Long Distance View of Whimsy Kaboom and the Volcano Pele

Another dramatic view. This one shows the western half of Whimsy, with Whimsy Kaboom Beyond.

Click the image for a larger view.

Inside the Volcano Pele, Whimsy

Here's a view from inside the Volcano Pele. We like dramatic vistas at Whimsy, and this one certainly qualifies!

View from Whimsy Kaboom

I love this view. I often stand on the sea decks on Whimsy Kaboom and face east. I watch the whales cavorting in the bay and listen to the sounds. Peaceful. 

Party at Ravensbrook Castle

In this time of social isolation, it's nice to be with people, even if in a virtual way.

I was invited to a very nice party at Ravensbrook Castle. We danced and laughed and danced some more. I knew most of the folks there, and got to know them better.

The DJs were Koviachi Banoo and, making his debut, Ashenford. The host, and the creator of this film, is Uncle Hamdi.

Thanks for a great time!

Ravensbrook Party from Mike Townsend on Vimeo.

Accidental Camming Fly-By

Second Life is a neverending surpirse. You never know what you'll come across.

Here, I was out exploring what seemed to be a public area. Suddenly, my camera was here.

I've not idea why the owner of this house had three identical bondage photos on the wall. I don't want to know. I only hope the blonde woman was a willing subject.

St. Patrick's Day 2020

In this time of social distancing, Second Life is wonder for socializing. Here I am closing down an Irish bar after hours of dancing and listening to music and chatting. Everyone but me and the prim bartender had sense enough to go home.

Castration Anxiety

Men shudder when seeing this outfit even on a sales sign!

Whimsy Peacocks

Adventures in Mesh Heads, Part VIII: Fixing the BOM Fingernail and Toenail Issue

This Image is From Virtual Bloke's Blogpost Get Baked. It Shows the Nail Problem and the Cure Beautifully.
Bloke Went to a Lot of Trouble to Make This, and I Admire Him For it. I Hope Me Won't Mind My Use of it.

Click HERE to Read Get Baked

I remarked earlier about the visibility of the system finger and toe nails when using Bakes on Mesh with the Lara body. The system nails are mostly covered by Lara's mesh nails, but show around the edges, making the hands and feet unsightly.

I was talking with a helper at Firestorm Social about this and he gave me a link to this helpful post from the Virtual Bloke blog:

http://www.virtualbloke.com/archives/3358

I was happy to see a discussion of the BOM nail issue, and happier yet when Bloke pointed out an inexpensive--$50 L--system glove that fixes the problem:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Rose-Nail-Gloves-White-Modifiable-Bake-on-Mesh/17933441

There's also a sock for toenails:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Rose-Toe-Socks-White-Modifiable-Bake-on-Mesh/17933440

The sock and glove are white and you'll need to tint them to match your skin. They work perfectly.

To tint, go to Appearance and select Edit and then Outfit. Find the glove or sock in the menu that pops up and click the wrench icon. Click Color and, if you know the color of your skin, enter the vectors in either the RGB or HSU squares.

If you don't know the numbers (I didn't), you can click around the colored square until you get a match.

I saved a picture of my nude system body to my hard drive, loaded it into the free graphics program GIMP, and used the eyedropper tool to get the needed numbers.

My finger and toe nails are now flawless in BOM.

Adventures in Mesh Heads, Part VII: Residual Problems

This Isn't the Greatest Second Life Photo Ever Taken, But My Readers Will Clearly See the Bulge in My Clothing. This Happens Only When I'm Using Bakes on Mesh with the Lara Body.

I was hoping my friend Elysienne would figure out the Lara mesh body before I did so I wouldn't have to go to the trouble of figuring it out myself. We bought our bodies on almost the same day. But darn it, I'm home all day and have more time to piddle about in Second Life, and so Elys has been no help at all.

Kind person that I am, I'm IMing her regularly, generally while she's away, and telling her what I've learned. Meanwhile, she's errr, head and shoulders ahead of me when it comes to mesh heads. Darn it!

I seem to have things mostly figured out with Lara, but I do have two residual problems.

First, I can't manage to match the skin on the Lara body with my system skin.

On the Laura HUD here's a common sense-looking skin color grid that allows changes of  Hue, Saturation, and Luminance, but for someone familiar with pretty much the same grid in the Edit menu, moving the pointers doesn't make the changes one would expect. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

The second problem has to do with nipples. I just noticed it. When wearing clothed baked on mesh, the part of my outfit that covers the nipples shapes itself over the nipples. The nipples don't stick through the clothing, which happens sometimes with mesh; they just make the clothing bulge as it conforms to the shape of the nipples. Now that I've noticed, they're embarrassingly obvious.

