It all started by Pandora taking Dandellion by surprise: HUG-attack! By now, a large part of the grid inhabitants are on a hug quest, showing themselves visible on the map and teleporting to befriended avatars all over the Second Life grid, just to give them a hug.

I won’t say these days are all about hugging - they are about expensive presents, way to much food and showing off the clothes too - but I do think this is a nice initiative. Lindens surely did not give us animations just for SLex purposes, did they? ;)

Today, I took it one step further: I hugged a total stranger! That’s right, a total f*cking stranger. Zonya Zenovka is hawt, but still a stranger. If I inherited one thing from my human’s personality, it is that I am not likely to hug. On rare occasions, and only very spontaneously, I will do so. In SL spontaneously is even harder to do, as I still do not master the whole ZHAO, animations, Pandora-HUD stuff. Dumb me. But that’s besides the point here.

So, when shopping for free full perm female skin textures, I sneaked up on Zonya Zenovka with a huge smile on my mouth to hide discomfort. And then, when gathered all courage, I asked if I could hug.

Yeey! I was allowed. Still a bit uncomfortable, I decided to look at the whole hugging thing from a bit of a distance - through my snapshot window. But still… when it was over, I did not want to let go! :/

So, who’s next? To be hugged by me? And to confess about hugging experiences? Wrath? :D

For making hugging a bit easier, Pandora Designs has made a freebie demo Pandora HUD available, which gives you access to one hug, a lot of happy facial expressions and allows you to pick three persons that will always allow you to hug them.

Disclaimer: some parts of this blogpost may contain humorous winks. ;)

Tags: HUD, meme, second life
Categories: Second Life, Vint Falken
7 Comments »

From the Amondeu Artisans Guild group notices, which I love:

Free Female Skins with Full Perms
Fri Dec 28 12:02:50 2007

Artisans these skins are provided as separate textures and can be used to gain knowledge AND to help the new. Double threat :) If you have an interest in skin making or know any broke avies, don’t miss these designs by the great and generous maker Eloh Eliot. Deck the halls with good looking avatars!

Landmark to Another Shop at Libbert was included, needless to say, this whole post is about charing these coordinates with you. Free skins to be found at : Another shop, Lippert (73, 185, 179)

These 12 free skin textures (each skin exists out of a head texture, a lower body texture and an upper body texture) are full perm, which means you can export them back to RL to play with them - and learn from that - in Photoshop. The way to do this:

1. In Second Life, find the texture you want to copy to your hard drive and open the skin texture so that it shows on your screen.
2. Make sure it’s selected: it should be in front and the frame is dark grey, not transparent.
3. Go to the File menu and choose ’save texture as’.
4. … the rest of the process should be familiar. ;)

These kind of notices - always interesting, always surprising, never expensive - is why this is a group I’d _never_ voluntarily leave. Hail to the leader Kilnara Balnarring! ;)

Update:

This just gets better & better. Eloh Eliot has made the original .psd files of the skin textures available:

1. Fe skin texture - pds file
   
2. Le skin texture - pds file
3. Re skin texture - pds file
4. Se skin texture - pds file
5. Lfº skin texture - psd file
6. Cfº skin texture - psd file
7. Lfºy skin texture - psd file (male skin version!)
8. Ffº skin texture - psd file
9. new! Cf1 male skin texture - psd file
10. new! Rfº female skin texture - psd file
11. new! SFº female skin texture - psd file
12. upcoming: Pleiades

Keep in mind that Eloh Eliot asks that the ‘derivatives’ of these files, are freely shared too! More information on the BSD license and what restrictions Miss Eliot kindly asks for can be found here.

Tags: eloh eliot, freebie, skin, texture
Categories: Fashion, Freebies
48 Comments »

Second Life crashed. 2 seconds after I logged in. Which means all the nice Xmas whishes and all the pretty Xmas textures & gifts I received are _gone_. I did not have time to accept them. Does anybody know where they are now? Where does ‘unaccepted yet not refused’ stuff go when you crash? The wishes are in the chat logs - I hope -, but the inventory stuff? Did I ‘accept’ when crashing and can it be found in my inventory? Or do they go to some strange deserted inventory server? :/

PS. As cherry on the pie Christmas cake all my friends deserted me. Either that or they all turned into hippos. :(

Tags: inventory management, rant, second life crashes
Categories: Rant
18 Comments »

A merry Xmas to all, as for the other wishes, you may pick something from the list, to your liking:

• world peace

• lot’s of love

• a Porsche

Tags: xmas
Categories: Vint Falken
10 Comments »

Both Veyron as well as Tiessa want me to go against type for them. And Lillie prefers me in a trio, but only one some days. Yeey! Am I SLex-polular now? :p Veyron and Lillie both tagged me, so I have no option but to answer this questionnaire before there’s nobody to tag left. Yet, I added a category ‘who would you want to have SLex with, for nostalgia reasons?’

