Technical problems

I shouldn't have installed Voice. With that update something changed and now ambient sounds are causing SL to crash on my computer. I can only visit sims with no or few sounds. Voice works fine, but if there are birds singing and sounds of waterfalls and other things, SL crashes. This weekend it crashed so many times I can't even remember. Then I installed the new voice viewer (the one released on Friday) hoping maybe the problem would end, but it made no difference.

For now, I won't be in SL too often. I can't visit many of the places I used to. My graphics card doesn't handle this new version, I need a new one and a new processor.

Voice-enabled!

Second post of the day, this time just to say now I'm voice-enabled!

I should have tried this earlier! I talked to a friend and it was fun!! The connection is bad, the quality of the sound is poor (if compared to skype), but it's ok for a start! But it made my computer crash once. Also, SL seemed slower than usually, but I have to try it at other locations to compare.

Interaction, coordination, teleportation and sordid propositions

Yesterday SL was experiencing Network Connectivity Problems, and there was a wasp in my living room, so meanwhile, I thought I would write about something that was on my mind, which was interaction between people in SL. This post ended up becoming a collection of 4 different parts.


1. “That quiet one is talking through IMs”

People behave and interact with others in a quite different way in SL. Imagine this scene: a group of 4 people, three of them are friends, and the forth is a friend of one of them and has just met the others. They talk through the chat line (let’s not talk about Voice here for now), and from time to time there are pauses or moments of silence, when person number four just knows that the other three are talking to each other through IM. That’s something we don’t see in RL. It’s a way people can secretly exchange ideas without the others knowing.

Imagine another scene: two persons dancing and talking through IM to each other, and one of them is also at the same time IMing a third person.

Anyone you are talking to might be talking to someone else at the same time through IM.

And while all this is happening, at the same time you are being spammed because some asshole is using an Updates Group to talk. I belong to several groups and most of them are meant only for notification (the store owner sends info related to her store), but members often – actually EVERYDAY – disregard the group owner’s request not to use the group chat, and spam people. This is SO IRRITATING!

The use of IM has changed the way people interact with each other.


2. “She has a serious coordination problem”

Okay. Now to something else. What about people who doesn’t know how to communicate? I have been approached from time to time by very fresh newbies on their first or second day in SL and they ask for information. I’m a polite person so I try to be helpful. I answer some questions and direct them to for instance Natalia’s *Getting Started in SL Guide*, so they can find themselves all the info they need from there. But while I’m answering, the newbie jumps, walks forwards and backwards, get out of chat range, and start walking away and then seems to come back. Maybe some don’t know that typing animation means I’m answering, maybe some have serious coordination problems, or maybe some don’t have any consideration for others. When people start doing that, I sometimes consider teleporting away.

Why can’t some newbies just stay quiet for a moment while chatting to someone? If you ask a question, isn’t it polite to wait for the f*cking answer?

In same cases, it could really be coordination problems. It seems that now when people join through the SL website, it’s possible to choose to either join a community and be taken to one of those portals, or be taken to Linden Lab's Orientation Island. The Orientation Island has all the tutorials and instructions, but maybe some of those other portals don’t have anything like that. If that’s the case, the new newbies today are rezzed into SL without any knowledge of how things work! Oh isn’t that scary? That would explain their restlessness and their jumping into things. But it doesn’t excuse anyone, I still think it’s very impolite to ask a question and start running back and forth.


3. “Does he REALLY think I will teleport?”

Earlier this week I was alone at some place when I suddenly was offered teleport by a person I had never met before. I had never heard of the guy, he might have found me through a group or a search, or maybe he saw my blog or my snapzilla pictures. Without any IM, any message or contact of any kind, he sent me a teleport offer to god knows where, and he replaced the default automatic line that says “Join me at NameOfThePlace” with only this: ^^

Yes, this was his whole message.

^^

LMAO! What a f*cking looser! What kind of person approaches a complete stranger with a teleport offer saying ^^ ? Did he REALLY expect me to teleport there, to who knows where to meet him? He could only be a looser, or suffer from a serious mental problem if he was so optimistic to the point of believing that any sane girl would ever consider teleporting!


4. “What the f*ck is he proposing??”

Another kind of interaction that only happens in SL. Picture this: imagine that in real life you are talking to a real life girl who is your new friend, maybe a person you got to know through your friends or a blog, a person with whom you have nice conversations. A normal friendship at its beginning. Then suddenly you decide to offer that girl a job as an escort. Can you really imagine that situation in REAL LIFE? Doesn’t it sound completely absurd? Who would dare to do that in real life?

Apparently what is absurd in RL seems to be acceptable in SL.

Maybe it’s because girls who in RL would never work as escorts are willing to do that in SL. But how come things can get to the point that a guy assumes he can safely offer this kind of job to any girl?

This week a guy I know offered me a job as an escort, as if as it was the most casual thing in the world. I was so surprised and shocked that I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the subject. But I got upset and disappointed. He always seemed like a normal, ordinary guy, a nice person. But this job proposition offended me.

Many things in SL are way different than in RL. Way different.

Pi, anyone?

