Raspberry Crystal

I think these are meant to be American 'Mediterranean Revival' style rather than homes based on the actual area in Europe. So 'new buld housing development vibe' would fit that brief. It will be interesting to see what people do with these in terms of creating interesting shells as mentioned in a response to your post. An issue I saw mentioned elsewhere was the large window size, which is hard to change, and changes the look compared to the original buildings which inspired the style. It could be possible to get an authentic Mediterranean look and then get penalised for being off-theme, which is quite amusing really.

I think this name will cause some confusion outside of the USA, but the homes themselves look really nice!

Sorry about no toys again DECOR

This remark made me smile! I have found so many of these house reveals confusing because of american terminology using the same vocabulary words that I know to mean something else (although the non-american meaning of Mediterranean architecture would be a very wide brief!).

I am not sure if this entirely answers the question. As @Paul Hexem says, some parcels are priced so they will *never* sell. In my case I am talking about those ordinary mainland parcels, away from roads or coastlines, and not islands in the middle of someone else's property. I realise that some are up for rent, but definitely not all. Some have been for sale for years. They clutter up the map when searching for property, and are often completely empty. My feeling when I see them is like encountering old grafitti with 'Baz wuz here.' written in aging, faded spray paint on a crumbling motorway underpass. What are these, a kind of 'up yours dead grandfather' thing?

I was looking at the land auction site, and it seems it can be cheaper to pick up parcels there than adopting abandoned land. eg around 0.5 Linden dollars per metre squared (some go for higher of course). A few aren't selling at all. I don't remember seeing this last time I checked which was around 18 months ago.

That is frustrating! I wonder what happens if someone actually does attend the web meetings, do they get flushed into a shark pool?

None currently. We had a very laggy stilt home a while back, the position was lovely but it wasn't a joyful experience overall. I'm now renting on mainland. The thing that I miss about having a premium account is the 'hopping', especially back in the days when the neighbourhoods were more diverse.

I'm excited to see what you might achieve with a homestead @Marianne Little. Changing the ground textures becomes an interesting diversion in itself. I've found that you can control odd patches with 'slight terraforming', ie digging out or raising up just a little. I have had more success in landscapes with less height difference, where the texture changes are squashed together. For instance you can create a beach this way which has both dry and wet sand of the same type, the dry sand being activated at only a slightly higher height than the wet. The quality of the textures can make up for missing 'prims', you don't need to hide the ground quite so much, as you have said yourself.

Sigh.

I don't think the misery spreaders confine themselves to any particular category, you can be affected by them whether you are a sailor stuck on some poorly placed off-sim rocks, or a land owner being harassed by deliberate griefers.

I always feel touched and grateful when private land owners go out of their way to give back to the community, whether that is allowing passage, or creating builds which enhance not just the owner's land but the general landscape scene. I don't expect it, but it is much appreciated. Finding a beautiful underwater scene is a wonderful bonus! Conversely, those owners who seem to go out of their way to inconvenience others remind me that awkward ****s exist, and will exploit any avenue to spread misery. I wasn't in SL in the very early days, and I would be surprised if the management of the time foresaw how long this virtual world would last. If they had, then maybe more time would have been dedicated to considering how land allocation would impact the experience of everyday users going forwards. I believe it was a mistake to allow any kind of private building in water areas. It is a very rare construction that looks at home floating in the sea, and if this means excessive cost for management, then I'm blaming poor coastal design in the first place. Of course making these observations with hindsight is much easier than predicting how a completely new entity will develop over time. Many parts of the SL mainland coastline can look quite jarring, aesthetically, and it is a real shame, because the underlying topography had a lot more potential.

Patch isn't well known for his architectural naming accuracy though, ranch style could mean anything.

I had a look through that album, and it is mixed in the content, with some seasonal images which simply feature LH content rather than being actual teasers.

Maybe it is just a Halloween picture.

Loud noises are difficult for my whole family, but some family members have very acute hearing and get annoyed by relatively quiet sounds. My current peeve, due to the warm weather, is 'drunken shrieking', emanating from two of our not so near neighbours houses in what I suppose must be BBQ parties. I imagine the people making this noise think that they are laughing, but it sounds like howls of pain to me and very different to normal everyday merriment. I don't know if it is common for inebriated people to make this awful noise as I tend to avoid situations where it might occur. Just so we are not annoying the new forum moderation policy, I will include an SL relevant thought. In virtual worlds there is always an audio mute button, something which isn't available at 2am in my RL, only the sauna like effect of closing the window.

