November 2009 Archives

I had a sudden urge to look at homestead and openspace sim rentals this afternoon. I don't know what brought it on, except possibly a surge of envy at the seemingly unlimited amount of prims available. Oh, I know they're not really unlimited, but hey, 3750 prims on a homestead compared to 440 on my current land seems almost unlimited!

But as usual... economics. *sigh*

Although I remembered that for a period of time, when my ISP was behaving badly and refusing to connect to overseas servers, I used to spend $200 a month (in Malaysian dollars, or Ringgit) on a VPN connection just to get into SL... so it does seem, if I really wanted to, I could spare $200. Which is roughly about USD$60. Which means maybe I could share half a homestead with someone. [Homestead tiers are USD$125 a month]

[EDIT: Gogo has just informed me that homesteads are currently USD$95 a month, but tier is rising to USD$125 in July 2010]

Unfortunately I can still think of a lot of better ways to spend $200 than on half an SL sim, especially when I'm thinking of buying a house in RL. Finally. (My dad's been after me to buy a house ever since I started working 8 years ago. Why help to pay someone else's mortgage when you can pay your own? he says.) Which means... no half sim. Stop thinking about it, Quaintly! *baps self*

I woke up two mornings ago to my Plurk timeline exploding all over LL's announcement of new XstreetSL pricing policies. Apparently LL has decided that all freebies are "marketing/promotional tools" and as such, designers should pay for the privilege of promoting their store. Therefore, in future, designers will be charged 99L per month just to place their freebies on Xstreet. That's 99L per item.

Unfortunately, free listings will be shunted off to their own section and will not appear in browsable categories or keyword search results. I'm not sure how effective they'll be as a form of promotion when people can't even FIND the type of freebie they're looking for, hello?!

And then! LL has decided that even though other items are not marketing/promotional tools, designers should still pay for the privilege of being able to sell them on Xstreet. Thus, content creators will be charged 10L per month to place their products on Xstreet. Yes, again that's 10L per item. Not to mention that when a creator sells any of these products, they will continue to pay commission to LL on the sale, as they do now.

Without that 10L listing bit, LL might just have looked confused and ridiculous but more or less well-meaning. But with the additional 10L listing charge for all items priced 1L & above, they've been called greedy, money-grubbing and a host of other uncomplimentary things.

I've read on plurk that a number of content creators are pulling out (or talking about pulling out) from Xstreet and moving on to other services like Apez and Slapt.me, but I don't really think that's smart: Xstreet is owned by LL, thus LL will be pimping it to residents, and the bulk of residents probably do not know that alternatives to Xstreet exist.

Content creators need to think of their target market. They need to remember that SL is larger than the circle of people they know on Plurk, or the circle of people they know though blogs and Flickr. They need to remember that not everybody reads blogs and fashion feeds or even the LL blog. Otherwise, there would probably be a lot less fodder for WTFug and a lot more people would be savvy about buying from BIAB (business-in-a-box) outlets or purchasing items which were possibly copybotted and stolen. I have a sneaking suspicion that you and I, my dear readers, are not the average SL resident.

Having said that, I commiserate with the content creators. You can't deny that there is a whole lot of junk on Xstreet, but not all of it is free. Besides, the lack of sales on Xstreet doesn't mean that an item is "stale" or clogging up server space. Many residents, myself included, use Xstreet to search for something, then go inworld to view & buy. It's just easier to look for something online than it is to go to a store, wait for everything to rez, then walk around trying to see if it has what you are looking for.

Here's what I think:

1. It's reasonable to want to charge a listing fee for freebies, but a monthly fee of 99L per item is a little excessive.
2. If LL truly wants to charge 99L monthly for listing a promotional freebie, the least they could do is to MAKE THE FREEBIES SEARCHABLE so that customers can find the damn promo item in the first place. It's hardly going to be an effective promo item if it won't even come up in searches and you can't browse the freebies by category. This doesn't take a genius to figure out.
3. Listing fees & commission together is a double whammy; it would be a lot more palatable if commission could be waived should it be less than the 10L listing fee, or the fee rebated from the commission if the commission is more than 10L.
4. If nothing in the "roadmap" changes, hopefully only serious merchants will remain on Xstreet, and that's good because it might get rid of the BIAB stuff, at least. By "serious" I don't mean "established", mind you. I mean people who make things and want to sell their stuff.
5. Merchants will have to re-think the way they use Xstreet. And that's okay; for example, listing one colour of an item with pictures of the other colours available, stating, "Other colours available inworld". Ari Blackthorne suggests offering the fatpack on Xstreet, letting customers know that individual colours are available inworld. Either way works.
6. Merchants may have to re-think the way they use inworld space. Previously, some merchants used Xstreet to offer products which they couldn't offer inworld due to lack of prims for vendors, especially when it came to old inventory that had been retired. There are ways to get around this problem. For example, instead of having 10 prims for 10 different colours of an item, you could put all the colours in the main vendor ad and use a script to allow customers to choose the colour they want when they click on the vendor to purchase the item. Jess Riederer has written a script which will do exactly that.

