… and in RL! I’m going for the ‘boiled lobster look’ (pictured below) by the time the laptop’s battery is dead. Btw: is there any way to add a texture to a face, whithout altering the skin’s face itself? If anybody wants the underpands and undershirt I’m wearing here, just let me know. :d

Ow! And Vint would not be Vint, as I was not planning on sunbathing on your desktop (at least, if it’s 1280*1024 beach).

Categories: Fashion, Laughter, Portrait, Vint Falken
12 Comments »

Let’s start with the official SL Video Tutorial wiki:

The video tutorial wiki/database covers a wide variety of subjects, from filling in your profile over building to SL photography and even liquify in PS. Neat! You don’t need to give any contact information to watch the videos, and residents are able to add their own. Neither do you need to pay. Good! Good! Good!

And now www.secondlifevideotutorials.com (You’ll can shoot me, cage me, orbit me or even take my precious photosphere away from me and I will _still_ not link to it!):

(If you type secondlifevideotutorials.com you end up at ‘Fast track home inspector training course and assessement program’ - a mistake? -, if you type www.secondlifevideotutorials.com you end up at the site I’m talking about here. And that’s being advertised on SLprofiles.com!)

For starters, it looks like sh*t and automatically reminds me of not very arrousing Viagra-spam. That and I’m really doubting if Mr. Miles page is actually legit if you keep this in mind:

You can’t (and agree not to) do any of the following:

Have the Second Life logo as the largest logo on your website or printed material;
Display a Second Life logo as the most prominent element on any page of your website or printed material;
Display a Second Life logo in any manner that implies a relationship or affiliation with, sponsorship, or endorsement by Linden Lab, or that can be reasonably interpreted to suggest editorial content has been authored by, or represents the views or opinions of Linden Lab or Linden Lab personnel;
Display a Second Life or Linden Lab logo in a manner that is in Linden Lab’s sole opinion misleading, defamatory, infringing, libelous, disparaging, obscene or otherwise objectionable to Linden Lab;

Now, lets just assume Mr. Krakow doesn’t want to mislead anyone. Just by accident the ‘Krakow Miles’ is written very very small and the SecondLife Logo and ‘Video Tutorials’ are huge. So ignoring this ‘little’ mistake, next thing to do is to look at the services Mr. Miles offers: ‘Over 100 Minutes Of ‘Click and Play’ Video Tutorials That SHOW You Exactly How To Master The ‘Must Know’ Features Of Second Life…. (And Without A Computer Geek In Sight!)‘. But dear Krakow… I heart computer geeks!! Can you please add one for me to the tutorials? Pretty please? :p

Hmmm. Without computer geeks will have to do. :( Now how do I get to those videos?!! Clicking ‘Click here to watch full screen “theatre style”‘ only opens the main window again! :( Ow! I see! Mr. Krakow wants to know my email. I’m sure he’ll send a link to the videos to that adress! But what else is he going to do with it? A quick view at his ‘disclaimer’:

This site is NOT officially associated with Linden Labs and Second Life // Go figure! :d

And here comes secondlifevideotutorials.com’s SAMPLE!!! Privacy Policy:

This privacy policy sets out how “[business name]” uses and protects any information that you give “[business name]” when you use this website.
“[business name]” is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.
“[business name]” may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from [date].

OMG! Now I feel _so_ safe. *grins* But there’s more (standard bullsh*t):

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:
whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you do not want the information to be used by anybody for direct marketing purposes
if you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to or emailing us at [email address]
We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.

Now. How do I contact you again?! And where’s that frigging checkbox you promise in the disclaimer?!! At this moment, I couldn’t hold myself back anymore and went for a whois on the domain. Just to see if the company adress in the disclaimer matches that of the domain. Hmm. Domain registered from Tucows and I’m not TechSavvy enough to find out more. *sobs* So let’s assume (at least) Krakow Miles’ company ‘Train In A Day’ is based Manchester, although I assume that’s just a postbox? There’s actually a traininaday.com, also registered through Tucows. At least that one looks more slick, and some IRL person’s names. I wonder if it’s the same ‘Train In A Day’, or if these people won’t like the secondlifevideotutorial.com site neither.

But anyway, after this, Mr. Miles, I’m not giving you my email! Besides I found another way to get the videos:

So that’s why instead of charging the standard $97 this course is really worth, we’re practically giving it away at the ridiculously low price of only $47.

For +- $0.50 / minute that’s a real bargain indeed, especially if I can get the same (and better) video tutorials somewhere else for free!

But to be honest, I must confes that I will not press the buy button that’s located above.. ow.. wait.. on the left of - are you sure the people you are targeting are still going to be able to find that button now? - that text.

And you sign with ‘Carl Duncker’. That’s nice. Who is it now?! Krakow Miles or Carl Duncker? This Carl Duncker: http://www.the-marketing-man.co.uk/?!

Dear Carl, secondlifevideotutorials.com is very sick example of marketing! It’s not about tutorials, teaching people or sharing knowledge! It’s not even close to honest! It’s just about abusing people’s good trust and getting some $ out of their pockets! You should be ashamed!

