Maybe it’s a bit of wishful thinking from my part, but then again, I’m a fan! And just look at the lovely lady… that’s tilde SL top model material, allright?

Just to break through the miss/model cliché: did I mention Veyron can think in different time zones (maths!), did not offer me meta-sex in exchange for photographs (moral, scrupules!) and that she shot me (eye for beauty!)? ;)

This three pictures featuring Veyron Supercharge were taken for this week’s ~SLNTM Vampire Challenge.

Also the non-tilde SL’s Next Top Model is kicking off, accepting applications starting april 1. Just join the non-tilde group or IM Miss Millesimee Jezebel to receive the information notecard. For applying you’ll need at least a headshot and a portfolio that shows your diversity as a model. And apparently, SL top models don’t pose nude either. Bummer! ;) And the notecard doesn’t say ‘male avies can’t participate / woman only’, so I assume hawt males can enter too? This model contest is getting even more interesting! *grins*

A bit strange is that both the SLNTM and the ~SLNTM websites are still rather contentless. Well, the tilde one does have ads. *rolls with meta-eyes*

Meanwhile Ana Lutetia is very busy practicing her catwalk moves for becomming Miss SecondLive L’Oreal Paris Glamour. Good luck to you too, lady.

Besides, being an SL top model is not the only thing that requires great (meta)skill. Zoe gives an overview of some of the skills needed for being a SecondLive BDSM mistress: interviewing skills, time management skills and knowledge about disciplinary action. ;)

Tags: model, photography, portrait, veyron supercharge, vintlabs
Categories: Fashion, Links, Photography, Portrait, Second Life
1 Comment »

No photographs or rant today, blame first life. But if you want to do some reading, check out All Things Tiessa where Miss Tiessa Montgolfier writes about how she became a shopping addict and discovering her inner bimbo. After reading Tiessa’s post I decided meta-bimbo’s so rawk! ;) Just can’t wait to hear what whould happen if the nuns of her catholic grade school only knew and what that is they may not know about.

Tags: shopping, tiessa montgolfier
Categories: Links, Paradise Lost
1 Comment »

Gun frenzy! Gun frenzy! If you ever get tired of girls with guns, do tell. Until that day, I’m serving them to you for breakfast, lunch and dinner and as a before-bed-time-snack.

Dakota Buck - who we should all congratulate on making it into the SecondStyle magazine with her savvy prim-included shorts - dropped by at my new home to show off her beautiful self. If good and hawt company wasn’t enough, she told me she bought her own pair (that’s two!!!) of guns and some gun poses. Gun poses! I knew I forgot about something when buying my gun. :( Anyway, Dakota’s portrait is big enough to serve as a 1280*1024 desktop wallpaper, so get yours here (right click, save link as).

Being both new to the whole girls-with-gun thingie, we figured we could use some target practice. Neither of us has great building skills, but I do think the improvised shooting ranch looks nice. No? Hi there, Andro! How you’re feeling today? Had felt any mysterious pains tonight when you were asleep? *grins* Shooting Andro was fun, but I just couldn’t resit shooting ‘Kota too. ;)

And another lovely lady felt like showing off her guns: following in ‘Kota’s footsteps a copple of hours later was verry verry sexy fellow meta-blogger CodeBastard ‘Cody’ Redgrave, renown bodylotion-addict and owner of the CodeRed Lounge. She brought a whole arsenal along and even succeeded at shooting me with a spambullet. Blah! 15 seconds of ugly way-to-bright green spam! You’re evil, I say! Evil!

I’ll try to make some decent cutouts for target practice, but until then, feel free to shoot the giant Andro. Do try and make a good aim, because somewhere in the upper left corner of the Andro-texture there’s a Vint dangling on her dancing pole. ;)

Tags: andromega volare, codebastard redgrave, dakota buck, girls with guns, portrait, poses, snapshot
Categories: Exploring, GirlsWithGuns, Photography, Vint Falken
9 Comments »

Mike Manhattan: (Saved Thu Mar 29 05:01:53 2007) Hello please remove the SLFlirt picture from http://www.vintfalken.com/ as this is copwrited material

Yes, Mr. Manhattan from SLFlirt.com, I understand perfectly that it is copwrited copwritten material written by a cop copywrited material, but I didn’t want to do any harm. Actually, I even think this small 150×80 pixel image is the best thing SLFlirt has going for it. I never though using part of a screenshot in a review about the place where I’ve gotten it with a link to that website right next to it would be considered seriously infringing on copyright laws. But I’ll take it down. Somehow I feel like removing the link to your website as well, though.

