Neva

It's been quite a while since I've made any sort of entry here. The delay is due to real life issues though. A move and work becoming more demanding of my time, but things are settling down a bit now. But just before I moved, I met my SL wife's daughter, Neva.

Neva is fun to be around and kind and polite. She also has a very beautiful place she lives at which is decorated wonderfully. So she obviously has great taste too.

After touring her place, I took her on a tour of mine. We made use of the hot air balloon ride and floated around the sim. I also showed her the skybox where her mother and I live. This might have been a mistake as it is now obvious to Neva that her mother is a pervert. Maybe she can justify it by blaming all of the naughty toys in our home on me? Yes, I'm fine with whatever works.

A day or so after that, Neva met up with me at one of our club events at Cherry Street. We danced and had a great time. She told me that she participates in some sort of role play which involves her dressing in period clothes, which she enjoys immensely. I must say, she looks good in them too.

Brox and Esme's Wedding

Esme, Brox with Kaboom

My nephew Broxton and his new queen Esme finally got married last week on the beach at Styll. It was a wonderful, formal demon wedding. I was asked to be the best man and graciously accepted. Darren also stood with Brox along with his brother Usher. Esme had her brides maids there too. My brother Kaboom officiated the ceremony and all went off with nary a hitch (which surprised me as there seemed to be hardly any planning and no rehearsal whatsoever).

The Wedding Party

I love SL weddings because it's a time for a bunch of friends to get together and celebrate relationships. I have friends to are appalled by the mere thought of a virtual wedding and others who embrace them. In SL, you can choose to partner with someone. When you partner with someone, their profile shows up in yours. Most couples who wed in SL have their virtual spouse in their profile. But you can partner with someone without the need for a wedding ceremony. The wedding ceremonies are just the icing in the cake.

Brox and Esme's vows

So Brox and Esme have this wedding planned for 5pm. My wife/sub/partner cat was able to attend which was a very pleasant surprise as the ceremony took place at an odd time of weekday for everyone. My ex wife/partner Ambriel happened to logon as we were getting ready for the ceremony so I invited her to witness. I had pews laid out for 2 dozen people, but nowhere near that amount showed up. I truly wish I could remember all the names of everyone who did attend but I'm terrible with names. That and the fact that your avatar can have a name and also a 2nd name with fonts that are nearly unreadable make keeping track of names nearly futile. But there were a good amount of people there and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Demon Reception

About an hour after the wedding we held a reception party at the new underwater ballroom. I demonstrated to Kaboom and Princess how my swimming shark will devour them if they are not careful. Princess ended up having almost too much fun with that shark in the end, but that's what it's there for. People started showing up one or two at a time over the next hour or so and I took over the stream and played the music that Brox and Esme had requested. It was a mix of country, techno, hip-hop, heavy metal and industrial/trance. Not exactly to everyone's liking but what the hell? It was Brox and Esme's special day.

cat had to leave after the wedding but made it back half way through the reception. She's the best! That really made the rest of the reception enjoyable. Princess was very funny though playing with her pet slave. She has her way of doing things and if he wasn't able to figure that out, she was more than eager to teach him the right way. Brox and Esme pretty much kept to themselves. I was able to toast them over the music stream which felt right. Typing in chat is one thing but being able to convey my congratulations to them via spoken word was special.

So I kept the party going for as long as I could but I eventually grew sleepy as it was quite late in my time zone and had to shut down and logoff. A couple of couples lingered but I don't know for how long. I was resting after the long day of ceremony and celebration. If you ever get a chance to attend an SL wedding ceremony, do it. They are almost never boring and many are filled with lots of great humor. If you ever attend a demon wedding, be ready for anything! You never know what's going to happen at one of those. Hopefully there will be one coming up in the near future.

Friends, Family and Clan?

Clan Meeting by the fire

In Second Life, (SL) every avatar you meet (with very few exceptions) is a real person at a keyboard or microphone. Needless to say, real friendships and relationships form as  you spend more time online. Many new people want to belong to a group or family. There are some advantages to belonging to a group. First of all, you have people to hang out with who usually have similar interests. Some people feel more secure when they are members of a larger family. They feel more like they belong. It's also a great way to make a lot of new friends quickly.

