Ajah Shape

To show you the difference a shape can make, here I am with DaeSkins Ajah Shape. The skin is my favorite, Deep Red.

My Skin

Written 31 December, 2007

My Skin

I put these up as separate blogs yesterday, but they chased all the other poses away, so I made the above in Quark XPress.

Here are the different makeups I have for my Skin By Max. I got the most recent only yesterday, for there's a 50% off sale at The Body Politik, Eventide Far East sim.

Max' skins work well with avatar lashes, I'm happy to say!

So Not a Fashion Blog

Written 31 December, 2007

So Not a Fashion Blog

The more I declaim the status of this blog as a fashion blog (it's really not, just on a fashion arc), the more people become convinced it is. Just yesterday my friend GM Nikolaidsis said, "Oh, I read it in your fashion blog."

After chasing around all day with my friend's male alt looking at skins, last night my Second Life brother Peter Stindberg told me of free skins at Minnu Model Skins.

Now, I love my skin by Max, which I bought at what is now known as The Body Politik, but if I owned any other skin I would be beating feet just now to Minnu, I tell you!

One thing I love about my skins is I can wear any level of makeup. I will show you in a future post on this not-fashion-blog. Minnu's female skins are VERY nice. I will show you in a future post.

So, here I am in my usual Max skin, and here I am in a free (yes, free!) skin from Minnu.

And, as a bonus, here I am in a male skin that was in the same gift box and which I donned by accident, thinking shaved mean, uh, down THERE! Once I had rezzed and could see I hadn't become merely a homely woman, I stuck on a demo male shape and took off my hair and this is the result. Scary, huh?

I sooo don't want to play a male avi, but I will admit to feeling a certain frisson as I helped my friend shop for skin yesterday. I mean, she's quite feminine, but as soon as the skin and shape went on, people began to treat her differently. And surprise, SHE began to behave differently, both to guys we encountered while shopping, and toward me, becoming aggressively flirtatious. It was as if she was getting a massive rush of virtual testosterone. And that's how she described it to me when she jumped on a poseball and did her best to get me on there with her. With him. How confusing!

I think I will be talking in depth about gender and about how skin and shape inform both the SL experience and the way we play our avis.

Oh-- and to get the free skins from Minnu, join the MM Skins group and retrieve them from the past announcements.

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Photos: (From Top): Chey's regular skin, Minn female freebie, Minnu male freebie

Alt Shopping

 Written 30 December, 2007

Alt Shopping

No, not another form of shopping!

Or well, yeah, maybe.

Today I went shopping with a close female friend. As a male.

She. Not me, was doing the male thing.

My friend had read on my blog that Sweetie had bought mens' shoes and hats and while were IMing this morning she confided to me that she has long had a male alt. That surprised me, but oh, well, Second Life is Second Life. I asked her to rez him for me, and she did, and he was the most pitiful newbie looking male I had ever seen. I told her that if she was going to take him around AT ALL she HAD to get him outfitted.

She perked up at that, and before I knew it we were on a whirlwind tour of mens' skins shops. I went with her just because it's exciting to trick out a new avi.

I won't reveal my friend's name or his final appearance, but here we are as he tried on various male skins and shapes.

It freaked him a bit when I pulled on a male shape and skin and stipped off my top. Hehehe.

Soo, my new friend is now tricked out with tribal tattoos and is off on his own. What a wild ride!

Manipulating Images

Written 30 December, 2007

Manipulating Images

I've been doing page layout with Quark XPress for many years, but somehow I just never got around to learning to use PhotoShop. I was able to crop and otherwise manipulate photos well enough to get by, in most cases and asked for help when there was something I couldn't manage.

When I got to Second Life, XPress served adminrably for making signs, of which I seemed to have need of quite a few. It was incapable of making image files, so I would print to Acrobat Distiller, crop the result, and save it from Acrobat as a BMP or JPG.

But my needs were such that Quark was not sufficient. I needed, for instance, to make alphas-- transparent textures. In Sl, they make the space between fenceposts, leaves of trees, and they make those neato cardboard cutouts.

I had PhotoShop on my ancient Mac iiCI, but I don't have it for the PC. I do have Elements, but I was hesitant to spend time learning a crippled program. So I downloaded the GIMP, a powerful free graphics program, and began to poke about with it.

The GIMP tutorials seemed to all be based on an earlier version of the program, so I had one devil of a time making my first successful alpha-- but finally there it was, a cutout of me and Sweetie. It took a while to make a second, for I wasn't sure exactly what I had done, but I persevered, and before long I could make alpha textures quickly and easily.

