CronoCloud Creeggan, Virtual Fashionista

Her name is Amaris (Adam n Eve's new Amaris skin)

2012-02-02T18:30:00.004-06:00

She was sitting in the University Library, she looked as if she was waiting for someone, she was a little bit dressed up for a coed, she told me she preferred dressing nicely. She was the girl next door, sweet, in the full bloom of young womanhood...her name was Amaris."

CC wears 5th & Oxford skins, everyone knows this. I am VERY skin picky, and while I freely acknowledge that there's a lot of great skin out there....I don't often wear it because it's not "CC". I have some very specific needs in a skin and it's hard to find my perfect skin. There are many who don't know this...but if all of my Roslin-made 5th & Oxford skin disappeared from my inventory and the entire grid, I would scream and tear my hair out in agony...and then I would head to Adam n Eve. Because even though I wear my Roslin-made skins almost all of the time, I DO wear other skins..and if you do see me in another skin these days, it's probably an Adam n Eve. Which is kind of funny, because I jumped from Adam n Eve to the TaP Deux's back in 2006. I have always considered Sachi-skin as I call it, to be among the nicest in SL. Well worth a trip to check them out.

Amaris is not my perfect skin...its a little young for me, but it is a VERY nice sweet and youthful skin and well worth blogging. (I almost blogged her previous Harper release, it made me look like Harper Beresford who did a nice job of blogging it, since it was inspired by her.)

Okay look at this squeezable tush. Isn't it adorable.

Goes back to ogling the tush again.

Nice face isn't it. Smudged eyeliner, soft neutral eyeshadow, simple makeup suitable for a college coed. Very pretty and youtful as I said.

The outfit itself is from Adam n Eve, mostly. The Sweater is the CC Sweater...and yes it's named for me. Look, it's no real big thing unless you have hair, a skin or a gown after you, those are the real prizes for fashionista bragging rights. :-) Ha ha ha. It's a nice simple little cropped cardigan..it comes in other colors as well.

The shirt is the Billie Linen shirt...which has my favorite white shirt collar in SL, while cleavagey it is classic.

The skirt is the shorter skirt from the Cora set (which comes with a very nice ruffly cleavagey poet shirt itself.

Tights are from Mon Tissu

Boots are the Madison Alpha Boots from Deco.

Glasses from Insolence

You simply can't get the jewelry and eyes anymore...I miss you Miriel Enfield.

Adam n Eve is in Genesis, of course. Go...NOW! Maybe you'll be "having Sachi's baby!" (an old reference to her old group title for her fans)

Undercover Tableau Girl

2012-01-05T21:03:00.004-06:00

You've seen them, we all have. At Mon Tissu and Tres Blah in Lula, FD, and Clawtooth in Tableau. I've always called them "Tableau Girls"

Where did they come from?

The shapes of the original "Tableau Girl" designers, that's what. Google search for Nylon Pinckney and Elka Lahane for example. The shoppers saw the shapes in the displays and pretty much adopted them themselves. Originally it was somewhat honest smart-alecky reaction to the more traditional barbie-ish glamour girl avatars and styles, a la Dazzle and other cocktail/party/formal designers, since the Tableau crowd did mostly hand drawn casuals at that time.

But now.....lets admit it, it's become something of a parody of itself and has somewhat taken over. I was there at Tres Blah last week during a sale....and I overdosed on Oracul Maidenly, sourpuss faces, and thighs so far apart you can drive a truck through. Avatars that don't look "pretty" but like nicotine addicted 12 year olds wearing their 22 year old sisters clothes and makeup.

Yes, I know I shouldn't judge, but I like seeing pretty, and seeing some Tableau girls overly photoshopped, gaussian blurred and shadowed pics makes it hard to see the actual quality of the stuff! And the exaggerated bodies means the stuff will look somewhat different. But they have great stuff, sure they tend to over accesorize, but damn do they have some nice stuff...I think...but I can't tell. Yes I know there are not many review blogs anymore that's part of the problem.

I'm not saying that avatars shouldn't be curvy or have junk in the trunk...but there's good variety and bad variety. To much exaggeration in anything, height, boobehs, or hips makes for a bad shape for showing off fashion in a pleasing way.

I also can't tell Tableau Girl hair apart,has a sort of sameness to it, at least to my eyes.

Former Boss Salome also makes a slight of a reference to this issue in this post but she's not really commenting on the girls themselves.

I'm not going to SLURL The stuff, though that bag and skirt are Mon Tissu and nice. Shoes are G Field "Alex" First picture was taken using standard Caliah style Windlight settings, 2 and 3 were taken with shadows and whatnot on.

Donna Flora Bon Bon

2011-12-26T04:39:00.005-06:00

Donna Flora just released "Bon Bon" A cute cocktail dress with a lovely bubble skirt meets 18th century sort of look to it. L$350, four colors, this black that I have, a sort of cream, a pale lavender and a sort of fuchsia pink.

Yes, the skirt is a rigid sculpty, which means it's not the prettiest skirt to sit in or do the more athletic dances in, but it really can't be helped with a bubble skirt.

SLURL to Donna Flora in Bonin

The hair is an Amacci, Jessica, a nice sweet lil updo with a sort of side swept short bang thing
going on.

SLURL to Amacci

Shoes are G Field "Eve"

SLURL to G Field

Jewellery is a "Princess Christina set, from a merchant I found via marketplace Rhiannon Nitely:

Link to her store on Marketplace

Skin is, of course, a 5th & Oxford:

SLURL to 5th & Oxford in Nouveau

And yes, I have my GT220 back in my box, I have a new power supply, Yay!

Going to be RL busy

2011-11-05T12:12:00.002-05:00

So you won't see me so much in SL....an upcoming RL move so packing and stuff.

Tier costs, the sim deathwatch: Why I don't think it's a big problem.

2011-11-04T14:26:00.006-05:00

ADDENDUM added at bottom.

Every so often on New World Notes or other SL related forums, you get some oldbie crank complaining about Tier. I usually want to be an oldbie crank myself and tell them off. Why?

1. The majority of the people complaining about tier prices are mostly members of what I call the "furry builder and scripter gang". (Yes, I know they're not all furries, it just seems like furrydom seems to go with being a hardcore builder/scripter) All they want is a cheap vanity sim to basically be their own personal sandbox. If they get one, all they'll do is spend time there building and puttering around and not really doing anything with it with other people (other than projects with other furry builder and scripters} involved.

2. The other group that complains about tier are the RPers. Almost all RP sims are vanity projects that survive on donations or a well heeled Angel or groups of Angels, which really isn't practical, long term. These folks, I understand.

But I doubt tier prices will go down soon, and in fact, think it might be a bad idea if they did so at the current time. Now you're thinking: "But CC, don't you want the furry scripters to have their sims, and the RPers to be able to keep their RP sims going" Yes, but:

1. There's a content glut on the grid. one of the reasons some regions aren't making it financialy is that there's too much stuff out there so the money is spread around. More stuff, with the same amount of people spending means the money gets spread thinner like too little butter over too much bread. Cheap sims would lead to a land glut and encourage even more newbie designers to flood the grid with 2006-era quality level stuffs. That would be a bad thing and LL knows it. LL wants to reduce content glut so every store sim that's selling low quality crappe that gets shut down is a good thing.

2. LL doesn't want to deal with the "Waaaaah...whining". I personally believe that sims are priced the way they are with the setup fees to help keep the "riff raff" out of sim ownership. LL doesn't want people who can barely afford it to get a region, then have them cancel two months later when their car needs fixed, and then beg LL to restore their sim as it was when they have a bit more money again. They want people with stable incomes who can keep paying even if their cat needs to go to the vet, or they have doctor bills or need to replace their furnace. In other words they want the upper class to own sims, but the rest of us to rent what space we can afford. Think about it, in RL, not everyone owns a big mansion with thousands of acres of property. You got a few people who do, and then more people who own a 1200sq ft home, and some who live in a cramped 500sq ft apartment. I know, everyone wants a mansion and a sim of their own, but LL is encouraging people to live within their SL means. Personally, I really wouldn't need anything bigger than a double prim 1024, really. Even if I had a sim...I wouldn't be doing much with it, it would lead to empty space which leads to:

3. One of the big things the masses and newbies complain about is how empty SL feels. LL knows it's an issue and probably likes that there's less of a sim glut so that SL feels less empty. If LL dropped tier, a bunch of people would buy their own sim and sit idle in it while they IM. Thus increasing the problem.

You want tier prices to drop? Probably not going to happen, but if you REALLY want it to happen. Get the masses spending money...including the second worlders. SL is a trickle up economy, more people shopping means more people with money for regions.

ADDENDUM:

Hey! I just had an idea...what might work is if LL priced tier based on purpose of the region, Commercial one-owner sims one rate, residential single owned vanity puttering sim another, RP group sims another. sims for commercial rentals another. They could then enable and disable various features and capabilities, like say..transactions...based on that. Might not work or be feasible but it is an idea to throw out there.

#define Fashionista

2011-10-06T18:19:00.002-05:00

To me, I define it thusly (I'm going to use female pronouns but there are male avatar fashionistas in SL):

A fashionista doesn't need to spend a lot of money...she doesn't even have to have the latest and greatest...but what she does have...she pulls together. She gets the little details right and everything just "works". She has her style defined...but can play around with it. She has stuff for practically any occasion, from casual to ball gowns. In other words, she always looks "nice", like she made an effort. She may even be a fashionista in RL, with an interest in makeup and fashion, or she just may read a LOT of magazines....but she knows her stuff.

But there's one other thing I want to say, In my view the term should be INclusive, not EXclusive.

How do YOU define fashionista?

Twins, ICING Shimmy and a hair Lament...also starring LaDonna Upshaw!

2011-10-06T15:34:00.004-05:00

Fashionistas are insane...I've said that before...or maybe it's just me...anyway it goes with the territory.

It all started with someone looking for a veiled hat...and then mentioning Icing Joan which has a VERY nice hat..and Icing Shimmy which is also nice and matches the Joan colors. So I ended up at Icing hoping to run into other fashionistas and hang out and ran into LaDonna Upshaw. She wore Joan, I wore Joan. Which has been seen on this blog before...I love it so. LaDonna makes VERY nice furniture...her dining room sets are to die for so check out her store Sweet Romance Furniture on South Sea Isle! (and yes, she knows I'm blogging pictures with her)

Twins we were...after I decided to go tan and put on ETD Tyra...which leads to our hair lament.

Neither LaDonna or I have found a good replacement for ETD Tyra in the "low sophisticated updo you can wear with a hat" niche. Not Truth, not Damselfly, not Analog Dog, not even Elikatira has one and I expected her to redo it!

That opinion was shared by both of us, but the following opinion is mine alone. It gets worse....I was wearing Tyra in Mahogany....which Elikatira does not have a replacement color for. None of the Elikatira reds are that dark, and they're all dusty and muddy like her browns as well. and not...shiny. I like shiny clean hair! The only reason I haven't returned to Elika as my hair crack dealer of choice is that her reds are sub par. There, I said it, and I've been wanting to say it for ages. I cannot buy several Elikatira styles that I LOVE the styles of, because of that. I want Elikatira Rhythm soooooo bad. If you like blondes or black's or blues or pinks or a few other colors you're good...and I do recommend ETD (I mean Elikatira) to people. But for me..I can't buy her hair.

This is the new Icing Shimmy, square neck, puff sleeves (which might need adjusting depending on shoulders, slim skirt. You can take it cocktail, or you can wear it as vampy office wear with a pen necklace and updo. It nicely shows off teh boobehs without being slutty. The Joan hats work well with it. LaDonna and I look sooooo goood in it. And Yes, I have the fatpack. Miko owns me and my L$ balance.

Shimmy dress is available at ICING

My skin was a A 5th & Oxford Tan Kitty skin

Shoes were G Field Eve Pumps,

1-800-Betties, Shimmer Sequins

2011-10-06T15:06:00.006-05:00

I think I first mentioned "Betties" back in 2006. they're still around and recently had a VERY large sale...everything in the store was 10L$. So you know what I did..... One of the dresses I found was the one called Shimmer Sequins which is a very nice strapless dress with included choker and earrings. I saw a friend, Kelsi Ember, wearing it at one of my favorite hangouts and put on a contrasting color of it and we danced together...and I took pictures with her permission.

I'm in the Red, Kelsi is in the green. It's a lovely dress ans swirls quite prettily. it comes in several other colors as well. Kelsi is a curvy what some might call "plus size" avatar and it flatters her VERY well. The gloves are included and it really is very pretty and shimmery and lacey...Just a simply pretty cocktail dress.

Shimmer Sequins Cocktail dress from 1-800-Bettie's

Hair on Both of us is from Truth, Seraphina on Kelsi and Amelie on me.

The skin on myself is a 5th & Oxford

Kelsi's skin is a lovely Alyson from Belleza

My shoes are "Eve's" from G Field

Kelsi's shoes are the Tribute pumps from N-Core.

Snooki-ized CC

2011-09-29T11:23:00.003-05:00

I was in a group chat and someone mentioned an internet meme showing Carl Sagan and Snooki (yes that snooki from Jersey Shore), where if you didn't know who Carl is, you are what's wrong with the world.

So I got the harebrained idea to Snooki-ize myself a bit:

That's a Vero Modero Dream dress. They have a ton of cute n' sexay dresses like this...in their casuals section...it's quality stuffs in my opinion.

Shoes are G Field Eve's of course.

Hair is Truth Bonnie, for that poofed up big hair snooki- look.

The skin is a 5th & Oxford Tan Rebel Rebel 1 with M.O.C.K Cosmetics L'Eau lip gloss Alchemist and Mile High Eyeliner layered over it.

I have an alt

2011-09-29T10:41:00.005-05:00

I finally created my first alt, to test out Firestorm and for utility/group purposes if ever necessary. And of course one of the first things I did was make her look properly like me:

My alt is the one on the left. :-)

From top to bottom:

That's Amacci Adena hair, a freebie

A 5th & Oxford Fair Kitty 6 skin, L$50

ICING Black Princess Pearls, L$195

ICING Night Mist dress, a freebie

Insolence Carmen grey collection pantyhose, L$299

G Field Eve Pumps, L$220

Oracul Math Teacher AO, which is off, L$150

And of course, my own shapes.

The one thing I really miss are my Miriel Enfield Eyes...sigh...I know they're old and that there are plenty of good eyes on the grid, it's just don't look like me without them.

I freely acknowledge my alt's name, since she's just for utility purposes: CeciliaCreeggan. Makes it easier for folks to realize it's me if I'm puttering in it. Don't intend to shop for it....I just needed a pretty outfit for it because no ALT of mine is NOT going to look properly like me and duck waddle.

The Viewer Drama, or why CC recommends Snowstorm.

2011-09-23T14:01:00.005-05:00

I use Viewer 3, there, I said it. Specifically the Snowstorm releases Wouldn't use anything else as my primary viewer. Readers are probably thinking...."But CC, you're a 64-bit Linux using nerd, I expected you to use Imprudence!". I don't. There's reasons for that, I NEED the outfits feature and multiple items on one point...Imprudence doesn't do that, and Firestorm doesn't have the "outfits" feature.

Personally I think viewer 2/3 gets "some" unfair vitriol aimed at it, for several reasons. And you'll notice I said "some"

1. Viewer 2 was developed mostly in secret, while viewer 1.xx languished. Because 1.xx wasn't getting new features, some power-users jumped to third party viewers. That was a bad thing, because it fragmented the SL userbase. It also meant that:

2. Viewer 2's UI was obviously developed to resemble other "normal" applications. It resembles web browsers the most, specifically it resembles Firefox on Linux, at least to me it does. Thusly it was intended to ease newbies into SL. However to oldbies familiar with the old "strange" UI, it was totally different and worked in unexpected ways.

3. If LL had gradually introduced the UI changes over time into the 1.xx viewer branch there might not have been as much resistance....but they had to dump that old creaky codebase so it was a big jump or nothing.

4. LL also overestimated the users wilingness to experiment and play with UI. They also reduced the viewers "discoverability"...some users take a while to realize that those "plus sign" and "gear" things in the inventory window are UI! Using those (and putting them at the bottoms) was a bad design decision I think. But let me tell you something that's been publicized in the geek press: Most of the requests for features for Microsoft Word are for features that are already in it. Most people aren't nerds and don't "play" with UI, so if they don't see a feature right off, it might as well be absent to them..and they often think that the feature isn't there. That applies especially to Viewer 2! And because they UI is so different, people often assume "everything" is different, and don't even try to explore/play with the UI.

I had a conversation recently:

Them: "How do you take screenshots in Viewer 2"

Me: "The same way as you do in Viewer 1"

Them: "Where is it in the menus"

Me: "You don't need the menus, the shorcuts are the same, Shift+Ctrl+S and Ctrl+~"

Them: "I use the shortcuts"...

The next thought on my mind was, if you use the shortcuts then what's the problem, it works the exact same way! I suspect that they told a fib and don't use the shortcuts and use the screenshot widget and didn't want to admit it. By the way, it's in "World>Snapshot"

I've also seen:

"How do you pay someone L$ in Viewer 2?"

"the same way you do in viewer 1? Right click and pay?"

"Oh, it's so different I figured they changed it."

People also don't realize that many UI elements in Viewer 2/3 are right clickable! The bar at the bottom, you can right-click and add buttons. the favorites bar, you can make go away. the address bar, you can right click and add info to it. Alls sorts of things that aren't immediately obvious unless one "plays" with the UI.

5. UI decisions:

I freely admit that early viewer 2 was a mess that wasn't ready for prime time. They rushed it to compete with TPV's I think. I only seriously began using 2.x with the 2.1 releases. Here's why I think they released it when it wasn't ready.....profiles.

