Free Market

At the advice of a friend, I finally got around to doing something I should have done a long time ago: put my Mermaid's Dream products up for sale on Xstreet (formerly SlExchange). You can find my things by going to Marketplace in Xstreet and viewing Merchants, then digging down to Mare Novi.

I have the "Dream Mer" tails, the latest version of the Mermaid's Dream AO, and some of the gadgets from my vendors. I should make pages for the other things just laying around the store, like the "mernature" and the poseballs. Maybe they'll get more customers online then just waiting for people to wander into the store.

Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz

I ran into a friend sailing her new Flying Fizz 3.0, and after crewing for a few minutes in it, I just had to have one. It seems to sail even more realistically and faster than the Flying Tako(!), which can make it more challenging to navigate. They're for sail -- er, sale -- at the Starboards Yacht Club in Hollywood.


There are several levels of operation, though; so if you just want to sail around, you can put it in "Fun Mode" and not worry about the sail settings and the like. Other levels give you control over the sail trim and tautness, to get the maximum performance out of the boat in races. Your crew, if you have one, doesn't just sit there, but can take an active role in manning the rigging and hanging over the side to help counterbalance the boat when it's well heeled over.

The colors and textures are fully configurable, so I can see I'm going to be spending some time fiddling with the paint job.

Cost is L$1,250, which was a bit more than I expected -- but well worth it!


The wind is freshening, and I hear the Blake Sea calling...

Battle Cry

And now for something completely different:

What Is Your Battle Cry?

Sprinting along the icy wasteland, brandishing a sharpened screwdriver, cometh Mare Novi! And she gives an ominous roar: "I'm seriously going to beat you into a fine spicy powder!"

Find out! Enter username: Are you a girl, or a guy ?

created by beatings : powered by monkeys

Reverie

Half asleep I hear a voice
Is it only in my mind
Or is it someone calling me someone I failed and left behind

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I've been
All the devils that disturbed me and the angels that defeated them... somehow
Come together in me now

Face to face I greet the cast
Set in silence we begin
Companions in an empty room I taste their victory and sin

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I've been
All the devils that disturbed me and the angels that defeated them... somehow
Come together in me now

A tale of beauty and the beast
I defend my soul from those who would accuse me
I share the famine and the feast
I have been the world and felt it turning seen the jester yearning to amuse me

Like a circus on parade
Seldom close enough to see
I wander through an angry crowd and wonder what became of me

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I've been
All the devils that disturbed me and the angels that defeated them... somehow
Come together in me now

- Paul Williams
Phantom's Theme (Beauty and the Beast)

Birth Of A New Sea

The Blake Sea has finally appeared east of Nautilus, surrounded by the relocated Second Life Sailing Federation sims. It is truly a vast area of connected, sailable waters that I look forward to pointing my bow (well, that of my boat, anyway) toward. Here's hoping the waters are mer-friendly!

I don't know yet how the new void sim limits on prims and avatars will affect any regattas or other activities in the area. Let's hope that the SLSF can continue its activities in their new location.

It's My Second Rezday

I figure that's 12 in SL years.

Yo-Yoing Through The Metaverse

Is it just me, or does it seem that SL has been having more than its share of problems lately? Here are the Grid Status blog entry titles for just the past week:

[RESOLVED] InWorld Issues - Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 08:01 pm PST
[RESOLVED] In world Services Unreliable
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 07:30 pm PST
Logins Intermittent.
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 03:51 pm PST
Second Life Wiki Maintenance
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 01:00 am PST
[RESOLVED] Possible Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 17th, 2009 at 05:23 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 16th, 2009 at 05:15 pm PST
[Resolved] Logins Currently Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 16th, 2009 at 11:38 am PST
[Resolved] Inworld Issues - Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 15th, 2009 at 01:46 pm PST
[Update 01/15 10:02] Rolling restart to deploy 1.25.3, Thu Jan 15 and Tue-Wed Jan 20-21
Posted by ReleaseTeam on January 15th, 2009 at 10:02 am PST
Scheduled Pjira Maintenance
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 03:54 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues - Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 03:05 pm PST
[Resolved] Updating Back-end Servers
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 10:17 am PST
Intermittent support portal malfunction
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 07:40 am PST
[RESOLVED] Partial Inventory Maintenance Scheduled for Tuesday 01/13/09
Posted by Status Desk on January 13th, 2009 at 03:57 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 13th, 2009 at 03:39 pm PST
[RESOLVED] blog.secondlife.com unavailable
Posted by Status Desk on January 12th, 2009 at 08:32 pm PST
XML-RPC service was degraded
Posted by Status Desk on January 12th, 2009 at 05:46 am PST
[RESOVLED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 11th, 2009 at 11:20 am PST

Even ignoring the scheduled maintenance entries, this seems to be a lot more problems than we've had in the recent past. Yes, they are marked RESOLVED, but you have to wonder if they really are, when the grid goes wonky again just half an hour later.

Why Shouldn't a Mermaid Have a Sailboat?

I own a Flying Tako, which as most people who sail in SL know, is an amazing little craft that sails fairly realistically. But I'd been having to change to human when sailing because of the pose.

With the Blake Sea and the sailing sims to open east of Nautilus, a short swim/sail from Mermaid's Dream, I decided to do something about that. It didn't take long to fire up Poser and make a mer equivalent of the Tako pose, which I then replaced the original pose with in the boat.

Always looking for more things to put up for sail sale in the store, I made up a vendor sign and slapped a L$50 price tag on it.

I'll probably be spending more time on the water now.

Flaming Newbies!

While swimming behind the store, I noticed a red line that hadn't been there before. A closer inspection showed a rocket-powered newbie figure fetched up against my back wall.


Was he part of a rocket zombie newbie invasion?

His root prim wasn't on my land, so the autoreturn couldn't get rid of him. I fixed that by jumping on his head and bumping him around for a while, with the hope that I could get him to fly south for the winter. I couldn't push him far enough, but I finally was able to get him enough over the land boundary that I could send him back to his launch pad.

Moving Notice

No, not our main store, but the branch that was in Elounda. The mer colony there has joined the Minoan Empire and is moving north into the Island of Thera sim. Work is proceeding on the sea floor landscaping, and it promises to be an exciting place! Here's a landmark: Mermaid's Dream, Island of Thera (76, 39, 2)