Why?

Well you may ask – it’s because I put up a new page onsite here, an informational page on XS Cactus and Quail – under the Breedables menu. But when I went to publish it to the navigation menu, I found there was an error with the blog template version (the latest) I was using, and so far the support group and developer hasn’t fixed it.

Time for a renewal, then. Not something to be taken lightly – delving into CSS and html, well – it’s taken me all day, and I’m still tweaking. But I hope that in the end, the new diary feature is appreciated, and some of the effects found on the homepage too.

Technorati Tags: featured

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I’m somewhat jaded about Second Life at the moment. There’s little joy in what I am able to do in-world and when the animals I previously loved to blog about become a burden, then something has to give. I’ve therefore made some more cutbacks in the animal department, with more to come. Here’s an updated list -

• About twenty Petable turtles have gone to my partner in crime (ie. the owner of the land) PacificBlack, who is actually enjoying his in-roads into turtle keeping. The TCD team has been lucky enough to have one of each of the specials recently, and this keeps us happy in maintaining our turtle groups. It took several days before we got our first April Birthstone this month, but we now have a male and female of these, so are perfectly happy.
• Ozimals bunnies – the 1.2 kindle a basket over Easter to get a choco elite bunny depressed me, particularly as I watched people announce statistics on the chat groups such as – ‘Kindled 200 nests, never got one at all’ and ‘I have five of them!’. I kindled about fifty 1.2 nests, twenty of them were purchased (cheaply) and never got one of the elites. I’ve kept four of my kindled bunnies to breed from, but that’s put up the food costs. The rest are sitting in my inventory, obviously starved at this point. There’s no point for me to now go around the markets searching for any new bunnies to purchase, given how many of them I myself now have. Of course, I’m going to have to terminate or kill several more of them given the food costs in maintenance, where they are also noticably not breeding so successfully also. I am contemplating just making a couple of them into simply pets.
• HunnyBunny bunnies – we have the (purchaseable) chocolate Easter bunny pairs here, still maturing to breeding age. The St Paddy’s and Valentines special bunnies are paired also, and producing red eggs together every few days. I am contemplating taking the three other normal bunnies and the red eggs to the HB official orphanage, however, to save on food costs.
• TL Sheep – after the controversy caused by TL Sheep originally being created using another person’s (Jon Haskell) well-known sheep a couple of weeks back, I have since deleted all TL Sheep from this property. This was a personal choice, and I wish Boxi Boxen and Telur Lane the best of luck in these sheep, however I hope that the fact that Telur maintains he purchased those copybotted sheep from an ‘unknown’ somebody at some point, is analysed and he looks into his payment statements to locate the culprit who sold these to him. This would be best on behalf of the entire breedable community, I’m sure. Boxi’s german-language chat group hasn’t helped my own attempts to understand those sheep, or any of the upgrade features for those sheep, making knowledge extremely difficult to come by, and therefore blog about. Both situations have left me uncomfortable, and thus leant their way to my personal decision to delete TL sheep from the property a couple of week’s ago, and release the pens for the upcoming HB Sheep or any new breedables coming up. This means I will no longer be blogging about TL Sheep as I do not own them.
• PinkyPigs – I still like the noises they make. I currently have six of these (three too many probably), as a couple are due to die from reaching the end of their lifespans very soon, and the younger ones are replacements. I appear to be able to get ruby gem collars, but no other elites, which can be quite demoralising, but given their short lifespan, I’m not willing to go out and purchase an elite (a love pig is the only one I know of) given they will die within a couple of months.
• sionChickens – I still have a pair of ancients who produce lovely eggs, an astral, a wandering original killer chicken (who only has a couple of months left of his life) and my Golden Rooster wanders around my office building. Many are coming up to the end of their lifespan, so I will eventually hatch out a couple of chicks to keep them going as long as sionChicken food is available.
• XS Cactus – I have a large border garden of XS Cactus. Maintenance of these breeding plants is very easy – using a golden watering can, I can water these plants for two weeks for only L$200. They remain a favourite due to their low maintenance and the production of seeds every day. At 2 prims each they are not a burden on prims either, and make a nice display.
• Seid Mushrooms - I have a crop of about twenty of these, all producing spores every day. I have several Level 5 mushrooms with special qualities, and although the maintenance of these – both feeding and watering – takes a long time – it’s currently free. Having to travel with the spores to a big mushroom to get the growing mushrooms, has been difficult recently with TP errors and lag defining my day.
• PlantPets – I have six of these out, at various small primmages. Their maintenance is free – but they require watering a couple of times a day for some quicker growers. Of course – these breed also, and currently I have a nice lot of gift packed PlantPets to give away to friends.
• Other Living Plants - there are three other types of living, growing plants I am trying out on the property. These will be blogged as I get through their lifecycles and also try out those who produce baby plants also.

