A Tiny Story, you betcha.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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"

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

Return to Classic template, and by the way, Notepad sucks.

In moving to the new "Layout" version of blogger with drag and drop ability of widgets and stuffage, it seems I lost my blog links. So I added the link widget, which I discovered one cannot edit manually, you have to add and subtract links one at a time. Not only that, but the new templates are in that evil of evils, XML. I have always believed that XML, CSS, DOM, and all that other crap was intentionally added to HTML to take web page creation out of the hands of amateurs and return it to the coder elite, remember Geocities, go.com, Tripod,and Angelfire? Well, I figured I could always edit the template manually and without thinking, saved it and opened it up in Notepad, since I was on Windows at the time. That, of course gave me a jumbled mess, because the file was probably unix-formatted and Notepad isn't XML aware. Which brings me to another point, to edit XML you practically have to have an XML aware editor. Windows by default doesn't have such a thing, and I don't have one installed, I think, So I just ftp'd it over to Linux where I DO have XML aware editors.In fact I have one of the editors that has a long history, vim.

vim (vi iMproved) is a modal terminal based editor descended from the 31 year old vi, that drives non-geeks insane. Modal means you can't just start typing in vim, which starts in "command mode", you have to enter "insert mode first, and then type. To use commands, for example, to save and quit, you have to exit insert mode and enter command mode. However, as you can see it can syntax highlight xml making it much easier to read and parse. The terminal here is mrxvt a version of rxvt with certain enhancements like tabs and TrueType font support.



After taking a look at the XML I realized it used an external call to the Link widget and thus wasn't easily editable to add my links.in so I switched back to the classic template to make it easier on me. That's when I decided to do this post about vim, which also has SL related uses because it can also syntax hightlight LSL (Linden Scripting Language)



As well as autocomplete LSL, type ll and hit Ctrl+n and it will popup a little mini-window.with all the llwhatever functions.



It can do tons of other stuff, like tabbed editing (just like tabbed browsing in Firefox, but even works in the terminal version) but not to worry, there is also a graphical menus n mouses version named gvim that is installed right along with vim.



See, it's not that scary. But even using gvim, the keyboard commands stay the same, like :wq! for "write(save) and quit". So there's a gvim enhancement called cream, that makes gvim act "normal" from a Windows users perspective. Ctrl+S saves for example. But any way you slice it, any version of vim is a better text editor than Notepad.

Windows installer for standard vim and gvim

Cream-ified vim/gvim for Windows installer Very popular among Windows users.

I will not speak of the editor emacs, I don't like it even if you can play Nethack, tetris, adventure and read your e-mail from within it. Yes, I know about viper mode that makes emacs act like vi, but that's the problem, viper mode acts like vi and not vim.

I've heard good things about a Notepad replacement called Notepad++ but I have never used that.

What CC wants....besides the pony.

Yes, I still want a pony for my full sized avatar self (the one from Virrginia Tombola), but there are other things I want in SL. Many of which I cannot find.

First of all, I want some tailored loafer styled shoes:


Lumiani Assisi high heel loafer style pump from Zappos



Chinese Laundry Degree chunky heel loafer from Zappos




Anne Klein Felder tailored loafer Look, a medium-low heel!



I'd also like to see some "Everyday", tailored basics (images and links from Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Loft):

Ann Taylor Loft Striped Cotton strech shirt This is the sort of thing worn by women everyday to work, it's simple, it's attractive, it has clean lines, it just "works"



Ann Taylor shift dress A basic shift dress one can dress up and dress down. Wear it with a jacket and those Lumiani Assisi's above for work, pair it with dressy jewelry and the equivalent of our Tesla Natasha's or Maitreya Slinky's for a dinner date.



Ann Taylor white shirt and black skirt Oh wait, I have this in SL. :-)



I also need some springy/eastery/ladies-who-lunch pink tweed/boucle suits. Other pastel colours would be good too. (All images and links from ebay)

Karen Scott pink tweed suit A little bit boxy and matronly with the cardigan styled jacket but still a classic.




Nanette Lepore pink tweed suit I really love the silhouette on this one and the insets on the hemline of the skirt. Since it's fitted, it might work well in SL.