I guess this means you just didn’t like my review on SLFlirt.com?

Dear Mike, please don’t tell me that now my chances of actually dating you or using SLFlirt’s unique online dating and personals service, with local, sexy adults waiting to hook up online* dropped down to zero? Will I now never be able to find a great date, love, a committed relationship or even, intimate, erotic sex?!*

And here comes the laughter-part of this blogpost:

I’ll just have to comfort myself with the knowledge that my review on SLFlirt ranks first when doing a Google search for slflirt.com. Yes, even before the SLFlirt website. And when searching for SLFlirt, I rank second, right after your ‘unique online dating and personals service created just for the residents of SecondLife’ . You’ve beaten me on Yahoo! but aren’t even listed on Windows Live Search where I also rank first for ‘SLFlirt’. *Sticks out her tongue at Mike Manhattan.*

(* Quotes fetched from Mike Manhattan’s in-world profile.)

Tags: review, sl web resources, slflirt.com
Categories: Laughter, Opinion, Rant, SL Web Resources, Vintfalken.com
11 Comments »

Great. They solved the problem. I can use the 1.14.00 client, but will be deaf when doing so. And I thought SecondLife was all about giving people with a fysical handicap second chances, not about giving fysically healthy - note that I’m not saying anything about my mental state - a hearing impaired avie. And it’s the desktop having the problems, not the notebook, dear Linden Gods. I’ll just stick to the old 1.13 viewer as long as possible. :(

From their the official SecondLife blog:

Some laptops with ATI X300 or X600 graphics cards are crashing before they even get to the login screen. Oddly, this crash is happening in the FMOD audio library and we have no idea why. There is a workaround: add “-noaudio” to your Second Life shortcut. This will disable audio in Second Life which is not ideal, but will at least allow it to run. See Resolving issues with Second Life 1.14.0 for detailed instructions.

Tags: client bugs, client update
Categories: Rant, Second Life
2 Comments »

Until yesterday I knew only two ways to shop for SecondLife products: in-world, TP’ing from store to store and sometimes waiting ages for textures to rezz, and on the www using SLboutique and SLexchange. A friendly salesman from MetaMart told me about a third one: using an in-world hud (heads-up display) to browse through goods. ‘Might there be a way to raise my clothes per hour shopping ratio even more?’, I wondered as I started type lots and lots of question in the IM-window. I can only guess at the following conversation:

Salesman: ‘Hey boss, I have an eager shoppingaddict with a blog asking me tons of question and I can’t keep up answering them.’
Salesman’s Boss: ‘Hmmm. Would she be pissed if you mute her?’
Salesman: ‘Yes, I think so.’
Salesman’s Boss: ‘Ok, that would be bad publicity, we can’t have that. I’ll talk to her and see if I can calm her down a bit.’

… and this is how a ruthed Robbie Kiama ended up in my skybox to tell me all about MetaMart. They say MetaMart is a HUD search engine that will help you to search & purchase items in-world. I say it’s a huge in-world shopping-playground. Using it is like being on the grid and using slboutique at the same time, but then without having to do alt+tab’ing constantly. No need to rezz something in SecondLife to prove who you are, just wear the HUD and you’re good to go. Would I speak that positively about something without testing it first? Of course not!

This is how I told Dakota - now with guns! - about it:

[18:09] You: think of what a break through it is for strippers
[18:09] You: being able to shop
[18:10] You: while they are busy on that pole
[18:10] Dakota Buck: hahaha
[18:10] You: well, actually the same for escorts i guess
[18:10] You: *giggles*

My experiences as a buyer:

Pressing ’search’ on the MetaMart-HUD makes it search for the keywords you send to #8. Search results turn up for both ‘/8 silks’ and ‘/8 costume’. At this point I bought myself the lovely ganster girl costume that turned up in the search, but that’s heading ahead on things. ;) Pressing ‘advanced search’ allows you to search for ‘Latest items’, ‘Popular items’, ‘Seller’s Name’ and … w00t ‘Free items’.

