Absent Long-Time Friends

Mel and Kaboom and BillieJo are three fine example of long-time friends. They have all been friends of mine for quite a while now, but we generally do not hang out all the time nor even Instant Message (IM) each other that often. But none of us forgets the other and we all have a good time when we get together.

The Ferrari I made for Mel

Mel (short for Melindah) is the Real Life (RL) daughter of my SL sister, Whisper. We very rarely hang out but when we do, it's fun. I am unsure as to what brought this get-together on but I was in IMs with Whisper when Mel was invited and showed up. I had told her about a Ferrari I had made out of a shell of mesh that someone had created. I put scripts in it and was having lots of fun racing around in it. Mel liked the sounds of that and immediately wanted a pink colored version, which I made for her. She took me for a ride around one of my racetracks in it. Let's just say she could use a bit more practice with her deceleration and turns. But we had a great time racing around the oval track. 

When reconnecting with an old friend, catching up on what has been happening is not always what happens. Often times it is just doing what comes natural. Doing what made you friend that person in the first place and that's just hanging out and enjoying each other's company.

That's what happened at BilliJo's rez day party too. It's hard for me to grasp but you can actually look back in this blog and find a post about BJ's last rez day party. It's hard to believe that I have been keeping this online journal for over a year now. Anyway, BJ had a rez day party and the group invitations went out early which allowed for me to plan for it. It was several hours away so I decided to logoff and get my RL stuff done before logging back on again and attending the party. There were people there I did not recognize but there were also Kaboom, my SL brother, his daughter/my niece and of course BJ.

As it was with Mel, instead of trying to catch up on all that has happened since the last time we had all been together, we simply enjoyed each other's company. I was pleasantly surprised when BJ danced with me. I had every intention of showing up to the party and DJing for them but I saw that DJ IceWolf was there and yet the music was a radio station stream. Well, that's good by me. It saves having to be distracted by cueing up a playlist. So dancing with BJ was a real treat because her attitude is a complete turn-around from last year or so. I honestly did not think she even liked men but she was quick to point out that she was enjoying the dance and that she had on an open access collar too. It was a swift set of commands before I had her stripped bare naked. And as most can attest to, there's something very very special about dancing with a naked, submissive woman. I have every confidence that this party could have lead to much more fun and excitement, but RL kept calling me back and I finally had to succumb to its needs. But hanging out with Kaboom and BJ and them was a delight and I only wish I had had more time.

BilliJo's Rez Day Party

On the other end of the spectrum, there is nothing at all wrong with getting together with an old friend in SL and catching up on what has been going on with them. That too can be a good time. That's what Archer and PrincessRose did with cat and Neva and I a week or so ago when I posted that entry about voice chat. We all got together and talked, catching up on what has occurred since our last encounters. But to simply get together and realize that it would require hours of typing to bring the other party up to speed, when you don't have those hours to spare, means you can still hang out and enjoy each other's company, no matter how long it has been.

Mesh Clothing

Okay, now I know it's not just me. I ran across an online magazine with many articles pertaining to Second Life. One of the articles that caught my eye was the one about mesh clothing in SL. I could not have written it better myself! I have been complaining about mesh for clothing since it has come out nearly a year ago. Don't get me wrong, mesh is great for things like houses, shoes even, cars, boats, etc. But it simply does not work for hair and clothing. I know; I have many mesh items. There was one jacket that I was able to make fit right, but I had to shrink my avatar to do it. Mesh simply does not work for clothing.

Rigged mesh attaches to the avatar's "bones". It moves with the avatar, which is nice, but it just looks wrong. I cannot count the number of times I have looked at a female avatar with a gorgeous figure, only to see it covered, or hidden, by a mesh alpha layer. Then let's say if you cam down into her cleavage (not that I ever do that), you see right through her. That's just wrong on so many levels (yes, even more wrong that camming down her cleavage). Rigged mesh is great for creating a whole new avatar. I recently saw an Asgard avatar from the TV show Stargate SG1. It was awesome! Perfectly done. Mesh is great for that. Fortunately, Asgards do not wear clothes or it would have looked silly with poofed out pants on.

But don't take my word for it. Please check out this article at: http://hummmagazine.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/the-emperors-new-mesh/ To all of my mesh hair and clothing loving friends and family, I apologize but I know it's not just me. Mesh is just wrong for hair and clothing.

