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.

Avatars, RL fashion and beauty.

I read the fashion mags, mostly Marie Claire, Allure and Lucky. Though I do read others on occasion. In the November 2007 Marie Claire, there was one of those "send a staffer out to test a runway trend on the street" 1 page articles by MC's Style Director, Cleo Glyde. In it, she tested out a riding crop, as seen on some runways.




Now when I saw that, I thought, "Hey I bet I could duplicate that look in SL if I wanted to." I also wondered how she could walk in those needle thin heels. But at the time I didn't have the clothing and accessories. Eventually I remedied the situation and here is my interpretation of Cleo's look. Blouse by Winter Moon, skirt from Ingenue, Armidi Bombshell hair in Ginger 3, Tete a Pied Vivant Red Lips 3 skin, Sunglasses from Paper Couture, Jane ankle strap pumps from Tesla, Riding crop by Carricre Wind (Admiral, Imperial Navy of Caledon)








I got pretty close, which leads into this rumination I had:

We all know about the RL fashion influences on SL fashion and beauty, but I think RL beauty is becoming more avatarized. Here's a few links for a start:

Jezebel.com photoshop of horrors

Evolution of Beauty video

Have you seen the magazines lately? They even photoshop Angelina Jolie, apparently even she is not pretty enough in her natural form to be on a magazine cover. And inside the magazines, some of the models look more like dolls (essentially avatars themselves) than human beings. Even in "beauty editor does blurbs on new products" type articles, sometimes the beauty editor is represented by a "chick lit style cartoon avatar" a la the original cover of "The Devil Wears Prada", than herself.

Or even compare the pictures of Rachael Ray on her books to her actual appearance on the show.

I'm beginning to think that avatars of some sort will replace RL women in print work (the average L'Oreal, Ralph Lauren, Chanel ad) in about 15 years or so.

En Garde!

En Garde is a two-player turn based card game playable in SL inspired by RL fencing. It was created by Rifkin Habsburg of Procyon Games and was inspired by the En Garde tabletop card game by Reiner Krizia. I learned about it in Caledon and just looove it. Since it's turn based, it's immune to lag, and it doesn't matter what your frame rate is. The game itself hands out what's needed to play, a scripted weapon (that's just for cool fencing type animations and sounds while playing) and the HUD that's used to play. I even bought my own set. While you can buy traditional fencing gear to wear by Bryndal Ellison at the Procyon Games location in SL, I tend to wear whatever I have on at the time, like this crisp white blouse from Winter Moon, pencil skirt from Ingenue and Tesla Natash stilettos. My weapon is the Ordinal Malaprop Galvanice Swordstick (En Garde version)

You can see the scoreboard behind me, which can show Team Rankings, World Player Rankings, or Local Ranking.



And here are Mr. and Mrs. Scaggs-Despres (Kacy Despres on the left and Mordecai Scaggs on right) engaged in a duel. You click on the score sign attached to the pole to get set up to play.



One reason I have my own piste is because I thought about renting it out for fashionista events. For example one could issue fashion prizes to winners of duels or set up tournaments to win a Limited Edition item, that sort of thing. (Though it can't give out items itself currently, I suggested that function to Mr. Habsburg) It's an additional draw for competitive fashionistas. Another plus is that it's low prim, the game itself is 16 prims and a single signboard is only another 18, how cool is that.

You can get the game at the Procyon games location in Malrif, personal license is 1999, commercial is 2999. The personal version is also available here on SLEX

PDF's

PDF is a great cross platform format for documents. Readers for Linux, OSX, Windows and other platforms exist. A couple of days ago I needed to send some formatted text with images and PDF was the one format I knew my recipient could almost be 100% assured to handle. In fact, it's probably the best format for sending formatted documents between Linux and the other OS's, since Linux users tend to be not overly fond of .doc, and Windows/OSX users probably aren't going to want to deal with .abw (Abiword) or OpenOffice formats. It's great for SL magazines too, though they should be optimized for screen use and not printing. It's very unlikely that a 70 page SL fashion PDF is going to get printed, and optimizing it for screen mode will make it smaller, faster to load, and work better overall in readers on other platforms, and even on that bloated monstrosity that is Adobe Reader.

OSX and Linux have PDF creation support right out of the box. On Linux, even if the application itself can't create PDF's directly, they do output Postscript, which can be ran through ps2pdf on the command line.

Windows doesn't have PDF creation support built in. You can install support in Word, and OpenOffice can create them, but the easiest thing is to install a virtual printer that creates PDF's when you print to it. I have one installed that came with a copy of Print Shop, but I've seen PDFCreator recommended.

I love Icing

And not just on cakes either.

