New Find: SiniStyle Design

Today while exploring Second Life, I stumbled upon a "Haunted House", but it was apparently not haunted anymore. While looking around the outside of the house, I came across this sculpture of "Death".

Being impressed by the design of this item, I decided to see who the creator was and if he/she had any more interesting builds. You can do the same right clicking an item, selecting "More->More->Inspect" and then while the root object is selected, select "See Creator Profile".


The creator of this object is Krius Misfit who is almost 2 years old within Second Life. According to his profile, his blog of new products at http://sinistyledesign.blogspot.com and he also has a MySpace page. His picks and Classified (Paid L$666 for the listing) both reference his main store location at http://slurl.com/secondlife/SiniStyle/74/92/33

Teleporting to the main store greets you with a gothic house and some interesting music selections. The lighting really sets the environment and mood quite well.

The yard sports some trees from Straylight courteously of resident Kriss Lehmann which is the *best* place I've found to buy scuplty trees.

Entering the building leads to a a shopping area with several wearable items, including choke collars, bloody skins, knee pads, respirators, belts, bracelets, a couple sculpty hats, shirts, trench coats, boots and pants.


SiniStyle Design's offers a store card that one can purchase and use instead of L$ balance. I'm assuming this is used to give someone a card to return to the store and make purchases. This is a pretty novel ideal and I'm guessing it's easier to implement than a "buy-as-a-gift" system.









Exploring the SiniStyle island, I found where you could buy the graveyard set for L$800 with copy permissions. This is good for anyone preparing for a gothic environment or Halloween.

Now that the adventure is done, what's next?

SecondLife Apprentice Mentor

On the 8th of January, I was accepted into the SecondLife Apprentice Mentor program and this morning I completed my orientation. The orientation was under an hour and most of it was "common sense".

I received a package with several notes with information on how to help new residents and policies related to being a Mentor Volunteer. Simon Kline hosted the event as a Mentor Coach and was very through, offered answers to every question and ensure the class stayed on topic and on time.

With the completion of the orientation, I look forward to helping new residents gather a foothold in the world much to the pleasure of their Users.

There is a cheesy video available from YouTube over the "Tao of Volunteers"




Below are additional pictures of residents that attended the Apprenticeship meeting:

Construction Started

I've started the construction of a building in an undisclosed location. I'm using this opportunity to learn some building skills needed to start a bigger project at some land I've been sitting on for a while on the one of the newer mainland additions.

This new office building may become a portal my user may utilize as a portal for some virtual work needed to promote various unsigned bands needing exposure.

Now to build the designs I dream about...

Side note, why does the sunlight glow through walls? Why do lights shine through objects? Where is my shadow? Residents, please vote on the Jira issue: VWR-1601 - Prims casting Shadows.

Linden Highway Construction

... and now appears a road.

I've had the land near this road since Feb. 07. It's always been a grassy "protected land", but today it's a road. The information states "Michael Linden" added the highway on "Mon Oct 8th 16:28:50 2007". I wonder what other areas have received updates?

Here, in the same region, Michael built a crude bridge that isn't exactly suburb but does its job. The annoying thing is that the guardrail pretty much cuts off my section of land.

Geektopia - Sweet Build, but only for a limited time

Today I stumbled upon Geektopia located at Father (220,221,33)

Go see it now, apparently they're losing the plot of land on Father and are moving to Onyx Ocean (127, 93, 21). I visited the new location to find ... a partially constructed "Steam Volcano". I'm not sure if the ship will make it to the new location.

So, to the folks of Geektopia, good build!.

With one statement, the gods kill my casino tycoon dreams.

On the 5th of April, the gods deemed it was illegal to advertise Casinos with the following thundering statement from the skies:

"It has been a basic tenet of Second Life that all Residents are legally responsible for their own activities and for complying with the laws of the local jurisdiction in which they reside. However, given the ambiguities of the issues, Linden Lab has decided that we will not accept any classified ads, place listings, or event listings that appear to relate to simulated casino activity."

Although I had no dreams to build or host a casino, this statement snuffs out the ability to properly market a casino. Obviously I can purchase some land, build a casino and fill it with enticing games of chance. But then how will anyone hear of it?

Some residents cheer at the fact there will be no more stupid search results for casinos while others cheer that this will force casinos to close and thus ending lag problems in their part of the world. The casino owners have said this will effectively kill their business, losing all the time and money they have invested in getting their businesses operational.

A lot of casinos provide jobs for new residents via "camping chairs" as well as "employees" who in turn spend their money elsewhere in the world. Other items that appear to fall under the new law include "xploder" balls and other novelty items found in many of the clubs and gathering places around the world. These places will have to re-evaluate their ability to properly advertise their events with accordance the new law.

As the residents cheered and cried, the heavens spoke again:

"Residents need to take responsibility for your own activities and for complying with the laws of the local jurisdiction in which you reside. If you are, or are concerned that you may be, engaging in illegal gambling, you should stop."

Confusion crossed the faces of many. This raises many questions.

When did Seokcheon become part of a government entity that passed it's own laws?

Does this imply I have to obey the laws of my user? If so, why?

Second Life Relay for Life 2007

Over the past few weeks, every where I go there is a new kiosk that is apparently used to donate to the American Cancer Society.



I'm really skeptical that this money ever reaches the earth realm and actually is 100% contributed to the American Cancer Society. The website proclaims "in cooperation with the American Cancer Society", but lists no official contact to the American Cancer Society, nor does it make claims of the amounts being donated to the organization.

Here are some breakdowns of teams that have "contributed" to the Relay For Life in Second Life:

Relay Rockers - L$577673 - USD$2012.48
McDunnoughs Relay Gang - L$469,674 - USD$1636.43
Team Eros - L$460,042 - USD$1602.68

The residents listed for contact are Fayandria Foley and Jade Lily with the latter being the only one with an earth realm contact of jade.lily@gmail.com. That's right, a google mail account, not a American Cancer Society email address. Hummm....


My user did some investigating and dug up an actual link from the American Cancer Society's website:

Second Life Relay For Life (2006)
Second Life Relay For Life Event Details (2006)

The former mentions residents RC MARS and Jade Lily while latter mentions a RL person :

Randal Moss
American Cancer Society
Futuring and Innovation Center
randal.moss@cancer.org

So now, there is a 2006 mention of one of the people involved with the Second Life Relay For Life organization.

Legit? Scraping from the top? It is very hard to tell without the accountability of donations being directly funneled to the American Cancer Society, especially with the individual involved NOT being directly involved with the organization.

EDIT:

Per the comments below from presumably Jade Lily herself, the SecondLife Relay for Life is, in fact, a legit operation. Jade Lily is currently affiliated with the Electric Sheep Company which is quite involved with the evolution and quality development within SecondLife.