You remember how in early Viewer 2 when you opened a profile it opened in the sidebar, like groups continue to do? And the UI was vertical and not horizontal tabs, and you could only have one profile open at once? Which as we know, sucked. Then they made a web profile which was weirdly sized for the default profile window and took up too much screen space. Then later on ( came web profiles with social features...with horizontal tabs, that take up less space (but still more than 1.foo style profiles did.) When it comes to profiles...only recently has viewer 2/3 become tolerable by my standards, and I'm pretty darn tolerant of UI quirks, being nerdy.

There are also notifications....which is the ONE thing I truly and dearly hate about viewer 2/3....they don't show enough text and are in the WRONG PLACE. Look I wouldn't mind them so much if I could configure them to show more text...like 1.xx notifications..and if I could have them in the upper right...and if I could make them a nice cheery shade of dark blue with black text on white background within the blue frame...but keep the other viewer 2/3 UI colors the default.

You'll notice how I mentioned screen space? Well to me it seems that Viewer 2/3 UI was designed with high resolution widescreen monitors in mind, but LL forgot about the hardware issues I'll talk bout later. but for now it seems there's still plenty of people not running widescreen or running lower resolution widescreen like me. (1440x900 ) Early Viewer 2 did a sort of strange view shift thing with the sidebar in early 2.foo...which drove many people batty and they refused to use Viewer 2 because of that. Now they did fix it...reasonably soon, but I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't people who don't know they fixed it.

6. Hardware:

One of the little secrets of SL is that a LOT of people are running SL on very low end hardware that LL would probably recommend not running SL on. Now that's low end hardware by "My" standards. Let me explain, further.

I was chided recently in a group chat when I said that inventory size doesn't seem to affect viewer stability and responsiveness at all....and it doesn't...for me. The person who chided me suggested that for people on low end hardware it could happen. Then I mentioned my hardware, which I consider low end:

2.8GHz dual-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, integrated Nvidia 6150SE running Snowstorm 3.0.6 under Fedora Linux 15 64-bit (I had to go back to it because my upgraded power supply died so no GT220).

Someone then said that they would love to have such high end hardware which would have made me spit a drink....because I consider my machine to be low end crap for SL, affordable crap, but crap nonetheless. Admittedly with that GT220 it's better crap, but the GT220 is still a VERY low end card. Now if I didn't run SL, it would be plenty of hardware for my needs, but I do run SL.

And scuttlebutt says Viewer 2/3 runs worse on low end hardware....it doesn't for me, it's always been better than Viewer 1 and it seems to look nicer. But some people have issues getting it to run at all. If that happens to you, try renaming your settings.xml so that the viewer starts with the defaults then manually change them back to what you use....that seems to work. Or it did for me in the late 3.0.2 -3.0.3 builds that I was having trouble with.

So, personally I like Viewer 3...for the most part...I can tolerate the things I don't like, easily enough, but I am a nerd. I also heartily recommend running Viewer 3 over any TPV, which have their own quirks and hardware issues. I also trust LL builds more than I do the TPV's. But IMHO if you want to run a TPV, it should be the Firestorm Mesh builds, though they don't do a 64-bit Linux build...course neither does Linden Lab...which I constantly complain about.

Mrs. Lanley portrait

2011-07-29T16:59:00.006-05:00

I was watching the ISC group chat and reading Mrs. Lanley's words and decided to take a visit. Like most oldbies I know how to find people, figured she was on her home region puttering around and she was. (I've been there before). She welcomed the company and we chatted as she showed me some of her favorite bits like the new dock she put in, which was nice. Well anyway she was just standing there, and there was somthing about her that made me want to take a photo. (I asked Mrs. Lanley's permission to blog and post photos) So I did my thing and got a few nice ones

This was the first, she was just standing there and I thought the water would make a good picture. I did a quick change to sunrise:

The next is of us together. After I showed it to her she laughed about how much taller she was than me. (We also played around with shape settings a bit later, which was fun.)

Now I wanted to get a photo of myself on the dock, so I turned up the settings, this has shadows and depth of field turned on:

And since I know Mrs. Lanley doesn't have good hardware I wanted a lovely portrait style photo to give her so I did this one with the Paris 2 windlight setting, shadows and depth of field on. Very lovely:

And yes, that's the Icing Joan I'm wearing. And yes, I have it in ALL the colors. It's Icing...It references Joan Holloway...what do you expect.

Shopping partner fun.

2011-07-29T14:57:00.003-05:00

There was someone in one of the fashion groups that was looking for shopping advice. What she wanted was "French Chic/conservative/Ann Taylor" stuff. So of course I chimed in, considering I've mentioned Ann Taylor in regards to SL Fashion before on this very blog. After she had got some great advice from the group, I met up with her after tossing her some LM's asking if she'd like some shopping company. She eventually gave me a link to the sort of thing she was looking for:

Armani Side stiched Jacket and dress on Saks Website

An image from the Saks site is below.

I laughed in IM, and she wondered why I was laughing and I told her I had given TWO people that very link in the past 24 hours to show them the sort of tailored elegant look I like to portray in SL, when I can find it. Most of the time I have to settle for retro...perhaps with mesh we'll see jackets like that.

So anyway I took her to the usual haunts for classic tailored things. We all know the drill. We hit up Lo Lo sim (Caroline Apollo) for jewellery, good place to hit if you need quality basics at good prices, and saw Caroline there.

I also took her to SF designs, where I had been a few hours before to pick up THIS on recommendation of Cousin Savannah Blindside of Caledon:

It's your typical ladies who lunch suit, though I'm wearing the short skirt which makes it more "20-something little miss junior league junior socialite who likes her skirts a touch shorter and heels a touch higher" (I actually knew of someone like that in USENET alt.fashion), but there's a longer skirt option if you want to go for the mature charity luncheon look. The outfit, with the short skirt anyway, actually reminded me of this dress from Donna Rico:

It really is lovely, comes in three colors too. However, the fabric looks fall-y and "heavy" like a nice thick dressy wool.

Mimi is available at the SF Designs for Women

The lady and myself had fun, we both discovered we had been fans of Ally McBeal and she commented on how some of the tailored skirts she had seen were Ally-short. And she swooned over Donna Flora's version of Audrey's famous Breakfast at Tiffany's dress. I helped her a bit in creating a skirt shape, and wanted her hair. She was wearing Elika's Rhythm style, which resembles the old ETD Roslin...but doesn't come in the dark reds Elika used to have...sigh.

Why Second Life is like tabletop gaming...or "Why certain virtual world pundits don't get it."

2011-07-28T01:56:00.004-05:00

Ah, those Virtual World Pundits. They make CC laugh. They say things like "zOMG, SL isn't popular and Facebook is so SL should be more like Facebook because unless it has double digit growth every month it's a failure". And then you discover that they spend 12 hours or less in-world...a month. No wonder they don't appreciate the in-world communication tools...they're not in-world enough to use them. And as for 12 hours, I can easily exceed that...in less than a week.

See, what those pundits don't understand is that SL...is like D&D. Not D&D Online the MMORPG....but D&D the tabletop experience. Let me explain.

D&D requires a TON of time if you want to do it right. A single encounter with multiple enemies can take up the entirety of a single session. That's not counting the paperwork and record keeping involed. Not only that, but the Dungeon Master's workload is even worse, creating a world, creating adventures, it's a major time sink. It's why there's never enough DM's. And there's the scheduling issues...can you find a time that matches a DM's plus other players? That is VERY difficult

Only a small majority of nerds want to go through that hassle these days...and some can't because of time constraints...so what do the others do? They play WoW, which although grindy, is no where near as complex as D&D. And you can play on your own schedule and STILL play with other people.

D&D is also expensive...you need your supplements and books.

D&D is not exactly the most newbie friendly game in the world, it's "UI" as it were is very complex and it has it's own vocabulary and a community that has it's own ideas about things.

Not only that, but that community complains every time some new sourcebook with additions is made or when a new version of the "UI" aka the rules is released.

So what does all that remind you of? SL. Like D&D, SL is a niche, it doesn't have to be Facebook. Those people who only log in for three hours or even a dozen hours a month...they're not SL's market. It's the people who spend a hundred hours a month in-world that are. Even if you're a content consumer like me, you still have to "work" for your fun in SL in a way that you don't in other social things. Most people don't want to do that....they want to start their crops, let the cows do whatever...while they're watching American Idol. SL requires immersion in a way that Facebook doesn't.

Here's an anecdote....my sister does her Farmville, while she watches TV. I wouldn't dare do SL while watching TV. There's people in SL who get in a little bit of a tizzy if they even think you're alt tabbed out in a web browser or in multiple IM/group chat sessions. SL requires attention in ways that Facebook doesn't....so the Facebook crowd isn't SL's audience and it's useless to pursue them in an obession for "Growth".

SL doesn't need rebranding. What it needs is for the pundits to figure out that being a niche product for a niche market is a fine and good thing in and of itself.

M.O.C.K. Cosmetics

2011-07-12T10:43:00.005-05:00

I've not mentioned the new "makeup layers" in Viewer 2 very much since I don't use them very often, relying on my trusty classic 5th & Oxfords....but....if you you to ask me: "Hey CC, where would you go to buy makeup layers?", my first answer would be Mocksoup Graves"MOCK"

Why MOCK?

Mocksoup, like Roslin Petion of 5th & Oxford, is a makeupista in RL, and it shows in her makeup. And she understands makeupista talk, so when I tell her, "I'm an NC20 and I need a gloss like the Juicy Tubes" she knows EXACTLY what I'm referring to. She also makes a ton of colors in her eyeshadows, lippie formulations and whatnot.

That's the L'Eau Russian Red Lipgloss combined with the Tonal Gold Complements eyeshadow over a 5th & Oxford Fair subtle 1 skin. That's one of the best lip glosses in SL, it really looks like one.

The M.O.C.K Cosmetics flagship store is at Rockhopper City 2 (38, 218, 23)

Low ARC Pretty

2011-07-01T09:18:00.003-05:00

Was working on an outfit for "Fairs" even though I don't often go to them since I find most of them annoying. For low-arc I go with system outfits, minimal prims and static non-flexy non-alpha things. It also means no-jewellery either. This is what I have today, though I've used similar outfits in the past:

Hair is an old ETD, Roslin in ETD Mahogany that Elikatira doesn't have an equivalent to. The ensemble are Cinzia jacket and Sonia skirt separates from L'Abel, which is having a sale at the moment.. Pnatyhose are from Insolence, the "Carmen's", and those are the Fri.Day Basic flats.

What's my shape digits?

2011-04-16T12:59:00.002-05:00

Strawberry Singh started up a challenge/meme/discussion on her blog about the numbers behind our Second Life shapes. Here's mine:

Interesting post by Kanomi Pikajuna

2011-04-08T13:50:00.003-05:00

Kanomi is the nice girl who is friend to all and she offers a VERY interesting solution (saw it via New World Notes) to SL's woes....sell it to the Users al la the Green Bay Packers.

Do I agree? I don't know, but it is interesting. Personally I think the real problem is the freebie culture....but that...is another story and another post some other time.

Sax Shepherd Bunny Ears

2011-04-08T13:36:00.003-05:00

I logged in today to see an IM from someone who was told to do so by former boss Salome Strangelove of the Late Lamented Linden Lifestyles, currently of Salome Says. Sure surprised me, thank you Salome, your piggie bunned greatness.

So this is a new creator...that made Bunny Ears...color changeable animated scripted bunny ears. Considering I was thinking about looking for some nice bunneh ears just 3 days ago, it was rather fortuitous.

You can change color, animation interval, set them to fixed position, set who can touch them, resize them, all useful things. Slightly less than 250L$ too. Now this is a new creator and this is their first item, but it's very nicely done. and worth picking up for easter fun, or if you want to do the playboy bunny look like I did. They're easily the best playboy bunny style ears in my inventory.

SLURL to Sax Shepherd in Seven Veils

Simone vintage bunny outfit, Truth Gabby hair, 5th and Oxford skin

Dear Shoe Designers with Love from CC!

2011-04-08T12:26:00.006-05:00

Hello Shoe makers! CC loves shoes! CC Loves shoes in RL! CC Loves shoes in SL. CC bought a shoe tipjar....just because! Look at Awesome tipjar that CC has that CC never actually uses:

Tipjar from Khango

You make shoes...CC happy. But sometimes you not make CC Happy. :-( [frowns]

CC uses viewer 2.+ ...CC no likes invisiprims, CC wants viewer 2.+ viewer alpha shoes! CC no buy non-alpha shoes, though flats without alpha are okay.

CC wants designers to update older shoes....CC wants them to release update kits for the already existing shoes in inventory. It would be good if such packs were available to group members or free..but CC is willing to pay, oh say around 50L$....but not pay full price by buying same shoes all over again.

CC also wants to know when you DO release 2.+ updated shoes and not find out by accident...use your groups! Do some marketing so that CC knows of Happy Thing you have done to make CC Happy!

So please listen to shoe loving CC....please make CC more happy!

Luv, CC

Image, style and compliments

2011-04-07T16:19:00.005-05:00

I've been socializing more, and experimenting with image and appearance in SL. I've also been getting a ton of compliments ever since I've been doing my social thing. I like Salome's take on compliments:

Also, how do you respond to compliments about an avatar being “sexy” or “hot?” I mean, I didn’t work out for this bod or spend hours on my hair and make-up. Do I think my avatar is cute and nummy? Yes — she fits my personal tastes. Do I appreciate other people may or may not feel the same? Of course. Would I take any feedback negative or positive personally? Um. How?

Don’t get me wrong — I appreciate it when someone says they like the sort of style I project, or when they squee over an outfit I put together. To me, that reflects a symbiotic pixel vanity and I do allow a smile here and there when someone compliments my aesthetic choices. But the “sexiness” thing always leaves me wanting to smirk and reply “thanks, your slider settings get me really hot, too.” But, you just know the sarcasm would be lost. To be fair, I don’t handle these sorts of compliments well IRL, either. Basically what someone is saying is they like the lot you drew in the genetic lottery. I suppose, comparing the two, at least I picked my own slider settings.

I often tell people that the content makers deserve all the credit...all I do is shop. I also say that I take the easy way out and keep it simple, classic and mostly real world inspired. Someone said to me that she thought me saying once that if Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn wouldn't wear something in SL...I wouldn't either. That's pretty close to the mark though I'd add a few more names to the list these days.

What do these images say to you:

That one got a compliment of "You remind me of that Black Swan movie", and that I thought of as well. Kind of princessy-ballerina-y. That's a L'Abel dress IIRC, Truth Tanya hair.

That one I nicknamed Zindra Hub CC. Your usual tanned, tattooed and shmexy SL Avatar look.

Tableau Girl, of course. :-) Makes me look like a 12 year old playing dress-up with mommy's clothes and makeup though.

Retro in ICING's Peggy, Clawtooth hair and Shiny thing's shoes. Got asked several times if I was a Joan on Mad Men fan while I was wearing it....which of course...I am.

Yes, that's the pen necklace. Was told I look sexy in that. Which is very funny considering how simple the look is.

Someone asked me if I was a fan of Desperate Housewives Bree when I wore that. Got a tonne of compliments with that. Mostly about how all the little details worked together. I like Bree's style , but that's not Bree inspired but Laura Bennett from the Third Season of Project Runway I have some similar white blouses of varying cleavagey styles that I wear with varying skirts a la Carolina Herrera. I call those my "uniforms".

That's the Coco Broadcloth blouse with the ingenue pencil skirt. Hair is an old ETD, Tyra that I haven't found a more recent replacement for. Sunglasses are the Heiress frames from Paper Couture and the jewellery is also from Paper Couture. That's the old Tete a Pied Heiress handbag. The Belt is from Fri.day, the shoes from Shiny Things, hosiery from Insolence.

My "issues" with New World Notes

2011-04-07T00:51:00.003-05:00

New World Notes is one of the oldest and well respected SL blogs. It's founder, Hamlet Au, was once Hamlet Linden, Linden Lab's own embedded reporter in SL. I heartily recommend it to people and read it myself daily.

However...I have issues with NWN and have apparently have been blocked from commenting there. That disappoints me, though I can understand why.

I probably mentioned Hamlet's indirect financial relationship with Facebook a few too many times when Hamlet kept flogging Facebook as the be all of what SL should be more like. He consults for a company that uses Facebook for game logins and thusly, indirectly financially benefits from it. I was a bit perturbed that he did not mention that connection earlier in his promotion of SL becoming more like Faceook, unlike his Blue Mars thing, which he was quite open about.

My issues with NWN are as follows:

1. Hamlet lives in the tech journalist bubble in California and is thusly disconnected from "average people". This in part led to my disagreement with him about the future of Blue Mars, because while he probably knows people who upgrade their computers often and buy a new iPhone whenever it comes out, that's not the case amongst the SL userbase. He simply didn't understand that Blue Mars had no future as a desktop virtual world with it's Cryengine based graphics when the mass market "Marts" of the US have machines on their shelves with integrated Nvidia 6150SE's in them.

2. Hamlet talks to much to the people behind virtual worlds, when it's the USERS who are the important people...without users, the worlds cannot survive. That also leads to him being a sucker for buzzwords like "the cloud" He thought that "the cloud" would save blue mars, that it wouldn't matter that all those housewives in SL had low end integrated chipsets on their PC's, that BM would be rendered in the cloud and displayed locally.....dumbest thing I ever heard. They didn't have the money! or the number of users to justify doing it. They'd have needed to start on that years ago, and they ran out of time.

3. Hamlet is guilty of the "if it's popular it must be good and anything that wants to become popular should be more like that" fallacy. That's the Facebook thing. Facebook sucks...it truly does. It's interface, it's privacy tools, the requests for "facebook aps" to do things to your info. But Hamlet thinks that because it's popular SL should be more like it, or become connected to it. That's kind of like the people who say smartphones should be like the iPhone, when the iPhone might not be the best device for someones needs. Facebook is all about real world identities and SL...is not. Hamlet says that SL users could use facebook to learn about events in world which tells me that:

4. Hamlet doesn't spend enough time in world talking to "the masses" in world. If he did, he wouldn't say half the stuff he does about SL users. Why use facebook for event listings when there's google calendar and SL's own group system....that he doesn't use effectively. Go on, check the NWN group...no notices...and the group is assigned land that is not covered by Tier:

More Land Credits are needed to support the Land in use."