Valerie Stevens pink tweed suit Oooh it's so pretty, and the trim! Again, love the fitted silhouette that should work well in SL.



Chanel Jacket Dress So classic, so fabulous, so perfect. Love, love, love.



If anyone has seen anything like these in SL, I NEED to know NOW! If not designers NEED to make them. :-)

I am such a Bree Hodge (van De Kamp) aren't I?



That must be why I like Icing's Stepford Wife

G.L.A.M. Bossy

You remember the late 80's don't you? Slim fitted suits, with slightly above the knee fitted skirts, worn with almond toe pumps? And the shoulder pads? Well guess what I'm wearing. :-) Obey your power suited boss with prim shoulder pads, or she shall give you the look of corporate disapproval



Semi sheer black hose and Shiny Things Classic pumps



I just love a good suit.

Fashionista is an inclusive word, or should be.

When I use the term fashionista in SL, I'm not just using it to describe those who blog or designers, I use it to mean any fan/follower of fashion in SL. That includes anyone that has carefully chosen their look to fit some kind of theme or idea, like how Ordinal Malaprop's avatar looks exactly like you'd expect a quirky Victorian Steampunk inventrix to look.

Here I am, in a picture taken last august at Miriel Enfield's store, with fashionista Judi Recreant. I saw her and noticed her outfit, and went over to talk. We had a most enjoyable chat.



My outfit was from Little Rebel, with a Fleur skin of course, Enkythings pinson boots, ETD Melinda hair in Crimson. She was wearing an outfit from rebel hope, hair from Gurl6, shoes from Fleur, skin from insolence.

On another note, don't be afraid to chat up the more "famous" fashionistas, we're just pixels, though sometimes busy. I was told a couple of days ago, that when I had visited a store that the designer hid from me! She said she was like, "zomg zomg zomg, Crono is in MY store! what should I do, should I talk to her, zomg zomg zomg" She said she still gets starstruck talking to certain people in SL. I told her that I was the same, "zOMG, she's talking to ME! zOMG, what should I say, do I sound like an obsessive fan, zOMG!" So talk! Chat us up! Tell us you like our shoes!

My shape, plus gratuitous boobehs!

I've been thinking about shapes recently again and decided to show off mine, without clothing, so that it can be seen better. This is actually a modded freebie shape that I've been using for ages, within a couple of weeks of joining SL. In SL my av is shorter than average, height gizmo's say about 5'7" (170.18cm)which is actually a bit taller than I am in RL. I used to be much taller, about 6' 2", but shrunk myself down to less glamazon proportions for my everyday shape. I also added a bit more flesh to the shape. I'm trying to go for for a fairly realistic for SL look: "the pretty woman next door who looks fab because she does her yoga and pilates, but she actually eats!" I knocked down the breasts from 66 to 60, though I'm beginning to think that 60 is a touch low for some fashions, even though 66 was a touch big for some fashions. I had knocked it up to 66 because TaP Une tended to make boobehs look smaller. I think this shape is pretty close to what I want, though I may tweak the hips up and shoulders down, and my torso and legs may be just a touch long. But I do think my av looks pretty good in most clothing. I probably need to tweak the eye depth and nose bridge, because I had fiddled with that when I was playing with certain eyes (they showed through my eyelids) and never changed it back. I also took these pictures in Windlight. The advanced lighting options weren't open to me before but they are now, even if I can't see the pretty clouds. I think I had the haze setting up just a touch too high, but these pics were taken without any prim lighting.









I love my avatars butt, it's just so cute.

Any comments?

Re-Opening of House of Gestures

I was thinking about gestures a few days ago and received this press release while offline, the 9pm slot is still upcoming so I'm going to post it:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

March 3, 2008—Unknown Unzoned—If you are looking for the perfect woot to shout out during a fierce SL fashion show or the sultriest rawr to add to your boudoir repertoire, then you must go to the Grand Re-Opening of House Of Gestures on Wednesday, March 5. Owned by Blazin Aubret and Tristan Careless, this company is opening its doors to the public at 12 noon SLT and 9:00pm SLT for two big, down and dirty extravaganzas!

