POM Dependent

I have no idea what causes Kirsten's client, Firestorm, or the 2.7.x beta to decide to grab all available RAM and crash.

Just now I fired up Firestorm twice; both times, it sucked down 3 GB of the 4 GB available and crashed--OK, the first time I saw it coming and signed off before the inevitable. Rule of Three: I started it a third time, and it behaved. No change in settings; I didn't clear the cache.

Maybe it will settle down into mostly working, the way the previous Firestorm did. I hope so. I may try global illumination again; if this is a Heisenbug, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just chance that made me think it affected anything.

I wish there were a real 64-bit build of Firestorm that I could try.

UPDATE: I tried global illumination; no apparent difference. It just happened to crash once when I had it on, and then not crash the next time when I happened to turn it off.

A beautiful tribute to the Minoan Empire

UPDATE: alas, the YouTube video is no longer there--but you can see it on Vimeo. (If there's a way to embed Vimeo videos, please let me know via email at mel_yeuxdoux@yahoo.com and I will embed it here.)

Farewell, Apollo?

NWN has a post up asking for what one might put on an "SL bucket list", though I'd call it an "inverse bucket list". The bucket list is what you should do before you "kick the bucket"; the places on this list are those you should see before they kick the bucket.

I am very sad that one of the comments states that the Lost Gardens of Apollo will go away on June 26th. Apollo is an amazing, beautiful sim, and one of my favorite places. I have taken so many photos there, including many of my experiments with forced perspective.

So... with Mammatus, then Goldie Locks and Nantli Xolal, then the Minoan Empire, and now Apollo going away, does the metaverse have it in for me? I can't believe that. I may think it sometimes, but I can't believe it. Unfortunately, the alternative would seem to be that a lot of places are going away, so that they'd happen to include my favorites. This is not a good sign.

NOTE: The ordering above is not chronological order, but the order I happened to think of them in. The Minoan Empire is due to close on July 6th.

UPDATE: Apollo, like the Minoan Empire, is one of the "featured Second Life destinations". To be featured, I would think that someone or some group at Linden Lab would have decided that the featured sim is special, that it represents what is best and special about Second Life. Does LL care that such sims are going away?

Blinded by the Light

"Facelight" is a dirty word to many residents of Second Life. It's amazing how many people walk around with a 500 terawatt arc lamp hovering in front of their faces, as if a perpetual Ground Zero accompanies them, washing out all detail in the entire sim, or the entire building they happen to be in.

It's not just facelights, though. I've been in a store where the posters for the clothing on sale were made to glow so brightly one could only see a fuzzy outline of the outfit, and couldn't make out a name or a price. And last night, while exploring and trying to figure out just what circumstances and settings cause SL clients to leak RAM like a sieve with the wire mesh cut out of it, I came upon a region that called to mind Roger Zelazny's greatest work, Lord of Light: "...this general area must have appeared in some quarters as though the Universal Fire did a dance upon the map."

This blinding light supposedly came from a small campfire on the beach. I have no idea why the prim skirt was immune.

I've seen buildings similarly lit. I don't know of anyone who virtually sleeps; what's the point? But some places, which seem to have been filled with hidden halogen lighting, would make it impossible.

No one could possibly intend that beach to look as though it had been teleported to some place inside the sun. There must be some client and configuration that makes those batteries of facial klieg lights and perpetual low-yield nuclear devices look good. I wonder what they are.

UPDATE: Boy, Google is fast. Maybe half an hour after I posted this, I googled "zelazny facelight", and (despite suggesting that maybe I meant "face lift"), this post turned up on page three of the results.

Help for Helios

One of the blogs I link to is the Blog of Helios, the blog of the HeliOS Project that puts computers running Linux in the hands of kids in the Austin TX area who would otherwise not have access to technology. The Project could use your help; consider donating your not-too-old gently-used hardware.

More urgently, though, Diane, the partner of Ken (who runs the project) is in need of help. She suffered a stroke due to an aneurysm, and the surgeons were going to go in and install stents... until it came up that she's uninsured. More details here.

64-bit Linux version, please?

So... the new Firestorm came out yesterday, and of course I tried it. It's become unusable for me, as Kirsten's client has been for some time.

Here are the symptoms: I sign on, and within minutes the SL client allocates all available RAM, the frame rate plummets, and the client crashes.