When I first read about the Xstreet changes I was dismayed, because I've long thought about making stuff myself and selling it, and I thought I would list on Xstreet first instead of committing to an inworld store & having to pay rent, when I don't have much store inventory to start with. But after spending two days thinking about LL's proposal, I don't think it will necessarily hurt small or beginning creators. If I wanted to start a business in SL, I should be willing to put a certain amount of investment into it, like renting land for a store, for example. I should also expect to have to do some amount of marketing & publicity for my brand and my products, not just list them on Xstreet and hope they will sell by themselves (I do realise a lot of creators work hard at marketing & publicity, by the way!).

In RL, businesses pay ad agencies to create ads; they pay newspapers, magazines, broadcast companies and billboard companies to show their ads; they pay PR firms to generate buzz about their products and keep their brand visible; they pay landlords rent for their business premises (if they hadn't purchased the building); they pay overheads to various utility companies; they pay taxes to the government on the sales they make. They have just as many, if not more, expenses that an SL business might have.

The only difference is that in SL, Linden Lab fulfills most of these functions, so it feels like we are paying them for everything. And it feels unfair. But if you were paying 5 different people or entities for all these things, would that make it different? You'd have the same outflow. That's something to think about.

I love trees. I can't explain why. In RL I'm not even much of an outdoor kinda girl, although I could blame that on the Malaysian weather -- hot & humid all year round... except when the tropical thunderstorms hit. Either way, the prospect of going out isn't very encouraging :p
 
In SL I'm always looking out for trees. My favourite is the HPMD "very big tree with poseballs", but it is 42 freaking prims. I've run out of prims on my land and had to take it back into inventory. *sobs*
 
So imagine my excitement when I visited a store today and saw a wonderful sculpted tree that used only 9 prims! I immediately TP'd to Garden of Dreams and got even more excited when I found that the copy version costs only 200L!
 
*bounces up and down*
 
 

 
 
One of my biggest joys in life is reading, so what better thing to do than laze under the tree with a book? I got the book with pose from Maximum Toys for 100L -- it's something I've always wanted too, but never really tried to hunt down. Seen it around in SL, usually sold with a cushion, but this is perfect. Ah, bliss...

It's very unfortunate that my sudden "building bug" is coinciding with a crazily busy RL period, and err... a new love interest ;)  Hard to build when you have your arms around someone, and also hard to build when you are trying to shop at 50L Friday, Weekend Fever, 60L Sunday, Beating the Blues Monday, 25L Tuesday, and 69L Hump Day Happiness (Thursday must be feeling all left out and lonely, poor thing)... not to mention the Truth sale, Glitterati sale, Flirt sale, Mischief sale, and god knows what other sales. Phew.
 
 

 
 
Still, I am very nearly done with the house, except that midway building I got a new idea and now have to start from scratch again and completely redo it. But I'm happy enough with the original house that I just might sell it on Xstreet. I always did intend to eventually start selling some stuff; the problem is I'm rather lazy so I firstly don't build very often, and secondly, don't want to have to manage a business in SL when I already have to work in RL. On the other hand, the prospect of having some possible SL income is somewhat enticing :p
 
In other news, Chestnut started a 365 Day project which involves taking and posting a self-portrait every day for a year. I'm participating, but posting the pictures to my Flickr, here.
 
Originally I thought, well, taking a picture a day is easy, but I don't want to overload my blog with posts that contain a picture only, and not much else. But I'm finding that Chestnut was right: "It is about the process of making a comittment to a creative endeavor and working through the dry spells that are sure to come." So far the commitment is keeping me going, and seeing other people's shots is challenging me to be more creative, rather than simply post a pretty picture of my avatar.
 
