Grid Expectations

Ryker tagged me ^^ I’ve been ignoring my blog for a few days, wups!

The Book Meme

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

The Book: Hyperion by Dan Simmons (<3 this book)

He was not sure if he was hearing and understanding Middle English or if the sentence had been simple Standard. He had no idea if the grizzled archer was another Command School cadet, an instructor, or merely an artifact of the sim. He could not guess if the slang had been correct.

Okay, I’m tagging anyone on the Juicy sim that has a blog.   (That means you, Gogo! :p)  I’ve been up all night and don’t have the energy to fire up the synapses to come up with five names to tag

Yet another update regarding iheartsl ^_^

We figured we would be thrown some curveballs and that there’d be a lot of work ahead of us when we launched iheartsl, and boy, were we right! 

First of all, working on iheartsl has been a real learning experience.  While I wouldn’t say we are complete luddites, we aren’t tech wizards either and we’ve had a bit of a crash course in XML, RSS, and the like.  There were a handful of blogs that requested to be added but we weren’t able to fulfill those until they fixed their feed markup errors (feedvalidator.org is now our new best friend!), and we’ve spent hours searching for a site template that we could tweak to our needs.

Another unforeseen aspect of syndication we’ve recently begun grappling with is that of creating both an opt-in and opt-out feature on the site.  We want to do things in an organized manner and not haphazardly, so we spent most of Monday (read:  we busted our asses all freakin’ day long working on this) going through the list of blogs that are on the feed and organizing it by name, author, URL, and feed URL.  (No, the software we are using does not generate this automatically, unfortunately, and this project has been so wildly popular, we’ve got close to 500 blogs on here.)  We created this list so that we can methodically go through it, contact everyone on it, and personally ask if they would like to remain in the feed or opt out.  (Feel free to beat us to the punch by e-mailing us first :D  Our e-mail is iheartslcom@gmail.com.  Just send along a simple message about how you’d like to either remain in the feed or opt out, and state your blog name and URL.)

Looks like we started working on this not a moment too soon, as we’ve already had someone question the motives behind iheartsl.  As I’ve already stated in my two previous posts, iheartsl was born out of the simple fact that requests for blogs to be added to the worldofsl feeds were, for the most part, ignored for months at a time, and we were tired of waiting.  That’s all there is to it — we love our SL and we love reading about it, and we want a feed that keeps pace with us.  Judging from the amount of people who have expressed gratitude for the new feed and even a blog posting that wryly notes that “there’s nothing like a little fire on your arse”, I think it’s safe to say the majority is in agreement with us on this matter.

Another question brought up is that of the anonymity of the domain registration.  With all due respect, I think most people would immediately see the benefit of this; this is simply a matter of common sense.  Given the ease with which Vint was able to copy and paste what she did find in her WhoIs inquiry and thus dispense it to her large army of readers only serves to underscore our conviction that we were right to do a closed registration.

Finally, there is the matter of archiving.  Just about everyone we’ve spoken with likes the idea of being able to use the Search function to find older entries, and who are we to argue with the wisdom of the crowd?  Majority has spoken and archiving shall remain. 

Anyways… we’ve got a new FAQ set up that includes information how to get in touch with us (Gogo and I are serving as the points of contact) if you’d like to opt in, opt out, or ask about whatevers.  Don’t be shy!  Ask us whatever you want, it’d give a us a good idea as to what else we should include on the FAQ. 

I dunno why I’m fascinated with these online blog quizzes that tell me what I’m like. Hence the new blogslut category. ^_^

I’m an INFP. That’s Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving.

You Are An INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world. Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships. It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close. But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. In love, you tend to have high (and often unrealistic) standards. You are very sensitive. You tend to have intense feelings. At work, you need to do something that expresses your personal values. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist. How you see yourself: Unselfish, empathetic, and spiritual When other people don’t get you, they see you as: Unrealistic, naive, and weak

There’s a new development in the SL Blogging World that I’m extremely excited about and happy to announce!!!

The World of SL feeds are a brilliant concept — it’s just that lately, for all we know Tao Takashi could have fallen off the face of the planet. I don’t know what’s going on with him and I hope he’s okay and all, but when literally three months pass by after a request for a blog to be added is STILL not fullfilled despite there being reassurances that it will be, then you know it’s time to (1) quit complaining and (2) take matters into your own hand.

