The Long, Hot Summer?

I love the holiday season, but have wound up buying lots of summery clothes in SL lately. Maybe it's to balance out all the holiday shopping I've been doing in real life.

Anyway, I was at Simone Stern's charity yard sale to benefit Ayashe Millions. Simone is selling a fair amount of her stock there for 100 lindens each. Anyone that has been to Simone's knows that's a huge discount on her line. Among the items I bought was a pretty gold fan with an animation overrider included. The fan looks lovely, the AO is very natural and, most importantly, does not conflict with the general overrider I wear.

I wound up pairing the fan with the "Olivia" outfit I picked up at Pixel Dolls' new location in Port Seraphine. Nephiline Protagonist has been on a roll with her designs lately, and this is one of my new favorites by her. I love the elegant red-and-black floral print and the long, flowy scarf. Combined with my "Mia" scarf-accessorised hair from ETD, and the gold fan, I think it makes a very pretty 50s' era, sleepy, Summer-in-the-South type outfit.

DarkDharma

With Halloween coming up, almost everyone is adding costumes to their stores. However, for my Halloween linden, I prefer DarkDharma Avatar Isle. DarkDharma Daguerre has a wide number of full avis and separates them into various themes throughout the property. A walk around the island includes avis of pirates, cowboys and salloon girls, Disneyesque characters, monsters, tykes, celebrities. The avis are very well detailed and many are a steal at 600 lindens. Many of the celebritiy avis are as dead on identical as I've seen in-world. What's even better is Darkdharma's avi "rental" option, which lets you return an avi within 48 hours and receive your purchase price back, less a 100 linden rental fee.

Darkdharma has also built a haunted house display just for Halloween. The build is wonderfully done and includes a number of freebies. All in all the island is a pre-Halloween must to visit.

Ahoy Matey! A Newly Discovered Boutique

New people always ask me what I do in SL. I give them the abridged answer that I shop and hang out with friends, but the reality is that I shop, talk with friends, shop, explore new places, shop, help new people, shop, and, of course, shop with friends. Many times even when I seem to be doing something else, I'm shopping. For example, when I'm at the welcome area, there aren't any genuine new people around, and I get tired of the gesture spam and pointless debates, I will peruse the classifieds. That's how I found Tres Beau Designs and my cute little sailor girl outfit.

Tres Beau is a mid-sized, well-designed little boutique with direct teleport access to various clothing departments, including formalwear, bridal gowns, menswear, tres beau classics designs, and retro outfits. Though I didn't buy a gown, I stopped briefly at their bridal section, which has a number of lovely designs, including *Angel,* a flexi gown with a lovely, unique scarlet border at the gown's hem, bosom, and veil's edge.

The retro section, where I was drawn given my retro-hollywood phase, has a nice littl e variety of '30s through 50's inspired outfits, including two sailor girl suits, a design I really haven't seen much of in SL. One is Sailor Blu, and looks vaguely like Christina Aguilera's sailor girl outfit in Candyman. The one I purchased, First Mate, at 400 L, is white with navy blue trim and is reminiscent of a mid-40s pinup girl costume. The sailor hat is particularly well done and one of the few hats I've run into in SL that doesn't look absurd sitting on prim hair. The little shoulder cuffs are also a nice touch, and the prim skirt is done as well as most prim minis. I'm not a designer, but it seems impossible to join the underpant and a prim mini attachment without some kind of edge showing on the rear. The edge on this one is visible but does not take away outraegously from the mini's overall line. My one problem with the outfit is the pinkish swirly design of the print on the top. I wish she had left it plain with just the tie. Other than that, it's quite a fetching little outfit and puts Tres Beau on the list of places I need to pop in to every now and again. ;)

Vampires cannot live on blood alone...

I confess: as one of my many incarnations on Secondlife, I am a vampire. I'm a laid-back vampire; one who doesn't bite that often. Indeed, I find myself turning down many, many offers to bite newbie guys with bad pickup lines. Anyway, for quite some time I have been living my vampire life with my good ol' reliable regular human skin that I love : the Hybrid II Vestal # 9 by Santana Lumiere at Nevermore Studios. Indeed I love my vestal skin so much that I can't bring myself to wear other beautiful human skins that I've bought on a whim or that have been given to me by very sweet designers. It just doesn't feel like "me."

However, in honor of halloween, I decided to buy a more vampire-appropriate goth-looking skin. The catch to my conscience of course is that I'd have to get it from Nevermore. So last night I picked up my Hybrid II Achromatic # 9. I love the look because it really does just appear that my "regular" face has had all the color drained from it. Although Santana doesn't appear to have updated her skin line since I got mine 7 months ago, there's nothing to criticize in failing to try to improve upon the wheel. Some may not care for the fact that her skins are not exactly photorealistic. However, I love the more hand-drawn approach and how elegant it is. And at $1000 L a makeup option, she falls right in line with the standard price for a high-quality skin.