This has happened to me on several 2.x based SL clients, including some from Linden Lab. It may have also happened to others as well; see this thread in the Kirsten client forum. I seriously hope that the message from Steffi Honi in that thread is not accurate.

It makes no sense not to create a 64-bit Linux build (or a 64-bit Windows or Mac build, for that matter). It can be done; Imprudence has done it for some time. It's just about impossible to buy a computer these days that doesn't contain a 64-bit x86 flavored CPU, unless you're buying a netbook, which can barely run SL anyway, or a tablet (which probably has an ARM processor that LL doesn't target). The 64-bit extensions correct infamous drawbacks of the x86 architecture, namely its poverty of registers and the extreme register pressure caused by the horrid non-orthogonality of the instruction set. (Translated to English: a whole lot of the instructions executed in any 32-bit x86 program are moves in and out of registers, and in particular moves in and out of a special set of registers that are the only ones that can be used for certain operations like shifts, multiplies, and divides. That in turn is caused by the x86 being the result of decades of backwards compatibility with ancient 8-bit and 16-bit processors.) If you look at Ubuntu Community documentation, they recommend running 64-bit if you can.

People should have learned their lesson when Microsoft C compilers moved from 16-bit int to 32-bit int. The ISO C standard requires standard header files that make it easier to avoid assumptions that trip one up when moving from 16-bit to 32-bit, or 32-bit to 64-bit.

Can I be sure that this particular problem is caused by problems with running a 32-bit SL client on 64-bit Linux? Not yet; since Imprudence goes to the trouble of doing 64-bit Linux builds, I think that running a 64-bit version of Kokua will tell the tale.

UPDATE: I do have to say that the new Firestorm's orange-brown smoke is nicer than the stock Casper, especially at night, and they do give one the option of pie menus, which are really nice for doing things quickly and accurately via muscle memory. But never mind the results of ergonomics research, surely the people who gave us 2.x know what is best for us... [slap] Thanks, I needed that. Sorry about the sarcasm.

UPDATE: New Firestorm is usable for me if I turn off "global illumination".  Alas, that doesn't suffice for Kirsten's client--it still grabs all the RAM and crashes in minutes. I hate to lose global illumination, though I guess I should tell myself at least I can take high-resolution pictures again (vide VWR-24178). 

UPDATE: Um, maybe not on the high-resolution photos. They're not blatantly ruined as they are with the VWR-24178 bug, but there's a pesky vertical line over to the right... here's an example. 

UPDATE: I don't know what changed, but Firestorm is once again sucking down RAM and dying. I had the System Monitor up and watched it grab 100 MB of RAM about every ten seconds.

UPDATE: OK. The SL 2.7.something beta client ran for hours for me today, and then I signed back on only to find it allocating all RAM and crashing very quickly--no settings changed. Is it the cache? I don't know. I do know that the SL client is very much still subject to the VWR-24178 bug; it ruined the high-res pictures I took in the grand old style, no piddly black line for it.

I also noticed something else... if you ever go to the Boobie Tops main store, it's set in an enclosed region that is permanently a rainy urban environment. I would teleport there and then notice that as I moved, there would be flashes of light--possibly the light from the outside day cycle flashing through; I don't know. When I stopped, they would stop. Today, with LL's 2.7 beta client, I saw that effect a lot in several places I went.

Not Over Yet

I should not leave the story of us Minoans where I did. We're trying to figure out some way to continue. If this interests you, please let me know.

Yet Another Must-Read from Gwyneth Llewelyn

"Meshed Drama" is an interesting discussion of various classes of SL content creators and how mesh might spread once it is official.

Over the Line

I am sorry to say that I got an announcement today from Ravishing Racks, a maker of very good clothing for prim breast users, that they have added to their business virtual pit bulls that can be made to fight. I cannot support that, even in a virtual world, so I won't be spending my L$ there. You will have to decide for yourself what you will do.

I hasten to add: pit bulls are not born aggressive and dangerous. Some are made that way by vile people who train them to be so, and I will celebrate on the day that practice ends and those responsible get what they deserve.

UPDATE: I am partly wrong: according to this page with a review of The Lost Dogs,

One law enforcement officer experienced with dog fighting is quoted as saying that as many as 80% of the dogs in a typical dog fighting operation never fight, even when coaxed and treated harshly and trained for it. 80% just don't show the aggression necessary.