In fact when I saw Elora's shots, especially this one, it made me want to do more work on composition and try to tell a story with my pictures, which I have never done before. Here are four other great ones: by Chestnut, by Elusyve, by Trisha and again by Elusyve. They're my inspiration, you might say :)
 
 

 
Moreover, I'm discovering that I'm quite possibly overthinking my blog posts (gaaah). I was reading through my very first posts on the blog and found a sort of joie de vivre that appears lacking now -- the ability to talk about anything and everything, just happily chattering away about my Second Life and not needing it to be meaningful, or witty, or particularly intelligent. That's what I'm rediscovering with this project -- posting the pictures on Flickr with a brief description of what happened in SL that day has helped me recapture that "Hey, look what I found!" feeling with regard to SL. In recent times that feeling has mostly become identified with shopping, which is very sad :p
 
The only problem I have with this 365 Day project is that setting up the picture, getting the correct setting, attire, pose, etc takes time. I already have so little time! Plus I need to sort inventory because I can't find the poses I want to use!
 
 
Second picture (I had to sneak it in because I'm so behind in my blogging!):
Hair: Truth Elizabeth 2 - Chocolate
Skin: Free Speerit Katherine Pale - Natural [review copy]
Eyes: Beloved Lolite Eyes - large
Glasses: PrimOptic Stilo
Shrug: Last Call Jenna Polka Dots - Paraiba (part of outfit) [no longer available]
Sleeveless top: Lookr Clean - Light Blue (F) [review copy]
Long-sleeved top: Potassium Off Shoulder Blue [store moving, not available at the moment]
Skirt: Sn@tch Crazy Little Jean Skirt - Green - Siena
Jewellery: alaMood Alkahi Dew Set
Shoes: Diamonds Fashion Ed Henry Shoe [free on XstreetSL]
Pose: Long Awkward Pose Feisty

I had a great day in SL today; I got to spend one-on-one time with a number of friends who mean a lot to me. That's really rare :)
 
First Ari sailed into my life (literally):
 
 

 
 
Very dashing he was too, in his pirate -- *coughs* I mean profiteer -- get-up, but the ruthless image was rather ruined by the kitten on his shoulder. Whatever happened to Polly wants a cracker?
 
We had a great chat, even if he forgot to abduct the wench and sail off into the sunset. Ari, you're losing your touch! :p
 
Later in the afternoon I met Bon, who left SL for awhile but to my delight, decided he couldn't stay away. We had a wonderful time dancing and talking. I've missed him so.
 
 

 
 
Bon and I don't get to meet very often due to time zones, but he is a wonderful person and a great friend. I'm so very glad you're back, Bon ‹3 (I bet I made him blush! *grins wickedly*)
 
After that I IM'd Ali to ask where I could get a unique, cute and colourful skybox or home. I've decided I'm tired of the house after all, and want to scrap it, but I want something out of the ordinary in its place, not the boring old stuff with boring old colours. I knew Ali was the best person to ask because she has a prefab addiction :P (She says so herself!)
 
She told me about the Invite Only hunt prize being offered by Concrete Flowers -- an autumn skybox -- and then came to help me search for it at the store because I suck at hunts! Thanks, Ali!! lol
 
Much later, London came inworld and we spent some time together. She was in a VERY "rawr!" latex outfit:
 
 

 
 
Yes, my hand is on her boob. One of the best places to be, in my opinion *wicked grin*
 
She also gave me advice on building, because I've finally given up and decided to build my own home. This is after surfing Xstreet and going, "WHAT! 500L for that?! I could build that myself!" and muttering, "Omg ugly... next... ugly... ugh... UGLY!" and TPing around prefab places clutching my heart and gasping in horror: "134 prims?!"
 
My current house is 47 prims, so I'm aiming for a house with fewer prims than that. Actually, I'm aiming to build one below 20 prims. I completely believe it's doable ;)
 
This is what I have so far:
 
 

 
 
Yes, I do know it's pink. You have a problem with that?! lol
 
In between building, I bugged Kamian on IM for how-to tips (poor Kamian :p) because, well, he does custom builds for people, so who better to ask, right? ...and met up with my plurk friend Carter Denja of Pocket Gardens, a store that specialises in landscaping and creating pre-made gardens. Carter gave me the Castalia garden which I'm totally going to use together with my new house. The garden has a waterfall! How could I not love it? (I think I have a love affair with water... okay, that sounded really wrong...)
 