I've had no luck with either problem on my own, so I'll reach out for help on one of the Maitreya groups.

Adventures in Mesh Bodies, Part VI: Shoe Rehab

With the BOM mystery solved, I've been busy working through all my old outfits. Every single one has broken shoes, thanks to the Linden's errr, derendering of Invisiprims. I fix the shoes, make sure I'm wearing my Mystitool and Mystitool Implant, change accessories and hair (if I feel like it), and, if the outfit moves me, I make a Bakes on Mesh version for my Lara body.

Fixing the old shoes involves finding or making an alpha that covers just the part of the foot that needs to be hidden. Too little, and flesh pokes through your shoes here and there. Too much, and parts of your foot are invisible, making holes in your avatar.

You can make alphas, but it's hit and miss to get them just right, and it can get expensive at $10L per upload. In the past you could go to the beta grid and upload for free until you got things right, but according to someone I just spoke to, nowadays that requires some sort of special dispensation from the Lindens.

I've been running into the miss part of hit and miss in my attempts to make alphas--in other words, I can't quite nail them-- but I've been able to rehab about three-quarters of my large collection of vintage shoes by in some cases using alphas that came with other shoes and in other cases the free alphas distributed by Imnotgoing Sideways. By trying different alphas, I've been able to make most of my Imelda Marcos-sized shoe inventory workable again.

You can pick up Imnotgoing Sideways' alphas at this SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ferguson/65/250/91

Seeing Double

The most amusing default avatar--to me, at least, is the 70s dude. He comes complete with a mini boom box and the most 70sish shirt and hairdo imaginable.

When you're in an area with a large influx of new residents, 70s dude is fairly common. Inevitably, you'll see two or three together, like this. It's just funny. Admit it.

Adventures in Mesh Bodies, Part V: Initial Success with Bakes on Mesh

My First BOM Outfit. Wearing Aoharu BT's Cablesknit Dress with System Layers Showing. Success!

Through trial and error, I've finally grown comfortable with making outfits with the Lara mesh body. I'm using the included Save Stick, which sets the HUD properly for each outfit, preventing parts of my body being invisible when it should be showing, and vice-versa. Even the foot position is being maintained when I re-wear the outfit.

I finally worked my way through all my mesh clothing, winding up with perhaps thirty-five outfits, of which probably twenty-five are ready for prime time. In a few I stick through in places or show my nipples, requiring me to add a bra, resulting in too many straps showing--but basically, making outfits should be all good from here on out.

Having made all the outfits possible without going on a shopping spree, I found and purchased a skin for Lara. It applied easily. I chose a shade as close as possible to the system skin of my head, but couldn't quite figure out how to work the color selector. Xubi said she will help me this weekend. She knows, she said, an app that will tell me the exact color of my skin, which will help me make an exact match.

I'm not yet competent with adding clothing to the three layers (tattoo, underwear, clothing), but have managed to do so successfully a couple of times. I have more fooling around to do with that.

But success!!! at more or less figuring out BOM!

Night before last, I bought a dress from Coeur de Couture that included both mesh and system components. I was just unable to get the system layers to show. Finally, I sent a notecard to ZiLight, the creator, and she was kind enough to refer me to a YouTube video on Lara 5.0. The narrator had a heavy accent and an astonishingly wide butt and talked somewhat about her poosy, but did an earnest if confusing walk-through of Lara 5.0. Along the way I realized I needed to remove the Lara full-body alpha in order to use Bakes on Mesh.

Here's the URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXmumUX0dao&t=1473s

I tried it with a vintage Cableknit dress from Aoharu BT. The system layers (pants, jacket, shirt, ) immediately appeared--and so, it would seem, did my system skin. I've always like that skin, and was happy to see it again.

Note the White Areas Around My Nails. WTF? IDK.

I couldn't get my Lara shoes to work properly, but the dress called for my vintage Maitreya dune boots, which attached perfectly after I hid my Lara feet. My hands look a little hinky, with a white area around my nails, but hopefully I'll figure that out.

I still have a lot to learn about this mesh body, but I was say I've graduated from Notive, Grade Zero to Amateur.

LEVEL UP!