Voice Chat

One aspect of Second Life (SL) that I don't seem to mention very often is voice chat. That and parcel music or media streams. I'll talk about all three here now.

First of all, voice chat is an option for two or more people in nearby proximity to each other. If you have a microphone, you can activate your voice chat, talk to the surrounding avatars through your mic and listen to what they have to say. By default, voice chat is activated when you login to SL. But under my preferences and setup, I have it disabled. Why? Well, for one it creates more lag. It slows your computer down making your online experience less enjoyable. The majority of people in SL are still communicating via the keyboard. Secondly, I might cough or worse, and nobody needs to hear that.

So I keep SL chat shut off unless someone expresses interest in talking. This last voice chat session for me was a couple of nights ago with cat, rose, Neva and Archer. Archer loves to voice chat for very good reason. He speaks and types in various languages. He is from the Netherlands and is fluent in German and English to name a couple of languages. While he can type in English quite well, it's an effort for him. So when we (me and cat) get together with him, we normally converse in voice chat. It was fortunate that Neva was able to talk as well. Unfortunately, rose was unable to hear us nor say anything, so we tried to keep her updated to the conversation as we went along by typing in regular text chat. Neva was best at this as I kept getting lost in the vocal conversation.

In voice chat. The space station in the background.

So I rezzed some new chairs I had just purchased and we all sat around on this huge platform I created to build my space station. We talked about Archer's new employment in RL and about Neva's man and of course my space station. I even rezzed a car I made for Archer to try out. I warned him not to drive off the edge of the platform but it was inevitable. He started falling all the way to the ground. But before he got there, I was able to send him a teleport invite and he accepted and was among us without getting killed and sent home. Yes, I have damage enabled on the sim so if you fall a long ways, you will die and be sent home. That would be undesirable so a quick teleport invitation was prudent. Anyway, it was a wonderful chat and we were able to exchange a great deal of information in a very short period of time as opposed to typing everything out.

Another nice thing about voice chat is you can actually hear the real voice of the avatar. It's just too easy for say a gay man to make a female avatar and play with heterosexual men without them knowing they are really being erotic with another male.

Parcel music streams are just that, a source of music for the entire parcel. You can set it to any of the streaming radio stations out there on the web and the music will play in your SL viewer as you exist in-world. Many people seem to leave this on automatically but personally, I thing music can be a distraction while building something, so I have mine off by default. Of course when I DJ, I have to have it on so I can hear the music I'm playing. The only time I turn the volume down is when I need to speak into the microphone. If I were to leave the volume up, there would be an annoying echo. This echo is due to the fact that there is a delay from when I say something to when people in-world hear it. It's anywhere from 1 second to 45 seconds. Why? I'm not sure. But I know that the longer a stream is running, the shorter the delay becomes. By the end of a two hour event, I tend to be delayed only about 5 seconds or less.

Video media is another possible stream into SL. Video can be viewed while looking at a texture that the parcel settings recognize as a video surface. This is a little tricky to explain and understand but basically, if you are the land owner, you can load a texture into your parcel's media settings and anywhere else you use that texture, streaming video can be viewed. So basically, many people use the texture of the blank screen of a TV, then put that same texture on a prim making it appear to be a powered down TV. Then they find a video source such as YouTube and paste that into the parcel's video stream source settings. After all that, if an avatar turns on their video media and that video texture is within view, they can watch the video stream. This video setting can be set to always on by default but again, this option creates even more lag than voice chatting so I have mine off by default. But I have known people to get on voice chat and sit in an SL movie theater, start their video streams simultaneously and enjoy a movie together.

While all this does sound ideal, it does not always function as anticipated. Linden Labs is always working on improvements to their streaming media controls, and have come a very long way in the past four years, but the quality of voice chat has much room for improvement when compared to a voice chat application such as Skype. But while the video stream may cause lag, if you are in SL to watch a video and not walk around and interact, it's a very cool feature. The prim that the graphic texture resides on actually becomes the video itself. It's pretty cool.

Griefing For Profit

Griefers have been mentioned here on this blog in the past. They are people who enjoy inflicting sadness or frustration on others. It makes them feel alive or something. I don't understand why they do it. It's just best to be on one's toes and ready for anything they might throw at you, especially when in a public gathering. But last Friday night was a new one on me.

