Give me the technological fix

Long ago in the early days of the ecology movement, the believers would decry the use of technology to solve pollution issues, scorning the "mere technological fix"--so the supposed problems weren't really the movement's motivation, otherwise fixing them would settle the matter.

I was reminded of this while googling around to see what in the way of wearing advertising people may have done in the past in Second Life, because the search happened to turn up the infamous "impeach Bush" extortionist. He would buy tiny plots of land, put up huge "impeach Bush" signs on them and then offer to sell the plots for a ridiculous price so those nearby could get their view back. When it happened, in late 2005, there was a huge brouhaha. Google "second life" "impeach bush" and you'll get over 27,000 hits.

Now, if you use Phoenix (or its descendant, Firestorm) or Imprudence? "Dang, that's an ugly sign." Right click, remove, derender... done. (At least that's the sequence for Firestorm, my current SL client of choice.) A would-be extortionist or griefer, nipped in the bud.

So... give me the technological fix, please.

Check out Cheyenne Palisades's blog for an example of applying mute and derender to an avatar.

A journey of a thousand miles...

...as the saying goes, though I prefer "All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small."

After a mere four years or so, I've created a texture for a prim breast clothing layer, using that of an Ubuntu T-shirt Allana Braveheart gave me as a model. Here it is:

So, it's a start. Now to figure out how to distort the flat texture to undo the distortion from applying them.

The text at least started out as a joke, but... in RL, people have rented out ad space on their heads, foreheads, eyelids, and abdomen. If one had the time to commit in Second Life, could one make money wearing advertising?

Nekos should like this...

Wearable Cat Ears Controlled, Wiggled by Brain

Foxbean Laboratories Nadine 1.5 prim breasts: a review

Big Booby Girls in Second Life started a series of very good reviews of prim breasts. Alas, the blog (and the Whimsy's Closet blog that it seems to have merged with) have gone dormant, so I will write a review of Foxbean Laboratories' "Nadine" breasts, release 1.5.

You should know this: Foxbean Liebknecht is a very dear friend, and she's given me some of her products. (I bought a set last night to make sure I know exactly what is in the box.) I will nonetheless do my best to write an objective review. Foxbean's work stands on its own; it doesn't require a biased review from me to prop it up.

Foxbean Liebknecht has been making prim breasts since the days before sculpted prims. In those days, clothing associated with prim breasts was built from prims, attached to the breasts, that you could associate a texture with and turn transparent if you wished.

The "Nadine" breasts, or as we will refer to them henceforth, "Nadines", use sculpted prims for a more natural, organic shape than is possible with the geometric prims that were all Second Life originally had. With the 1.5 release, they have a "clothing layer" to which you can apply a texture to match a top.

When you open up the box (and the box within it!), here's what you'll find:

• the Nadine prim breasts with all four combinations of with/without clothing layer and with/without bra
• plump, "torpedoes", and quad (!) versions with and without bra
• two versions of a tintable halter top; as with all tops that work with prim breasts, there's the usual sort of paint-on texture top one wears, and a texture one applies to the prim breasts
• a description of all the textual commands one can use to control the breasts
• a HUD and documentation for it; the HUD gives you control over size, position, skin (see below), color, and lactation
• a colorizer
• two shapes designed to work with the prim breasts
• documentation on texturing for the breasts and the bra
• a suckle attachment and documentation for it

That last item needs some explanation: it doesn't include the animation you might expect, but instead it attracts the prim breasts' lactation to it along a potentially gravity-defying path. I only used it once, to see what it does.

The above list doesn't mention an important feature: the breasts come with four skin textures for the breasts: pale, tan, bronze, and African-American. They work well with certain Redgrave skins.

(Speaking of skins, Shayna Korobase has been working on skins for prim breasts that should be available shortly. She has appliers that work for several brands, including Nadines. I look forward to seeing them!)

All that is well and good, but it tells you nothing about the most important thing: how they look. The nipple is a sculpted prim unto itself, while the breast proper includes the areola. That makes it easier to get a very realistic skin texture... but what I most dearly love about these prim breasts is their shape. I suspect that the name "Nadine" is a clue to their inspiration; there is a model named Nadine Jansen.

I have received many compliments about them. Here are some examples.

From a thread about prim breasts in Second Life at the Breast Expansion Archive forum:

One user, commenting on a photo I took in the Minoan Empire with the "torpedo" Nadines: "Those sculpty breasts look so real."

I replied: "That's why I love Foxbean's work. The 'Nadine' prim breasts are amazing, and IMHO Lolas are their only rival in SL for appearance."

Another comment: "I totally agree when it comes to natural looking Foxbean and Lola are the top, but I have to throw my chips in with eCorp on their creativeness and builds."

I respect that. All prim breast makers have my gratitude; some push the envelope, and different people have different interests.

A comment on the same photo, this time from flickr:

"You know, one thing that I like about you is that even though your breasts are a bit out of the standard norm, you take the time to make them look like they have actual gravity to them, instead of them being just big balloons floating on your chest. That little bit of detail is refreshing in a way."

About clothing availability: I've not seen many clothiers that explicitly mention Foxbean Laboratories compatibility, alas, but Nadine 1.5 breasts are compatible with eCorp installers, which are plentiful in the prim breast clothing world.

After all that, I must admit that Nadines have one disadvantage, for me at least.

Remember the HUD and its great variety of adjustments of prim breast position? One of those adjustments is to move the prim breasts closer to each other or farther apart. This adjustment works on all the prim breasts that come with the package--except for the set with the clothing layer. To work with that set, the actual shape, not just size, of the clothing layer would have to change so it would still fit precisely around the breasts themselves. I don't know whether that is possible.

Why does that make a difference? Because of the way Nadines are shaped. If you look at some prim breasts, you'll see that at the top, they come to a point above the sternum. Whatever one might think of that for verisimilitude, you can grow them to considerable size and they will still come to a point above the sternum. Nadines don't come to a common midpoint; they each have their own.

If, like me, you want to push the limits, you'll find those limits are tighter than they would be for some other prim breasts because of that difference. Make Nadines too large, and they'll attach at the top to your upper arms; make them larger still, and the tops won't be attached to your body at all. I must experiment further, but as I have them, they look unnatural with low-cut tops well before that size. My desire to be extremely well-endowed thus pushes me towards modest dress save in the Minoan Empire, where going topless is the social norm, letting me move the breasts closer together at larger sizes. I blame only myself for that; whatever prim breasts' design, I will push them as far as I can.

I hasten to add that Nadines aren't alone in having problems at extreme size. Lolas will stick out through your back if you make them too big! Even Implant Nation prim breasts have a difficulty, though they can be pushed much further than Nadines: the wrinkles that happen in sculpted prims at the "north pole" become rather noticeable.

So, in summary: if you want your figure to be controlled by others via various mechanisms, Nadines are not for you. If you want your breasts to look like they obviously have implants, Nadines are not for you. If, however, you want to look and feel beautiful, I can say that I use Nadines, and that is what they do for me. I've tried other prim breasts, briefly, but I always go back.

