Toast: Why Not? June 30, 2008

Today the blogs are aflutter with the age-old question: what’s up with the toast thing? Here is my thoughts on why. This essay may be missing fact and logic. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

Today I am going to write an essay on why there is a sudden Toast Revolution on SL. I think it’s as simple as “Why Not?” or “Just Because” or other non-reasons that your mother told you were reasons why you should not blow milk-bubbles through your straw or tilt your chair back on the back 2 legs.

Back to the toast: I blame the Japanese. They are always coming up with crazy, lovable things like this. And I don’t think there’s ever a good reason why. I came to this careful assessment because the first toast I remember in-world was a freebie from the Little Girl Doll place.

So you have cute, free Japansese-created Toast that, when attached to the mouth, looked super duper uber cute and pleasantly dorky and unique. People started taking pictures and shared them via Flickr and blogs and it made other people go, oh how cute, toast in your mouth, I want that too.

Then more designers made their own toast versions. And more people collected and wore the toast and liked it and it was good.

People started seeing each other with toast and feeling a connection to each other despite this big, cold uncaring world. A connection that comes with doing silly, nonsensical things together. Something Like Toast. Or Blingis!

Toast is simple, toast is plain. But it’s good and comforting. Toast is in danger of getting overlooked for more important, technologically advanced things like iPhones and atom-smashers. Remember when we almost forgot about cats? Then the cat lobby came up with the showstopper of all memes LOLCats and now kittehs have safely guaranteed their future importance well into the next century.

And that is my essay on how the Toast Revolution started. The End.

Palm Slap to Forehead June 27, 2008

Soo….I was getting SOOOO proud of myself b/c after the viper pit party on wednesday night I sat down and got a huge major start on an outfit for my store that I actually think is awesome and will work. (sidenote: my new outfit is NOT the one pictured above, that is a suuuupercute dress from the always fab Big Booty Big Money) I’m still struggling a bit with the prim bits and it’s not nearly anywhere finished but I am very excited because I’m now at the point where every new thing I start seems to have huge jumps in quality. Yay!! Stuff is sticking!! The new outfit is very much based/inspired on a RL costume I modified/made and wore to Burning Man pasts.

When I started this whole clothing designing thing I quickly learned that there’s a few distinct parts to designing clothing in SL: the first being the design of the outfit itself, the second of course being to translate that design in photoshop to create an SL wonder of beauty. Two quite diff skill types but both equally important. So having to worry less about implementing a brand new design has helped me work on improving the photoshop skillz, me thinks. I will probably do a few more crossovers from my RL costume vaults to gain some more practice and it will be fun to maybe put RL pictures up next to the SL ads!

And I do have a goal to wear it to the next viper pit party (fingers crossed it’s finished in time).

So happy happy joy joy tra la la la…..BUT THEN…(insert car tires screetch/record scratch)

Suddenly today I get that feeling, that yHi6&F%6dV#*6br!!!Vve&^ feeling when I saw that the beloved Canimal has released this awesome Slaughterhouse Chic apron. NOOOOOOOoooOOOOO I screamed. Why? Because I have made something enough similar gathering dust unfinished on my hard drive/inventory. Not completely the same, mind you; mine is a set of aprons in a bunch of diff styles and patterns (ranging from girlie to more utilitarian like Cani’s) in a bunch of diff types (normal, worn, dirty, bloody). But mine are soo not nearly finished (it was one of the first items I worked on so the quality is sucky, but I was planning to revisit and finish before opening my store)

And this is not the first time this has happened. A few weeks back when I saw this pic from the loverly dorks I gasped in horror. OMFGBBQSH!TBALLS that looks soooo much like another of my unfinished projects! (the flower outfits) Not exactly to the Tee but close-ish enough. *cries*

See, the issue here is multi-fold. First, flooding the market with a specialty thang. Then worrying that people think that I’m copying, then to worry that the designer themselves accuses me of copying! Now, I do have technical proof that I at least started these designs before the others were released or I saw them but thats beyond the point. I don’t want to step on toes or give people a reason to start drama especially when I’m only starting out trying to establish myself. But this most bothers me because everytime this happens it gets me all depressed and then I don’t work on my store items for a week or more.

Should I start just ignoring all SL fashion and give up shopping completely for awhile? Should I just say F*** it and do what I planned on? Put them on the waaaay backburner and give the established products a metric tonne of breathing room before even think about releasing? forget about ever releasing them? talk to the orginal designers? work on making them specificially different than the others? this is all new terrority for moi.

Clearly, there is one thing I need to do: start finishing things and releasing them right away! That might avoid the whole problem, huh?

/me opens photoshop and gets crackin….

Home!(ish) June 25, 2008

So I’m home, actually got home late late Monday night. But yesterday was The Boyfriend’s birthday along with dealing with one of our cats who had some separation anxiety (he’s better now).