Technorati Tags: Second Life

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I did not come with the intention of creating content. My world, both real and second life, is about ‘writing’ content, and this includes both blogging over certain subjects, writing freelance occasionally and writing fiction as my passion. In a previous real life hobby I was a content creator, and I do possess some capabilities with an image editor – BUT…I have no intentions of being a content creator, rather I am quite happy in being a paying consumer of the designs created for me in-world from those who are.

Still, over the past year or so, I’ve often found myself needing to create some small thing. Today I found myself with another example – I was in need of a large modifiable trough to plant a growing cacti collection in, and after much searching I just hadn’t found one to buy. So, I made one – I for the first time, dealt with learning how to make a hole within a prim. I’m not happy with the result, but it will make do at a pinch, and the textures came out quite well.

Brandy Darkrose is an avatar ‘project’ recently started. She appeals to me, because she chose the noob avatar that I started off my own second life with. Brandy’s project is to create everything she needs to makeover her noob avatar over the next year.

I am a character in the virtual world Second Life. I am a project created by someone who has been around for a while. The project, to recreate my real life self piece by piece. The catch, I have to be the one to do it. The deadline, March 9th 2011.

And on Brandy Darkrose’s project blog, she’s putting up tutorials whilst she does it. Obviously I don’t know the real virtual avatar behind Brandy’s alt, and I don’t care. I wish her the best in continuing her project over the next year, and thank her in advance for anything that she might teach me. The first was how to create a simple pose stand.

Now, I have plenty of pose stands, most have been given out freely to me. But to make one of my own – now that’s pretty kewl. And although I don’t need possibly half of what Brandy might be about to show me, what is it that they say -

‘Knowledge is power‘ Sir Francis Bacon

or is it

‘Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it‘. Samuel Johnson.

Either way, I’m bookmarking Brandy Darkrose’s blog and look forward to her project.

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Seriously…not happy.

Credits :

Pink Lawn Flamingo – L$50, this weekend only, at Aria – part of the Spruce Up Your Space Straight out of the Trailer Extravaganza.

Wearable Push Mower - L$50 yesterday only, at RC Cluster – Fifty Linden Friday promotion.

Ridable Clippy Mower – L$150, this weekend only, at Ambiance - part of the Spruce Up Your Space Straight out of the Trailer Extravaganza.

Log with animations - L$unsure – Dutchie. There is also a couples log. This single log contains seven animations, and is only one prim.

Technorati Tags: fun

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Spex and Kismet were a couple of avatars I met around the Petable fishing hole just now. Actually, I’ve met Spex before – at a Steampunk Fair, and Kismet, remarkably, turns out to live in the same county in Great Britain that I do. Small world – both in real life and second life – but we all know that, right?

I came away having been gifted by Kismet with this St Paddy Day custom catch I was trying to get there. It’s an exclusive fishing catch, available only until next Thursday at the Petable SIM. The conversation and gifts made me slightly more thankful for the day. Not only that, but while I quietly stood cursing my fishing luck over the last hour, Spex and Kismet provided high entertainment value beside me. I was particularly intrigued to learn that you can actually fish with a neko cat rod tail (thanks for the demo, Spex).