I shouldn't go on about appearance without showing it, so here are some photos, though of course you can see examples scattered through this blog. (Admittedly, using myself as a model has the disadvantage that you won't see a range of sizes.) NSFW photos are after the break.

UPDATE: Reine, in the comments, is absolutely right. I should mention that Nadine 1.5 costs L$300. As I write, the only place I know of to get them is at the lower level of the Busty Village Mall, at Phaedra (85, 32, 23).

The last of the above photos shows the issue with décolletage at large size.

There's an (empty) web site

BUSTed Magazine has a web site, http://www.busted-magazine.com/. Alas, at the moment, there's just a blank placeholder page there. I hope we can look forward to a web site as beautiful as the magazine.

Reine

I've mentioned my friend Reine before; it's past time I showed some photos.

Reine is a beautiful woman with impeccable taste not only in clothing, but in architecture, interior decoration, and landscaping. Yesterday she showed me around her new residence. Would that I'd thought to take pictures inside--I was utterly amazed at its opulent Middle Eastern style.

Reine herself:

Reine and her magnificent home:

Whimsy, Beautiful and Dangerous

I try to stick with the beautiful part; those hummingbirds are mean! Here's a view of Whimsy by night with a bit of fog.

A Reminder

I can't wear Minoan dress everywhere (really? :)).... but I can wear something that reminds me of Crete, to which I will always return.

New activity at Minka Made

If you keep an eye on the list of links over to the right, you'll notice that Minka Made is back on the list. That's because there's a recent post there. It's good news; Minka Pearl has put up a store for the summer that has most of her work for sale. Check it out.

Many thanks to Maggie Bluxome for noting this on her blog. If you don't read it, you really should!

"There's a new Mother Nature takin' over..."

The news came out yesterday--there's a new Earth Mother statue at her temple. I had to go see, and that gave me, if not a new experience, an experience I hadn't had in quite a while. I was headed for a temple and not rushing to try not to be late for a temple ceremony. (Very embarrassing, but I must admit to it to be honest. I forget about the passage of time, or underestimate how long it will take to get ready or get to the temple. My next goal is to tour the temples and collect landmarks so I am not late again. The temple ceremonies are very moving and beautiful; the empire's priestesses are amazing women who do a wonderful job.)

That combination meant that I was both looking for a place and not so desperate to get there that I didn't notice things along the way, and that led to my seeing a lovely unbuilt-up area in the city of Knossos. There I saw sheep peacefully grazing...

...and the path that took me there led on past high rocks and trees...

...ultimately to a dwelling. I didn't go there, lest I disturb anyone, but the path itself is a pleasure to travel, just to see the surroundings. It didn't lead to the Earth Mother temple, though, so I headed on my way and found it--and what a treasure I found at the end of my search!

Here I wish to my voice to the chorus in appreciation and gratitude to Beautiful Shamen for a magnificent statue.  Thank you, and thanks to Aeneas Anthony, architect of the city, for announcing this excellent work.

UPDATE: So you can compare, here's a photo I took of the temple back when I first visited the Minoan Empire sim:

UPDATE: It is a puzzlement. I went to the shrine to Europa, clicked "Create Landmark Here", could edit it to be labeled "Shrine to Europa"... no problem. Went to the various temples, clicked "Create Landmark Here", and could not edit it to save my life. Have I unintentionally offended the gods?

Only Myself to Blame

If you want to upgrade to the current version of Ubuntu and want to do it quickly, don't do it on the day it comes out. I did... and it took somewhere in the neighborhood of six hours, most of that downloading.

I'm up now, though. I will give Unity what I think is a fair try to see how I like it.

UPDATE: Unity's not bad. I think I could get to like it.

Like Income Tax?

New World Notes has a recent post that points out some interesting data. Tyche Shepard estimates that 80% of Linden Lab's revenue comes from 5,500 SL residents, and 73% comes from just 500 people.

It's rather reminiscent of the distribution of money the US government takes from us via income tax; a few at the top end pay the majority of that money.

And in a way, it is a tax; in the virtual world, it is essentially property tax, the money that landowners pay for the privilege of keeping the virtual land they buy. (Can anyone really be said to own property if they have to continually pay the government to keep it from being seized? I digress...)

On the other hand, it's not like a tax in one important way: unlike the government, you have the choice to not deal with Linden Lab. How many, and what kind of, missteps would it take to drive away the 500?

Bodice Ancient Clothing returns to the grid

Reine kindly let me know that Bodice Ancient Clothing has returned to the grid on The Cyclades sim. They have an assortment of Minoan-style dresses at prices varying from very reasonable to "how can they afford to sell it for this?".

I hope to have photos up soon, but along with all the other things that have been happening lately, either my router, DSL modem, or ISP is flaking out on me, which is making it harder to stay in SL and take pictures. Roseanne Roseannadanna was right.

I apologize in advance--even when I have photos, it's going to be a bear to make the short skirt versions usable for me, because I go to extremes about leg length, which makes glitch pants stick out beneath the hem of skirts (long skirts, too, but it's less noticeable).

UPDATE: I've managed to get photos with one outfit from Bodice at least. It's NSFW, so it's after the break.

Couple designs their dream house with Google Sketchup--are they part of the "3D elite"?

From The Tennessean:

Using Google Sketchup, a 3D modeling program usually used by architects, engineers and other design professionals, not homeowners, [Philippe and Thao Jeanty] drew the plans for their home and all of its high-tech, low-environmental-impact features on a computer screen.

 So, were these folks part of that "elite" that knows how to use 3D design software? Um, no, not as far as I can tell. Philippe is a physician; the article doesn't mention what his wife's occupation is. They ran into problems, but got quick answers when they asked questions on support message boards.

When mesh comes to the main grid, a lot of people who've spent time on the beta grid will already know how to use it. Others will learn, just as they have for sculpted prims. There is no elite.

UPDATE: The link to The Tennessean is broken; check out USA Today instead.

Apologies

I've not been on for a while... finally made it back to the Minoan Empire for a short time today. RL has been rather demanding lately.

I hope I'll be able to visit more regularly before long.

Must-read Crap

How to stop concurrency fall off and grow Second Life again from WHAT IS THIS CRAP? Be sure to read the comments, too.

Drunken Drow Wench contest

The Drunken Drow is running contests; one is to determine the Drunken Drow Wench. One votes with one's L$ for a candidate, and the one who garners the most donations (which all go to Relay for Life) wins.

My dear friend Susyn Stenvaag is with Team Dream to Live. She's a wonderful lady, in SL from back in the time when women often made their own prim breasts, which she did, and still does too.

I hope you'll consider voting for her. The candidates' photos are all up in a tent near Elvenshire 163, 23, 24; Susyn's photo is almost directly opposite the tent entrance. (While you're there, be sure to explore; Elvenshire is a very interesting place.

Natty Narwhal: T minus three weeks and counting

"I see you shiver with antici...... pation." --Frank N. Furter,. RHPS

Yay! Only three weeks until Ubuntu 11.04, "Natty Narwhal", is released. The beta is out now, though you should not install it on a computer you depend on. As with previous releases, we have a countdown graphic on the blog.