Fashionistas chat with each other, this is what we do, especially when we work with each other. So I was talking with Daisyblue Hefferman, a co-minion of Linden Lifestyles, and she mentioned wanting a horse but not having enough money. I told her that I knew of a place with cheaper horses that seemed pretty cool to me, Virrginia Tombola's Coach House just off the Caledon Eyre telehub. So I popped over there and checked the prices and offered a TP to Daisyblue. And then I saw what she was wearing and wanted to rip it off her right then and there. It reminded me of my third grade teacher Mrs Lowery who was a bit of a "dame" with a taste for classic styles. Mrs. Lowery would have worn something like that, perhaps with a bit less cleavage, though she probably would have worn her red and white spectator pumps. So as soon as I could I bought it too, making my first visit to ICING. It's called Study Date, but IMHO it's way too sophisticated for a student, I think of it as more as "Alluring Librarian", it gets the details right, the sleeves, the belt, the little bow, the books.



While at Icing I also picked up this Holiday Party dress, which I love love love, it's just so Donna Reed meets pretty pretty pretty. The skirt moves so prettily and it has a net crinoline. It looks great without the fur capelet too.




And yes, I saw lots of other retro-pretty lovelies at Icing that I NEED.

ETD Roslin hair in the older Mahogany, and TaP Vivant skin (just lips 2, frameworks glasses, Lassitude &Ennui Eva shoes, pictures taken in Caledon Victoria City.

Icing store at Mischief 147, 160, 24

The 25 limit must die! Use Subscribe-O-Matic

I hate the 25 limit on groups. Really really hate it. But there's social groups and update groups and \I get invited to groups all the time and simply can't join them because I'm at my max. It would make me very happy if more update groups switched to Subscribe-O-Matic. Admittedly, Subscribe-O-Matic is a fee based service and might work best for larger businesses.

Of course, all this would be moot if the Lindens would increase the group limit. 100 would be a nice start, 200 would be better, 1000 would be heaven.

Shopping center sims

This post was inspired by the launching of the Le Zoo sim.

I like shopping centers in SL, they're a great way for a bunch of small to medium size businesses to pool their marketing advertising efforts and drum up some business.Also i'ts kind of handy to have favourite small to medium designers near each other. However.....I'm not for certain if the concept works in the long term in SL. Why do I think that? Two words...Midnight City.

When I joined SL Midnight City was the IT sim, it was the happenin place, it had all the hype all the awesome fashionista parties that I only heard about. But now, it's deserted. It's like "Midnight City, whats that?"

That said, I think people should still keep doing them, because I think the concept is sound, it's the implementation that's tricky.

1. I think the sim's owner/creator can't be too busy or absent, or it suffers. If the creator is busy, perhaps they should hire a full time manager to actually run the sim, while they concentrate on on their business.

2. The stores in it can't be too big, or the traffic hurts the sim, neither can they be too small with not enough inventory.

3. The stores have to have new inventory to attract repeat customers.

4. It helps if the stores are full stores and not satellite shops, there's few things more annoying than knowing a store doesn't have the full inventory and having to travel the grid to find the item in the one satellite shop that has it.

5. That said, limited inventory satellite shops might work for large businesses who might want to reduce traffic lag at their main store. For example, a hair creator putting new releases in a satellite shop as well as the main store.

6. I think it helps if the center has areas for just hanging out and having fun, to kind of develop a community.

If I had the cash, I'd probably try to start up what I call "the Fashionland/Fashiondonia project." It's inspired by Caledon, which is an obvious success. In Fashionland, I'd have the sims be mixed commercial/residential, a la amicitia, but with perhaps a bit more commercial.

Fashionland 1: mixed residential-commercial with some common areas for just hanging out and having parties.

Fashionland 2 more of the same if 1 is successful.

Port Fashionland, with a sea inlet for more waterfront property.

Fashionland Runway: Runway setup, model agencies, photographers

Fashionland Bryant: Big shows and events, with tents and stuff, but set up with a long return time so that it an be used as a kind of sandbox by fashionistas.

Fashionland Avenue of the Fashionistas: HQ's and residences of the SL Fashion Press

Fashionland Swirlyland: Swirly Cyclone, gets her own sim, just because.

Fashionland Coiffure: Hair! (and residential)

Fashionland Macquillage: Skin! (and residential)

Fashionland Outlet: The place where designers can put their old stuffage

Fashionland Condo: Cheap residences (and some cheap commercial slots) for fashionistas on a budget)

Fashionland Ducalpalooza's: Low prim Island sims for those who need a bigger store/mansion/castle, but don't need a full priced sim.

I'll never be able to do it, but I think it would be fun to try, though I imagine Desmond Shang or Anshe Chung could pull it off.

I got Tagged

Blast, I was hoping to stay hidden. :-) But both Amelia Book and Rose Farina got me.

"Eight Random Facts" meme.