It was Nakie Friday at House of the Rising Sun. Clothing is optional and we were having a contest too. I was DJing and having a really good time. Alobar and sami, the owners were there, and lots and lots of people. At one point, I killed the music and keyed up my microphone to remind people to vote for their favorite "Barely There" contestant, remind them to tip and to tell them what songs were coming up next. Just as I keyed my mic, two blue windows popped down in my viewer. If you have ever used an SL viewer, you will know what I'm talking about. They normally inform you that you have paid someone money or that you have been paid, or to verify any action you are taking such as joining a group. Well, this one was for joining a group. The name of the group and the name of the avatar who sent the group invite are unimportant now. This zero-day-old avatar has been deleted by Linden Labs. But the message was vague and dangerous.

Keeping in mind that I was quite busy making announcements over the music stream and that I was an inch away from clicking Yes/OK on the blue windows to get them out of my way, I just happened to see the characters "L$5000" on each window. Of course that lead to my stuttering over the mic and as I read the rest of the message, it was clear that someone had created a group and added joining fees to it. The fee in this case was 5000 Linden dollars. That works out to roughly $20 US dollars. I got two invites. Had I clicked on them, I would have been out L$10,000.

Instead of speaking about the next songs coming up, I changed it to a frantic announcement. "Do not join that group you have just been invited to". And come to find out, most of the people in attendance were invited. The person who made the group and sent out the invitations was in and out of the club so quickly, that hardly anyone noticed him. But sami copied and pasted a notification of his appearance into local chat. So we had his name. One of the women there was quick to report the incident to Linden Labs. Her actions will have this terrible thief banned from SL. Personally, I have never reported anyone before. So I took the opportunity to ask her how she did that so quickly.

It's important that we all know how to report abuse. The fact that this avatar was quickly sending out invitations to join his/her group for L$5000 is considered abuse. It would be easy to accidentally click the OK button and poof, your money is gone. This woman explained how to report abuse quickly. There is a Help link at the top of all versions of SL viewers screens. Click that and you will be given the opportunity to report abuse. Click on that and it will give you the option to send a screen captured photo to LL in the report. This screen capture is very important. This picture can show LL what you are seeing that lead  you to report abuse. In this case, it would be the blue group-join window. One look at that window tells LL the avatar's name and the name of the bogus group he/she created. They can then look up the IP address of the avatar and ban it. They can also shut down that group.

Remember, what goes around comes around. Karma and all that. Fairness is on our side. Linden Labs wants an enjoyable experience for everyone. In this avatars case, if he/she did not trick anyone into clicking OK on his/her group invite, then he/she did not make any linden dollars. If that's the case and his/her group was shut down by LL, he's out L$100 for forming the group. If that's the case, and it probably is, then we can all laugh and laugh and laugh so hard that we pee a little before getting back to enjoying our party.

New House and Prims

The house that cat and I live in is huge. It takes up the entire end of our half-sim parcel but it only has a living room  dining room, bedroom and office. For the sheer size of the place, you would think it would have more rooms. Well, one night cat and myself went out to visit with Whisper. It seems she is now tending to her friend's house and property in SL as he is gone sometimes for months on end before he can come to and enjoy SL. So she was showing us around his house and it had several rooms, more rooms than our house, and it took up less space. So I resolved right then and there to build us a new house with three times the room. Unfortunately, I was also committed to making a space station for the land. So I thought to save time, we should probably go out house hunting and see what is out there.

Our New Mansion

There are some wonderful builds out there. Many of them have been on the market for years. It's fairly easy to tell how long a house has been listed. First of all, mesh is a fairly new feature of SL so any house with mesh components in it will be relatively new. But first and foremost will be the cost of the house. Back when the economy in SL was strong, house builders were fetching thousands, if not tens of thousands of lindens for their creations. For example, we ran into a modest 2 bedroom contemporary house listed at over L$4000. Then the next place we visit, we find a partial mesh house with 4 bedrooms and lots more space for just L$500. Those higher prices are from years ago when thousands of lindens was the going rate for houses and they have simply not lowered their prices yet to compete with the newer economy.