Civiltà Cattolica on hacking

I didn't expect this, any more than I'd have expected the Spanish Inquisition in the Monty Python sketch... but Father Antonio Spadaro has written an article on hacking (in the original sense, thank you very much, and Fr. Spadaro quotes ESR on the distinction!) for Civiltà Cattolica. I don't know of a link to the article proper, but Techworld has a post about it.

I know what I'll do for vacation--I'll work!

Working at a Renaissance fair, so I will miss the chariot races, alas. The charioteers of the Minoan Empire are a noble (and fun-loving) bunch; best of luck to you all.

Better Corsets Through Technology

The alpha capabilities of Viewer 2.0 permit a great improvement in shoes; they avoid the problem of dueling alpha textures that make some things that shouldn't be transparent transparent. (Now to see whether I can get improved versions of all my favorite shoes...)

The same facility improves the appearance of corsets greatly. No longer do you have "invisiprims" that make things behind them look transparent! The House of Alisha has new products that take advantage of the new feature, and I've bought a gown. I still have hopes of combining a tiny waist with prim breasts.

The Development of the Cool

My landlady and friend, Cheyenne Palisades, is a wise woman. Linden Lab could do a lot worse than handing new residents a copy of her blog post, "How to Be Cool in Second Life". (Though I have to admit to liking clackety shoes at a reasonable, i.e. low, volume.)

Break It Down

It's coming up on forty years since the publication of D.L. Parnas's classic paper on how to break a problem down into pieces. Slightly later, Glenford Myers wrote about software design and the principles of coupling and cohesion of modules. The whole of computer science teaches us: break a problem down into reusable pieces that communicate solely through well-defined interfaces.

And still the temptation is there, under the pressure of deadlines and demands from customers, to take the easy way out.

If the SL client honored those principles of minimal coupling and strongly cohesive modules, it would be easy to create new user interfaces, or keep an old one as an option. None of the brouhaha over being forced to use the 2.x UI would have happened. Hamlet Au writes about SL and the disabled, and how, ironically, a virtual world that lets one escape one's handicaps to an extent has a UI that can be hard for the disabled to use. One UI will do for the able-bodied, but there are many disabilities. Locking shifts? Sip and puff? Some analog of sonar for the blind, or a force feedback device that can be made to act like a Hoover cane? The potential users for a specialized interface form a small market that will be waiting forever for Linden Lab to create something for them. Make it possible for anyone to create a user interface, and people will.

Of course, we're partly at fault. Darn it,. the problem we've found is the most important in Second Life, and must be fixed now! [Insert favorite threat of what we'll do if it's not fixed this very instant here.] Just piling on more of that motivation to take the short cut, the easy way out... the fix that violates the interface, sneaks a peek at data that should be hidden.

Tateru Nino writes about the issue, and I've seen comments on web sites of third-party viewers about the amount of coupling between the UI and the rest of the client.

Would you be willing to accept some delay in fixing your favorite bug if LL would take the trouble to do it over right?

OK, so I tried it...

...and, as Queen Victoria would say, we are not impressed.

I grabbed the Snowstorm SL client that supports point-and-click to move, and enabled it. Then I tried two things:

• clicking (or rather, double clicking) on a point with an obstacle on the direct line between me and the point
• clicking on a point with water on the direct line between me and the point

For the first, well, at least it was smart enough to stop when I hit the chair. For the second, into the drink I went.

I shudder to think what would happen at a store hundreds of meters in the air had I tried to cross a gap.

The sole virtue, IMHO, is that enabling point and (double) click doesn't preclude the old standard arrows to move, so on the rare occasion that it proves useful, you can use it, and stick with arrows the rest of the time. I didn't try interrupting it, as you'd definitely want to do if someone unexpectedly appeared in or walked into that straight line path that is all it knows to do.... and that is supposed to be the savior of Second Life?  Puh-leeeze.

P.S. Am I opposed to it, as per Hamlet Au? Only when I think of the opportunity cost. What actually useful things were put off or discarded in favor of... this?

BUSTed featured in Gwenwifer Parx's blog

Maggie's already mentioned it, but... BUSTed is becoming more widely known!

Gwenwifer Parx's elegant blog (in Portuguese) has an article about the magazine. Ms. Parx contacted Maggie, and the result is a pleasure to look at and to read. Brava, Maggie!

Compatible Latex

For those who like latex clothing and prim breasts: Latex Web Inc. makes some outfits that are compatible with Lolas and eCorp prim breasts. (I have indulged in SL--I really liked one outfit that was very reminiscent of what a superheroine might wear--but can't imagine how anyone could bear to wear latex clothing in RL.)

Must-read from Dale Innis

Second Life’s Transformation into Profitable Chicken Farm Seriously Threatened by Second Life Users’ Hate and Fear of Change

A spot-on parody of Hamlet Au's recent spate of postings about how vast hordes of new users would come to Second Life if only one could click to move like the Sims and Second Life were integrated with Facebook, and that the worst enemy of SL's expansion are its current users.

Oh, dear...

A local establishment that does heating and cooling work is having an event that's unfortunately named for those of us in Second Life. It involves a free furnace, so it's their... yes, their "freenace" event.

If you can't have a sunken cathedral...

...how about a semi-submerged pipe organ?

A dear friend, Reine, collects Second Life musical instruments, including really gorgeous stringed instruments like oud, pipa, vihuela de mano, lute, theorbo, and the like. (Drums, too; she has a sweet tabla.) But I'd never have expected this...

So for a while I took pictures with various Windlight settings while she played gorgeous baroque organ music partially underwater at the beach on Crete. Great fun!

UPDATE: Oops! Reine properly corrects me in the comments; she has an archlute, not a theorbo. 

UPDATE: Nae, Reine may well have told my absent-minded self where she got the pipe organ, but I don't remember. Peeking at SL Marketplace turns up a fair number of pipe organs. Help, please? [tries for the big puppy dog eyes look]

New (to me, at least!) Prim Breast Maker

Laurana Newell kindly sent out word that HKM is making and selling prim breasts. They have a vendor at Wesh Beauties. I have yet to knowingly see anyone with them on, and it will be a bit before I can afford to buy and try out a pair, but I will post what I find out as I find it out.

BTW, while the prim breasts may be new (and I think they are, judging by the bug fixes mentioned on the web site, HKM isn't new to Second Life. I've purchased another item they make, called "Boob Tops Maser [sic] v2", though microwaves are not involved as far as I can tell. It looks like it's intended to make it easy to create tops for prim breasts, but the documentation suffers greatly from very definitely not being written in the author's native language.

The Mystery of Bodice Ancient Clothing Solved

Here's what happened: Bodice Ancient Clothing now exists only on Second Life Marketplace.

There's a certain logic to it. No tier, no rent, just income... or does Linden Lab charge for a presence in the Marketplace? On the other hand, it does eliminate the social act of shopping, and thus may also miss some sales--aren't you more likely to buy if you're with other people, chatting and shopping?

