the great inventory challenge

When I said hi to Gogo this morning, she mentioned to me how she’d been working on sorting her inventory since the grid was having a bit of a fit, and pointed me towards the official Second Life blog where there was a post about inventory management.

The Linden blogpost includes a link to a Knowledge Base article about inventory management, which you can find here. I took a look at it and this particular sentence amused me: “Searching for an item in your inventory can be a frustrating affair; some Residents have over 15,000 inventory items to sort through!“

Lol, “some”? Perhaps this is indicative of the kind of social circles (crazed fashion enthusiasts with accounts that are roughly a year old or older) that I move in (hrmm LOL at the term ‘social circles’ seeing that I am actually a bit of an introvert) but most of my friends are packing inventory counts that are in excess of 25,000. My own inventory currently stands at 22,700+ and this is AFTER I’d deleted roughly 3,000 items’ worth of skin/hair demos, landmarks, and unpacking scripts. And then I’ve heard of people carrying 45k, 50k, even 75k worth of stuff.

Which brings me to an interesting comment that Phoenix Linden posted in the thread following that blogpost (italics and bold are my own):

When you copy an item in your inventory, we only copy the data for the inventory reference to the asset and do not generate a new asset, and thus no asset server load. I designed, implemented, and deployed the inventory databases (now called agent store when we bother to use the new-fangled language) in Second Life 1.4. Currently there are something like 60 machines in that cluster and other than the simulators themselves have proven themselves to be one of our most scalable technologies.

However, we do not currently cap inventory count on a per-agent basis, and too many inventory items can degrade your performance. When originally authored the inventory was never meant to hold more than 1,000 items. After a few iterations and optimizations I estimate that current viewer systems should be able to track around 20,000 inventory items without serious performance degradation. Periodically cleaning out your lost&found and trash will improve your experience and reduce system load.

Holy hell… never meant to hold more than 1,000 items? For real? And what kind of performance degradation are we talking about?  I’m already using a laptop with limited graphics power; if I’m experiencing yet more performance issues because of a matter that is completely under my control (inventory bloat), then it’s time to take action.  You know, I was really proud of the fact that my inventory had dropped from 25k+ to a little under 22k several weeks ago but now I’m suddenly feeling quite motivated to get my count whittled down even further.

Before I can really start cutting out chunks of my inventory, however, the anal freak in me wants to assess how it’s currently organized.  My biggest folders are my Clothing folder, Hair folder, Objects folder (cringe cringe and cringe again), and my Textures folder.  I think my Clothing folder is as organized as I’ll ever get it, this is how the current folder heirarchy looks:

Clothing

• BareRose/GOTH/PUNK etc
• BAGS & PURSES
• BELTS
• DRESSES
• GLASSES
• HATS SCARVES & GLOVES
• JACKETS
• LINGERIE
• WHOLE OUTFITS
• PANTS
• SHOES
• SHORTS
• SKIRTS
• SUITS
• SWIMWEAR
• T-SHIRTS
• TOPS

Each of those folders contain more subfolders.  More sub-categories are at the top, then folders by designers, then folders for individual items by designers I don’t have much from.  This is what my DRESSES folder looks like, for example (not presented in it’s entirety because it’s way too effin’ long):

DRESSES

• ! ASIAN
• ! FORMAL/WEDDING
• !! ❤ Cupcakes
• !! artilleri
• !! Baiastice Haute Couture
• !! bossa nova
• !! canimal
• !! Evie’s Closet
• !! Fireflies
• (CS) Sweetie dress
• (PixelDolls) Amoreux: Red
• (Simone!) Tin Roof Slip Dress in Black

I use the exclamation points as a way to place certain folders ahead of others.  My Hair folder is similar in that it, too, is organized by designer name.

As for my Objects folder, quite frankly I’m kind of scared to look at it, haha.

Textures… I am not really sure how I should go about organizing it.  I started making use of my textures folder only after I’d been in SL for about half a year or so; prior to that I was mainly a consumer and hadn’t really explored building.  (That’s changed now ^^)  Because of this, my Texture folder’s state of organization has mostly been ignored, and I’ve been freely dumping things in there without much thought.  There’s lots of unorganized folders containing textures by various texture sellers, textures I’ve made for myself, and approximately ten gajillion snapshots.