Hence I am pleased to announce a brand spankin’ new feed website, iheartsl.com!

Get your bookmarks ready, folks; so far there are two feeds available on iheartsl:

iheartsl is built around the same premise as World of SL — blogs of feather are categorized under the same feed. The Fashion feed is meant for blogs belonging to fashion blogger and designers, obviously, while the Grid feed is meant for blogs that feature SL news, issues, and resident viewpoints.

Are you a designer who has been waiting to get onto the fashion feed, or a resident who has been wanting to feature their blog on the regular feed? If so, then iheartsl.com WANTS YOU! Everyone who is currently featured on the the WorldofSL feeds have already been added. The site is still just one day old, however, so it’s possible that a few links may have inadvertently been overlooked. If you find that your link is missing, or if you’d like for your own blog to be added, simply visit fashion.iheartsl.com/?p=1 for fashion blogs or grid.iheartsl.com/?p=1 for non-fashion blogs, and leave your URL/feed address in the comments, or send that info to iheartcom@gmail.com.

And YES — you WILL be added promptly! No more waiting for months on end for results; from the time you send in your request to be added, you should see your posts on the feed within twenty-four hours.

Do you own a blog that features content that should be featured on both feeds? Filtering your posts so that the right entries go to the right feed is super easy!

Let’s use my blog as an example…

I run Grid Expectations on WordPress. Although a lot of my entries are about fashion, I do manage to bang out a few non-fashion posts every now and then. To avoid having these show up on the fashion feed, I’ve simply created a category called Fashion.

Every category created in WordPress is assigned a numeric value. You can find the value of the category you’re going to be filing your fashion posts under by hitting your Dashboard > Manage > Categories:

In my dashboard, you can see that the Fashion category has been assigned #3737. All I have to do now is plug that number into the feed URL, which will look like this:

http://gridexpectations.wordpress.com/feed?cat=3737

For those of you that run your blogs on the Google-owned Blogger platform, Blogger offers a Labels system that you can take advantage of. Just be sure to consistently add the label of your choice to all your fashion entries, and then use the labels feed syntax to create your URL feed.

Here’s an example of that syntax at work:  I have a blog at iluvtiggy.blogspot.com (seriously, don’t ask about that title, lol). Let’s say I wanted to blog about SL Fashion on there — I simply affix the label “SL Fashion” to each entry as is appropriate, and here is the feed URL for all my SL Fashion posts:

http://iluvtiggy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/SL%20Fashion

Easy as pie

See you all at iheartsl!

Okay, since it’s Ryker asking me to do this meme and she’s already followed through on another meme I passed on to her, I figure I’m obligated to answer. :-p

Name the avatar that you would most like to have second life sex with for…

1. … their avatar: anyone with a good shape that’s wearing RaC Cliff, lol

2. … their mind: Vivi ^_^

3. … their poetic/mystical/creative spirit: Salazar Jack */me sings that Eiffel 65 song*

4. … their social success/success in SL: Codie <3

5. … their libido: I will get into trouble if I answer this honestly

6. … wanting them to go against type for you. That is, if they are normally a top, you would want them to be your bottom, if they are straight and you are same sl gender: Arahan Claveau

7. … and you would go against type for this: Screw dat, I’m going against type for No One ^_^

8. … and you would most want to do a nothing-but-sex week with, who you are not currently having sl sex with: Any of the Lindens; instead of whispering sweet nothings in their ear I’d ask them to rig the jira so that my votes count twice as much as anyone else’s :p

9. … and you want a threesome, which two: I don’t like threesomes

10. … “The forbidden,” the one that, you’d like to publicly confess to, but the consequences would be toooooo awful. Examples would be your best friend’s partner, a professional contact, someone you know rl who is here… Someone who you want, but have never been able to confess it too. Don’t post… Just answer with whether they are online right at the moment that you post your answer: Online

11. … nostalgia reasons: Marquez <3 Don’t wanna shag him, I just miss him

It was not too long ago that I’d blogged about Eloh Eliot’s new line of “E” skins at her humble little store, simply called Another shop! Her hand-drawn skins were priced shockingly low; so low, in fact, that I was hesitant about blogging the price because I hadn’t confirmed with her whether or not that was an error.