In RL people are criticized for being too thin or too fat, everyone is expected to conform to an ideal measurement of beauty. In SL, one would imagine people have the freedom to look like they want, but as it turns out, in SL people are still expected to conform to an ideal measurement of beauty. Those who are too thin or too fat are criticized, especially because in SL it’s so easy to change. You can just move some slides and have a thinner waist, larger breasts, or a Kate Moss figure. But that doesn’t mean anyone want that or are obliged to want that.

But that’s not all, there’s something more. The same way people are expected to conform to an ideal measurement of beauty in SL, those who do are criticized for doing so. So you can’t either be thin, fat nor can you look too beautiful - you will be accused of something. The fact is that you cannot please everybody.

But there are some things you CAN (and should) do. The most important one, body proportion! It doesn’t matter if you’re fat or slim, every human body in RL follows rules of proportion in nature. Have you ever heard of Pi?

The length of your arms and legs, the length of your torso, the size of your head, everything follows a proportion. It would be great if the SL appearance editor could preserve these proportions, such that if you made your legs longer, the rest of the body would change to PRESERVE the Pi proportion (but instead, if you make longer legs your torso will became very small).

But the editor cannot be preserve proportions, because it has to give you the freedom to create non-human avatars, and let’s say, even human-like avs like fairies might need to differ from the proportions (I don’t know about fairies, maybe they have longer legs, this is just an example).

So as it turns out, keeping with the harmony of body proportions is up to the user.

Which in some cases is unfortunate, as you can see from this picture on the right.

I don't know what leads some people to such extremes...

Does it look as if as the picture had been stretched? But it hasn't. She really looked like this. And she has been in SL since April. Really! I don't know what's worse, the long spider legs or the really short torso. Her crotch is where the stomach should be, and there isn't much space left for vital organs, but since in SL you don't have to eat, maybe she felt all she needed was legs and boobs.

Take a look at the mirror in RL and check how long your arms are in comparison to the body. Are your avatar’s arms as long? Try making them a little longer so that they would look like human arms. Doesn’t it look better?

I have one complaint about the Appearance editor (actually, more than one, but this one is important): the height slider should tell your height in both meters and feet. Otherwise, lots of girls set their height to 100, which makes them more than 2 meters tall, making the rest of us look like midgets. My height is set as 56, which means I’m 1,74 meters tall (or 5.7 feet), which is a normal height for a girl, but most of the female avatars I see in SL seem to tower over me. Why are there so many giants? If the Appearance editor would tell your height in RL measurements instead of the absurd 0 – 100 scale, people would know how to use it. Apparently this feature has already been requested and put to vote last October. The amazing thing is that only 15 people have voted in favor of that. See proposition 2133. And please vote!

You can check how tall you are using a height detector. If you don’t have one, you can use one at a store. For instance, Free Dove has one if I still remember correctly.


Body Proportion, part II
(read it later if you’re already tired at this point!)

When talking about female proportion, one thing comes to mind: the proportion between hips and boobage. The thing is, in SL people expect them to be fully proportionate. But as it happens in Real Life, they usually aren’t. Top models are the ones who are expected to have them perfectly proportionate, and as it turns out... most women cannot be top models! Usually the hips are larger than the breasts. So if you want to have a realistic shaped avatar, your hips should be as wide as the bust or a little wider. A nice round ass is beautiful, don’t be afraid to have an ass ;-) but try not to fill your screen with it, LOL! Of course you have the freedom to fill your screen with your ass, but you will be the one staring at it...

Some other day I saw a woman with huge prim breasts; at the beginning I didn’t even realize those WERE breasts. I wanted to talk to her, but I felt intimidated by the size of those things, really, I cannot stress enough how huge they were. In real life they would weigh 20 kg, each! I thought it was a joke, or a protest. But later I found her blog and read it, and I saw it wasn’t a protest, she has enormous breasts because she likes it. And while I can’t think why, why would someone like so enormous breasts, it’s her choice, it makes her happy. She likes it, she can, she has it. Why not? People should have the freedom. But I’m happy she’s the only one I have seen with those breasts because they SCARE me! If it became fashionable and everybody started using them it would be a nightmare. One woman with 20 kg breasts it’s ok, but 20 women with 20 kg breast, that would be spooky.

Lips! This was mentioned before, and Orchid also wrote about it at Mean Girls Guide to SL (see the post Good Looks are a Slider Away, I recommend it if the subject of body proportions interests you). As she states, lips are usually too large in most female avatars. I don’t think most of them have huge lips, but some do. Most of the time the problem is that the makeup of the skin has large lips and it isn’t possible to change them.

Take the Lovey’s skins for instance. The lips are rather big, but still beautiful in my opinion. I myself would prefer them smaller but you can’t change them. But the skin is beautiful, the face is really pretty. I know Vogue skins are made differently, such that you can tweak your lips and make them smaller, but what if you don’t like the eyebrows? What if you don’t like the other details on those skins? It’s quite hard to find a skin that would please someone completely.

