Yaya Bingyi

Yaya Bingyi (centre) leads a tiny Halloween hop-a-long.

Woke up to some terrible news this morning - Second Life tiny resident Yaya Bingyi passed away last weekend.

Her RL partner sent me a notecard stating that she died on July 5th, "from complications to her long illness."

Yaya was a tiny hippo in-world. She'd had a store on the Shire in the shape of a beehive almost since Raglan came into being. I remember it being there when I first visited the sim and was immediately drawn to it. Even then, it was already well-stocked with a range of beautifully made tiny wares. Most of it was made for females, but that didn't stop me from admiring the workmanship and envying the talent that had gone into making them.

Time zone differences aside, it seemed that for a long time our paths never really crossed in-world - that is until late last year when I was quite randomly teleported to a gathering of tinies on some remote sim where the group already there was inflicting their own brand of silliness onto whoever they could. Yaya was part of that group and welcomed me as though we'd been friends forever. I guessed that as I'd been around the Shire for not much less than her, she'd heard of me through mutual friends or by reputation (unbeknownst to me at the time, I'd already connected with her through Facebook and she followed my ramblings on Twitter, both under her RL name); and from then on, we chatted and chatted. I remember she was using Voice that morning and there was just something so enthusiastic about how she spoke that it made me have to plug my headset in to chat back to her. Normally I wouldn't have bothered, but Yaya's energy made me feel as though I wanted to be part of that conversation.

And then she wasn't around so much again. I'd occasionally see her drop a comment or two on statuses on Facebook, so I assumed she was OK. I'd never have known that she was unwell. I don't know what her illness was; I do hope she wasn't in pain. And I do though know that Yaya left behind a good number of friends who will miss her.

SL10B - The Tinies of Raglan Shire

SL10B - The Tinies of Raglan Shire, originally uploaded by Daniel Voyager.

Here's a nice shot of our SLB Helter Skelter, built by Etheria, Panacea and Summer. I just booked the plot and directed traffic when required.

Looking Forward to SL10B!

Wow, it's that time of year again already?! Seems like it wasn't that long ago that we chopped down our Giant Mushrooms at SL9B!

Well, it is that time again, so of course Raglan Shire and the tinies have a presence there. This year I again recruited the amazing Etheria Parrott and Panacea Pangaea to assist with the building and asked Summer Seale to come on board to help add a touch of sparkle and all-round beauty to the finished thing. I did virtually nothing; OK, I came up with the concept, but aside from that my contribution was embarrassingly minimal!

It's Second Life's 10th birthday and this years' theme is Looking Back, Looking Forward, encouraging residents to review their time in SL so far. I don't know of anyone who's still around since then - I think the only person I ever met who was 'born' in 2003 was the late Stillpink Sandgrain - and of course Raglan Shire didn't come into being since 2007, so we haven't had as much history to draw from, but enough.

I won't elaborate any more on our build just yet so as not to spoil it for you, dear reader (it doesn't open to the public until tomorrow), but I think the ladies have done an incredible job. I do hope you find time to visit!

Super 6 Cometh!

April 2013 will mark Raglan Shire's 6th anniversary of being and as usual we are holding a themed-event month to celebrate. This year's may prove to be one of the most exciting and dynamic yet!

It's Super 6: Superheroes versus Supervillains!

For the 30 days of April, the League of Defenders (LoD) will fight back against the forces of the Legion of Tiny Villains (LTV) from spreading their influential menace across the cluster!

The LoD have erected a glorious base of operations beside the Shire's favourite social hangout, the Paw & Whisker clubhouse. It's a pristine white villa and has been strategically placed directly opposite the abandoned warehouse that the LTV have taken up residence in. The former base of operations of The Leftovers Catering Company has fallen into ruin but the LTV are now using it to cook up their own evil schemes!

The League of Defenders' Headquarters

But on whose side of the stream will you align yourself with? Will you stand alongside the heroes of the League of Defenders or will you set out to cause trouble with the Legion of Tiny Villains? Or will you align yourself with neither? Perhaps you will be a mercenary, ready to fight for the highest bidder or perhaps you are already part of a group that will take on all-comers!

The Raglan Shake

So my good pal Pyewacket and I filmed this yesterday...



Fun times!

Silent Treatment

Silent Treatment, originally uploaded by Betty Rogan.

Just stunning, beautiful, enchanting, bewitching, sublime...I'm running out of superlatives to describe this.

So honoured to call Brogan a friend! One of the best Second Life artists at work.

Spring Clean

In an effort to try and jump-start Spring, I've been having a general tidy-up of my vendor presence in-world.

Well, it was kind of enforced upon me on account of my hippoVendors refusing to deliver two items from any of my vendors, even after I'd checked permissions, reset and re-uploaded everything. So after some deliberation - and cursing that I've now got a costly hippoVend system gathering pixeldust in my inventory - I chose to switch to the Caspervend system.

And so far, I've been pleasantly surprised by it; it seems a very easy system to set up and use. the in-world instructions from the server and vendor units are pretty simple and the layout of the webpages is extremely manageable, nice and uncluttered. I bought the free version, which pays Casper a small fee on each transaction, but seeing as my sales are so low, I couldn't have justified (at least not in the immediate short-term) to pay out for the full system, especially with only having bought hippo no more than a year ago. So I've replaced my vendors at the Tiny Outpost at Orbiuna, my single units at Cynister and Elemental Motifs, whilst also taking the opportunity to move around my main store layout at Heron Shire wharf.

Funny Bunny Store on Heron Shire Wharf

In addition to the new vendors, I've also put out a single prim vendor containing all of my previous Tiny Swagtastic Weekend exclusives; TSW is a $50L offer that Tia Macbain and Dorian Longstaff run, whereby participating store owners put out an item for $50L for the weekend. I had a load of stuff that I put out on offer but never transferred to my main range, so thought I'd make use of a spare wall and throw out a vendor just for those few random items.

I also took the time to replace the items in my two Lucky Watermelons - actually Shep Korvin's popular Lucky Chairs, retextured to look like giant cut fruit. So the extremely popular Tiny Aviator Outfit and the Tiny Glockenspiel have both been put into retirement to be replaced with...well, you'll have to go and find out yourself!

Tinies Rising

Here's Petlove Petshop's finished video for the One Billion Rising campaign.

The tinies I helped gather together make a cameo at around the 2' 48" mark, but it's worth watching the whole thing. It's a very well put together piece and perfectly captures the breadth of different communities and cultures with SL.

Ladies Rising!

Oh, hello 2013!

So I managed to help organise a crowd for a video shoot today; Petlove Petshop and the Prim Perfect team are putting together an in-world video to support the One Billion Rising cause, to help raise awareness of anti-violence programs for women across the globe.

Petlove wanted part of her video to feature a Raglan tiny contingent, and I managed to pull together a few of our female Friends of the Shire to go and dance across the sandy dunes of Raglan Galaxy beach. It's happening right now, as I type this; but that's about as in-depth as my field reporting can go because I threw myself off the sim! I know guys can join in the dancing if they wanted but because Galaxy is only a Homestead sim anyway, there's a maximum of 20 avatar limit, and I didn't want me or some other stinky guy taking up a valuable spot!

The video will support the team's plans for February 14th when four sims will be given over for the day for dances; so hopefully I'll be able to update this when Petlove has the video edited together to give you some idea of that craziness that went down today. In the meantime, familiarise yourself with the cause by visiting the One Billion Rising In SL page!