The Real Loser

Hamlet Au writes today in New World Notes about virtual world racism as discussed at this year's SXSW, and someone goes on in the comments about how such things are mostly fake, arising from him (or her) and people like him (or her) who get their pathetic jollies by saying whatever it takes to get a rise out of people.

In a perverse way. I appreciate that, and I hope that warning about such people is made a part of the information given to newcomers to Second Life. Also, I'd like to see his (or her) ilk become known as the real losers of virtual worlds... not the stereotypical guy in the basement, but those unable to think of any other form of diversion than being a jerk.

Earth Mother

A plea to hairmakers and jewelers

If you make items appropriate for the era of the Minoan civilization, please consider setting up vendors in the shopping area on the Minoan Empire sim. Hair especially; it would be nice to try on a demo while wearing clothing appropriate to the era, but that clothing is liable to get one at best a talking to, at worst banning from stores elsewhere. Thanks.

Conclusion jumping, streaming audio version

Well, I spoke too soon. I misunderstood what was going on with the music I was hearing; it wasn't streaming, it was just a really long sound effect.

So no, Firestorm does not play streaming audio on 64-bit Linux systems. Darn it.

Cover Art?

Two and a half years ago, I took a picture with some particle generator attachments in the depths of Chakryn Forest, and I was reminded of some of the cover art work done by the great Frank Kelly Freas. (Only reminded, to be sure; as the comment says, it's a humble nod to one of Freas's styles.)

The more recent photo I took brought the earlier one back to mind, and something else: I can visualize a title superimposed on it, can't you? I'm sure that the permission and IP issues some talked about in the past for Second Life photography in general would return with a vengeance here, but I wonder--has anyone used a Second Life photograph for cover art of a book that is not about Second Life or virtual worlds?

Bodice Ancient Clothing--has it disappeared, or just moved?

I'm looking to increase my wardrobe of Minoan clothing--wonderful as RFyre's Ondami dress is, variety is a good thing. In my search I came across some items from Bodice Ancient Clothing that looked promising. I peeked at the SLURL (I don't have my browser set up to deal with those yet), entered the coordinates... and teleported, as the song goes, "way up in the middle of the air". Thank goodness Firestorm has a one-button "TP me back!" function.

So... SL Marketplace data are at best old; at worst, the store's gone. If you know what happened to Bodice Ancient Clothing, I'd love to hear from you.

Minoan Empire a featured sim!

As I type, the Minoan Empire sim is a featured sim in the historical role-playing category. Congratulations and thanks to all those who have made it the beautiful and inviting place that it is.

Ancient Minoan Civilization ("Creep" by Radiohead)

You may have seen things on YouTube like rap versions of the intro to the Canterbury Tales... well, here's a quick look at Minoan civilization to the tune of Radiohead's "Creep".

For a rather more serious overview, don't miss the museum in the Minoan Empire sim.

I don't think I can do better than this...

So... I did let my fingers get a little pruny trying out Windlight settings, and I think I've done about as well as I can do for now. I've posted pictures taken from behind before, so we'll skip the break this time.

It's all too easy to forget where we came from. We get used to improvements, impatient, and always look at what we don't have. "Why's mesh taking so long?" and so forth. To remind myself of how far Second Life has come, here's the very first photo I took on the grid, about five and a half years ago:

I was so proud of it... then... and I remember how amazing the sim seemed, with railings and stairs and benches, and a little bar at which you could sit and watch the ship in the distance, and the art exhibit you could walk through.

must-read--er, view--at the Alphaville Herald

I'm not sure just what's going on at the Alphaville Herald. It seems that articles are getting to be few and far between, and somewhere around half of them are photo spreads of avatars in various stages of (un)dress, typically accompanied by a pile of catty comments. That said, I recommend strongly that you check out this article, which treats a subject with every iota of seriousness that it deserves. I hope you enjoy it as much as I. (Oops, that's tranya....)

Minoan and Second Life skirt construction

I'm amused by something I've just read. A web site about the famous Minoan "snake goddess" figurine describes the construction of the skirt as follows:

The skirt worn by the figure is comprised of seven overlapping flounces; a flounce being a strip of cloth gathered and sewed on by its upper edge only. The lower edge of the first six flounces overhang the upper edge of the one below. The bottom edge of the lowest touches the ground, concealing the figure's feet.

When I read this I had to smile; after all, what are prim skirts in Second Life but flounces just as this web site describes them? Coincidence? Perhaps, but I like it.

Looking for a tree

I'm looking for a tree in Second Life, and I'm having some difficulty, because while in the US, where I learned about it, it's called a "mimosa tree", it's not really a mimosa... and SL advertisements don't use Linnean names, alas.

What I want is Albizia julibrissin, a tree that flowers with countless little pink puffballs that smell heavenly. (Yes, I know SL doesn't have smell-o-vision yet--is there a JIRA entry for it? If I find the tree, though, I'll go looking for the essential oil and take a whiff while I stand under the virtual tree.)

If you know of such a tree available in Second Life, please let me know. Thanks.

Whew!

The other day I was scared; Firestorm suddenly had around 2.1 GB of RAM and climbing. I relogged, and things were back to normal, and they have been that way since. So, Firestorm isn't immune to the problem, it just doesn't seem to happen as often. What was different about that run? It is still a puzzlement. 

UPDATE: It's happened a time or two, but last night all was well. Not sure what I can do other than keep my fingers crossed, but that makes it awfully hard to type.

Spelling

There's been a spike in blog views the past few days. I suspect it has something to do with posting about something other than how SL clients are crashing on me right and left.

Search terms are a lot less varied than they used to be, and "cheesy phrases" is nowhere to be found. Strangely, the top one is now my name... but misspelled. By far the most people who came across the blog were searching for "melissa yeuxdeux". If you do that, Google will show the results for "melissa yeuxdoux", so you'll find what you're presumably after.

I wonder what would happen if you had to search for Μέλισσα Βαθυκόλπος instead. :)

Another, Admittedly Minor, Goal Reached

I finally got around to doing something I'd promised myself I'd do for a long while, I think since water reflections came to Second Life. Thank you to the people at Second Life who made Windlight happen and the various graphics settings that make the world look as good as it does, and thank you to the people working on the Firestorm SL client.

"So what was it, already?" you say? It's a photo, and NSFW, so it's behind the break.

(UPDATE: If I'm not careful, my fingers will get all pruney from staying in the water so long. So many Windlight settings to try, so little time...)

Sigh... I'd forgotten

There I was just offshore on the beach in the Minoan Empire sim, with striking Windlight sky and water settings, and I took the pictures... and tripped over VWR-7672 again.

I guess I was elated at having been in SL for more than an hour without crashing or bringing my computer to its knees, and I forgot. Next time, I'll pull back the resolution. Sigh. I can't ask you to vote for the JIRA entry any more, but could you please watch it? This bug basically kills serious SL photography.

UPDATE: the entry to watch is VWR-24178, which is apparently the real bug; it looks like they're well on the trail to fixing it. *crosses fingers* The workaround for now: if you have "global illumination" enabled, don't make the image size larger than the SL client window.

