New Release: Tea For Two

Thursday, August 23, 2007 / by

RL is pretty busy at the moment, but I've been working secretly on this new idea of mine and today it's time to release it!

Tea For Two Box

Tea For Two is a romantic tea set for friends or couples. The teacups are scripted, allowing you to prepare your tea as you like it. You set everything through blue menu, having options to put (or not) teabag, lemon and sugar into the teacup. Depending on the options, the teacup change. For example if you decide to put lemon in, it appears in the teacup and disappears from the plate. Whenever you feel like having another cup of tea, you can easily reset the teacup.

The set includes:
  • Two scripted teacups
  • One teapot
  • One sugar-bowl
  • One plate dispensing peanut butter cookies (perfect for tea!)
If you'd like to have a tea party with more friends, you can buy the Extension Pack, consisting of 6 additional teacups and a prop plate with teabags and lemon slices.

Tea For Two Extension Pack Box

You don't need the main Tea For Two set to use the Extension Pack. These will be working whether you have the main set or not. Of course having the main set is recommended, as it has nice prop items.

Members of Magic Nook group are getting a special first-week promotion, as always with new release, so if you haven't joined yet, do so, and check past notices to find out what you can get with your purchase.

Tea For Two

Picture you upon my knee
Just tea for two
And two for tea
Just me for you
And you for me... alone.

Have a great tea time everyone!

Saving Codestation

Sunday, August 19, 2007 / by

I've been hearing about IBM's Codestation game, Sentinel 2.0, for a while now but hadn't visited the location until yesterday. For those of you who haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, here's a little explanation from the game FAQ note:

This is a puzzle-based adventure game that will test your coding and building skills while working your brain. IBM CODESTATION has been overtaken by a foul, pink beast named Double-Bad Bugra. Your object is to rebuild SENTINEL, the defender of CODESTATION, and defeat Double-Bad Bugra. If you succeed, you will be rewarded with a car designed especially for the challenge by The Electric Sheep Company.

Basically the idea is that there are four parts of Sentinel (arms, body, legs and head) hidden in different locations around SL. Your job is to find them, rebuild Sentinel and participate in the final challenge on September 19. To find the parts you use black boxes released every two weeks at IBM Codestation (you need to figure out yourself how these work).

So far there have been two black boxes released and I must say I'm a little disapointed. I was hoping for some difficult riddles, that take time to solve. But the parts are actually very easy to find and there's not much guessing involved. There are still two more boxes to come though, so I'm hoping for some difficulty increase :)

Nevertheless, the whole idea is very creative and promotes the Codestation in a humorous way (devastating pony-tails, lol!). The Codestation itself is a nice contribution for SL community too, offering open-source scripts and objects. All in all, I like the project and I'm looking forward to see what's coming next.

Speaking about the game, I need to mention the sim where the second stage takes place - it's the most beautiful sim I've ever seen in SL so far. It's a stunning woodland area filled with trees, foliage, slopes, waters, bridges and light beams. Here's a photo I made there... Yes, it's a paradise for photographers:

Straylight

Definitely worth seeing. Care to go for a walk?

Ah-you-me

Friday, August 17, 2007 / by

As I've been surfing through SL blogs, I came across an article by Myg, asking SL residents for the stories behind their names. This sounds like a fun topic, so here's my story.

I chose Ayumi as my first name, cause I think it's cute :) I'm interested in Japanese culture, so choosing a Japanese name came quite natural.

Here's how it's pronounced:
Ah-you-me (listen on Kanji Dictionary)

Ayumi literally means "to walk" but for names it's interpreted as "walk your own way, independent". The ending "-mi" is common for Japanese female names and means "beauty". Friends usually call me Ayu or Yumi. Or Yummy :P

As for the last name, I wanted something that goes well with Ayumi, and Cassini was the best option. I like the Italian sound to it. Italians are passionate about everything in their life, they like to celebrate together and they smile a lot. Sounds like me :)

So, after months of playing, I still totally like my name. And I hope you do too!

The mystery of The Man

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 / by

In the old sim of Natoma, on the top of Philip's Hill, there stands a statue that remembers the ancient times of Linden World*. It is said to be one of the oldest and longest standing structures in Second Life (along with Arch'D Linden Grande and Delerium Castle).

The Man statue in Natoma

The Man statue, built by oldjohn Linden in year 2002, is one of the very few builds that survived the transition to Beta. The statue was originally located in the town square of Linden City (the first city in Second Life as far as I know). The Linden City was completely deleted when moving to Beta and the Natoma sim kept changing a lot since then, but The Man remained intact. For the first 4 years, The Man was stretching his arms towards the sky. Since 2006 he is holding SL3B Time Vault, which contains items contributed by residents for future generations of SL.

Looking at the statue, you won't notice anything unusual at first. However, the more you examine, the more it gets interesting. One of the funniest facts about the statue is that one of its parts was built 3 months later than the others. And that would be the statue's head. Yes, the statue was headless for 3 months :)

The Man (Inspect)

It was probably quite simple in the beginning, with head added later to give it more detail, but it's still pretty funny when you think of it.

Looking closer you will notice a bottle of sake on the back of the monument.

The Man (Sake)

And that's the mystery I mention in the title. Why is it there? It's certainly not a random object, since it's owned by Governor Linden. The bottle was built in 2005 and that's actually the only information I could find about it. Any ideas?
______________
* That's how Second Life was called in the Alpha stage.

Hello, Avatar!

Monday, August 13, 2007 / by

So I started a blog... I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but not being sure how much time I would have for blogging, I kept postponing it. This way I would never start a blog though. So I just did it spontaneously and I guess I'll manage to place at least one entry per month.

This blog is going to be a mix and match of everything around the topic of Second Life. I'll be sharing some of my thoughts, writing some tutorials maybe... Surely this will be the update blog for my shop (Magic Nook) too. And a place for you to leave comments about my new releases (do it! do it! do it!).

I should probably write a little bit about myself now, but I'm not really good at it. If you'd like to know more about me, why not invite me for some SL coffee? ;)