Obviously both Kismet and Spex are fellow shellers (the term used for those who keep Petable Turtles) along with me, and both also have interests in Ozimals bunnies. Both read this blog occasionally also, so I’m shouting out to see if they notice the use of their names. I put them up in the title – so they should do.

Keeping this blog going is difficult sometimes. Second Life itself can be a thoroughly lonely business. I am lucky enough to have family members who sometimes log on to keep me company, but most of my time here is spent basically with myself, my thoughts, and the grunting of PinkyPigs, and clucking of sionChickens. When I put it down like that in black and white, it’s enough to make you wonder about my mentality sometimes.

Although real life and other second life committments are meaning I must cut back on this blog and my animal husbandry to some respect here, when you encounter people who actually recognise you for this work then it becomes more worthwhile.

So, I hope this serves as a reminder for anybody else out there reading this, also. Take a look at some of your favourite second life blogs, and send those writers (yes, writers) a quick note of thanks. Because whether it’s writing a full-blown 140,000 word novel (something I’m doing right now) or a 1000 word post on a blog, it’s still damned hard work. But unlike a published novelist, few bloggers actually are recognised for it. So make today – or tomorrow, or up until the end of the week, a personal ‘Thank a second life blogger’ day for yourself. Go – thank them, and make them smile.

And this blogger is thanking two particular people out there for making me realise, ever so briefly, that I’m not entirely alone all the time. Even when I have blue skin and bogly eyes.

Catch your own St Patrick’s turtle custom catch at Petable

Technorati Tags: Petable Turtles, Writing

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You know something is wrong when you don’t feel such an alien in the world just because you are an alien.

Venutian Princess Avatar available from Peace & Titanium

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So far, this has involved -

• A cut back to four PinkyPigs only (one of these is nearing it’s own death due to old age).
• A cut back to six HunnyBunny bunnies (which will include the special edition bunnies for breeding, which we love)
• Six sionChickens – one is an astral, one is a long-term non-eating Golden rooster, and one is an old black killer who is sadly due to die in the next two months due to old age.
• A staged and planned cut down to the quantity of Petable Turtles including specials.
• An eventual staged and planned cut down to three breeding pairs of Ozimals bunnies (we are currently working out which to keep, and which we want to go to Matriach status with the more expensive food investment required).

The cut backs are due to several issues including a need to bring back the fun into our second lives. If you have too many of these animals the costs of maintenance – food, primarily – but also the length of time spent putting out food and trading in eggs and things, or documenting baby’s heritage – well – it’s taking all day! For those who are trying to live their slife’s with breedables as a business, this may well be profitable. But for us – time to make some cuts.

This cut back will also include a slowdown in blogging and other breedable obligations in-world such as beta testing. These changes are necessary for two-fold reasons – one again being to bring back the fun into our smaller second lives, and the second being to allow more real life time particularly with PacificBlue who has a writing project on another novel underway.

Pacific also has the Fantasy Faire to blog for coming up in April, and it will be nice to actually concentrate on some fashion after a good long while looking at furs, glows and spots on animals. And Aunty Audrie needs to tackle some ill-timed health issues.

So, if you notice a slow-down in blogging on The Chicken Diaries, and less information on particular breedables in the future, celebrate with us. This is actually a good thing. It means we are getting a little more balanced, spending less money on our second lives, and possibly just having more fun in the time we are here.

The blog and our second lives aren’t going away– we’re just refocusing our passions, and working out what we can and can not do within a day, and balancing it all with an assessment of what is the benefit of that work and expenditure.

Oh, and isn’t it nice having some sunshine around in this springtime? We plan to actually spend some time in it.

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Why not? It saves load time, and nobody will see you anyway. And the animals don’t care.

