An Exciting Couple of Weeks, Second and Real Life

Ten years ago I moved from London and returned to Scotland, where I was born and educated, defecting to the big city.  I enjoyed it so much I remained there for 14 years, except when I lived in Dublin for around a year.

 Boat of Garten Railway Station (run by Steam Railway Enthusiasts)

During the past decade I've been very fortunate to have lived, for the most part, in the Highlands of Scotland, working in Aviemore and Inverness and living in the lovely wee village of Boat of Garten and the seaside town of Nairn.  My greatest pleasure has been to take in the lovely scenery of the Highlands, driving along the twisty roads in my MG, with the roof down.

  

The MGF 1.8 VVC 75th Anniversary Edition.

Only 2000 of these special edition MGFs were produced to celebrate the 75th anniversary of MG, 1924 to 1999. Half were produced in black and half in mulberry red; and all with grenadine red leather interiors. Of these, half were the 1.8i engine and half, the faster, 1.8 VVC.

Only 500 cars were sold in the UK and the rest were exported, mostly to Japan

 

Recently an old friend I have known since I was 8 years old, asked me to join his company and this means a return to London.  I'm excited about my move, scheduled for August, as it will mean returning to many friends, who have continued to remain in touch, and being able to drink in my favourite coffee house again: The Troubadour.

The Troubadour Coffee House, London

On Thursday I took delivery of Windows 7 Professional and spent the day ridding my computer of the sluggish Vista.  It was a very quick and, relatively, painless process even when I moved all my files, videos and pictures, etc. from the back-up drive I'd popped them on before formatting.  Soon I was enjoying W7, except for one annoying thing: I couldn't connect to the internet.  My network controller no longer wished to recognise anything beyond itself.  Using my mobile phone to surf for solutions, I was interested to find many who had experienced the same problem, specifically with NVIDIA nforce network cards.  After a frustrating time, I gave up, went into town and for the huge sum of £7.99 (or about ten bucks) bought myself a new card, popped it into my computer and instantly reconnected to the world again.

I was keen to see if W7 might improve my Second Life experience and, after trying Phoenix, the preview of Phoenix Firestorm, Kirsten's and the Lab's Viewer 2, I was delighted by an average gain of about 5 to 10 fps and have settled on using my favourite, Kirsten's.

I am fortunate in being able to occupy one of the sims which is part of the beautiful Scottish Highlands in SL, so a move to London will not see me leave behind the Highlands completely.  We are taking part in SL8B and I have been enjoying completing our build, a copy of rl's Aldourie Castle.  The Highlands of Scotland is a magical place, so it fits in very well with the Lab's birthday theme for this year.