Do notice this mostly falls under the ‘fantasy should stay fantasy’ category: even if you’re listed here, I probably prefere talking, shooting, building, battling, discussing, shopping, … with you over having SLex. ;)

Name the avatar that you would most like to have second life sex with for…

1. … their avatar:
   Mr. Wrath Paine. C’mon ladies - and gents - do admit, that avie looks hawt! Compare it to the Wrath we knew 6 months ago, and note that he has become absolutely _gorgeous_. Runner up: Mr. Alexander Burgess
2. … their mind:
   Mr. Dolmere Talamasca. What’s holding me back? Apparently, finding a good story line to have sex with a skeleton - how colourful it might be - is rather difficult.
3. … their poetic/mystical/creative spirit:
   Miss Wuf Shirabyoshi. Pitty she’s a ‘miss’. And Mr. Andromega Volare and Miss October Hush.
4. … their social success/success in SL:
   This is a difficult one. Mr. Tate Watanabe? ;)
5. … their libido, that is the thing they seem to want to do from how they talk and act:
   *passes*
6. … wanting them to go against type for you. That is, if they are normally a top, you would want them to be your bottom, if they are straight and you are same sl gender:
   Mr. Dolmere Talamasca. Again, apparently skeletons do not have sex. :p
7. … and you would go against type for this:
   Miss Mygdala March
8. … and you would most want to do a nothing-but-sex week with, who you are not currently having sl sex with:
   Miss Veyron Supercharge. I don’t think I can think of any other avie with which a week of non-stop SLex could be that much fun.
9. … and you want a threesome, which two. They don’t have to be from the above list, but can be:
   I’ll list Mr. Wrath Paine and Mr. Dolmere Talamasca here. Yet, Wrath might find this to creepy. ;)
10. … “The forbidden,” the one that, you’d like to publicly confess to, but the consequences would be toooooo awful. Examples would be your best friend’s partner, a professional contact, someone you know rl who is here… Someone who you want, but have never been able to confess it too. Don’t post… Just answer with whether they are online right at the moment that you post your answer:
    I don’t think so. Honestly, I don’t know. And I’d rather loose my two pair of ears and tail before worrying / caring again.
11. … nostalgia reasons: Mr. Ecelebration Londen

Awefully curious about what Mr. Evans, Timothy Lilliehook, Kris Constellation, Kean Kelly, Nephie Eerie, Dolmere Talamasca and Loki Popinjay will answer. Wrath was already tagged by Veyron.

Tags: meme, slex
Categories: Vint Falken
21 Comments »

Tired of having to ‘justify’ yourself to someone as to why you do not join their group? Tired of hearing the same excuse over and over - sorry, I have reached my group membership limit - when asking people to join your group? Tired of having to go over your list of groups and decide which person will be the least insulted when you quit one?

Well, all this group membership limitation trouble and pain that burdens your Second Life will be over soon! That is, if you go to JIRA issue MISC-208 ‘More than 25 groups!’ and vote positively for it. Veyron said to do so in her putch to expand SL group limit! And CodeBasterd Regrave also thinks this is a great idea. Yet I do not see why we would have to use a petition if we have JIRA.

Update: If you’re not familiar with using the JIRA, Cherlindra Lamont has a nice step-by-step explanation of the login process and the voting over on Fabulously Free in SL.

Yeah, I know: this probably has been begged, pleaded and demanded for before. But let’s try this. See if we still own our world, or at least are a tiny bit able to influence it. Oh, and dear Linden gods, if you can’t give us this, then at _least_ give us RSS feeds for group notices!

I hope this is the last time I’ll be ‘cleaning out’ my Second Life group memberships:

1. blogpile land
2. *q-music city*
3. ::no name::
4. 555 staff
5. amondeu artisans guild
6. belgie - belgique
7. blogher ‘07 in second life
8. cannery dev
9. codered lounge
10. das waffenamt
11. dolmere basstastic perversion live
12. friends of rejeanne
13. girls and guns
14. hk estates
15. opensim pioneers
16. paradise lost…
17. queen’s volunteer punishment corps
18. rezzable
19. rezzable creators
20. secondlife bloggers
21. sister act!
22. sl birthday exhibitors
23. stella errans
24. the paine principle group, lcc
25. virtual thirst unveiling event

Tags: groups, jira, second life, SLinovation
Categories: Second Life
19 Comments »

I was already wondering when Sweet Second Life would not only - attempt at - indexing the SL blogosphere, but also be a topic for that blogosphere. Not that I was awaiting it. When they first launched and started spamming blog comments, I asked for a bit more info. Although I did send it to the email address they supplied, I never got an answer: i just figured they did not want people to write about them.

