But then what? I can make some cute snapshots and post them (or keep them to myself). And then take it down again.

It’s fun, but it also kind of sad. It was more fun when I could invite others to come and see it and play with it and have fun.

3 years ago today I let the SIM Mystical Falls and called it Binemist. I have had some great times these past 3 years, I have learnt a lot and I have had so much fun with it. Now it’s time to take the next step! As you can read in my previous post I have bought a SIM. It’s a full SIM – which means so much more capacity, I basically have my own server now at LindenLabs, and I am already forming plans on how to use it. I seek inspiration from all over the grid and it is all very exciting.

But alas there is some sadness in this too. Because what will become of Binemist now that I have a new “baby”. I did consider buying it from it’s owner, but it doesn’t make sense to buy a Homested, so after a few IMs back and forth between myself and the owner, we decided that I will give it up, when the let expires in less than 2 weeks.

So if you want to go and enjoy/explore Binemist for the last time, you should do it by the end of May. The SIM will go back to the owner by May 31st.

It’s the holidays and I got Steffi to do the Christmas Cards with me. We made some cute ones and had some fun in the process. There are a lot of nice pose opportunists on the platform in the sky on Binemist this winter, so one card was not enough, so we made a couple more:

Secondlife is 12 and this weekend the community celebration SL12B opened. This year’s theme is “What Dreams May Come” and as one of the over 200 exhibitors Bine has been wearing the tag SL12 Dreamer this past few weeks.

From the press release:

Spanning 15 regions with over 200 exhibits and more than 600 performers, disk jockeys and speakers, SL12B is a showcase for the accomplishments and content of all SL residents, celebrating the anniversary of Second Life© leaving its initial beta in 2003.

SLB12 Official Website
SLB12 Exhibitors with direct SLURLs
SLB12 Performance Schedule
SLB12 Flickr Pool

My exhibit is ready and this is the credits:
Welcome signs by [we’re CLOSED] & Trompe Loeil
Path, Trees, shrubs, bottle lamps & sunlight by HPMD
Moon Lotus by Elicio Ember
House by Trompe Loeil
Artwork “Ship of fools” by Haveit Neox
Stairs down by Studio Skye
Decor inside the house:
Hans A. Wegner Inspired Wishbone chairs and plant by Apple Fall
Books, chair and other decor by Bazar
Stove and desk by Scarlet Creative

All creators have been super nice and encouraged me to use what ever I need in my exhibit. Some of the creators even offered me more help than what I expected, and I am really grateful.

I am not a creator, I’m a designer, so I have asked a list of creators if I could use their creations in my exhibit, and I have been met by such lovely response. Some of the creators I asked look forward to seeing my design, others offered to help and donate more stuff, and one creator/artist even helped me out when my Event Assistant wanted a real creator on my list of building assistant. I am overwhelmed by the kindness and helpfulness of all the creators.

SL12B has been such a rewarding experience for me, and it hasn’t even opened yet!

June 21st-28th will see the Community Celebrations of Secondlife’s 12th Birthday, and I shall represent Binemist. I have applied for a parcel to show off Binemist, and yesterday I got the news that my application has been accepted. I’m hoping I’ll get an under-water parcel, but I’ll know more on Monday.

I’m asking designers and artists if I may include their work in my exhibit and so far Haveit Neox, Cory Edo and Apple Falls have given their consents. Apple Falls has even been kind enough to donate some Hans Wegner chairs, which I think is so amazingly generous. I love Hans Wegner’s super classic design – so very Danish, and it is fun that Apple Falls has created a virtual chair that is so similar.

Update* Since yesterday Sasaya and Charlotte Bartlett has agreed to let me use their design on my exhibit. That makes me very happy, as I use both Happy Mood and Scarlet Creative a lot on Binemist. It would be hard to make a good Mini Binemist without those.

It was terrible news for the woman, as she had grown so fond of her hobby, and she didn’t really know what to do. She knew the estate needed to make money, but she didn’t know anyone she could ask to become her neighbours. So what should she do. She thought long and hard, and eventually decided to go it alone and get a full island all by herself.

The woman was not rich, and she couldn’t afford to buy an island from LindenLab® (the makers of her virtual world), so she made a deal with the estate owner. He had a homestead that was becoming available, and I think he felt he owned the woman so he let her have the homestead for a very good rate. The woman was inspired and eager to get started, and she had lots of ideas.

The woman had an old church on her parcel and she wanted that church to be a feature on the new island. She had  an idea of a Nordic beach and a central feature should be that church.

The church was placed on a mountain with a bridge crossing a gorge from another mountain. There was 2 ways to climb the mountains. One was to walk up the path from the forest on the West coast and take the last steps, another way was to climb the step spiral staircase towering up from the sandy beach to the East.

