep talking! I love that you’re being so communicative with the users, and I hope you keep it up! 😀
Many thanks to Berry for our meme and for Flat Ebbe! I’ve been following his comments, from the keynote speech to his twitter feed and so far I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the future of Second Life. I’m eager to see what happens next!
Mar 8, 2014 | Chatter, Images
I am so completely ready for warm weather, in RL and in SL. I finally took some time to de-winterize my SL house and make it a little greener and warmer looking. It felt pretty good, so it progressed into a bit of stealth landscaping at ground level. That was a thing the husband and I would do from time to time, we’d wait until the sim was empty, then buzz around the island and swap out trees or reroute waterways and install little groves and tranquil ponds on a whim. Sometimes I’m surprised we’ve remained on the estate manager list for so many years. 😀 (more…)
Aug 29, 2013 | Images, Sightseeing
I’m a little late to the party with this weeks blog meme, but even without a challenge I’ll always jump on the chance to share pretty shots. Strawberry Singh‘s blog challenge for this week is to share some of our favorite places in SL, so I began looking through my landmarks and thinking about the places I like to visit. This quickly turned into me being nostalgic, and a little sad when I tried to look up a landmark on the map and found that it was no longer on the grid. Like many people I was in love with all of the sims that AM Radio designed, and I’m delighted to know that The Far Away is still on the grid, I will definitely be revisiting it.
Here are the instructions if you’d like to join in:
Meme Instructions: Share 1 to 5 of your favorite places on the grid. I feel like exploring and discovering new places. Share places you think everyone should visit and also tell us why they are your favorites. Don’t forget to leave a link to your post in the comments (on the original post here)!
I was tempted to dig into my old images and find some of my favorites, but instead (with one exception) I thought I’d take a fresh look at some of the places I’ve always enjoyed I typically edit pics because I like to play with color or add filters, but I left all of these untouched except for cropping (again, with one exception) just to see how things would turn out using only windlight settings. These are in no particular order.
Calas Galadhon
Of course everyone knows about these sims, but I have to mention them anyway. I love all of Calas Galadhon. I love to wander around, and look for interesting camera angles, and just sit sometimes and imagine that I’m really in this lovely setting. This pic was in Dimril Dale, and I think (it’s a couple years old so I’m not totally sure) that I used the viewer depth of field and the only extra processing was the vignetting (and probably cropping.) This is one of my favorite images out of the SL pics I’ve taken over the years. I am really looking forward to seeing the sims open back up in September, this is one of the places that the hub and I have had a lot of fun exploring.
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