Holiday Festivals

I’ve had my building and organization skills challenged, and I’m pleased with the final outcome.

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, a group I belong to has decided that they want to raise money for Toys for Tots and my contribution was to be a display on Kwanzaa.

The challenge of building this display was while I was able to find some of the textures (the african masks, the Kwanzaa mat, african rug, drums and plant) …. much of the rest of the display had to be built from scratch. Seems that Kwanzaa has worldwide recognition as a festival, but SL hasn’t quite caught on yet.

The challenge for me in this project were the following:

• Learn about Kwanzaa
• Transfer that knowledge into a display in SL
• Figure out how to build that display (without pulling out my hair in frustration.)

Learning about Kwanzaa wasn’t that hard as there were lots of great web sites, however, figuring out how to bring the festival into SL was a real big challenge. In some ways, because Kwanzaa is big on symbols, it made the task easier, but on the other hand, it made it harder because it was critical to not forget any important symbol and because each symbol was required, it meant I had have those symbols.

That’s where the building challenge came in. It wasn’t a difficult building task, but it was one that required lots of attention to little details. Many of the things within the display have been crafted from scratch. I had to laugh as I was building, because it did not take me long to figure out how a person could end up going heavy on prims while building something to the exacting specs that they wanted – the crop basket alone is about 45 prims – fruit and veggies add up, ya know.

Even the fruit and veggie basket was a bit of a pain in the butt for me. Perhaps it is because I am a beginning builder or maybe it’s because I am anal about how things turn out, but I was able to find some fruit that was already in existence to create the basket, but in the end I had to upload some veggie textures. This turned out okay – saved on prims, and the textures were quite good, but I really would have loved to have had some sculpties to use. I would have ever learned how to make the sculpties, but time was a factor. LOL. (I will learn to make sculpties!)

Anyways… the display was completed. Thanks to Teddy for helping me because as I got near the end, I was feel a little scattered and a bit pressured (personal) to try to pull it all together. I knew what I needed to do, but I just couldn’t quite get it all to fit. With him listening as I yabbered and his help in building me some stuff… (You’re awesome Teddy!) the display was finished. I did create a box with all the free stuff that Teddy built, a few of the things I put together and some awesome Kwanzaa tshirts that Teddy put together – you can find them all and donate to the Toy for Tots campaign by visiting the following link: Toys for Tots Campaign in SL

I won’t go into the details of the Kwanzaa festival, but I have uploaded some pictures of the display.

The Display

 

The Feast Table

One of the Kwanzaa tshirts designed by Teddy

The Pictures:
The first picture is the display from a distance. As I said, I won’t got into too many details, but things to note are the three colors (green, red, and black) are a key part of the celebration. Every item within the display holds some significance .

I have included a picture of the feast table because that is a very important part of the celebration. From the crops and the corn, on through to the wicker mat under the crops.. everything has meaning.

Please come by and visit the display. There is guaranteed to be something there to please everybody. Other highlights include:

• Festival/Holiday displays:
  • HaAnnukah
  • Santa (you can pose and get your picture taken)
  • Nativity Scene
  • Valea (Polish)
  • Winter Solstice
• Other Cool Stuff:
  • Advent Calendar – something free given for each day of December
  • Santa Lucky Chair
  • Lots of Posing Opportunity (Yes there is mistletoe there someplace *blush*)
  • Christmas Shops
  • Lots of freebies scattered throughout
  • More (I will continue to update)

Catch you on the flip side.

Artwork

Well, I have a new neighbor *waving at Froschli*

Scribbles decided that his house exterior wall needed some brightening up… ‘cuz it was just too white . . .

Now who’s gonna get mad at a 5 year old who got the urge to get creative? huh?

Catch ya on the Flip Side.

If Ya Haven’t Seen Much of Me Lately . . .

Don’t call 911…

and if ya have… call them back and say it was a mistake…

I recently started on a medication that is making me sleep like Rip Van Winkle . . . between 12 and 16 hours a day.  ACK!

Needless to say this sleep pattern has not only affected my SL time, but also my RL time.  Ugh!

On the SL front, I have been working on a display for a holiday festival event.  My theme is to be Kwanzaa.  As I have had to research it, I have become fascinated by the intricacy and depth of tradition of this festival that I previously had known so little about.   The big bonus for me has not only been the personal education I have been getting by reading and becoming informed about Kwanzaa, but my building skills are being challenged and rounded out as I put together a tableau for the festival display.  It’s all for a good cause too – the aim is to raise money through donations for the “Toys for Tots” campaign.  I can’t remember how many different cultures/displays are going to be on the Sim, but there’s quite a few including Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Santa.. and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

Well, it is a busy time.  So if you see me and I don’t say “Hi” – don’t fret too hard… I’m either sleeping at the keyboard and really wrapped up in trying to put together a Kwazaa display.