Don’t mistake this Grand Re-Opening as one of SLs oh-so chic events. No ball gowns required for entry here! There is a gritty, urban ambience, and you can almost smell the cigarette smoke wafting through the air as you explore the sim. This place will remind you of the back alleys your parents told you to stay away from. DJ Kromus Korobase will also be the featured DJ during both events, and you know he’s not known for keeping his clothes on!

Watch out for:
- Funny and sexy trivia games with prize giveaways such as gag gifts, Linden dollars, and gift certificates
- A $1200 photo session giveaway with "Cut Above Photography"
- Gesture hunt on the land with 15 free gestures to be found

The store features various gesture selections, such as Movies, TV, Comedy, YouTube, Music, Club/Party, Howls, Expressions, Gaming, Kids, XXX and more. With 98% of the gestures being fully animated and all being custom-made (including Chatart/ASCII), you are sure to find one or more to suit your filthy tastes! *Rawr*

Clothing Fair, a Relay for Life in SL event.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but my Dad is a prostate cancer survivor, and cancer killed both of my mother's sisters, so I support the various RFL events in SL and RL. Here's the press release:


Announcing the Relay for Life, Clothing Fair 2008 brought to you by Relay's Raiders with sims Donated by the Rezzable Group.

The much anticipated Relay for Life, Clothing Fair will be opening it’s doors March 17, and run thru March 23, 2008. Jam packed with live music, treasure hunts… and fashion shows this year’s fair features 84 of SL’s premier designers! Kicking off this years Relay for Life Clothing Fair will be a multi-sim St. Patrick’s Day celebration. The event runs 24/7 until the doors close on the 23rd.

This year’s concept spans four sims to ensure a low lag, positive shopping experience. Watch all our sponsors for more infomation on this event.

Come stroll the seasons and help us “Celebrate, Remember, Fight Back”. We can make a difference! Until there's a cure, there's Relay for Life.

http://www.slrflclothingfair.blogspot.com/

I miss the old Second Style blog

You know, when it was just Celebrity Trollop and a few loveable lackeys like Choice, Grazia, etc.

It had more..."soul". It felt more "personal" like Celeb and friends were my gorgeous fashionista friends helping me find the good stuffage. It seems impersonal now, with that Second Style Network and all. Sigh. It's not that I don't understand being busy, having other projects, or not having enough people, and the grid overflowing with stuffage. I just miss what it was, but realize that SL has changed and that Second Style perhaps can't go back to what it was.

Ahh I guess I'm an oldbie now, ranting about how things aren't like they were in the good ol days.

Fashion Circle Jerk

Several commenters on a post about the various blog feeds on Shopping Cart Disco made that remark. That everybody blogs the same stuff, that the fashion press feeds on each other. And sometimes that there's conflict of interest a la someone working for/renting from/economically intertwined a designer still blogging said designers stuffage. You know what, they're right for the most part.

That's one reason I do commentary and opinion and don't do new items like a lot of other blogs do. This is a blog what I like blog.

I also don't ask for review copies, for one I don't have lots of SL time these days, so if would feel wrong. I DO tell people where they can send their stuff.

There's also things I won't blog, for example, I work for Metro Models and thusly am an associate/employee of Alaska Metropolitan. Therefore it would be wrong for me to blog any of her new stuffage as a "review".

If you're a new content creator, IM me, I probably won't have the time to blog your stuff, but I am willing to take a look and give a quick opinion via IM or in person.

Marketing advice....well that's another story, because that's one of the services Metro Models offers. And I wish more folks took advantage of those services. There comes a time when winging it isn't cutting it anymore in the competitive SL fashion market. You have to "bring your A game" and it's best if your stuffage is as good as what's already out there, if not better or more unique.

I could rant on marketing, ad design, etc all day and I'm not even a professional!

GLAM SL magazine.

Alaska Metropolitan told me to check out the Glam World SL magazine last night. I went to the website and browsed through the flashy thingy.

Gosh the Photoshop work sure is pretty and artistic, but it doesn't reflect the real SL, which I think is a bad thing.

We hate it when designers excessively photohop their ads to make their stuff look better, and I think it's a bad idea for the SL magazines to do similar. It also prevents those not familiar with SL from getting an overly rosy picture of how it looks.