And finally, I ended the day with a hug from Peter. No picture unfortunately because I was sleepy and he was in a rush to get to his dinner, but I couldn't have chosen a better way to end this full, happy day spent with so many special people :)

Peter alerted me to a pie chart in the Lindens' recent blog post on the SL economy's 3Q stats:
 
 

 
 
Look at that chart. It divides the user-to-user L$ transactions by country. Do you see what I see? Malaysian users make up 4% of the total transactions. What? 4%! We even beat the Australians and Canadians at 2% each!
 
I'm like, wtf where are all these Malaysians?! Because in all my time in SL (nearly 2 years now) I've only met one other Malaysian who lives in Malaysia. I know two living abroad, and the two friends I introduced to SL hardly ever come in anymore. Don't tell me that I alone spend enough to account for that 4%! Because I'll sock you one :p
 
Anyway, it's interesting, isn't it? I want to meet all these Malaysians. I like to think they'd be cool interesting people and not griefers or copybotters. *sighs*
 
 

 
 
Talking about copybotters, I support the cause of Artist's Voice and the sentiments behind it, but if you would just look at that chart I showed up there, you can see that the grid is really, really large. To "send a message to LL" one would have to mobilise content creators across the grid, not just the English-speaking ones, and not just the ones you know, or the ones you regularly interact with within your circle.
 
So I understand if some want to stop shopping or close their stores for these 48 hours as a gesture of solidarity, or to show support for the cause. But if they're doing it to "send a message to LL", frankly, I think um.... they must be extremely optimistic people.
 
 

 
 
Hair: ETD Lindsay - Chocolate
Skin: Free Speerit Katherine Pale - Elegance [review copy]
Eyes: Beloved Lolite Eyes - large
Glasses: PrimOptic Stilo
Top: House of Hucci Dance Darling - White [review copy]
Trousers: Fishy Strawberry Equinox Jeans - Siena
Jewellery: alaMood Akhal Teke Set
Belt: love.love.love Anya Satin Belt - Silver (tinted) [no longer available]
Boots: Bax Coen Prestige Boots - Brown Leather
Pose #1: HNF-LADYpose02 [no longer available]
Pose #2: TorridWear Basics 03

 

 
 
Ooooh lots of 'firsts'! I was going to write about the two firsts that happened to me last week, then today I had another first. And yes I know last week is old news. I can't rival the unceasing output of Ana Lutetia, Gogo, or any of a dozen bloggers I can think of... which is why I'd never make a good fashion blogger *blushes*
 
Anyway! Last week two things happened which have never happened to me before. Firstly, I got griefed!
 
People always talk about griefers in SL and I've always wondered where all the griefers are, since I've never encountered one. Considering that my original avi rezzed 17 Dec 2006, that means I've gone nearly 2 years without meeting a griefer in person. I know, I know, I should count myself lucky...
 
But of all things, one has to come and bug me when I was terraforming my land. Now, terraforming is not my favourite thing to do (what an understatement) so I was concentrating and was exceedingly annoyed when prim boxes suddenly started appearing all around me. Eventually the MystiTool reported:
 

[2009/10/28 5:18] MystiTool HUD 1.3.1: Collision with "Bullet", Owner: Kirk Dethly

I didn't even see him. He was shooting and shooting and the boxes, or "bullets", were multiplying, filling up my screen. No, I didn't get a screenshot because I was focused on getting this nuisance out of my face and immediately banned him from the sim. He didn't realise that I'm one of the Envision estate managers. Wrong person to mess with! *laughs evilly*
 
The other first was a lovely one. Someone gave me a gift. What's intriguing is that I don't know who :)
 
I happened to mention on Plurk that I wanted the new Musashi-Do dress... my plurk went like this:
 
 

 
 
Next thing I know, I have an offline inventory offer and IM from the designer...
 