We had a great time but took about 3 blurry pictures (bad us). But our friends took more pictures so maybe I’ll find a few to share. We were camping for part of the trip so that always takes more work to unpack and get things back to normal. The spot we were camping at is 2-3 hours north of the Sit-ay (SF) and was SO beautiful but quite dry in places. It was also crazy hot up there, which is better than chilly willy (in my opinion at least). Thankfully we weren’t hampered by the area wildfires, but driving out we saw lots of hazy smoke all the way back to SF. The best part of the trip was of course just hanging and chatting with our friends, some of which live up thataways that we don’t get to see a lot.

Anyhooo, back to my regularly scheduled SL blathering soon-ish!

Vacationy Time June 16, 2008

So tomorrow I leave town, gone for a week, heading to NorCal. Even tho its yes the same state I’m currently in the wee bottom and have to travel to the nearish top so it’s quite a long drive, which I’m not too excited about the drive but the rest should be fun fun.

But!! I can’t believe I’m missing the fetish-themed hump day party! Everybody have fun without me and take some pics, k?

I’ve mostly been busy with RL stuff these past few days, getting ready for the trip so I haven’t been in world too much or done anything exciting except on Friday night attended one of the premier shows for DiVAS Season Finale!! It was a great show and great seeing the always lurverly DiVAS. Watch it on their blip.tv channel.

See everybody in a week! *muah*

Already over?!? June 13, 2008

I haven’t answered any of the BBB(c) questions all week but I will answer the last one!

Do you think this will change how you blog in the future?
What did I get out of this experience?

My rezzdate is 9/11/2006. In that time, I’ve taken 2 extended leaves of absence from second life. All that time and RL interference has taken a toll on my in-world relationships…almost all my old friends never log on anymore or very very rarely.

I started blogging for a few reasons: to write more, for one. And to justify all the pictures I take, instead of them growing mold on my hard drive. Share places and experiences and write tutorial posts helping people with stuff.

But mostly I started this blog to meet people and make friends. *tear* I found it was getting very hard to meet people and make new friends in SL through just random occurance. I started reading a lot of blogs right after the new year and started to feel a bit of a connection to people and realized that it would be a great way to reach out and make new friends.

It’s taken me forever to finally just “let go and post” and not over-think things. This challenge has finally gotten me over that hump!

I want to thank Alicia for her “Just Do It” attitude that kick-started this BBB. Yes, I was a big bad blogger beforehand. But now I have new blogs to read and have meet people in-world that I’d already been reading.

I think I’ll probably post more often now. I’m aiming for a one post per day goal, but I know I’ll miss somedays. The important thing is getting into the general habit.

This week has also inspired me that I might start hosting a (semi) regular event (monthly?) for people to get together. I know we always have our Hump Days but I’m thinking a weekend when we could hit more time zones and folks not able to attend on Wednesdays for whatever reason.

Hugs to all the BBB Challengers! We rock it with our sox on!

Husk June 12, 2008

A few days ago my friend Rob was checking up on me. He always keeps me on my toes about how my shop is coming (shhhhh), and if I’ve seen the latest and greatest SL builds. When he asked if I’d seen AM Radio’s new(ish) installation called Husk, I winced and admitted that I had not.

He drug me there (tp makes it easy hehe) and from the moment things started to rez I was nearly speechless.

One of the things I love about AM Radio’s work is that he has this enormous ability to capture Place and to evoke such an emotional impact. In his builds I am *there* so deeply: I hear the sounds, smell the smells, and am always lost in my own personal memories that his pieces trigger in me.

What surprised me most about The Husk was exactly *what* place it reminded me so much of….Burning Man. Well, technically more the locale itself of RL Burning Man festival that I have attended for 8 years now (this year, in August, will be #9).

Almost all SL’ers know that every year there’s a Burning Life festival held in Second Life in an homage to (what I believe) to be Second Life’s Burning Man roots (dear Phillip attended BM in ‘99 from what I hear and it had a lot of do with how he came to see the possiblities of SL and shape the idea of “Your World, Your Imagination“).

But SL’s Burning Life itself, although noble and wonderful, is a different beast and loses something in translation of Place that The Husk perfectly captures. Not that I can put my finger on what that is exactly…sometimes emotions don’t have words.

Burning Man, like Second Life, is hard to explain or sum up in a few sentences; in fact the Burning Man Org themselves say that trying to explain it is like trying to explain color to a blind person. So today at least I’m not going to do much ’splaining bout Burning Man (check out the website if you are curious). But I also want to warn ya’ll: as the Burning Man event draws closer, I will be thinking about it more and talking about it more and I’m appologizing right now that by the middle of August you might just be sick of hearing about it, already.