So even though these scum try to make the dogs fight, the vast majority don't.

I am not wrong about pit bulls not being inherently vicious or aggressive. (Details here.) 

The Lost Dogs is the story of what happened to the dogs in the illegal dog fighting operation Michael Vick was involved in. From the page linked to above:

Out of the 51 dogs rescued, at least 20 were suitable for foster care immediately.  Others were sent to sanctuaries, and after some work, were then sent to foster homes.  Many of the fosters passed the Canine Good Citizen Test and the ATTS behavior test, and some are currently working as therapy dogs.

Only two had to be euthanized.  One for aggression, and one because of a severe health problem that was inoperable and causing the dog pain.

Only two.

And this was after the president of the Humane Society, Wayne Pacelle, publicly stated that it didn't make sense to keep any of the dogs alive.

UPDATE: Do read the comments.

Ominous News

Word has come from King Minos that the gentle, smiling dolphins who normally play about the shores of Crete have disappeared. I know not the cause, but in the coming days, you will find me at the temple of Poseidon, earth-shaker and ruler of the sea.

UPDATE: Here are Christopher Smadga and I, praying to Poseidon:

UPDATE: From the Perseus web site, the Homeric Hymn to Poseidon (minus the line numbers in the translation):

I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, god of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae. A two-fold office the gods allotted you, O Shaker of the Earth, to be a tamer of horses and a saviour of ships!

Hail, Poseidon, Holder of the Earth, dark-haired lord! O blessed one, be kindly in heart and help those who voyage in ships!

UPDATE: I've about cried myself out, for now.

Aeneas Anthony has announced that the Minoan Empire sim will close on July 6th. There will be two more chariot races, on June 19th and 26th, at 1:00 p.m. SL time (or 1300 if you prefer 24-hour notation). I beg you, if you have not visited the empire,  do so while you can. It is a wonderful place, and I will never forget it. Thanks to King Minos, to the Architect, Aeneas Anthony, and to all the wonderful Minoan citizens.

UPDATE: A photo taken from the beach with no dolphins to be seen:

UPDATE: we are not resigned to our fate; see "Not Over Yet".

Must-watch Video via Grace McDunnough and Marianne McCann

Phasing Grace | Social Architectures and Virtual Worlds: The Magic Soul of Prims: "When you think all the light has been drained from the world, remember to stop and ask yourself: ' Can you see the shadows ?' Watch them d..."

Anticipation

I tried to log on just now, and couldn't. Sure enough, the status report page showed that database maintenance is underway. People who want Second Life to be like it was in the "good old days" now have their wish in a way, though not of course what they'd say they meant if you asked them.

I can't remember the last time I wasn't able to log on--at least the last time that I can say for sure was due to issues with the centralized part of Second Life. I would say that indicates that those responsible for the reliability of that part of SL are doing a good job. Thank you!

Carly Simon got it right way back when. These are the good old days.

UPDATE: Even this morning, it's not like the good old days; downtime was just half an hour.

Goldie Locks Closing

It is with great sorrow that I write the following: Goldie Locks is closing. Now through June 16th you can buy Goldie Locks hair for half off; on the 17th the store will go away. (UPDATE: not just the store, but Nantli Xolal sim.)

I have far more Goldie Locks hair in my inventory than any other--I can always count on it to look good, its default size fits my head :), there are many lovely styles, there are no dueling alpha textures to make your head look like one of those cheesy plants made out of intersecting planes, and the superlong hair catered to my inner Diane Witt, especially with a little editing on "Jordan" to make it 3.5 meters long...

So, thank you, Selena Gateaux. I am more indebted to you than I can say, and I hope that you will continue to create in Second Life.

UPDATE: I went back again with a friend (Hi, Kaseido!) and said "Next to Nantli Xolal is the Rainforest sim, I hope it will remain..." and then zoomed out to see it was gone; the pyramids, the trees with comfy beds up in the branches... it's already gone away. *blinks back tears*

BUSTed Magazine First Anniversary Issue

As Maggie Bluxome has already mentioned, BUSTed's first anniversary issue is now on the stands, hot off the virtual presses. Don't miss it.

Thanks are due to many people: Cole Deischer for starting it all, everyone who works on BUSTed, Maggie for asking me to write for BUSTed, and all of you who read the magazine. May BUSTed continue for many years to come.