That picture above was taken at the NWN headquarters location in Waterhead...his building is gone and his furniture and pot plants are just floating in mid air. The man really needs to spend more time in world doing the things that other SL users do, like maintain their land and socialize and stuff. You may not believe it, but in the old days, NWN actually sponsored events in-world!

Another thing that leads me to believe that Hamlet isn't as connected to the masses of SL users as he ought to be is his avatar appearance. Most avatars, even male ones that don't shop much...update their appearance quite a bit. Could you imagine a female SL blogger looking like she just stepped out of 2006? No. Sure, Hamlet's a guy, and a tech journalist and doesn't himself cover SL fashion, leaving that to Iris, but still. DJ's shop, Land Baron's shop, content makers shop. Shopping, especially of things related to avatar appearance, drives the SL economy.

5. He doesn't talk about the SL economy as much as he did in the past. That's hurting SL more than anything. It isn't sim crossings or group chat problems that really hurts SL, but people NOT spending L$.

6. Hamlet doesn't get that SL is a niche product, like hex based strategy games and roguelikes are. The same applies to Minecraft. Sure it's a lot of buzz, but it's coming from hard core nerds who love that sort of crazy complex stuff.

7. The core SL user is probably a 30-50 year old woman...but Hamlet rarely talks to them and would rather talk with Ex-Lindens starting up micro-worlds based on SL code that are going to go nowhere without content that will attract those 30-50 year old women. No pretty shoes, big hair, sexy dresses to make their avatar look kardashiany? They aren't going to be there.

8. Hamlet doesn't realize that NWN is a bubble itself. He's not getting true feedback on
how the masses see and feel about SL via the comments on NWN because NWN's readers are oldbies, FIC and near FIC. Almost all a part of what calls the 100000 That's a problem because the things they care about sometimes don't matter to the "masses" of SL. There's folks in SL who don't give a damn about group chat...and there's plenty of people who simply don't cross sim borders...they d on't need to. In fact, I tend to only cross borders in the steamlands! Everywhere else, I TP.

So that's pretty much it. It's not that I dislike Hamlet or NWN, since it's still a great source of information, it's just that Hamlet needs to be more "grounded" like he used to be.

SL Client 2.6.4 and the bouncy boobeh physics

2011-04-06T21:49:00.006-05:00

I was using the development series builds anyway, because they're the only Linden Lab viewers that have the c-ares glitch on Linux fixed (starting with late 2.6.3) so I've been using those builds and moved to along to 2.6.4 and the bouncy came with it. Here's a video demonstration I did:

The physics for breasts, belly and butt are implemented as a wearable physics layer. If you're running 2.6.4, go to My Appearance and Add Clothing> New Physics. That will give you the layer to play with. Here are the settings I use:

breast bounce max effect: 100 spring: 25 Gain: 15 Damping: 50
breast cleavage, max effect: 20, spring: 10, Gain: 9, Damping: 50
Breast Sway, max effect: 20, spring: 10, gain: 9 Damping: 50

And under Advanced Parameters:
Breast Mass: 10, Breast Gravity: 10 (in the video though I have it at 0 now), Breast Drag: 30

The other settings related to Butt, and Belly are at the defaults. To me, it looks best subtle.

Here's the caveats:

You need a 2.6.4 viewer to see or use it. If you have a 2.6.4 viewer you will see bounce on anyone who uses the physics layer, even if you don't use the layer yourself. Likewise, if you use the layer, anyone running 2.6.4 will see it no matter what. Prim attachments don't move with the body parts, they stay where they're attached. so if you were wearing prim pasties and have bouncy...your boobehs would probably bouncy beyond the pastie.

Go to the Snowstorm Development wiki page to download the 2.6.4 builds. Even if you don't use the feature, testing out the viewers by as many people as possible with different hardware and whatnot is a good idea.

Adventure Brigade? Protectors of Seraph City?

2011-01-14T17:54:00.004-06:00

Wuxtry Wuxtry, read all about it....rumors of Adventure Brigade to protect Seraph City...

Citizens, I Have heard rumors of a group of two-fisted adventurers forming to protect the Beautiful Metropolis of Seraph City from varous sundry forces of mischance and evil. Why do I know this, fashion reporter that I am? I hear things.

Terrible Lizard from Dinosaur Island wreaking Havoc among the spires of the City? They'll be there.

Black Vulture's mooks stealing the Good Professors Applied Phleabotium? They'll get it back.

Cultists of ancient Evil Entities trying to raise tentacled monstrosity from the sewers? Yep, anti Entity gas grenades will do the trick, dropped from their DeHaviland.

Madcap Heiress held for ransom? They'll bring her back safely and engage in witty banter with her every step of the way....it's in the Adventurer's Rulebook.

May the Brigade prosper and grow.

Great Minds Think Alike...perhaps they should join forces

2011-01-14T16:40:00.005-06:00

So there I was in Seraph City...was I watching a Burlesque show at the New Champagne Room where you can always find retro-lovin gals and get more ideas on things to buy? maaaaybe. One of the audience members was wearing what looked like Icing's Puma Jie puffy sleeved blouse and pencil skirt combo...but it wasn't....it was a puffy sleeved dress with a pencil skirt combo named Guro from Ivalde. The lady told me it was a giftie...and turned out...I already had it. So here's a comparison, that's the default red bloused Icing Puma Jie on the left and the Ivalde Guro on the right.

Great minds think alike...red blouse/bodice and black high waisted skirt is a classic look and it makes perfect sense that both would do a version of it, so no saying that one stole the "idea" from the other because they did not. That look is a fashion archetype.

So that got me thinking. If one shops at Ivalde, one probably shops at Icing, and vice versa. (and probably Ingenue, Jet Doll and Donna Flora as well) Same people shop at both...they appeal to the same market segment. So...what if they joined forces or merged. It might be an advantage..focused marketing...larger inventory...more frequent releases because they have TWO people doing stuff so if one takes a break the other is still doing stuffs. It might help with customer service as well, if one isn't online, the other might be. Their skill sets might also compliment each other, say if one doesn't do jewellery but the other does or if one does shoes and the other doesn't. You never know...such things with similar businesses/markets might work in SL....or not. I have been told that one reason they don't is that there's the "trust" factor to deal with. SL doesn't have the trust mechanisms that RL has, so people don't do such things. Too bad...it might be a great way for smaller or medium sized design houses to compete with the larger super shops.

SLURL to ICING main Store in Mischief
Icing Blog

SLURL to Ivalde
Ivalde and L'Abel website

Donna Flora Andrea and Donna Flora Flickr.

2011-01-12T15:41:00.004-06:00

Everyone knows CC loves a good suit or suitish type things in SL, so CC LOVES Donna Flora, who makes the retro pretty, and modernish fashionista suits with that Milan flair.

This is Andrea, a relatively recent release:

That's the Wine but it also comes in black and silver. It's very "I'm the Executive Editor of a Fashion Magazine" -ish....which means...J'adore! The jacket is sculpty so it might require some moving around. and you really need an updo with it because of the collar.

Acquire at: Donna Flora Main Store in Bonin 195, 130, 23

Best way to keep up with her new releases is via her flickr:

Donna Flora Flickr

GT220

2011-01-02T13:30:00.003-06:00

I received a new video card for Christmas...a GT220. Yes it's a low end card...but it's still much better than the integrated 6150SE I was running. Shaders went on and sliders went up. It also fixed the double resolution screenshot bug I had with the 6150SE. Yay!

ICING Gala

2011-01-02T13:12:00.003-06:00

Of note over the holidays there was an ICING release, not of retro pretty pretty, but something a little more modern red-carpet-y. Gala:

Long skirt (either with train or not, with a very high slit and one shoulder bodice. Personally I like the red the best.

Well worth adding to inventory if you want an "Award show gown".

SLURL to ICING main Store in Mischief

7 League Boots from Cattiva

2010-11-24T08:08:00.005-06:00

CC NEEDED boots. Versatile Suede Boots, with not too many straps n buckles, but not too plain, not too high of a heel but high enough. A little bit of Victorian aesthetic wouldn't be bad either. Platform would be okay as long as it was a hidden platform and not too high. You know, victorian tinged fashionista window shopping boots. Boots that were "Just Right for CC" CC's friend Lissa Maertens at Cattiva made boots, not just for CC but all the grid to buy!

This is the brown, and there will be a dark brown eventually. I also have them in a luscious black suede as well. I love these boots enough that if I was a young fashionista in RL that could handle the heel, I'd want these boots. And I've already received positive comments on them on flickr from a Caledonian. And yes, the name of the boots was inspired by the famed Seven League Boots of folklore.

They're available for L$500 a pair at the Cattiva e Cattivo Main Store in Zhao, 103,129,26

Ivalde Seremin

2010-11-11T16:13:00.004-06:00

I'd been wanting a pink lady-who-lunches suit and found one at Ivalde, via Marketplace. Surprised I hadn't seen it or found it before.

Turns out it's an older release, 2008 vintage, but still pretty nice. It's not a work suit, this is what you wear to your charity luncheons and whatnot. The damask is rather subtle, I can barely see it with my bad eyes, and it has satin lapels. The skirt would probably be a touch more flattering on me if it was a touch shorter, but it's the "right" length for it's actual purpose. You'll notice the sleeve attachments have that shading/lighting issue, but it's not as noticeable in the black version, which I also have.

SLURL to Ivalde
Ivalde and L'Abel website

Truth Joceln hair in Blood
5th and Oxford Fair Kitty skin #3
Antique Pearls from Paper Couture
Carmen pantyhose in shiny light white
Delphine mary janes in blush from Shiny Things

IBizarre Mara Sweater/Jumper

2010-11-11T14:55:00.004-06:00

This was a pleasant surprise in my inventory. I received a blogger package of a "Mara Jumper" from Ibizarre, which I hadn't heard of before.

It's just a simply cute ribbed turtleneck sweater with a little pouch in front. I'm pairing it with a pencil skirt with Whippet & Buck to show it's "dress it up" potential. I love how the turtleneck isn't snug, I loathe snug turtlenecks in RL. It hit my inventory at a good time too, since I was jonesing for a cute sweater. The slightly pushed up sleeves are a nice touch. It comes in several nice fall-ish colors, this is the graphite. And it's only L$150.

So thank you for dropping it on me, Anyusha.

SLURL to Anyusha Lilienthal's IBizarre Main Store

Anyusha Lilienthal's IBizarre blog

Hair: Truth Nadia in Blood
Skin 5th & Oxford Fair Kitty #4
Skirt: Victoria High Waisted Pencil Skirt from Whippet & Buck
Hosiery: Carmen pantyhose from Insolence
Shoes: Delphine's from Shiny Things

Elika's back.

2010-10-29T14:48:00.005-05:00

Yep, she's baaaaack with hair stuffs. The question is...can she take back the mindshare and customers she lost (mostly to Truth, Analog Dog, and Damselfly) by being away/shut down for so long? We'll see. Personally, I think she'll get back some customers but not be as dominant as she was in the old days.

Here's the gist, new textures, more modern primwork. There are fairly nice browns...but....the reds need more work. She simply doesn't have a dark enough red to replace the old ETD Mahogany, the color I based my entire look around.

The good things:

Color numbers: This could let her add new colors, say she could do a dark brown with red highlights and simply call it 10RH. She could do colors inbetween colors and call it say 9.5. It also helps the customer, knowing a 5 is darker than a 1. Pop quiz, which is darker...sienna or chocolate. :-)

The prices: L$200 for 5 colors. Brilliant, a fair good price at the sweet spot in pricing. Most sales of stuffs in SL are of items L$200 or below. More hair makers should adopt the pricing.

The Bad:

The textures...welllllll....she could use more colors, and the reds could use more work I think, or some darker chocolatey reds. A la Clawtooth Hot Chocolate or Truth Blood. The browns seem a touch mousey and faded and not as vibrant and rich as I expected them to be, but she does have a color that could replace the old ETD Chestnut.

The Branding: Elika had a perfectly good brand...ETD. It was simple, it was easy to remember and referenced her name, Elikapeka Tiramisu Designs. It was also fast to find with an inventory search. Why she went with "[e]" and Elikatira is beyond me. Everyone is just going to call it ETD anyway, and slap her new hair in their ETD folder. Never rebrand unless you absolutely have to! (I was opposed to Dazzle rebranding as Last Call too! The name Dazzle had cachet and flair!) And if you do, the new name should be snappier and easier to remember. Frankly...IMHO she should just go back to using ETD.

That said, it's Elika hair, at good prices, and you really can't go wrong with it. She's also going to be doing other stuffs like shoes again, that'll be good. I can't tell if it's Willow modelling the hair in the displays, but she doesn't call the Willow Packs, Willow Packs anymore. :-(

SLURL to ETD Main Store...I mean Elikatira

Oldbie stories

2010-10-29T12:53:00.005-05:00

There's a bittersweet post about Oldbie Stories on New World Notes
SL is very ephemeral, there is much that has been lost of beauty, wonder and fun. That's one reason I don't delete much in my inventory and started this blog...to remember.

I came into SL on July 19th of 2006 via a secondlife protocol link to join a vodcast releated chat, so I missed out on newbie island and landed at CC Chapman's Podcast Palace in Shatgogae. It's no longer there, of course.

My home point was in Waterhead welcome area, which is still around and still much the same.

A lot of the older stores aren't around or have changed locations, but my August 2006 LM to Adam n Eve is still quite functional because they're still in Genesis. SLURL to Adam n Eve in Genesis

My oldest Caledon LM dating to late July of 2006 is still quite functional since Caledon On Sea is a hubbed sim

I'm wearing the Spring Flowers dress from Torridwear which I bought about a week in SL. Torridwear is gone....the last thing to go was her poses I think.

My skin is a 2006 era skin from Roslin Petion and CJ Carnot of Tete a Pied (New York shade, Paris makeup, red brows), Fleur and Currently 5th & Oxford They're still around and I still wear their skins SLURL to 5th & Oxford The Tete a Pied makeup box, that you could buy skin from, sits on my vanity table in my apartment in Caledon.

The pearls are by Raven Rosebud of Raven's Creations, who is still in SL, but her store is now Sub Rosa SLURL to Sub Rosa

The hair is "Audrey" from Six Kennedy's Gurl 6. It is still in GurlyWood: SLURL to Gurl 6

And just for fun...I cow danced in Lalique: SLURL to Lalique, home of Luth Brodie's Reel Expression

Sigh, not even Elika calls her "Willow Packs", "Willow Packs" these days. For you newbies, "Willow Packs" were what you call "Fatpacks" they were so named after hardcore SL shopper and blogger Willow Zander

In the old days...things were different, with fewer people logged in at one time (5000 to 7000) it was easier to make a name for oneself. Heck, marketing fashion stuff was easy, you could drop review copies on about 4 people (Willow Zander, Celebrity Trollop, Sabrina Doolittle and Salome Strangelove) and be done! The fashion market is bigger, but more fragmented due to the huge number of stores and amount of stuffage on the grid.

Oh yeah: IIRC "stuffs" and "stuffage" as terms related to SL fashion started on PXP I think, as did "kyoot" What's PXP? Pixel Pinup Online, one of the old big 3 fashion blogs: PXP (Willow, Canimal Zephyr, Arbel Vogel and others, Second Style (Celebrity Trollop and eventually others) and Linden Lifestyles (Sabrina and Salome with assistants) I think the squint-eyed junk in the trunk tattood and pierced grungy look was popularized via PXP (in response to the pretty sparkly party dress look of Dazzle and other places)

I've been seeing more "Tableau Girls" lately, you know what I'm talking about. The cutesy oracul AO, the hand drawn casuals, the "touch of anime" look to their skin, the hair with the headband, the petite cutesy girly shape. For a while there, they seemed to have disappeared, but now they're back.

It would be fun to have an oldbie fashionista gathering of some sort.

Viewer 2.2 Awesome

2010-10-28T16:40:00.004-05:00

Now normally when I change clothes in SL, I use the Add to feature, so I can change wherever I'm at and not be nekkid. Well last night I was changing and adding some jewellery....and it didn't replace my old jewellery like it normally did...it went on the same attachment point.

Also, some may not know but you can have multiple clothing items on the same spot...just right click "Add" That applies to skin and the new makeup layers as well. That's right...it would now be possible for skin makers to do their own separate lines of eyeshadows, blush, lippies, etc.

I'm actually wearing four sets of earrings in that pic, and two necklaces on the chest point (and another on the spine) Just before I took that pic I was wearing 2 makeup layers over it...just because I could.

Thank you Linden Lab.

Shiny Things Delphine

2010-10-27T18:55:00.005-05:00

Shiny Things Delphine is a 2.foo alpha compatible, high heeled, almond-toed, mary jane pump with a slight platform that is very classic but still subtly sexy. The heel is probably equivalent to about a 100mm heel in RL. So far they only come in leathers. We need suedes and satins Fally!
Love them, they are fabulous shoes!

SLURL to Shiny Things

Icing Equestrienne

2010-10-27T18:44:00.005-05:00

Have I mentioned Miko Omegamu is back to making retro pretty stuffage in SL? Yes, yes she is. And if you've seen me in world you've probably seen me wearing some of her recent stuffage, like the Mad Men inspired Peggy dress.

This is Equestrienne a very lovely riding habit. You can wear it either with the skirt (with our without the bustle or with the breeches. I paired it with Lassitude & Ennui's very realistic looking Severan riding boots which are now 2.foo alpha compatible.

SLURL to ICING main Store in Mischief

SLURL to Lassitude & Ennui in Nouveau

Wearing purple for GLAAD Spirit Day

2010-10-20T12:38:00.002-05:00

GLAAD Spirit Day

What is Spirit Day?

