Yet another quick post

Sigh . . .

I have way too much work to do, so I can’t even make it onto SL tonight. I’ll post quickly about last night, and then it’s back to the grind.

I started Monday night by cleaning up my inventory a bit. I had received some free things that I hadn’t looked through yet, so I had to decide what was worth keeping and dumping the rest. As I was doing this, my neighbor called to me from outside, so I went outside to talk to her.

I had noticed soon after logging in that my neighbor’s treehouse was gone and that she had for sale signs out. I had also noticed that she raised her land so that it was no longer level with mine. I feared that she was doing this as an attempt to get me to buy the land, as I have an arch that faces it, and with raising the height of her land, it made a hill in front of that arch that mostly hid the flowers I had planted on either side of it. When we started talking, she mentioned that her land was for sale and that if I wanted to buy it, she would give me a better price. While she did mention a few reasons why she thought I might want to buy the land, she wasn’t pushing me very hard to do so. Because of this, I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt and not considering the raising of her land a technique she’s employing to get me to buy it. She seems like a nice girl and has freely given me items in the past (she even gave me a couple of things last night), so I won’t think badly of her.

I talked to my friend Sexy a bit over IM while chatting with my neighbor. She offered to teleport me to ACTIV8, one of the clubs where she works, but I wasn’t really in the mood last night. Instead, I did a little bit of shopping and explored Sylvan Park a bit. Afterwards, I sent an IM to FallOutBoy, whom I had met at Temenos Island and with whom I had done some shopping a few nights ago. She had wanted to see my place, so I was checking to see if she ever had the chance. She had not, so I teleported her in and gave her a tour.

Following the tour, I took FOB to a yard sale where she could get the pounce attachment I had picked up previously in the night. We then stood and talked at the yard sale for a very long time before going to Bliss Garden to take a few pics.

So, that’s it, ladies and gentlemen. And about 10 minutes before it turns midnight here. Still managing to post daily Gonna be hard tomorrow, though, since I’m not going to make it into SL.

Very quick post

I almost feel like I am cheating with this post, trying to maintain a daily posting schedule, as it’s going to be very short. RL is currently interfering with SL (I know, how dare it!), so I’m not able to be online as much :/ I did get online last night, but I spent most of that time arranging items in my inventory. I did make a trip to Grendel’s Children, though, and bought a few new avies (my God, they were inexpensive—Medusa cost me the most at 110L!). Here’s a pic of everyone’s favorite Gorgon:

Oops, I suppose I should have told you not to look directly at the picture.

Luck of the Irish

Well, dear readers, I don’t have much to post about today. Last night was relatively uneventful.

I started the night by trying to find some accessories I needed for an outfit. I wasn’t having any luck, so I decided to play poker with my friend Tommy. He was in the process of wrapping up a game, so we didn’t play for long (just long enough for me to lose 40 L). Following the game, I went to ACTIV8 to hang out with Sexy again. The club was, not surprisingly, having a best in green contest. I’m really not that much into St. Patty’s Day, so I didn’t have a good outfit to wear. I finally just put on my green fairy outfit that I wore to the first ColeMarie concert I went to. Frankly, even if I had tried to compete, there were some excellent outfits last night, and I wouldn’t have stood a chance without putting some effort into it. Some people really went all-out for the occasion.

At one point in the night, I got stuck dancing between two Amazons. Seriously, these girls looked to be at least a foot taller than me, and my avie is 5′8″! After extricating myself from that situation, I started getting hit on by some guy who made a joke about “having me for free” (I had mentioned that much of what I was wearing were freebies), then acting like he wasn’t into cybering, then trying to convince me that cybering is no big deal. Yeah, real smooth.

I finished the night by doing some shopping. I bought a cool rockabilly dress, a pearl necklace with matching earrings, and dogtags for one of my neko outfits. And that’s about it :/ I didn’t even manage to snap any pictures (really should have got a shot of those Amazons).

I promise I’ll try to be more entertaining next time

When good kitties go bad . . . (don, don, doooooooon)

First off, Happy St. Patty’s Day, everyone. Make sure to put on your green, watch out for leprechauns, and beat any errant snakes you come across (Oh, Whacking Dayyyyy . . .).