Now they finally get noticed, it’s not in a way that calls out for a lot of applause: Crap Mariner is wondering if Sweet Second Life is full of Crap. Well, it isn’t. Although he did submit his blog, and that is exactly why it _is_ full of crap. Yes, this kinda confuses me too. Also Tiessa Montgolfier, having submitted both mine and Veyron’s blog - which never showed up - finds they have a strange way of ranking blogs or a lousy crawler.

Yet, at the Social Rank headquarters, they have their answer ready:

Hi there. Thanks for your feedback. I have added both of the blogs that you mentioned into Sweet Second Life so you will start to see them being added over the next week or so.

In terms of the ranking, it is based on links and comments. So, in that sense it is more advanced than either Google or Technorati because we really look at who is talking about which blogs and we do that over time so we can have accurate rankings.

However, at times we may miss a blog so thanks for suggesting that we add these into our index.

Geeh. Lady or Sir, I wrote you an email to ask for info, and you never replied. Back at that time, when I got a beta or alpha or zero or whatever account, I also submitted multiple SL blogs, where amongst mine. Other blogs included were for instance Zoe Connolly’s, October Hush’s, Kisa Naumova’s, Dolmere Talamasca’s, Codebastard Redgrave’s etc. All rather popular and active blogs. They never showed up in your rankings. A few months ago, I submitted mine again. It still did not show up. You say you index - I still doubt you index at all - based on the amount of comments and incoming links? I must say, that the last quarter, I had a lot of both. So someone needs to work on their algorithm a bit? I agree with Dandellion, don’t boast about being more original than technorati, or google. At least, they index quite thoroughly. And they drop by if you ask them to!

One thing learned: the link-love theory is bullshit. Best way to be blogged about: not linking to people! Although I still assume, you do not want people to write about you, and you did not list my blog, so I’m not linking. Nah. Yeah, I’m rather good at holding grudges. And I now second the full-of-crap-theory, in stead of the link-love one. ;)

Tags: blogtools, sl blogs
Categories: SL Blogs, Vintfalken.com
7 Comments »

Breaking your head over how to get Google Analytics to run on your Flickr account - as far as I know that was impossible - is now history: Flickr has given us stats. *click here to activate yours* I wonder what they’ll give us, as we allready know how many people see a photograph - that’s public - or how many fav’ed it. Locations? Referring domains? Search terms? I wonder what we would have got if Google and not Yahoo bought Flickr! ;)

Tell me, how many of you already pressed the button?

;

Ow, and some more about the Flickr stats:

• They are only available to pro members.
• Flickr has stats to show you on the amount of visitors since the day your Flickr account was born.
• Yes, they contain referrers. Only from a week before you active the stats, though.
• They can not track views on external sites. Well, I assume they can, they just are not doing that.
• They’ll show search engine traffic.
• Daily stats for your account as well as each seperate photograph.
• Most viewed photograph of yesterday & all time. I would like to see some more sub categories there.

An analytics addict

Tags: flickr
Categories: Flickr
4 Comments »

1. Crashed A Cab on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - Never thought a drowning virtual cab could be this beautiful. Best WindLight photograph _evvah_! ;)
2. Motorati Life - Motorati / Pontiac will leave SL on December 31th. Auwch. I always referred to them as a prime example of corporate engagement in SL. *sheds a virtual tear*
3. fotowoosh - Powered by Freewebs - ‘We live in a multidimensional world- it’s time to break out of the one or two dimensions that media and technology have locked us into for so long.’ I agree, although it does not work terrific on my test images. You can try it out on facebook.

Categories: Links
3 Comments »

Pfff. I know my Xmas tree to hang in Rezzable’s christmas tree is not extra-ordinary, but that ugly that they need to close down the grid to prevent me working on it? Nah. Besides, was sabotaging uploading textures, taking the ‘final’ version of the tree into my inventory, deleting half finished trees and scaling up & down of the tree, etc. not yet enough?

*returns to PS to make a candle texture*

Tags: downtime
Categories: Rant
4 Comments »