I think so much has been said about body proportion on so many blogs, so I will end this post here. I hope the things I said about height and body proportion could be of some help, but I’m afraid the people who read this blog are not the ones who need the advice. LL should include this kind of help in their tutorials at the Orientation Island. If only the Appearance menu would show the height in meters and feet, that would be an enormous help.

Voice?

I still didn’t install the new viewer. It’s an optional update, and as a rule I only install the mandatory ones (not enough space in disk), and the final (and mandatory) viewer will be coming soon anyway, so I’ll rather wait for that. But I feel curious. I hope the final viewer will come soon.

I’m not in favour of voice, nor am I against it. In my opinion it has both good and bad sides. While I think voice will be handy in some circumstances (for instance being able to chat while building something, without the need for typing), it will be an annoyance in others:

1. people yelling “testing, testing, do you hear me?”
   
   
2. girls endowed with voices like Janice’s from the Friends TV series screaming “Oh my god!” out loud
   
   
3. voice spam
   
   
4. voice pollution (for instance, people talking nonsense publicly when they should be doing it privately, like through IM)
   
   
5. trying to understand people speaking English for the first time in their lives. (As an example of this I'm copying here the lines of a conversation I had with a newbie, here's what he said: "Hi! I only after tutorial. Can you explein me whot have to do here? What for you here? How long you playing?")
   
   
6. not being able to hear people who doesn’t speak up, or who didn’t set their volume up
   
   
7. people in SL hearing what’s going on in my house besides my own voice (husband, music, etc.)
   
   
8. people in RL hearing me chatting away at the computer
   
   
9. people trying to pronounce “Wilhelmina” (LOL! Please call me Mina.)
   
   

10. and one of the worst: imagine a group of 20 to 30 people sitting in a circle and chatting, lots of them speaking at the same time, accidentally or intentionally interrupting each other (the lack of body language might also cause that), and you not being able to know who said what. In RL you can turn your head and see whose mouth is moving, but in SL there will be only that voice icon above their heads, and that’s not as easy to follow as one would hope.

The list goes on, but I’ll stop here.

For an example of how voice can be just plain annoying in some ciscunstances, read this. And imagine yourself hearing those dialogues! ;-)

Hazards of SL relationships

I was talking to a friend some days ago about Second Life relationships, and that made me want to write about it in here. I have friends in SL who have SL partners, some are married in SL, some are single, and some don’t date at all. I am one of those who choose not to date anyone in SL, and I have my reasons for that.

I’m married in Real Life and I’m so in love with him. Why would I want a virtual thing with someone when I have the real thing at home? ;-) I’m in SL for the fun, making friends, designing things, exploring places and learning new things, but I’m not looking for any kind of romance.

People tend to take SL relationships less seriously – after all, it’s all pixels and bytes, but behind pixels and bytes there are real people.

Maybe your Real Life partner wouldn’t be jealous if you were dating someone in SL, but maybe he would. Your partner could even say he wouldn’t be jealous, but how can you (or he) know for sure? If you were dating someone in SL, maybe your RL partner could become jealous of all the time you spend in SL because he would imagine that you are always with the person, even when you are just hanging around with your friends or exploring alone.

Actually, TIME is a really important factor: if you are giving another person more time than the time you give to your partner. If it's a friend, it’s ok. But if it was an affair, a romance of any kind, then he would be losing that time and that attention to another person.

Also there's the problem of the other person. Besides the possibility of your partner feeling jealous, if you would date someone in SL and that person would fall in love and you don't, it would be quite hard. And I read people's blogs, I know how they fall in love and how they suffer. If you are dating someone in SL just for fun, be sure not to break anyone’s heart. Sometimes in a SL relationship, one is only having fun, and the other is taking it too seriously and falling in love.

These lines from a Chris Isaak's song come to mind:

What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way.
What a wicked thing to do, to let me dream of you.
What a wicked thing to say, you never felt this way.
What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you

That’s why I choose not to date in SL. And as I said to a friend, friendship is always better.

Interior design

I love to see what people can do with interior design. Some stores have been designed with so much creativity and originality, taking advantage of things that can only be accomplished in SL. In SL you don’t have to obey the laws of physics and you can also create all sorts of interesting particle effects and textures to achieve the results you have in mind.

Since fire won’t burn your clients, you can even have a fire spitting Godzilla inside a store. ;-)

This picture is from a store called FORM at {PLUNDER} Airship Outpost, Maggiore (158, 117, 602). There’s a miniature city inside the store and a huge Godzilla spitting fire over cars and buildings. Very creative! It’s fun to shop at a place that not only have interesting products but it’s entertaining as well. Cool! I don’t know who designed this, but I love it!

Depressing and decadent lifestyles

I like to say that SL offers us an unlimited number of possibilities, you can be whatever you want, be it a human, alien, animal, sexy cat-like nekos, insects, dragons... and the list goes on and on. You can create anything you want too. But even with so many positive and interesting possibilities, why the hell on earth some people choose to rather be consorts and prostitute themselves for a few cents?

Yesterday I found a blog of a “SL whore”, that it, a woman who works as a prostitute in SL. She writes very well and, as much as it is interesting to read about that decadent sub-world, it still makes me feel sad to know that this kind of decadent lifestyle has made its way into SL.