I discovered along the way that it's a LOT of work to cut figures from a background. I had to blow the images up and erase them pixel by pixel.

And so I was happy to learn that my N30 photo studio (about which I've not yet blogged) provided several unicolor backgrounds. They made it easy to make a cutout of me in a 1920s outfit for my new mini-store in the Chataqua Estates sim.

Lsat night, I"m proud to say, I was able to make an Alpha using Photoshop Elements!

The Strangest Thing...

Written 30 December, 2007

The Strangest Thing...

I dont know how it happened. Maybe it was that folder I dragged onto my avi.

But I found myself suddenly transformed into the tiniest, cutest little heli-bot.

Smallest avi I've ever seen.

You can get it at the Flotsam Beach sim at  Seven's Selections.

Christmas Chat With Mordecai

Written 30 December, 2007

Christmas Chat with Mordecai

On Christmas Eve both my Sweetie and my Second Life brother Mordecai's lovely wife Kacy were doing the family thing.

Mordecai and I IMed for a bit, and then he came to Pele and we made ourselves comfortable in the Christmas light-tricked-out tiki shelter on the (now frozen) lake.

Because Mordecai's compter has difficulty with Skype, we chatted in SL Voice for a good long time-- until, in fact, it was long after Mordecai, who is five hours ahead of me, should have logged out and gone to bed.

We caught up with all sorts of things. It was a lovely way to pass a holiday eve.

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I found the other photo of a chat at Mordecai, this one taken at his home in Caledon. It was taken a couple of days earlier.

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Yesterday I took Sweetie to Prim & Proper so she could browse the sale items (and she did, cleaning out, for some reason, the mens' section).

While we were there, Mordecai and Kacy teleported in; seems they had read about the sale in this blog!

Alas, no photos from P&P!

And Just because This Isn't a Fashion Blog

Two more coats!

Old Crates

Written 29 December, 2007

Old Crates

My old barrels seem to be popular on SL Exchange, so I had a thought: why not make an old crate.

I mean, how hard could it to to make a crate? Four sides. Top. Bottom. Done.

But I tend to get carried away.

I did make a simple one-prim crate which I think I'll set for sale on SLEX, but what I wound up with were eight pallets loaded with crates of fruits and vegetables with vintage artwork on the sides.

The ninth is a pallet from the Roaring 20s, complete with a crate with the top slid aside to reveal a cache of magnum-sized bottles of Dom Perignon, vintage 1916 and a half-orange on the top with a knife stuck through it. All Chey-built.

That's me in a roaring 20s outfit. You'll have to read the Flights of Fancy blog (I will be posting there later toniight) to see why I decided to become a flapper.

Name that Maker! The Inspect Feature (Level 2)

Pie Menu

Torley Linden's Customized SL Watermelon Pie Menu. Your pie menu won't look like this unless you're very good.

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This is a shameless plug for our Tweaktocracy blog.

Ever seen an amazing object, on or off an avi, that you just had to have? Well, there's a neat hidden feature in your pie menu that lets you find the maker of any object, even if it's attached to an avatar (think hair, shoes, accessories or body parts). That feature is called INSPECT.

The pie menu is the circular semi-transparent menu you get when you right click on any avatar or object in Second Life. ( Mac Fans: right click = apple key (cmd) + click ) Yeah, that’s right. Looks familiar, doesn't it. The pie menu does not, alas, offer you endless fruity deserts, but it holds a variety of delicious everyday features.

If you look down at the bottom slice of pie, leaving behind the normal SIT, IM, ADD FRIEND, TOUCH,, and EDIT commands, you'lll see the word MORE>. Whohoo, loookee here, Page 2 and still more options, including a tweaker's favorite TAKE COPY. ;) But soldier on and click MORE> again and you will find INSPECT.

Inspect will reveal to you, as far as SL in it’s quasi-omnipotence is able to determine, the entire lineage of an object by showing you the creator's name of every prim.

So now you know who made the object. Even better; INSPECT will let you click on the profile of the creator and IM them or look in their PICKS to see the location of any stores they own. :) You can teleport directly from Picks to their store to buy the item you admired or take a landmark adn return later. Eitehr way, you're an SL Inspector first class and sure to amaze yoru friends.

Inspect. Most handy.

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Practice Location: Try a mall in the Vctorian sims of Caledon, where you'll find lots of goods to click on and avatars with many attachements. We recommend Caledon SteamSkyCity.

New Discovery on Pele

Written 29 December, 2007

New Discovery on Pele

When the vest virtual seismologists in the world came to Pele a few months ago to check out the emerging lava fields, they found something that concerned them.

