Thursday, May 23, 2013

Play Nice!

I happened to visit the Firestorm/Phoenix project page today and saw this post.


I was flabbergasted.  I'm just as frustrated as everyone else with the current state of SL.  The roll out for Server Side Baking and the viewer changes are causing more crashes per visit than I can remember having in a long time.  Not to mention some other fun bugs and just plain strange weirdness.

But what are people thinking?  The people who make third party viewers like Firestorm and Singularity, do so largely for free because they love the SL experience and the tools that allow it.  The fact SL works most of the time amazes me.  I know just enough about how this stuff works to grasp the complexity of what goes into making a virtual world come alive on my PC.

So people are spewing pointless crap at the nice people who provide us with better tools than Linden Labs?  The people who do it FOR FREE!?

Those people need a serious reality check.  I for one appreciate the work that the 3rd party developers do.  And frankly, the work that Linden Labs does.  I think LL makes some bone headed choices sometimes...  But even so, these people are pulling off a fucking miracle of technology.  And it's not by waving a magic wand.

So to those people who don't like the efforts of 3rd party developers, and Linden Labs, let me tell you something.  Be nice.  Letting developers know about bugs can be done constructively.  Be civil.  Be constructive.

Can't do that?  Then put up or shut up.  Make a better viewer.  It's open source.

White and Black

I've been shopping and exploring a lot lately in SL.  Just haven't felt all that much like clubbing or romping.  Some of that I've been doing with a new friend Lacey.  Who has put together some cute looks.  I should get some snapshots of her to include here.

But for now, here is me, in a white outfit put together with bits of this and that.  The top is from Belle DeJour, the sash, Bellydance Goddess and the white mesh skirt is from Glamorize.  Shoes, jewelry and glasses are all from Grumble.  The whole things cost me less than 10L.  Photos are at Pair A Dice.

By the fire at Sunset.
On the Junk, next to Ma Deuce.
























Lacey talked me into going to the Goth Fair.  Not that she had to try hard.  I like shopping with her, and I like things Goth.  Add in the cause is a good one, the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.  I ended up picking up a couple of freebies and some demos, but didn't really find anything I loved.  Though some of the mesh corsets were hard to resist.  There is the the typical black and red, lace and velvet stuff.  But all kinds of things from breedables to furniture can be found in the numerous vendor stalls.  You should come take a look.  And many of the vendors have items done in black & purple that help the foundation and are marked down for the fair.  Even if you don't buy anything, you can donate to the fountain pictured like I did, or other items around the fair.

But when I was shopping with her, I was so not dressed Goth.  But the next day I ended up wearing something a bit more Goth-ish.  So I went back and took a couple of snapshots.  The dress is from Happy Undead.  The shoes Grumble.
From the front.
From the back.  Notice what the bunny has...




Saturday, May 18, 2013

Feeling Blue

The blue I was feeling was simply the primary color of another one of the 1L Soulglitter micro-dresses I picked up.  Shown being worn by yours truly here on the dance floor at Pair A Dice.  With a Grumble hair do, moded some blue bangs, and some glossy blue stripped boots. I picked up the boots on a hunt in ages past, don't remember where.  If you've gotta have them, IM me in world and I'll see if I can find out who made them and where to get them.

While I've found many lovely new outfits lately, I've been experiencing a lot of crashes too.  I have to wonder how much of that is my new hardware and software, and how much is due to the changes happening on the Linden Labs side.  I kind of wish I had either delayed switching PCs, or done it sooner. 

Either way it's annoying and my apologies to the people I just poofed out on.  Sometimes RL or other things crop up and I don't make it back for a while.  So in that respect, I guess I'm not only wearing blue, but feeling it a bit as well.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Four Faces of Lee

I recently got a new skin.  I wasn't even in the market, I was still pretty happy with my Nvious skin.  All my prim feet and other bits were color matched to it after having it for about a year.  But an old friend who hates to shop asked me to help him find a certain type of skin.  Specifically a "femboi" skin.