The idea behind Spirit Day, first created by teenager Brittany McMillan earlier this month, is a simple one, not dissimilar to the idea of "Spirit Week" held in many high schools, and can be summed up in three words: Everyone Rally Together.

Spirit Day honors the teenagers who had taken their own lives in recent weeks. But just as importantly, it's also a way to show the hundreds of thousands of LGBT youth who face the same pressures and bullying, that there is a vast community of people who support them.

Purple symbolizes 'spirit' on the rainbow flag, a symbol for LGBT Pride that was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978.

As one of the event's Facebook pages says: "This event is not a seminar nor is it a rally. There is NO meeting place. All you have to do is wear purple."

Wearing purple on October 20 is a simple way to show the world that you stand by these courageous young people and a simple way to stand UP to the bullies. Remember those lives we've tragically lost, and show your solidarity with those who are still fighting. 'Go Purple' today!

http://www.glaad.org/spiritday

At the Cup of Goodness:

Myself, CoG owner Elisabeth Beurling, Icy Rage, Zana Starsider, Dana Starsider, all showing our support. Thank you to everyone there.

Two lovely avatars.

2010-10-20T10:21:00.004-05:00

There are blogs out there that Fug SL avatars, but I sometimes like to show lovely ones I run across.

At the "Cup of Goodness" Sami Mohindi, wearing a lovely Pixeldolls dress, Truth hair and what she said was a Rockberry skin, romantically pretty:

Linda Whitehead, who had paired the top and sweater from Icing's Robot Love with some trousers:

And here I am with her, having paired the Robot Love top with a pencil skirt:

Food is the new black.

2010-09-30T16:49:00.004-05:00

Slurpee's from Callie Cline are Yummy!

Rive Gauche dress from Baiastice
Baiastice store

BlakOpal Bella Luna

2010-08-26T19:47:00.006-05:00

BlakOpal isn't a new store to me, I don't recall ever mentioning them on the blog before. They desbribe themselves best: Victorian, Gothic, Steampunk, and Pirate-wear for Men and women. This is a new Gothy release, Bella Luna

Basically a short crocheted lace minidress with prim bustle lace thingy with red rose accents. Black and red...can't go wrong there...I love the black n red

Moves well too. That's what of my things I look out for, does it look pretty when I'm moving. I'm all about the pretty.

That is very nice work on the bodice, well done indeed.

The stockings, while very squeetastic, are let down by the SL ankles, darn it. I do so love a good patterned stocking (in RL as well).

Those are the Riveted Low ankle boots, a little Western to my taste but not bad at all. Though IMHO it's the pirate-y knee boots to really take the cake in the footwear section at BlakOpal. Mmmm Pirates. In fact, the first time I saw a lady dressed in BlakOpal Pirate gear I immediately thought: "Pretty! CC Want!" And I still haven't got around to it...skin comes first.

The gown was dropped on me by the owner, but I have other blakopal items in my inventory. The skin is a 5th and Oxford Brooke Nightfall. The hair is new, a very "Joan from Mad Men"-ish updo named "Mrs. Kitten 2"from Clawtooth at Tableau

SLURL BlakOpal Main Store

SLURL to 5th and Oxford at Nouveau

SLURL to Clawtooth in Tableau

My Name is CC and I'm a Girloholic. (with props to Salome)

2010-08-22T16:43:00.006-05:00

My former Boss at Linden Lifestyles, Salome strangelove has written a very thoughtful post in regards to her feminism and her "Squee" over SL fashion.

I could tell epic stories about my angst in trying to reconcile my feminism, with my love of femme-y things, and my Transgenderedness. And I do mean epic. I have several threads, one of them 18 pages, on a message board I frequent that are basically all about that issue.

It wasn't till relatively recently, May of Last year, that I got over it...mostly. You see, for many years, I thought that because I was a nerd, I couldn't be a woman because I was nothing like a woman. Also for many years, I thought I couldn't be a woman because I was attracted women (I didn't know that lesbian MTF Transsexuals existed). And there were times that I believed that because I'd go squee over some RL pair of shoes like these Christian Louboutin Anemone's (even if I couldn't actually walk or afford them) that I wasn't "really a TS".

Dear readers, did I ever tell you that I'm amazingly low self esteemy? Even in SL! Just last week I was thinking that perhaps my avatar wasn't pretty enough.

What helped me the most was my friends on the Internets, and the Visible: A Femmethology Volumes.

Am I a feminist? Yes, yes I am. I've identified as such for years. Lets see, I think it was before Anita Hill, somewhere between 1988 and 1990. I began identifying more strongly with feminism with the rise of Third Wave feminism. In fact, it was a series of articles and interviews in Glamour magazine about and by Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi that did so.

I would describe myself as a pro-porn, pro-choice Third Wave feminist. I'm a practical feminist, I don't go for that deconstruction and theorizing, it hurts my head. I like to keep it simple.

I don't refer to myself as a "girl" or "woman" yet, I feel like I haven't "earned it" yet, but when I was young, I played with my sisters dolls, read her YM and Seventeen, played with her makeup. But that doesn't mean I didn't like Dungeons & Dragon's (got my first set in 81), playing with the Brix Blox Lego knockoffs, and playing video games.

I also sometimes sing the chorus of "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from the Musical "Flower Drum Song", sometimes ironically, but sometimes not, and I have done it while shopping in SL:

When I have a brand new hairdo
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do,
I enjoy being a girl!

Vita's Boudoir

2010-07-24T12:15:00.003-05:00

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes mentioned a shop called Boudoir operated by two RL fashionista sisters (SL names: Vitabela Dubrovna & Precious Restless) who own a RL shop of the same name in Croatia. It's all couture and runway inspired stuff, totally impractical, but very fabulous. I only saw one dress that really spoke to me at that particular moment: The Bed of Roses Dress

The laced corset style bodice appears to be leather to me, and the sheer tulle skirt (I think it's tulle) is covered in roses. It's got a sort of badass punk princess look to it. The skirt has the usual alpha issues though, not too bad though and it looks nice while moving.

I also saw these Red open-toed platform stilettos with roses, very couture-y...I know it's not a word. :-)

I was a bit surprised by the store build, I was disappointed, I expected it to look more like their lovely Boutique in Zagreb, which you can see in this Youtube Video of their boutique

Boudoir at Zora 61, 205, 303
There are also websites for both the RL and SL boutiques

RL Boutique store website
SL Boutique blog

ETD Lorraine hair
5th & Oxford Brooke Subtle skin

Rosie's Thingies

2010-07-19T09:56:00.003-05:00

Rosemarie Indigo dropped a blogger box on me today, and the name of the shop intrigued me so I opened it right up. Eyes, it contained eyes, Considering how my favourite Eye maker (Miriel Enfield) has left SL, I figured I ought to take a look considering how the eyes were described as a fruit inspired set. One set of the eyes, the Framboise (raspberry) made CC look deranged, but this set...the Kiwi, is nice.

A very nice kiwi-ish green, and how I love a nice green eye. Now admittedly I'm a smaller iris sort of gal, so these larger irises aren't my thing, but if you do like quirky large irised eyes, you ought to take a look...considering how the designer said she was a Miriel fan herself. They're inexpesive as well, 30L% for the fruit eyes, except for Framboise, which is a dollarbie.

Rosie's Thingies at Fantasy Dreams (181, 109, 801)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Fantasy%20Dreams/181/109/801

And on XstreetSL:
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=237462

Rezday party on the 22n'd

2010-07-16T12:55:00.003-05:00

My 4th Rezday is next Monday and I'm Throwing a party next Thursday:

To All and Sundry;

CronoCloud Creeggan, the not entirely tame Fashionista, shall be hosting a Rezday Party to Celebrate her Fourth Rezday at the Ballroom at Coughton Court in Caledon Rothesay (47, 82, 22) http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Rothesay/48/82/22

Event will take place on July 22nd at the following times. Times are in SLT (PDT)
12PM to 2PM and 8PM to 10PM

Dress is....wear what you want, you KNOW CC will be changing her outfit during the party at least once.

has it been so long, seems like it was just yesterday that I joined.

Donna Flora

2010-06-19T10:55:00.004-05:00

Donna Flora is a new store to me.....mostly retro, seems to favor Edwardian and Roaring 20's to my eyes, but there's a smattering of stuff from most eras. But this is the star of the store to me, the Lorenza Black/white suit:

"But CC", you say, "It's just a boring suit"

Not so boring, it has a very high end ladies who lunch vibe to it, got that Euro-designer feel to it. How can you not love it, it has a hat and a bag!

Isn't it pretty?

There's also a white/black version that's also nice.

Teleport to Donna Flora in Garman 204, 87, 102

Details

Analog Dog Mia hair
AlaskaMetro<3 skin, Rose brow 3, makeup 7
Shinny Things Classics pumps

Felicia's Designs

2010-05-06T10:55:00.004-05:00

Felicia's Designs is a store I haven't mentioned on this blog...quite an oversight on my part. We met some time ago. I saw she had some new releases and went to check them out...and her new store.

I picked up a couple of things that spoke to me.

The first is Sarina, a sort of summery party/cocktail dress with lace trim, the shoes you see are included. This is the "pearl" but it comes in other colors (and black, I have GOT to have my black) Perfect for a concert, or nice event where you want to look dressed up, without going all ballgowny

The second is Eve, sleeveless turtleneck sweater with a long paisley skirt..a style one of my internet acquaintances favors. And yes, the boots shown in the ad in the store are included. It comes in what seems to be a bajillion colors, but this is the black. It has that classic dressy-casual with a touch of Bohemian vibe to it.

The store iteself is VERY nicely laid out and attractive, so the shopping experience there is a good one. The store displays are very good as well, kudos to Felicia on a job well done.

Felicia's Fashions is at Bellatrix 120, 219, 27

other notes>
Skin: 5th and Oxford Brooke 2 in Fair
Hair: ETD Maaliyah
Eva Mary Jane Pumps shown with Eva from Lassitude & Ennui

Been busy and away from SL but I'm sort of back with SL on 64 bit Fedora

2010-04-30T20:53:00.005-05:00

Yes, been busy and working and my schedule has reduced SL time. But I got myself a cheap refurb x86 box so I have more access to SL when the laptop is occupied. I'm dual-booting it between Linux (my usual OS that I ran on my PS3) and Windows. I used to use my PS3 for everything except SL, until Sony decided to take away the ability to run Linux with a recent firmware. Without that firmware you don't have access to PSN so it was either run Linux and forgo network play and PSN or update and use Linux. So that's why the x86 box.

I have SL installed in both operating systems...was a bit of a hassle to get it working in Linux (due to 64 bit issues) but it works fine now, even with sound, and voice. Just mess with the secondlife script that starts it to make sure gstreamer doesn't get disabled


#if [ "`uname -m`" = "x86_64" ]; then
#    export LL_DISABLE_GSTREAMER=x
#    echo '64-bit Linux detected: Disabling GStreamer (streaming video and music) by default; edit ./secondlife to re-enable.'
#fi

Don't create that SLVoice script some say to do. Just get all those i686 libs you need.

I'm also in counseling working on getting the "hormone letter".

My Third Rezday!

2009-07-23T14:26:00.002-05:00

It was the 19th, RFL day so that's why I didn't do anything special like throw a party or something. I'll do something eventually, I think. Just have to organize it.

Happy Rezday to ME!

SL sure has changed since my early days, and it always surprises me when newbies say I've been in SL a long time. Not that many non-designer fashion bloggers left from 2006 either. It's been a lot of fun over these years, thanks in no small part to my SL friends.

RL influences on my Avatar

2009-07-21T22:01:00.007-05:00

There has been a bit of a meme for SL bloggers to discuss their RL influences on their avatar. My turn now.

My biggest influence is probably the iconic Audrey Hepburn especially in her incarnation as Holly Golightly in the famed "Breakfast at Tiffany's", which should come as no surprise to my readers:

And perhaps just a touch of redhead Ann Margret from her ingenue days:

And also a bit of red headed Rita Hayworth, especially when I'm doing a Hollywood style gown.

And modern burlesque pin-up, Miss Dita Von Teese. That might surprise some, but you haven't seen all my SL lingerie. :-) The lady also really knows how to work her makeup. That dress even looks like it could be from ICING in SL.

Not long after visiting Caledon, and hanging around there I realized I had subconsciously made my avatar look like Kate Winslet as Rose in Titanic. Look, another redhead!

I was once described by SL fashionista Celebrity Trollop as the Bree Hodge (of Desperate Housewives as portrayed by Marcia Cross) of SL. Little did she know as she said it that Bree is easily my favourite character on that show, in part because of her look. Very very prim, very very tasteful, very very classic and elegant, but still very very sexy, and very much a redhead.

Although her appearances on Project Runway took place after I had joined SL, there's quite a bit of the third season's Laura Bennett in my avatar. Which goes to reason since Laura is still my favourite Project Runway designer, and is the one whos designs I just loved loved loved. Very very classic, elegant and sophisticated and redheaded.

Laura has a comic book style column on iVillage called Case Clothed, where she has been avatarized by fellow Project Runway alumni and Barbie clothing designer, Robert Best. Avatar Laura and avatar CC could be sisters!

Since I've added some poundage to my shape, it seems there's a bit of plus-size model Kate Dillon too, but that's to be expected since she was one of my fashion role models during the days when the late lamented plus-size fashion magazine MODE was still around.

CC and Zen, dancing on the beach.

2009-07-21T20:27:00.005-05:00

Zen, or more formally, Sir Zenmondo Wormser of Caledon have been friends for quite some time. It might have been late 2006 but more likely sometime in 2007. I am fond of him, we are of similar mindsets about things, and both "nerds" of a sort, though he is much more skilled in what he calls Code Poetry than I am. And yes, writing computer code, even LSL is an art, so Code Poetry is an apt name. Zen is one of the few gentleman (or ladies) who I'd ask to escort me to a formal ball in Caledon if I needed such an escort if he was available. There are a few others, but most of them are either taken (Hi Alistair Whybrow), or would most likely be escorting a peer (Hi JJ Drinkwater) or busy. I won't even go into how most of the eligible bachelorettes in Caledon don't stay eligible for very long.

Anyway, I like Zen, and for some reason, he likes me. I warned him I'm a not entirely tame or sane fashionista, but that doesn't seem to bother him. I have promised him a dance or two in the past if my memory serves me well, but I think I reneged, but I did manage to get one in after the RFL ended. I was dead tired, but I promised him and this time I wasn't going to default.

Here's a picture with my default SL settings including the CalWL windlight lighting setting:

Here, I have turned on some features and whatnot:

And here it is up to max, windlight clouds, pretty water, and everything:

Looks amazing, but took my framerate way down. That setting would only really be useful for static shots.

A very enjoyable dance, and then he took me underwater to show me his artificial life based fish. They are quite an amazing feat. While I know of AL projects over an entire sim I don't know of any small enough to keep in ones manor or somesuch.

Caledonians might see Zen and I together at events, since he is good company, and it would be nice to have a regular dancing partner whose company I enjoy. He's invited me to visit a Disney inspired sim, that he's aware of, that I hadn't heard about.

Don't look at me like that. Heaven knows what's come over me, but the real truth is, I am fond of Zen. I had a habit of calling him Sir Zen, even before he was knighted.

RFL experience, not so good.

2009-07-21T20:06:00.004-05:00

I posted this in a comment on New World Notes in response to a question on how the RFL could try to raise US $500000 next year.

Having a big event over a long period of time is a standard tactic for SL, but that goes against the "a RFL event is 24 hours" tradition that comes from RL. Well they'll have to get over that, because SL is not RL.

Which leads me to the fact that in RL you can have people along side the track cheering on survivors and caregivers and walkers, but that doesn't work very well in SL. Those Avilion folks in Tree of Life meant well, but they were making things worse! Somebody should have ejected most of them.

Having the track double back or overpass itself through sims was a bad bad bad idea because it increased the number of avatars in a region. That's what killed Overcome, because you had a bunch of spectators at the track that passed through the Northern edge of Overcome. Besides those walking through the southern part. I never did complete the Survivor-Caregiver lap because Overcome took down SL three times. Support, Remember and Stride were also bad. it took me 10 hours to do 4.46 laps!

They should have kept the camp and build sims away from the track. I remember in 2006 how you had to walk quite a bit to get to camps to visit RFL vendors, while this year you could spot vendors right from the track. Bad idea, which also made it harder for those who didn't want to walk but just wanted to get some of those RFL specific releases.

In past relays the relay regions stayed up for days or weeks after so that people could go in and explore all the neat builds and shop at the vendors and donate yet more L$ to the kiosks. This year, no dice. They're taking them down today!

If you go here: http://slrfl.maintree.com/

You can compare the # of avatars participating and the laps/distance traveled. 2008 was king, participation wise. The track was shorter, meaning that it's easier to do for those who don't want to spend over 2 hours trudging their way through, and it was better designed. I bet the 2009 might have had better participation without the major lag. I'm talking worse than an old Dazzle LE event. I figure some people popped in, found out they couldn't move well or see, and popped right back out. It was so bad in some places that you couldn't TP out, you had to quit SL and then come in at your home point.

If you take a look at the top 15 walkers you'll notice that 7 of them are from Team Caledon, and even they/us were crashing. I know a few of us got stuck in regions that were were moving as slow as treacle in while they were rebooting. It's only people who were that dedicated to the cause who were willing to put up with the overall experience.

The RFL sent Survivors and Caregivers a survey link.

I came back to the RFL to start my laps at 2am my time on SLunday. Being less busy, it was at least tolerable then but got worse later on in my stint as others started showing back up. I also figured that if His Grace Viderian Vollmar of Cymru in Caledon could do it, I could too.

The camaraderie was great though in the Team Caledon chat and in the ISC chat too. I even got a picture of Guvnah Shang at the end of the Relay. The man doesn't stay still often enough for me
to get one!

I NEED more group slots.

