SecondSnaps Studio 3 Mesh Modeling Studio, by Ava Rage

Ava Rage, fashionista (and friend) par excellance has updated her SecondSnaps studio.  As any long time readers would know, her studio replaced my "vintage" Picture Perfect studio from Sabrina Doolittle, though I kept the Picture Perfect pose stand in use because I liked it slightly better than the one in the earlier versions of the SecondSnaps studios......until now.

Basically the studio big buttons to choose and switch between textures, and you can add more via texture sets or make your own.  It also has built in lighting and other features.

But the posestand does something that I don't think any other pose stand in SL does.  You rez it a bit ABOVE your picture taking spot and pose BELOW it.  With other pose stands that you stand ON, if you're wearing a long dress it can get in the way of the buttons to switch poses...but not this one.  They're ABOVE you and they're not tiny little things, so easy to click on.  It has the standard show/hide feature and you can add more poses as usual.

I slapped my 3-axis rotation script that lets me rotate a pose stand at any angle I want with a chat command without having to manually turn it via the edit window.  For example "/7 z 180" rotates the stand 180 degrees for quick pictures of the back of outfits.

All in all the SecondSnaps is the "best selling full-featured entry-level studio since 2011," for very good reasons.  It just "works", doesn't have a high LI, is easy to use, and is inexpensive.  I highly recommend it.

Acquire the SecondSnaps Studio via Marketplace  or via the SecondSnaps in-world store, for only L$350 for studio and pose stand.

Strawberry Singh Friends List Meme

Yep, another Strawberry Singh meme, this one pertains to the Friends list:

1. What is the number of contacts on your Second Life Friends List? (visible in firestorm viewer or your web profile) :  304
2. Are you picky about who you add to your list or do you usually add most people?   With new folks I always accept out of sheer politeness and wanting them to have at least "someone" to IM if they have a problem.  I'm often shy about offering it, not because I'm snooty or anything, I just don't want to bother others.  There are people I probably should friend, but haven't yet.
3. Who is your oldest contact? (check your calling cards) Cleon Goff.  I think I met him at the SL event I attended upon first login.  (I joined SL to take part in a "GeekBrief" vodcast meetup in SL.) 
4. Who is your newest contact? (check your calling cards) Robie Shan
5. Do you know every single person on your list? No.
6. How many do you speak to on a daily (weekly) basis? Daily I would say about 2 to 3 and weekly maybe about 6 - 8.  Mostly because I don't want to bother others.  Now that doesn't count group chats, because there's plenty of  people in my friends list whom I see in various group chats very often.
7. How many do you see/get together with in-world on a daily (weekly) basis? Not many.  Maybe a half dozen or so weekly.  I could be underestimating, I see a LOT of people.
8. Who on your list do you have the closest relationship with?  Gabi, every steamlander knows who that is.  It's a part of our "Caledon Legendarium" that we're cousins.
9. Who do you wish you knew better?  Salome.
10. Who on your list is the funniest/most entertaining?  Easily, Salome. Who is made of pure awesome.  We have similar interests.
11. How did you meet most of the people on your list? (work, parties, etc…) I haven’t actually “met” MOST of the people on my list.   Group Chats, other fashionistas, random encounters shopping, socialization.
12. Do you ever clean out your list? No.
13. Do you have a crush on someone in your list? Yes.  There are a few, and one very special one.
14. Is there anyone on your list that you would trust with your password? Yes, if need be, there are a couple. 

And now for a couple of entries of my own:

1. Do you have any FIC in the friends list?  Yes.
2. Are there any friends that have left SL that you wish would return?  Yes. Sabrina Doolittle is one of them, of course.  As is Kit Meredith.   And Swirly Cyclone.  The CC misses the Swirly and her humor very very much. There are some others that haven't exactly left SL but don't log in often.
3. Has anyone in your friends list passed away in RL:   Yes.
4. Okay CC, how many in your friends list are designers?  Actually not many designers are in the friends list.  I've met many as acquaintances, but friended/been friended by relatively few.
5. Who were you tickled pink to have accepted your friendship?  Several people, including most of the fashionistas and Caledon notables in my list.

As for what I'm  wearing, basically only the hair is new and it's the Truth Lunara.

Location:  Cody & Billy's Stompin Ground

The new Blog Header, with appreciation to Gogo and Mr. Whybrow

Ever since cute blonde Gogo changed her blog header I had been thinking that I needed to do one rather than just have plain text.  I had been meaning to do it, just never got around to it.  I am, after all, quite a lazy blogger.

But I was taking some pictures today, at my new home, some cheesecake ones to tell the truth.  I decided to try to get a formal style portrait for the downstairs.  I did get some pictures I thought were fairly well done, specifically this one:

I liked it so much, because it "exemplifies Ms. CC" , so I quickly cropped it down to make a new profile picture.

However, my friend Mr. Whybrow of Caledon said it was dark and could use some lightening up.  I had taken it using a non-fixed region windlight because the lighting was good only a few minutes before....it had gotten darker, and this pic looked even darker in the profile.  He suggested I try again with prim lighting... but I don't do that, don't usually need to because I'm running around with a fixed time windlight....but not this time.

But I liked the picture so I normalized it up in the GIMP and used THAT.  Then I realized that might make a good blog header.  Played around with it until I realized it would work best with some text on it, so I added some BodoniXT in The GIMP.  That got my header.

So Kudos to Gogo and Mr. Whybrow...and my new EVGA GT640 Rev 2. (that's the recent Superclocked GDDR5 version not the 2012 version) video card, which let me actually MOVE (with a low 15fps) with ambient occlusion, full shadows and depth of field on.  And not crash a few minutes after turning them off again.  In fact I've turned them on and off 3 times.

Mrs. Lanley portrait

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.