So you see something that you like, and want to see more of it? Just click on the thumbnail picture and the full picture texture will slide out of the HUD’s interface. If the ‘i’ next to the thumbnail is bright yellow, the seller has included a notecard with more information about the product. Just press the appropriate yellow ‘i’ to open that notecard. Sometimes the large textures tend to load rather slowly, but that is the seller’s fault, as the displayed textures use asset UUID. Maybe there is a way to check the size of the texture through the UUID before loading it?

To buy a product that is not a freebie, - evidently - you need to have enough money in your MetaMart account. Depositing and withdrawing funds to and from your account is made easy with a menu that also allows you to check your account saldo. Both redrawing and depositing work without delay. The ‘ganster girl’ outfit was sent to me right away, and now I’m happy, goodlooking gangster girl. ;)

Robbie Kiama ensured me that version 3 of the MetaMart shopping HUD will include the ability for customers to rate/comment on a product. That’s great, because I must admit, with SLBoutique, I’m a bit to lazy to return to their website to comment after I tried the product I bought in-world.

Other things I would like to see added though:

• For the ‘free items’ search, the latest added item should show on the first page, not the last. But that’s solved if we get some ’sort by price up/down’ and ’sort by date added oldest/newest’ functionality. Please?
• A way to browse items by categories (avatar, clothes, security, hawt silks, photography equipment, … ;)) and a way to search only within those categories.
• More items! It’s just starting up, I know, but c’mon sellers, get your items up there. I want more choice. Especially in hawt silks! Preferably white, please. ;)
• I want to be able to ‘fave’ sellers, so I can easily sort all their products in one search query, listing the latest they’ve added on top.

From a seller’s/freebie-giver’s point of view:

Works the same way as SLboutique does. You’ll need 1 free prim to rez an in-world warehouse that will keep up to 40 items. If you want to become a referrer, that’s 6 prims. Keywords and price you can add/edit on the MetaMart website. If you want to give your possible customers more information, you need to add a notecard that has the same name as the product, but with _nc behind it to the warehouse. I hope that they will add that functionality to the website, so the information simply shows below your product on the HUD. Already to much useless notecards in my inventory. The texture displaying the item you need to upload to SL and then copy paste the asset UUID on your products item page on their website. So keep the texture you upload as low-sized as possible!

From the price your product is sold for, 97% of the money goes to you, 1.5% to Meta Mart and 1.5% to the referrer (the person that gave your avie-customer the HUD). You can easily get a report send to your email that tells you exactly how much money you made selling stuff on MetaMart and your referrals shopping spree’s. The report could be a bit more detailed though, but the same goes for SLboutique. I don’t want to know how much I sold in total, I do am interested in how many times I sold item A, B, C, … .

Ow, that and the warehouse does not look really that impressing. Either put in some other pictures (graphs?butterflies?!binoculars to be associated with SL-search?! that’s a tab window, for christ’s sake! geeh!!!) or I’ll just hang it on the outer side of my skybox. Yes, at 700 meters altitude! *grins* And I had a minor problem adding a notecard with information to my product. See, the product uploaded was already using the maximum amount of characters and object’s name can have, thus no way putting the _nc behind it. Well, people will just have to do without the explenation.

And some general ranting on the HUD’s looks and functionality:

I IM’d about that already with Robbie, but these are some things I only noticed after that conversation:

• It took me 4 seconds to much to find the ‘buy’ button when I wanted to use that. Place it somewhere more logical, on the right side from the product I want to buy for instance.
• Why is ‘minimize’ written out that big? It disturbes! And each time I maximize it again, it gives me yet another notecard. I have tons of that already!

Will I use MetaMart myself? Yes, I *heart* the idea behind it and believe it can become a very functionably SecondLife meta-shopping help. I will upload any future freebies to MetaMart as well as SLBoutique. If you want to try out the MetaMart HUD yourself, you can get one from the MetaMart Warehouse in my skybox. Yes, that will make me your referrer and I’ll earn 1.5% on each item you purchase through MetaMart. But, hey, clothes and guns don’t come cheap! ;)

Directions to get to my skybox: go to the Paradise Lost Club (SLurl) and then take the teleportal (round disk in the floor) to ‘Vint Labs’. You’ll probably rezz somewhere close to the warehouse where you can get your own MetaMarkt HUD.

