Grid Expectations

Please take the time to read and sign this if you are able: Project Open Letter

In a nutshell, it is an open letter to Linden Labs requesting that they step up their improvements on existing features before introducing new ones.

This is actually a frame out of the caramel dance I was doing in Etoile, lol.  I’m still messing about with the slow-mo and freeze frame stuff.

There’s an Audrey Hepburn fashion challenge going on at Snapzilla, courtesy of Second Style magazine.  Being the incredibly anal perfectionist that I sometimes am, I obsessively read up on Audrey Hepburn for like several days.

I obviously already knew who Audrey Hepburn was, of course, but all of what I knew was just casually obtained infomation accumulated throughout my life thus far.  At the risk of sounding like a complete tool, I wanted to learn more about her so that I could somehow mentally “distill” her into just a few choice adjectives, to help me decide what look of hers would inspire my own outfit submission to the challenge.  The impression I was left with was that of a woman who was graceful, charming, intelligent, fresh, classy, timeless, and above all, confident.  If she had ever at any time felt pressured to conform to the more voluptuous Hollywood starlet look that was in during her beginning years in film, she never showed it — she smartly forged ahead with a look that she knew worked for her, and stuck to it throughout her entire lifetime without being a fashion slave and bowing to whatever trend that developed.

She always kept her delicate features in center stage:  her face was always framed nicely with fringed bangs, demure ponytails, and classy updos.  The lines of her clothing were always clean, long lines that suited her small frame; she favored items like sheaths, capri pants, and A skirts that accentuated her dancer’s build.  The build and style of her fashion choices were always simple but enriched with gorgeous details.

Soooo… based on all this, I thought I’d take my inspiration from that dance scene she had in the movie Funny Face.  It’s like pure Audrey — the outfit is incredibly simple, just skinny black pants with a long-armed black shirt and flats, and yet it shows off her slender build and allows her to move like the dancer that she is.  The clothing could easily look a tad morose on someone else, but on her it was fresh and fun.

I haven’t made up my mind about submitting one of the photos of this outfit (I’ve taken quite a bit, lol) as my response to the fashion challenge, though.  I’m still wrangling with the thought of wearing a little black dress, instead.  :p

I recently noticed that when I put a red dress from ETD on my avi, her butt seemed… well, larger. The same happened again when I put on a skirt from Nylon Outfitters. Later on, one of my friends confessed that she and her bf had actually had a brief discussion on whether I’d deliberately made it bigger or not!

We all put a lot of effort into the appearance of our avatars. Hell, I agonized for about two weeks just over what skin to get, as some of my friends can attest. Something like this, then, can be a bit of an annoyance, especially if it seems like it’s beyond our control.

I recently learned a great little trick for getting rid of the dress butt — it’s so simple, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier myself.

1. Put on a non-flexi skirt.
2. Go to Inventory and look for your shape.
3. Right-click your shape, and select copy.
4. Right-click again, and select paste.
5. A copy of your shape will appear; you should now see two identical shapes in your Inventory.
6. Rename the one you are wearing to something like “Shape - Dress”.
7. Edit your appearance, and using the slider adjustment, set your butt to a lower number, as preferred.
8. When your butt is looking normal in the skirt again, select Save.

That’s it! Now all you have to do is remember to wear this shape when you put on a skirt, and then change back to your original shape when you’re wearing other types of clothing like shorts, pants, etc.

Now, if it were only that easy in real life! Hehe. I hope someone has found this information helpful.

Hair Fair 2007 has arrived! I went with Alan the other day, who warned me that “This is going to be crazy”.

Oh my god, he meant the lag. It was incredible; I saw countless grey bald people moonwalking about and booth images took a really long time to rez, with some of them never rezzing the entire time I was there. And I can’t even recall how many times I crashed!

I was IMing with Alan pretty much the whole time. Hair Fair is actually duplicated into two sites so that more people may be accommodated, so I went to one site and Alan had gone to another. He suggested removing attachments so as to lighten the load on the sim, so I took off my hair, jewelry, and AO. I drew the line at going completely naked, though.

After multiple crashes and not even being able to buy a demo, I left with the determination that I would return when there were less people logged into SL.

I returned several hours later and although things were still laggy, it was nowhere near as bad as before. Several people were shouting out advice to people to take off their hair, AO’s, and other high prim-count attachments, such as shoes. “Disable your AO, embrace the newbie waddle!” one woman shouted, hehe.

I was able to do much more during my second visit, and let me tell you, the hair at Hair Fest ‘07 was worth every damn crash I’d had to endure to get there. Some of the booths were just downright gorgeous:

I also saw several vendors there that I’d never heard of before. Curl Up & Dye was one of them. Isn’t that a fantastic name for a salon? I chuckled when I saw the booth.

I picked up a bunch of demos, and now I must admit I find myself in a bit of a quandary. They are all fab! How on earth am I going to choose just one or two?! (The following images are thumbnails with links leading to their respective flickr pages.)

Such tough decisions ahead of me!

I started this blog for a number of reasons: to document my adventures and discoveries in Second Life (SL), to discuss whatever topics I come up with that have to do with SL, and of course, to talk about SL fashion. Who knew that dressing up an avatar could be so much fun? It’s like I’ve rediscovered my Barbie doll, only now she’s on a monitor and she can walk, dance, and make funny faces.