So, with my return to Second Life I arrived just in time for Linden Homes to be announced. And I thought to myself “Self, it would be good to have a place to unpack shit and take horrible photographs for your blog of doom and hey, it’s only 10 dollars a month. You spend more than that on way sillier things”. And so I stared at the menu to select one and explored the several different options. In the end I chose the Skylight model in the Meadowbrook theme. And things were good…or so I thought.

The Author Standing In front of His Small Abode.

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Tags: Linden Homes, Linden Lab, Mainland, Second Life

Hello Atomic Valley Readers and welcome to October! This month at least once a week we’d like to showcase Halloween sims, half-sims, parcels and what not. But we need your help. If you have or have a parcel of land that you think is the scariest thing since Glen Beck started cornholing Sean Hannity off air then send me (Dancien Graves) an IM, notecard, email, smoke signals, psychic vision, bat signal, and if we think it’s scary and well done we’ll throw it up on the interwebs for people to see.

For example we have Club Baby Seals

This is what it looks like from the landing point. Almost all of the trees are from Botanical however there are some from Aki over at Organica

Sinistyle actually makes a very good sculpted graveyard set and if you can avoid the zombies you can also find mausoleums and coffins as well.

This is as we approach the “club” area. The fog and the raven are made by the same guys who made that Bloodlines game which is proof even a blind squirrel can find a nut on occasion. (I love the bird and the fog but that Bloodlines shit is the worst thing since that tool from Extreme joined Van Halen).

This is the view from the DJ booth. We set up the couples dances to be just ontop of the fog. I have been in love with the floating dance concept ever since I first went to the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland.

This is the Sleepy Hollow tree from Organica it’s very well done and it also has the option to generate fog which meant I didn’t have buy another fog thingy YAY.

This is the long bridge to the little swamp settlement. When I first came up with the idea for the halloween build I wanted to do a haunted swamp. The little houses from Blackstar really helped.

The haunted twins and the grandma have been in my inventory for so very long that I do not remember who they were from. The cauldron is made by Nebulosus Severine who on every level absolutely rules. The pumpkins are a mix between SiniStyle and HOC Industries

Inside the abandoned church there is a little piano made by Vooner. It has a number of different melodies the ghostly hands play.

And that concludes the tour. You can see it for yourself here

Remember, submit your entries via notecard, IM, or email (DancienGraves@gmail.com) and if we think it’s awesome we’ll showcase it here.

Tags: Fall, Halloween, Showcase, Spooky

If the Second Life prefab market was an arms race then Bethany Heart and Colleen Desmoulins from The Loft have just dropped the biggest nuke in the history of the platform and now every other prefab builder just completely freaked as a new standard has been set. Their newest creation is called The Wisteria and it is by far the most innovative and realistic house this writer has seen in a virtual world. Featuring a den, garage, dining room, kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, a gorgeous bathroom, a man cave and a kids room as well as an outdoor balcony the full furnished version of this house will require 2994 Prims. The good news is all the rooms are rezzable and as such can be deleted for space or what not.

Every seat in the house comes with multiple animations/poses and the user of sculpties and shading is as per usual top notch.

The level of detail and thought put into the house really begins to show once you enter the kitchen.

The kitchen island features animations for baking cookies, cutting vegetables, cleaning the floor or spilled milk as well as just talking and hanging out. You can do dishes, clean windows, wipe counters. The Stove actually features multiple rezzable foods you can cook inside the oven and on each burner and you can even see the details of the food inside the fridge.

The bedrooms is another area in which the level of detail and thought shine through. While the two adult bedrooms do feature your “Ye old humpin” animations there are also animations you’d never expect to see.

Breakfast in Bed

Dancien’s first and only attempt at yoga

Doing some serious literary work

Each room features poses such as coming hope and showing you friends what you shopped for, chatting, watching movies, and much more and as far as I could tell you could have up to 4 people using these poses.

The bathroom is huge featuring a giant party shower, a huge bathtube, two sinks, toilet, seating in the middle and details everywhere.

The third floor of the build is what I like to call the man-cave. It’s actually the most empty of the rooms and that is fine with me. It features a couch and a pretty big TV. But it also has room for an air hockey table, pool table, or a good foosball table if such a thing exists in Second Life. For Iris and I we’ll probably be using it as our new workspace/photo studio as it has plenty of room.

The kids room is also on the third floor and features very well constructed furniture and if I believed in Second Life Children this place would be pretty awesome for them. More than likely though we’ll also be turning this into maybe a photo prop storage room and what not.

The deck is also very well detailed and actually features a ton of seating from the ledge seats to the four chair table. It even has animations to lean up against the rail. The house itself costs 8000L and weighs in at 504 prims. The fully furnished, very well thought out, and incredibly detailed version runs at 65,000L and as mentioned before is 2994 prims. But considering this is the last house you will ever buy in Second Life that isn’t nearly as steep as it seems.

Tags: Animations, Bethany Heart, Colleen Desmoulins, Furniture, House, The Loft