Tags: freebie, HUD, meta mart, shopping
Categories: Links, Opinion, Second Life
8 Comments »

As September, 11th of 2001 is better know as 09/11, I know declare March, 27th of 2007 to be 1.14.0.

Why? Tons of homeless Avies, or Avies that aren’t able to get in touch with their close relatives to check if they are in good health. Emergency services weren’t prepared, were uninformed and arrived on scene late and the whole thing could have been avoided if LL’s intelligence services had done a more thorough investigation.

Some avies lost all of their belongings and the SecondLife economy goes haywire as shop keepers can’t keep up with replacement and refund requests. Lot’s of male residents involved in 1.14.0 suffer from the Ruthing-syndrom, probably caused by post-traumatic stress after the install.

Residents are redrawing their deposited l$ en masse and some are even considering committing suicide as they just can’t handle the constant lag and buggyness anymore.

Shortly put: what the hell were they thinking?!! SecondLife’s a bitch sometimes for sure.

Kuddo’s for the lady at LiveHelp though. Kitty - her last name now slips my mind - was very patient with a ranting Vint and did the best she could in a very friendly and helpfull way. She even suggested installing the 1.14.0-viewer-of-death herself, but I said I could not ask that from her.

Tags: client bugs, client update, girls with guns, selfportrait, zoe connolly
Categories: GirlsWithGuns, Rant, Second Life
7 Comments »

I install the advised update (xx.14.xx) and tell the SL client to boot. It does try. Only to give me a ‘Display settings have been set to recommended levels based on your system configuration’. *curses the Linden Gods*

I hope First Look will succeed where the ordinary client fails doesn’t work either. Give me back my SecondLife!

The blog says ‘you’re local cache will be flushed‘, when installing the update, it didn’t say ‘we’ll flush your whole Second Life’. :( :( :(

Dispite my misery I was ROFL when I read this comment from Linus Rossen: ‘OK guys! The “Login Failed” dialog box works perfectly… any other features you would like us to test while we pay?‘

Update: Rebooting my operating system did not help. Anybody has a copy of the old install files left? Trying to connect whilst using SLeek now. Nvm. Doesn’t work either. Next attempt: uninstalling 14 & firstlook, reinstalling 13.

Most recent LindenLabs blogpost concerning this problem. ‘We assure you the sky is not falling’. Well, even as it were, we wouldn’t notice, would we, as we are stuck here in first life!?

And a new best quote from the comments:

And I finally got thru to someone in voice support…informing me that 1.14 has a significant redesign and might not work with all the video cards it supported before.

Don’t you think this might be the kind of thing to tell people very loudly about BEFORE they update???

Tags: client bugs, client update
Categories: Rant, Second Life
7 Comments »

Now I’ve totally had it! First I had to find out about him cheating* on me on Flickr. And now he even thinks he’s some kind of hawt and sexy Andro Blond spy and is threatening me. I quote: ’some ladies here are playing with the fire, take care it could get very hot!!!’

So since yesterday, the decorative dagger is replaced with a SOCOM MK23 v1.1. Thank you, Zoe, for helping me pick out such a great gun. Killer laser beam for focussing, silencer, flashlight function for dark and evil places, … and a huge range of ammunition. Skills I’ve already mastered: drawing it, holstering it, modelling it. So just to make sure I don’t harm any innocent Avies, I’ve loaded it with training bullets. :D

Just look at both pictures and compare. Who looks like a pro hitmanwoman and who doesn’t? Now place your bets! ;)

And, ow! Look! I’m even dressed for the occasion! You can get the pink camo top for free on SLboutique. The ‘Girls With Guns’ T-shirt comes in a shirt, jacket and undershirt version.

* Technically speaking he can’t be cheating on me as we are not and never were involved. But we’ll just ignore that fact. *grins*

Tags: clothing, freebie, girls with guns, selfportrait, vint falken, vintlabs
Categories: Flickr, Freebies, GirlsWithGuns, Rant, Vint Falken
9 Comments »

Skycat Ranger already did a great job at defending my honor and scaring the hell out of Andro. When an armed - and dangerously beautiful - Melodious dropped by today to check out my new place and I noticed Petra was dancing at the club… well… *grins* Girls, you are warned! :D

Tags: andromega volare, girls with guns, melodious source, paradise lost, photography, portrait, snapshot
Categories: GirlsWithGuns, Paradise Lost, Photography, Vint Falken
7 Comments »