I have a rocket ship, a jetfighter, a paper airplane

There's a lot of really harsh commentary coming out of the blog post on camping and bots. Witness this reply by Sammybob Michigan:

Sounds to me like a bunch of people that want something for nothing. Reward without any hard work. If you didnt have a business plan when you started your business and some capital then you should close now because you going to fail anyway.

I didn't correct anything in that statement; it's all just as he--or, gods forbid, with that name, she--wrote it.

Let me be clear, here--I'm all for helping newcomers out, we were all new to the grid once, and new people need the help--but I'm just as happy providing landmarks to places with free hair, skin, and outfits; at this point, nearly everyone's come up a notch or two in the creative department, and new friends don't have to camp for three months straight to afford better skin, better eyes, better shoes.

But by the same extension, this seems unduly harsh. If one's business idea is 'toss freebies in boxes and get people to pay for them', or 'rip off good designers and resell for less', then yes, that business will fail. But if it's an honest person expressing something they want to see in world? And remember, very few are actually making rent out of anything they do in world; I know a bare handful. Most are actually lucking out if they make tier costs. Success is measured in micro-percentages in Second Life.

Angel Sin made another point in response to someone else:

Remember: The worst lag is being caused by avatars followed by listeners and huge texture files. Don't forget the scripts and last but not least poses. If you have the ability to check the debug menu for your region - set up a posing stand filled with about 20+ poses and look what's it causing.

While I was trying to understand this, I realized Anthony Hocken had replied later in the thread to Angel:

Not sure where you get that from. It should be minimal. The total poses makes no difference either (along with any other non-script asset in the prim's inventory). Only scripts are considered. What you're probably seeing is the pose stand object, plus the avatar standing on it along with all their attachments and HUDs. You'll see the same thing with any other scripted object with an avatar sitting on it.

Well, that's what I thought...

Onward. Does the top picture in this article on the upcoming movie "Gamer" remind you of anything? Like, oh, say, a live-action version of SL?

The strange thing is that the trailer is dark and gritty and moody and intense. The shots that io9 show, though, are all the candy-colored rave stuph. Bizarre.

Inventory cleaning again. Paired with nostalgia, it's an occasionally scary thing. To wit: I finally broke down and went through the main system "Clothing" folder, wherein I still had stored all my old (and by old, I mean 2006 vintage) avatar concepts.

The Clockwork Vampire:



Yes, I was proud of this at one time. System shoes...she started out with system hair until I found the freebie hair at Free Dove...and sadly, the maker of the clockwork corset--the only item I kept--was lost to an asset server crash long ago.

The Goth Fae:



Second iteration, two months in--still had the cyberbot, had made her shorter and more curvaceous, though she still had the pout. There was nothing I was able to do shape-wise that would kill that pout.

The corset was a freebie from one of the endless freebie stops on the grid, then; the leather skirt I got from the vampire princeling, who handed me forty-eight Lindens and the outfit to 'help out'.

The Camouflage Demon:



I have to admit, knowing nothing about how to adjust attachments then, having little in the way of finances to buy really good hair--I was pairing freebies creatively.

I will be honest with you--even with system hair, if it didn't have that strange black smudge across the lower face, I would keep this skin and outfit. I would. I'd slap better hair and wings on her and romp around world again, I am genuinely sorry to see her go.

The Citrus Butterfly:



Are you sensing a theme? I had a thing for wings. I still have a thing for wings, but I'm far more selective now--pretty much just Jen Shikami's beautiful offerings at Seven's Selections, and the occasional gorgeous tragedy, like Tox1c Chemistry's Shattered Seraph line.

At the time I just had the freebie wing pack I'd picked up somewhere, and I was carefully pairing wings to avatar to eyes to skin to hair--in this case, another system-hair girl, with the orange monarch pants (orange! My gods, orange! What on earth possessed me....), the orange wings, the butterfly top, and one of Nephilaine Protagonist's early skins I'd gotten on sale.

The shape? I hadn't really formally identified a "look" yet; this was maybe three, possibly four months in, and this was a slightly modified Fabrielle shape I'd found...somewhere or other.

Red Rains:



Don't ask me why the name, either on this one or Violette d'Nuit two avatars down; I have no clear idea. This was what the folders were labeled.

This one was not a shape I ever used to dance in (specifically, by request of the shape's maker, as it was the shape she was first seen dancing in, and we were dancing at competing casinos for a while), but was a shape (and outfit) I used to walk around world.

You'd be absolutely unshocked and unsurprised to know that I had many offers from gentlemen wearing this. I of course was completely clueless as to why at the time...

I will note, though, just for posterity: this was the second formally purchased hair, and my first purchase of flexi hair, I ever made: Adam & Eve's "Godiva", because it looked so amazing spinning around a pole. This started an SLife-long addiction to good hair, and sachi Vixen's hair in particular; at one point, for a year solid, I only wore Adam & Eve hair, nothing else.

The Naiad:



I admit, I was tempted to keep this one, too. But particles three years later behave in whole new ways from when I started; both in terms of my graphics capability now (I had a terrible graphics card starting SL), and with the advent of Havok4 from Havok1, particles behave completely differently.

Case in point, my naiad. She used to be a freebie skin/shape/outfit available everywhere; the particles (from her translucent skirt; though the rest of the outfit was equally translucent, and I'm really hoping the Photobucket Nipple-Recognition Software doesn't peg this picture as--gasp! ungasp! proceed--containing nipples) used to pool in a barely blue water-like rippling mass from calf to feet, and flow outward.

Now? She looks like she's standing in a sauna; even worse, she's looking like she's standing in a shower.

Violette d'Nuit:



Look! Boobages!

*coughs*

Do I mention this was the second shape I got from that dancer friend of mine? Again asked not to use it dancing, which I was more than willing to comply with, but mysteriously left in the folder with the skin (which actually, I kind of like), the burgundy hair (the third purchase of hair I made, I believe from either Panache or Curious Kitties, before the hair maven split off for Deviant Kitties), and this outfit--which was defiantly not streetwear.

As to the name, your guess is as good as mine; I wasn't involved in RP at the time, so maybe it's just what I thought something that looked like her would be called...

(Also, for the curious: the fact that the outfit was topless was actually less obvious before I had to add the little 'covering' hearts. Censorship sucks.)

Night Dancer:



I was dancing at my second club in this one (the first one got nuked; and I was just starting to realize at the end of my third month in the game, I really needed an actual paying gig to keep playing), in between trips to the dance pads in Amsterdam. I'd started in on my own shape modification, but the absurdly teeny waist, I have no explanation for.

The hair was another recolor/retexture of base hair; I just didn't have prim hair in any sort of variety yet.

There's more sorting to do, and the Angel of Smog I've been holding off on looking at, because that entire avatar is based around a glowing halo and the MistMaker 5000...which, considering the particle explosion from the Naiad av, makes me worry deeply.

But oh, how far I've come since those days of confusion and camping. And I'm down to 59,142 in inventory. More must be erased.