I kind of don’t even know where to start, lol.  Help?  ^_^

*THIS POST TO BE CONTINUED ONCE I GET A CLUE AS TO HOW TO DEAL WITH MY TEXTURES FOLDER*

Juicy & irkmade

Hap Underwood of Irkmade just released this fun sculpted moon. Embedded in it are several fun animations; I took a few quick snapshots but I just know there are tons of great photography opportunities to be had with this new toy 😀

Elven Dreamscape of Juicy Shoes provided such an opportunity with the release of the new scrumptious slingbacks. These sexy new shoes come in the same broad range of mouth-watering colors as their Classic Pumps, and the sitting pose on the moon came in perfect for showing them off.

Elven’s worked sculpt magic again on these babies; the primwork is immaculate. Anyone who knows me is aware that I am picky about my shoes, mainly because I really, really, really hate when I put a shoe on and see slivers of foot gone “missing” due to some invisiprim parts sticking out and covering it. That drives me crazy. Elven’s deft touch with sculpts and prims mean you never deal with this type of glitch, and I can only think of a handful of other shoe designers that seem able to pull this off consistently.

Technical aspects aside, the aesthetics also please greatly — once again Juicy shoes hit that sweet spot with the toes, falling nicely between too pointy and too round. The buckles and the heelcaps also sport texture-changing so that you can change the metals from gold to silver, or you can make them black. As for the shoe’s color textures? They are gorgeous! They’ve got the right amount of highlighting/shine on them, and the array of colors means your wardrobe’s covered. In fact, there’s so many colors I didn’t bother taking pics of all of them… I got lazy. So I “stole” this pic off Gogo’s flickr, hehe :p

Other details about what I’m wearing in the images above may be found after the cut:

my latest celebrity morphs?!

What the hell?  Heather Locklear was on the list, too, but I’d chosen a template that only allowed five images.  o.o  I don’t think my avi looks like any of thoses celebs!!  So I tried again lol.

Okay I don’t think my avi looks like any of these celebs either (and apparently the angle at which your head is tilted affects your results) but whatev — Beyonce’s sooooo pretty, she looks good even without makeup on <333

‘the love that dare not speak its name’

The other day I visited the Amsterdam sim because I’d heard there was an art installation set up there (thanks to Keiko for the notecard ^^ ) by Arahan Claveau (RL artist Steve Millar). I went just in time, too — it was the last day of the exhibit. I didn’t take any snapshots, which I am now regretting, but I am sure there are some pictures floating about the internet courtesy of the avid Second Life flickr community.

The name of the installation was ‘The love that dare not speak its name’. It was the kind of exhibit that makes you… well, very uncomfortable. One of the first things I saw when I arrived was a giant, pink pyramid which puzzled me at first but I think I got the message once I’d pondered on the scenery a bit more.

The whole thing was about the persecution that people of homosexual orientation have faced throughout history and continue to grapple with today, and how a lot of us tend to not want to deal with thinking about it. What I personally got out of it was that it felt a bit like I was contemplating a reflection I was seeing in mankind’s common mirror; a terrifying reminder that we, as humans, not only have the capacity for so much blind intolerance, cruelty and straight-up evil, but that we also will very often gloss over these things and/or look the other way because it’s just plain disturbing to dwell upon these truths.

Some of the imagery was fairly obvious: a gallows platform, with bright pink party balloons littering the ground around it, and blood spatters on images of men that flashed in vivid colors, which to me was somewhat reminiscent of color-changing club strobe lighting. Walking over some of the images prompted a notecard-giver to offer notes with titles such as ‘Homophobic Violence’ and ‘Homosexuality Laws of the world’. That last note was quite an eye-opener; I hadn’t realized that even places like Western Samoa and Tokelau, island countries I’ve always perceived as pockets of Pacific paradise, will hand out harsh prison sentences to people for having gay sex.