A bit more on Firestorm

Speaking of exercising in Crete, I had a strange experience that I hope will cease being strange. I heard the music! We decided that the gods had smiled on us, but later on... Hmmm...

$ file bin/do-not-directly-run-firestorm-bin

bin/do-not-directly-run-firestorm-bin: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, not stripped

Gee, so it is possible to hear streaming music on a 64-bit Linux system with a 32-bit SL client! I hope other SL client makers will pay attention. For now, it's all the more reason to switch to Firestorm.

Evening on the Beach in Crete

After such a long frustrating time with stays in Second Life tightly limited by crashing clients, it was a joy to spend a pleasant while on the beach in the Minoan Empire sim. I wandered out to the beach and was greeted by Myklos, who kindly invited me to join him in a pleasant evening's exercise on the beach. We chatted, and soon were joined by Chrissy, JackSparrow7, Stef, Titjana, Reine (who graciously played for us), and others. We chatted and exercised and meditated, and eventually were joined by the great architect of the sim, Aeneas Anthony.

It was the best time I've spent in SL for a while; thank you to all who were there and made it so thereby. I invite you, Dear Reader, to go to the Minoan Empire sim; you'll see the effort and the love put into its construction.

It's amazing how readily one can find someone to paint a fresco... :) I felt that the scene deserved to be preserved. Since we were dressed in Minoan style, I'll put it after the break. Caution: NSFW, in modern times at least.

Silly Me

Well, I thought I could make the masthead image wider and get rid of the strip down the right hand side... so I took a screenshot, opened it up in GIMP, selected the masthead image and the strip together, copied and pasted, and then redid a portion of the photo I started from, making sure it was that size, and replaced the old masthead image.

And the strip is still there.

Ah well, I tried.

POM Dependency?

There was a full moon last night. Maybe that's why Firestorm worked for me last night and this morning, delivering a consistent, if not astounding, 10 or so fps at ultra graphics settings without laying waste to available RAM.

I'll fight off the urge to not change anything lest things go to heck in a handbasket again, and try other clients. How could this happen if it's my computer?  OTOH, it's had to believe a server issue would make clients allocate huge amounts of memory. It is, as a fictionalized King of Siam would say, a puzzlement.

UPDATE: Cleared cache on, and started up, Kirsten's client's latest build. It took a while to pull down the textures and information on surrounding structures, after which I started walking around. It was reasonably responsive for a minute or two, and then it took the plunge. The system monitor showed it allocating RAM at a rate of about 100 MB every twenty seconds, 1.3 GB and climbing. I signed off.

UPDATE: Tried Firestorm again... and it worked. On for what seemed like forever compared to recent fiascos (which probably means it was maybe fifteen or twenty minutes), and the most RAM it took up was a bit over 800 MB. I even fired up the System Monitor and saw its RAM consumption decrease occasionally! Res miranda... oops, wrong civilization. This was with graphics cranked, including, once I found the knob on Firestorm, global illumination. I think I've made my choice.

The Road Goes Ever On

Donald Swann (of Flanders and Swann) set some songs based on the Lord of the Rings, published under the title The Road Goes Ever On. Someone once said to him that it must be hard to come up with tunes for the songs, since they already exist. "Where?" Swann asked. "In Middle-Earth," the fellow replied.

I'm continuing down my road to my goal, namely being able to stay in SL for more than a few minutes at a time. I detached an AO rather than just deactivating it, and I've purged a couple of thousand items from my inventory. I think that may have helped, but I'm not sure.  Clearing cache seems to help... peeking at ~/.kirstens s20/cache shows data.db2.x. running near 107 MB. Is that excessive?

UPDATE: Things were nice for a while this evening, nearly 30 fps. Then I moved, and down to 6 or 7 fps it went. Client RAM usage was up around 1.3 GB.  Anyone know of a good Linux 3D graphics benchmark program that I can fire up and let grind? (Yes, Phoronix does. I'll be running those this weekend. I could believe my graphics card may be throttling itself under load, but why would that cause clients to allocate RAM like there's no tomorrow?)

What the font?

So what's with the masthead font? That "A" looks downright uncial, very anachronistic.

Well, I didn't want to use one of those cheesy pseudo-Greek display fonts that use a capital sigma for E; that's tacky and disrespectful. If I wanted to match the Minoan Empire signage, I'd use Lithos bold--it would be appropriate, since Lithos's designer, Carol Twombly, was inspired by ancient Greek inscriptions. But I can't afford to spend money on fonts at the moment, and I certainly wouldn't steal it.

So, I went with a freely-copyable font that is simple and relatively plain. I think it works.

Where to go on Whimsy

I wish I had a Linden for every time I welcomed a friend to Whimsy and then fumbled around trying to find a particular wonder to show him or her. (That's the thing about Whimsy; there are so many. If there were just one, it would be easy to find.)

Fortunately, a new issue of the Whimsical Times is out, and it gives a landmark to a place with two doors, presenting you with a choice: beautiful or dangerous? (Beware; there are places on Whimsy that are both.) Now I'm prepared.

La lutte continue...

This morning, Phoenix was zipping right along. No shadows, but I'm starting to get frustrated, and a 1.x based client probably has the alpha textures versus shadows bug.

So, this afternoon I was going to use it again. The chariot races in the Minoan Empire are always a pleasure to attend, and I would be chatting, not taking pictures. Fire up Phoenix, sign back on at home, to change into appropriate Minoan clothing before teleporting... and Phoenix grabbed all available RAM, slowed to a crawl, and crashed, where it hadn't just hours ago. Kirsten's client? Ditto. 2.5? Ditto.

Once more on 2.5, and I was able to tell it to clear cache, and then sign off. On again, and things worked much better, but for how long? (After all, I'd only run Phoenix once; how quickly does it accumulate stuff?) We'll see.

UPDATE: I happened across a message on the Kirsten's client group about reducing the amount of graphics RAM used for textures. I thought I only had 512 MB of graphics RAM and Kirsten's client was using that much. so I pulled it back to about half that. Turns out I was wrong; the card has 1 GB of RAM. Did it help anyway? I'm not sure; I'd already cleared cache, so any improvement may have been due to that. I had the statistics bar and the system monitor resources graphs up to watch CPU usage. There were periodic swings from somewhere around 20 fps down to under 2 fps. One of the CPUs was pretty well maxed out, and the others fluctuated. A lot of RAM was in use, but not all of it, at least not by the time I called it quits for the night. I'm not sure what to try next.

Long overdue

I've finally done a couple of things that I should have done long ago:

• I've finally updated my profile image. (That's it above.)
  
• More importantly, and may King Minos forgive my oversight in not having done so until now, I've added the Empire to my picks. In his wisdom, he prefixed an exclamation point to the pick label, assuring its rightful position at the head. (Picks are sorted alphabetically.)
• Changed the blog--new template, new masthead.

OK, three things... and I don't have an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, so it won't go any further.

Minoan Culture... with some help from Mattel?