2009-07-18T06:14:00.003-05:00

I keep harping on this, but I really do. 25 isn't enough, 50 would help, 100 would be better, 500 would be great.

I know there's a JIRA for it, but I NEED them. I'd be willing to do "almost" anything for more group slots.

ICING Puma Jie.

2009-07-18T04:13:00.004-05:00

I've been wearing ICING's Puma Jie a lot lately, in the fat pack version. The original version came with the red blouse, but later Miko Omegamu released a pack of blouses to mix with the original outfit.

I know it's an older outfit, but I still love the retro classicness of a nice blouse and high waisted pencil skirt. I could probably buy something similar in RL pretty easily. I know I've seen puff sleeved blouses around lately.

I'm wearing the white blouse in these pictures but I like all of them, Peacock, Purple, and Pink too.

And here's a closeup that shows the prim sleeve and the necklace part of the ICING Princess pearls set. I really really love these puffy sleeves, and other people have admired them too. The Princess Pearls set includes, a necklace, earrings and the bracelet. It's also available in black pearls too.

Fleur Allure Kitten skin, ETD Roslin hair, glasses from First Impressions, Shiny Things Classic Stacks pumps.

SLURL to ICING

ICING on XstreetSL

A familiar looking guy.

2009-07-17T22:29:00.004-05:00

Amazon hosted a virtual job fair a few days ago in SL, and I was there. Not because I'm qualified for any of the jobs, but for another reason. This guy looks familiar, doesn't he:

His name is just on the tip of my tongue....

Got him! Yes, that's Philip Linden, founder of Linden Labs, creator of the vision that is SL. It was mentioned in the ISC group chat that he was at the Amazon job fair and I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to see his avatar and get a picture even if he has no reason whatsoever to say a word to me. After all, I'm not FIC . Mwah ha ha ha ha.

By the way, I don't entirely agree with Prokofy Neva's concept of FIC (Feted Inner Core), I consider it a bit limited, especially these days. I Prefer Gwyneth Llewelyn's concept of the 100000. But Mr. Neva did post the newest version of his FIC list on his blog

Personally I think Mr. Neva underestimates the influence of the SL press, IMHO Hamlet Au is probably one of the most powerful and influential Avatars in SL. He may not be a land baron, he may not be a famous scripter or builder, but a heck of a lot of powerful and influential avatars in SL do.

I also don't care very much how Mr. Neva uses the perjorative term "mangina" but that's a personal thing. I also pronounce FIC like "Bic", or "pick" because "Inner" has a short "I" sound not the long "I" sound of Bike.

Second Life Relay for Life 2009 starts tomorrow.

2009-07-17T21:25:00.004-05:00

The SL RFL (anti-cancer charity event) is one of the first big events I heard about in SL, though I only heard about the 2006 one after it was over since it took place the weekend after I first rezzed in. Back then I didn't know much about the blogs and whatnot so I didn't hear about it.

But each one since I've participated in, though not formally as a team member of Team Caledon till this year.

Why do I take part? Because my Dad, is a cancer survivor (and me and my sister were caregivers for a bit when he came back home from his surgery and we still take him to appointments and whatnot because he stopped driving himself), and cancer took two of my late Mother's sisters. We as a family also take part in the local RL RFL, and have done so for years. It's something I feel good about participating in, in both RL and SL.

The event begins tomorrow at 12pm SLT, with the Survivor and Caregiver lap starting at 1pm SLT. More info at the SL RFL website

Here is the SlURL to the event

And finally a couple of pictures of my luminarias:

I'll be at the relay probably from about 11am till 3:30pm or so SLT on Saturday. Then perhaps. about 7 till noon on Sunday.

Even if you decide not to attend, please consider dropping a few L$ into one of the many donation kiosks set up around the grid. Every little bit adds up.

Anna Darwinian's Steampunk Adventures

2009-06-04T15:08:00.004-05:00

Anna Darwinian's Steampunk Adventures is an interesting emporium featuring choice Steampunky merchandise from assorted Steampunky content makers. There is clothing, accessories, jewellery, gadgets, furnishings (check out the victorian furniture set that you can see to the left far rear) and this clock by Uni Ninetails, that I NEED even though I really don't have a place to show it off.

The build is attractive as well, quite worth visiting on those merits alone.

Slurl to Steampunk Adventures

Miriel Enfield is shutting down her store

2009-05-27T15:17:00.004-05:00

In the next few weeks she says. It makes me sad, Miriel was among the first jewellery stores I visited in SL, along with Lassitude & Ennui and I found the kind of jewellery I wanted to wear and liked there. Pretty!

And then she did eyes, which are my favorite eyes in SL, and are among the "fashionista favourite eyes" in SL. She did hair, prim lashes, and clothing too. And the trees she worked so hard on. Her vendor scripts were so good I wanted to have their prim babies. You see with Miriel, you could choose your metal and favourite gem color using the scripted vendor in either copy or transfer. Anyway I've decided to showcase some of Miriel's stuff.

That's the Flora gown and Eleanora hair in Chocolate.

Here you can see her Glamour prim lashes, the Beatrice jewellery set and my favorite eyes in SL, Miriel's Vivid Natural's in Strong Green. You see me on the grid, I'll be wearing those eyes 99% of the time, and if I'm not wearing those, they'll be one of Miriel's other pairs. I prefer the smaller irises, you see. Miriel often wore Tete a Pied/Fleur skins and I'm wearing a Fleur Allure Kitten 3 skin in Truffle.

A few other things of note, one of the reasons I loved Miriel was because of her ads, the models were just simply pretty and some of them looked like me, which made me double-take once with a ETD Maaliyah wearing redhead. Since they were so classic looking it was easy to tell what I wanted and what would look good on me.

And finally, I never did get around to begging Miriel for her "sim-killer" jewellery set. :-)

Miriel is also nice. I'd have her prim babies in an instant and I will miss her stuffage in SL. Though I'm hoping she decides to hand off her inventory to someone else to sell for her, it would be a shame for all of the beautiful things she has made to be unavailable in SL.

Namarie, Tar-Miriel. Rim hennaid Findesselya vanya Ná Elbereth veria le, ná elenath dín síla erin rád o chuil lín.

Shape comparison, a Gracie-ified CC post.

2009-05-27T14:17:00.005-05:00

Recently designer Grace Winnfield did a kind of a model search and posted her requirements for the model's shapes:

4. You must be willing and able to mod your body shape (not face) to within the params outlined below. The note here is a guideline of ranges into which you should fall to give the right feel to my clothing in the photos. The clothing is designed to fit any av size, however to look the most true to my original design i prefer this range of sizes.

SIZE PREFERENCES FOR GRACIE MODEL:

Go into edit appearance and click body
follow the measures down.. I will highlight and give a range for the important ones:

Height: At least 75 but preferrable is 80-85 or so.

Body thickness: less than 7
Body fat 0 preferred but no more than 7
Torso Muscles should be less than 40
Shoulders should be proportionate but usually less than 50.
Breast size: LESS THAN 40 PLEASE (mine are around 33)
Arms length… you are taller so your arms should be longer… probably between 60 and 69 and finger tips reach just around or above your mid thigh. Mine are at 67
torso length… we dont need long torsos so less than 55 but not too short so shorter than 44
Love handles…. between 15 and 20
not too muscular please … less than 47 but we need some tone so more than 40
leg length.. LONG!! somewhere between 80 and 95 is usually good… mine are 89.
HIP WIDTH: NO more than 48!!!!!!!!!!! ( remember i use a lot of system skirts)
Hip length shouldnt be very long.. keep it less than 37 please.
Butt size less than 30 (ALOT OF SYSTEM SKIRTS SO SMALL IS GOOD)
Saddle bags less than 25
foot size 0 so that all shoes will work.

Since lots of other fashionistas were doing it, I did it too, making collages comparing the shapes I've used since I started looking like how I wanted (since about late July of 2006)

Here's a front view of four CC's:

From left to right, theres Plus Size CC, Catalog Model CC, Supermodel CC and Grace-ified CC. I based the Gracie version of me on my Supermodel shape, which in itself is a modded freebie and I knew would be closest to what she wanted. Supermodel CC was my default shape from late July of 2006 till sometime in late 2007. Then I began using Catalog Model CC. I made Catalog Model CC after hanging out with Boss Sabrina and Tanya book, who had more realistic shapes than I did. She's a mod of the Supermodel shape that's about 8 inches shorter, with a touch more muscle and a bit more body fat. As I say sometimes Catalog CC is the woman who does her yoga and pilates every day so she can still fit into a size 6, but she wouldn't turn down a muffin now and then.

I've discussed the origins of Plus Size CC before, though I do admit she's pretty small for a plus size avatar. If she had a bit more of a waistline and was a few inches taller she could do plus size modelling in RL.

Here's a side view of all the CC's:

You really can't tell how much taller Grace-ified CC and Supermodel CC are in the pictures but they are, considerably. Couldn't figure out how to get the camera to really show the differences.

Yes, Grace Winnfield is the designer and can choose any shape she wants to model for her, but frankly of all the CC's, Catalog Model CC is the most aesthetically pleasing to me, and if I was a designer, that's the one I'd have model for me.

That's a Fleur Allure Bare 1 skin in Truffle in the pics.

My Mother passed away.

2009-05-09T01:44:00.004-05:00

She'd long had health issues, ever since I was young (over 30 years now), and I was her primary caregiver. She is best described as spunky or feisty, even as she got older and less well.

She knew about SL, and I had mentioned my avatar and shown her a few pictures but had no interest in it herself. She did think my avatar was pretty. I put a few pictures of her in a set on my flickr:

Pictures of my mother

She was something of a fashionista herself in her younger days and even until recently she still did what she could, she was very proud of her fingernails, which she did herself. I never did learn her secrets on that.

It's kind of hard, her dying just before my RL birthday (the 9th) and mother's day.

I miss her so.

Caledon long cool women in black dresses.

2009-03-30T14:05:00.003-05:00

I was just playing around with the taksi video capture software one day. I then edited my video using avidemux on Linux on my PS3. Since taksi doesn't capture audio, I just added the song via ffmpeg to the final avi. Thats Her DJness Gabrielle Riel and me. And yes, that's the old Dazzle Paradoxe, and no, you can't have it.

L'Abel Lanikai from Neferia Abel of Ivalde

2009-03-29T02:42:00.005-05:00

Neferia Able of Ivalde has created a new line of modern styled clothing to complement her wonderful retro-wear. She has named the line, L'Abel. I popped over to her store to take a quick look and found this dress that I HAD to have, Lanikai

It's a deceptively simple sheath with a square neckline, and I do so love a square neckline. There's a slight dip at the neckline for added interest. The sleeves are fluttery and sculpty, the remind me of little wings. The skirt is straight, as it should be. It's not plain, which would be a bit ordinary, but with a subtle pattern in the cloth texture. It's really quite pretty.

It really is quite flattering on my new plus size shape. I have already received several compliments on it.

Here's a closer look at that floral pattern and neckline. You can also see the solid unpatterned insets at just below the bustline and extending around to the back. In RL that would be VERY flattering.

It comes in a blue and burgundy as well, which I want. I also want the sweater dresses, and the cocktail dresses and....well it's Neferia stuff, and I want it all.

Consume, buy, from the Ivalde Main Store

I forgot to mention the other stuffage: Hair is Mia in Brown Sugar from Analog Dog, Shoes are the Party Pumps from Shiny things, and it's a Fleur Allure skin, Lounge 3.

Lady Darcy earns £10000 a year, thanks to Nicky Ree.

2009-03-28T23:50:00.005-05:00

Mrs. Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane's is nothing to it -- nothing at all. I am so pleased -- so happy. Such a charming man! -- so handsome! so tall! -- Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh, Lord! What will become of me. I shall go distracted.... My dearest child.... I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a Lord! And a special licence. You must and shall be married by a special licence. But my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it tomorrow.

I love Colin Firth, well not exactly love, but he's my favourite UK romantic actor. One of his quintessential roles was as Mr. Darcy in the A&E/BBC coproduction of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In the film Bridget Jones Diary, he essentially repeated the characterization as Mark Darcy, since the character in the original book was written with his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in mind. And here is Mr. Firth as the proud Mr. Darcy himself in his most quintessential ensemble from the miniseries:

I saw this Lady Darcy ensemble in Nicky Ree and I just had to have it...Swoon!

I know I know, I should have taken a few pics glowering in a corner, that's what he does. But isn't it such a handsome ensemble. I love that style of jacket and wish they were still in style. And the ruffle collar shirt, and lovely waiscoat. I paired it with Riding boots from Adam n Eve, since they have a nice pretty heel but not too high. Hair is ETD Carolyn in the 2007 version of Mahogany and the skin is a Fleur Allure, Lounge 3.

It comes in multiple colors, but the other colors suck from my perspective because EVERYTHING comes in the color. Which means the jacket is red, the waistcoat is red, the trousers are red, the shirt is red and there's not enough contrast between the various pieces. That means this black and white version is the ONE to get. Now if the other versions came with contrasting shirts/trousers/etc, that would be most excellent. My suggestion is to buy the Black and white one and then if you want, get the other versions for the jackets and wear those jackets with the white shirt and trousers. There's also a men's version called Lord Darcy.

Apparently there's a Pemberley sim in SL so I should go there...and find a pond. Heh heh heh, pond scene.

Kanomi Pikajuna

2009-03-26T10:30:00.002-05:00

Kanomi is important. Kanomi is special. Kanomi matters. She is the friend to all. Everybody likes her. Everybody likes the nice girl who is the friend to all. She is nice and important and special and important and she is the nice special important friend to all! Kanomi is important. Kanomi matters.

She's covering the SL gaming scene for Hamlet Au over at New World Notes, replacing Miss Vidal Tripsa. She's Caledonian too.

Second Chick feature

2009-03-25T13:00:00.005-05:00

Some may not know that I'm open to doing an occasional feature/commentary/post for practically any blog that likes what I write. I had heard that the Second Chick blog was looking for writers. Second Chick is: "for and about the women of the Second Life® virtual world" Whether you’re a woman in your first life, in Second Life, both or neither doesn’t really matter. If you’re interested in the the things that appeal to women in the Second Life virtual world, then Second Chick may be just the thing for you. So I contacted the owner, Willow DejaVu and sent in a submission.

My little post is The Holes in My Heart

I hope my readers enjoy reading it, and the other posts on Second Chick.

Are you on the list?

2009-03-22T22:50:00.003-05:00

ArminasX Saiman of the Second Effects blog, has compiled a list, using various geeky Technorati methods, of the Biggest Blogs about SL.

I'm on the list, at #155, which seems a bit too well ranked, but I think the list is close to the mark. The list is also a list of some of the "movers and shakers of SL", at least in the blogging community. Vint Falken is there, and Hamlet Au, Mr. Neva, Gwyneth LLewelyn, Zoe Connolly. Ana Lutetia, Celebrity, Iris Seale, Tenshi. Codie, Botgirl, Crap Mariner, Colonel Otoole, etc etc, Kota, Myg, Callie, Ordinal, Iris Ophelia, Cani, Anti, Zealot Benmergui. I could probably address about half of the first hundred or so by their first names and they would respond with my nick name , "Hi CC" and I've met a heck of a lot of the rest on the grid. And yeah, friends list and groups. It's like an extended family, six degrees of separation and all.

Personally I really don't care how I'm ranked, though I'm always amazed people read my deranged rantings and stuff. I'm not entirely a tame fashionista you know.

Salome Says

2009-03-18T12:29:00.002-05:00

Salome Strangelove, one of my former bosses at Linden Lifestyles has a new blog where she posta about all sorts of things. (who knew she had played AD&D first edition, she never told me!) Including SL fashion. Yes, that's right, the Patootie Haired one is writing about SL fashion again. Squee! I'm getting my fix back.

Plus (real) size CC

2009-03-17T23:08:00.005-05:00

I'm friends with the lovely bear eared fashionista and Fleur CSA Rosie Barthelmess, and every time I'm near her, I kind of feel shame for having an unrealistically slender avatar. Sure my avatar is not as super skinny and amazon tall as some, and not as much as I was, but still, I always have admired Rosie. So while hanging with her today at Fleur, I decided to do a "Real size" CC, with her help and this was the result. I used my standard shape and modded it to something more like my RL shape, but still pretty and pleasing.

Layniewear Audrey Dress, Fleur Truffle Biba 1 skin, Shiny Things classic pumps, Stockings from Adam n Eve, Analog Dog Mia hair in Brown Sugar, and Oval glasses from First Impressions

Yes, I know, my hair doesn't look like this. I wish it did.

And a shot in lingerie from the Adam N Eve Carrie gown

And as a comparison, RL femme mode me, not so young and pretty as even Real Size CC, but similar in style. I'm even wearing faux lashes and I tried to wing my eyeliner, like how avatar me sometimes wears prim lashes and wears Fleur skins with winged eyeliner.

L'Oreal Infallible foundation
L'Oreal Wear Infinite eyeshadow quad in Subtle Sable
L'Oreal Lineur Intense felt tip liner in Carbon black
Andrea Modlash #33 lashes applied using the "put the glue on the lid instead of the lashes" trick
MAC Angel blush
MAC Viva Glam IV lipstick

I haven't decided if Real Size CC will become the Standard Avatar Me or not. I know the shape will make prim skirts more difficult, but I think it's a good thing I made the shape.

Space Pirates of the Caledonian, Team Caledon's Second Life Relay for Life kick off.

2009-03-17T22:26:00.003-05:00

Most readers have probably heard of the Second Life Relay for Life, a large grid wide event to raise money for the American Cancer Society, that parallels the events held in RL. The fundraising kicked off on Saturday, and the gridwide total is already close to 3 million L$. Team Caledon's kick off event was last Sunday and according to something of a tradition, was a pirate themed event. This year, it was steampunky space pirates. I didn't get any pictures, but I did get some video snippets via the free version of the fraps video capture software. Sorry about the interface elements, I wasn't really prepared to do it.