Living Room by cat

Another problem was one of the creators of houses did not have a location in SL where you could walk through his houses. They looked great in 2D on the Marketplace. But you cannot buy a house for thousands of lindens without experiencing it first. His creations looked wonderful and I almost certainly would have purchased from him had he had a place to browse his homes. Fortunately, everyone else did have temporary rezzed homes for us to experience. Most of the homes had very few usable rooms in them, just like our current home. I began to have second thoughts and actually considered dropping my car and space station projects to create a custom home for us. But then we ran into Envision Prefabs. I paid these people L$1500 but I still think they deserve a plug. They had exactly what we were looking for at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Envision%20Blvd/182/117/24

Incomplete Kitchen

I feel the L$1500 is a modern, updated price and worthy of the mansion. Did I say mansion? Yes, it's not just a house. So when I first went through this place, I decided right there and then that every other mansion was going to have to be compared to this one. As it turns out, we came close to finding something comparable, but there would be something wrong with it such as cost or number of rooms or wasted space. The place we purchased our current home at, InVerse had a lot of problems with it. First of all, they have 4 temporary rezzers with only 3 of them in working order. They had some great places but it was too busy there and it took two days before cat could grab a rez controller. I had to stand guard at the rez controller or someone else waiting in line would have grabbed it. The prices here were quite low for what you get, so I can understand why the place was so busy, but they really need to accommodate that kind of a crowd. They need another sim with at least 4 more rezzers on it. So that place left a sour taste in our mouths, despite the fact that we liked a couple of the places they had there. Then there was that Serenity Designs. They did not have an inworld place to view their homes but they sure did look great on the 2D ads. We would have likely purchased from them if  the houses were anywhere near as good as they looked on the Marketplace, but a home MUST be walked through in 3D first. It's just common sense. Whomever created the mansion we did end up purchasing, should be thanking the creator(s) of Serenity Designs for forcing us their way.

Game Room

Regardless, I'm very pleased with the mansion we ended up with. We took extra time from our work day yesterday to delete our old house and terraform the parcel to accommodate our new home. Then we went about landscaping and decorating. This task will mostly be for my girl to accomplish, but I did have a few things I needed to place out, such as teleporters and beds and stuff. I did run out of time and had to leave for dinner, leaving cat there to work on her furniture pack placement. She did a great job! We have more rooms than we need right now but I'm confident we will fill them up. What we needed was; a living room, formal dining room, dinning room, kitchen, master bedroom, master bath, room for kaz, office, game room and punishment room and garage. We have all of that plus two rooms I do not know what to do with just yet and these rooms are all huge! In comparison, our old home took up just a little less space but only had five rooms; living room, dining room, bedroom, office and bath. The old house did it in 3 stories where this new mansion does it in 2 stories. It will be a challenge for cat to fill these spacious rooms, but I'm confident she is up for it.

Incomplete Office

Now I do not know how many prims our old house used up, but this new one uses over 850 unfurnished. So it did not take long last night to run our land down to 500 free prims out of 7500. Keeping in mind that a good chunk of those 7500 prims should be available to our daughter Neva, I went about looking for ways to reduce the prim count being on the parcel. First of all were all the prims owned by people who no longer visit nor use the property. Whisper, Pearl and Joe were the first to have their stuff removed. Jojo too had a bunch of prims I returned to her. Then there was my 'sandbox' building platform. I had a lot of prims on there that I'm not working with anymore. Beds, cars, etc. So I just picked them all up. Then I went up to the cuddle forest. I was asked by cat if that forest is ever used and I could not not think of anyone using it. I had used it most recently with starie, but that was quite a while back, and before then? Nobody that I'm aware of. So I started returning cat's stuff from there, but she had so much that I stopped because I didn't want her inventory getting filled up with misplaced returned items. Yes, SL does not always put your returned items back where they belong in your inventory. Most things end up in Lost & Found and have to be sorted.

Incomplete Master Bedroom

So by that time, I had freed up well over 600 prims for a total of nearly 1200. That should allow cat enough to work with and if we become pinched for prims again, I can always go through and pick up some of the club stuff or racetracks, etc. The castle is well over 100 prims plus the stuff that's inside of it and so far as I can tell, nobody uses it. But we'll see. It probably won't come to that.

A Lot To Be Said For Formal Parties And Stargates

At Dolls of Death (DoD) where I DJ parties on Sunday nights, there is always some sort of theme. Some of them are very hard to chose an outfit for. Take for instance Decades. At first it doesn't make sense but they always come out with a suggestion or two in the event description. But always, at the end of the announcement, "naked is always in theme". Fortunately, even for the Horny event, I was not stumped but one of these days, I will be at a loss and will probably attend naked, which usually happens toward the end of the night anyway, after the dancers have been tipped out of their clothes. But not this past Sunday.