Heady with my prize skin capture, I needed a new outfit. Sure, I have all kinds of gothy outfits, but, well, a new skin is a special occasion. ;) With that in mind, I flew off to DE Designs, one of the better large-scale stores to find a good gothy dres.

My pick for the evening was Doc Eldritch's new design of the week, Waiting, in red. The outfit included the top, skirt, and gloves for $275L, and features wonderful eyelet stitching textures. I also love the unique cut of the outfit: a top with a high, narrow collar that plunges around the breast and a skirt giving the appearance of a knee-length lace overlay in front of a silk gown that is ankle-length in back. Out of the box, the gown was not wide enough, either with my animation override poses or the standard poses, which caused the gown to look ripped. However, the outfit is moddable, allowing for an easy fix in editing.

Now, if I could just keep cheesy would-be victims away from me, I'd be set. :)

Samurai Neko?

I didn't buy anything new tonight, the eve of another SL update *shudders*. Instead, I just played with a samurai sword I'd gotten weeks ago with Koko and Scrappy, but had never really used until tonight.

There's a thriving samurai combat community in Secondlife, and most of the combat can be found on Samurai Island. To engage in that combat, there are quite a few scripted swords out there. I'm not really into the whole combat scene but Scrappy and Koko both recommended the Ashes Jin-Geom, and it certainly seems like a good weapon overall (yes I am out of my element ;) ). It includes a scripted combat HUD, 15 animations for attacks, blocks, and sheathing/unsheathing. Looks-wise (where I'm a bit more in my element), it's a beauty, and customizable in a variety of color combinations. Like most, if not all, other combat enabled swords, it comes in at about 800 L which is a good deal for something that gets you into the whole combat scene. Performance-wise, the combat anis seem relatively responsive, and are simple to perform (using the directional keys) although I haven't fought anyone yet ;). At any rate, it certainly looks nice on my waist :).

all's clear... for now :P

Well, LL finally seemed to stop the griefer attacks and had the grid up for most of the day. I did a lot of window shopping but wound up only buying some more neko casualwear, namely a pirate kitty t and a bell necklace and collar set from Boneflower Designs on Temenos Island. I'm hoping Zoe continues making more of these type of t's. I love them.... flirty and fun... :)

Oh I also picked up a pair of blue "Bagheera" eyes, from, well, E's Eyes. I love his eye designs... I do. However, I'm not as big a fan of the cat design as I thought I'd be. Sooo.... I doubt I'll be using those, and will stick to my old reliable teal and blue pair from Here Comes Trouble.

Still down..

SL is still down... reading theSL weblog, it sounds like they have brought it up several times today, only to have to roll it back down because of a bug or another grief attack... *sighs*

Another day... another grid attack

Well, SL is down... again. Five minutes after I logged on I started recieving hundreds of offers of objects, as did everyone else in-world. It was another grid attack using an object replicator, trying to bring the world down. I set myself to busy, but the lag alone knocked me offline and the Lindens closed everything down in an attempt to regain control.

Unfortunately, this is neither a new nor a rare occurence. It happens almost everyday now. I love SL in many ways, but recent policy changes are destroying it. Linden Labs is so bent on getting one million avis on their rolls that they have opened the floodgates to problems. Until about six weeks ago, you were required to have some sort of payment information on file, or a verified cell phone number, in order to register. Now? Nothing. Give an anonymous email address, say you're over 18, and you're in. According to Linden Labs, this allows more Europeans, many of whom don't have credit cards that could be accepted by the SL database, in-world. However, this also allows the creation of an unlimited number of alt accounts and castrates LL as far as its ability to punish griefers. Anyone banned for griefing, grid attacks, etc., can be back online in moments, merely by creating an alt account. Grief again, banned again, create a new alt... rinse and repeat. It has drastically increased the frequency of grid attacks.

The uncontrolled, artificial growth has also seemed to wreak havoc on the servers. Linden Labs releases updates every two weeks now, which gives them almost enough time to fix the hail of bugs from the update before. When I first came online, the grid would be down for updates during the scheduled period (usually 7 a.m. to noon SL time) and bugs were rare. Now, one can expect the grid to be off and on for most of the day of each update, as bugs blow up the world as soon as it's put back online. Following an update, a variety of bugs are fixed on a triage-type priority basis, causing "non-critical" bugs such as vanishing objects, texture copying exploits, etc., to remain problems for days and weeks at a time.