My video page on Youtube

Embedded here for your perusal:

The last video "stars" Her Grace, Her DJness, Prim Minister, "Cousin" Gabrielle Riel

When I joined SL back in 2006 I arrived just before the final Relay event, the one on the BIG 34 sim relay track. I didn't hear about it till after, so didn't take part in many things, but I swore I would take part as much as I could in 2007. You see, my father is a prostate cancer survivor and I have lost two aunts to cancer. But I missed taking part in the Pirate event immortalized by Oolon Sputnik in this video.

So, if you see a Relay kiosk, put a few L$ in every now and then. It adds up...quickly, and every little bit, even 1L$ helps.

The beautiful Rooby Begonia

2009-03-17T21:45:00.004-05:00

There are Second Life fashion websites out there who chronicle the fashion challenged in a humorous way. Today I decided to do something similar, but to show someone who, in my personal opinion, had a stylish and interesting look, with a couple of images from my SL folder.

One day, last December I was pointed to a store by a friend, and as I was looking around, I saw an avatar, a rather beautiful one. Now there are those that say everyone's avatar can be beautiful in SL, but I don't think that's exactly true, above average in attractiveness perhaps, but truly beautiful, no. I see lots of attractive avatars, and interesting avatars, but ones that that I consider beautiful are a bit more rare.

I saw her:

Redheads tend to get my attention, and the way she was dressed, and the way she moved and her hair, it all just added up to "Breathtaking."

Many things ran through my head:

Who is she? Her name is Rooby Begonia. Rooby Begonia, what a great name.
Where does she shop?
Is she an SL model, she has to be.
If I had my own agency I'd hire her right now.
Ooooh, her AO is awesome.
I wonder if she will speak to me.
I want to have her prim babies.
She is carrying a PURSE!
She looks like she just popped out of some fashion magazine
I want her hair...ah, Analog Dog.
Should I talk to her?
She is truly beautiful, in a rather classic Ralph Lauren-ish way.
She isn't answering, maybe she doesn't speak English....oh no. I want to tell her how beautiful she is. Whatever you do, don't go away!
Oh! She was only AFK! She's talking to me. Yay!

Just look at her...sigh. Redheaded Fashion goddess. What? I didn't have an immediate crush, honest. Sure, she's a Stephanie Misfit class beauty, but I didn't check her profile to see if she was partnered...honest. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Rooby's skin is a Chai, the hair being Analog Dog Mia. I'm wearing ETD Maaliyah and a Fleur skin. Can't remember my outfit, but that's the denim skirt out of the Hazel outfit from Shine. Pinson boots from Enkythings. She makes me look like chopped liver.

And she's NOT a model! I know! She said someone told her that her nose is too big, and she said she wouldn't have the patience for it. What a loss to somebody's stable of models.

Farewell to Calla, my home.

2009-03-16T01:18:00.006-05:00

My home, such as it was, was in the Calla sim. I had build rights in a 512 area above the golf course, provided gratis by my (currently former) Boss Sabrina Doolittle. You see, as a fashionista, I'm rarely there, and only needed a spot to put up the pose stand and background thingy plus other tchotchkes, like my pancakes. I could do what I wanted, as long as I kept it up in the sky.

Sabrina basically left SL and over time began reducing her SL involvement, which included the sim, just recently. A few days ago I logged in to find Calla gone. At first I thought it was temporary, but after a couple of days I figured it was going to be gone for good. So I asked around on what to do since I had some items rezzed, including my pose stuff. Some said, that in the old days, when sims were deleted your stuffage got returned to you, but mine wasn't. So it was suggested I contact the Lindens and they'd probably temporarily bring back the sim so I could grab my stuff, which they did. I didn't even have to beg or anything, just telling them about my stuff left on the sim was enough.

So, I received notice of the temp return of the sim, and went back to get my stuff and take some last pictures.

This is the Picture Perfect Pro

What's the Picture Perfect Pro, you ask? The enhanced super deluxe version of Sabrina's Picture Perfect Studio (pose stand and background thingy). What's that you ask? You never saw it in Sabrina's store? Of course you didn't, it wasn't 100% finished when Sabrina took her hiatus, which eventually became permanent, from SL. She and I worked on it together, which is why I know about it...but I don't have a copy of the almost ready for release device. We were talking, which led to discussion of the picture perfect and other photo thingies and talk turned to doing an enhanced version with built in lighting, but still low prim and cheap. I think we were planning between 500 and 1000L$. Anyway, I did the lighting scripts, based on those for the Picture Perfect Studio Light Effects, but it's up to version 1.4 or was it 1.5. Anyway all 4 lamps are individually controlled by chat. The rings they're on spin around, top and bottom individually, but the standard placement was designed to reduce shadows in the pre-windlight client to zero. Took 4 lamps to do it, we tried 2 and it almost worked with 3, but we couldn't get the placement perfect, so we settled on 4.

The background thingy is a cylinder so it will fit inside residences, sphere's big enough for avatars with a big enough opening were a bit too big, also getting textures to look good inside of sphere's was a bit annoying, using a cylinder was easier. Sabrina did the script for that, she's much better at texture manipulating stuff. She also did the physical build of the thing, she's so much better with prims and textures than I am.

The pose stand itself contained one of our secret weapons, a simplified version of my pose stand rotation script. You see, I was once taking pictures of an outfit and wanted to take a picture of the back with a certain pose that faced me. So I rotated the stand in edit mode and I got to thinking, hey wouldn't it be cool to be able to turn this thing with a chat command, without having to go into edit mode and then cam back in. So I figured out how to do it, and built the script. Now I wanted to test it in my Picture Perfect but I figured that since the scripts were no-mod that I couldn't put my own script in it. so I searched through my inventory and found a full mod pose stand with pose changer buttons and an invis button. I altered it, improved it. rebuilt it...I had the technology....better...stronger...faster, and then I put my script in it. And it kicked ass. I handed it out to a few people, who liked it, but I wasn't going to sell it, because it just did what the picture perfect did, only better because I could rotate it along x, y or z axis with chat commands without camming out or changing cam position. So I told sabrina about the script and she told me that even if the PP scripts were no-mod I could still put other scripts in it, just like poses. So we did, and it worked great, but the controls were a bit complicated. Sabrina said she got so many help requests for her easy to use Picture Perfect stuff as it was so she asked if I could simplify the rotation script, Z-axis only and say a dozen set positions like a clock. I could and did, and that was the version of the pose stand going into the Picture Perfect Pro. My original PP pose stand got the fully geeky version of the script though.

So now that Calla is gone, no more chance for the PP pro to be released and if I am correct the original PP can't be bought anymore. I don't think it's sold anywhere else. And the Studio Light Effects I designed and built was also sold there so it can't be bought anymore either, though I'm willing to sell them directly out of inventory.

I could duplicate the function of the PP Pro pose stand with one of my own, easy enough, and in fact I have such a stand in inventory, which I may release now that the PP is unavailable. But I don't have a replacement for either of the background things, though I could do a version of the original PP's one, given time. The problem would be the textures, I can't do em. The Pro, there's no way I could build that. I could come close in basic shape, but it would be ugly, and I don't have Sabrina's texture changing script for the cylinder.

And how many prims on the PP Pro? I think we got it down to 16...total for everything, stand, cylinder, and lights, but I think there were plans to get it to 12 or was it 10. See those lamps were "bulbs"...inside of a faux reflector, using a single cylinder and faking with textures would have removed 4 prims. Either way we got it down to lower prim than practically anything else out there. It was great, even in unfinished form.

Here's the original Picture Perfect Studio, low prim, 250L$ One of the best purchases I ever made.

My light was sold next to it, Sabrina and I shared income on that. For a while, that thing sold like crazy.

Here's the exterior of the store where Sabrina sold the PP and other picture related stuff, albums, frames, etc.

Ahhh Linden Lifestyles HQ. Where the famed LL male and female freebie packs were available. I have them too and can drop them on newbies as I see them. Oh how I miss the Linden Lifestyles blog. Sabrina and Salome wrote so well.

Calla Country club, there were games inside, pool and a couple of others, and there were a few casino machines, but they went out when gambling in SL did. If memory serves me correctly Sabrina threw a few parties there. It had a small stage and dance floor, IIRC. It was a nice cozy venue for small parties. I have a golf cart given to me by Sabrina that has my name and Calla Country Club enscribed on it. The golf course, which no one ever used, that I know of, is nearby.

Chez Petite, Sabrina's low prim furniture store.

My skybox, in the skies of Calla. That's my bed, used only for a few pictures, a Caledon dance pole, and you can see a bit of my en garde piste

There's the rest of the piste, my Picture Perfect setup, my vanity table with the Tete a Pied makeup box on it, my magazine style homage to the Hussy and the Patootie head, and my pancakes.

Calla Marina, where Sabrina sold that great little housebout, that I always wanted, even if it's too small to put a picture perfect in. She'd customize it for you too. It really is a nice little place to live in.

The bridge, leading from the commercial side of calla to the residential. The golf course was on both sides of the river/inlet

Now I'm going to have to find another spot to "live" or at least put my "studio" setup in. I don't have the L$ to spend on both a 512 and shopping. I have a L$ budget (especially these days with medical expenses). I'd like to find a semi-regular writing gig with one of the "big blogs" to earn a little L$ besides writing Elsa Klensch style reading scripts for fashion shows. Will serve as lackey/minion/weapons testing target in exchange for a 512! Back to sandboxes for SL picture taking for me, give the geeks a thrill to see me skin testing sometimes.

I've been in the hospital

2009-02-10T13:27:00.002-06:00

That's all I'll say here, but that's why I've been missing the past couple of weeks in SL, feeling like crappe before and not having access to SL during. I'm okay, nothing deadly or anything, just very very very annoying.

Don't know if I'll spend a lot of time in SL till I feel a bit better, but I do look at the blogs n stuff.

Finally, engineer boots that are "Just Right"

2009-01-11T16:42:00.003-06:00

Do you know how hard it is to find stompy engineer boots that I like in SL? Sure, I could just get Fally's Old Boots, but everyone has those and they're not exactly what I want. Then on the other end of the scale you have boots with a jillion straps that are like a jillion prims. I wanted boots that had were simple, but not too simple. Some straps and buckles but not too many.

So I was in SL and got an IM from a long time designer friend, Lissa Maertens stating her store was back open again. Now at the time I was lamenting ETD being shut down...again....which is another story, so I popped on over and saw that Lissa was wearing some cool boots that weren't Fally's, so I clicked on them to see who made them...she did!

No editing on the pics, this is a quick and dirty blog post.

They come in brown too and are 350L$

SLURL to Cattiva e Cattivo

My inventory frightens me, but look at these cool earrings I forgot to blog.

2009-01-05T11:36:00.006-06:00

Oh sure, there's fashionistas with double the inventory (there are people with 60000 items!), but my inventory is ummm very disorganized. I throw stuff away, but it adds up. I also have that shame of the fashionista...unopened bought items. I have all sorts of things in there. I have a house, I think, probably more than one. I know I have a really cute victorian cottage....somewhere. I have fantastic waistcoats that are in my unsorted folder rather than my Caledon folder. I have a couple of VERY nice gowns by a relatively unknown designer that I NEED to blog, once I find my info on the store again.

I've got some unfinished projects in there, like my Steampunk Automaton and things I meant to blog but never got around to doing, some of that dating back to....2006.

Here's some pics of some cool earrings from JUNK by Koge Cleaver. (these are from July I think) Koge makes really cool looking earrings. I think one of the reasons I hadn't posted these is that I was wearing my thin lips shape because I was wearing last years Fleur Relay For Life skins which look better on my thin lips shape and are not available anymore...I think.

Yes, that's HCT hair and I'm wearing blue eyes instead of green, some of the strands get in the way of the jewellery, sorry about that. But they are really nice and well worth purchasing. Lets see if I can find a SLURL to Koge's shop:

Nope, but Koge does have a shop on OnRez and check out Koge's profile for a TP to the shop.

A try at a better ad.

2009-01-01T13:57:00.004-06:00

I've complained about ads and store displays before and I've decided to put my money where my mouth is.

Here's an ad, for a a gown that I very much like from Crimson Shadow, that could use a little bit of work. The gown and ad are located at Crimson Shadow Rezzable 229,166,27

Now, that ad isn't as horrible as some I've seen, but it could use a little work. In my opinion the ads major offenses are bad lighting of the avatar, and the text is placed directly over the background causing legibility problems.

Here's my quick and dirty remake of the ad, which still sucks, but is somewhat improved.

Notice how I have my avatar lit a touch better, though I probably should have turned up the contrast a bit on the avatar images compared with background. I've also placed the text, not over the background itself, but over a plain black "information area". Using such areas, separate from the item images themselves increases legibility, though I should have made the text bigger. My ad also shows the included shoes. Since I have that nice space at the side, I could add a store/brand logo which would have been an excellent idea. I might, depending on legibility, even be able to list information on the model's skin/eyes/hair right on the ad/display.

So there you have it, my own example of an ad improvement.

SL Fashion Business/Economy/Glut/Marketing/Freebies Omnibus post

2008-12-21T23:59:00.006-06:00

Let's talk business, you and I. Suppose you are a designer and you want to make a Beeeelion L$. Everyone does. I do. Anyone got a Beeeelion L$? I've always wanted a Caledon Duchy and Willow Packs of every hair Elika makes...and a pony.

Back to my point, if some new designer came up to me and asked for advice about starting their fashion business I would say:

1. Don't. There's a glut of stuff on the grid, so much stuff that it's overwhelming, and if your stuffage isn't as good or better than the stuff that's already out there you WILL get lost in the glut. For example, as much as I respect Eloh for releasing her skin PSD's into the wild and making it easier for budding skin creators, she created the skin glut of skin makers looking to make their beeeeelions selling skin.

2. Wait for the shakeout. I'd lay odds some of these new creators won't be able to keep going for too long.

3. If you still want to release your stuff, why not partner with another small content creator or an already established business.

4. You'd better have very very good ads and marketing.

5. Don't get caught in the freebie race. Discounted budget items/lines are fine.

6. 200L$ is the magic number, most transactions are that or below. 200L$ represents for me the impulse vs think about it for a while purchase point. In fact the number of people willing to spend even that much is small. The SL fashion economy is sustained by a relatively small number of people because relatively few new folk become part of that economy in a major way.

Gwyneth Llewelyn has a blog post about this

Here's a citation of her major train of thought:

At this stage, I have to formulate my own theory though. Based on my own perception of the numbers, I boldly claim that the number of people willing to spend money in SL is about hundred thousand, and this number hasn’t changed since at least early 2007.

The second bold claim is perhaps even more surprising. The number of service providers (content creators, event hosters, and land managers) is about hundred thousand. This basically means that about one in ten active users is a producer of content, while the remaining are pure consumers.

And the third bold claim is definitely shocking. This number will NOT change in the immediate future. Unless, of course, things change dramatically (which is always possible), but the change will be only a positive one, ie. more users in this group, not less.

The fourth claim is perhaps not so surprising then: The number of informed people in Second Life (those that read and write blogs or e-zines, participate actively in SL-related issues, work for RL companies providing content and services in SL, etc.) is about a hundred thousand.

And the fifth should not come as a surprise either: They are exactly the same people. Sure, I’ll allow a margin of error, of, say, 20-30% in either direction. But I’d say that it’s extremely likely — mmmh 95% or so — that if you’re reading this article, you’re very likely a Premium Account resident, or an owner of a private island (or a set of them), or a content/service provider (these are inclusive “or”s, so you can be all of those). If you’re none of those cases (ie. a Basic Account user who never spent a single cent in SL, live from freebies, and never organised a single event in SL…), you’re probably writing regularly about SL.

Some personal stuff:

I think she's close to the mark. I'm a Basic account holder, and have no intention of going premium. I have a SL Lindex budget that I limit myself to each month, about 3000 to 5000 L$. I ought to unsubscribe from EQOA again, I joined it to see how it looked and played on my PS3, and cut down my SL spending a bit to compensate, that would add another 3000 or so sometimes (but not every month), but I try to keep it as small as I can. Now back when I was working for Linden Lifestyles, that gig paid a bit of L$ so I spent more. I'm not a content creator, I can't design clothes, or build and my LSL scripting skills are minimal, so I can't make money that way. I'd love to have a way to make more L$ in SL to finance a 512 or 1024 in Caledon, but right now, if I was to get a spot in Caledon it would mean much less shopping since I'd be feeding Desmond Shangs cute little meter L$ every week.

In fact, I write these infrequent blog posts these days basically because I don't have a regular commentary writing gig with a "Big blog". I'm thinking I'm one of the few remaining fashion bloggers from 2006 who aren't content creators that is still writing. I'd be tempted to apply for that Second Style Magazine editorial assistant post if I felt I could devote the time to it the job deserved, and of course to fill out my Hat Trick. So far I've worked for 2 of the old "Big Three" fashion blogs: PXP and Linden Lifestyles, Second Style would finish the hat trick. Of course since PXP is on defunct and LL pretty much on permanent hiatus, that might not be a good idea. I'm the kiss of death.

Back to the fashion business:

Here's another citation from Gwyneth:

But these days it’s insanely hard to launch a new brand. It’s not only making sure that you’re well-known enough by all fashionistas and fashion bloggers and magazine writers — which is hard and takes time. It’s not enough to have the best quality products available in your collection. The problem is that there is a limit on how much the 100,000 can spend. They’re stretched thin across the dozens of thousands of brands in SL already, and every week a new designer pops up and wants a share of the market — another market which is also saturated! Put it bluntly: there is no room for more designers except if you’re willing to drive your competitors out of business. So there is no time to use soft silky gloves for fighting; the only way to survive in the fashion world is to eliminate the competition. The Armidi brand is trying very, very hard to do that, and perhaps with some success. Many others have understood that the market has stagnated — but still working under the wrong assumptions! — and are starting to put up a serious fight. Long gone are the days where you put up a shop and would have increased sales just from “being here”. Even long gone are the days where quality defined success, or marketing and promotion helped you to find out where all your potential customers were shopping and open your shop there. These days, we’ve hit the limit on how many different brands are able to survive in SL, because the market is only 100,000 people and they have a limit on how much they spend.

