Wednesday, March 26, 2008

First post- Meet me and Chip

Two weeks ago, I was born as Annabelle Fanshaw in Second Life.
Blame the impulse to go virtual on a combination of cold meds, and
chocolate, if you will, but I am glad I did. It's a wild,weird, world over there.

For you newbies, it's kind of like a glorified chat room with a common visual reference. But, I get ahead of my story. First things first-getting a body-your avatar.
Not surprising, it doesn't look much like me, with the same sort of passing resemblence that Michael Jackson has to his Thriller cover, or me after an overdose of Botox. Everything about my features are stiff and new- but like most things virutal it can be changed. I'm off to find a better body and most importantly, better hair! There are lots of places to buy these things, and you can use your Linden dollars to do that, or you can go for the freebie malls, which are also in abundance.

Linden dollars are bought with your real American credit, but the exchange rate is favorable-
about 8$ for 1000$ Linden. And 1000$ Linden can go a long way if you are a careful shopper.

At this point, with all this purchasing to be done, you may ask yourself- What does my heart desire? Easy for me- A horse, my kingdom for a horse! So off to AKK stables to check out the stock. Riding a horse in SL just seems like a natural way to get around, there are lots of fields to gallop across, beaches to ride on, and rooftops to teleport to. Yes, we can even fly- my horse and I. Meet Chip, my virtual horse. Together we are exploring this virtual world. Here is our story...


It all started here- on Orientation Island, where your avatar takes shape and learns to walk and talk. Chip and I are wearing our Medieval look, because in the next post we will show you some of the great Medieval realms in Second Life.




In the meantime, here are some of my early shots- showing me exploring the NASA site. I am standing in the gift shop of the massive NASA site, chatting with 2 fellow visitors, one from Denmark, and one from the JPL lab in California. One of the default animations for an avatar is making typing motions while you type a chat response, kind of strange with out the laptop infront of you, but it gets the point across- I'm busy typing!


Here I am visiting a marina- where you can sail around the oceans of Second Life. They offer nightly sails. As you can see, the sun is setting here at the Marina. As you move throughout SL, you will encounter different time zones and their corresponding celestial orientations. However, since you are a god, you can change this- force the sun to be at it's noontime orientation- no problem.


And my first ride on Chip- We are out on the fields of AKK Stables, I'm trying hard not to steer him into the trees- He hates when I do that.









And out in the "back 40" of AKK, we have changed into our Medieval outfits again.







Until next time- when we start the Medieval tour- A

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