Second, I have an announcement I should have made a few days ago. One of my pics from Flickr was to be put in a German newspaper today as part of a story on SL! Unfortunately, the story isn’t online, so I can’t verify that they actually used one of mine, but that they considered using one of my pics is really cool It makes me think that my photography is improving, and though I’ll never be as good as some of the people in the SL Flickr pool, I at least have some confirmation that my pics aren’t horrible. Plus, my account is no longer falls under NIPSA (or is NIPSAed or has NIPSA applied to it or however that should be said), so I’ve been getting many more views. I have a couple of pics with over 300 views, and another one that is very close. Apparently, a pic I took of a Cthulhu sculpture in game even made Flickr Explore! Of course, it looks like many, many pics get chosen for Flickr Explore!, but I was still happy about it

Anyway, the newspaper that was to use my pic is called HNA, and the story was to appear in today’s paper (March 17). If any Deutschland readers out there happen to come across my pic, let me know The pic would either be Annie_3-8-07_concert_3 or relaxing_at_asylum.

Wait, I just thought of another announcement. I’ve been meaning to have a housewarming party soon to get all my friends together in SL. I keep putting it off, as I’m not sure how to keep people entertained in SL—it’s not like I can just keep the alchohol flowing I’m thinking of finally setting a date within the next week or two, though. If you’d like to come but aren’t currently on my friends list, let me know.

OK, now to get to last night . . .

I tried to do some shopping again last night. I keep looking for cool outfits to go with my neko skin, but I don’t think I’m great at coming up with them. Maybe after I go exploring Midian with October some of her style will rub off on me I did finally find a jacket that I liked and put together an outfit that I think works. We’ll see what happens when I finally wear it out.

I did come up with what I’m unimaginatively calling my “bad kitty” outfit. It doesn’t seem like a very neko outfit, but I like it I wore it around almost all night, even when I attended a beach party. Sure, I didn’t fit in, but when you look this good, it doesn’t matter :p

While taking this pic, I made a new friend who I talked to much of the night. We started off talking horror movies and got into Star Wars and Japanese culture. He knew much more about the latter two subjects, but I think I held my own when it came to horror flicks

I did a little more exploring last night, but not much. There are a couple more pics on Flickr to check out, if you so choose.

Wow, three days in a row of posting. Can I make it four? Tune in tomorrow and find out

My first step towards going back to daily posts

Here we go . . . two consecutive days of posting! Woot!

Last night wasn’t the most interesting night, dear readers, but I’ll try to be as entertaining as I can

My goal last night was to find a jacket to go with the boots I bought on Wednesday night. Seemed like a simple enough task—really all that I wanted was a brown jacket. It didn’t matter if it was leather, corduroy, whatever, as long as it was something casual that would complement the boots. Instead of going into all the particulars, I’ll just tell you that it was not as simple as I thought it would be, and at the end of the night, I still did not have my jacket. I did buy a cool black leather jacket, but it did not go with the boots. Instead of the jacket, I ended up buying a hoodie and jeans outfit from the same place I bought the boots the other night. Guess I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by just buying it then :/

There was one very cool thing that happened while I was shopping: I ran into Sidney Smalls. It may sound strange, but to me, it was like meeting a celebrity! Sidney is part of the Second Life Photo Pool, and she takes some really cool pics. Beyond that, some of the descriptions for her pics talk about photo technique (it was because of her that I learned about the zoom feature in SL). She was very polite as we talked, though I was certain she would have rather been about her shopping than be bothered by me Anyway, it made my night.

So be warned, SL Photo Pool members . . . if I see you in world, I will accost you

After I was done shopping, I decided to see some of the SL artwork that’s been talked about on the SL forums. There’s a thread devoted to a sculptor named Starax Statosky, about whom everyone was raving, so I thought I would check out what made them so special.

Since it was late when I started, I didn’t get to see a lot of his stuff, but I did get an idea of what made his work so special. This Cthulhu sculpture was my favorite out of the few I had an opportunity to see. If you check out my Flickr page, you can see a couple more (FYI, the spider sculpture is not one of Statosky’s). Also, if you check the thread in the forums, you find a list of the in-world coordinates for many of his works.