I mean beyond the fact that the believed a new volcano was forming and might soon erupt, wiping out all life for four sims in all directions.

It seems they found a big empty space on Pele. And not the one in my head.

There were able to raise an image of it.

Can you find it?

Look on Pele.

Speaking of Coats...

Written 29 December, 2007

Speaking of Coats...

Since we're on the subject of coats (this being in no way a fashion blog, after all), Here I am in a really nice tweed coat made by Maruri Dryke.

It's from *DP Serendipity on Aventi Island.

I'm making it really easy for you to TO RIGHT OUT AND BUY THIS COAT! HEHE!

I wish I had one like this in RL.

Even if it doesn't get quite cold enough in Atlanta to justify the expense.

I'm wearing a scarf from Artilleri Mainstore. There's quite a selection at only $75, and they come with free frosty breath.

I love my frosty breath. I bought it last year at Jopsy Pendragon's Light Sorcery on the amazing Teal sim. I aquired it too late in last year's season, but I've made extensive use of it during Pele's brief winter. Sweetie says it makes her feel cold.

OMG! I have learned in all this not blogging about fashion how to make embedded SLURLS!

Will wonders never cease!

Coats, Coats, Coats

Written 29 December, 2007

Coats, Coats, Coats

We have only another week or so of snow, and then it's sand, sand, sand for another year and back to the islandwear.

Until then, however (even thought this is NOT a fashion blog), it's coats, coats, coats!

Here I am against a blue screen (which makes is super easy to use GIMP or PhotoShop to make those cutout figures you see in stores all the time). I'm wearing a ski outfit by Queenie Moriarty. It cost very little.  I picked it up most likely at Kanga Design; if it's not there, you will need to IM Queenie. IM her too if you need to get marries, since being a preacher seems to be her primary gig.

The outfit had a scarf, which I straightaway had to rotate, since the drooping flexies cut through my breasts, but they looked okay in the back (warning: rotation of the scarf requires repositioning). Alas, I didn't get a photo of them.

The outfit also had the first earmuffs I've seen in SL.

More Pretty

 More Pretty

Here's Pele and her snow in Windlight Pretty!

Pretty

Written 29 December, 2007

Pretty!

Pele is so pretty with the snow and all her decorations!

I found some great lights on SLEX or OnRez and stuck them up all over. Check out this tiki hut.

Prim Nails

Prim Nails

Avatar Nails

Written 20 December, 2007

Prim Nails

Not a fashion blog. I _swear_ it!


I love my prim nails, but I’ve reluctantly put them away

Prim nails attach to your fingers, giving a lovely, more realistic, and of course high-fashion look to your avi’s hands.

They require resizing of the hands, but the good ones come in a variety of hand sizes, and besides, everyone knows there can be no beauty without pain.

But mine were coming loose sometimes. I would be kissing Sweetie and sneak a quick look at myself (I mean, who doesn’t like to look at their avi? Second Life is a narcissist’s paradise!) and see my prim nails floating loose above my hands.

I finally figured out that poseballs could dislodge prim nails—and so can the animations in Animation Overriders.

I believe it has to do with the priority of the animations. These priorities (there are four levels) are set when animations are imported into Second Life; higher priority animations will override lower-priority animations.

Animations can also specify the hand position of avatars—fists, open, relaxed. I think prim nail problems can related to that, too. Perhaps even a low-priority animation will dislodge them if it specifies hand positions.

At any rate, I was forced to choose between prim nails and cute stands.
Cute stands won out.

And especially cute stands that override the typing animation. I hate the typing animation. But stands that override the typing animation seem to be incompatible with prim nails.

I will probably be doing a card or two in my AO that contains poses that are prim nail compatible, however.

Because a girl just can’t do away completely with her prim nails.

Holidays

Written 26 December, 2007

Holidays

Today it was back to work after a four-day Christmas holiday. I am soooo not in the spirit.

The spirit of work.

/me snickers

But one must earn a living, and so I arose today at the crack of noon (my workday commencesat 11:30 am; I deliberately overslept) and prepared to do battle in the world of commerce.

Nah. I’m just waxing poetic. I don’t have truck with the world of commerce at all, at least not in the real world, unless I’m buying groceries or blank CDs. I work as a behavior specialist at an agency that works with adults with developmental disabilities. So I prepared to do battle in the world of service provision.

It will be a short week, though, and then there’s another holiday.