Wandering about googling "Minoan", one comes across a serious web site, The Role of Women in the Art of Ancient Greece, with a page titled "Minoan Culture and its Women". The discussions are interesting, and there are references at the end (though many of the links are broken, alas)... and then there are the photos of how various scenes from Minoan life might have appeared, re-enacted, so to speak, by dolls.

It's well-intentioned, but the results are surreal. (It didn't help that I read "In this courtyard processions and dances occurred. These are believed to have been line dances..." and immediately had a mental image of snake priestesses doing the Achy Breaky. Utterly unfair of me--line dances go way back--but it's what came to mind.)

So... read it in the spirit it was intended, and thank you to the site's author.

"Hello, I must be going..."

Lately I've been signing on and shortly afterward apologizing and signing off before I crash. Basically, KirstenLee Cinquetti's SL client is unusable, at least for me. It sucks down all available RAM like a Hoover and the frame rate plummets to around 1.5 fps. Minimizing and unminimizing the window, or moving it to another workspace, brings only short-lived relief to the frame rate.

It's a darned shame; that client can't be beat for graphics... but that doesn't do any good if I can't use it.

Imprudence is fast, and there's a 64-bit version of it, which means that streaming audio works! (Attention Linden Lab and some of the folks commenting in Kirsten's forum: ia32libs doesn't include 32-bit versions of every library.) Unfortunately, the current Imprudence still has an old bug with alpha textures and deferred rendering.

I'm now trying out the 2.5 beta. So far, it looks good.

UPDATE: It's looking even better. Found the knob to twist to turn on "global illumination", and nothing bad happened; still getting 20+fps on the beach in the Minoan Empire, and the client's only using a bit over 500 MB of RAM. (It's a sign of my age that I shudder at seeing "only 500 MB".)

UPDATE: It's not that simple. Started up the 2.5 beta, and it promptly sucked down 3 GB of RAM and crashed. Twice in a row. So, is it code common to both clients, or is it something about my computer? Perhaps it's time to fire up memtest86+ and let it run all day.

UPDATE: I did. Came home just as it was finishing pass #10 over all 4GB. Zero errors; it's not RAM problems.

UPDATE: OK, I tried a 32-bit Sabayon Linux Live CD (since it comes with the proprietary nVidia driver). It made no difference; Kirsten's client grabbed all available RAM, the frame rate slowed way down, and it crashed. So it's not something about running 64-bit Linux. Now, I do have an applet that shows the CPU frequency (at least one of them, anyway); it's set to slow down if it's not doing very much. Maybe that affects the frame rate, but no way would it cause the client to leak RAM like a sieve.

Sigh. If I run 2.5 beta over and over again until it crashes, do you suppose it will get the problem a little more attention?

Don't Do That!

My landlady, Cheyenne Palisades, IMed me. Alas, I wasn't online at the time, but fortunately, I wasn't anywhere near IMs being capped, and they got through.

Turns out that someone was rezzing nude prim breasts near the house I rent. Note: Whimsy and its environs (Greater Whimsy?) are G-rated. Says so right at the top of the SL client display. No public nudity is permitted. The person doing the rezzing was bounced, and rightly so.

Common sense... too bad it's not more common.

Must-read at Maggie Bluxome's blog

OK... like some other blogs, it's all must-read, but you should look at this post in particular. Please support the cause.

Μέλισσα Βαθυκόλπος λαχανιάζει (/me gasps)

The creators who make Second Life something more than open fields and seas never fail to amaze me... the second link Google turned up when handed "second life minoan hair" was to an SL Marketplace page for "Tiny ioumane Minoan female hair". Yes, hair for a tiny female Minoan avatar, and it is lovely and too cute for words. Follow the link so you can look and say whatever the Greek equivalent of "Awwwww...." is, and kudos to Noyl Boucher, creator of this delightful avatar and hair!

UPDATE: A friend who was also taken by the tiny Minoan avatar kindly let me take a picture... isn't she cute? (The site is very brightly lit; I don't really shine like one of the golden maidens Ἥφαιστος fashioned to aid him. Also, apologies yet again for the low resolution.)

Minoan Women's Hair

SkyShop HairResort has quite a variety of historical and fictional hair (that didn't sound quite right...), among which is the Posedaia Minoan hair. I have yet to edit the various sets of bangs into position and size, but even so, I really like the look.

Apologies for the really small image; that pesky SL snapshot bug ruined all the photos I took bigger than 800x600 (!), and the face was a small part thereof. If I'd zoomed in, I fear the results would be very distorted. (Try taking a RL photo zoomed in on someone's face. Better yet, shoot a mannequin's face, lest the subject see the result.)

UPDATE: The SL Marketplace won't let me write a review there, because I didn't buy the hair through the Marketplace, so here's my review: It's beautiful, the hair and the decorative beads are tintable, and the closest thing I have to a complaint is that the vendor shows two hair colors, so that my silly self had the mistaken notion that, like other hair vendors, you have to buy multiple items to get more than one color. One suffices! Wear the HUD to let you easily set things to your liking.

Once more, with thrift

Let's try for something less expensive but still plausible, shall we?

• BIOSTAR N68S3+ AM3 NVIDIA MCP68S Micro ATX AMD Motherboard and AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor; a Shell Shocker at newegg.com today for $90, which is $30 off the usual price. It's no Phenom, or even a quad core, but reviews of the CPU are almost universally positive, some saying they've successfully overclocked to 3.5 GHz. The motherboard is low end (no gigabit ethernet, won't handle a CPU that takes more than 95W, PCI Express 1.0, DDR3 1333) but serviceable.
• HITACHI Deskstar H3IK10003272SP (0S02860) 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive for $80.
• Same DVD burner as before, for $20. They're pretty much a commodity nowadays.
• Same case as before... but this time the default power supply will do.
• Same RAM as before.
• Palit NE5S450SF1101 GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) Sonic 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card for $130. Decent mid-range card, nice and short to fit in the cute little Micro ATX case, doesn't require more than the X-QPACK2 power supply can deliver.

So... ignoring shipping and handling, that's $480, I believe... or $510 if you don't get the Shell Shocker special. There's a motherboard that has gigabit ethernet and PCI Express 2.0 (allowing the graphics card to shovel data as fast as it's designed to), the BIOSTAR TA880GB+, for $80; with the Regor at its stock price, that replaces $90 with $140 and thus takes you up to $530--but since the Shell Shocker is almost done, it's fairer to compare it with the $510 price. If you're going that far, though, you might as well go ahead and get the Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H for $100 and future-proof yourself with USB 3.0, eSATA, and 6 Gb/s SATA, so $550.

I feel a little better now.

And Now, for Something Completely Different

Hamlet Au at New World Notes kindly gave me a hat tip in his post on Egyptians from around the world meeting at the Egypt sim. (Thank you!)

This is an apology to any who followed the hat tip link here in hopes of finding more information about the matter. (*blush*) I write about things going on in the world, but only once in a very great while. For information about Second Life and current events in First Life, one should go elsewhere. I will attempt to find some places and link to them.