So I set out to find him some options.  I found many fine places to get such a skin depending on your budget and tastes.  But I found one place that did things in a manner I've never seen before in SL.  Pink Fuel is the shop's name.  They only make female skins.  But then they also sell tattoo layers that change the body of the skin from male, to small busted, (average is part of the skin), to large busted.  You can add more muscles, or leave things as they are.  The tattoos are perfectly matched to the skins and do not change the face!

This was great!  I've long wished I could get away with a smaller bust size, and with the tattoo layer I can.  But I just don't look right in a lot of my clothes without at least modest breasts.  Also, skin textures seem to look best with a small range of bust sizes.  These tattoos solve these problems.  On top of that they had an asian style skin called "Kumi" that just looked wonderful.  I tried on the demo and had to have it.  Took me a while, but I've color matched my bits (I did some of this with the demo so I would know it would work for me before I bought the skin) and gotten a couple of shape changing tattoos.  I also modified the breast size of my shape and saved them all together for ease of use.  I'm really quite happy with it.

This strikes me as another good time to show you how a skin can effect how your avatar looks.  I took shots of the skins I wore the longest over the years I've been in SL.  All with everything else, such as shape, eyes, hair, lighting, position, all the same.  So, that said, here are the four faces of Lee, from 2009 to 2013.

I have worn other skins, mostly in 2009 when I was new before settling on the Slink.  I noticed looking at this, it makes me look like I have gotten progressively darker over time.  This was not something I intended. I simply get the skin shade that appeals to me the most from each vendor.  These skins I tried early on in SL ran from much lighter to somewhat darker than all of these.  I mostly used one about the same shade as the Nvious until I got some prim feet from Slink.  I ended up buying a Slink skin because the feet I had came with pre-set color match settings for those skins.  Now, I can usually recolor something to blend very closely with my skin.  Back then, it took me months of intermittent trying to get my Slink feet to match the Laqroki skin that I already had and liked better.  Eventually I did, and I wore that skin for a very long time!

I also noticed that the new skin makes my lips thinner, I may see if modifying the face shape to make them a bit fuller works for me.  This is one of the fun things about SL for me, you can tinker endlessly working toward a certain look, or coming up with completely different looks.

Take a walk.

Every once in a while, I just take a walk down a road in SL.  It's interesting what you find, or find out.  I have often been surprised what clubs or venues are near others.  Or what little gems are just down the pike.  Today LL was doing a massive rolling restart, and my home sim was down.  So when I logged in to change I had to find someplace I could stand around half naked while I worked out what I wanted to wear. 

I ended up picking a cute little frock from .dots4, costs 1L.  This is one of my recent finds on SL Marketplace.  It's mesh and unusual that it is not "hollow" so folks can not look up your skirt, even if it is short.  Instead the bottom is given a vague shadowy texture.  It comes sized for a pretty wide range of avis, and even comes with what I think is a alpha set for the folks who have gone to fully mesh avatars.  Something I am not ready for, and I don't know even if I like the idea.  Anyway, after finally dressing, I just took a walk down the road on Zindra (I figured adult sims don't care so much about your state of undress while dressing) where I had ended up to dress for the day.

I found this very cool little steampunk styled bar called the Iron Crow.  It's got single and couple dance machines, and the public can even change the music stream!  So it's a great place to take your honey bunneh for a dance and chat.  There was nary a soul about when I was there, so likely a pretty secluded place.

After checking out this place, I went on down the road.  Finding myself outside of such "infamous" places as Dark Delights new shop, Lar's, etc.  I also saw a lot of empty parcels.  Some were just flat green expanses, but some had been planted with greenery, or had a building or two.  I applaud those who do something with parcels they are trying to sell, beyond letting them look like a putting green.

Among these, I came across the most lushly overgrown parcel I've ever seen in SL.  In RL you'd need a machete or something to get even a few feet into this overgrown jungle.  But it's a lovely spot, here's a snapshot for your enjoyment.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Dust & Corn

I also decided to pop around to some places that might be photogenic.  A sim called "Dryland" provided some interesting photo opportunities.  I set the winlight to dusty and took these mildly disturbing shots.

The rusty hulks are disturbing enough, the giant petrified clown and Freudian balloons is going to give me nightmares, I just know it.