I'm not sure, but the behaviour seems to fit , if let's say if in order to be in some sort of second life 'platinum club' you need to have a certain level of land holding, and maybe to hold so much currency as well. In that case having the plots bought up would be an inconvenience, because they would need replacing. Setting the prices high would prevent mass sales and accidentally dropping below the set threshold, but still leave room for the odd high profit win in the property market. This sounds like a speculator mindset. I don't want to get mod censored by trying to guess what kind of benefits this imaginary club might have. The benefits to LL would be more stability in inworld currency and land holdings, and exporting some risk in general.

Unless you are running a grid on your own pc, then everyone here is renting, it is just different kinds of contract. Even LL are renting the server space.

You need a haberdashery which functions like an old fashioned hardware shop! No pre-packaging, you could buy nails / screws / fittings by weight and these were sold in a paper bag

It would be really interesting to see an example of this kind of project documented. I do agree that the lack of infrastructure, along with oddly sized and distributed parcels is a huge disincentive for purchasing abandoned land. Unfortunately it only takes one person using an area as a personal sandbox in which they abandon their half-finished, badly textured and generally hideous constructions to blight the landscape for some distance. This seems to happen more frequently in 'low rent' areas with a lot of abandoned land and adds to the downward spiral of lack of demand. Having an area which does look cared for seems to influence the surroundings plots as well. This feels like real life urban re-generation, where investment in one area encourages more development and investment, which in SL means emotional and time investment also. Taking on this type of project as a group with an established track record would tend to discourage Land 'flippers' and property speculators from setting up such a scheme as an exploit. With regard to adding the laugh emoticon as a simple way of disagreeing with a post, I'm afraid this is not how this comes across to me. It appears lacking in respect and dismissive, especially when seen on a series of posts where no further explanation for the reaction is provided. @Mollymews has obviously seen more context and may well be correct in her assumption, but there is a real danger that most people won't understand it in this way.

Apart from very plain t-shirts, I can't imagine myself wearing all the colours in a fat-pack of anything. I would get bored seeing the same item over and over. What seems reasonable, is that it would be cheaper to buy the fat-pack than buy the items I might wear separately. If someone feels the need to have every colour, then that doesn't feel like a fashion choice, it's looks like more of a collector impulse. I do know that the actual choice of colours is a big influence in my choice of retailer, some are much better than others. Maybe this is just me, but if I can't imagine a selection of clothes which would fit into a regular RL wardrobe then it's hard for me to warm to the items. I can get attached to my one pair of brown boots, but the idea of having fifteen different colours boggles my mind. I do make hud based fatpack exceptions for those creators who I really like, and who make this offer very good value, and who do not offer singles..this is just their normal way of selling. In this case I might just wear one colour and ignore the rest, and not have my inventory cluttered up with unwanted items. If a creator does only offer basic colours in an expensive fatpack then that landmark goes in the trash. I would rather support another shop. The fun for me is in creating a working wardrobe, within a chosen colour palette, and making it feel real. I know that is not true for others, that making fashion pics is their joy, but even then, nobody likes to feel cheated or manipulated.

How lovely this looks, Jeogeot is an interesting place to be, especially if you can find good (or no!) neighbours.

Thank you for the suggestions so far. I recognised the emergency response boat, and wonder if I already have this somewhere in my inventory, so on my list to try. @Orwar's suggestion led me to a great deal of fun distraction at the creator's demo sim. The row boat suggested fitted my criteria, is very easy to steer and has lovely animations, so thank you for that idea. I will check out the Tuff range today.

I'm looking for a vehicle which looks and sounds nice, and is designed to work in river channels. Something which is easy to steer, has slower speed settings available and which doesn't have excessive problems crossing sim boundaries. I'm not too worried about space for passengers, though having one extra seat would be a bonus. Cruise control is important to me as it reduces my hand problems, so canoes and row boats don't really work for me unfortunately. Any ideas welcome.

Yes, I thought afterwards that my sense of humour might have seemed a bit obscure there, I was going to explain but the moment seemed to pass. It was meant as light-hearted response to your saying that @Charlie Rowleywas hours behind noticing Patch's post! I was giving the general Euro excuse about not noticing things when we are asleep.