Mostly Demons in the family

Some groups or families are formed around the notion of a clan. These clans are often made up of vampires or werewolves (remember, you can be anything you want in SL), or even furry people. In any case, these clans have several purposes but one of the main ones is growth. Clans want to add more members, the more the merrier. So it's no surprise that lately I've been asked to join a couple of different clans. For various reasons, I joined the one that my woman cat belongs to. It's my 'nephew' Broxton's vampire clan. So he had a meeting for his clan the other day. These clan meetings are a great way to meet others in the group/family/clan. We talked about drama within the group and how to deal with it. We discussed growing the family too, which is a guaranteed topic at any clan meeting.

I'm not at all new to SL so I sort of have my own family or clan if you will in my group of friends. So belonging to a clan, while flattering, it is not all that necessary for me personally. But if you are new to SL or find that it's time to change things up in your virtual life or even if you just want to get to make a whole bunch of new friends, the clan or family is the way to go.

Party Nights

Dancing on the beach

It's about time cat and I got out and had some fun. With Emi, Clancy, Gefter, kasie, Zefer and many more, we were able to go out partying and actually have some fun instead of work for a change. Due to a new feature at Cherry Street Nightclub, I will likely be reopening it very soon, so these Party Nights might be some of the last ones cat and I get a chance to do for a long time to come.

Clairede Live

It's always special going out to listen to Clairede Dirval's live performances. It's been way too long since I've been able to attend one of her one hour shows. So when the opportunity presented itself, cat and I jumped on it. We danced and listened to Clairede sing and play guitar. All of her songs were new to me because it has been so long since I've attended one of her performances. It was a wonderful night and so good to see Clairede again. She played at a nude beach so most of the audience were able to shed their pesky clothes and dance naked.


I threw a party at my nude beach a couple of nights later. For the first half of it, nobody showed up but later on when Emi and cat logged on, Clancy showed up and we had a nice small party. Met a couple of new guys too. Bruce and Oluthus (Olu). Olu is a DJ and I think he's going to hold events at Cherry Street. So there's one more reason to reopen the club. They belong to a vampire clan which has a club that holds regular events, Thursday through Sunday. Fun bunch of people! The event I went to there was Sleepwear on Friday night. Well in the end, nobody was wearing anything and my tasty pet won with the most votes! Great time had by all.

Zef and kasie's 5th anniversary celebration

But the night started out with kasie and Zefer's 5th anniversary. Yes, she has worn his collar for 5 years. That's a very long time and it certainly looks as though another 5 years together are not out of the question. kasie had decorated and setup Zefer's beach for the party. She hired him a "fuck toy" who jumped out of a giant cake. Gefter was there along with my pet and a very good DJ. We danced and listened to some great music. kasie did a wonderful job setting up the place.

Mirri setting up the runway

The Runway

Earlier in the week, cat told me about a friend of hers having a new dancer/escort system for his club. We went and checked it out and it was very unique for SL. It's a runway, not a stage and it does not use poles for the dancers. Instead it makes use of zones and each of those zones interact seamlessly with patron's chairs on either side of the runway. Also, up to 2 of the dancers can interact with the patron at the same time! This is very unique and sure to make it much easier for my girls to make tips during events. For that reason and because I'm missing my friends, I'm reopening the Cherry Street Nightclub. This runway will be a major attraction. It is so unique that the creator (Mirri) had to come and set it up herself. Once setup, the runway cannot be moved without her assistance, but it's in a great location now and I see no need to move it for some time to come. The animations in it are very erotic and unique. This is one of only 4 other runways that I'm aware of in SL. The one at Cherry Street, the one at cat's friends club, one other that Mirri mentioned and the one she has at her shop as a demo. That's it! So if you want to experience something very unique in SL, you should come on down to Cherry Street Nightclub and check this out. secondlife://Styll/58/176/24

So later the next day, cat put on a wonderful show for me on the new runway. I cannot wait until people get a chance to try this thing out.

A Bit About Lag

Lag in SL is just as you would imagine. Things happen slowly when there is lag present. Sometimes text chat can be slowed down. Sometimes frame rates will drop to very low levels making every movement appear jerky. Lag can cause your computer to freeze. It can prevent you from teleporting in or out of a region. It can prevent textures from loading and can prevent avatars from rezzing in completely. Lag is undesirable. But what causes lag and can it be prevented?