Then I popped off to a cornfield in a place called Sand Hills Country and took some photos while selecting other winlight settings just to see how they looked.


I've run into several folks lately who commented that I go more places than they do.  That they always visit the same old sims over and over.  I encourage any other residents of SL to go to search, select places and type in random words or search for something that interests you.  Exploring the vastness and inventiveness of SL is one of it's many joys.


Cheap mesh from the Marketplace.

Mostly I shop in world in SL, I don't use the SL Marketplace because weeding through all the stuff you don't want that comes up under searches is more tedious than wandering around in world.  At least in world you can look at the builds, check out other resident profiles and entertain yourself while you look for goodies.

Recently I hit on the idea of selecting apparel, setting the price range at 0 to 3, using the keyword "mesh" and selecting "modify" as a required permission.  The search function is so broken you still get no modify things that out of this price range, but it greatly reduces the number of demos.  Doing a quick skim has led me to some nice finds.  To get this theme rolling here are two of them.























The leopard print micro-mini-dress on the left is from Soulglitter.  They have a mess of these on the market place in different textures all for 1L each!  The pumps are from SF Design, shoes I've had a long while but rarely wear because I had no leopard print outfit I really liked.

The red and black two piece number on the right is from Plausible Body.  This shop has been around a long time providing a variety of avatar appearance goodies like clothes, shoes, skins, etc.  All using what they call "open pricing."  This means you buy anything in the shop, or that they provide via the market place.  Then you pay them what you think it is worth, or what you can afford.  This little combo is color change and pattern change.  So there dozens of looks you can get.  They have another more modest outfit that is the same way.  So these are definitely worth checking out!  Just don't forget to pay them some L if you can.  We want them to keep turning out such nice things and letting us get them in such a nice way!  The red & black ankle boots are from Grumble.  Note that other free mesh color change outfit from PB that I do not show here includes color change pumps!

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Pair A Dice

My home sim is Pair A Dice.  A fun filled, quite nicely appointed and decorated sim owned by Raychill Firecaster.  Below is a shot of the lovely Miss dancing with me around Cinco De Mayo.  She's sporting some new mesh finery and I thought she should be in my blog.  I'm the one in the gold mini from Essencials, the clutch in my hand is something I made a while back.  By now I've got like a dozen of them all textured in different ways to match different outfits.
By now I would figure that you know what the front of me looks like, but this might be your first visit to my blog.  So below is another shot taken at Pair A Dice where I am wearing a new frock from Slave's Dressing Room.


Giant M&Ms!?

Woke up in the middle of the night and decided to go exploring.  I ended up at a collection of galleries at a place called Torell Nederland.  A lot of the art wasn't to my taste, but as always, one can usually find something one likes.  Several somethings in this case.  The one pictured here is a giant machine that rolls out irregular orbs that remind me of a certain chocolate filled hard candy from Mars.  They wobble, bounce and roll around quite realistically.  But there is also a "Van Gogh Village."  And several displays of 2D art.  The place is worth a visit.


Thursday, May 2, 2013

Period Pics!?

A new friend of mine was telling me about a role playing sim they had found called 1888.  I am a long standing fan of things Steampunk and Victoriania.  So I had to check it out.  It's actually a pretty cool place.  I set my winlight to "foggy" and explored the whole place.  Cemetery and all.  And I must say that the folks were friendly, well dressed (if not always exactly to period) and helpful.

The underlying current of the Victorian theme is BDSM, so I might just have to spend more time here in future.  But until then, here is a lovely photo of the water front.  The ships are mayhaps a bit dated considering the name of the sim, but they are fine examples of tall ships from Blackspot shipyards.


You can just see me and my friend standing in the pool of light beyond the bow spit of the ship in the foreground.

Final Photos at Fantasy Faire

I went back to Fantasy Faire with new viewer software, the latest Singularity 64 bit for Linux and it was nice and solid.  So I toured most of the place.  It was pretty striking.  Here are a few snapshots of some locations for your amusement.




The outfit is from Bondage Witch Project, a shop partly owned by the awesome Internet artist Grigbertz.  You can view the Grigbertz gallery here.  The boots are from SF Design.  The hair and ears are freebies!