Shiryu Musashi: Hello, a secret admirer required a delivery of the Tender Blossoms fatpack for you. Please don't ask me who he or she is, I've been threatened, so I can't tell you :D

I was all like omg! It was such a lovely, unexpected thing to do and I still don't know who was behind it. That totally made my day! Thank you, whoever you are ‹3  I love the dress to bits and that's me in it right there in the picture at the top of this post :)
 
As I said in the plurk, I'm Chinese. The dress looks very like a cheongsam, a traditional Chinese dress, and while I don't normally walk around wearing cheongsams, I did wear one to my university convocation (graduation):
 
 

 
 
(Please note, this was taken nine years ago, lol. I, err... probably will never ever be that slim again *grins ruefully*)
 
Moving on! :p
 
The third first was winning something. I have never won anything in SL before apart from lucky chair gifts, so I'm really happy!
 
See, I'd joined the DeePosed VIP group and added the store to my profile picks, because they have a random giveaway to two group members every month (or something like that), and this month my name came up and I WON!!! What did I win? L$3,000 worth of poses, or in other words, 40 poses. I get to go to the store and pick the ones I'd like! *dances*
 
 

 
 
Hair: ETD Xaria - Chocolate
Glasses: PrimOptic - Stilo
Eyes: Beloved Lolite eyes - large
Skin: Rockberry Eva 6000 Member Group Gift - Natural (Glow)
Dress: Musashi-Do Tender Blossoms - Sea Emerald
Garters & stockings: Insolence Laure Purple Outfit (part of outfit)
Earrings: Alienbear 2006 Logo Lady Group gift
Bangle: CentoPallini Gem Bracelet Opal
Shoes: One Grid Silver Pumps [L$15 on XstreetSL]
Picture one: Swing & pose from Attituede, taken in the iTutu Forest Sky Box

I've been busy the past few days trying to terraform and landscape my land. CT agreed to give me an extra 320sqm, so I moved my pond and decided to try creating a beach once again. Most of you won't remember, but the last time I tried this, almost exactly a year ago, it ended up in epic fail.
 
But this time I was determined. The first problem was finding some sculpty sand. I have sculpty ground covers, but they all seem to undulate in strange ways or are too square and I needed something that was relatively smooth with a curved edge. First I bought a stretch of beach off Xstreet but that didn't really work:
 
 

Click picture for larger image
 
 
The sculpt was too long and narrow. It might have worked for a straight stretch of beach, but I was trying to create a little corner, so the shape wasn't ideal. And since it was on a megaprim, I couldn't stretch it or alter the size in any way. Back to the drawing board.
 
Then I got the bright idea of using one of those popular off-sim island thingies. Only, I thought, why does it have to be off-sim? I could use it on land to create a little beach! I found one on Xstreet that was copy/mod, put it down, and started modding it like crazy - moving the plants around, adding extra copies of plants, and putting in some rocks, also from Xstreet. The rocks are copy/mod and come with a set of textures too. Fantastic stuff. (Whaddya know? Never thought I'd get excited about rocks :P)
 
 
Click picture for larger image
 
 
Seemed to me I was about done, except that I needed some waves. Now all the while, I'd been plurking about terraforming, about looking for a good sand sculpt, about trying to create a beach, and finally, about needing waves. Ted Cornell offered to come over and help me out. I didn't realise it, but he loves beaches and happens to be somewhat of an expert on building them! And if I hadn't plurked about this, or hadn't been on plurk, I would never have gotten to know this or met Ted ever... scary thought!
 
But since I am on Plurk and I do know Ted... he kindly took some time away from other friends and Halloween parties to come over today and have a look at what I'd done. Once he'd seen the set-up, he suggested some modifications. I gave him the go-ahead and he proceeded to add some wet-looking sand, making it so that the sand dips in the water (notice in the previous picture, the sand is above the waterline). Now I could not only walk in the water, I could even laze around on a floating lounger... which he gave me, too! *dances*
 
He even helped me to terraform. I thought I was in heaven!
 
 
Click picture for larger image
 
 
I'm so happy with the beach now - the only thing missing is waves. I want the Las Islas waves but they cost a bomb, so I'm still thinking about them. Been TPing everywhere, but none of the other waves I've seen look as pretty or realistic as the Las Islas waves *sobs*
 
Here's Ted and I consulting about the beach. The blanket on the sand has some pretty good cuddles in it and cost only 99L on Xstreet... and yes, I did indeed wear a dress and heels to do landscaping! Well, actually, the truth is I was just lazy to change :P