Bowl Haircut

 Just in case my readers were thinking I was kidding about bowl haircuts...

Here's my mom and dad staging a haircut. They always claimed not to remember the bowl haircuts, but I certainly did. One Christmas they gave me this photo, framed.

And the Winner Is...

Here I am going all Lady Godiva in Exile's Counting Stars hair. It's one of two styles I bought at the Hair Fair this year.

It's mesh, I believe, but I like it because it seems to move. And even better, it covers my big-ass head without me having to wear the alpha.

Here's a back view:

Hair Overload!

Chey's Prim Hair Might Stick Through Her Shoulders
But It By God Moves when She Does

All, right, enough is enough.

My bloated inventory still has thousands of items from the Hair Fair-- notecards, landmarks, images, HUDs, and actual hair styles-- 95% of them mesh.

After hours or wearing and photographing hair and making hardly a dent in the demos I picked up, I've had it. Next time I'm in world I'll dump the entire shebang, except for the freebies. You can expect a post soon on free hair, but I'm done with the Hair Fair. There's too much of the same.

I know, I know, the fashionista mafia will be sending their knee-and-elbow team around to twist and distort my avi, but I had to say it anyway.

Some of the mesh hairdos look nice, but they sit rigidly on one's head like an upended bowl of spaghetti. They don't move when you do, or when the wind blows, or ever. Moreover, when the mesh is rigged, it can't be resized or moved around on one's head-- and if you don't wear the often bad invisble head-obscuring tattoo, your scalp shows.

I'm not a big fan of sculpted hair, either, and won't be unless and until the Lindens add flexibility. That leaves prim hair.

I like prim hair, and specifically flexible prim hair. I know flexible prim hair goes through your shoulders sometimes, and yeah, that's a pain in the ass, but it just does it for me way better than a plop of rigid chewed Double-Bubble.

Mesh hair is like a badly-applied wig in real life. When a wig blankets your hair, covering everything, it looks artificial-- but pull a few strands through and blend it so observers can see a place or two where your hair is attached to your head, and suddenly, as any drag queen knows, that wig looks like real hair.

Happily, a few creators use a combination of mesh and flexible prims to create nice looking hair that moves. You must wear the mesh and attach the prims, but it works well for me, and I just bought at least one such product. I'll do a blogpost about it soon.

Okay, Maybe Not This One

"Hair emergency! Hair emergency!"

"What is it now?" asked Sweetie.

"Look at this hot mess!" I cried.

"Oh, yes," she said. "The bowl."

"What bowl?" I wailed.

"The bowl the hair makers pass around when they get stumped. They put it on your head and there's your haircut."

"My mother used to do that with my father," I said, "but I never expected to be subjected to the bowl myself!"

"The path to platinum fashionista status is not an easy one, grasshopper," she said.

I cringed. "I can expect more of this abuse?"

"Just click Read More," Sweetie said. "You'll see soon enough."

Chey Wears Hair Fair Hair

No Blow Dryer in the World is Gonna Help These Bangs!

Sweetie and I hit every single vendor at the recent Hair Fair. We know we hit every one because the layout, unlike many product fairs we've visited in the past, was logically constructed; we eventually wound up back at our starting point.

I have to say, I took demos from every one of those vendors!

I've not yet worked my way through all the freebies and demos (computer problems), but I've worn more and photographed more than 100 styles. You'll see many of them below the fold.

Mesh is of course the big thing this year. Most is rigged, meaning it can't be adjusted. Like sculpted hair, it's immovable-- although some hair makers add a second wearable object made of flexible prims.

Many of the creators have a big problem with bangs, as you'll see.

And now, the hair.

Slowdown!

I've been having a difficult time in Second Life lately.

My seven-year-old desktop (read about why I got it here) died in May. I've been using my four-year-old Sony VAOI laptop for everything. It has worked like a champ in SL until lately. Now, often, I find myself unable to build or cam using the mouse. Inspection shows zero processor free time and the system using up all the free resources. Usually system is zero, but it's as high as 60% when the computer is acting up.

Speedfan shows my CPU temperature runs about 61 degrees Centrigrade when Second Life is running, but the slowdown doesn't seem to depend upon CPU temperature. I'm beginning to suspect the fan on the built-in graphics card (if it has a fan) may not be running or may be running intermittently, but the slowdown could be caused by any number of things. In the meanwhile, SL is agonizing when I can't use the mouse.

