I went to my ISP's office this afternoon and they said it will take 7 to 10 working days to get my Internet connection up and running in my new place. Is this normal??? *Quaintly dies of Internet (and SL) deprivation*
So, ladies and gentlemen... I will see you when I am able :) Have fun inworld on my behalf, and may the new RC not crash you!
Okay, that totally wasn't what I wanted to post yesterday. Hands up all those who are sick and tired of hearing about my inventory. *Quaintly raises both hands* I tell you I could happily live the rest of my life without ever hearing the word 'inventory' again!
Now this, THIS is what I wanted to blog about. This video:
I saw it on Sasy Scarborough's blog and felt it well worth sharing. To me the saddest part is that she said SL is just like RL where if your av is in a wheelchair, people treat you differently :(
And I guess SL is a place where people with disabilities can be "normal" if they want to be. They can be themselves and not worry that they'll be pre-judged due to their disabilities. SL does give you a certain freedom, and together with the anonymity of the Web, that can be a marvellous thing. (Of course, it's also why so many male avs feel able to walk up to female avs and say, "Wanna f***?" *sigh*)
Still, that's really no excuse for LL founder Philip Rosedale to say that most SL residents are trying to escape to an alternative, anonymous world. Of course, he was also quoted as saying that the only thing SL residents have in common is a lot of free time, and that "bad weather, oppressive regimes, and poor economic conditions" are what make SL users. If I were working for a company whose founder and head dared to PUBLICLY say such insulting things about our customers -- which, you remember, are what put us in business in the first place -- I'd take it as a Very Bad Sign.
Makes you wonder what the morale is like in LL.
I received my debit card statement in the mail today, and wonder of wonders, I have more money in my card than I thought I had! Which means I can buy Lindens! Which means I'm not broke anymore! Yay!!!
But, I dare not purchase anything, because...
A number of my inventory folders are SHOWING EMPTY AGAIN. Dammit!
It happened three days ago. I haven't worried because one of the folders showing empty contains the hair currently on my head, and another contains the boots on my feet. I figured it was just normal SL weirdness and just went about my usual stuff.
Well, three days and my folders are still empty. Of course, this only happens to Quaintly and not my other two alts. Maybe the name Quaintly is jinxed... (for those who don't know, my original av Quaintly Questi lost her entire inventory in February. *sigh*)
Strangely enough, I am not upset -- I am annoyed. I can't understand how the HAIR ON MY HEAD could be missing from inventory, nor the BOOTS ON MY FEET. So, it's probably an issue with the stoopid inventory not loading properly from the database or something. I did the clear-cache-and-log-into-low-lag-sim thing, no difference. Maybe I need to try it a few more times.
Bah!
UPDATE:
I cleared cache again, then logged in with the Nicholaz viewer instead. Inventory loaded like a dream! Logged out and then went back to 1.19.1(4) and everything was back where it should be. Another day, another catastrophe averted...
I've been chatting with some SL friends lately, and the topic got to that of age. Hehe. I'm not coy about my RL age -- I figure it's a fact of life -- but what's interesting is that some of my friends have turned out to be... hmmm... how to say this... significantly older than I am? :D
It's SO COOL, I cannot tell you how cool it is. I can't imagine my mom on SL, she only learnt how to email about 2 years ago and then I had to write out step-by-step instructions:
1. Press the big round button on the large rectangular box. 2. Double-click the tomato-looking icon on the screen. 3. Type in gmail.com in the long white bar at the top of the screen.
(Yes, it's a desktop PC, and don't tell me you've never thought the Firefox logo looks like a tomato from afar!)
Anyway, so yeah. I've been blogging my personal life since 2002 and couldn't get my parents to understand what this blogging stuff is all about. Why blog? And why put details of your life on the Interweb? What is the point??
I have no hope of explaining SL to them at all... let alone an SL blog!!!
I am broke. I have exactly L$9 in my account. *boohoohoo*
Well, maybe this will help to cure my shopping addiction. *grins*
What with moving house in RL and all the associated extra costs, I can't justify buying Lindens, and since I don't have a job in SL and haven't gotten a RL job yet (first I need to get through exams this week and next week!!), I'm trying to be responsible. You know, like a grown-up??
Sometimes I don't feel very grown-up. *giggles* Since I couldn't decide whether to study or to pack... yup, you guessed it... I went in-world. And built my first ever useful thing - a pose stand!
I figured it out by looking at a full perms pose stand I already had - a gift from Sn@tch - and also modded the script inside to make the av float higher in the air. That's to make it easier to see the feet when you make adjustments to shoe prims. So, I must really thank Ivey Deschanel. She's one of the most generous designers in SL and hands out great freebies to her group all the time!
The flower pattern on the top surface of the stand comes from a box of free textures in Sioxie Legend's store and the side texture is from a freebie box I got at the Digital Dragon Designs freebie area. Yay for freebies!