Sunday Night at Dolls of Death

This past Sunday was Red Carpet party. The description went on to explain that we should all dress up as if we were attending the Oscar awards in Hollywood. Well, for a guy, that's pretty easy. Just throw on a tuxedo, which I did. But for the ladies? Expensive custom gowns. I was taken by surprise when I saw the club fill with people. Everyone looked wonderful! Normally I keep my viewer camera looking at the entrance to the club so I can greet whomever arrives. But tonight, I could not stop looking at all the wonderful outfits out there. It was the ladies gowns that took my breath away. For the first time that I can remember, everyone (except the dancers of course) kept their clothes on. They were gorgeous! I'm not sure who comes up with these events. Could it be the clan's queen Lydia? Whomever it is, kudos to you! That was a wonderful Sunday night event.

It was also starie's first night hosting at Dolls of Death and she did quite well, but I was not surprised. She has been hosting for me at House of the Rising Sun for a while now and does a great job of it. My former hostess at DoD was KellE and she had to resign due to time conflicts so while I miss her a great deal, it's good to have someone I know there, hosting with me.

Oscar Night

Now on to something completely different. When I first found out about SL and made an account and logged on, I was alone. I was alone for the first two weeks because I could not talk my friends nor my wife into exploring SL with me at that time. So I would wander the meta-verse alone the first couple of weeks. What I found was that everything was amazing to me. Most of the people I met were interested in only either biting me for blood and soul (Bloodlines) or asking for money. So I spent nearly all of my time exploring the collection of sims (called Mainland) and trying to learn from everyone's creations. Everything was new and unknown to me. I found myself rushing through my daily RL work, then rushing through dinner so that I could logon to SL and explore some more. It was a wonderful feeling which I have not enjoyed for years up until recently.

Recently, I have stumbled upon stargates. I have always enjoyed Stargate SG1 on SciFi channel over the years and for a time there, watched them in re-runs for four hours per night. So when I saw a stargate in SL, I bought it. I never did get it working right so I just picked it up and left it in my inventory. Well, I was wandering around on a night that cat was unable to logon and kaz was busy and trying to find that sense of exploration I had experienced years ago, when I ran into someone's stargate. I clicked on it and there was only one preset in it so I clicked on that. It took me to a space station. The space station was a wonderful build that required extensive exploration, exactly what I was searching for. It took me all night and part of the next night to explore that thing and it was wonderful and reminded me of the first weeks of my SL existence. I also found right next to it a link to a free stargate. What? That's right, the stargates are free, so I went and got one. This looked exactly like the stargate I paid money for way back when, but it was networked to about a hundred other stargates. I began to wonder how many other space stations were out there that needed my attention. So I rezzed the gate behind the BDSM castle and clicked on it. It gave me a link to an external web site which had a list of every rezzed stargate out there in SL. Even my freshly rezzed gate was listed! So I started my explorations.

My New Stargate and Controls

It is just like beginning anew. I am able to explore exciting places without having to trek across huge "continents" until I stumble onto something. Just about every place a stargate exists is an interesting place. Yes, there are a few exceptions but only a few and I can quickly move on to the next destination. Some places I arrive at, I'm shot at with a security drone and I'm killed (re-spawn at home). Other places are blocked completely and cannot even be dialed up. But most places are very accommodating and very interesting to explore. Yes, there are a few clubs as destinations and if  you arrive during an event, they all call out your name and want you to stay. For me, a club is not a place to explore. It's a place to meet new people or hang with old friends. When I'm "gating" around, I'm in an exploration mood.

Stargate and the Event Horizon

So I am making a folder in my inventory of landmarks of all the places I visit that are interesting so that when cat is able to be online, we have stuff to do. We will not be travelling through the gates, we will simply use the much quicker landmarks I make. The gates themselves have different methods of operation. You can use the DHD or Dial Home Device, as it's called in the TV series, by punching in symbols in a certain order. Then the gate goes through the animation of spinning and locking in "chevrons". Or you can use a control console that was supposedly designed by humans (as opposed to aliens) to control it and even keep a memory of places you frequent. Or you can send commands to the gate via chat channel 0. This is by far the fastest way to make the gate connect to another location. The syntax looks like "/dial goetz castle". Goetz Castle being the name of my gate. So I use the list on their web site of all the different gates and travel around that way. The locations are listed in alphabetical order. I am currently into the Ds and have been at this for nearly a full week now. So there is much much more to explore and I'm very excited about that.