Ok, now that I said I was gonna cut the chatter, I have to say this: when I saw the sewing machine at Husk, I could not get over it. Seriously, does AM Radio has a direct line into my subconscious memories or something?? I generally do a lot of sewing in preparation for burning man, and one year even sewed a “dress” for a bus (that striped fabric is all me baby). That year we were so behind in our art project that I ended up having to bring my sewing machine along on the trip so I could finish the sewing while I was there, a bittersweet memory…

Visit Husk.

SL Suggestions: 2 – In-world Mail June 10, 2008

In general I’m pretty much an SL/LL fangirl. But I’m far -FAR- from blind to the most prelevant Second Life problems and issues. Like the big ones. Da buggers.

Like………….——> !!!!!!!! ******* jha98gyYG&*YO*&EHG98h *looks left, looks right, leans forward and whispers….*

Why The F. don’t we have inworld mail?

I mean, my god. that’s like…..so 1986.

On Joe Random’s™© website I can sign up and have some kind of site mail or message service that consists of an inbox, outbox, archiving, To’s and From’s, RE:’s and FW’s…I mean c’mon!! That’s considered basic internet service(manners)! I swear it’s even in the U.S. Constitution (You Shalt Have E-Mail was like, the 11th bill of right). What just about any idiot can have on their own personal piece of the web is waaaaaay…. worlds more — nay, UNIVERSESESESES more than the glorified hack in SL which is offline IM’s and notecard droppings.

(btw, what color are notecard droppings? do they smell? leave a stain ?!?)

This basic lack of service has forced us to use things like groups for more than we should need to. It’s forced business owners to go coocoo or die trying to keep up since we have no solid, archivable, formal means of contact with their in-world customers. Outside of out-world emails, of course. And all kinds of other types of contact opportunities to keep people connected. My brain just explodes with the possibilities.

I mean, like *duh*

….Oh, and while the bag is open, can we also get various levels of “friends”? And of course I still want more groups. Is there a way to make the amount of groups limitless? perhaps allow group owners to turn features on and off *cough*GROUPCHAT*cough* and allow for less stress on the database and slicker backend scripting. ?? !!

For the future of Second Life, I honestly hope LL is listening.

Windlight Settings for You! June 10, 2008

Look at me, being the suuuuuuper good blogger (/me pats self on back).

First, I want to thank everyone who’s been responding to my “poll” in the last post! Yay! And if you’re reading this and haven’t responded there yet, keep ‘em coming!

So a few weeks back I made a windlight preset which I do from time to time but most of them I don’t end up liking that much when I use it again. Except this one. Which I can’t stop using! It’s soft and purty and pinky and dreamy and sunrisey (except it’s actually sunset hehe).

It seems that sometimes when ppl exchange the preset xml files 2/3 of the time they won’t load on my machine properly so I have to dig into it and fix things and blah blah so to avoid that I’ve just taken screen shots of the sky and overlaid the settings in a graphic. So yes you have to create a new preset, name it, input my numbers and save it yourself but it’s well worth it I think!! (and yes, you will have to click the link to see the full sized version on flickr to see the numbers)

Here’s a shot of how it looks on objects and avies (FYI I am wearing a very very low wattage single face light in this shot but no PS work)

Any questions or problems feel free to ask. Enjoy!

Response Requested June 9, 2008

OK, I could do one of those Formal-Poll-Like Doo-Hickeys but I prefer your direct response via comment. So if you would oblige me PLEASE dear readers….

It’s short and sweet and easy but important to me, since I am a Geek and all. Additionally, it has to do with an upcoming post I’m planning. Additionally X2 it gives me a chance to make all my readers say Hi, including any lurkers (as a lurker on a majority of blogs I read, I get ya).

{–Questions–}

1. What OS Do you use (Windows/Mac/Linux)
2. What browser do you use (Firefox/Internet Explorer/Opera/Safari)
3. Do you use an RSS reader? (zOMG Yes/Sometimes/Rarely/No/What’s an RSS reader?)
3a. If Yes, what RSS reader do you use?

Thank you!!

Queen of the Dorks! June 9, 2008

So lately I’ve been humbled to receive many glorious accolades. Firstly, last week the super-cool Canimal put one of my pics up in her sim! (and right under Ms Willow Caldera’s nakkies pic! *pokes*)

And just now I found I’d won the vanquished title of “Dork of the Week!” from one of my new fave blogs (and not just cuz they have GREAT taste in WordPress templates *hrhrhr*), Who Let The Dorks Out. They’ve set up a Flickr group where you can submit all your favorite dork shots, which is heaven for me since I’m overflowing with ‘em (I have a bunch I have not uploaded yet…soon). The winning pic is below; it’s an older one but still makes me giggle everytime I see it.