Formal Night at Bosom Buddies

One of the things I enjoy most in Second Life is Formal Night at Bosom Buddies. I don't have photos from it; for those you definitely want to visit Aliecia Lionheart's blog Happenings of a Busty Second Life Dancer.

Bosom Buddies has other theme nights, but this one is special. Go and you will see a huge room full of beautiful, well-endowed women impeccably dressed. (There's a contest for best-dressed. Two, actually; one for employees and one for everyone else. It is very hard to decide who to vote for.) It motivates me, and I'm sure everyone else, to do better. Last but not least, I get a really good laugh at the thought of this going on in the face of the fizzling out of a certain blog. To borrow a couplet from a song that didn't make it into Fiddler on the Roof, "gone they are--we're still here!"

Don't miss Formal Night.

UPDATE: Shame on me for not saying when it is. Formal Night is Sunday, 6-8 p.m. SL time.

Mesh Timetable

It's out, as promised. (The timetable, I mean.)

Barring unforeseen bugs, in July some sims on the main grid will have mesh enabled, and by the end of August, it will be enabled everywhere.

Yay, finally! (Or as they say in Esperanto, finfine! That's an example of emphasis via repetition; it might be translated as "at long last!" or "geez, fi-nally!")

Jumping the Snark?

It's been quite a while since the SL Fashion Police and What the Fug? blogs have had a new article posted. The latter changed a while back so that date stamps don't appear on posts--but they didn't think to pull them from comments, so it's highly likely that WTF? hasn't had a post since late September 2010; SLFP hasn't had one since early December 2010. The What the Fug? flickr photostream is still up and accumulating photos and comments, to be sure, but that hasn't resulted in new blog posts.

Perhaps people have burned out on snarky posts commenting on photos of people who typically have at least questionable fashion sense. (I can't persuade myself to take the time to look at the rate of posting or commenting on the flickr stream since the last WTF? post, but the data would be interesting.) We can hope.

Jinxed Fashion

Last night I was looking around for a sleeveless low-cut halter top for a photo. I never found it, but while I was looking, I came across a couple of stores I'd never seen before. (That's good; you know that prim breast-friendly clothiers are doing well when there get to be more than you can keep track of!)

The first one I came across is Jinxed Fashion. There's a store in the Busty Village Mall, but to see everything you'll want to visit the main store in the Valle Verde sim.

I bought a couple of outfits--first a dress, called "Siena", that caught my eye because of the lovely texture. Note: Windlight settings make it look black and gold rather than black and silver. (If the creator happens to read this, please consider a black and gold, or black and copper, version!)

The second, "English Rose", comes in several colors; this is the black. Note: the skirt is very short; so much so that I took advantage of multiple attachments and put on both Rufeena "Temptation" black  and black pantyhose. Again, local lighting gives a yellowish cast to the dress, and it's also very bright, but I liked the idea of going to one of the  Mainland London sims for this photo. I couldn't quite get standing beneath the "Welcome to Carnaby Street" sign to work, so I took my picture here.

New vString prim breasts from Violet Studios

As Maggie Bluxome has announced, Violet Studios has come out with a new set of prim breasts. They're a joint effort of Hemi Violet and Juggernutz Ivanovic.

The name is very clever; vString starts with "vS" (Violet Studios), and includes "string", alluding to polypropylene or "string" breast implants that the FDA banned in 2001. A very few women still have them, most notably Chelsea Charms, and I believe her look influenced the look of vStrings.

vString prim breasts give you many options. There are two HUDs. In practice, I think that the one that lets you change size and some other things will be rarely used. It's far easier to simply touch the breasts and call up a popup menu that gives ready access to that HUD's functionality and much more--but not to positioning the breasts on your torso; that is left to the standard Second Life editing options, which are easy to use, so why reinvent the wheel? The other HUD is the "Breast Look Designer", which gives you control over skin and tinting for various aspects of the breasts and of the bra and tank top layers. vString breasts are made to work very easily with Violet Studios skins; as the docs say,

If you own one of our Verotic Human Skins, or Demon, or LTX range prior to the release of the vStrings, simply go in to the appliers folder for your skins, find the updater and wear it. A new version of the appliers will be sent to you, including the new vString appliers.