Now, I know a pose stand is probably one of the most basic things ever a person could make, and they're a dime a dozen since many clothing stores bundle one in together with their products. But I was so ridiculously pleased with myself for managing to make it - and, more, managing to successfully mod the script. I don't know anything about LSL, the scripting language used in SL, but I do know a bit of HTML (just enough to be dangerous) and so I kind of felt my way around. And experimented. heheheh.
I wonder if I'll ever be able to create anything worth selling. I haven't the first clue about Photoshop or GIMP, unfortunately. Of course, one could always learn. Then again, it might become too much like work? SL is entertainment and a hobby, I don't want it to become like work. Hmmmm.
As an aside: I'm now using the 1.19.1(4) viewer with no problems, except (you knew there was gonna be an 'except') I find that the lighting is completely different from 1.18.5.3. I'm not running Windlight settings because my PC can't support them, but still... where 'sunrise' used to give great lighting for taking pictures, now it makes everything all orangey; 'sunset' is too dark and 'midday' gives shadows and makes the av look washed out. So now my pictures look like crap again. Gaaaah.
And I was trying to make a light, when I realised it didn't work because I have local lights turned off in my graphics preferences. *sigh*
I swear I have the bestest landlord ever.
I'm renting a cottage from IBME Swindlehurst for free, a deal he offers to newbies less than 90 days old... and my lease is expiring in less than 10 days, by which time I'll be moving in RL, and probably not have an Internet connection for a week or so.
Yesterday I was talking to him about it, discussing the possibility of renting land and moving my stuff in SL before moving in RL. After all, I don't want to log in to SL after a week and find all my stuff returned to me, in my Lost & Found folder!
"If you want to stay in the cottage until after your move, that might be better? I can set that up. That gives you a little time to get settled, and you don't have to pay anything," he said.
o.O
He is so nice, can you believe it??
Then I was telling him I've been looking at pre-fabs, but nothing has really caught my eye. I'm actually trying to make my own house, but I keep getting distracted. So far I have... err... two walls :P
He offered to build a house for me!
*swoons*
My friend Aureis: "You have a crush on your landlord."
Quaintly: "I do not!"
Aureis: "Yes you do!"
Quaintly: "I do not!"
But, you know, he IS really such a nice guy... and it is so rare to meet somebody so nice... *looks dreamy*
Aureis: "There ya go!"
Quaintly: "Oh, shut up!"
Every time I see the last name 'Babii' in SL, I want to grin. I don't personally know anyone with that last name yet, so I'd better say this first before I make friends with one and risk offending them...
'Babi' is an actual word in our national language (Malay). It, err, is the name of an animal. *cough* The animal that is round and pink and goes "oink". *cough*
Mind you, I'm not trying to be offensive. This is a fact ;)
*grin*
I think there's some sort of conspiracy going on.
My ISP and SL are BOTH pissing me off big-time. Half the time SL is borked, the other half my Internet connection is borked, and sometimes they're borked TOGETHER. It's at the point when I'm not sure sometimes whether it's SL, my ISP, or my computer (old, slow, laggy).
Bah.
I am hoping the Internet connection issue will be solved once I move to my new place end of April. Of course, knowing my ISP, we might end up without a connection for days. And before you tell me to take my business to a different ISP... it's practically a monopoly in my country.
*grumble grumble mutter grumble* *glares at monitor* *swears at ISP* *thinks disparaging thoughts about LL*
Getting inworld, staying inworld and doing stuff inworld (read: shopping) is starting to be such a chore that I'm hardly bothering these days. SL was already starting to bore me, and now it's just frustrating the hell out of me. Why would I want to waste my time on something that frustrates me? Frustration is not good for health!
*mutter mutter grumble mutter grumble*
Have you guys voted???
*****
I've been reading people's comments about the Windlight, the latest new viewer, and the Release Candidate (took me forever to figure out what an RC is, I was too lazy to check, but I figured it's like a beta version of an upcoming viewer?). Anyway... apparently Windlight is so "sophisticated" that it takes lots of playing around with the settings to get things looking right.
Or rather, to get things looking the way you want them to look... which just means the same thing :P
I've never used Windlight -- there's no way my PC could support it, I'm barely limping along as it is. Like how you hear that the Nicholaz viewer is so stable? I still crash two or three times per session with it. But at least I can get into SL! *grins*
Apparently Windlight can make some things go funky-looking. One builder said it makes certain textures appear a completely different colour (orange-ish?); and someone else said that skins don't look as good because previously skin makers shaded their skins to make up for the inadequacies of the lighting, and now the lighting system has changed, and it makes the skins look different.
And then there's the facelights. I see people complaining that facelights aren't working anymore, others saying that they work intermittently, and yet others saying they work fine, all you have to do is adjust your settings. Phew.
So now I'm sitting down and thinking, I have no idea what my av looks like to other people. Sure, she always looks okay on my screen coz I'm the one looking at her, right? But I have no idea what others are seeing, because so much depends on the client they're using, their client settings, and their video card. For all I know, I've been going around the grid with a black face coz I never use a facelight.
Maybe ignorance truly is bliss.