PS. And a big ‘Booohooo!’ for SLprofiles.com too, for actually running Mister Duncker’s ads!

Categories: Links, Rant, SL Web Resources, Second Life, Tutorial
11 Comments »

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of my Secondlife… as I visit exhitibions and get stuck in blacklights, as I keep working on my ‘Green Medic’ outfit and try to master RezLoop (I quickly gave up on aligning prim skirt panels by hand), as I find out Dra has a partner on file by now (I am not jealous! At all!) and as I try to take Veyron’s good advice on getting my second web life organised (Yes, PortableApps, I know by now! Let me first tape that USB stick together again!) and as I keep cursing my lack of RAM. (But all that minus the drama!) :p

Categories: Links, Portrait, Vint Falken
1 Comment »

Jacek Antonelli has posted the Not-a-Meme challenge #15: Make a new friend in SL. Here goes my response:

Actually, I add people to my friends list almost every day. Most of the time it’s just to make contacting them more easily (business cards don’t allow you to see if the avie is currently residing in-world) and for being able to TP them. But once in a while, I just _know_ I’m going to talk more often to that avie. Be it that he or she is interesting, kind and has a good sense of humor or an interesting take on ‘the SecondLife’. The lady added most recently to my friends list is such a person. May I present to you: the lovely and very talented Rejeanne Cannoli.

How did we meet?

She contact me in-world for taking her photograph. I wasn’t online at the time, so the first place I became aware of her existence, was in my inbox. ;)

What did we talk about up to now?

SL-photography, prim skirts, scripting, sexual transmittable diseases, living in a bi-lingual country and not speaking french that well. ;)

Will we meet again?

Yes, I really hope and think so! She sounded like a very interesting lady avatar that is very well-spoken and can actually teach me a thing or two about the SecondLife. Even if the ‘let’s exchange skills in stead of L$’ project does not go through, I’m sure we can still engage in good conversation.

And about my clothing in this picture, let me state one thing very clearly: I did not give up on being the Neko of the Reich and total SecondLife-world domination! I do am doing a lot of stuff involving the Hospital lately, and thus decided to dress a bit more appropriate before people will start to call me ‘Fraulein Mengele’.

Categories: Portrait, Second Life, Vint Falken, not-a-meme
8 Comments »

There are two sentences in Torley’s post ‘Be Luminous enjoy with “RenderGlow = TRUE”‘ that I don’t like at all:

1. (if your graphics card supports it) because for me the answer is: ‘probably not’.
2. Download Second Life 1.15 because I’m very busy being conservative and sticking to the 1.13 that _actually works_ for me.

But I must admit, judging from Torley’s screenshots it does make SL look less ‘flat’ and more ‘alive’. Luckily one can achieve - sort of - the same effect with the ‘Diffuse Glow’ filter in Photoshop. (Make sure in your tools palette the upper color layer is black and the one on the back is white and go to ‘Filters’, ‘Distort’, ‘Diffuse Glow’ and experiment with the sliders. ;))

Torley’s snapshots:

VS.

Categories: Links, Photography, Second Life
7 Comments »

Yesterday I stumbled over this build by Muratus Losangeles. It’s his new home, totals at 499 prims and has (real rotating) fans, a lot of slots, a CPU, some hard disks, …

Mr. Losangelus figures that as he lives his SecondLife from his home computer, he might as well live inside that same PC in SL. Nice way to show you accept you’re ‘only virtual’. ^^

But you did make me curious, Mr. Losangelus. What’s that other, longer story about SL and your computer?

Anyway, you can visit the computer build at the Toroge sim visit the computer at his new home. Do check it out, it’s kinda neat! ;)

Categories: Building, Exploring
7 Comments »

Yezzz, dze boss is featzured in dze local newzpaper!

You can pick up a copy of dze Avastar at the terraze of dze Paradize Lozt, oder browze dze zite of dze Avastar. Direct link to dze PDF of dzeses issue here: Dze Avastar issue 18 featzuring Helena Kirkorian as AvaStar. A pitty she haz only been given eines pagina, I think she haz lotz more dzu tell.

Ow, did you notize dze photogaph is mine? :d

The is alzo a huge file of dze pictzure for putting on the dezktop. Du findest es here. Enjoy! ;)

And if du bist curiouz after what the Club Paradize Lozt lookz like, Wuf Shirabyoshi haz taken lotz of pretty pictzures of it which you can find at her webzite.