Speaking of size: you can control the size of nipples as well as the breasts as a whole, and in addition to discrete jumps in size, you can start ongoing growth and stop it later.

There are a lot of options for "interactivity", i.e. whether and how up to ten other people can modify the state of your breasts. You can either permit it or not, and modify the set of people you grant permission to.
So, how do they look? I first tried them with a turtleneck that I have worn for a while:

Of course, I wouldn't stay at that size. (Besides, one effect of actual string breast implants is that, barring draining of the fluid that the polypropylene string absorbs and irritates surrounding tissue into producing, they will make the breasts continually grow.) Here you can see that these prim breasts, like some others, come together at the top at a point over the sternum, so they can be pushed to very large size.

Finally, I had to try Bad Kitty's gorgeously detailed "Tied Up" top. Here you see what's a problem with all prim breasts: tops with a neckline are just about impossible to match up where the clothing layer joins the neckline. (UPDATE: and you can see that that meeting point, which the clothing layer has to be set up to cover, is at the very top of the sternum as I have them positioned. That may be a mistake on my part.)

vString prim breasts are, as I write, L$1000, with free updates for (second :) life. The makers encourage feedback, though they admirably say "we don't do promises". The shape one prefers is a personal choice, of course, but given the features and openness to suggestions, I think that people will be very satisfied with vString prim breasts.

Anime-ish Avatars

A while back I posted the result of an attempt to make my avatar more anime-like, at least in the face. The results were kind of creepy.

Turns out I didn't need to bother. If you want very anime-like and very creepy avatars, go for one of the "Bloom Doll Avatars" inspired by the RL "Blythe dolls" that were initially short-lived, but proved, as the saying goes, big in Japan. Emerald Wynn has the details, with pictures.

I Use Prim Breasts and I Shop

So some of us were dancing at Bosom Buddies, chatting and enjoying one another's company, when the conversation turned to things that we as prim breast users could do. Suddenly a variation on a recent political snowclone leapt to mind; it occurred to me that when we go shopping, we could wear a T-shirt that, perhaps, shop owners would see and think about:

This is just a prototype; I will get some advice on how to improve it. When I'm done, I will make it freely available, and I hope that if you use prim breasts, you'll consider wearing this while you're clothes shopping.

(OK, now I'm really getting silly. I'm thinking about a shirt that says "I Ching and I Vote".)

Reset!

OK. Was I misled by the etymology of "bathycolpian"? Was there some meaning drift between classical and modern Greek? ("Knecht" in German still means "servant", but English "knight", which the cognate English "knicht" turned into, is very different. German "sterben" means "to die" whatever the cause; in English it turned into "starve", specifically to die from lack of food.) I don't know, but... now that two Greek speakers have warned me about my epithet, I've reset my display name. I'll see if I can't find another one.

The anti-Gor

A few weeks ago I was relaxing in a pool with fellow Minoans. I forget exactly what we were talking about, but I was trying to find a way to describe what appeals to me about the Minoan Empire sim and its citizens and culture, and here's how I had to describe it: it's the anti-Gor.

UPDATE: It turns out that there's an "anti-Gor" group in SL. I don't mean the above in that sense. I mean it in the sense that the basis of Minoan civilization is, as far as we can tell, quite the opposite of that of the Gor books. Minoan civilization appears to have had equality of the sexes; Gor proclaims the superiority of men and that men and women are in their rightful position and only truly happy when men own women as slaves and women are owned as slaves. There is very little evidence of Minoan civilization being warlike. War and individual combat are common in the Gor books; googling "gorean warfare" and "gorean combat" turn up millions of hits.

Wonderful News!

I am delighted to have found out that Maggie Bluxome and Jennifur Vultee are engaged! More information at Maggie's blog (believe me, you want to go there to see the photo of the happy couple), Aliecia Lionheart's blog, and the Latex Web Inc. blog. Please join me in wishing the couple every happiness.

2nd Hub

In the ongoing saga of Facebook versus SL avatars, check out this NWN post, where we learn that LL suggests that instead of creating a Facebook account for your avatar, you create a Facebook page for your avatar (which you can only do from a Facebook account, which would presumably be that of your RL identity). You show up as the creator of the Facebook page, but only to yourself.