Basically, lag is a lack of speed. Your internet connection might be slow and this could cause your experience in SL to slow down. Your computer might be slow. This will manifest itself as lag through your SL viewer. This does not necessarily mean that SL is being laggy. All it means is things need to speed up on your end. On the other hand, you could have a very fast computer and very fast internet throughput yet you are still experiencing lag. This could be the SL server that your avatar is currently occupying. A good way to test this is to try teleporting to another region on another server. If you are still experiencing lag then it's probably slow throughput on your end either due to a slow (or busy) computer or too slow of an internet connection. If changing locations improves your framerates and such then there is a good chance the region you were in is experiencing lag due to the server it resides on being over taxed. In this case, restarting the sim might work. But if it's due to too many running scripts (programs) or too many avatar prims, then restarting the sim will have no effect. I mention this because I've been getting lots of requests lately to restart my sim. It's no trouble restarting it really. I just go there and Debug the land and select Restart. But more often than not, when I arrive at the sim to restart it, I am not experiencing any lag at all.

I recently ran into an ARC counter (Avatar Resource/Rendering Cost) which I have place inside my nightclub at Cherry Street. I've found that my avatar uses a great deal of resources as oposed to most. Therefore I create lag just about wherever I go. I can remove some of my huds and scripted items to bring my ARC down to an acceptable level. And I will do that should there be a great deal of lag where I'm at, but it's not always necessary. If I'm in a location where there are very few people, then it usually is not an issue. But the more avatars there are in a region, the more computations the servers need to make to keep up with them. That's when I need to lower my ARC. I'll remove my radar HUD and dance HUD and such and that usually takes care of it. But I cannot control what others do. If someone else on the sim is wearing a lot of scripted items such as HUDs or weapons or wings and piercings, etc., there's not much I can do about that except to either leave or put up with the lag.

Adjusting your 3D graphics settings can make a huge difference too. I turned my draw distance down from over 200 meters to 100 meters and it more than doubled my frame rates. Things are very smooth now even with my older 3D graphics card. Lots and lots of speed can be found by going in and customizing  your graphics settings. One very important setting to look at is under your Network tab. Set the maximum throughput speed slider all the way up. Why not? I mean, why put a bottleneck in your bandwidth throughput? Just turn it all the way up so there are no restrictions to your internet speed. That right there will make a huge difference for most users.

There are multiple sources for lag, some of which were not even mentioned here. It's not always the sim you are visiting. Many times it can be the person standing next to you, using all of the server's available resources.

Been Away

Cat distracting me

Not much has been going on at Cherry Street this past week or so. At least not that I'm aware of. Who knows? There could have been some epic battles going on, fights to the death, huge orgies or awesome inner tube races. I would not know. I have been sick. I tried logging on a couple of times only to find myself fading away at the keyboard. I'd fall asleep and wake up wondering what the hell I am doing. It was a long achy week but sleeping through it seemed like the best idea at the time. The doc fixed me up with a shot and some pills and now I'm good as new.

Exploring a deserted island

I took cat out on a few short and quick 'dates' as time allowed. Those are always fun. A quick cruise through the sea to a secluded island and some laying out on the beach. She always manages to distract me in the most wonderful of ways. And a new/old friend of mine, Pearline has returned to SL. She used to make dresses and shoes so I have provided her with a shop and we'll see how that goes. She's been gone over 6 months so it's both odd and wonderful to have her back. I'm hoping she's here to stay. She is my SL sister.

I have not said a word to anyone just yet but I'm already thinking of holding Friday night events at Cherry Street again. I miss our get-togethers and Fridays seemed to work out best for everyone. I know I told Brox I'd try to do Friday nights for his Krimson Moon, but he now has 2 DJs which is 2 more than I have and I'm going to play the selfish card here. I miss our Friday night parties.

Get Together

It seems it's getting tougher for my friends and I to get together lately. That's probably my fault for shutting down the Tuesday and Friday night events at the Cherry Street Nightclub. Friday nights on a regular basis might work out for everyone, but I did promise those nights to Broxton's Krimson Moon. But because he has not held any other events there since last Friday, I'm doubting he will be able to keep the place open. In any case, Emi, Gefter, Darren, Zuri and I all got together Saturday night and had a great time!

First, Darren IMd me to show me a gadget he picked up which makes configurable weather over the entire sim. For a demonstration, he and Zuri chose flaming rain. I've seen these devices before and they sure are impressive, but they also create a great deal of lag. Darren offered to leave the control device on the land for me but I had to decline due to the lag considerations. It's important that I keep the lag at Cherry Street down to a minimum. But I did suggest that we have a party soon where we have bizarre weather while we party on the beach. It would still be very laggy, but it's only a temporary thing and it sounds like it would be fun.

