Second Life – titbits and more

When I first read about Second Life in one of Dan Brown’s books I obviously assumed it was a work of fiction. Then a few weeks later I read about it in a local newspaper (DNA) and I thought to myself “hmmm so this really exists then”. Curiosity I say is always good unless you are a cat (that quote was first heard by me in the television series NCIS), so curious as I am I decided to check it out. I googled second life and found the website http://www.secondlife.com.

After having read through the website, I was still curious, so went on to create an avatar, downloaded the client and wham there I was….a hapless noob (newbie) in second life.

My first few days in SL were strange. I kept getting called to locations that had too much nudity and sex. To add to that my computer wasn’t good enough. The graphic card etc was not up to the mark.

Well never let a little technological problem stop you right? So I went on to upgrade my computer, I got the best I could afford, which was quite good by the way. Now I seriously started exploring SL. Made a couple of friends, hung out at places and learned about this new world.

So here are the things I learnt:

1) Like all world’s this world has its own currency “Linden Dollars” represented plainly as L$. You can buy lindens by using a credit card or your PayPal account. Or you can earn it. Now earning it can be done in one of many ways:

• You can start your own business. If you can build, or can work with photoshop or create uniquely beautiful stuff, SL is the place to become a business person.
• You could work for someone. SL offers a lot of job opportunities. You could become one of many things. Just to name a few jobs in SL, you could be a host, dancer, stripper, live musician, DJ, manage clubs, etc.
• You could become a model, now here the earnings are way lower than the expenses…so I don’t really want to  classify it as a job, but its there nevertheless.
• You could camp, now this is become really less, when I joined it was quite popular and I must admit to having made my first few lindens in this manner.

2) Now the good part, you can change your looks almost every minute. Seriously  make no jokes in this regard. You change buy and change everything, starting with your shape to you skin to your clothes and shoes and eye color and eye lashes, nails etc etc. Its bloody fabulous. Ofcourse, if you need quality stuff you have to buy it. But for those of you who are new, you can also go to freebie islands and get yourself some freebie skins and shapes, etc. They aren’t model material, but they’ll pass. If any girls are new here, you can even contact me directly (Moksha Nightfire) and I’ll be able to help you with some quality skins and shapes even hair — FREE!! lol

3) You can be a beach bum and just roam around SL, visiting clubs, various SIMS, beaches, brothels whatever it is that you want to visit, or you could get your own home in SL. Now here too you have options. You can rent a home which would probably just let you have one building structure with limited prims (i’d rather not explain prims here, will get into that in some other post….maybe! lol). Now if you want something a little better you can rent land and put your own house on it or make whatever you like there for your home, beach home, jungle…whatever you can imagine up. This is a lot more expensive though mind you. Lastly you could rent a skybox. Remember I said the sky wasn’t the limit and this is a perfect example. Some sim owners throw out little homes high up in the sky that you can rent out. Some of these skyboxes are quite pretty mind you, letting you have multiple looks within one skybox. So now you can live on a beach one day and the next be living in a dungeon. Imagination…ahh….quite a wonderful thing it is.

I think I’ll let this be where I call a stop to my first post. In my next post I can reveal more of my life in SL!