I visited Last Sunset, today. It’s a tiny little island ‘intended for photographers’. It looks promising when you land…

… there’s some static big cats…

… a few cute simians running around doing forward rolls and stuff…

… a bridge that only has a few angles that don’t include buildings…

… and a few places where you can make it look like you are in the wilderness, as long as you keep the buildings out of shot. If you wander too far in search of something else (you can’t fly, so you can’t even hover up to get an idea of your surroundings) you get threatened with eviction in 5 seconds, which I found simply too irritating in a place that is supposed to be a photography sim. Anyway, it closes in a couple of weeks, so if you want to see those cute chimps, that’s how long you’ve got.

In a wave of nostalgia, I decided to resume the bipedal wanderings of the Mainland continents that I used to do, back in the day. I decided to start in Heterocera, on Route 1. I started at the beginning of the road, the surrounds of which are your typical, ugly SL mishmash of buildings and signage. It wasn’t until Plano that things started to become more visually appealing, with these lovely Hobbit houses beside the road. I’ve always loved these cobbled Linden roads, more than any other style of road they have. I love the old, tired, worn feel they have, I love that they have plants growing on them. I don’t know if that plant placement is just some algorithm, or if some Linden minion meticulously placed every one…

… but, by the time Route 1 had become Park Way, in Bombyx, the feeling of old and tired had become downright dilapidated and overgrown, which I totally loved…

… there was even a ford across the road, which I’ve never seen before on an SL road…

… I really liked this part of the route, there are some really lovely, thoughtfully placed and landscaped homes, all close to the cosy old road, giving a really open and friendly feel you don’t often find in SL…

… it was a lovely change…

… this one in particular, in Samia, warmed my heart with it’s simple, friendly invitation, and it’s half open gate. You seldom see signs openly inviting the traveller to come into private gardens. I continued on Park Way till I reached Sundana, then TP’d home because I was too tired to continue my wandering. I shall resume tomorrow.

Well, this isn’t what I was going to post, today. I had another SL nostalgia post all lined up, but when I was doing some last-minute research for it, I discovered The Port of Sparquerry, where I’ve never been, and which was FAR more interesting. The instant I arrived at the landing point, just outside this room, I thought ‘This looks like ACC ALPHA‘…

… from the landing point, you can cross ‘The Bridge of Quests’, featuring the photography of Ziki Questi…

… the scale, here, is gigantic…

… there is an enormous amount to see, here. At first, I was flying around at random…

… and flew to Qeddoq, next door, to get this shot, not actually realising it was a different place, because it all looks like one, continuous build…

… but I decided I needed to go back to Sparquerry and have a more thorough explore. All the time, I kept thinking that whoever built this must have had something to do with ACC ALPHA…

… I kept intending to go one way, then being distracted, and going another way, only to arrive back where I’d been…

… it was all monumental in scale, and quite beautiful and strange, an atmosphere helped by the dirging vocals and music…

… then I discovered this little tour vehicle, running on rails, so I took the tour…

… it headed out toward Qeddoq. You can stop and start it where ever you want to, as long as you don’t get out of it…

… as it was trundling through Qeddoq, I remembered the rail system in ACC ALPHA, which I had only walked on, not used a vehicle on…

… so I wasn’t that surprised when the little vehicle actually rolled into ACC ALPHA! What an amazing set of builds these are.

I was looking out my window, to where the Circuit La Corse runs past my home, and I saw one of those ubiquitous SL tour pods go past. It got me thinking about the traffic that used to be on the Circuit La Corse, back in the day when I looked as I do in the image above… 8 years ago. When I first bought land in Jormundgandr, and built my first little gallery, there was far more random traffic, of all kinds. I went through my enormous pictorial library (I’ve been taking pictures ever since my first day in SL) and found some images I had of some of that traffic…

… like the tanks. You would hear them coming, the roar of their big diesel engines, always in a cloud of exhaust, they’d roar past my front door on their mysterious missions…

… there were these school buses, which you could take tours from depot to depot in…