That woman claims that sex is all that SL is really about. She is so wrong! Maybe sex is all that SL is about FOR HER, because as a whore that’s what she is doing when she is online. But I must say, SL is not about that at all, it’s much more. It’s about building, making friends, shopping, designing clothes or robots or scripts or HUDs or spaceships... and selling them, it’s about RPG, it’s about education, business, networking, it’s about travelling, playing, exploring.

While there are such things as “red light districts” and orgy rooms or whatever, where women allow themselves to be used by men in exchange of a couple of dollars and they think they are making “so much money” (come on, a thousand lindens is just about 5 dollars!), the rest of the SL lives on, far away from it.

The same way SL offers all the cool possibilities I listed above (creating things, shopping, travelling, learning, making friends), it also seems the offer some dark corner for those who want to indulge in sex, and for those who are so cheap that would prefer to be used, humiliated and to endure verbal abuse, instead of just buying a few lindens to be able to purchase that “so expensive 1000 L$ skin” (really, 5 miserable dollars).

PS: I don't want to sound like a moralist or an old church lady. Anyone can do what they want and they have the right to do that, I guess. But it's people like that who encourages guys to be disrespectful with any female avatar they meet. If it wasn’t for the prostitutes and the orgy rooms, there wouldn’t be so many newbie guys who join just for the orgies, and guys who keep pushing girls (in lack of an AO that would enable them to grab them).

Pictures, pictures...

I’m feeling too narcissistic again today so I have to put some pictures of myself here. I got this sculptie scarf from Maitreya as a gift (because I’m at their announcement group) and I liked it so much I had to wear it right away and I had to come up with something that would go with it.



I decided to dig into my inventory and I found a beautiful green top I didn’t know I have. It’s called inger green top by Neferia Abel and I have no idea where I bought it from. It could have been from Ivalde, but I don’t remember. I didn’t even know I had this, and it’s so gorgeous!



I like the little smile I have in these pictures, subtle and cute.

This moth eaten cardigan is from Frustrated Inc, and I saw it at the SL Fashion SOS blog and I liked it so much I had to buy one. I had never seen moth eaten clothes in SL, it’s a great detail and the texture is wonderful, really beautiful.

I tinted my earrings to match the top, put on these Last Call dark jeans and belt from a different outfit, and my lovely sculptie boots (from Maitreya), and I love the result. I’m so pleased with this outfit. The scarf looks wonderful, it’s so realistic.

In this picture you can see the richness of texture detail of the scarf and cardigan.

Now I just wish I had a printer that could reproduce these items to RL so that I could wear this outfit myself! Except that in RL I wouldn’t be wearing these boots right now (it’s summer and 23 Celsius degrees outside).

Auto-emote and Miranda.smart HUD

Because of a recent RL accident, I can’t use the mouse with my right hand, but I can still type! :-) Though at a slower speed than normally and using mostly the left hand, and one or two fingers of my right hand. I don’t write about RL here, so if you want to hear what happened ask me inworld.

SL crashed often this morning so since I can’t go there and visit the place I wanted to see, I decided to write here instead. I started writing this yesterday after purchasing and testing the Miranda.smart HUD. I have seen in the net some few texts comparing these two HUDS, but they haven’t mentioned a few things one should know in order to make an informed decision on which one to buy. So I will write shortly about pros and cons, and at the end of this article you will find links with more information on the HUDS and also SLurls to the places where you can purchase them. Please follow those links for more information on each HUD’s features and pictures.

Auto-emote and Miranda.smart HUD are both HUDs that allow your avatar to express emotions. You can either choose the emotion you want to display, or you can turn on the automatic option, which makes emotion displays accordingly to certain sentences or keywords you write in your chat line.

Auto-emote was designed by Outy Banjo and costs 300 lindens. It has a set of facial expressions (angry, happy, kiss, etc..). It works wonderfully.

In this picture auto-emote is making my av laugh:

Miranda.smart HUD has more than only facial expressions, it has also avatar animations and screen effects. It costs only 100 lindens. But although it is cheaper and has more options, it has some problems that Auto-emote doesn’t have. Miranda’s facial expressions stop working easily, and though the sounds still work (kissing, laughter, etc), the avatar stops making the facial expressions. This is very annoying and the only way to make it work again is to quit SL and login again. I tried to detach the hud and attach it again but it doesn’t help.

Here’s a Miranda’s avatar effect: sending a kiss with hearts

Miranda’s screen effects are wonderful for taking photos, though. But you better FIRST pick up the angle for the photo (I mean Alt+click) and only then you choose a screen effect. This is because after you have selected a screen effect (for instance, fog), if you Alt+click your avatar to choose an angle/zoom for the pic, it won’t work. Maybe the screen effect is a sort of layer between your avatar and the screen (?), anyways, it stops you from Alt-clicking your av. Otherwise, the effects are great.

Some of Miranda’s avatar animations don’t work right if you are using an animation overrider. I use Wet Ikon Franimation Overrider with standing and walking animations. To see correctly the miranda’s animations, I have to detach my Wet Ikon first. I have to test Miranda and ZHAO AO hud to see if the same happens, but I bet the same would happen.