She's absolutely right on this one. I've reached my limit and most others have too. If you want to survive you have to convince me to spend my money with you and not them. You have to be absolutely ruthless. Jack Tramiel used to say: Business is War.

Say it with me, "Business is War." Find out who your competitors are and take them down...hard. You've got to be agile, mobile and hostile. Know them, know their weaknesses, know yours. If they do something, you have to do it better. If their customer service is good, yours has to be better. Your job is constant improvement. You need information and lots of it. Information in SL is one of the most valuable things ever. "Information is ammunition." Know your market, know theirs.

Sounds harsh, I know, but it's the only way to survive the glut.

Gwyn has this to say about Freebies:

In despair, designers tried to give their content away as freebies, hoping to make themselves more popular (and show themselves as politically correct towards the “poor newbies”). Nothing could be worse. As Prokofy Neva put so bluntly several years ago, we’re flooded with freebies. Fashion comes and goes — nobody wears non-sculpty heels these days — and you can rely upon consumers to pay for new, fresh, innovative content. But you can’t fight freebies: they accumulate. Unlike content creators who retire products from the market (when they don’t sell, are out of fashion, or are replaced by better and improved products), freebies never disappear. And to worsen that, while in 2004 and 2005 wearing a freebie was considered hilarious — because they were of such poor quality! — the freebies of 2008 are of insanely high quality. In fact, whole communities have been popping into existence to help people to pick the very best among all freebies in the world — Fabulously Free in SL being perhaps one of the best examples. All these sites, these notecards, these people explaining where to get free things in SL are just increasing the magnitude of the problem. (And I know they mean well, that’s besides the point; none of them are Evil Communists Trying To Bring The Downfall of Laissez-Faire Rampant Capitalism in SL, but just happily giving out tips and ideas, to newbies, non-consumers, and even the 100,000, who are often amused at how good those freebies are these days)

I think Freebies are fine...in moderation, but the Freebie glut on the grid nowadays is no moderation. Problem is a lot of folks aren't even willing to pay 10L$. It's hard to become integrated in the SL economy unless you create. It's only recently that more businesses in SL are hiring CSA's and I think most of those get paid in items and not L$, though I may be mistaken on that. I have no skills and am in the economy only because of the Lindex. If I wasn't buying on the Lindex I wouldn't be shopping. It's not like The Sheep or Millions of Us would want to hire me, and most of the major fashion blogs are bankrolled directly or indirectly by a content creator.

So instead of freebies I recommend budget lines, "clearance rooms" and "Everyday low prices". Every L$ a consumer spends with you is one they haven't spent with someone else and you want as many avatars as possible spending with you.

Which leads in to marketing:

A lot of notecard copy and vendor/notecard ads suck. Sometimes the items are sucky too, but sometimes, sadly, the items are great but the ads aren't. I've pointed to this post by Alaska Metropolitan before. And yes, sometimes I think some content creators would be better off getting someone else to model and do their ads for them. Some months ago I bought a really nice gown, from an ad with a really sucky vendor picture. I had seen someone else wearing the gown or else I wouldn't have bought it, the vendor picture was that unflattering. So while I was there hobnobbing. (there was a lucky chair attracting shoppers), I decided to take a few pictures of myself in the gown and my pictures turned out better than the vendor ones. But frankly, my SL image skills both in and out of SL are not very good...at all. To put it in the vernacular, my pictures suck, they just suck less than some of the vendor pics out there. There's people out there willing to help with marketing and ad making but creators are reluctant to use them.

I've been thinking about organizing some kind of fashion blogger summit held via FashCon Cafe or something. Sabrina Doolittle was planning on doing so, but her RL got in the way. I really should keep in better contact with my "colleagues".

CC wears Fleur, everyone knows this. She is their #1 fan.

2008-12-20T05:02:00.006-06:00

I say the title of this post all the time. I have worn Fleur, formerly Tete a Pied, skins almost exclusively since August of 2006. I am probably one of the "oldest" Fleur fans on the grid (though not the oldest) and did end up being one of the Fleur Insiders. Don't ask me how many Fleur skins I have, I think I have 12 or so of the new Allure's, at least 54 or so of the Vivants.

Why does CC wear Fleur? It's the faces. I need classic pretty makeup and Fleur gives it to me, lots of it, and at good prices. That means I can change my skin to match my outfit and have tons of skin for various purposes. Also, Fleur is redhead friendly skin. There are skins I simply can't wear because they don't come with red or red-brown brows that I can wear with my favourite ETD Mahogany hair color.

So let's take a pictoral look at the evolution of Fleur, with more nudity than a Second Life Herald Post Sixx post! This isn't a review, CC is biased towards skin that makes CC pretty, passes the bald and naked test, and is made by Roslin Petion and CJ Carnot. I am, after all as I say, their #1 fan.

We start with the oldest Tete a Pied skins, the ones now commonly referred to as the Une's.

This skin was entirely hand drawn. They have non-fuzzy nips and that cute little heart shaped bush, which has become a Fleur tradition. The shading is minimalistic, which meant that TaP Une's made my boobehs look smaller and cleavage less resplendent than other skins so back when I wore them I knocked the knockers up to 66. The face is demure and sweet looking in a sort of retro way and has those TaP Une slightly glossed lips which were something of a trademark. This shape I'm wearing I didn't actually wear much with the Une's since it came after.

I still have my special scripted Tete a Pied makeup box which let you buy skins in your favourite shade and brow color at a very significant discount. It sits on my vanity table in my skybox. I'd love to have a new (non scripted) Fleur branded makeup box to sit along side it. I have nostalgic feelings for the old TaP builds at Ear and Pyrina. These were nice skins and I loved them...then in August of 2006 came the Deux:

Time changes in SL, and so does skin, and the TaP Deux's showed Roslin and CJ's progression in mad skin skills. The body has more shading and definition and look at the boobehs! The faces while still having a classic look were more modern looking and seemed more detailed to me.

There was one problem with the Deux's, the brow color. You could not buy your choice in brow color from the vendors, so I had to get me a custom 4 pack of the Deux Sophisticates. Later on, Roslin and CJ released 4 packs just for us redheads. I loved the Deux's and consider the Deux's as when I started looking like me because I finally had a face I liked. I sometimes describe my shape as looking like Alaska Metropolitan's catalog model sister compared to her runway model look since my shape is a modded version of a freebie shape she made. I did all sorts of futzing with the face and eventually the body (to make it shorter and a bit less supermodely) Now one thing that TaP had in those days was shapes, and one of those shapes came with a brow shape that became my default hair base for a year...until the TaP Vivants came out. Ahhh, the Vivants.

The Vivants were hybrid skins, though Ros and CJ had experimented with touches of photosourcing in some of the later TaP Deux skins. Putting it blunty, the Deux were good, but the Vivants were better. Thanks to the new cleavage shading I even knocked the knockers back down to 60. I was pretty in the Deux but the Vivants made me a glowy glamazon. A glowy glamazon with brows that always matched my hair. Those Vivant brow and kitty packs were the best thing ever. All Vivant skin was redhead skin, woo hoo. That was a good thing, because Roslin and CJ made lots of Vivant skin with lots of makeups to choose from, which means I bought lots of skin. lots of freaking CHEAP skin, because if you bought them in the 3 packs it came out to 400L$ a skin. Almost as cheap as the old TaP Unes were with the special makeup box discount. Roslin and CJ wanted people to think of skin as an accessory to be changed to match the outfit so they changed their pricing strategy. It worked, because it seemed like everyone was buying Vivants and you always saw green dots in the Nouveau sim.

Then came the branding change with a new sim, which surprised me, but was probably a good idea since Fleur is snappier and easier to spell than Tete a Pied. Ahh I loved the train station, that lovely man CJ rocks as a builder, though I love to poke fun when he's in TaP Shepherd dressed like Roslin. Now Fleur looks like Manhattan, and there's the new Premium luxury line of skins, the Allure's.

CC wears the Allure's now, and it would take Wild Zontars and a Blingon Warfleet from Vulgaria to get me to switch skin makers. Though I do wear other skins on rare occasions, and I freely admit there's lots of great skin out there. It's just that, CC wears Fleur.

The Allure's are also hybrid skins. The body now, the body, oh that beautiful body. The body that's good enough for the dance pole, or burlesque, or just simply being nekkid at the Allure launch in. The feet are great, the hands are great and the nips are awesome. The faces are even prettier than the Vivants. Weirdly enough, the Allure's actually make me look more like Alaska Metropolitan than I did before. That's one of the Kitten makeups in the Truffle skin shade. I looove the winged eyeliner. I'd kill to be able to do it that well in RL. Since Allure's are premium luxury skins, they come at a premium luxury price......1000L$. Ha ha ha ha ha ha, that Roslin and CJ, such comedians, they're a steal at that price for the quality you get. Oh okay, originally at launch they were 1200L$ each (with 3 packs at 3000L$) and even currently at 1000L$ each (with 3 packs unavailable) they do cost more than the Vivants (which they supplement, not replace), but not really. You see, if you buy the Fleur gift cards in the larger denominations you can get them at a discount, either 33% or 50% for the 3000L$ card. So if you buy the 3000L$ card you're actually paying... 500L$ per skin and you can pick and choose and don't have to buy a specific 3 pack to get a discount. Ha ha ha ha, they're practically giving these beauties away. Roslin and CJ, I love them so, they make lots of pretty skin for CC. Now if only they would name skin after CC, or a dress, or put a shrine to CC on the sim. Hey, I can dream.

Fleur skins blog is here
The store is at the Fleur sim of course, right next to Nicky Ree's Tropical Orchid.
My hair, is Maaliyah in ETD Mahogany (the 2008 version of Mahogany), Eyes are from Miriel Enfield, Vivid Naturals in Strong Green. The earrings are also from Miriel.

Fashionista Transparency: yes, I'm a Fleur Insider and member of the regular Fleur group.

Callie Victorian skins from AGENDA

2008-10-10T23:30:00.003-05:00

While watching the Independent State of Caledon chat I saw a notice of some new Victorian style skins. As it is now, Caledonians tend to favour certain specific skin lines, so new skins designed with Caledonians with mind got my attention:

From the release notecard.

Thank you for trying on the Callie DEMO skins from Agenda. There are six skins in this package in two skin tones. These were designed specifically with Caledon residents in mind, capturing features of both Victorian style and some features that address modern resident needs and tastes. Also included is a Body Shape and an Eyebrow shaper. These extras can be used to show what I believe is an optimal face shape for these skins, but feel free to modify them to suit your own preferences. I have also included my best pair of pale blue eyes, gratis.

At this time, Agenda Skins and Clothing is not yet open to the public. Our schedule will hopefully allow for a late October opening in the Bad Wolf Bay region. For now, you can buy these skins in Kittiwickshire at the Discovolante shops.

They're pretty skins, very classic in appearance. They only come in two skin shades, pale and medium (which I show in the closeups below) and three different makeups. The lips on the skin do not flatter either of my standard shapes lips, so if I was going to wear these I'd have to do another lip shape/lower face shape. The cleavage shading is well done, that's quite necessary for a Victorian Trollop like myself.

This is the pale skin shade:

This is the medium skin shade:

My personal opinion is that they are worth getting, if the lips flatter your lip shape, and if you like "classicly elegant" skins like I do. I only got the demos because I want to tweak my lips sometime and try them again, and I'm saving my cash for the new Fleur skins coming up next week.

Bear Ears from ATOMIC Kitty

2008-10-10T23:22:00.004-05:00

Twas Rosie Bartholomess that made me buy them, they were sooooo cuuuuute on her, that I NEEDED them too.

Aren't they adorable. these are the auburn ones but they come in more colors, including traditional panda style.

Slurl to Atomic Kitty

A Tiny Story, you betcha.

2008-10-08T21:30:00.004-05:00

Ya know, there was once this avatar lady in a red jacket and black skirt, her hair was half up and down and she had glasses like Tina Fey.

The lady liked to hunt, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but the lady liked to hunt from a freebie DX4 Attack helicopter which isn't very sportspersonlike.

So she was wandering the skies of the grid and she found a Moose in Caledon Tanglewood. Must have been some kind of Maverick Moose to be wandering alone in Caledon. So she preparted to target and bag her a sculpty moose.

However, the Lady in the Red Jacket was called away for some other purpose. Probably involving camping for money for a bridge to a Sim named Nowhere. So she turned on the Computerized Artificial Intelligence of her helicopter, telling it to shoot the Moose and then bring it to her later, which would let her talk with the other Joe Sixpack campers about being an outsider.

So the un-womanned helicopter moved in and targeted the unaware moose with it's nose cannon.

Looks like our Moose-y friend is doomed. But wait, what's this. A Tiny defender of Moose shows up, carrying a VERY large weapon.

The tiny warrioress readies her weapon and aims at the AI controlled copter.

And then unleashes hell.

The helicopter is pushed away, thanks to our Tiny Heroine. Hurrah Hurrah.

Our Heroine celebrates by giving her support to a certain Senator from Illinois.

Red Jacket from Laqroki
Pencil skirt from Ingenue
Phoebe hair in Chestnut from ETD
Classic Pumps from Shiny Things
Fleur Vivant Red Lips 1 skin.

Tiny Moose Avatar from Extrovirtual

The gown I wore to the handfasting: Evening Star from Adam n Eve

2008-09-28T21:21:00.002-05:00

Here's the gown I wore to the Royal Handfasting of Gabi and Azul, Evening Star from Adam n Eve in the Genesis sim:

It's called a "red" but it's more of a lovely fall burgundy. I has nice contrasting black and gold trimmings on the bodice and skirt, but also comes with a plain unadorned skirt. The skirts also come in a slim version, for those who don't want to wear the poofy ball gown skirt. I just think the gown in this color is very flatting on my avatar, and it was well worth buying.

ETD Anisa hair and a Fleur skin.

The Royal Handfasting of Gabrielle Riel and Azul Draken

2008-09-28T21:09:00.006-05:00

I attended the handfasting of Her Grace Gabrielle Riel of Caledon Carntaigh and Lady Azul Draken. Here's one of the pictures I took.

Her Grace Gabrielle Riel was wearing the Flora gown in white from Nicky Ree, and the Gibson Girl hair from Miriel Enfield. Lady Azul Draken was wearing the Lady Edwina ensemble also from Nicky Ree.

I am in the first pew on the far left in the burgundyish Evening Star gown from Adam n Eve, ETD Grand hair, and Fleur Vivant Laura skin.

I took more pictures and put them in a set on flickr:

Gabi and Azul's handfasting set taken by CronoCloud Creeggan on flickr

The handfasting was probably the "grandest" event I've attended in Caledon and I am glad I was able to attend. My happyest wishes for the future to the happy couple, the Nightingale (Gabi) and the Dragon (Azul) Huzzah!

Here's some links to other Caledon blogs with posts and pictures on the handfasting:

blog post by rhianon jameson

blog post by Otenth Paderborn

blog post by Eva Bellambi

Baron Outlander says he'll have some up

Ball gown shopping for Her Grace's handfasting.

2008-09-26T22:39:00.004-05:00

Her Grace Gabrielle Riel of Caledon Carntaigh (and of Radio Riel fame too) is being handfasted on Sunday to Lady Azul Draken and I, along with many others have been invited. You know what that means, choosing a gown to wear. Her Grace is a noted Caledonian fashionista as seen in this picture with both of us wearing Simone Gatsby:

We have noted our similar tastes in wardrobe, makeup styles and hair styles so it's part of the "Caledon Mythology" that I'm a distant cousin whose clan of fashionista-warriors sold their lands and titles....to buy more shoes.

I happend to mention I was gown shopping and she showed up herself looking for another gown. Caledonian ladies, duchesses or no, can never have too many gowns. I almost didn't recognize her at first.

Where's the ETD Anisa and Tiara? Where's the ball gown? zOMG she's wearing....jean capris and....sneakers. Nooooooo. Ah I so kid the Duchess, she does look great casual too.

Goes to show you that most avatars have different looks for different occasions.

The important thing was not clashing with the Attendants which prevented me from wearing the gown I had been planning on wearing. "Cousin" Gabi's will be in red, and Lady Azul's will be in blue. So I went through my mess of an inventory. Yes.... it's really a mess. a BIG mess.

I had nothing that was really telling me that I wanted to wear it to the handfasting. I eventually picked up four gowns, only one of which I have pictures of at the moment, Carrie from Adam n Eve. It's a simple corseted ballgown with a sheer skirt overlay, I got it in black, of course. Yes, I know one is not supposed to wear black, though it's more accepted these days, but I can, because I'm a Victorian Trollop.

Simple! Pretty! Love! Good price too and it comes with options so you can wear the corset and stockings lingerie style.

I also Looooooove the newest Adam n Eve build in Genesis sim. It is VERY well designed, signs, teleports, it rezzes quickly, it's not laggy, and it's attractive.

Now I may not actually wear that gown to the handfasting, I may choose one of the others (though one I will probably save for the Bardhaven Halloween Ball), or just go in Uniform of one of the Caledon Military groups. ( I can do that too.) I did need to supplement my collection, though I have gowns that are more "Old Hollywood" in style. I don't have many that said, "Caledon handfasting and reception ball"

Ack ack, bad CCC blog hiatus.

2008-09-25T00:41:00.003-05:00

Yes, I'm still alive and in SL. It' really is hard to get back in the swing of things, I swear. I login with the intent of doing bloggy stuff but then I get distracted, and NOT with shopping.

I have put a few newer pictures on my flickr that I've finally gone pro on. Alaska Metropolitan told me I would go pro eventually. :-) You can see that I "finally" got the ICING Miss Hathaway gown that everyone else has.