I went to download the PDF version of the magzine today and got a surprise... it's 81MB. That's right, it's 81MB. No, it doesn't have as many pages as Second Style, it's rather short. I don't know what they're doing but 81MB for a PDF is outrageous. Optimize for screen, people, not printer. No one prints these things. it doesn't need mega high resolution/quality.

I will be avoiding Skin Fair.

"Why CC, the new Fleur skins are there." you may be thinking.

It's simple, I don't like badly organized events, even if I think it was a good idea, and even if I'm a big fan of the content creators involved.

1. They only have 1 sim, it's not enough. You get more than 20 fashionistas in a sim and you're asking for trouble. Sure the sims can handle more, but not in a "fun and useable" way. Now I'm the sort of person who'd show up nekkid, or intentionally ruthed, it's a skin fair after all, but there's folks who feel the need to show up and show off in their latest bajillion prim hair and 5m wide flexi ball gown....with bling. And an event like this with free and/or cheap skin will attract a hell of a lot of people, enough to fill and/or easily crash 1 sim. I know people love to gather, but big events with lots of avs simply don't work well in SL. That's why some of us would prefer some kind of "virtual fair" where the designers involved did special branding/adverts/promotions in their own stores, thus reducing the strain. Then hand out special HUDS, that when you click on a "Fair" location bring up the map so you can see how busy it is, and choose another.

2. They didn't promote it well. I didn't know the Skin Fair was on "for sure" til last Tuesday! They should have had all their cards together: location, time, etc and been promoting it for weeks! But maybe they were promoting it, but I didn't have any information. The only promotion I got was a picture of Sachi Vixen's booth from Sachi herself last Tuesday, and I'm press! Second string press, but press nonetheless. If Aradia Dielli dropped some press package on me I didn't see it, and I know there are others who should have got press info that didn't. Handing out press kits means the press doesn't have to actually go there and fall through the ground, walk in slow motion, see unrezzed sculptie ball shoes, unrezzed vendors, and everything else that comes with lagtastic events. They can sit at their home/studio/skybox and do their thing.

In other words, if you want to do a big event, pre-planning, lots of it, is essential.

Trying something new

I wonder if one can host template images on blogger itself.

lolneko

Everyone knows about lolcats and icanhascheezburger, don't they?



I'm a copyKit because I'd been meaning to do a lolneko picture for some time and only got around to doing it after shameless red headed hussy Kit Meredith did it in this blog post upon her return to blogging again.

Again I must mention ImageMagick, that's what I used to caption the image, using this perl script, also posted below:

#!/usr/bin/perl

$input = $ARGV[0];
chomp $input;
print "Working on $input\n";
print "top string text (only ~30 chars or so): ";
$top = ;
chomp $top;
print "bottom string text (~30 chars): ";
$bottom = ;
chomp $bottom;

system "convert -scale 640 -gravity North -font Impact -pointsize 50 -fill white -stroke black -strokewidth 2 -draw \'text 8,30 \"$top\"\' -gravity south -fill white -stroke black -strokewidth 2 -draw \'text 8,30 \"$bottom\"\' $input lolcat.jpg";

Why ImageMagick doesn't get more press on the SL blogs is beyond me, it's just so useful.

House of Zen: Career Woman

House of Zen has a nice sleeveless "career woman" dress for sale. Everyone knows I like tailored things so I picked it up. It's more of a summer dress, being sleeveless. The sort of thing you'd want to wear a jacket with at the boardroom while doing the presentation, but without a jacket back in your workspace. Problem is, it doesn't come with one. I'd LOVE to have a matching jacket.




As you can see, it's knee length and has nice piping at the button placket and waist. However, the collar shading and the hip darts are a just a little bit too defined for my taste. Perhaps a dark grey colour for the shading would have looked less stark. But then again it actually has darting, which is a plus. It comes in other colors but I liked this grey the best. I'll probably pick up the burgundy too, eventually



I paired the dress with my new Stacked pumps from Shiny things, the classic Fleur "Heiress" bag, Maaliyah hair from ETD, and neko ears/tail. I was in a neko mood at the time because lolcats had been mentioned on a message board I frequent. I think neko can look very nice in business wear.