UPDATE: Alas, things have turned ugly, thanks to the pro-Mubarak forces, or should one say mercenaries? From commondreams.org:

Anonymous sources at a state hospital and at the Ministry of Petroleum said employees were told to join the regime supporters in demonstrations Wednesday.... Today, several protesters said they had been offered by ruling National Democratic Party members LE50 to join the pro-Mubarak group as they passed by the television building on the Corniche.

That's 50 Egyptian pounds, a bit over $8.50 US. I wonder whether anyone's being paid for pro-Mubarak signs at the Egypt sim?

UPDATE: A statistic I've seen repeatedly is that half of the population of Egypt lives on less than $2 per day... so $8.50 is enough for one of that half to live on for the better part of a week, if that's true.

Khaire Nymphe Thea ( Χαίρε Νύμφη Θεά )

I happened across this video today and thought I'd share. The hymn is from the 19^th century, but the author was, the poster says, "a dedicated scholar, well versed in the ancient texts and in the liturgy of the early Byzantine Church.... St. Nektarios was a scholar and an expert in both Byzantine liturgy and the pre-Christian sacred texts and would have been well aware of the original context when he composed this hymn."

The accompanying video features ruins of ancient buildings and dancers in clothing that you'll recognize from the reproductions of ancient artwork in the Minoan Empire sim if you've been there.

I've done it...

I've changed my display name. It's now "Μέλισσα Βαθυκόλπος", "deep-bosomed Melissa". (Spelling and grammar corrections are gratefully accepted.) I hope it will do well in the Minoan Empire, and we'll see if I now get asked "Do you know what that means?" by Greek speakers instead of Francophones. :)

Now to see if I can find that book of instruction in Homeric Greek...

Yet Another Computer Pricing Exercise

A few days ago the reviews started coming out for nVidia 560-based cards. They may be the new sweet spot for price/performance, as they're coming out at around $250, close to what 1 GB 460s initially cost.

It has been a while since I calculated how much a computer for running Second Life might cost, and hearing about the 560 made me look once again into the question.

I've definitely splurged this time around, made worse by buying a case with power supply and then having to buy another power supply to meet the requirements of the system. (Please, Apevia, consider selling the X-QPACK2 without a power supply!)

Here we go:

• EVGA 01G-P3-1561-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti FPB (Fermi) 1GB graphics card for $250. For the same price, Gigabyte has a more overclocked version, but it has heatpipes that stick out of the top, and I was afraid it wouldn't fit in the case because of them.
• AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition Deneb 3.5GHz Socket AM3 for $186. Can't really justify six cores yet.
• GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-UD2H AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 motherboard for $100. I doubt that a rotating hard drive can move 6 Gb/s, but SSDs will come down enough in price someday...
  
• G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 for $75.
• Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB for $80. I feel guilty about the power consumption of the graphics card, OK? :)
• LG DVD±RW SuperMulti Drive Black SATA Model GH22NS50B for $16(!).
• APEVIA X-QPACK2-NW-BK/500 Black Aluminum Body/ Front Mask MicroATX Desktop Computer Case for $85. Anybody want the 500W power supply that comes with it? *sigh* I went to the Antec power supply calculator page, and the 560 is too new to have an entry there, so I said 570 to play it safe, and it recommended a 550W PS... and the Apevia PS with the case isn't modular, and... if I bat my eyelashes and say "pretty please", will Apevia consider selling just the case? *sigh* Probably not, but then, the other Micro ATX cases I looked at that didn't come with power supplies cost nearly as much or even more, and have their own issues.
  
• Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W for $90. It's (semi) modular, it is 80 plus bronze rated, and it suffices for our purposes.

Total damage, not including shipping, $882. (I've used rounded figures, so they may not quite add up.) Eep! That's more than I was hoping, but it should run SL very nicely.


UPDATE: The nVidia 560 was too new for the Antec Power Supply Calculator to know about it when I first did this, but now it's there, and I redid the calculations. Judging by it, the graphics card manual, and Apevia's description of the power supply that comes with the QPack-2, I don't think it's necessary to buy another power supply, if you can get away with one of those Molex-to-PCI Express adapters, since technically, the PCI Express power connector includes a voltage not available on the four-pin Molex connectors, though some cards using that connector don't use that particular voltage, so sometimes you can get away with it. If that's the case, that's $90 off the cost (and probably a significant hunk off the shipping, since power supplies are heavy).

Serendipity strikes

One of the very first things you do when you begin your Second Life is pick a name. At the time I did so, at least, you were presented with a list of last names to choose from, and could select any first name not already chosen. (That last may have given rise to the flock of names with digit strings at the end, since that's a common way of making a name for a login id unique. "OK, if I can't be Fred, I'll be Fred0123456.") "Yeuxdoux" appealed to me. It's French (and yes, I know what it means; faire les yeux doux à quelqu'un means to make eyes at someone, to look amorously at someone).

"Melissa"? I liked it, and nobody had chosen "Melissa Yeuxdoux", so there I was. Some in SL refer to those who share the same last name as "cousins"; I have few cousins in SL. A search for Yeuxdoux in names just now turned up only five of us, though some may well have left over the years, and I can understand a desire to avoid unwanted attention and hence not choose "Yeuxdoux" as a last name.

[Stock footage of pages falling off calendars and clocks spinning quickly...]

Years go by, and the Minoan Empire comes to Second Life. It's beautiful, and Minoan fashion is encouraged, a joy in the days before prim breasts with clothing layers. I fall in love with it, though my loyalty to a dear friend and wish to support the endless delight and inventiveness of Whimsy keep me renting there.

More time goes by, and the "display name" comes to Second Life, amid some controversy... hey, this is the situation display names are made for! I should have an appropriate name to go by in the Minoan Empire, but what to choose? We know that the Minoans spoke Greek, or at least there are surviving writings in Greek in the curious syllabary we call "Linear B", but Linear B tablets hold the words of the ancient counterparts of Adrian Monk, not of a Homer or Hesiod. "Three tripods, one with a broken leg... two amphoras of honey for the temple..." Not many clues there.

It turns out, though, that while "Yeuxdoux" is of course millennia too late, "Melissa" might be just the thing. (Pause to slap my forehead, since I should have recognized the Latin and Spanish cognates.) Now to see whether there were patronymics (or maybe matronymics for the Minoan culture?), or place names or occupational names. ("Then Joe said..." "Joe who?" "You know, Joe, Fred's son", or "You know, Joe from Hotzeplotz", or "You know, Joe the shoemaker"...)

P.S. The page linked from "Minoan fashion" curiously describes the Minoan woman we see in surviving art as similar to the Victorian ideal: "The figure of the Minoan woman, with large breasts, large hips, and tiny waist, was very similar to the female shape that came into fashion during the late 1800s C.E. , when women laced themselves into tight corsets to make their waists small and wore hoops under their skirts to increase the size of their bottom half."

P.P.S. If you have any interest in Greek names, by all means visit the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names.