Here are the rules:
(1) Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
(2) People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
(3) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
(4) Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.
8 Things you may not know about me.


1. I like vi, but never use vi-keys in Nethack

2. I love doing accents and impressions, which means that you might want to disable voice in SL when I am near. I also sing, run away, run away.

3. I know my MAC foundation number.

4. I love Hello Kitty.

5. I love pumpkin pie and could eat it all year long. I love making pumpkin pie too, the secret to a good pumpkin pie is in the spices (if you can't see them you didn't put in enough), and in the cooking method. Use a cookie/baking sheet even if the recipes say not to. Using the cookie sheet will increase the time necessary but will protect the oven from filling spills and help bring out the spices. It's also important to sing the Swedish Chef Song when putting in the spices. adding more with the Bork Bork Bork.

6. My favourite drink is root beer. a really good root beer is a rare thing. It should be smooth, but not too carmelized and no fricking caffeine. Root 66 was the best, but it can't be bought here anymore.

7. I used to be able to solve Rubik's cubes, but have forgotten the ending sequences so can only get halfway these days. I could do it in less than 2 minutes if I was doing good.

8. I can't watch trivia/question and answer style game shows on TV, the contestants annoy me.

Lets see, now who to tag, oh I know: Sabrina Doolittle, Salome Strangelove, Swirly Cyclone, Stephanie Misfit, Furiae Blackthorne, Alaska Metropolitan, Roslin Petion, CJ Carnott

For the guys who are gals in SL. respond if you want.

Been reading blog posts lately and saw this response by anony-mouse on a post on Kit Meredith's blog. I know why I play a female avatar, I'm transgendered in RL. But there's folks who don't identify as transgendered who also play female avs. Some do it for business I think, some do it to "explore"and some I think are transgendered but might not have heard of the term or even realize that's what they are.

This post is for all of you born males playing female to respond to, anonymously if you want. It's not really intended for those who do identify as transgendered though you can respond too. I'd like to know how you feel about playing a female av, why you think you do it, how you interact with other avs, anything you want to talk about. If you don't feel comfortable talking about that, tell me what clothes you like, where you shop, that sort of thing.

I'll kind of get things started:

I'm CronoCloud Creeggan, born male, play a female av. I'm transgendered in RL. I would like to do what we call "transition" but such things are very money intensive and I don't have those kind of resources. I've done what some might call "crossdressing" in RL for around 30 years. I like the things that the people who are called "femmes" tend to like. I have an amateur's interest in fashion and makeup. I'm also a very much a geek. :-) I'm not involved in any kind of romantic relationship in SL or RL, in fact I freely admit to having never been on a date in RL. And yes, I'm a virgin. (I know, I know I'm 40 and a virgin) But that's all issues and drama. I don't identify as lesbian in RL, though I did at one time spend much time hanging out in transgender friendly lesbian IRC channels. If I was to transition though, I would identify as lesbian. Lesbian male to female transfolk are actually rather common. As we say, gender identity, and gender object choice (who you want to love and have romantic relationships with) are two different things.

I'm honest in SL about being a born male, it says so in my profile. I decided early on to do that because I joined SL using my "male" nick to participate in a vodcast related chat. The persons in the community related to the vodcast knew me as male. But after I had seen fashionable pretty avatars in SL I wanted one too, so I switched, and decided to admit to why I had done so in my profile. There's a bit of a trend in the transgender to community to try to encourage less secrecy and more openness.

I've not had much trouble in SL in regards to my openness, though it has surprised people and some people I have encountered have openly said they don't get the "why" of it. But that's okay because I don't know why either, it's just the way I am. Now it's your turn, I look forward to reading the responses. If you don't want to respond on the blog, you're welcome to e-mail me, there's a link to my e-mail address at the bottom of the page.

Welcome Fashion Planet readers

I finally got around requesting being added to the Fashion Planet feed and I see that my posts are showing up there. So, welcome and thanks for reading to all the new readers And thank you Tao Takashi for adding me and creating and hosting such a useful tool.

A Pirate in Penzance

After seeing that Pirates of the Caledonian video I just had to find myself a great pirate costume. Which I did at my costume go-to store, Reasonable Desires. And when the Caledon Penzance sim was built, I had to sneak in before the official opening and take a picture of myself as a Pirate in Penzance. Yar!



IMHO, this is the best sexy pirate costume in SL. It has a thigh dagger, it has a belt, it has an eyepatch, it has skulls and crossbones, it has a BIG HAT, and it's reasonably priced, like all of Reasonable Desires stuffage is. And of course, I look good in it, which is all that matters me hearties! Yar! Raise the mizzen sail, load the cannons and prepare for Piratical shenanigans! TaP skin and ETD Maaliyah hair....as usual.