Facebook pages are typically set up for businesses, products, bands, celebrities/public figures, causes, and the like. They don't have messages associated with them, and can't have friends, and while Facebook accounts can "like" them, they can't "like" anything themselves. Your Facebook account is associated with the page as its creator, and as such, you, and anyone else you deem an administrator of the page, can see the list of creator/administrators.

I say to heck with Facebook; I don't want to go where I'm a second class citizen. I've taken the advice Strawberry Singh posted in a comment, and set up on 2nd Hub. At least, I've tried to. I misspelled my avatar's name, and it won't let me verify my account because of it. (If you go to the support page, they list as one of the most frequently asked questions "I signed up with the wrong email address, or I spelled my email or name wrong. What should I do?" That question links to the FAQ page, to a different question, whose answer basically says that if you didn't do any of those things, you can verify your account. Gee, thanks.) It's been eight hours since I submitted a ticket; we'll see what, if anything, happens.

So... if you decide to try 2nd Hub, for heaven's sake, double check your avatar name!

UPDATE: I was pretty impatient, wasn't I? Around 5 the next morning my time I got an email reply; the problem is fixed, and I'm now verified. More news as it happens.

No Turning Back

I'm sorry; when I compare a photo like this (taken at sunset in the Love Garden) with the crude images from my first days in Second Life, I can't imagine going back to those times.

nVidia's come out with the 560; it's like the 560 Ti, but with one of four streaming multiprocessors disabled. The cards are starting at $200 rather than the $240 for 560 Ti, and tests show it considerably closer to the 560 Ti than the 460. I hope I can upgrade my graphics card before terribly long.

If you like Caminante de Sueños...

...you'll love Avatars in Motion. (Thanks to Hamlet Au for writing about it on NWN.) Hybie Minx is a busy lady; she also has a fashion blog, Hybie's Fantastical Fashion Phenomenon, that you should check out.

Wishing for Detachment

People often discuss "detachment" in the context of Buddhism. I was trying very hard to practice detachment today, but Second Life wouldn't let me.

OK, it wasn't the Buddhist sort of detachment, though it was detachment from things--in particular, jewelry and prim skirt components. In total, I detached a whole set of Indian jewelry and a prim skirt close to a dozen times before I gave up and signed off.

Searching on the Firestorm JIRA shows that it's a known problem, it's in the server code, and LL is working to fix it. I hope it's corrected soon. I'd like to maintain my detachment.

UPDATE: I suppose I got my wish. Now my avatar just doesn't rez. Last time this happened it was days before I could see myself.

UPDATE: I don't know whether it had anything to do with it, but I signed on with Kirsten's--which grabbed a lot of RAM and slowed to a crawl as usual, but before it did my avatar did at least rez. I can get back on with Firestorm now, whatever the cause.

I'm flattered!

Emerald Wynn over at Emerald's Eyes has an interesting little graphic on her blog pointing to a web site, I Write Like, that will analyze text and tell you what famous author it thinks the text resembles. It says she writes like Stephen King (though her subject matter isn't macabre--I would guess the site just checks grammar and the like). I couldn't resist, and here are the results, after feeding it the text of "The Bathycolpian Ambassadress":

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

I'm flattered! (Now, to fiddle with the HTML to make it fit in the right-hand column...)

I think I'm spoiled

I think I've gotten spoiled by the variety of clothing now available, and want more. I wandered over to Club Habibi, looked at the lovely clothing in the nearby stores, and could only think about the work required to adapt it to prim breasts. Then I headed to the lovely Danbi sim, decked out in Indian jewelry, and wished I had a sari of the sort I had seen on sale.

The problem with the sari is the way it drapes over the shoulder—the texture would only really work at one size, just as regular texture clothing only really works on the specific shape the designer creates it on... but surely we could have a choli!

I guess what started me down this path was seeing a gorgeously detailed dress while hair shopping and wishing I could wear it. We've made advances, but still mainstream clothiers don't think it's worth catering to us, while on the other hand, how many clothiers catering to us can spend the time on that level of detail? (There are some [waves to Mullemaus Oh], and they have my gratitude.)

So, shame on me. I shouldn't whine, but I will hope that we take the next step, whether that is persuading the mainstream to think of us, seeing more adaptations such as Tenyene's fine add-ons to Bug[poop] bustiers, or more prim breast-friendly clothiers moving to the next level.