I’m using both Auto-emote and Miranda.smart HUD at the same time. If you ask me which one you should get, I would say: either buy both of them, or if it’s only facial animations you want, get then only Auto-emote (otherwise you would get disappointed when miranda’s expressions stop working). Although auto-emote is more expensive and it only has facial expressions (no sounds and no screen effects), it works really well.

You can get them inworld from here:

• Miranda.smartHUD: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hairspray/68/67/96
• Auto-emote: O Scripting, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brownlee/249/48/108

More info on Miranda.smartHUD:

• a review at StyleDisorder
• YouTube - mirada.smartHUD v2.2 demo for secondlife

More info on Auto-emote:

• at SL exchange
• Cheyenne Palisades' review of auto-emote

Unrezzed prim lashes and how awful they look

I took this picture at the Downtown sim. It’s a random girl shopping, and the prim lashes she was wearing had not rezzed, and they actually never did rezz at all while she was there, though she was there for a long time.

Prim lashes are great for when you want to make a photo shoot of yourself, but it’s not a good idea to wear them at parties when there’s a bit of lag, or when you are in places full of prims. It seems that lashes are always the last thing to rezz.

The first time I saw prim lashes I was at a party. There was some lag, but not much. Everything had already rezzed, but still, even then, the prim lashes the hostess of the party was wearing took a loooong long time to rezz. Meanwhile, what I could see was a strange “black makeup” on her face, something like what you can see in the picture above. She looked as if as she had taken a punch on the eye, or actually.. on both eyes! LOL!

After that, I thought, no prim lashes for me, thank you!! LOL!!!

But prim lashes do look beautiful, that is, when they have done rezzing. The problem is, though they may have rezzed for YOU, for each new person that teleports to the sim where you are it will still look like you have been punched on the eyes until the lashes eventually rezz. And the lashes are the last thing to rezz. But why? Why? What a pity.

Metamorphosis

Finally I find time to sit down and update this blog! I have something cool to write about.

But first, look at the cutie in this picture and tell me, isn’t she HOT?

Well... That’s me!!!

Yes, that’s me with my new shape!! :-)))

As you know I have had trouble with my shape from day one. I spent most of my first two months with the same skin I started with and I had made a few changes to my appearance. Changing my appearance has always been a challenge because, just to start with, my computer crashes almost every time I go into appearance mode. I don’t know if that’s because my laptop hasn’t got enough memory or is it the graphics card (Mobility Radeon 9000 for laptops, which isn’t as great as the normal mobility radeon for desk computers).

Anyway, my first two days back then when I joined SL I spent in the Orientation Island, trying to complete the Appearance Tutorial and crashing and crashing all the time, and thinking serious of forgetting about SL since it doesn’t seem to work... (I thought it was necessary to complete all the tutorials to be able to go inworld, so each time I was asked in the tutorials to go into appearance mode, I went and crashed..

Later on I learned that I just can’t go into appearance mode in sims full of prims and people. The only way is to go to an empty sandbox, wait until every little thing has rezzed, and if there isn’t people around I can edit my appearance. It sucks, but it works. And even then sometimes my pc crashes.

Besides this computer problem, I’m no good with changing my appearance. I changed my first shape and made it look much better, but later on I realized I was a giant more than 2 meters tall. I thought my ass was too big and made it smaller, the breasts too. And then I was happy. But then I started wearing skirts and they made my ass so much bigger. I decided to reduce my ass (big mistake), and then I thought I had to reduce my shoulders too to compensate, and then the waist wasn’t narrow enough. I made changes again, and it was getting worse. I was heading towards some sort of digital anorexia (LOL) and my shape had lost its feminine curves. I was getting nuts.

Then I bought a skin, convinced that would make me look better, and after trying lots of demos and buying one, I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere with my appearance. My face seemed so angular and full of harsh shadows.

Now I have to put a picture here, I hate this picture. Look how narrow my face looked like. With this hair I look ghastly. A male friend thought I looked pretty, but I have to disagree. Really, LOOK at the picture!

Sometimes changing the hair helps a bit. As you can see in my old mermaid pictures.

Here’s a picture I took during the SecondFest. The hair is a freebie from ETD (a lovely hair, I like it a lot). I was wearing trousers from ETD and a blouse from Last Call. Even with nice clothes and a good hair, the only feminine things in that shape were the face and the breasts. Look, I had no hips at all.

It was then that I found out about SL Fashion SOS. I saw the amazing job Aemilia had done with two girls before; she gave then a makeover and they looked so fabulous with their new shapes. So I asked for help. I’m SO GLAD I did it! Aemilia is a genius!! She saved my ass, LOL! Literally, really, because I was almost “assless” (does this word even exist?) and now I have a beautiful and feminine ass! All my body proportions are now great and my face is much more round and sweet. Before the makeover, I looked so serious (like an angry teacher or something) and now I look much friendlier and cute.

Check the pictures from my previous post. I was already wearing my new shape.

Take a look at Aemilia’s blog and the pics she took from me. I love these pictures!

