the pathless heights

Over the last two weekends much time has been given over to setting up and running an OpenSim region as a stand alone on my Mac computer. The idea is to use it as a personal sandbox so that others do not have the pain of viewing my truly clumsy first attempts at building and texturing.

Setting this up has not been straightforward but more by luck than judgement the region has made it on to my screen with its resident 'Master Avatar', who remained a gray misty gas-ball for over a week whilst I struggled my way through the forums and finally learnt the trick that she has to wear not only a 'new' skin, 'new' eyes and a 'new' shape but also 'new' hair after which Kazaam! - the default Ruth avatar is forced to appear.

The steep learning curve was amply rewarded by viewing the land spread as ordained across the new wastes of sim as I loaded my first terrain file. Coupled with reading a passage in Freya Stark's The Southern Gates of Arabia this experience has set me dreaming of worlds in creation.

No grimmer coast can be imagined. The mountains are sharp - naked apparently as when they hissed in black coils from the darkness of earth, lonely and hard as death, and with a derelict and twisted beauty. Their cliff faces press one behind the other towards the sea, whose luminous moving waves seemed to repeat in gentler and more living form the chaos of their desolate chasms and ridges.

I know how to do it now, and what is this? Southie Allen offering a landscape competition for residents of Blues Islands? Guys you ain't seen nothing yet! Stand back and watch the Twisted Mountains rise...

Something About Stripes.

I love the elegant stripes on {AND}'s SuperEffin Glowtastical Mainstore by Southie Allen! There's something about a stripe! The mesmerizing, quirky, crooked outlines will shed a welcoming glow far out across a sim. Like the Crooked House at a fairground Glowtastical provokes curiosity. In one tight, silky, pleated, little package Glowtastical has all those elements understood by the first inventors of the shopping experience to welcome us and make us stay and enjoy our shopping. Warm and sparkling, it is nicer than home! Reminiscent of those pleated silk-fronted cabinets that used to contain and project the magic wizardry of sound and vision, Glowtastical entices me  to start shopping and never stop until I have as many boxes, packages and bags as Audrey Hepburn could squeeze into a lift. Was that scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's or Fifth Avenue? Darn, I shall have to watch them all again! 

How long I wonder until I succumb to the need for this zippy lighthouse and carry out my mad plan to convert The Robin Two-Storey House into the perfect boathouse? What I love about these stripes is the delicacy, and the vibrancy of the colour ranges: smoky caramels and coffees, and robin egg-shell blues. They remind me of the subtle blends and mellows found on the peeled wooden stuccos of seaside villas. {AND} Can't you hear that lighthouse singing?!