Minoan population growth

Recently King Minos sent out a notice: there are now four hundred citizens of the Minoan Empire. I am happy to hear the news, and I hope for a prosperous future for the Empire.

If you've not visited, I hope you will. The land and the city are beautiful, and the residents welcoming and friendly. Come see the museum, the temples, the beach, and the chariot races. Try your hand at bull jumping. I think you'll be impressed.

UPDATE: If, as I hope, you've followed the link to the page about bull jumping, do look at the rest of the site. It's well worth your while.

Machinima Mondays

Darn, I wish I'd known about this sooner. Apparently there's a series of videos up on YouTube collectively called "MachinimaMondays" put up by Chantal Harvey. If they're all as good as the one I saw today, featuring Kirstenlee Cinquetti and the Kirsten's SL Client team, I will make sure I continue to view them. Don't miss that particular one; it's loaded with useful information.

Interesting item on mailing list

From "SLPlugin lagging my viewer like crazy, maybe it was a bad idea from the start?":

Anyhow, the result of all those (useless?) [SLPlugin] processes in the background is heavy swapping, manifesting itself in "lag like hell" (framerate drops from around 25 to 1.5). A relog fixes it (of course), but only for a short time.

That's what I'm seeing (OK, he doesn't mention the insane memory usage, but still...). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anyone's come up with a real solution; I'll give the "killall SLPlugin" method a try.

UPDATE: I tried it; didn't do a bit of good.

Noyl Boucher's Minoan hair... it's not just for tinies any more!

Noyl Boucher, creator of utterly cute tiny avatars with wonderful Minoan hair, has generously allowed us bigger people to benefit from the lovely hair he created, too. And even more generously, it's free! Thank you; I'm in your debt. And if you're interested, don't just check out the hair; visit Noyl's Lil Shop and Noyl's fascinating flickr photostream.

OK... if they don't have them back by now, will they ever?

Enough. If Blogger doesn't have the removed post(s)/comments back by now, I'm going to repost what I recall. Sorry, everybody.

(Hmmm... it wouldn't be quite right to do a parody called Posts off a Blog, because unlike the snakes, the posts aren't there. "Enough is enough! I have had it with these [bleep] posts off this [bleep] blog!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)

New Blog

OK. Perhaps it's a good thing that Blogger has yet to restore those changes, because I can now correct a mistake. I hope Aliecia Lionheart will forgive my having repeatedly misspelled her name.

She's started a blog, Happenings of a Busty Second Life Dancer, which promises to be very interesting.(It is NSFW, as you might infer from the title.) It will cover various topics, so do take a look at it.

Great service!

Now that Blogger is letting me post again (still waiting for the wiped posts and comments...), I can do something I promised.

A while back I bought a blue outfit with a short skirt in the Minoan Empire's shopping area. I put it on, and the skirt promptly told me to click on it and activate the scripts, which would let me resize it to fit... but I couldn't do it! Some kindly folks on the Firestorm group suggested it might be marked no modify, and indeed it was.

I IMed the seller and requested either a refund or a skirt that would let me turn on the resize script, and VERY promptly I got a kind reply and a skirt that let me resize as soon as I put it on.

I enjoy letting people know about people who provide exemplary service, and the seller, Cleopatra Xigalia, is one such. One can't ask for more. She sells a wide variety of items, not just historical clothing. Check out some gorgeous examples at Virtual Fashion Feed. (UPDATE: and don't miss her recreation of an ornate dress from a painting of Elizabeth I. Not the one with the hard-core ruff, but still amazing.)

Disappearing articles/comments

As you know if you've tried to post an article or comment to any Blogger-based blog in the past day or thereabouts, or tried to find an article that darn it, you know was there, you know that Blogger has been having trouble.

One major glitch (that I've seen, at least) in over four and a half years is better than it could be, but is still frustrating while you're in the midst of it. I can post again [crosses fingers], but one or two posts and comments are still missing. I hope they are restored shortly.

UPDATE: That said, one has to wonder about what's happened to Ann Althouse's blog, a very popular blog that, for some reason, Blogger has characterized as a spam blog and taken down. Anyone who's read it would know it's as far from a spam blog as one can get.

Good photography

OK. When it comes to photography, I'm so-so. (Which is OK... it just means I have a lot to learn, which should be fun.) If you want to see some amazing work, take a look at Luminis Kanto's photographs on flickr.

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?