We set that summer out in style...

This is our quiet time on Skype where we sit down & blog together. He does a post while I do a post. Normally I am much more prepared and know exactly what I want to be blogging, where as he is usually the apprehensive one. Call it Freaky Thursday but I am at a loss as to just one thing to blog & he is just going to town on his post. So hang in there, this is a summertime/water sport potpourri post. Happy 1st day of Summer!

Roller Skates & Water Balloons
How do you get that combo? Not sure but roller skating is fun, water balloons are fun. Why not throw the two together & have a blast!?! Now you can! These are a set of realistic rollerskates. They have been carefully designed to create a realistic beginner skating experience.
Included in the pack are the skates, a HUD for performing a few trick moves, and a water balloon you can throw at other skaters.
When the skates are attached use your normal movement controls. You will find movement is different. You will not stop immediately when you release your controls, but will continue to slide to a stop. If you hold down shift and and tap the left or right arrows you will do little spin turns. If already moving, tapping your forward/back arrow keys will slide you forward in a standing position, holding down the forward/back arrows will cause you to go into a full skate. If you press your back or forward arrows from a standing stop you will start skating immediately.
If you have a low speed collision with another avatar you will loose balance slightly, high speed collisions will cause you to fall over. Being hit by a water balloon will have a similar effect causing you to either loose balance or fall over depending on your speed. The hud you can attach has 6 fun tricks you can perform. simply click on the buttons on the hud to perform one of them.
Get yours now for FREE at Abranimations (tm)

Take a dip in your local swimming hole!
There are a lot of water ways in SL. All you have to do is look on the big map (or even the mini map for those of us that use it). One of the best things you can do is head down to Siggy's WaterWorks Island and pick up the Swimmer HUD. It's a summer time must have for everyone's inventory. The Swimmer is a HUD device that reacts with water in Second Life, the real sim water, and the rivers and oceans of Second Life. It adds buoyancy when you go in the water - and allows you to swim freely above and below the waters surface. The Swimmer can also swim in swimming pools using 'PrimSwim' water! Now you can swim in your home pool as easily as you can swim in sim water!
To go along with my nifty Swimmer, I added the new Pink with Polkadot Swimmies (water wings - seen in the pic above) from Sand Shack Surf Co.

Where to go...
If you are looking for some great places that are swim friendly as well as scenic and chalked full of stuffs... Definitely check out Dragon Moon Resort. Everybody is welcome! ONE rule only: Tolerate and respect each other! COEXIST! (Coexisting with griefers is not mandatory). This sim was actually built by an old friend of mine from the Wandie days, Demian Caldera. In fact, most of the U2 in SL concerts take place on Dragon Moon. Demian is a very very active participant in the U2 in SL projects. Anywho, back to the fun water stuff... You can swim among a big purple dragon, tube along skirting the sim with your lover, wind sail, play in the waves along the beach, catch some rays on the beach towels or just play drums. This is also a great spot for scuba diving with all the treasures tucked nicely below the surface of the calm waters.
Another awesome place with low lag & great beach is Parrot Island. A lush tropical island sim with public jetskis, beautiful waterfall with couples poses (not the best couple poses, but there are some) and perfect photo opportunity areas. Most of the area of this sim is dedicated to water than it is to land which makes this by far the most perfect spot for swimming & most of all jet skiing. Traffic is pretty low on Parrot Island which makes it perfect for time alone with a special someone (*coughs* Blue Hair & Gill). Unfortunately it is a no-build sim, so you can leave those pose balls at home *sigh*. Scripts are still allowed so bring that Couples Animator. *wink*

If all else fails...
PLAY TRINGO! :D I hope we've given you a few things to get you out of your SLhomes to help you bring in summer properly.
Go... go... go... Get out & get animated! :)))

Dat Wascally Wabbit

Wow, what high hopes... what high expectations... I know that a few of these big companies entering SL have been let downs lately (like Microsoft)... but surely PLAYBOY a company which has built a marketing empire that spans print, online, retail, catalog, television, and movies would get it right. Surely the only guy south of the North Pole who wears red every day of his life would see to it that this venture is worthy of the Playboy branding mechanism. Surely they would research the proper mechanics of texturing and materials before slapping their logo on some product and trying to sell it to the SLmasses.

I was expecting a full size replication of the Playboy mansion where you could tour all the rooms and test out pose balls in the grotto or in the inner sanctums of Hef's room. Imagine bunnies on trampolines around every corner, okay okay, maybe I digress or else have seen too many episodes of the Man Show, I dunno for sure.... but to make a long story short, if this is your vision of bunny paradise, you will be severely disappointed in the Playboy sim.


I have visions of the marketing blunder that happened when Chevy introduced a hot new car called the Nova to its spanish markets. (That translates to no-go for those of you who slept through both your intro spanish course and marketing.) The main section of the Playboy sim is the store where you can buy the very same outfits for your AV as you can buy online at Playboy.com for yourself with one big exception.... these interpretations suck!! and are incredibly overpriced!! Case in point - 400L's for a painted on pink coloration with an iron on bunny on it?

We did see one playboy bunny avatar working in the shop area (which Jelly promptly tagged blingtard), which would set the bunny to male ratio at about 1:25. There is some hope that Playboy will be able to bring a few interesting live acts into their jazz club area and provide a decent live music venue, but I am holding out til I see it for real. We did notice an interesting lack of any slow dance options in the Jazz Club, although they did have one nice cuddle which made up for it. We toured the lounge where you can catch up on your Girls Next Door snippets, but again the club was loaded with guys but there were zero bunnies on hand.

My plea to big business out there is to do a little market research before opening up a subpar sim. There is a ton of missed potential with this sim, and it is a shame that they didn't care enough to do it right. Luckily for me, I brought my own bunny and she has more than I could ever need... :).

Castle Wars

Jelly and I were in charge of the Things To Do activity for Thursday which involved taking the group to participate in Castle Wars created by RacerX Gullwing. Huge thanks to RacerX for explaining to the group how to play the game.

What is castle wars? Basically it involves up to 8 people sitting in catapults and launching colored balls at the other player's castles to knock down their walls before your own castle is destroyed.

Other than the state of Hawaii having major internet issues, and Jelly bouncing off and online throughout the activity, we had a really fun time.

The game will support up to 8 players at one time and we found that with a larger group it actually made the event even more fun. We had more players than slots, so I offered my moral support to team Pink during the first round.

Grab a group of friends and head to Montmartre to try out Castle Wars! For more information you can also check out Gillian's write-up on the same event from earlier.

Duck Hunting

Firing ducks at the pink elephant = FUN.

Firing ducks at the shitty neighbors/signage = PRICELESS

The latest stop we made on our tour of hot spots across SL was at the Imagination Breeding and Zoo. This provided a fun diversion for about an hour and a half's worth of entertainment. Although the zoo is light on the quantity of animals, it is heavy on scripted items that do random assorted fun things. Such as:

Turn your av into a flaming ball of fire to be juggled by a life size pink elephant.

Get in some awww's at the koala's zzzzs

Or take turns pushing your loved one around the park in a wagon

Overall there is enough fun to merit a quick stop by the Imagination Breeding and Zoo, so feel free to TP in and have a few good laughs.