Nanami and Sissi Design go Marketplace-only

As Maggie Bluxome reports, Nanami and Sissi Designs are closing their in-world store. I hope that they prosper; they make beautiful, finely-detailed dresses and other outfits, and I want to see them continue to do so.

In-world stores have advantages for customers and potential customers:

• An in-world store can show you how the product really looks in world.
• An in-world store can be a meeting place. Anyone you find there is likely to share your interest in the type of item the store sells, and you can trade information and landmarks and even make new friends.

That said, I understand why a creator might choose to sell solely via the Marketplace, and can't hold that choice against any creator. Linden Lab, maybe, but not the creators. I am amazed, especially given the RL economy, that anyone buys land given tier charges.

Shiny Toys

I was watching TV, and on a Saturday morning news show they were in a festive near-New Year's mood. One woman wore a top made of liquid lamé, and I felt a brief stab of jealousy--I'd love to have a liquid lamé top or gown in Second Life.

I'm hoping that will be possible once the work on normal and specular maps makes it into Second Life, and I also hope more generally that it will mean more realistic metallic objects and drive a long overdue stake through the heart of pre-baked highlights; now you need only wear your latex catsuit at the wrong time of day, stand on your head, or step half into shadow for an instant verisimilitude wreck as your suspension of disbelief hits a huge pothole.

(Is there a competition for most tortured metaphor in a blog post? I'd like to enter...)

Normal and specular maps (specular maps are the ones pertinent to shiny things; normal maps let you efficiently make a low polygon count shape look more detailed) are among the things mentioned in "A Look Back at Improvements in Second Life in 2012 and Forward to 2013", a December 20th Linden blog post. (The mesh deformer is conspicuous by its absence from said post, and I suspect I'm not alone in being less than happy about that.)

P. S. I know there are good arguments against using song titles as blog post titles, but as a Joni Mitchell fan I couldn't pass it up. :)

New World Notes must-read

"Cloud Party's Advantages Over Second Life for Content Creators (Comment of the Week)" is very much worth your reading.

Some time ago Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote about the obstacles to scripting in Second Life; Ezra makes the more general point about the hackery required in SL to do what should be simple things and contrasts with Cloud Party (which no longer requires Facebook to sign up--yay!).

Taking the plunge

I have bought a set of Lolas! Tango mesh breasts. I have yet to try them out--I have but taken the parts out of the box they came in and looked at the user manual (which comes in English and Spanish versions).

The Tango mesh breasts, like some other breasts, have two clothing layers, here called "top" and "bra". Apparently applicators for Tangos require a multi-step process:

1. Wear the applicator.
2. Click on the breasts and select the clothing layer to which you wish to apply the texture.
3. Click on the applicator to actually apply the texture.

rather than the more usual method of simply wearing the applicator. In the past I have been able to use a Lolas! applicator despite not wearing Lolas! breasts at the time, with some texture adjustment afterwards, but no more. I fear what this might mean if newcomers to breast attachment-friendly clothing devote their efforts solely to Tango.

I will experiment with the Tango breasts and put up some photos. There are some things I'd like to try out.

A Chat with Ceri Quixote

Just so you know: I am likely to be all gushy in this post.

I was wandering around this morning and had gotten into a conversation with a handsome and sharply-dressed fellow--I think he said he was about 3'9" tall. As we chatted, a group announcement came through with a new landmark for Quixote's Dream. It hadn't gone far, just enough to move a pesky sim crossing out of the way.

It occurred to my that my dapper chat companion might be interested in seeing the store. (Procrastinator that I am, I have yet to get myself properly set up with a giantess avatar.) Off I went, and after moving away from the landing point, back the TP offer went, followed quickly by his arrival.

It took a bit for things to rez, but then we saw the bridge leading to the shop. Partway across I noticed a figure that looked like she might be using a giantess avatar. "Cool, we can talk to a customer!" I thought, and we walked the rest of the way over and I saw the name tag. It was Ms. Quixote herself!

OK, here comes the twittering fangirl gushiness...

She was utterly breathtaking. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be present in person when she appeared at The Tides at a height of two hundred feet. The photos and the video are great, but they're just not like being there.

As a mesh avatar, her avatar doesn't have the obvious, verisimilitude-killing joins of early giant avatars.

I was able to converse, and we chatted. Alas, the gentleman who accompanied had to go, but we talked a bit more, though I suspect I was less than coherent. We did talk a little about clothing layers for the growing number of outfits for her giantess avatar.