This made me feel much better about the realisation that I have spent a few weeks wearing the same things (primarily over the first weeks of January when both HunnyBunny and Ozimals launched, and I also took on PinkyPigs). I’ve never believed myself to be a fashionista, although enjoy fantasy fashion immensely. But at least I don’t go around naked (which would be commented on when my Aunty and cousin arrive in-world, I’m sure).

Today I got to thinking, however. There’s another way to be naked without actually going bald or showing too much nipple. And here I am for this week – my dog avi. Not quite naked, though – because I can still attach one of my wearable Petable Turtles (and probably put an Ozimals bunny onboard if I wanted to, also).

Heck, this is a naked that I can even go out around the markets or to those fantasy fashion stores or Furniture stores I am searching around at the moment.

Technorati Tags: fun

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Oh, yes. The trend to be an old woman all of a sudden. Which I might suggest I find a little irritating. Just because  a store called Baiastice did a new line in gear for grandmas, and suddenly everyone wants to be one? Well, I welcome my peers, and decided to blog this in response.

Regarding being a grandma* , I’ve been one all my life – my Second Life, not all of my real life – I was young once, and have got a bit of a past, yes. But a woman has to grow into her wrinkles, and take pride in her laugh lines, she does. It’s not just a matter of putting on a wrinkled skin, just because it’s free, my dears. So if you are about to take up on Baiastice’s very generous freebies, at least pass a thought across how the inner you should behave when wearing such lovely evolved skins.

* I am taking the liberty of presuming that ‘grandma’ is, in this instance, simply an indication of an elder status, rather than a technical reality of having given birth, and then having my progeny give birth to another generation. Because I am not, by fact, an actual grandmother – but I am a very good Aunt. And despite my name having this family title right inside it, (and my group tag says – “Just call me Aunty”) many a Second Life male has greeted me with, “Hello, Granny” rather than as directed, so I know I have the credentials for spouting on about this. In all intents and purposes, for the consideration of this post, please consider me a Grandma.

So, annoyed by the sudden immitations of the well-worked for maturity I like to think I possess, I went to take a look at this Baiastice place.

Which is when I realised my neice and I had already been there before Christmas, and in fact I’d already picked up some of the granny stuff given away there, and this was just a new free gift in the series for this year.

Grandma’s Closet

Baiastice already had a package out for free for some time. It’s still out there on the little table at the main entrance.

The package opens up into a real closet, and you have to open each of the non-linked clothing packages to get to them. Grandma’s Closet comes with four elderly skins, a shape, eyes and five different outfits including shoes and accessories.

It was the actual closet that I liked initially. And the more formal trouser suit is quite nice too. New hairs are always helpful also, of course. I do like a bit of new hair.

The glasses you see in these photos come in the original Grandma Closet package, whereas a cane comes in the Grandma Holiday suitcase.

The Outfits

Baiastice Grandma Day Grey outfit – I would suggest that it looks a little too Victorian in the advert shots. But once I put this on, I took a bit of a liking to it. The outfit comes with a nice carrier bag, too, for that busy day shopping. Although the bag appears to be somewhat filled already.

Baiastice Grandma Glitter Class outfit – nice swanky trouser suit – the outfit comes with shoulder pads, a cane and handbag with or without animation.

Baiastice Grandma Korea Style – this outfit comes with special hair too. But no shoes. Despite the beige colouring, once I put this on – it actually brought out my skin tones lovely. Very nice.

Baiastice Grandma Pretty&Young – perhaps this should be renamed Pink&NotSoYoung? It’s not that flattering to my thickening hips, I must say. But I do like the handbag and the stockings are quite sexy, don’t you think?

Baiastice Grandma Purple Poppins – another Victoriana outfit, and on this one I’m not so sure about the definitions on my nipples. A very nice hat with net makes up for this transparency on my chest, perhaps.