OK, I’ll be back tomorrow with more tales of the mundane

Return of the cat

Ugh . . . I need to get back on a daily posting schedule here. I apologize to all you hypothetical readers I have out there

Anyway, I’ve been so comfortable in my neko skin, that I’ve been wearing it for the last three nights. After the “Night of the neko” I posted about last, I decided that there were more pics I wanted to take in this skin. So, after a night of dancing alongside my friend Sexy once again at ACTIV8 (I need to get a pic of us doing this sometime, since it’s been a common occurrence lately), I began searching for new places in SL to take some pics. I wore the same outfit I did on Monday night, except I removed the vest and arm warmers (in actuality, the vest, arm warmers, and leg warmers were all part of a jacket I butchered to make this outfit). I decided to try out the Wastelands, since I had seen them in the pics of other SLers and thought the environment suited my outfit.

Though I got a couple of pics I liked, I still wasn’t satisfied, so I headed to Devil’s Moon, a place I learned about from Natalia’s blog. Though I thought the city was cool, with its Blade Runner-inspired architecture, I couldn’t find any particular section of it that jumped out at me. That changed when I entered Abranimations and saw one of the coolest avies I’ve come across in SL: ED-209 from Robocop.

Though not an exact replica of everyone’s favorite malfunctioning security robot from the movie, this avie is just awesome. I don’t know where or when anyone might use this avie (maybe in a roleplaying sim?), but even I was tempted to buy it. I don’t remember the price exactly, but it seems like it was around 1200 or 1400 lindens. The upper end of that is what I paid for my neko skin, without the ears, tail, or whiskers.

Of course, I wouldn’t look nearly as cute as ED-209, right? You’d better answer that question correctly if you know what’s good for you. :p

I followed up Devil’s Moon with a trip to the City of Lost Angel’s. I took a couple of pictures there while I did my best to avoid the roleplayers (didn’t want to mess up their game). Check out my Flickr page to see them.

On Wednesday night, I met a new friend who shopped with me for neko gear. I was desperately searching for a good collar for my avie. I bought the collar with a bell from the shop on Temenos Island, and though I like it, the ringing started to drive me nuts (if anyone knows how to silence the bell, please let me know). I did buy a collar at Miau Haus that has a kitty who’s flipping everyone off (very cute), but it’s white and doesn’t show up well against my neko skin. I actually spent the whole night looking for a good collar, but even when I found one I liked, it was no copy (for the love of God, why do designers do this with items that will likely be used with more than one outfit—e.g., shoes? I’m not going to buy multiple copies, if that’s their reasoning). It wasn’t until the end of the night that I finally realized that I could easily make a collar myself. In fact, a little modification of my Maria choker would give me a collar I could copy as much as I wanted. Yeah, I’m a little slow sometimes So, I’ll probably be spending a little time tonight coming up with a new collar. Who knows—I may even sell it, as a copyable item

Oh, I took a couple of pics last night as well, sporting a new hair/hat combo and new outfit. Check out my Flickr page to see it.

Hopefully, I’ll be back here posting mañana with more thrilling tales

Night of the neko

After spending Friday and Saturday away from SL, I resumed my second life on Sunday evening. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, I need to talk about the excellent Toe’d Up concert I attended on Thursday. Let me just say that I think this group is fantastic, and not just because I’m friends with the lead singer Annie They did a rendition of “Heart Shaped Box” that I would love to have a copy of. They did some other covers as well as some of their own songs. If you haven’t checked them out yet, please, for the love of God, click the link I’ve provided under Chloe’s Hot Spots

I think I followed up the concert with a game of poker. Maybe I played poker before the concert. I can’t remember What I do know is that I actually won about 400 L. Of course, I soon tipped all my winnings away at the clubs I visited later

Return now to Sunday evening. Not a lot happened the night of my return, though I did get a chance to hang out with ColeMarie, which I hadn’t done in a while. I may have also been at ACTIV8 with Sexy (I’ve been there quite a bit since she began work as a dj there). Anyway, I can’t remember much else (maybe more will come to mind when I’m not so tired), so let’s move on to . . .