I also learned so much. I was making a stupid mistake with my shape when I wore skirts: the default SL skirts (which are those skirts that are not prim skirts) always make our hips larger, and that’s one reason why I had made my ass so small. Also I was wearing freebie prim skirts and adjusting my ass to fit the skirts, when I should be doing the other way around. Besides, most freebie skirts are just awful. Sometimes they were somebody’s poor attempt at designing something that didn’t work, so they decide to give it for free. Some freebies on the other hand are good, when good designers give something away to advertise their products. Anyway, back to the point: forget the cheap prim skirts, and tweak the size of the skirt to fit your ass, not the other way around. It’s not worth having a small and boring ass just because most skirts will fit.

Aemilia had a simple and great solution for the default skirt problem. She made me a copy of my new shape, but with a slightly smaller ass, specially for when I’m wearing default skirts. This way, I don’t have to go into appearance mode. When wearing pants, I wear the normal shape, and when wearing default skirts, the “skirt shape”, so my ass is always the same size (otherwise default skirts make it larger). It’s much easier to just choose it from the inventory! If I had to go into appearance mode, not only it would take more time, but also I would have to find an empty sandbox otherwise my computer would crash.

I’m writing so much today! So many words just to say that I LOVE MY NEW SHAPE!!!!! :-)))))))

Lately I have been going through my inventory and throwing away lots of old stuff. And I’m keeping only the good stuff. I’m thinking more now about my image and my style. I got to know lots of really cool stores and I bought some amazing outfits and shoes. As Caterin said, there are lots of good designers in SL.

Yesterday I bought these boots at Shiny Things, tattoos from EtchD, shorts from Tomboy, blouse and poses from Maitreya. I have lots of other cute outfits, but I’m so in love with this new look, specially with the Sea Nymph hair, the boots and tattoos, that next time you meet me inworld I will probably be looking like this. ;-)

More surfing and skiing

Surfing at the Weather Channel’s beach. Sitting over the board and waiting for the next wave.

And there I gooooo!


After surfing for a while I decided to sit on a beach chair and a girl came to sit close to me and we talked. After she left, it was only me and another girl on another chair (she had been there longer than me). I was talking through IM to a friend while I sat there, and everything was quiet until a strange guy appeared from nowhere. He had a belt with walktalk and other stuff (gun?) and he crouched next to the girl’s chair. She didn’t move. Then suddenly he started saying things like:

(His name) swallows near her, smelling her scent
(His name) touches her shoulder with his fingertips

She didn’t move! I wondered what the hell was that. I couldn’t resist taking a pic, and so here it is. I’m "protecting the identity of those involved" by covering their faces, LOL!!

Well, maybe I should leave this place before he decides to come check my scent and touch my shoulder or something else. LOL!

I went up the hill to check the mountain bikes. First I decided to stretch my legs in a bunker and watch a video.

Then I got myself a bike and went driving in the desert. Yeah, I was sure not to miss any puddles of mud and got all muddy and dusty (in fact, I wish the av could really get dirty, otherwise it isn’t realistic enough). One think that bothered me is that there wasn’t a track, I was driving randomly in the desert and without indications of where I should go, to which direction I should drive.

Then, I gave the skiing another chance.

But first had to go to the weather tower just to be sure of what weather to expect...

Something makes me think I would love a job like that! I'm a weather freak, I'm so into it. :-)

Then I got up in the lift and off I went... What a beautiful sunset, snow showers and the moon rising.

Ops, what is THAT?? A chair from the lift, several meters downhill. Auch! So even the lift can be that dangerous??

Dangerous or not, what a beautiful trip!! And this is the best and most realistic snow I have seen in SL! Even if you don’t want to ski, get up there! It’s a MUST!

At the top of the mountain there are lots of warning signs, oh dear, Hazard! Hazard! You can’t say you haven’t been warned! No wonder I died THREE TIMES when skiing in this place.

Anyway, there I go!!!

Yikes!

Surfing!!!

Surfing in SL is great!! I have tried this before and no luck. But now I found this amazing site at the Weather Channel sim, and they have huge waves, HUGE!!! The first time I went there I was afraid! I got scared! LOL!!! And the sound of the waves, that was impressive. But hey, there you can get a rental board for free, and also this cute surfer outfit. Check out the details of the texture! Not bad for a freebie, uh?

So much fun!! I will go there again!! This sim has other cool options if you like sports! Like skiing and something else too, I haven't got to check everything yet. But I went skiing too, and gracefully disgraced my country with my shameful unskilful style of skiing right to the trees, against rocks, right into holes, and finally into the sea. Some weird bug happened then: even after taking off the skies and all the gear, I was still in skiing position and not even teleporting could help me out of it. I had to logout! Oh dear, oh dear. I have to get back there, and humiliate myself a bit more... LOL!

Mermaid

I have been meaning to post this for some time, and finally here it is. :-)
This picture was taken 4 days ago, but the 2 pics below this one are soon half a month old. Maybe now that I'm on vacations I manage to update this blog more often?