Talia Talamasca's "Schwarzes Kleid und Minuette Avatar"

Taliah Talamasca dropped this deliciously "dead" skin, shape (the Minuette avatar)and clothing ensemble (Schwarzes Kleid), at around Halloween. She knew I like black. Which is true, I like black, I REALLY like black, and now, I also like being "death"ly beautiful:



It's just so corpsey and gothy and fluttery and feathery and BLACK! It comes with those pretty little victorian style shoes and that lovely hair. The skin itself is quite pretty, or at least I think so, and looked great not only on the included shape but on my own usual one. When I put this one I simply had the desire to find some poor desolate sim and sing laments to lost loves. That, and then find Furiae Blackthorne of the Fashion Victim blog and go kill things with her, just for fun.

Available along with lots of other victorian pretties at her store, Wardrobe Trunk.

A picture I wasn't originally planning on posting.

In this blog post by Kit Meredith. She mentions finding her perfect haircolour, and I noticed that she resembled my Boss Sabrina a bit in the last picture. She then replied that she was inspired by me to a certain extent and that she might be essentially be a "grandchild red-headed shameless hussy". I then remembered this picture, that I wasn't planning on ever posting:



I had been playing with the new TaP vivants in at their launch in August, and I had just purchased some HCT hair to see what it looked like on me, and I was playing with my thin lips version of my shape to see how the TaP lips looked on it, and THAT happened. The blue eyes didn't help either. It not only resembles the last picture in Kit Meredith's post, but also resembles the pictures in this post by Boss Sabrina on Linden Lifestyles. Now admittedly Sabrina is wearing TaP Deux and not Gala in that post, but the resemblance is there.

Now normally I don't wear HCT (or Gala) for that reason, and though I have a thin lips version of my shape (which certain skins look better on) I wear the fuller lipped version and I wear green eyes and not blue. But yeah, she's obvioulsy my biggest style inspiration along with Salome, and frankly who wouldn't want to BE Sabrina or Salome and be one of the best dressed and tressed av's on the grid, not to mention one of the best fashion writers around. I'd love to have half her or Salome's wit, style and panache. Helping out at Linden Lifestyles is probably my dream gig in SL.

Kit Meredith is no slouch on smarts either and is one of my new favourite bloggers. Besides, the more smart red-headed shameless hussy's on the grid, the better.

Ageplay, Fashionista Style

After reading varioups posts and articles about ageplay in SL on various blogs and whatnot I decided I needed to admit something:

I'm an ageplayer.....but perhaps not in the way one might normally think.I'm 40 in RL, how old does my avatar look?



Tete a Pied Vivant Red lips 1 skin, ETD Carolyn hair in Mahogany, Eyes by Miriel Enfield, dressy Nuclear Boutique

That image is one of the best ones I've ever taken of my av I think. It's just simply beautiful. Even if with that classic understated elegance makeup my av does not look 40. She's 25 at best.

Or what about this "teen queen sexy schoolgirl" look a la Britney:



Tete a Pied Vivant Sultry 3, Armidi Bombshell hair in Sangria, Sister Penitence School Uniform from Luminosity, Go Hellions!

See what I mean? Even if an av is not a child there's still a lot of ageplaying going on without many folks consciously realizing it. Sure I dress my avatar in mostly classic tailored clothing, retro-wear and casual basics, but she still doesn't look as old as me. And I'm not for certain I want her to look 40 anyway, because she lets me be pretty (and sometimes sexy) in a way I can't in RL,though having the option to look older would be nice.

Pricing

Might as well state it up front:

I think some designers wares are overpriced. I think some are overpriced for the quality and I think even some high quality designers are overpriced. Usually it's in the range of 25 to 30 percent but I've seen some that I believe are overpriced by about 50 to 60 percent.

Now admittedly most of the "overpriced designers" do have some lower priced wares, but I've always wondered if they've read the Lindens own data on in-world purchases, the gist of which is this: most purchases in SL are of goods priced L$200 or below. The number of pople willing to by tiems priced at L$500, L$1000, or more is actually relatively small. Which may be why the Japanese designers are keeping their prices lower, making up for the lower prices in selling mass quantities of goods. L$20000 is the same amount of money whether earned form selling 100 items at L$200 or 40 items at L$500

Perhaps experimentation is in order, but I think the Japanese designers have the right idea, quality goods at lower "don't have to think about it much" prices. I personally try to have a budget in SL that I stick to in regards to Lindex purchases which isn't very high. If I had steady income from SL I'd spend more. But for me the L$200 price point is a marker betwee "just click and get it" and "spend some time thinking about if I really need or if there's something I need more"

I understand designers have rents, fees and design time to consider which is why this is a touch ysubject. Again, some experimentation might be a good thing, to see what works. I know some designers have budget lines and deluxe lines kind of like how Old Navy and the GaP are the budget and higher priced stores within their overall company.