Please Fix Linden Realms

Linden Realms, the popular quest game in Second Life has a flaw. Maybe more than one depending on who you speak with, but I can think of only one: The crystals often rez within the bounding boxes of plants thus making the crystals inaccessible.

If the plants were changed to "Phantom" (no physical presence) then a game player could run through them to collect crystals that, as things are now, are un-collectable. This would also increase the number of crystals available over a given time period (pink ones return from harvest faster than yellow ones do, yellow crystals return faster than orange ones, etc., the most valuable green and blue ones taking the longest) and also increase the number of really valuable crystals at any given time. Whenever I run a particular section I see this sad green crystal worth L$1 at trade in (equal to finding 50 pink crystals). If this plant was Phantom I'd know to come back to this spot every hour after grabbing one as crystals always re-rez on the same spots.

How easy it is to be a Noob? Part I

The Lab's recent announcement (not on the Official blog, mind you as that would be too easy, but here for one source) of its new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, has many people thinking about what might happen to Our World. Most of the comments I've seen in various sources has to do with The Lab's famous inability to communicate with the Residents – like not making their announcement on the official blog, as noted. One of my first concerns has been about the New Resident Experience. I had both of these in mind when I made a late night purchase from the Second Life Marketplace.

For many of us with our own land its natural to just unpack things at home. Long time Residents might even have build rights on some group land for said purpose. At minimum, experienced users know of at least one sandbox location (I keep two in my Favorites so I can log in to one right away). For the rest the question Where can I rez my purchase Inworld? applies. Thank goodness the Marketplace is there to help us on the post-purchase receipt page (or so they call it, but its not really a receipt). Click the handy link and you are whisked to the Opening Boxes page on the SL Wiki.

Then find a buried link for "this list" of public sandboxes and click ...

... then scroll almost to the bottom of the page for a list of links to public sandboxes (or keep scrolling for a list of privately-owned sandboxes). Easy as pie, right?

What's in My Closet? Too Many Freebies

Using Strawberry's Simple Photo Studio

Checking out Strawberry Singh's new, free simple photo studio (see here) while chatting with a friend about what she might write about if she were to start blogging I commented "Whenever I'm stuck for an idea I do a 'What's in My Closet?' post. Yes, I'm that lazy. So I took a quick peek and I have about a half-dozen un-opened freebies laying about so here's the first one: A ModaMia Sayings Tops "I am Fucking Awsome" set with a crop-top T-shirt (with primplants appliers), a mesh skirt in five "standard" sizes, some strange sleeves (not pictured) and a set of two bangles (also not pictured). The shop is on Sensible Island (SLurl).

No, for several reasons I'm not keeping this one. I'm getting more serious about deleting clothes at an alarming rate except for about three of anything – three jeans, three slacks, three t-shirts, three .... you get the idea. Same for body parts. Finally pack away skins I haven't worn, delete more hair styles (hundreds were tossed recently, though back-ups are in storage), eyes, etc.

In Real Life I have four pair of Crocs, a pair of winter boots, three pair of sandals, two pair of jeans, two pair of shorts .... again, you get the idea. Oh, and one dress with nice shoes because funerals happen. My Second Life should be that complicated.

Topless Tuesday with Xandah

As I was contemplating how to make today Topless TuTu-esday, Xandah dropped by to distract me. See how others commemorate this wonderful day with the Topless Tuesday in SL Flickr group.

B&W Self-Portrait Meme

Apparently, people like photo themes for Strawberry Singh's Monday Meme blog challenges. No surprise there as I'm sure many of her following read the blog for the pictures and for tips from one of Second Life's better photographers (that's The Berry, if you missed the inference). This week she's hit us with a quest for a good black and white portrait (see here).

Meme Instructions: Share a black & white portrait (headshot) of your Second Life avatar. You can post a raw shot or process the image as much as you like. Don’t forget to leave a link to your image in the comments and also share it in the Blog Memes flickr group.

So there's my portrait. My primary image editor is Acorn by Flying Meat, a fabulous application for Apple computers. I added a tilt/shift effect for some depth of field, cocked the image a bit counter-clockwise, then used the RGB filters to fine tune the Greyscale filter. I learned long ago that I like a green filter when I shoot most black and white portraits, but that was back with I bulk loaded Kodak Plus-X film and Ilford HP-5 (pushed to 800 for graininess). I was able to replicate the effect here with a combination of increasing the green channel and decreasing the red and blue channels rather than going with full-on green filtering. I wish I had that option back in the day as that would have saved a lot of work in the darkroom.

Rather than do just a close-up portrait (with Strawberry's Close-Ups Windlight setting) I also wanted to do an environmental portrait. Looking at the Flickr group mentioned above, most people went with first style as directed so I'm glad I went beyond just the one shot.

Trent Kalamack, the alt I created for some recent blog posts and a contest (tied for 2nd place!!) seemed to be fitting for this scene in my brother's cabin. That and my brother wouldn't let me borrow any of his characters. His "steampunk old man" (see here) would have been perfect. Environmental portraits tell you about the subject and subtly set a mood. They can also be more fun to light in real life than just a studio head shot.

I had to rebuild some fingers and add some shadows but for the final result I also desaturated by about 95% after adjusting the White Point then tweaked brightness and contrast. The final tone is very light and in retrospect I should have gone with a selenium tone. Expensive portraits from "back then" would be treated with selenium to give it a rich look and increase print longevity. Maybe I'll go back and do one.

I fought, fought, fought myself to NOT desaturate the image then bring back the steamer trunk. Too cutesy and not important to the final image. Spot color can be dramatic but so many people use it without thinking whether or how much it compliments the subject. I could have increased the contrast, but most don't know that images turned brownish by time (and initially not washing the print well enough) are softer than those that are created artificially. I'm tempted to grunge it up some more.

Oh, it's fun to be in a darkroom again. I don't do it enough. I could go on and on and on. Thank you, Strawberry!!