(Ok, I’m going to quit those bad German jokes starting _now_. *Miauwz* *Miauws*)

Tiny version of the original .png:

Categories: Links, Paradise Lost, Photography, Portrait, Work
3 Comments »

It took me ages 40 minutes to find this video file from ‘the archives’. I remembered nothing about it whereabouts except that back then I had burned it to a red colored CDR, just to annoy the person that gave it to me. During this search I’ve held in my hands CD’s titled ‘Mandrake 8.1 disk 3′, ‘adobe photoshop 7.0, illustrator 10′, ‘bryce 5.0′ and ‘Die Ärtze’. Nostalgia, all right. :p

I loved (and still do love) this video, just because - although a lot of people don’t seem to get that - they put themselves into perspection. C’mon!? It are pigs drinking that wine in the end of the movie. Another reason why I love this vid: 1.22 on the vid’s counter, ripping open his shirt, the iron cross and the rather original way of drinking a german wine together with the lyrics ‘In the hands of the master / I am a slave / In the hands of the master / Broken or saved / In the hands of the master / In futility or lust’. ;) But whatever people say about Der Blutharsch, I heart Albin Julius’ voice, was there when they performed in Belgium and the band’s flag (an iron cross and oak’s leaves) hangs above my bed. (German ammo for Andro.)

Behold ‘In the hands of the master’ (or ‘time is thee enemey XI’) from Der Blutharsch (label: Wir Kapitulieren Niemals):

Took the video down upon request of the band. If you’re really that curious, just ask me for it.

Also on that red CD full of nostaligia lots of Boyd Rice stuff can be found. Again a very controversial person but I think the lyrics to his song ‘Disneyland Can Wait’ are amongst the best ever written. (Someday I’ll take you to Disneyland / We’ll go on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and follow him straight to hell / But that’s not necessary just now / For now hell’s all around us / No rubber devils, no smell of sulphur / But hell nonetheless / Hell more grotesque than any medieval woodcut / Instead of dramatic demons: a lifeless shuffling horde / Without souls, without imagination, without worth / And beyond redemption / Someday I’ll take you to Disneyland / I’ll buy you a pair of mouse-ears / Tons of cotton candy / And a big helium balloon with Mickey inside / But all that can wait / Today I’ll buy you a 357. Magnum, with lots and lots of bullets / I’ll buy you a stack of AK-47’s, and a warehouse filled with banana clips / all loaded, and ready to go / I’ll buy you a B52 loaded with neutron bombs / And lots of soldiers, to do whatever is necessary / Disneyland can wait / We have time / Someday there’ll be more of us / Maybe then the world can be Disneyland / And visiting hell will be noble again.)

Here we have Mr. Rice ft. Walt Disney:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhxLovB2d68]

Then my lonliness closes in
So, I drink a German wine
And drift in dreams of other lives
And greater times…

Vint

Categories: Music, Opinion, Rant
5 Comments »

Loki e-mailed me this, and indeed, it’s hilariously funny:

Investigators of the Belgian first life Federal Computer Crime Unit are investigating the rape of a SecondLife resident: RL cops patrolling the grid!

Belgian Federal Computer Crime Unit has started an investigation after a rape that happened in SecondLife. A complaint at the Police departement of Brussels (our capital, for god’s sake!) of an avatar being raped led to the opening of a case file and now the Federal Police says it’s their intention ‘to look into if any punishable facts occured.

Sources: De Standaard (ty Loki for this great break! *still laughing*) and HLN (via secondlifecrew.be) Would someone tell those cops Median is probably not a safe place to stroll around in police outfit and that they’d better wear their visitor tags? :p Ow! I so hope they bumb into Tiessa or Zoe. *grins*

Categories: Belgian, Laughter, Rant
9 Comments »

I’ve - tried to - explain this to other avies in-world for over 20 times now, and frankly, I’ve gotten rather tired of shouting out ‘use the frigging liquify tool to correct that!!!’ over and over. Badly made clothing edges, avie limbs seriously messed up by strange poses, squared parts that should be round, strange shadows, prim sticking in or out, exaggerated breast size, … most of this snapshot problems can be very easily corrected by doing some basic post-processing using the ‘Liquify’ tool in PS.

An example:

I was going to write a tutorial about this already ages ago. And then I realized I needed tons and tons of screenshots to go with it, and that I had to aquire those by taking a snapshot in PS, going to GIMP, pasting it, continuing with the liquify tool in Photoshop, taking another snapshot, going back to GIMP, copying, and back to Photoshop, and again, and again and again…

So I gave up on my ‘Text Tutorials uber Alles!’ resolution and made a video tutorial. It’s my first one evvah so please, be mild. If you have any more questions: *points at the comments and miaws*.

This video tutorial is shot in Photoshop CSII (maybe III has even more options there?) and is only a basic. Now you know that the liquify option exists, and what it does, play around with it. Get the hang of it. Experiment. And then show me some results! I’m curious!! Ow, and if you want to play with it without watching my tutorial first, you can find ‘Liquify’ in the ‘Filters’ menu. ;)

Video-tut on using the liquify tool in Photoshop to correct avatar forms and clothes in SecondLife snapshots:

Errors against the English language I bravely admit:

1. Cloth should be dress.
2. ‘First and all’ is no English. At all.
3. Ctrl+Alt+Z is very bad pronounced and sounds like Ctrl+Alt+C.
4. …
5. …
6. …

I beg for forgiveness for those! There was only one take for video and one take for voice. Next time, I’ll try harder (or just go with text again). *grins* *playfully moves her neko-ears* ;)

Tags: photoshop, tutorial
Categories: Photography, Photoshop, Tutorial, Vint Falken
38 Comments »