Monday. Overall, it was a good night. Sure, I didn’t get to win the poker tournament I was in, and I spent even more of my dwindling money on tips (really need to find a way to make money in SL), but I got a chance to talk to several of my friends, which always makes me happy I visited Annie at her place and got to see the work she’s doing on it (she’s really making it cute), I talked to my poker buddy Tommy (very nice guy—you all should visit him at Aces High), and I spent time once again dancing alongside Sexy at ACTIV8 (always a pleasure). I even talked to my neighbor Tabitha, who gave me a little red dragon that will follow me around.

After all my friends went to bed, I decided to put some outfits together and take some pictures. When I visited Annie earlier, she was wearing neko ears and a tail, which made me realize how long it had been since I wore my neko skin. After putting on my skin, I began trying out different pieces to come up with a new outfit. I came up with this camo ensemble:

I took this picture behind Gritty Kitty (and did a very poor job of cloning a few elements). I think this is my favorite outfit that I’ve come up with for my neko. To see a few more pics, check out my Flickr page.

OK, I need to get to bed I’ll be back tomorrow . . . same bat time . . . same bat channel

Toe’d Up concert today!

If you’re in SL today, you should come see my friend Annie’s group Toe’d Up at Harmony! The show starts at 1 PM SL time (4 PM Eastern).

Annie’s a great person, it will be a great show, you’ll have a great time, and, um, it will be great to see you all there

Just search for Harmony in SL. I’ll try to post coordinates when I return from work . . . and here they are: MCEstates (78, 40, 29).

Toe’d Up rocks!

Sunday through Tuesday recap

Here’s what’s happened over the last few days.

Sunday

After finishing the Maria costume I posted about last, I attended Natalia Zelmanov’s blog party at the Bubblegum Music Factory. I decided I would wear the teal dress I bought at the Virtual Angels charity yard sale, as it has quickly become one of my favorites (the clothing from Simone is really well done—you should visit the yard sale if you haven’t yet, but do it soon, as it ends on March 10). Using the landmark Natalia had included with the invitation, I arrived at the party maybe 5 minutes or so after it began. Unfortunately, I had to wait another 5-10 minutes, as the area was lagged, and my hair and dress wouldn’t rez (I actually hid in the bushes outside until they finally did). Grrr . . .

Anyway, once I was completely clothed :), I joined the party inside. A lot of people who frequent Natalia’s blog were there, dancing and talking away. Natalia wore her dress from the Miss Second Life finals, and it looked very, very nice close up. After dancing for about an hour, we all stood in front of the fireplace for a group picture . . . which I unfortunately don’t have available to post (sorry). I will post one of the snapshots I took, though

That’s Natalia on the left side of the picture. I didn’t talk to her much, as I imagined she was being IMed left and right by partygoers, and I didn’t want to add to the deluge. Maybe someday I’ll meet her in SL in a less hectic situation and we’ll have a chance to chat

I think everyone had a good time at the party, and awards were given near the end for best-dressed female and worst-dressed male. My choice for best-dressed female didn’t win (and no, it wasn’t me), but I did help choose the winner for worst-dressed male

I had to make a quick exit from the party as it neared its end, as I had a RL problem to attend to (my sink was overflowing, flooding my kitchen!). I’m not sure if I returned to SL again before . . .

Monday

Since I was so pleased with my Maria costume (though I know it could still use a little work), I decided to start work on a Lisa Garland costume. Lisa is the nurse from Silent Hill 1, and she is a fan favorite because of her tragic story. Though it seems that her outfit shouldn’t be too difficult to do, since it is just a nurse’s uniform, that seems to make it all the more difficult to me. Because it is just a nurse’s uniform, I have to make sure all the details are there to differentiate it from other nurse’s uniforms. So, I’m trying to get everything as close as possible. I really want to capture the shape and texture of Lisa’s hat, so I’ve been spending a good amount of time experimenting with that. Plus, I’m trying to figure out how to shade a white dress and have it come out looking right. I’ll post some pics as I get closer to finishing the outfit.