I recently had a new floor installed in my kitchen, and when my electric range was moved we kept on going and left it on the curb. The oven element went out some time ago, and when inspecting it I somehow managed to fry the electronics. Considering that three of the four burners were operative, I realized one day I owned a 200-pound hotplate! For now I'm cooking with my microwave, steamer, crockpot, and an electric skillet that sits upon a TV tray. I had hoped to buy a stove by the time my friend Sandra arrives for a visit in late August, but now I'm setting top priority for a new motherboard, processor, and RAM.

My This-Is-Not-A-Fashion-Blog Parade of Styles from the 2013 Hair Fair Will Shortly Commence

The title says it all.

When Second Life Grinds to a Halt

 It's the Lindens' Fault. Except Torley, of Course. Torley is Blameless.

I had a terrible time in world last week. Second Life, which runs admirably on my Sony VAIO laptop, was giving me problems. I was unable to build or use my camera. When I tried, nothing happened. The program just froze.

My frame rate, ping times, and bandwidth were all good, so I blamed the rollout of server-side baking. I wasn't sure if the new sim software had actually arrived, but it was convenient, so I blamed the Lindens. I mean, why not? Everybody blames the Lindens. For everything.

I soon realized the problem was with my mouse. I could cam with arrow buttons, but the moment I tried to use the mouse, the camera locked up. Damn cheap Logitch wireless sumbitch!

It wasn't the mouse, of course.

The problem turned out to be WordPad, a Windows utility for reading plain text and rich text files.

On my recently-deceased desktop Word was a beast. It took forever to load and it was always annoying me--- so I converted my dozen or so most-consulted files (passwords, calender, notes, address book) to RTF. On my laptop, however, Word ran just fine. It was WordPad that was the beast. Files were slooow to open and search took forever.

I often leave the files I consult frequently open, and it was when one or more text files were open that my camera locked up. WordPad was the culprit.

I'm going to reinstall  WordPad and see if that solves the problem; if not, I'll convert my RTF files back to Word format.

Anyway, problem solved. And I still suspect the Lindens were behind it all.

The Spy Business Isn't What it Used to Be

James Bond Didn't Have a Smartphone

"I can't believe you've retired from your life as a spy," I said to Sweetie.

"Well, the spy business isn't what it used to be," she said. "I mean, I loved the Minox spy camera. It had class. Nowadays every idiot has a smartphone with a built-in 8 megapixel camera with high-definition video. It's just not the same."

"I see your point," I said, as I surreptitiously took her photo with my smartphone.

"And then there's the company," she said.

As in "The Company?" I said. "The CIA?"

"Them too," she said. But I mean the players. In the old days I hung out with James Bond and Julia Child and George Smiley. I used to visit Alger Hiss in prison."

"But those are semi-fictional," I said.

"As am I," Sweetie smiled.

"I mean Hiss and Child are real, but Bond and Smiley are fictional characters."

"Well, I used to hang out with them all," she said. "Especially Julia. Who do you think was the source of my interest in the pasty sciences?"

"Either Julia or Smiley," I said.

"Julia," she said, "although Smiley gave me the idea for throwing scones."

"Well, Hiss and Child are dead," I said. "Bond must be like eighty years old now, and Smiley's older than that."

"Exactly," Sweetie said. "And who has replaced them? Faceless CIA spooks. Homeland Security agents. NSA operatives. And Teleportation Security Administration patter-downers."

"Patter-downers?" I asked.

"You know what I mean," she said. "And then there's MI-6. It just isn't what it used to be. Bond is retired, Moneypenny came out as lesbian, and that old guy who made the weapons now works at the Redstone Arsenal and has like a thousand patents."

"Sean Connery was the real Bond," I said.

Sweetie is a Roger Moore fan, but she didn't bite. "And who's at MI-6 now? A bunch of geeks at keyboards, reading everyone's e-mails and recording everyone's calls." She sighed. "The field operatives-- there are still a few-- have to check in hourly via IM and attend weekly webinars. It was time for me to leave the business."

"Maybe you could hook up with Wikileaks," I said brightly.

"Who do you think sent them all those documents?" she asked.

"Oh," I said. "Well, what are you going to do with your time now?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "I'll do some experiments with icing string theory, certainly. I'll have to conduct them well away from the ground. We don't want any visitors dematerialized or covered with cream cheese."

"We wouldn't want that," I said, "although all those Brazilians who leave prims on our land could use a lesson. Maybe you could go undercover at Linden Lab."

"That's already been done," she said. "Hamlet Au. And look how that turned out."

"He's mostly not writing his own blog these days," I said. "Iris Ophelia is kicking ass over there."

"Mostly," Sweetie said, "I'm going to concentrate on being a muse."

"But you already are a muse," I said. "My muse. Please don't tell me you're going to muse others."

"No, no," she said, "but now I'll have ever so much more time to muse you."