Well, looks like I shouldn’t have worried about that! If you follow the Fashion Planet feed at all, then you’ve probably read Fab Free’s and Rykerized’s entries by now and are already aware that Eloh has made the ultimate gift to everyone: she’s giving away her entire line of E skins for free, and with full permissions.

It doesn’t just end there, by the way. When you view the folder’s contents, you’ll see three textures: the makeup-less texture “tattoo” for the head, as well as the texture files for the upper body and lower body. Eloh hasn’t just opened the door for you to go and tinker with the skin, she’s practically taking you by the hand and leading you through it. I think it’s safe to say that she wants people to be able to customize their skins as they see fit. Ever wanted to have your three top clothing layers available for an outfit mash-up and still be able to wear tattoos? Now you can superimpose your tattoo texture onto the skin. Or perhaps you’ve been wanting that perfect shade of purple eyeshadow that no one seems to offer? All you need to do is download the face texture to your machine and then open up the file in your image editing program.

Well, yes, you need a bit of technical skill, too, of course — but the point is this: a skin designer is not only enabling you, but is outright encouraging you to modify her work. In a world where past incidents of skin “franken-modding” has led to a considerable amount of drama, this sort of handing over of the reins of control over your skin is virtually unheard of and is indeed a rare opportunity.

My immediate reaction, like most people’s I believe, was something like, “Omg… has Eloh lost it?!” And then, after the initial shock wore off and I gave it some more thought, I realized that this move seems very much in line with how she operates. Her store is one of the simplest stores you will ever see in SL, sitting on a parcel that does not even measure a full 512 sqm; she does not run an ad; she offers freebies regularly and refuses to put the word “demo” on her demo skins lest she mar their aesthetic quality; she makes her work accessible to everyone with her pricing scheme; in her picks tab on her profile, she lists her little shop with this sentiment included in the description: “This is where I sell crap to support my expensive shoes & hair habit.” Couple all of this with her apparent perfectionist approach to her skins, and you begin to sense that while she probably enjoys whatever profit she may make from her work, this seems very much to be about her art and it’s contribution to the SL community.

Or maybe I’m wrong and she has indeed lost her marbles. :p Either way, it’s incredibly generous of her, so please, if you take advantage of this incredible gift remember that reselling a freebie is a big no-no and is frowned upon, and drop her a note of thanks or something. ^_^

P.s. It did occur to me, too, that perhaps she’s developing a new skin… so I snuck a peek at her flickr. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future of Another shop holds!

 Nadine Nozaki was tagged by Timothy Lilliehook to do the “Eight Randon Facts” meme; she, in turn, has tagged moi. 

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.

Okies, so here we go ^_^

1.   My vision is really odd.  My right eye is afflicted with myopic astigmatism (nearsightedness) and I’ve hyperopia (farsightedness) in my left eye.  I wear prescription glasses but I’m totally able to get away with not wearing them.

2.  The last time I took a typing certification test, I clocked in at 93 wpm, corrected.  That was a while ago and I’m quite certain I’ve become faster since then.

3.  True story:  I was once in a vehicle-pedestrian accident, and my alcohol consumption that night was probably what kept me from getting more badly injured than I had been; at least, that’s what the EMT dude told me in the back of the ambulance during our ride to the ER.  Wanna know what was really ironic about the whole situation?  The guy who’d hit me with his jeep was actually the designated driver for his group of friends that night.  o.o

4.   My dreams are extremely vivid and can be quite spooky sometimes.

5.   A list of facts about yours truly will not be complete without mentioning my hardcore Star Wars nerdiness.  Yeah, I’m one of those people.  :D  I have a little library of my own, a wall of books… and one entire shelf is dedicated to Star Wars books and comics.  I’ve since scaled back on the SW spendiness, though; it gets to be a bit much after a while and besides, I’ve run out of room.  :p

6.   I love poetry, and I am particularly enamored of the sonnet.  William Shakespeare and Edna St. Vincent Millay are gods, as far as I’m concerned.