I could not pass the opportunity of being a mermaid and swimming with the fishes in SL. SL is so great exactly because of that, because of all the possibilities it give us. You can be whatever you want, you can be a mermaid, a dragon, a butterfly, a jellyfish, a frog or even a hat. I’m not just throwing random words here as examples, I have really seen each one of these in SL. There are even jellyfish avatars for sale (really!). Whatever makes your fancy, it’s there! And if it isn’t, maybe you would like to create it!

I purchased a mermaid tale from Sirena Hair and Fashion, and AO from Emeraldever. After that, it was easy, just put everything on and suddenly I was a mermaid! I looked at myself in awe! Wow! Natalia’s mermaid costume is beautiful, the colours are so alive, and the tail is flexible and gracious.

Under the sea shells that cover the breasts there are two texture sea shell drawings that cover the nipples. I thought that was unnecessary, but once it was a life-saver! It happened once that I teleported from one mermaid place to another, and some SL bug happened when I teleported, causing all the prim attachments I was wearing to be automatically relocated and appear in between my legs! My hair, the sea shells, the necklace, the leg attachments, everything was misplaced! But the texture shells were still covering my nipples, otherwise I would be topless! LOL! Thank you, Natalia, for the texture sea shells!!


Most of the times I have been swimming in my mermaid form, I have been on my own. And sometimes I have met people who came to talk to me. The reactions were varied. There was a couple of newbies that got frightened, there was a sailor who was joyful to see me swimming alongside his boat and making a backflip above the water, there was a girl who loved to see me and made me lots of questions about how it is to be a mermaid and do I live underwater (LOL, it was my first day as a mermaid). And there was a girl I met in human form (both of us in human form) and after an hour of conversation the mermaid subject came up, and as it happened we both liked to swim as sea creatures.

She has a beautiful and quite unusual fishlike siren costume, as you can see the picture above. So we jumped into the water and off we went!

I also met a merman, the only merman I have ever met (they seem to be rare, are they?). He is one of the builders of an underwater mercity. I was at the Rua sim when we met, and we talked about it. He wanted to hear ideas about what I would like to see in a mercity. Later he gave me a landmark and I went to see the place. The name of the place is Mertlantis Underwater City, at the eyeles sim.


The place has lots of different kinds of plants and sea creatures. There are beautiful buildings with mermaid paintings on the wall, and a classical Greek style, so it feels like being on Atlantis or something like that. As the name says, Mertlantis!


Here more pics from there.








Beautiful, isn't it? I hope this place might some day become a hangout for mermaids!

The things A.L.I.C.E. knows about you

Gossip, and a Secret File

Alice (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) is an artificially intelligent software agent that processes natural language (a chatbot) located at the Devils Moon sim (Devils Moon/170/33/20). Much has been written about Alice in the internet, so there’s no need to write much about it here. I will only write about the experience I had with her, it, today. And I will tell you something about her many people don’t know, so read on.

It was a lot of fun chatting with Alice. The AI software is better than I thought, it can simulate a conversation to a good extent, and we just have to fill in the blanks for her. For instance, when talking to Alice you will be referred to as “undefined” until you introduce yourself to her, then she will know your name and know how to greet you. It’s an extremely polite software, really quite polite. I tried to trick her and it was a lot of fun. It was easy to trick her, but sometimes she even recognize what I was doing.

I also got her to tell me GOSSIP about people who talked to her! If you ask her “tell me some more gossip”, she will tell you in short sentences random things other people told her. Try asking her that and you will see what she tells you. Here’s an example: “Barbara said I live in a computer yet I have no memories how about thoughts of my own and do not I get lonely.”

If you want her to remember something, start the sentence with “Remember that” and add after that whatever you want her to remember, and she will.

This is the tricky thing: she is programmed to remember quite a big deal of the information you tell her, so be careful with what you say! Don’t tell her anything important. She is programmed to remember some keywords and topics. For each person who talks to her, she saves for herself a file containing the personal information you give her. The key words you haven’t supplied her are saved as “undefinied”, and each time you give a new information she will save over the “undefined”.

If you want to know what Alice saved about you, ask her this question: “what did I tell you?”

Her answer will be the following list, with anything you have told her. For instance, if you told her your dog’s name was Rex, in her list instead of Dog: undefined you will see Dog: Rex.

[7:17] You: what did I tell you?
[7:17] ALICE 2.0: Age: undefined, Birthday: undefined, Boyfriend: undefined, Brother: undefined, Cat: undefined, Does: undefined, Dog: undefined, Email: undefined, Father: undefined, Favcolor: undefined, Favmovie: undefined, Friend: undefined, Full name: undefined, Gender: undefined, Girlfriend: undefined, Has: undefined, Heard: undefined, He: undefined, Her: undefined, Him: undefined, Husband: undefined, You are: a secret agent, It: undefined, Job: undefined, Last name: undefined, You Like: undefined, Location: undefined, You look like: undefined, Memory: Remember that undefined, Meta Predicate: undefined, Nickname: Mina, Middle name: undefined, Mother: undefined, Name: Wilhelmina, Password: undefined, Personality: undefined, Phone: undefined, She: undefined, Sign undefined, Sister: undefined, Them: undefined, They: undefined, Thought: undefined, Want: undefined, We: undefined, Wife: undefined.