CronoCloud Creeggan's flickr

Also, one of my friends in SL has left SL, fellow blogger and redheaded hussy, Kit Meredith. I respect her reasons but I'm going to miss her very much. Which, with the ending of Linden Lifestyles, means I am the ranking redheaded shameless hussy on the grid. And these days now that I think of it, I am one of the "older" fashionistas on the grid, which is really strange.

I really should work harder on doing stuff for Metro Models, writing fashion show scripts (blurbs for outfits) is fun most of the time, unless I'm having writer's block. And on the new machine I could turn down the settings and sit for hours at a fashion show.

I've finally figured out how to solve the 11MB high res SL .bmp dump issue, just go ahead and let SL compress them, it'll save em as .png which is not lossy and a lot smaller.

I've also been flirting with Miss Hypatia Callisto of Caledon, every chance I get, simply because she says she doesn't get flirted with. There may be a Caledon singles ball scheduled sometime so that we singletons can celebrate our singleness and be cheered on by all and sundry.

I also need to take a picture of the bear ears of immeasurable cuteness. Nothing is cuter than me in bear ears, except Rosie Bartholomess in bear ears.

Miriel Enfield has finished her build.

2008-08-04T01:43:00.001-05:00

She's done. :-) That's really all I need to say. Don't know if it's actually open yet, but it's done, so soon very soon.

Blog Death

2008-08-02T02:30:00.004-05:00

Yes, I'm sad about Linden Lifestyles, but I'm also sad about Mean Girls Guide to SL and Shopping Cart Disco. Heck I still miss PXP and Style Disorder.

But SL fashion blogs do die, not that we want it to happen. I know that there's some who wish the lackeys would just take over Linden Lifestyles and keep on going, but Linden Lifestyles would not be the same without Sabrina and Salome. It's their baby, they created it, they put their whoring hearts into it and I am happy that I was a small part of it.

As for the Mean Girls, I love em. I aint got the attitude to be a Mean Girl, but I did admire them and what they did.

As for what I'll do post LL, not that I did much during my tenure, I'll blog here as I have always done on occasion. And post pictures to my flickr page I'll probably do infrequent posts for the Metro Models blog

As for preventing blog death, I think the solution is people, lots of people, as many as you can get. Give em beat assignments if you want "you get the fashion shows, you get skins, yadda yadda yadda" but also say: "if you see a hole, plug it, fill in the gaps." I guess that's what Second Style is doing these days with syndicating content, it's essentially getting lots of people working for Second Style.

Six degrees of separation.

2008-08-01T23:27:00.004-05:00

I've been seeing a LOT of familiar faces and names in Hamlet Au's New World Notes lately as subjects of posts, contributors and commenters, and it got me thinking

Here are some of the names I've seen recently:

Crap Mariner
Vidal Tripsa
Phineas Messmer
Zoe Connolly
Eladrienne Laval
Charlanna Beresford
Iris Ophelia
Kit Meredith

I know them all. Lanna and Iris contribute to NWN and they're in my friends list. Phineas, Zoe and Eladrienne are Caledonians and I see Miss Laval and Miss Connolly frequently. Miss Tripsa I met in Extropia, before she got mentioned on NWN. Turns out she hangs in Caledon too. I can't remember where I met Crap, sorry Crap. Kit I met at a Metro Models show, and she and I both worked for Linden Lifestyles as did Iris.

Some might be thinking "Hey, they're really is an insular clique of the famous people" A "FIC" (Feted Inner Core) if you will. Not that I agree with the concept of the FIC, created by Prokofy Neva (Yes, there are people from various parts of the FIClist in my Friends list)

I think the FIC concept is too limiting. IMHO there's a more generalized "avatars of influence" group that's much larger. It would include the formal and informal SL press (bloggers and the like), those who post/comment a lot on blogs/forums, a lot of content creators, etc. It's too large of a group for any individual to have major influence. In fact, SL is so big these days that there's not much Fete-ing of anyone by Linden Labs Everyone is becoming a smaller fish in a bigger pond. Ask new folk who Anshe or Aimee are. They'll say Anshe who? Aimee who?

Places like NCI, the Shelter or BareRose, or Caledon as a whole, are far far more influential than individuals these days.

Even in the SL fashion world, individuals are becoming less influential. Are the folks at Second Style as influential as they were back in 2006 when I joined? I don't know. Or consider the skin glut, seems like everybody has a skin line these days.

And by the way, I'm D-List at best. :-)

"Chick Like Me"

2008-08-01T22:25:00.004-05:00

Caledonian Phineas Messmer is doing an experiment in Avatars. He, a freely acknowledged straight male, is trying out a female form.

She's already found out it's a money sink, and learned the powers of a pretty skin and is discovering how important shoes are. Mwah ha ha ha ha.

I know that Mr./Miss Messmer will have some interesting experiences and interesting things to say about them.

And yes, the title of this post is a reference to the Boy Meets World episode: Chick Like Me, which in itself was inspired by Black Like Me

Rezday.

2008-07-24T15:00:00.003-05:00

My second rezday was last Saturday, same day as the RFL so I didn't plan anything, not that I'm a good planner of parties. I'm still not planning anything, though I do want to throw some kind of party of some kind. If I had parcel control in my skybox area I'd just invite everyone over and set up the parcel stream to Radio Riel or something.

I'm glad I kept a blog on my avatar. It's interesting to see how little my avatar has changed over the past few years. I've been reddish haired and TaP/Fleur skinned since late August of 2006. I'm still very classic in style, though I do like to play around with appearance, after all I've been a penguin dressed as Wonder Woman.

It's been a fun two years, thanks to the people I've met. SL wouldn't be the same without the people. Alaska, Sabrina, Salome, Daisy, Dot, Kit Maitland, Kit Meredith, Sachi, Rosie, Celebrity, Willow, Luth, Sophrosyne, Vidal, a bajillion Caledonians, and so so many more.

Getting back in the swing of things.

2008-07-24T14:24:00.002-05:00

As Kit Meredith says on her blog, it's hard to get back in the swing of things. There's never enough time to do what I want in SL and do other things in RL. I've also been trying to figure out a way to streamline photo stuff. On the new laptop SL pics are 11MB, which are teh devil if I want to send a bunch to anyone. Either I can compress them and lose quality or send em as is. Though one good thing is the new lappie must have the gods own integrated graphics. When I can go to a charity fashion show, have everything rez and take 600MB of pics, and only have SL crash after turning up the graphics after at least 6 hours of SL, that's something.

I swear, I should just set up a cron job to auto convert and scale pics I put in a specific directory.

Oh yeah I also have another new toy, that I've been wanting for over a year, a mighty Playstation 3. I needed one in addition to wanting one because Midgar (my Playstation 2 with Linux installed) was having hard drive issues. I knew it was going to fail soon, and it did. fscking superblock errors, it refuses to boot at all now, and I never did get all my files off of it. I installed Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3 late night the evening I got it. It runs soooo much better than on the PS2, the GIMP is actually speedy, though it's an older version than what I had on the PS2.

I've also discovered that the laptop's LCD screen is crap compared to the cheapo Wal-Mart LCD TV I have the PS3 hooked up to. It's contrast and color is not so good and it's even lower resolution. The TV is 1440x900 and the lappie is 1280x800. I'm using 1280x768 under Linux because going higher res causes the TV to try to scale things funny, the PS3's graphics chip is funny about output resolutions too, it only uses specific ones, so I can't force it to go 1440x900.

I've been playing Oblivion on the PS3 too, been collecting pretty dresses for my character, a female Imperial with reddish hair. :-) Oblivion's character graphics are "uncanny valley weird", even more so than SL. In some ways I think the game would have been better had the avatars been more "SL" in appearance, less realistic. They eyes on Oblivion characters are spooky.

I've been a member of Sony's Gamer Advisory Panel for over 5 years, so I'm hoping I'll get an invite to the "Home" beta. "Home" is sony's SL style virtual environment, that looks suspiciously a LOT like SL. I really want to compare the two. I'm also hoping they allow for user content so Elika can make hair and Roslin and CJ can make makeup for Home. Because I don't want to wander around Home without my ETD Hair in Mahogany or Fleur skin.

Absence

2008-06-22T09:03:00.002-05:00

I've been absent from SL and the blog, I know. I apologize to any readers and fans for that. I had been not feeling up to par, in part due to a bit of the shingles. But I feel more myself these days, thank goodness. Also, the household has a new lappie, still with integrated graphics, but Sl does play better at the settings I normally use, and if I turn the shaders on I can see the pretty clouds and water, and watch my framerate drop to 2fps again. But that would be good for photos I think.

The old lappie still works, and it's now my "tinkering with" machine so that means I might actually be in SL more than before, just sometimes on the new lappie (which is for general household use) and sometimes on the old. If I can find a replacement DVD/CD drive, once I'm certain we won't need any files on the old lappie, I'll clean it up as much as I can, repartition and install Linux alongside XP (if I can fit them both)

The new lappie has Vista...-[continue/cancel], it is annoying, [continue/cancel], I'll probably turn off UAC [continue/cancel].

As for the lappie itself it's a HP DV6809wm AMD 64 bit Turion dual core TL-60, 3GB of RAM, 120 GB of HD (of which about 65 is actually available), NVIDIA 7150M integrated graphics (with hardware T&L, woot!). Aero runs fine, this thing runs Vista better than the old lappie runs XP, so far, mwah ha ha ha.

Femme Couple poses from Aphrodite Creations UPDATED

2008-04-28T02:16:00.004-05:00

While there is some dreck promoted through the Fashion Consolidated group, sometimes FashCon comes through with something you were thinking about or looking for.

A few weeks ago, just before I posted about my openness to an SL relationship, I was wondering what couples animations were out there intended specifically for femme couples, ie couples comprising two female avatars. So I did a little bit of looking, but didn't find much, though if memory serves me correctly Luth Brodie has some at Reel Expression. UPDATE: Luth has 9, and is working on more, they are availabe at Reel Expressions in Lalique Square.

So, a notice earlier on Sunday from Aphrodite Creations caught my eye, and i took the notecard. When I opened it and looked at the pictures of the animations, I thought: Bingo! I was busy at the moment but a short time later I TP'd over to the Aphrodite Creations store and bought the three femme couples poses for 100L$ each. Soon after, I got an IM from Aphrodite Outlander saying, "How dare I shop in her store when she wasn't there." :-) Turns out she's a big fan of Linden Lifestyles I told her the above story and told her I was pleased to see and buy the poses. I didn't take the time to fully explore her store, being L$ broke after buying the poses, but she does have some nice shoes and dresses. Later on I wanted to take some pictures of the poses, but since I am without an SL girlfriend I was trying to decide who among my friends list to ask to help. Then I thought about asking Aphrodite herself, who ws nice enough to take the time to help me out.

Pose 1: in this one it looks like I am being shy while being pulled over for a smooch.

Pose 2: Back to back with our heads slightly touching, very pretty.

Pose 3: Looks like I'm about to lead her to the dance floor for a twirl.

I liked the poses, and I hope Aphrodite does more. Also the individual poses in the pose hearts are copy so you can use them individually in your pose stand. Very cool. Thank you again, Aphrodite for taking the time to pose with me.

My outfit details: Wrap dress from Karamia by Kara Eagle, Fleur Vivant Red lips 1 skin, ETD Jollen hair in Mahogany, Tesla Natasha stilettos, Miriel eys

Cheating on Fleur with Rosemary Galbraith.

2008-04-25T16:08:00.003-05:00

I wear Fleur skins pretty much exclusively, everyone knows this. Last night Rosemary Galbraith of OH! What a neat boutique asked for my input on some skins she had made. One of them was this skin:

Uh huh, it's pretty. She customized it according to my input, with slightly different torso and belly button. And red brows of course. I like, oh okay, I LOOOOVE. Pretty! I might actually wear these along side my Fleur's. They're a touch more "traditional SL skin" than the Fleurs, but more classic than say Minnu's.

And look at the face! I still look like me! And like Kit Meredith, who also looks like me in certain respects. :-)

And now I feel guilty for skin-cheating on Roslin and CJ. waaaaaah.

Blogger strike against LL's trademark policies

2008-04-15T22:59:00.000-05:00

There will be no posts from me for the next couple of days (until the 19th) because of the blogger strike started by Gwyneth Llewelyn. Of course, since I don't post a lot that's easier for me than others, but I thought I should at least say something.

The issue is real to me When I started this blog, Linden Labs guidelines for bloggers were pretty liberal. Essentially, "Hey take these images here and use them as appropriate, and put a disclaimer on your site and it's all good."

So I folled the guidelines, and now I have an SL blog with SL in the URL that I've been wondering what the heck I'm supposed to do with. Should I just change the URL? How should I refer to SL and LL in my blog? LL's new rules aren't entirely clear and they are also far reaching in ways I think they shouldn't be. That's why I'm joining the strike along with other SL bloggers.

Peeking out of my shell.

2008-04-12T02:59:00.007-05:00

I've decided to become more comfortable with certain things, and to try to experiment and be more open to new things in regarding SL relationships and love. To let myself be more outgoing, and less shy, and that it's okay if I flirt or do other things in SL, or to, as the vernacualar puts it, be shmexy avatar:

ETD Vivian hair in Mahogany, Fleur Pink lips 3 skin, Victorian Riding Kip corset, panties and hose from Skye Qi, Tesla Ziggy boots

The pose is a new one from Grazia Horwitz who makes some great poses at her shop, Grapevine Shapes & Poses, Rue D'Antibes (111, 133, 28)

This doesn't mean I'm going to be stripping at the current equivalent to the old "Barbie Club" though. :-) What inspired the "New Improved Somewhat Shmexy, But Still Classy CC"? Windlight in part, it sure does make me pretty, and reading the thoughts of Kit Meredith on Love and Relationships in SL. And talking to people, and having someone flirt with me, with me of all people! I want to thank those who talked to me and listened to me, and inspired me, I really can't thank you enough.

The Modest Mommy: Nan Bamaisin

2008-04-11T14:48:00.004-05:00

Nan Bamaisin is the owner of the Modest Mommy SL fashion blog. she focuses on more modest clothing, and is a "girl with glasses". I really like her blog, because she's a fine and humourous writer. Saw her today and helped her a bit with some info on lighting settings. Got a pretty nice picture of her Modest Cuteness too:

I love chatting with other fashionistas

Sexy Librarian glasses from Mokoptical!

2008-04-11T13:33:00.004-05:00

There's a lot of notices in the FashCon group, but some catch ones notice. There was a notice about an eyewear store I hadn't heard of called Mokoptical In the notice there was a picture of some awesome women's glasses called "Mary". But perhaps "Sexay Librarian Mary" would be more appropriate.

ETD Tyra hair, Fleur Boudoir 3 skin, 80's power dress from Marni Grut, Miriel eyes

These glasses are, to put it in the vernacular, hawt! I want these glasses in RL! Everyone loves them and their, again to put it in the vernacular, shmexyness! I've told other "girls with glasses" about them too, I had to, especially Dot Lane and Nan Bamaisin

RL move.

2008-03-26T23:26:00.003-05:00

We've moved into the new place, finally. !#@$#@$ flood! Which is why I haven't been in SL (neener neener I'm not using the TM)much move preparation and after-move work. Don't know when things'll return to normal. I don't have much time for SL, but I DO read my email.

Layniewear Audrey

2008-03-12T12:41:00.003-05:00

Layne Link of Layniewear loves CC! She saw my wish list and came up with a simple and pretty square necked sheath named Audrey. it's what I wanted, and I actually prefer the more fitted silhouette than the shift silhouette of dress I showed. It's something I can dress down for business

or dress up for evening. All it takes is a change of makeup, hairstyle, jewellery and shoes.

I love. And yes it comes in more colors, Thank you Laynie.
SLURL to Layniewear Pamran location

Channeling Alexis Carrington in a Business suit from Cattiva

2008-03-12T11:04:00.003-05:00

Lissa Maertens of Cattiva saw my post about the G.L.A.M. Bossy suit which mentinoed the 80's and dropped a photo on me. Now I knew Lissa was, like me, a bit fond of the 80's which might be a bit of an understatement on both our parts, but I wasn't expecting this lovely:

I put it on and spent practically the next hour humming the theme song from the nighttime soap, Dynasty I really needed to find a Linda Evans as Krystle Carrington avatar to have a catfight with. It is exactly the sort of thing Joan Collins as Alexis would wear to the Carrington offices. BIG shoulder padds, 80's style cropped jacket, slim skirt. You must understand, we 80's folk have a love/hate relationship with BIG shoulder pads I, of course paired it with BIG hair from Armidi (Envy) and glam makeup from Fleur because I just had to have the Alexis style cheekbone contouring. This is the ivory but it comes in other colors too. but the ivory is so Alexis.

Now all I need is an SL Blake Carrington to buy me my own sim, and lots of shoes.

Dot Lane

2008-03-12T10:31:00.003-05:00

I met fashionista and blogger Dot Lane the other day. I'd seen her pics on flickr, and they were "kyoot". Of course, being a redhead, wearing ETD Maaliyah and wearing Fleur skins is always a way to get my attention. Fleur wearing Maaliyah redheads unite!

So I friended her and she likes meeting new friends in person so I invted her to my lil skybox. She was wearing a simple button down, jeans, Shiny Things Lollies, and a Fleur Parfait skin. She was adorable, so I switched clothes so we could be kyoot and adorable together.

My shirt is from Luminosity, jeans from Launa Fauna, and one of my many Fleur skins.

I suggested we storm a sex club with our kyootness, but we didn't. Though that would have been fun if we were riding cows. I also love Dot's blog, she covers tons of kyoot, and punk stuff and has even visitied the Japanese sims that I never get around to doing. She's also the founder of a "Girls with Glasses" group, that I want to join but can't because of the sucky group limit. Just like I can't start up a "Red-headed Shameless Hussy" group.