• Second Life avatars dance around a bonfire in fantasy garb.
    Second Life

    Weekly Tweets 2010-02-07

    February 7, 2010 - By 

    Oh good, the blog-tweet thingy is working. 45 minutes on RL exercise bike at RL club, #completed Next: shoe store, then home. # Oh good. My mouse just died, and the grim silence as my in-house geek works on the computer worries me. # RT @MoodyLoner "RT @DanaHoule: I. Don't. Fucking. Care. If. A. Bill. Is. Bipartisan. Neither do voters. Just pass fucking bills." # @ordinal Wish someone would tell that to Shazam and a number of other sites. I may have to smack WP's Twittertools with a stick. in reply to ordinal # Not unlike what i plan in…

  • Keep Calm and Change the Subject... turn that crown upside down!
    Building - Second Life

    ZOMG! So much completed!

    February 1, 2010 - By 

    I created another Pacific Northwest Coast-style bracelet, photographed it, embellished the image with my gimpy GIMP skillz, added it to my otherwise empty XStreetSL inventory, and got the thing listed. #Completed I’m not sure if it depicts an Eagle or a Raven, but I think the Raven in PNW Indian art usually has a bluntly pointed beak, and this one looks more like a raptor’s hooked schnozz. It’s for sale on XStreetSL, it’s in a box in my mostly-empty shop inworld, and it’s also in a vendor that I just got working, that was given out in an excellent “Sell…

  • Second Life avatars dance around a bonfire in fantasy garb.
    Building - Second Life

    What a To-Do About “To Do.”

    January 31, 2010 - By 

    @Ordinal’s announcement has caused a stir of sympathy and dismay amongst the #SecondLife #Twitterati. It distresses yet comforts me to know that even the most accomplished and celebrated builders struggle with completion issues, ennui, and an overriding desire to chuck it all into the outer darkness and do something, ANYthing else for a while. I wish Ordinal Malaprop a rejuvinating break, and hope for a very speedy return. That said, I’ve now wasted about two months since my belated burst of builder’s mania, with a mostly finished house on bare land, plus an empty shop building on another plot of…

  • Get Excited and Make Things - the crown image is made of wrenches
    Second Life

    Change, Change, Change

    January 28, 2010 - By 

    Was it too easy to import and redirect my old Blogger blog to my new self-hosted WordPress blog? Yes, suspiciously so. I didn’t even have time to shout “Wish me luck, I’m off to crash the server,” because… well, it’s all done. Weird how technology works how it’s supposed to work. Tonight, I hung out watching the SOTU speech with friends at Cafe Wellstone, but then got a notice of a building class, so I tore off, built a cute little Asian cabinet (it looks vaguely retro 70’s, pix later), and then promptly lost the second project, a glass candy…

  • Happy girl: me thinking about learning 3D modeling Overwhelmed girl: Me learning 3D modeling, covered by texts: shit ton of hot keys, smooth shading terrible, Ctrl-Z Ctrl-Z Ctrl-Z
    Second Life

    Whee! I can has domain?!?

    January 23, 2010 - By 

    Thanks to my partner Rock, I naow has a domain of which I am Queen, Empress, and Chief Prim-Twister. As my chum Mist might well say, “fear teh wahine neko. FEAR HER.” Now to avoid the temptation: a very large parcel has suddenly gone up for sale in front of my shabby little adobe dwelling, for about $150.00 real USD American ducats. Now I get to watch the neighbors move in (and I hope they’re nice and not naked all the time, because teh smexy should never be boring). I used to have a view of the leftover furniture and…

  • Second Life cows and bulls
    Building - Second Life - Virtually Anything

    Talking To Myself

    January 19, 2010 - By 

    Okay, this is really, really… weird. I was in a class at Caledon Oxbridge and realized that it was a little more basic than I needed (though it was about making them, it was actually about finding and wearing clothes and attachments). So on a whim, I whipped out my iPhone and tried to log in my alt to see what would happen (yes, I know it’s possible to log in with multiple computers and laptops, but this… this is an iPhone, people). And… succeeded. But in a truly odd way. From Northwest Indian Images He’s a wizened little boy…

  • Second Life avatars dance around a bonfire in fantasy garb.
    Second Life - Virtually Anything

    What In The Virtual World Is aioSimProbe?

    January 10, 2010 - By 

    I was checking on the neighboring parcels today and noticed that one of the “garbage” parcels sold, and now has some kind of doohickey thing on it. aiologix Woops, did a quick and dirty screenshot-crop, it included some chat and buttons. Anyway, what is this for, and is it good, bad, or neutral? From the angle, you can see the trench that’s another garbage plot, and in fact this probe sits in a trench with another smaller garbage plot that’s bounded on 3 sides by a decent-sized 400m plot that’s currently overpriced for the prims it would bring. I don’t…

  • Second Life screenshot shows a fantasy cottage with lots and lots of scripted DFS trees and plants.
    Building - Second Life - SecondLife Steampunk

    Why Johnny N00b Can’t Build, And How To Help

    January 3, 2010 - By 

    The people at Linden Labs who created Second Life… or at least, created the framework for their subscribers to create Second Life content for them, have a lot to learn about how to retain new subscribers. Apparently, they think one way is to disband the Mentor program… ::shakes head in disbelief:: and then wonder why their stats are trending downward. A number of SL bloggers have commented recently on the well-known but disturbing statistic that although Linden Labs/Second Life claim to sign up 10,000 new subscribers a month, they actually retain only about 10% of those new “Residents.” Some think…

  • Keep Calm and Change the Subject... turn that crown upside down!
    Building - Second Life - SecondLife Steampunk

    Land Shenanigans

    December 23, 2009 - By 

    I now own 3 parcels of virtual land, all in the same “sim” so that I can put out some of my prim-heavy, nicer furniture. I’m thinking about renting a simple house that I put on the third parcel, to replace the very nice but very primmy house that was offered for sale on the parcel. The experience of buying the third parcel was pretty fraught with tension, because I was trying to figure out the mysteries of the “group tier discount.” The Land Use Fee (also known as a Tier Fee) is a monthly charge in addition to membership…