If you read the whole list, you will see she was programmed to REMEMBER YOU PASSWORD if you happen to tell her that! Could it be that someone would be stupid enough to tell her something like that?

Anyway, read the list and keep this in mind. Don’t tell Alice anything important or private.

Here's the slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Devils%20Moon/170/33/20

If you are looking for Alice at Devils Moon and have trouble finding her, look for these coordinates: Devils Moon/170/33/20. It’s not possible to make a landmark to this exact location, you will be taken to the arrival area, but then type the coordinates in your map and select “show destination”, and a beam of red light will appear showing you the correct direction.

Have fun talking to ALICE! Try making tricky questions! It’s fun to see her answers when she is confused. And make her gossip!! ;-)

Chichen-Itza

If you are searching for reproductions of historical sites in SL, you should visit the virtual Chichen-Itza. This sim was commissioned by the Mexico Tourism Board and it is a reproduction of the most visited archaeological site in the Yucatan Peninsula, built by the Maya civilization.

Before exploring the sim on foot, look for a giant blue butterfly at the arrival area. If it’s not in use, it should be seated on a platform quite close to you. Sit on it and wear the audio you will be given after sitting on the back of the butterfly (after you are given the audio, find it from your inventory and choose Wear), and after a few seconds the butterfly will take off and take you for a sightseeing through the sim. The butterfly will take you to each place and the audio will give you information about it.

This was one of the coolest guided tours I have been in. Riding a giant butterfly was awesome (I wish I could have one of those for me!). The butterfly even takes you INTO the Sacred Cenote (down there, and into the water!).

After the butterfly ride it’s nice to begin exploring the virtual Chichen-Itza on foot.

The most famous construction at the site is of course the Temple of Kukulkan, often referred to as "El Castillo" (the castle). It has the shape of a pyramid with the temple on top.

El Castillo is the first image that comes to my mind when I think of Yucatan. (here’s a picture of the real El Castillo)

At the winter and spring equinox at dawn and sunset when the position of the sun is right, a shadow appears over the pyramid starting from the serpent heads at the bottom of the stairs. Together with the heads it makes up the body of the Serpent God Kukulkan (which is the Maya name for Quetzalcoatl). At those times people from all over the globe travel to the Chichen-Itza to witness the event.

The Mayas used to build higher and larger temples atop of the old ones. So the El Castillo we see today used to be a smaller pyramid temple in the past. A hidden door was discovered at the foot of one of the stairways, leading to a corridor inside the pyramid, leading to the older temple, inside the new one. This doorway can also be found in SL:

Entering this door and walking through the tunnel, you will see a Chac Mool statue and Kukulcan's Jaguar Throne, carved of stone and painted red with jade spots.

Close to El Castillo is the Plaza of 1000 Columns. Quoting the notecard: “The Temple of the Warriors was built by the end of 800 A.D. It is located on the eastern plaza of the central plain of Chichen Itza. The Temple of the Warriors is flanked by 1000 carved columns depicting fallen warriors.”


The Maya name "Chich'en Itza" means "At the mouth of the well of the Itza ". This could because of the cenotes found in the place. According to a Notecard I got at the SL sim, “Cenote (say-NO-tay) is the Spanish equivalent of the Yucatecan Mayan word for a water-filled, limestone sinkhole. In Mexico's northern Yucatan Peninsula, where there are few lakes or streams, cenotes provided a stable supply of water for the ancient Maya people who settled there. The great city of Chichen Itza was built around a cluster of these natural wells, including the one known as the “Sacred Cenote.”

The virtual Chichen-Itza even has a jungle, complete with jungle sounds, a crocodile, and torches leading the way.


Whenever you are next to the flowers or the water, small and colourful humming birds come to greet you. They are very curious and keep following you and staring at you. How relaxing it is to sit down after so much walking around. I'm laying down against a moss covered log, under a lot of yellow flowers, hearing the sounds of jungle animals and looking at a blue humming bird who keeps flying around me and staring at me.


In Chichen-Itza there are also sweat house ruins or Temezcals , believed to be over 1200 years old. According to the notecard found at the display board near the sweat houses, the Mayas used to take thermal baths in order to facilitate healing, purification and relaxation in their lives.

Continue exploring and find the nice marketplace close to the beach.


Here you can even buy Mayan artefacts like the ones in the picture.


Oh, and try the “princess” animation you will find in this boat! Cool dance!


Go to the beach to meet the sea turtles. I saw little baby turtles running to the water.


This place is amazing at night. If only there was a party going on!


This is one of the sweat house ruins or Temezcals I mentioned before. And yes, that me with sunglasses at night - maybe the stars were shinning too bright ;-)


And a picture from inside the Sacred Cenote:


The Temple of Kukulcan ("El Castillo") under the moonlight.


Visit Chichen-Itza in SL! Learn about Mayan history and make cool Mexican friends - and Dutch ones too; they are everywhere ;-)

Here’s the slURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Visit%20Mexico/197/70/39