… there were steam engines…

… there were these much bigger buses, which you could also ride in…

… and there were these ice cream trucks, with their familiar, tinny music. These vehicles were everywhere you went, you had to be careful not to get run over. You may have noticed the vehicles in the last two images are a bit wonky on the road, that’s because there’s a sim crossing, just before my gallery. The vehicles would go wonky, going through it, but usually come right again, and continue on, but you would often see one’s that had obviously come to grief going through a sim crossing, they would be on their side beside the road, or just stuck somewhere…

… the best one I saw was this bus, literally stuck up a tree. They would remain in these predicaments, engines running, exhaust billowing, sometimes forever, it seemed…

… no idea what was happening here, but I’m glad I photographed it. All these images are from before I learned to take decent photos in SL, they are actually all screenshots, hence the crap quality, but I think it is the digital version of sepia on an RL photo (:

I discovered Le jardín sur le toit, today, I saw it in the SL ‘Destination Guide’. I’ve never been here before, but the way it was written up made it sound like this winter version had a previous, non-winter iteration…

… I have to say, it is the tiniest ‘Destination’ I can recall ever visiting… what you see here is literally all there is to it…

… it’s a winter rooftop, with a frozen swimming pool with two resident penguins…

… and that’s pretty much it! It was almost a zen exercise getting six images that didn’t all have the same background…

… but, I also have to say, I spent a long time here, trying to find those six interesting shots, and no-one else showed up…

… and it was actually kind of restful and relaxing. I love that someone has gone to the effort to create this little scene, and put it in the ‘Destination Guide’, so others can enjoy it’s tranquility.

Back in February, Veyot asked me if I wanted to decorate one of the ‘Last Drop Cafe’ buildings she had set up as a project. I was delighted, and really enjoyed doing so. Veyot’s projects tend to be short-lived, pop-up kinds of things, so I never expected to still be curating the Wyrd Last Drop Cafe decor nine months later. She recently asked me if I wanted to decorate it for Christmas, and, of course, I did want to. I’ve been doing that over the last few days, but that involved a good few weeks of going to Christmas shopping events, looking for cute stuff…

… I say ‘cute’ stuff, because, somehow, the decor in the Wyrd cafe has just gotten cuter and cuter. I like ‘cute’, and there’s plenty of it in my own home, but I’ve just kinda let go here. This kitten on a sled will play xmas music, if you click her…

… there are gorgeous little snow Fae having a snowball fight…

… inside it’s all xmas colours and critters…

… if you click the chocolate log, you can eat some of it…

… there’s plenty of xmas-themed seating…

… the people over the road have gotten into the spirit, too, so xmas has definitely come to Wyrd.

Veyot told me there was going to be a light show at Sun Dream, today, the place I blogged about in my last post. Veyot is very social, I am not, and seldom go to such occasions, but I’d been so impressed by what I saw there, the other day, I decided to give it a shot. I got myself a good, front-row seat…

… this being my first light show, I wasn’t expecting physical structures…

… but was soon immersed in the stunning display of light…

… it was really gorgeous, and truely impressive to think someone had choreographed something so complex…

… and huge…

… like, staggeringly huge…

… and really pretty…

… one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in SL…

… I think it lasted an hour…

… and I didn’t regret my front-row seat…

… I really enjoyed it…

… but I had to leave, here, about 45 minutes in, because my human had RL commitments. I will certainly try to see more light shows.

I went to the M2D Light Week installation, last night, it was very pretty. I am like a moth when it comes to gorgeous neon and light. This one is kind of divided into mostly warm oranges/yellows/golds…

… and cool blues/purples/mauves…

… counterpointed with plenty of black…

… the display was around a crowded nightclub, full of happy dancers. I spent my time clambering all over the structures that support the light show, looking for interesting angles…

… and was rewarded by discovering that what looked like big areas of open, plunge-to-your-death space, were actually solid, walkable surfaces…

… from which to get more lovely angles.

I love this suburban corner of my yard…

… it’s right on the Circuit La Corse, as it runs through Jormundgandr, an area that suddenly became repopulated, a few years ago and has, pleasantly, stayed that way, with relative constancy, the last year…

… what I like most about this delightful suburban corner scene, is that when I look over the fence, I’m in the suburbs…

… but when I look back at my place, I’m not.