Catch you on the flip side.

Fond Memories

Just a little under ten months ago, I was lured to Second Life (SL) by a good friend, Zen . . . “You gotta come check this place out. You should see what you can do there.. anything… and you meet the coolest people… from all over the world.” His enthusiasm was contagious and hard to resist so, I checked to make sure my computer met the system requirements for SL and signed up.

The first place any new person drops into is the Welcome Area. Gawd… what an experience that was. I felt swamped and I was in visual and system overload. My computer might be able to handle the system requirements, but my brain and visual cortex surely wasn’t. I struggled through what I had to be able to carry on the most basic of conversations and then I went in search of my buddy Zen.

I couldn’t remember Zen’s full name. Perhaps it was because he never gave it to me. I wonder if he really ever thought about the fact that I might need it if I was to find him. But it didn’t matter that I didn’t have his last name because he told me where he always hung out… “Rust’s Teen Dock.” It was the place he had set to him “Home Point” and he said he was getting slivers in his butt from sleeping there at night. He also told me that he had run into the coolest guy there, Duncan, who he had been having some awesome conversations with. So, immediately after getting my noob feet planted on the ground, and the fundamentals of being able to walk and talk down, I tp’ed to the dock.

Once I got there, I knew I had found Zen, but we played a little verbal dance to make sure that he was who I thought he was. *grin* ‘Cuz although I was certain he was who he was, he had to figure out that Doodle was really the person he told to check it all out. Does any of that make sense? It’s like asking a long lost friend a question only they will know the answer to… just because they would be the only one with the answer.

Today is a sad day for me. As I reminisce about the dock and all the people I have met there, the dock no longer exists except in memories and pictures. Due to many circumstances, Duncan has dismantled the dock. There was a farewell party – and a fair number of people attended, but as I danced and people showed pictures, I felt like I could have cried. It seems silly that one could become so attached to what other people would see as just “pixels,” but I am … I have a lot of fond memories specific to the dock. It was a place to hang, to do nothing but what young people do – to chat, to tease, to dance, to just be … relaxed and happy. I’ve had light conversations there… and I’ve had conversations that were very serious and gave me much to think about . . . the bottom line is, that when all was said and done, I came out as having benefited by spending my time on the dock.

I bid a sad farewell to the dock. Thanks Duncan for creating such a special place. I know that I am not the only one who will be missing having the dock as a presence in SL.

Making a Penny

I’ve been busy in SL… uh… doing a little pranking. I did redecorate one friend’s place. Hehe.. imagine turning a nice masculine looking residence into something adorned with pink and purple furniture. At least I was kind enough to just place “prim sleeves” over the furniture in question… not actually change the colors of the objects themselves.

So, what has happened to me? I’ve developed this insatiable curiosity to see how things work. Slow but steady is the learning curve. First is the structure of things – and then – scripts… the things that make objects do stuff. How’s that for nice technical talk, huh? I’ve been dabbling is the best way to describe it.

The stupidest of things have been triggering the desire to experiment and learn. For example, last week I was at someone’s house and spotted a wishing well. As I stood there waiting for them to finish up whatever task they were working on I got to thinking how I would have liked to have a penny to throw in the wishing well. From there on.. it was an obsessive task. I just had to create a penny – - – but not just any penny – - – it had to be authentic. . . and then . . . it was suggested that coin should be able to be flipped to show heads or tails.

Arrrrrghhhh.. it could never be so simple, huh? Well, I knew that in order to do a heads or tails script, you need to use a random number generator, but my skills at scripting suck, and I had no idea how to translate the random number script to one that said heads or tails. Duncan to the rescue! He modified the script for me… hallelujah and thank you Dunc!

So… the penny… a replica of a 1959 US penny.

So, ya might be thinking … “A penny… so what?”

Maybe, maybe not. I can tell you that it was a bit of a pain in the arse. One of the first things I figured out was that one of the sides of the penny wanted to show up backwards and upside down which meant changing its orientation in the texture before I uploaded it. Next to that was the issue of the side texture – *shrug* – not that hard once I figured out what to do, but being anal about how things should look, I did fuss with it for quite a while.

Now the next challenge, if I should ever get that ambitious (not likely to happen)… will be to add some kind of script that would actually show the texture (heads or tails) of the penny change depending on what the flip is. For practical reasons I’m not sure that this would work . . . firstly, the penny’s actual size is as small as you can make an SL object and therefore, in order to be able to see whether the object was heads or tails, you’d have to resize it quite a bit.

That’s it. Yeah… I’m fiddling around with other stuff. “A little bit of this and a little bit of that” is how I like to describe it.

Catch ya on the flip side.