I've been to Bliss Garden Center about a half dozen times looking for plants for a project that I'm working on (more on that later).

Today I noticed a sign for "teleport to Gardens Below" sign. It was then that I realized that I was in a massive sky-store above the infamous Bliss gardens.

If you haven't been to Bliss Gardens, it is definitely worth a visit. There is a balloon tour with two routes that provides you with an aerial view of the beautiful landscape. When I have more time, I'd like to go back and explore the trails.

I came across a a free photo morphing application called Squirlz Morph and decided to blend images of my avatars. The application lets you specify key features on the images and then output the result in several formats.



It made me realize the somewhat jerky, unelegant avatar transitions in Second Life, where I often get stuck in my underwear with a shrunken head.

Remember the "5 free fun things to do in SL" list that I mentioned? Well, I'm ticking them off one by one.
1) Go Karts (done)
2) Sailing
3) Archery (done)
4) Jet Skiing
5) Swimming Pools and Waterslides

I've been sailing, jet skiing, and swimming, but I still want to visit the locations that they mentioned. In the mean time, I came across one that didn't make the list but it's definitely worth an honorable mention in this cats opinion - The Mooz Raceway.



I was able to rez the bike, but I couldn't get the heads up display to work properly so I might have been missing some of the experience. Steering the bike is intuitive and you can use the page up/down keys to shift. I'm not a good SL driver because I go entirely too fast - I crashed several times.



Luckily, I had 20 seconds to get back on the bike before it disappeared. I also heard sirens so I think they might have sent an ambulance to make sure that I was ok.

The build is affiliated with the SL Motorcycle Racing Association, and they have frequent races - the next one is this Saturday at noon PST. You can learn more on their website.

Around Thanksgiving, I bought my female avatar a kitten from Wynx. She loves to be carried around and purrs endlessly when I pet her (ok, or when anyone clicks her, she's not picky).



I rarely use my female avatar, but I did last week and when I rezzed the kitten it vanished. No longer in my inventory and not in world either. She's 76 prims so I think I'd notice her lying around on my land :) I put up a sign in case someone finds her.



I searched the forums and tried a few things like clearing my cache which didn't help. I e-mailed tech support at 2pm on Thursday, explaining exactly what I did, where, and the troubleshooting that I tried such as clearing my cache per the website instructions. I received the following response at 1pm on Monday. (unusual characters are part of the reply)


In some instances, Inventory items may not show up, even when searched
for. While this isn’t guaranteed to work during these harsh
conditions, you can try going to Edit menu > Preferences > Network tab
and push “Clear Cache” button and relog.
Remember that generally, things may appear to be gone, but they are
not actually gone. When the database’s functioning as expected, your
stuff should be rezzable again.
If you're still missing items in your inventory or see empty folders,
please file a bug report and give as many details as you can on the
missing items.
We are working hard to correct the complications and apologize for any
inconvenience that this might cause you.


"During these harsh conditions" ?? What about my poor kitten?? Wandering aimlessly through some strange dark database without food, water or toilet? Ack !

Vodafone has had an island in Second Life for a while, but the island was empty with the exception of a few butterflies. Yesterday I went back and the island now has a lot to explore, although I think it's still under development.

From the telehub, I clicked a fire-pole looking prim and was thrust out the bottom of the telehub and wound up underwater with a shark. Good thing I'm a diver :)



The island has a lot of activities - I literally spent 30 minutes exploring (which says a lot since most places hold my attention for all of 10 minutes). I danced the can-can on a floating wedding cake, dove off an amazingly tall diving board, did a little synchronized swimming, and rode butterlies. There's also an ice skating rink, a concert hall, a giant fish bowl where you can maneuver a crane to try to win prizes, and some other surprises that I will let you discover for yourself.

I found a really good place for scuba diving.



I also messed around with my scuba equipment and was able to get the mask and regulator to fit over my avatar head. This had previously been a problem so I just didn't wear them, but I have since figured out that I can attach things to different body parts, and then reposition them accordingly.



In addition to great coral-scapes, there are whales, sharks, dolphins, jellyfish and a wide variety of other fish. If you don't have scuba equipment, there's a vending machine near the shore.

AOL's new island, AOL Pointe, opened yesterday. I headed right over and had fun trying out the sticky wall.



The skateboarding park, a.k.a. the centrifuge, has a bit of a video game feel because if you skate by certain points you win Lindens (ok, only 1 Linden). If you don't have a skateboard, the store has free ones that do several tricks and also sells ones with special features.



The build also has a trivia contest area (where I won L$20), a "walk of stars" where you can make a star with your name and hand/paw print, and a lot of other areas that I didn't explore yet.

Next up from the list of free things to do is go kart racing.

This was a great Second Life experience - there were other people around to make it interesting, but not so many that it caused lag. A sign explained to simply click the sign, select a color, and start driving. It couldn't have been simpler.



Driving the car was simple. The left and right arrow keys control the steering wheel, the up arrow is used for acceleration, and the down arrow is used for reverse.



The track includes some ramps that go up to a second level and has some curvy parts to keep it interesting. AND I didn't have to dress up!