7.   I’ve inherited my father’s love for music.  There isn’t a music genre (except maybe country, lol) that I don’t love.  I can play the piano, ukulele, drums, saxophone, a little bit of the guitar and even less of the violin.  I’ve also written a couple of piano pieces; if only I could sing, too

8.  I visit the beach almost every day, which is easy to do since I live like two blocks away from the ocean.  <3 Ke Kai

All righty, so there’s my list of random facts!  Here are the people I’m gonna tag:  Vivienne Graves and Morrigan Repine over at Second Impressions, Serenity Mercier, Ryker Beck, Allegory Malaprop, Eloh Eliot, Puma Jie, and Daniella Tobias over at D!ff. 

I found out from Lex a few days ago that my object matte photo “me and ary” got a little mention in Torley Linden’s “Torley’s guide to high quality photography!”

Here’s the pic:

Yeah, it looks funny… but that is how the image was captured in SL, no post-editing work was done on it. To get this look, you must use the Snapshot function (the snapshot button at the bottom of the client or Ctrl + Shift + S) so that you can view the snapshot dialogue, so soz but “snapshot to disk” won’t work. (Yeah, no sneaking in any silent pics, lol.) You must also select the “Save snapshot to hard drive” option in order to activate the dropdown menu in the Capture field (which is located at the middle of the snapshot dialogue). The dropdown will show “Depth” and “Object Mattes”.

Here’s an example of a shot taken using the depth option:

Another mention I got was on the Brutal Honesty blog. One of the contributors to that blog, Tina Travanti, recently checked out my store Mela’s. In spite of some trouble with a poster I’d priced incorrectly, she had some very nice things to say about my store, for which I’m *really* grateful:

I love my new shape and even with the mix-up I was transformed in just a few minutes and very happy with my purchase. Mela the Slider Surgeon has a great product and has put a lot of time and thought into what she’s doing. You have to check out her store. I fully enjoyed myself and I will be sending people there for some slider work.

I do try to put a bit of thought into my store and what I make, so it’s super nice when someone says something positive about it. Thank you so much for the encouraging words, Tina!

One of my favorite things about playing dress-up with Second Life fashion is finding ways to put my own personal flavor or stamp on the clothes I choose to dress my avi in. Great blogs such as MichaMi Style Blog and Closet Crisis, along with their readerships, are a testament to the fact that this holds for true for pretty much for anyone who is into SL fashion.

Even with the multitude of designers in SL cranking out their products in a variety of textures and colors, however, if you like keeping up with the latest in-world trends then it’s still pretty easy to run into another avatar who will be wearing the same hairstyle, same clothes, same shoes… hell, sometimes they’ll even be using the same AO stands as you.

What’s an avi to do? Well, one great way to really showcase your own individual sense of style in your outfits is to tinker with the modifiable pieces that are in your virtual closet. Hair, skins, system layer items, sculpty prim attachments… there are LOTS of ways to play with your look if you have modifiable versions of these items.

I recently blogged about how sweater dresses are a current season staple in RL (well, for you mainlanders at least :p I hail from Hawaii, the land of T-shirts, shorts and slippers), and Last Call has the excellent Starley II Mini Sweater Dress set available right now. With five colors thrown into the pack, it’s already a real bargain… but when you consider the fact that everything is also modifiable, that just makes it even better. With a bit of imagination and time spent on editing prims and pushing clothes sliders, one can come up with all sorts of variations on this dress. (Important rule of thumb: Always, always, ALWAYS make a copy of an item before you begin editing it!!) Here are four different looks I came up with, all modeled on my soon-to-be-released Sturmer Harcourt body shape ^_^ (store credits and SLURLs are at the end of this post):

1) Modding Happy

This hip outfit layers the dress over a 3/4 sleeve black sweater and skinny jeans, cinches it with a velour heart-clasp belt, tops it with a smart looking cap and ponytail, and finishes it all off with pretty sculpty boots. To achieve this look, I made the following edits to the cream colored version of the dress:

• Shortened the jacket layer sleeves
• Shrank the sleeve prims, rotated them as necessary, and changed point of attachment to the upper arms
• Tinted the jacket and skirt layers grey
• Tinted the collar and sleeve prims a slightly darker grey to blend in with the system layers

The dress wasn’t the only item that was modifiable in this outfit, by the way! The right front bangs on the hairstyle (which came conjoined with the cap) were edited so as not to cover up the right eye; the black sweater had it’s sleeves slider maxed out; the jeans were shortened so as not to poke through the boots; the belt’s size was altered to fit the waist; even the lip color on the skin was modified. The only items that were not modifiable were the eyes, glove-layer manicure, and boots.