P.P.P.S. Maybe I should think up an epithet. (If you followed the link, I mean the first meaning.) Μέλισσα Βαθυκόλπος?

Maggie Boots

Maggie Bluxome is beautiful and impeccably stylish... and the boots at Bad Kitty that bear her name share those properties. Check them out at Maggie's blog.

3D? You wouldn't think it.

Second Life is a 3D virtual world. Those of us who can, go out or online and spend what we can afford on graphics cards that will display SL as we would like. We all read the reviews and press our faces against the virtual windows of the storefronts with the cards we can't afford.

So why do some think the ideal SL photograph obliterates SL's 3Dness?

I posted about it when I first came across it. Alas, the excellent Ophelia Drowns is now invitation-only,. so you may not be able to see the images in the "Picture Perfect" post there... but you can see "GoGo's Lighting Tips" on the Juicy Bomb fashion blog. The goal: a photo that utterly flattens the image. The model looks like a dress-up paper doll in some Dover Press collection, without the hard-edged style.

Ah, but those posts are from years ago. Perhaps their authors' opinions have changed... but we've read Mariko Nightfire's more recent two posts (so far) on the desirability, or undesirability, of what she calls "walking with windlight" (a phrase that makes me hear Patsy Cline in my head).

If you look at the photos in the later post, again the photos labeled as better are flatter. I think that's partly because the skin, the face especially, has shading painted on, so that ironically, flat lighting makes the fake shading look better, though it also enhances the effect Galatea Gynoid points out in a comment in NWN: it looks like her head was Photoshopped into a flat drawing of the rest of her. (Not having "real" shadows causes that effect. If her head were really there, it would cast a shadow on her neck, and even if you can't point that out, it sets your mental teeth on edge. Alas, years after it first appeared, shadows are still not officially supported in LL's client, so that's LL's fault.)

Windlight gives us directional sunlight and moonlight like RL, rather than the uniform lighting of pre-windlight SL. Harsh shadows in RL don't distract you, any more than someone standing between you and a tree does. (After all, you're keeping an eye out for predators... or rather, your ancestors were.) Take a picture of it, though, and they're all you see. "Darn, those shadows are harsh. Oh... What's growing out of Billy's head? BWAHAHAHA...."

That's why photographers schlep flash and reflectors, and why photographers in SL keep transparent light sources in their inventories. I use a facelight, but only as fill lighting, and I do my best to take it off when I no longer need it. It's dim, and easy to forget.

So, is the Second Life client window more like RL, or a photograph? In a NWN comment, I claimed it was like the photograph, but I think I've changed my mind. I will never do without windlight unless I'm on a computer that can't support it, and the only times I recall lighting or shadows being a distraction are in stores so brightly lit that everything is washed out, or where someone steals the beacon from a lighthouse and points it at herself. (It's always herself, in my experience.)

So, like the vast majority of things in SL, it's up to you, the hardware you have available, your SL client, and what you want. I can't count on a "shared experience" with whoever's there, as far as the environment goes--who knows what they're running, or what their environment settings are? The sky and water's appearance and how I can use their effect on my surroundings are more important to me. Your mileage may vary.

P.S. Juicy Bomb is well worth reading... the author covers some really nice clothing, hair, and shoes.

Publicity

SL doesn't have mass media. If it did, people would probably complain about it. There are popular blogs, but what fraction of SL residents read them? A lot of SL podcasts have faded away, sad to say.

That leaves word of mouth, which is one reason I hope those of you who use prim breasts go out into the bigger world.

I had an idea this afternoon that is simple enough that I might even be able to do it myself: make a top that will point out a problem that prim breasts solve in a way that will encourage curiosity and conversation. The problem? Painted-on textures don't behave like clothes do, and the most severe example of it is the most visible concavity covered by clothing: cleavage.

There are people who sell and give away T-shirts with graphics or text on the front. If you're a woman and have the breast size slider up any significant amount, that graphic or text will be a distorted mess thanks to the way the texture is painted on rather than being a separate object.

So... I think a T-shirt that says

WITHOUT
PRIM BREASTS
YOU COULDN'T
READ THIS

on the front would point out the issue. Make it the way all tops for prim breast users are made: a regular T-shirt along with a texture for prim breast clothing layers and an applicator. The regular shirt should have the text as well, and the whole thing should be a freebie; give it away, so non-prim breast users can put the shirt on and see just how bad it looks.

P.S. I talked a bit about this with Maggie Bluxome recently, and I must admit... technically, the T-shirt text isn't quite accurate, since it will be legible with the breast size slider in the range of [0, n] for some value of n. Our goal will be to make n as small as possible.

Must-read from Dusan Writer

Check out "Second Life Next: 2011".

Iconafashion

Icon Allen has started a web site about her products and, as she says, "any other things of interest." Check it out, and don't make the mistake I made of thinking it's organized like a simple blog, with just a list of entries in chronological order. Click on the topic headings to explore.

UPDATE: You really do want to go there; she now has a post showing what mesh will do for skirts in SL... and heaven knows it's long overdue. (Lovely work, Icon!)

The good side of fidgeting

I have to admit that the Oracul AO makes me feel like a model; the fluid movements make for good photos. I feel like I should be playing some stereotypical photographer patter in the background. :)

"Look for the buxom label..."

This morning I saw something for the second time... in a store, there was a sign with a logo for items that are prim breast compatible, along with an explanation of just what that means.

I will have to go back and see whether the logo was the same in both places... and I will inquire with the shop owners about the possibility of making it, or something like it, a standard that can be placed on ads for prim breast friendly clothing or other items. Prim breast users: wouldn't you like to be able to tell at a glance what stores cater to you? Not just clothing; how about the ability to buy an animation and know before you buy that it won't send your arms or legs through your prim breasts?

January 2011 BUSTed

The new issue is out. Gorgeous photography, and don't miss the article by Allana Braveheart.

Gatherings

I was looking through the new messages at Buxom Life, saw Stacia Zabaleta's post on the "Introduction" thread, and was happy to find out that she has clothing for prim breast users at her store, Gatherings.

I went looking (accompanied by Foxbean, yay!), and sure enough, there it was. Some outfits are more daring than I'm comfortable with, but there's a variety of choices, and I bought some more modest items and some others that I might not normally buy, save that I've seen them worn, and they look very good.

So, makers of prim breasts and prim breast-related items (not just clothing--I have hopes that someone will start making prim breast-friendly animations), here's another example. When trying to get your name before the prim breast using public, come to Buxom Life and introduce yourself.

I, for one, welcome my new animation override

Elysia and Val kindly pointed me at Oracul when I complimented them on their wonderful standing animations, and now I have one of Oracul's AOs.

I'm still getting used to it. The animations are graceful and fluid (yet another reason to favor fps a bit more when I'm not taking pictures), but I feel a little fidgety.

UPDATE: Thinking about animations reminds me of a pet peeve from the past: a sitting animation for women that made one loop through a rapt contemplation of one's fingernails. Oh, how I hated it! Earth to whoever the animator was: there are intelligent women out there.

UPDATE: The fun part is going to be figuring out the documentation.