Cute Colonel Creeggan

Some may know that I am a "Friend of" the Victorian Steampunk SL micronation of the Independent State of Caledon. I'm a member of some Caledon groups, one of which is the military unit known as the Gunbunnies, which is comprised entirely of Tinys. The Gunbunnies are considered an Elite unit in Caledon whose main purpose is to serve as Guvnah Shang's bodyguards, similar to Queen Elizabeth's own Life Guards in the UK (They're a part of her Household Cavalry)

Recently, the commander of the Gunbunnies, Oolon Sputnik stated that he would step down and asked for volunteers to take over for him. I offered to do so, but only if no one else did. Guess who got the job.....that's right, me. So now I'm the commanding officer (colonel)of the Gunbunnies. It's my job to organize events, and you know, do stuff. Well, one of the things I thought of doing was doing some kind of Trooping the Colour like they do in the UK on the Queen's birthday. Well for that, I'd need a proper officer style horse, to look impressive on while I carry a flag/banner. But as a Gunbunny, I'm a tiny penguin and I didn't know if they made horses for Tinys. But in SL you can find anything, and yes, that means horses for tinys. Cute lil' ponies, actually. They even come in pink! Although I did say in the Caledon group chat: "I don't think a penguin colonel would ride a pink pony no matter how cute and adorable it was." So I settled for traditional white. Here I am, Colonel CronoCloud Creeggan of the Caledon Gunbunnies riding her great white pony, Stallman. Yes, I named the pony after Richard M. Stallman, pony's live in "stalls" and I do run GNU/Linux (though I just call it Linux) Hi ho, Stallman!



I acquired my pony from Lilliput in Heron Shire 215, 215, 21. It was only 550L$ and it even works with the Cavalry HUD sold at The Coaching House (right near the Caledon Eyre telehub)owned by Virrginia Tombola.

Making books in SL the easy way.

Everybody knows you can make "books" in SL, either typing up a notecard or putting images in a scripted prim of some sort, either one you make or something like a THiNC book. THiNC help info says:

The THiNC Printing Press & Book only uses textures or snapshots to display pages. By using your favorite paint program you can put text into a picture format supported by Second Life to upload. Currently I find the easiest way to incorporate text & pictures is using Microsoft Publisher and save it as a jpeg. A free publishing program which I haven't used alot called Scribus, it can export to jpeg and it is available in all flavors. (Mac, Windows, & Linux). There is also a printer driver for windows users that can save each page as a bmp. (Recomend bmp, the jpeg optiond didn't work for me.) It's available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/imageprinter/, only con is it makes large image files. You don't have any control on what sizes it makes.

Typing text into your image program? Cludgy. Scribus is a nice open source desktop publishing app, but why not use your usual wordprocessor or desktop publishing application, or even LaTeX.

But now you're thinking, but CC, how do I get the output of those into my SL "book".

PDF. SL can't import it directly, but it is easy to take a PDF and turn it into a series of images in any format you want, but you'll need the tools to do so.

First your program should output PDF somehow. On the Unixy type operationg systems (Linux, OSX, the BSD's, etc), that's easy, their printing systems are Postscript based and the option to print a file as PDF is often a standard GUI option. And even if it isn't, it's a simple command on the command line away to convert the Postscript output to PDF. On Windows it's not so easy, PDF output support is not built in. But you can download virtual PDF printer you can print to, most of which are actually frontends to the Ghostscript software that provides the Unix type OS"s their PDF making abilities. PDFCreator or CutePDF are often recommended.

Once you have PDF (or Postscript since you can convert PS to images too) you use whatever tools you have to convert PDF to your image format. ImageMagick suite's convert tool can convert PDF into practically any format, including the formats preferred by SL. OSX users can do the same or similar.

You Windows users....well you've got tons of shareware/freeware/nagware/adware stuff to pick from, none of which I'd trust as much as the Unixy tools. I'd try ImageMagick's suite's command line "convert" tool, you'll still need Ghostscript installed. You'll simply do a convert.exe foo.pdf foo.jpg (or foo.png, foo.tga foo.bmp etc.) You'll get a jpeg of every page as output. Enjoy.

Flood

Had to evacuate our home because of flooding, don't know when I'll get back there. Probably won't be in SL since SL would monopolize the net connection of the friends we're staying with.