Hi everyone *waves and jumps up & down*!!! Gosh I've really missed you guys!!!
I had a really, really good time. Brushed off so many cobwebs. Gotta love that yoga! 7am wake-up calls for morning yoga sessions will sort all your rusty bits out in no time!
How has everyone been? I hope you've all had a wonderful few weeks too.
I made a decision during my trip to put my first life first (which hasn't been the case for awhile) because I really have to focus on getting stuff done RL. I've been procrastinating for ages! But I'll see everyone on the weekends because I love SL and all my friends and my robots too too TOO much. So please don't forget about me.....
I'll be spending more time on my RL blog, An Immaculate Conception, to chronicle the progress of my start-up as it goes along and offer ideas, resources and learnings from my experience as it happens in real time. So if any of you are interested in getting to know the real me.......
So I've been thinking of setting up an Ugly Shoppe. With ugly shapes, skins, reject clothes even your aged mum would never wear, daggy shoes and facial attachments like ginormous zits and ummm......bad green breath particles which blow out as noxious fumes into people's faces. And bodily sound packs. And bushy underarm hair attachments.
UPDATE** I'm going mental with this adding-sound-to-my-blog business! I often play tracks obessively if I REALLY like them (i.e. loop them 4-5 times in a row) so I'm sharing my Choon-of-the-Day : Taiyou Ga Arukagiri (feat Hazaed & Daddy Shadow) from DJ Krush's Code 4109
I've had some feedback from customers saying they really liked my low-prim alternative to the Ghetto BeatBlaster - who can blame them, the original is a whopping 89 prims! One customer had to put away his living room set to be able to rez the full-prim GBB! *giggles in a secretly thrilled way*
I don't know if this is a common technique but I thought I'd share it cos it's quite nifty, if I do say so myself! It doesn't work for all objects, but here goes...
What I do is build all the bits and bobs perfectly, then take a close-up of the objects I think can be replaced with textures. So, for the GBB I have a texture of the front panel like this:
Then do a bit of cleaning up in photoshop to make it all neat and puuurrrddy, adding transparent bits so the buttons here can shrink from 15 prims down to.....ONE prim (muahahaha, laughs The Count).
Then I deconstruct the GBB until it's practically naked and replace the bits with textures.
For me, the trick is not to replace everything with textures because that will just look...BLEH. Gotta have some bumpy bits!
Here are the two GBBs side-by-side. Can you tell which is which?
The full-fat version is on the left, and skinny on the right - a 50-prim diff!
My alt, Koi, is extremely attached to Arbel Vogel's Chibi-Robo - she never goes anywhere without it... and when I started building robots I promised her I would make a fleet of shoulder pets so she would never feel lonely.
So THANK YOU Arbel for the inspiration!!!
The Robochums (pronounced roh-boh-choooooomz) all come with a menu-driven sound pack that speaks Roboguage. What is Roboguage, you might ask? You'll have to come find me inworld to find out....
My favourite is Robochum Milton. He's got shifty, animated eyes and holds up a cardboard sign that displays Milton's Laws:
Hide behind someone bigger than you Do it when no-one is looking When in doubt, run It wasn't me
Robochum Digit waves and winks at you ... he's awfully proud of his long lashes, he is!
Robochum Rob flashes his eyes at you and lights up your path on those long midnight treks (to the kitchen to get another cupcake). He also keeps your earlobe toasty with his little flame. You'll have to buy an ear muff for the other ear.
Robochum Telly is deep in slumber but I am kicking him awake as we speak.
Can someone please make a magic permissions-changing box where I can put all my textures and scripts and thingumijigs in, and set all the permissions at one click????
"High on the hills was a lonely doodler, Doodle-oo, doodle-oo, doo-dle-OOOO! Loud were the scribblings of the doodler, Doodle-oo, doodle-oo, doo-dle-OOOO!"
Waayyy waay way wayy back when I first got to SL (ok, not that way compared to some) I came across Patch Lamington's Leaning Towers of Doodles in Amicitia and thought "WOWIEZOWIE!!" An avatar after my own heart! I'm a big doodler, not so much because it's my, umm, preferred medium per se but because I can't draw! But doodling? I can doo!
And so I entered a period of doodledreams, admiring Patch's work from afar, surreptitiously lurking on street corners in Blumfield, consulting the Tarot for any hints of a future and fantasising about changing my last name to Lamington (I couldn't - they were all out of dessicated coconut)...
But like all things, my doodlhimsies faded away and I fixated on something else*.... until...I got an amazing DOODLEBOT in my inventory!!!!!!!!! Complete with wind-up key!! It made my day, and extra-sweet was the fact that Patch remembered my request from long, long ago. *Proof that the only way to get over an obsession is to replace it with another.
Well, I immediately set Doodlebot up in my studio next to my building bench so I could gaze at him while I worked...
... and then I zipped off to buy that doodle-pad typing overrider with it's own scratchy-scribbling sounds I have long coveted but abstained from buying for fear of igniting another fervent infatuation...
...and THEN I customised the doodle-pad with my own Robot doodle (because the doodle-pad cleverly allows you to do that!)...
...and THEN I met Patch and his whole army of Doodlebots in person (it was a bit scary, they were very impassive and their silence was unpredictable....)
...and THEN Patch took this picture for me....
...and THEN I realised purely by coincidence I was dressed in Doodle colours which thrilled my matchy-matchy-self to bits....
...and THEN I nipped back to my studio just in time to foil an assassination attempt! Those cheeky little buggers, bristling with jealousy and lulled into a false sense of security by the darkness, had crept up on poor Doodlebot and tried to.....tried to....*gasp* I can't bring myself to say it!
I'm so ashamed....it's all my fault, I should have raised them better. Spare the rod, spoil the robot.....
PS: Thank you Torley for teaching me how to add audio in a much niftier way to my blog! If the rest of you want to do it too, the tutorial for Blogger users is here
Ummm....so, I got a mic and Skype (I've resisted it for years on the misconception that there;s alot of lag!) and and and and....I thought I'd do an audiblog today. It's a bit stuttery (I'm kinda shy) but.....hehe here goes! PS: Yes - I say umm, yeah, y'know alot....a helluvalot. PPS: Yes - any chance to flash my logos...
I'm the wormiest of bookworms and am never more than an arm's length away from a good read. But it isn't often I'm moved to tears.
David B's beautiful autobiographical work, Epileptic is a memoir of isolation, loneliness, and the noble quest for identity, all rendered in stunning, ferocious imagery. He shared an idyllic childhood with his older brother and younger sister, until his brother developed a violent form of epilepsy. It chronicles his evolution into an artist, and how learning to re-envision and recreate the world with his eyes and hands offered understanding and an escape route from the madness and disease that consumed his family.
For those of you who think that comics are for children, think again. Epileptic is a hauntingly sophisticated and emotionally-gruelling story, woven with a dreamlike quality with insights that will resonate with all of us.
What I loved was his portrayal of two sides of human character- his brother who ultimately gave in to his demons, and David, who fought with every ounce of his being. I have had the privilege to meet many people in my travels across the grid. People like his brother, who hide behind their illnesses, using them as a shield to protect them from the harsh realities of life. And people like David, who struggle continually onwards, never giving up and never giving in. I count both as friends - learning from one, and aspiring to the other.
I am reminded that the true beauty of SL lies in its ability to liberate you from the shackles of the physical, and to transport you to the most magical reaches of your mind, and your heart, and your soul. However there is always the danger that if you're not careful, your refuge may become your prison.
Thincers rock!