2) Long sweater layered over a skirt

Another chic fall look that layers the dress over denim again, only this time the denim appears in the form another mini skirt. The neutral tones of the sweater dress, tights, belt, and boots offset the dark blue of the skirt rather nicely.

The same simple edits that were applied to the previous example were made here as well, but without the color tinting. To accommodate the short length of the denim mini skirt, the sweater dress’s skirt layer was shortened a bit via the slider. With the introduction of a single new element and some fast easy edits, the sweater dress takes on a cool new look.

3) Bold contrasting colors

To change things up from the neutral colors I’d been playing with, I decided I wanted a look that was colorful and visually striking. I once read somewhere that the strongest possible contrasting color combination is black and yellow; I decided to use that contrast concept but tamed it a bit by pairing the already grey-tinted sweater dress in my inventory with yellow pieces. I wanted contrast, not walking bumble-bee, hehe.

Very few edits were required to accomplish this look, and most of it involved color tinting. The scarf (which was a real steal, by the way — 7 colors for only 50L) was originally white and I tinted it yellow. I did the same for the tights, which actually comes in two parts (on the underpants and socks layers). Because the color contrast was already quite visually engaging I felt that adding more accessories would make the look too busy, so I limited it to the chunky hoop-earrings, which are scripted to change color via voice command.

4) Basic black

For this final outfit, I went with the trusty all-black look. Again, this was extremely simple and required very little in the way of edits — all dress layers and prims were tinted a very dark grey (as opposed to completely black, which would have washed out all texture details), and the belt was modified to fit over the hips. The sweater dress takes on a look that is simultaneously cute, casual, and feminine when layered like this over black capri leggings, and worn with a dainty banded hairstyle and ribboned wedges.

So there you have it — four additional looks pulled out of an already great set from Last Call, all of them achieved with just some really simple color tinting and prim edits. Thanks to modifiable pieces, with a little bit of imagination and time spent on editing, you can show off yet even more of your own personal style.

Where to find these items:

Sweater dress set is from Last Call and body shape will be released soon at my store Mela’s

1) Modding Happy… Hair: Janine in copper from ETD; Skin: Celestial Studios Champagne Smoky Noir w/ freckles; Eyes: Simtropia greenish; Tres Blah plain black sweater on shirt layer; Boing Fromage black velour heart-clasp belt; LF (Launa Fauna) Ingenue jeans in indigo; Maitreya bloom boots in black.

2) Long sweater layered over a skirt… Hair: ETD Amber in copper; Skin: Minnu Model Fair SkinGloss(freckles) Teacher; Eyes: Simtropia greenish; Caroline’s Jewelry Lo Lo Painted Beads Bracelet, brown leather small; Last Call Yelena Torn Jean Miniskirt (pants layer and prim attachment, taken from the Yelena outfit); Last Call/vamp Liah boots, mahogany; Shiny Things brown strung leather belt; Paper Couture Plain Transparent Tights (underpants layer) from Barcola store freebie gift box; RaC Manicure 06.

3) Bold contrasting colors… Hair: ETD Lydia in chestnut; Skin: Nylon Outfitters Poppy Marked; Eyes: Simtropia brown deep; Imperial Elegance Woven Scarf - snow (tinted yellow); Blaze Pantyhose white (tinted yellow); Paper Couture overstated maryjane shoes, fedora; Celestial studios Lulu Chunky Hoops color change earrings; RaC manicure 11.

4) Basic black… Hair: Hiccup Slow Jamz 2007 in black; Skin: Insolence Lisa Tan Smokey; Eyes: Simtropia honey deep; Paper Couture basic hoop earrings (freebies from Barcola store); Fancy Schmancy slither belt; Girlie black leggings; Maitreya Sassy velvet Black wedges; RaC manicure 4.