I don’t know who decided to put Christmas so close to New Year, but thank you! Thank you for that! And it was clever to make Christmas close to Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving close to Halloween and New Year close to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Soooo much better than the holiday wasteland of summer, with nothing whatsoever to relieve us between Independence Day and Labor Day.

I know a lot of you won’t make much sense of these US-specific holidays, but most of you will celebrate a major holiday around Christmas time and everyone celebrates the new year, so I can only assume you’re as happy as I am to have these holidays dropped upon you in close proximity. Besides, a lot of you get a long holiday between Christmas and New Year (you lucky bastards!), and are probably laughing YAO at us holiday-poor Americans who get only two days for Christmas and one for the new year.

Hehe. I love to be ridiculous in this blog.

So anyway, I’m just happy for the holidays and thankful for all my first and second lives have brought me. I know most of you feel the same.

And in just five more days we can get drunk on our ass and ring in the new year.

Except for those who don’t drink. We’ll just mimic being drunk on our ass as we ring in the new year.

Happy holidays, folks!

Big Sale at Prim & Proper

Written 28 December, 2007

Big Sale at Prim & Proper

My friend Stargazer is a big aficionado of Second Life designers, and she keeps track, through various groups, of what is free and on sale. She is kind enough to cue me in sometimes and then I cue in my friends.

And I SWEAR this is not becoming a fashion blog. I've just been a fan of fashion these past few weeks. It will pass.

Last night the told me about a sale at Prim & Proper (SLURL here). And it was indeed a big sale! Period dresses from the late 1800s through the early 1900s were only $100L, and there was a wide selection of fans for $10, and dozens of beautiful hats for only $25L.

Needless to say, I loaded up.

One of the things I bought was the black mink wrap in the pictures. It was only 50, and is well made-- but when I put it on it blinged so much it almost burned out my eyeballs.

Bling off. It still blinged.

/bling off. It still blinged

/1 bling off. It still blinged.

So I went on a bling hunt (the wrap was copyable), hunting for bling scripts tedious prim by tedious prim and erasing them and running a particle eradicator script whenever I did.

Finally I just got fed up-- I didn't like the jewel anyway-- and unlinked it prim by prim and erased it.

I now have a really nice, non-blingy coat. Not bad for $50L.

But I have to say, that coat was the most blingy, scripty thing I have ever seen in Second Life. Almost every prim-- and there were maybe 100 in total-- contained Robin Sojourner's bling removal script. So when i was wearing that coat, itwas really using up a lot of resources.

As a public service I IMed the creator, Shenlei Flasheart, to let her know she could remove those bling scripts immediately after dropping them in, as they do their work in about one second.

Goddess knows how many of her coats are out there slowing down the SL experience. But at least she knows now.

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Photos: Me in the wrap, in red and natural mink coats that are only $100, and in one of the hundreds of persiod costumes on sale.

Rude, Rude, Rude

Written 27 December, 2007

Rude, Rude, Rude

I was just on the Chataqua Estate sim, where I was doing a photo shoot, and where I have a store which I have not yet told you about.

The sim is scheduled for its grand opening between the first and the sixth, and it looks to be a nice place. The theme is the Roaring Twenties, and I have decorated my shop accordingly.

I was seeing how many of the other shops were up and running, and, spotting a new-looking avi named BlkSpider Avro in one of the shops, stopped to chat.

"Setting up?" I asked by way of conversation.

It took her a long while to reply, and then I got one word. "Busy."

Sure, she was busy, but she could have said hello, at least to a fellow sim-sharing merchant. I just said, "Rude, too," and walked away and wrote this blog.

But I did go back with my camera and got this great shot with her avi's head up its butt-- which fits her personality, it would seem.

She's filling her shop with newbie crap at $10L, so god knows why she's so high and mighty. Her hippo vendors are missing all their textures, too.

Good luck to her, but you can bet I won't be taking her any icebreaking chocolate chip cookies. Instead, she can read about herself on this blog.

Ah, the power of the press! Heady, it is!

Now I'm Getting Worried!

Written 27 December, 2007

Now I'm Getting Worried!

So, the snow Dreamland dumped on the sim was okay, and I had fun putting in snow drifts and icicles.

But things are getting SERIOUS now.

These icebergs showed up yesterday, and this morning there's a family of penguins took up residence.

This place is beginning to look like Antarctica!

And oh, crap! I just noticed a wrecked boat on one of the icebergs. And yet another penguin!

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Photos: The wrecked boat was made by Greg Paslong and is available for sale at Flights of Fancy. The penguins were made by Xandi Mars. I picked them up for free at Winterland. There's an igloo for $1, too, and a snowball thrower for your avi.