I'm not even supposed to be on SL. My deadlines are killing me. But lo and behold, somebody in the forums asked for a list of places to go to get free women's stuff. And I started making notecards. That is, until I crashed three times :P
I've been reading in the forums about how there's so much less choice for men than there is for women. Putting the notecards together has convinced me... my gosh, so many female skins for 1L or even 0L, but I hardly ever see any freebie men's skins.
FKNY is having a sale on their male skins. After a 500L discount, they're 1350L each (ouch!). I was wondering whether to get one for Immortal, so I sent him over to get some demos. Now for some reason all the demo packs have 2 skins instead of 4, but even then, he can't decide which one he wants. (And they say women are fickle-minded!!)
So of course, we're going to ask our dear readers to help Immortal decide...
1. "Stubble Soul"
2. "Rugged"
3. "Rockstar"
4. "Funky Monk Soul"
5. "Caveman Soul"
6. "Bouncer"
7. "Babyface"
VOTE NOW!!! (before the sale is over, lol)
I find it hilarious. None of us can get into SL at the moment, so we're hanging out at the forums. Hilarious, and a little sad, especially given that it's a Saturday. XD
I also find it amusing that we threaten to leave due to the problems -- inability to TP, objects sticking to the butt, friends list not loading, stale money transactions, undelivered purchases, etc. -- but we never actually leave.
In effect sometimes I feel like no matter how much we bitch about SL, we'll still stay here. Much like how we might bitch about the politics of our country, or our Prime Minister / President's policies, but still stay on. lol
In this aspect at least, SL does mirror RL... maybe a bit too much?
***
And now, since this blog has been rather bare of pictures lately, here are some gratuitous pictures of Morpher in her various guises. Took these some time ago but never got down to posting them!
Morpher the fairy (yes, I forgot to adjust light settings AGAIN)
Morpher the witch
Morpher the... err... punk chick
I was so terrified when I tried to log in today and got the message that updating to 1.19 was mandatory. I'd been reading all the blogs everywhere complaining about the viewer -- people saying it made them crash so much they couldn't do anything in-world, and one even reported inventory loss of 1k items! (or inventory not loading -- either way, the items were inaccessible). After my experience with the Dearly Departed Quaintly Questi, you know that's the one thing sure to freeze the blood in my veins...
Plus I know I'm running at below minimum system requirements. Man, I need to get a job so I can upgrade my RAM :P
Anyway, since I had no choice I did it. Then I chose the alt I can most afford to lose -- Morpher, who has no real function except to allow me to be goofy :P -- and logged in. I got a message that said something like, "Your graphics card is below minimum requirements. Your system memory is below minimum requirements. Please be advised this program might not run properly on your computer. Do you want to proceed?"
I clicked "Yes".
Well, I managed to get in.
And things did rez, albeit slowly as usual.
And my inventory loaded. (10k items)
And I could buy stuff.
And I could TP.
And I didn't crash.
Yeah it was pretty laggy, but then I always experience lag, sometimes more than others. Crappy Net connection + low-RAM PC = lagginess. I couldn't really tell if it was laggier due to the viewer, or SL in general, or my Internet connection.
But still, at least everything still works! Woohoo! For a minute there I'd thought I might be looking at the end of my SL days forever. *dabs at sweat on brow*
So, it is 3am and I am procrastinating on my uni assignment (which is due in 12 hours. Eek!). I decide to pop in-world for a bit just to clear my IMs (famous last words!). After all, my IMs constantly get capped, which is not nice -- annoying to miss messages.
I can't log in.
So I go to the Official Second Life Blog to see if SL is offline. There's nothing on the blog to indicate such a thing.
I decide to log in to the SL website and I get a 500 Internal Server Error on secondlife.com.
So why isn't there anything on the blog? Obviously something is wrong somewhere...
I swear, SL is getting BUGGIER every single day. I wonder how long before it gets too frustrating and residents start leaving in droves. Well, at least now I can get back to my assignment :P
I was over at Blowpop to do the survey in return for the free skin, when I met another lady. We got to talking and she asked me if I used a MystiTool.
MystiTool? Whazzat?
I've heard the MystiTool being mentioned on a few blogs before, mostly about how the bloggers can't live without it :P But nobody has ever explained what it does, and I didn't really bother to go find out.
Well, here was my perfect chance to find out :D
First, she told me it will enable me to walk though walls. OMG how wonderful is that? How often have I "touched" the door of my cottage and then not moved fast enough and ended up bumping into that stupid door because it closed again? lol
Next, she told me it will store my TP history, up to the last 45 locations. I knew then that I HAD to have this tool. OMG how many times have I wished I could click a "Back" button like in Firefox or Internet Explorer and go back to where I was? And since I'm TP-ing all over the place all the time, I hardly ever remember where I've been!
There were other cool things about it, but for me these were the two selling points. She brought me to the store and told me that it's cheaper to purchase in-world than to buy it on SLexchange. Sure enough... it's 396L in-world and 423L on SLexchange... O.O
So I've got the MystiTool and I'm going to have to experiment with it. Oh yes, and it tells me how many avs are nearby so that I know whether it's safe to change in public!!! lolol