Tuesday

In an effort to build a sense of community with my neighbors, I decided to transform the greater portion of my property into a park. It’s fairly basic as it is, but I finished it on Tuesday. The park is, I’m guessing, about 1024 sq. m., so it isn’t huge, but it has a modified version of the pond I previously made, several cherry trees, some flowers, and three brick archways leading into it. Each arch has the name “Streeter Park” etched into it (damn narcissism). I still haven’t found anything to put on the pedestal in the center of my little pond. I’ll come up with something . . . eventually

I also spent Tuesday shopping for yet more clothes while the Virtual Angels charity yard sale is still in effect. I bought two more dresses, a top, and a pair of shoes (which didn’t show up in my inventory, though I’m sure that will be rectified). I was so happy with the way that my avie looked in one of the dresses, that I just kept having her walk back and forth near my home (did I mention the narcissism?). During this, I IMed back and forth with Annie, one of the coolest SL chicas out there Oh, and her band is playing at Harmony again tomorrow! I’ll post the time here later

After talking to Annie, I spent some time talking with my friend Sexy, who has added ACTIV8 to the clubs she djs at. I joined her there later for a beach party. We had fun dancing the night away in our bikinis (though someone didn’t keep her bikini on for long ;)). After the winners were announced for best male and female swimsuit, I called it a night, as I was exhausted.

And now, I have to be off to work :/ But I’ll be back soon

My first attempt at making an outfit

OK, so the title isn’t 100% accurate. I did try making several outfits before leaving newbie island. Of course, these were all incredibly basic, and I have none of them in my inventory now. Since then, I have made pieces to go with other clothing I bought (or got for free), such as socks or an undershirt, but I didn’t try another complete outfit of my own until this past weekend.

What prompted me to take another shot at clothes design was seeing an image posted by October Hush to the Second Life Flickr pool. She submitted a snapshot from Little Silent Hill, and being a fan of the games, I decided I had to visit the area. But if I were going to go, I needed to be dressed appropriately.

I visited the shop in Little Silent Hill to see if they had any outfits. While they did have a cool Robbie the Rabbit avatar for free and had a mini Pyramid Head (not sure if this was an outfit or just a doll), they did not have an outfit for the character I had my heart set on: Maria from Silent Hill 2. I couldn’t walk around Little Silent Hill in my normal clothes, so I took it upon myself to create the outfit.

The construction took all my SL time on Saturday and part of Sunday. Using Chip Midnight’s clothing templates (which are improved versions of the basic SL clothing templates) and Photoshop CS (still haven’t upgraded), I created Maria’s undershirt, sweater, skirt, socks, and butterfly tattoo. It took a lot of tweaking (and several uploads of new textures) to get the seams to adequately match up, but I was finally satisfied with what I had done. In game, I created Maria’s choker, belt, ring, and boots. The boots were a definite first for me, and the first version of them was very basic (and very clunky—this is like the fourth time I’ve used that word to describe the boots because it defined them so well). On Sunday, I worked on the boots a little more, and they are now much closer to what Maria wears in the game.

So, without further ado, here is the outfit, placed beside a picture of Maria for your reference. There are a few things that I still might tweak, but I’m pretty happy with it right now. What I would really like to change are the hair and skin, but I have never tried to create either, and I think they may be beyond my abilities right now. The hair that I’m wearing here is the platinum and pink Tart from Diversity Hair, edited to make it darker (couldn’t add the dark roots, though, without changing the texture). The skin is my normal skin (New Blush from Chip Midnight) sans makeup. In my opinion, I look a little too healthy and happy here to be Maria, and changing the skin and makeup would go a long way in fixing that. If anyone has any comments or suggestions on the outfit, I’d love to hear them There’s always a chance that someone will see something that I’ve totally missed.

I’ll end with this image of Maria in action at Heaven’s Night in Little Silent Hill. Be sure to check out my Flickr page for more images of the outfit.

I’ll be posting again soon with info about Natalia Zelmanov’s blog party, which I attended yesterday afternoon. If you haven’t checked out her blog yet, you should, as it is incredibly informative, especially to those of us with aspirations of creating in-game material. You can find her blog here.

Ciao!

Chloe