Grandma’s Holiday 2010

This is the package which has caused all the fuss recently. Baiastice gave it out as a group gift, but don’t worry about that, because it’s available for free off the floor of the shop now also. I literally teleported in, and picked it up from the floor to take a look.

This suitcase contains the granny skins and hairs, plus some outfits Baiastice suggests I’ll be needing whilst on my journeys. Like, er, a Parisian underwear white assemble (surely it will show all the travel stains?), a swimsuit with paddling pool, and a safari outfit. Now, although I don’t find a safari hat that flattering, to be honest, take a look at those kick-ass (as the Americans would say) boots which come with the outfit!

There is new hair and special holiday makeup for this package also. Plus eyes, and a cane with AO.

The Outfits

Baiastice Grandma2010 Lingerie – the suitcase comes with the lingerie already unpacked inside. No shoes, but with the cane possessing some lovely posing AOs, who needs shoes when you can stick your bottom out like that?

Grandma2010 Holiday Safari – I seriously didn’t expect to end up wearing an elephant when putting this entire outfit on, but the suitcase comes with not one, but two sets of these. There is a small elephant to sit on, or a pair with two sit balls (yes, I know there might be a male elephant joke in that one, too). Plus the boots I had my eye on, of course, and a veiled hat, or non-veiled hat. The belt needed adjusting to my waist size, which is telling me something, I should think.

Grandma2010 Paris White Dress – This outfit comes with long or short skirt, glitch pants, gloves, the shoes. And it’s very pretty once on.

Grandma2010 Swimwear – Okay, now we’re talking. Bathing suit, plus retro glasses and bathing cap. But also – the pool. I haven’t been in a paddling pool for sixty years, mind you – and can’t recall if I danced in one, but this one comes with a few good poses, and of course – the dance.

My Verdict?

Whilst I’m happy in my own naturally grown-into skin, thank you very much, I will admit that if Baiastice can make it more accepted to be of a more mature age within Second Life, then who am I to complain? It would be lovely to meet up with some older women within second life – although I hope they’re not all wearing the same face and clothing.

In fact, being older appears to have some bonuses – my younger niece has already pointed out to me how many hunky young men seem to want to be my friend on Avatars United compared to her.

And both of these collections are absolutely superb fun, and much of it is now a staple in my own wardrobe (once I get out of the pool, that is). And of course – all of it is free. That’s very generous of Baiastice to offer that, and to bring more recognition to the older generations within Second Life.

Credits :

Skin and Shape throughout – My Own (see Aunty Audrie’s Stylecard)

Closet Photo :

Hair – Pink and Green Hair Curlers – The Rural Route
Glasses – Horn Rimmed Glasses from Wrigglesworth Residence
Wings – Elda Wings from 2010: The Future is Now – Lazy Places
Outfit – Monypenny Wool Suit Ensemble in taupe – Milady’s Fancy Gowns

Other Photos :

Hair, Accessories and Outfits by Baiastice.

SLurl : Baiastice

Technorati Tags: freebies

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Stay tuned for the first Staged Challenge completed by Black. He was given a month to stage a garden shed build, but has nearly completed it, somewhat assisted by PacificBlue (no, not nagged!). Black, taking great pride in portraying the  English male, took over the garden shed to truly make it his own domain. I’ve been in visiting, and must say I’m not totally impressed by some of the contents, but he always does things like that to tease me. Speaking of teasers – Below is an image I, er, borrowed,  of that staged post coming up later this week.

The Chicken Diaries now has an updated Index Listing of the Staged Challenges so that you can more easily go to these posts if you ever want to. You will find the index under the main Concentrates Heading.

Under the Breedables heading you will now also find some informational pages with all the SLurls you may want for PinkyPigs, PlantPets and updated other Breedable pages. Pacific took a little time doing those up, but it’s all up to date now.

Coming (further up) you may (or may not) find my own Staged Challenge. My neice thought it would be funny to get me to stage a witch’s parlour. I don’t see the joke, but it does look like fun.

Technorati Tags: Staged

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