About the pyramid… after I gave it some thought, I remembered that most pyramids from ancient civilizations are really basically tombs for the dead. So I was thinking that perhaps it’s a giant grave painted over in pink; a massive monument representing the many lives claimed by hate crimes against gay people, washed over in an unoffensive and cheerful hue that represents a willingness to cover up the ugliness, look the other way and feign ignorance. If you can’t see it, then it’s not really there, right?  The neatly arranged pink crosses that looked like they were knocked over and tumbling into the river?  I’m sure they had multiple meanings. One of the ideas that I personally read into it: the hypocrisy of organized religion in general, since our religious leaders preach about love and instruct us to cherish our brothers and sisters, and yet so much of the hatred and intolerance we see expressed towards gay individuals finds its roots in centuries-old religious ideologies.

Anyways, the whole thing really made me think, it raised my awareness a bit more and educated me on the subject and made me question if I’m being one of those people who choose to look the other way. I really appreciated that; a lot of the art that I see in SL is “prettiness”; what I saw yesterday went beyond that. Not that there’s anything wrong with pretty images (remember, the author of this post is someone who is borderline obsessed with dolling up her avatar), but I really liked that I was looking at something in SL that was thought-provoking, informative, and a strong commentary on what’s going on in our flesh-and-bone, brick-and-mortar world.

As I mentioned at the outset of this post, I am a bit late in writing about this. The exhibit ran from the 10th through the 18th, and the 18th is when I went to view it. You can see more of Arahan’s work however, alongside that of Nebulosus Severine’s, at their art gallery Arthole (Kress 168, 88, 391).  I’m looking forward to seeing more exhibits in the future.

May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii

Hawaii Pono’i, nana i kou mo’i, ka lani alii, ke alii
Makua lani e, Kamehameha e, na kaua e pale, me ka ihe

Aloha kakahiaka 😀

May 1st in Hawaii Nei is first and foremost considered Lei Day, and while I do love playing at being all sorts of things in SL — a faun, a siren, a medieval maiden — there are times when I love being able to make my avatar feel like home, so I’m always tickled when I come across items in SL that remind me of my beloved island home. ^_^

Here are a few of my favorite items I’ve found; more info on the items below will appear after the cut (if the cut even works at all on the feeds lol):

Plumeria flowers are super common in Hawaii, so I was really pleased to find these well-made plumeria hair ornaments and this lei. The blossoms for your hair actually come in three colors, and go on either side of your head to indicate whether you’re single or spoken for, cute touch imo!

I’m infatuated with this hair, partly because it reminds me so much of the way the dancers from the hula halau will arrange their hair when about to perform in events like the Merrie Monarch Festival.

This orchid lei actually comes in two colors; I chose the white one but you can also get a pink version.

I had wanted to rez a copy of this lei in order to unlink it and create a matching hair ornament, but it’s no modify. I think I may suggest creating a matching blossom for tucking behind the ear, to the person who made it. ^_^

The kukui nut lei is often used for dressing up for formal events. I was thrilled to find this! The place where I found it also sells an anklet version; because they’re copy/modify, I was able to mod one into a bracelet. ❤ I might try rezzing a copy of one of the anklets later so that I can unlink the prims and mod a couple into a pair of matching earrings.

This is not something I’d wear around my neck in RL, lol, but it’d definitely work as a decorative hanging in my car on the rearview mirror (right now I’ve got a dried orchid lei hanging there). I thought it looked really cool, though, so I picked it up :p

When my friend Tea (who is also from Hawaii) and I saw this hairstyle, it immediately reminded us both of home! The local girls often put their hair up in a style similar to this, myself included. After pairing this hairstyle with shorts and “rubbah slippahs” (flip-flops to all you mainland folk), I can almost smell the ocean, hear the chatter of people on the beach and the occasional braddah playing his uke and singing, and taste the spam musubi. 😀

The ubiquitous maile lei, common at weddings and graduation ceremonies and hula festivals all throughout the 808 State, is actually nowhere to be found in SL. The closest thing to it I’ve found are these ti leaf leis which mimic the look of the maile. These are at the same place where I found the orchid leis.

If you feel like listening to a bit of Hawaiian music, here’s a favorite stream of mine that’s on my parcel’s music stream changer, you’ll hear the likes of Israel Kamakawiwoole, Kealii Reichel, and Hapa:

Mountain Apple Company

When my friend Gogo found out about Lei Day, she decided to set aside a spot on Juicy just for celebrating this ^_^

Okay, and now for those details about what is being worn in the pics above…