About that time, I wanted to show them my new sim-border crossing boat. I warned them that it was not pretty but that it was elegantly scripted. Because my sim, Styll, does not border on any other sims, I was unable to demonstrate the boundary crossing feature of the boat. At first, Zuri took the helm but she did not understand the controls. She held down the accelerate button until we hit the edge of the sim. Then she turned it around and raced across the sim to the other edge, hitting it hard and placing us in limbo so to speak. I was stuck underwater but eventually made it out and was able to meet up with them at yet another corner of the sim. Hitting a sim border at high speed has unpredictable results. But it's never a good thing. So I thought I'd demonstrate a nice leisurely cruise to them. I took them on a short tour of the waterways on the sim.

All together now

About that time, Emi contacted me in IM and wanted to know "where's the party?" So I figured we should all get together and go boating out on Blake Sea where I could demonstrate the boat's awesome boundary crossing feature. I did not know at the time that Gefter was with Emi so that means there would be five of us and my boat only seats four. But I planned on rezzing a second boat for Gefter or Darren to pilot. As it turned out, we were able to get everyone on board but one person (Gef I think?) had to 'sit' on the boat and not in an animated pose. It seemed like this was going to work out just fine. We crossed one border and while it was a bit rough and laggy, we all made it across together. But it was the second border that turned out to be a real problem. We were all left behind and deep underwater. The boat was nowhere to be found. This is not unusual with the old scripted vehicles when crossing sim borders, but I had expected better out of this new scripting. But I reasoned that it must be due to the fact that the boat had one more person on it than it was intended for. So I suggested we head back to the marina (which had an area where you can rez things) and try two boats.

Sinking Yacht

Darren informed me that Zuri had a large yacht and that it seated 12. Well, I would imagine it did not have the new sim crossing scripting that my boat did but I thought, why not? At least we'd all stay together. But the yacht proved too large for Zuri to handle. Because she is the owner, she is the only person allowed to pilot it. With the new boat I have, they allow for multiple copies of it to be piloted by anyone with the same group membership that the boat was rezzed under. A very nice and handy feature. So if the yacht was not going to work out, I was going to rez a second boat under the Cherry Street group name. And as it turned out, when Zuri tried to move the yacht to a decent starting position, it sank. It didn't happen very fast though. It was a slow, torturous submersion. Oh, the humanity! But we all managed to survive and that's when I rezzed first one boat and started to rez a second when Darren informed us that Zuri had a small sailboat. Well, that will work too, but I had to wonder if it had these new updated sim-crossing scripts. As it turned out, it did not.

Zuri floating behind us

Darren and Zuri took off to the east so Gefter, Emi and I followed in the boat. We saw a couple of very cool islands and the border crossings were good. As I suspected, Darren and Zuri did not fare so well. On our third sim crossing, Gefter and I ended up in the sky. So that newly scripted boat of mine did not fare so well after all! But as Darren figured out, it was the same sim that we had trouble with earlier when we all ended up underwater, standing there bewildered, laughing as Gef donned his scuba gear. He's got a great sense of humor! Anyway, we decided to take off in the other direction, north and west. We regrouped and rezzed our boats again, took off on a slow cruise and this time, everything worked satisfactorily. Darren was able to impliment a 'follow' command with some sort of gadget he has so instead of sitting on the boat, Zuri floated behind us, but we were all together that way. So we explored for a little bit until we crossed an as yet uncrossed sim border. It went badly. I was so disappointed with my new boat after that. So we all decided it was time to play a game of hot tub Greedy. Gefter agreed to play too, but he was to be allowed to win this time. He had me in stitches all night

We all met back at Cherry Street and hopped into the hot tub Greedy game that Emi and Gefter got cat and I for our wedding gift. The game went very well because I won! But that sim crossing boat of mine was bothering me all the rest of the night. It should have performed better than it did. It always worked great for me!

So the next morning, I logged on and went out to the place we were at last night, rezzed a boat and started heading for the sim borders that we had issues with the night before. It was as smooth as ever, crossing those sims. So it must have had something to do with the number of people we were trying to force across the borders all at once. So with renewed confidence in my boat, I went out exploring, crossing countless sim borders without a hitch. I found a wonderful island to explore but I'll wait until cat or a friend can come along with me.