I love SL, or else I wouldn't keep coming back. LL has a truly unique, wonderful product... when it works. But they are running it into the mud and filth... and that's sad.

Saturday Night's all right for... silk shopping :)

Usually I have to finish up my week's work on Saturday evening, which means I treat myself to a little shopping spree after work is done. Okay, well, I buy something almost every night of the week, but well, Saturday I always try to find something nice.

This week I tried out a new place... Solange! Fashions. Solange Cerveau emphasizes silks, Middle Eastern, and Western Asian-influenced clothing here, which is exactly what I've been into lately. After looking around a bit, I decided on a large fashion set called Buttafly, in red. It wasn't cheap, at 900L, but it does include 24 pieces, including numerous accessories, so you get a wide variety of outfit combinations. The pieces are very pretty overall, with generally well-detailed textures and a number of flexi attachments. I particularly like the back tassles, which I haven't seen in a silk set before. My only potential quibble is with the textures of the butterfly wings, which seemed blurry, despite numerous attempts to get them to rez clearer. Of course this could also be due to nasty SL lag. At any rate, buttafly is a lovely silk set.

The Whole Kitt'n Kaboodle

I spend a lot of time as a neko (or cat-girl for the uninitiated) nowadays, yet for some reason I hadn't visited Temenos Island in forever. Scrappy got me back over there on Saturday by showing me a cute Mew University hoodie set made by Zoe Lleywelyn and letting me know Zoe had made matching tails and ears to go with her wonderful neko skins.

The hoodie set is well designed and gives a nice casual look that I didn't have with my neko skin, as I'd stuck mainly to silks as a neko. The set is also versatile, as each pack gives you a choice of hoodie up or down, with the hoodie up option giving you a variety of attached hair colors. Zoe also threw in cute Mew U tshirts in white and black and a nice pair of low rise black jeans. It comes in 9 different colors and is a bargain at 250L for each color, or 1800 for a fat pack of every version.

The tail and ear set is also a wonderful buy at 500L for parts matching every hue and skin pattern offered by Zoe in her neko line. Zoe's tail scripts don't have all the options of my old tail made by Anisa Naumova of Curious Relics, but the movement is a little more natural because it's a true flexi, and of course the textures match the skins right out of the box. I do wish Zoe's tails had a "tail up" option, though, because most of my silks' bottoms get in the way of the tail when it's down, causing the swishing tail to cut through the silk and look awkward.

With the cooler weather where I am, I also decided to pick up a snow leopard neko skin to change things up from my usual duskier look. For the first time since I went redhead as a newbie, I also changed my hair color to a Royal blue thanks to the clearance willow pack I bought at ETD. I was surprised, actually, that Elika put her "Smooth" style on clearance, as it's my favorite flexi pony of hers. It's thick and flowy but not too comicky. At any rate, I think the blue gives a little pop of color and fun to the snowy skin.

Me Me Me!

So my first post and a generic one at that. If I could put it on one of those, "Hi My Name is..." stickers I would. Anyway, this is just a blog for my Secondlife well, life. For those that don't know, Secondlife (SL) is, in a nutshell, a metaverse where you can do and be almost anything you can think of. My real life is stressful and frankly not something I like reliving ad naueseum, so this blog will focus only on my SL doings. Primarily, it's just to let me post pictures of the fruits of my shopping obsession in secondlife as well as some random reviews of my purchases. I don't script, I can't build much more than a hollow cube, and I'm not a designer; but, I know shopping, and lord knows SL can cater to my shopping addiction like Tony Montana to Whitney Houston.

As with every other self-centered blog, I'll give a little information about me. I live on part of an island owned and designed by my friends Koko and Scrappy. Depending on when you catch me, I'm either your standard all-American red-headed girl, a neko, or your standard all-American red-winged vampire. I spend most of my time either chatting with friends, shopping, or helping new people at one of the welcome areas. Occasionally I build hollow cubes that fall apart when I try to make them flexible.

Like I said before, my real life is fairly stressful, and I entered SL as a way to relieve some of that stress. I've found that people either quickly become bored with SL and leave, or fall in love with it. I've fallen into the latter category, in part because I was lucky enough to meet lovely friends who helped me along as a newbie. That friendliness, as well as the inherent, intangible "magic" in the SL world kept me coming back. Throw in the fantastic shopping and the fact that it's one of the best places to "people watch" and observe human/furry/object drama, and it hooked me. I'm on almost every day... sometimes at work (shhhh, don't tell anyone) and late at night when I get a chance. It's one of the best ways I've found to pull my mind away from everything nerve-wracking and tiring of the real world.

So that's me and my secondlife....