Ms. Quixote graciously let me take a picture to publish here:

Thank you, ma'am, for your time, for letting me take the photo, and for your lovely work.

More from Penny Patton

A while back I pointed readers at Penny Patton's blog, The Digital Pasture, which had an important post about avatar proportions (which you should read, or reread, if only to point out the ways it's been misinterpreted).

Penny's done it again, this time with a multi-part series, "A Critical Look at Second Life". (Here's Part One.) I hope you will read it.

"We got both kinds [of music] here..."

"...country and western!" This famous line from The Blues Brothers may have been intended to show the wide variety of music liked at Bob's Country Bunker, but if that was its intent it was, I dare say, less than successful.

For a long time, that line has echoed in my head when I look at a possibly-useful application to see whether I could run it, only to find that it proudly supports both operating systems... Windows and Mac OS!

The recent surge in talk and support of prim/mesh breasts has been exciting... but then I'm reminded of that scene when I read the descriptions of some new clothing items and see that they support both prim and mesh Lolas!

I hasten to add that Lolas are, IMHO, among the very best breast attachments for a natural look, and they and their designer have my utmost respect... but there is more to the breast attachment market.

Clothes designers, thank you so much for supporting breast attachments. I hope you'll consider supporting multiple vendors' breast attachments.

Taking Inventory

I took a shot at reorganizing my inventory a while back. It definitely paid off, and I should go for another iteration, with a particular eye to paring down--but this time I'll be far better armed.

Don't miss Cheyenne Palisades's two-part series on Inventory Control (part 1, part 2). It's full of very good advice.

As promised...

...the Renee India "Retro Maxi" gown. (Hosiery and shoes not included, but I don't care. I love this gown!)

Fuschia boots will have to wait for now.

Merry Spam-mas?

I think that this Christmas season I'm getting a lot more spam... how sad.

Darn Blogger!

I thought I'd change things a bit... and boy, did I.

Somehow I managed to get the various gadgets underneath the blog posts rather than to the side of them, and now they won't move.

I hope to have things back in something approaching a reasonable shape soon.

UPDATE: Whew! I will try to bring back some sidebar items that didn't seem to want to move back into position, and I will rethink the masthead image, but at least I've overcome the major snafu. The odd part--nearly as I can tell, I had to edit the blog with Firefox to move items around. Under Google Chrome, they just did not want to go.

Yet another apology

The new Busted is out, which you should of course immediately read and admire. I, alas, am not there, and I apologize for that.

RL work (for which I am extremely grateful!) is cutting down on my SL time and writing time. Once I get settled in, I will once again write.

For now, you are in very capable hands--Misty Wraine, Zenith Hawke, and Angel Eulenberg appear in this month's issue, and I hope to see more from them in the future.

UPDATE: Sigh... I have to apologize for my apologies, having not mentioned Playful Howley's look back at the progression from Pong to Second Life. Don't miss it.

Hitting the big time

OK, we've pointed you at articles about breast attachments in various blogs, some of which are outside the "SL busty community". Now, there's one in the SL blog: New World Notes.

Iris Ophelia's fashion eye and virtual pen have turned to breast attachments, with "We Love Mesh Hands, Mesh Feet, Mesh Heads... Why Not Mesh Breasts?"  As with the aforementioned articles, the coverage is of Lolas!, in particular the new Lolas! Tango breasts. That saddens me a bit, as I don't think the other makers of prim breasts should be ignored... but given that, it is nonetheless a good article. The best sentence:

There's nothing wrong with [pixel sex or fetishism] necessarily, but they're often used as an excuse to push everything associated with them into a dark little corner of shame.

Alas, that enlightened attitude is not universal.

By all means, read the article, and comment if you are so inclined.

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comments. After one "mousebi" posted "...the bigger the boobs that means the smaller brain size you have.. just like in RL" and other similarly astute observations, "Eva" was one of several who responded--my thanks to all of you! From Eva's comment:

Oh, and mousebi? I wear a 38L bra IRL, and I don't have implants... but I do have a Master's degree and some old IQ tests with results in the genius range. Unlike you, I can also properly spell, capitalize, and punctuate in English -- and oddly enough, I don't use my breasts for any of that! Hey, you know what IS a fairly reliable indicator of stupidity, though? Prejudice like yours.