I have been to sandboxes and had the frustrating experience of people there who only go to bother others, griefers. I have put a box on the ground and stretched it and rotated it. I have put an outfit on and modified it with the basic tools in the edit section, but I had never built anything that was going to stay put or that was very big. I decided after being in Second Life from the begining in 2003, and then leaving and coming back with a new account in 2007 that I was ready to actually purchase a piece of land. I looked in search and the land sales, asked friends in my clan family about their experiences and took their advice and finally decided on a little island of my own. It is very private and I now can control who and what comes around. I can't believe I waited this long to do this! It is fantastic to actually own a virtual piece of land. I can build and leave it and move it and edit the terrain. It is so incredible what you can do in Second Life! I started with a pre formed castle thinking that since it was pretty much put together that it would be easy! I was wrong. I rezzed it on the ground where I wanted it and it was the size of a little sand castle, lol. I stretched and moved it until it was the size i wanted. I thought okay that was easy. That is when I decided that I didn't like the floor texture, or the wall texture, or the shape of the fire place. So I began changing things. Now, since I have been in Second Life so long I have quite the selection of textures. So at first it was fun! I began by changing the outer walls of the castle. I right clicked on the castle, edited and then chose texture. I put on so many different ones just trying them out, but I found that I had lost the origanal stone texture. It was not in my inventory, so I had to chose a different one, and that in itself wasn't so bad, because I had so many different types of stone ones. The thing that was bad is that some of the castle was linked together and some was not. This means that some of the castle was one stone and the other parts were another! I had to change almost stone by stone the textures into the same ones. I relinked and locked and unlinked and relinked so many times! I could not believe how many parts were with this castle!! If I had it to do over again I would have made sure the whole thing was linked in the begining and then just went to edit the linked items. But, I am learning so it is all an experiment of new skills learned each day. After I changed the floor to marble, which again required a lot of linking and unlinking, I was so exhausted I felt like I had done it for real! I decided then I would stop on the castle and work on the sky box that came in the box. I wanted to put it way up so that I could make it a little private get away for friends and I to enjoy the sky and stars. I went up to 3000 meters and rezzed the skybox platform and the skybox which 
again was the size of a small sand castle. I finally got the two to fit right and stretched to the right size and then decided I hated all of the textures, lol. I played around and came up with the idea of an all glass skybox. I chose a glass block texture and stained glass for the windows. Wow it looked pretty cool! I found a music pod in my inventory that I had picked up so long ago and put it on the wall. I linked everything, put a nice rug, played nice music set the light to midnight and it was amazing. The moon and the stars were so bright and you could see everything. The glass block texture that I chose was blue so it glowed bluish in the night! Then, I thought that I should put the music pod on the other side of the room, so I clicked and took it into my inventory.....um without unlinking it. Which as you can guess took the entire skybox back, except that three of the windows were not linked! So there they were floating around and the rug was floating around too. I tried to fly around and take everything back, but everything went back into my inventory as the name, object. Just to let you know how difficult that is, I have 25000 objects in my inventory and a lot of them were made while building the castle below. I couldn't find the windows at all. I rezzed a lot of objects and never found them. I tried to put the skybox back and it wouldn't let me drop it. I don't know why. I could wear, and detach, but not drop! I went back down to the castle so mad at myself that I had to log off. I came back after some nice coffee and a bite to eat, since I had spent the majority of the early morning hours trying to unscrew what I had screwed up. I put my flight feather on and went back up to 3000 meters and rezzed the platform and skybox again. It all came back except the windows and I was actually pretty happy about that. The next hour or so I spent trying to figure out how to make a window like the other three that were linked when I took the skybox back. I teleported a friend who does some building and he showed my how easy it was to make my own windows!I can't believe it. It is so simple.
You click the build at the bottom of the screen and in the box you choose the box object and click on the ground! A box appears and you add the texture of the stained glass. Now you have a stained glass box. You stretch and move into place! You have to adjust the horizontal and the vertical postion of the texture by editing and choosing texture. You move the horizontal and the vertical numbers to the places that you want. I copied the numbers and the settings from the other windows. Perfect!! Oh if you are thinking, why couldn't you just copy the other windows, I will tell you that I tried and failed. It would not let me do it. So now I know how to make my own windows!!!!
Next article I am going to tell you how to make your own teleport box!
Have fun exploring and learning!
By Christina Munro