To the South the woman made a vast grass plane. She had just visited her SecondLife® friend in Austria and she had seen the Alpine grass meadows in the mountains there, and she had loved it so much, she wanted to recreate it virtually on her land.

In the forest was a little farm with lots of animals – a clearing in the woods provided a pen for the sheep and goats and pigs, while the chicken roamed the grass in front of the farm house.

As soon as the design was finished – or as close as the woman could make it to finished – she opened up the Gates to the community. Lots of other people like herself came to visit her land – her work – and she was happy every time she found images from her Binemist.

The seasons changed on Binemist. First to autumn and later to winter. The woman had fun changing the colours especially in the forest to brown and orange

And as winter came to the woman’s native RL land, so she changed the season again on Binemist. A lot of fun was had in the winter landscape by her friends who came to visit.

Eventually the woman grew tired of all the colourless snow and ice, and her creative juices were flowing once again. She had been a big fan of the island Embryo – an ever changing water sim with patches of dry land and lots of trees and flowers, so after winter she started transforming her island to a vast waterscape. She couldn’t bring herself to take the church down, so that stayed on it’s mountain with the spiral staircase to access it. The lighthouse stayed too.

A big water space is a great place to put out large pieces of virtual art and the woman found a perfect spot for a Haveit Neox piece called Ship of fools.

At the church you could find Bryn Oh’s White Balloon

In the tree tunnel on the water you would find Ladder Chairs by Cherry Manga and WISH YOU A BUBBLING 2013 by Rose Borchovski and other fish.

Under water tortoises swam free over a myriads of Cica Ghost grass and Cherry Manga’s Light Birds. When the woman’s creative juices started flowing again, she thought she would give the tortoises more room and expand this little corner of her “island”.

The woman finally let go of the church and lowered the ground to 20 meters under the surface on most of the island, and thus creating the land that is Binemist today.

Under the surface the woman created a hidden world that one only discovers when one wonders down the steps from the beach house. The woman is very pleased with the way Binemist looks on her 2nd anniversary.

It is my dream as the woman in this story to carry on Binemist. It may keep it’s current shape, or it may change again. Only time will tell.

* A Last Note: All the snapshots I’ve used for this post are taken by visitors to Binemist and shared on the Binemist Flickr Group.

But when you deed a SIM/parcel to a group, you cannot change that. What you have to do is sell the parcel to yourself and deed the parcel to the new group. I googled it… I read that it was very important to turn off auto-return, which I did, and everything went according to plan. Binemist is now deeded to the new Binemist Group.

Thursday morning I logged in to do a ‘Je Suis Charlie’ tribute, and I noticed some balloons, someone had left behind. I flew over and thought that I could use them for my snapshot too, and I think my tribute come out very well.

After I published the photo, I thought to myself: “I must remember to reset the auto-return. Why not do it now!” And so I did. I was standing on a piece of ice with the last Polar Bears of the world and watch how first the balloons and the the bears and the ice disappeared and I fell to the bottom of the sea and saw the underwater world disappear too. I also saw massive amount of stuff coming back into my Lost & Found folder in my inventory.

That’s when I realised what I had done.
OMFG! Darn it!

I almost called in sick to work to get started on fixing it right away, but then I woke up to reality. Not a good idea to skip work unless you are really sick, and certainly not to fix a broken hobby. Instead I closed off the SIM to anyone but group members, posted a explainable snapshot to flickr and went to work. When I got home in the evening, I was too tired to login, and the same on the Friday. But Saturday I woke at 5 in the morning – I couldn’t sleep any longer, the how-to-fix was running havoc in my head – so I got up and logged in.

I think it was probably good that I  had some time to think about how to fix Binemist. Had I gone in Thursday morning to start fixing my wrong, I think I might have made it worse. As it stands now I have replaced the platform in the sky – alas 8 meters higher than the old platform, but I hope I have sort of taken care of anyone logging in with the old landmark. I have placed a little platform where the old landmark would take you and then I placed a teleporter up to the platform’s new height.

Logging in as early as I did, Michaell (who lives on SL time) was online – watching a baseball game and hanging out before bedtime. He came over and kept me company, played the ukulele and gave advice. He is such a sweetheart

Anyhow… I was glad to find him sending his greetings from Binemist, and I was quick to invite him in for a spot of coffee and cake. I know he loves that.

Taken at Binemist, Mystical Falls (76, 110, 2201)

I love the ISPACHI animals available at the Arcade, and I thought I would use the Polar Bear in a political statement. Polar Bears are the first animals to be endangered by Global Warming. The loss of sea ice habitat from climate change is the biggest threat to the survival of polar bears. Read more about the Polar Bear here www.worldwildlife.org