We've been eating Gameraaaaa! (part two)

Picking up from part one...



Oh, yipe, what happened here? Those poor li'l Yetis...hope they recover.

Back into the bathtub, and the next room is a village of...heart trees??



Oh my. Site of another massacre. All those dead cherubs...poor things.



Another sploshy, curvy trip into the tunnel...and we've reached the sands of time? Now with added Soilfiends!



I fit right in with the rest of Eggland. (Though I will note, if you stand in certain places for too long, the sky rains chocolate eggs down by the...ah...dozen.)



Nope, I don't fit in after all--I better scamper before the bunny eats me!



And if you find all the jars, you can get prizes at the end stop. (And if you don't, there's a room between the last one, and the end coffins, where you can return to any zone you missed.)

All in all, this is a very enjoyable haunt. The hunt aspect isn't super difficult, the concept is sound, and I adore the whimsy of the bathtub rides from land to land. Five out of five skulls, do go if you can.

Gamera is really neat, Gamera is made of meat... (part one)

It's five pm, do I know where my children are?

No, actually, they're scattered through several timestreams at the moment. Working for the restoration of something, most likely.

In the meantime, I was in a profoundly weird mood, so--

Hmm? My moods are always weird, you say?



No, I'm serious. Even for me, carrying a teddy bear is just odd.



So I read through the instructions, and I'm following all but one of them--my sound settings aren't at the dead-low-tide point they were when all this started, but I doubt if they're even up to 30%.

But here we go anyway! On a jar hunt at Dark Adventures!



I kind of dig their pathway markers, the creepy tilted hand things. (And, checking, they seem to be something NOMAD came up with.)



So first off, and lemme drop my view so it's on a hopefully NON-arachnid containing frame...the start of the haunt is through a cobwebbed hallway. Just FYI.

...and GYAAAAH, arachnophobes definitely stay out, there was a trap in the tunnel that got even me! Not saying more than that.

Though, plus side, you could wander around in the upper level for quite some time, there is a great deal of seasonal pretty.



There is a short--and I do mean short--bathtub ride to get to the next section, so short I thought I'd looped in a circle to return to where I started!

[[Insert from the Editrix: I had actually gone to the first room, but thought I hadn't, so went back to the start, I thought--only ended up in the second room. Wups. This entry has been revised.]]



There is something deeply disturbing about these things. And it completely doesn't help that the pop-up monster for this room holds a toothbrush.

[[Another insert from the Editrix: in the (now three) days since I started putting this entry together, I have figured out what bugged me so much about the "tooth fairies" in this room. And it makes everything worse. Apparently part of my brain is deeply disturbed by the idea of a soft, squishy thing connected to a hard, chewing thing.

[[In other words. It's the eyes. It's always the eyes.

[[But that makes a good dividing line between part one and part two, so--off we go to the second!]]

I don't belong among the angels, and baby, that's just fine with me

This is my entire aesthetic, yes.

she'd laughed at the graveyard on one sip of wine

It's a crisp fall day. The leaves are turning, the spooky forests are growing thick and dark, there's some weird sort of flickering in the fog...so let's go see the Harrington Haunted House.



Seems simple enough. Walk into the spooky forest, stop at the gate. Open gate, go in. So far so good.



Hey, uh...whatcha lookin' at, puppy? Oh, er, you seem...stuck in the...you know what? You're probably fine. I'll just check out the house.



ohmygoodnesshellodon'teatme!

I swear, poof of flame, there he was. Never saw him coming.



Okay, so we've all seen this house before, right? Can't blame people, it's pretty hauntable, and if you pay that much to get it, well, you're gonna use it, right? Because Never Totally Dead isn't cheap.

On the other hand, with what they do make, up to and including this house--they have every right to charge more.



The TV is watching me.



Lovely. An abandoned kitchen, not a serial-killer kitchen.



Spectral horses in the backyard.



Oh, dear, the bathroom upstairs is not in good shape. But wait--blood dripping from the ceiling? We must investigate.



Someone ate the baby!



Oh, that's why there's blood dripping from the ceiling. Poor fellow.

There's a coffin teleport system that takes you to other places. The Dark Forest, a schoolhouse, the cemetary...I'd honestly give this one five out of five skulls. It's not overly spooky, but there's some creativity to the prop placement, and it's just grand fun start to finish.

so many adventures couldn't happen today

So, according to an intrepid group of researchers, it has been discovered that cucumbers, mainly, ride the New York subway.



No, not really, but what did happen is these researchers spent hours on one full subway line, gathering samples of bacteria. Then they tested them, with current evaluation standards, and learned many things. But even better, they learned how many things they didn't know. Frankly, learning one doesn't know something is generally better for science anyway, because then one feels driven to learn what that something was.

Also, this is fascinating, if a bit creepy: medical science has discovered that skin from cadavers is actually better at healing living skin wounds than synthetic skin, or even transplanted skin from the same living being. But keep in mind, this isn't just a chunk of dead skin attached to the wound: through special treatments, they've been decellularized--in other words, everything that gives human skin its thickness and color has been removed. What's left? The base matrix of skin itself--all the non-cell filaments and proteins that make up the structure.

So why is this a good thing? Two reasons: first and most important, skin matrix that's been scraped clean of all cellular matter won't be rejected by a new host. And secondly, for all the advances in synthetic skin production--and there have been many--it's just not as good as what humans grow on their own.

Now, we join a Neverwinter chat already in process, sometime back in...I can't even remember. Somewhen in 2014, maybe:

[Zone] k0n4ik@u5701242: Delicate - party?
[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: why is this map all white???
[Zone] wrapped_in_cotten@nowolfes: not just mine like that then lol
[Zone] Kira Stormblade@undeadsoldier999: so its not just me?
[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: lol odd
[Zone] Slash@stephthegadget: been bugged for weeks

Ah, this may track down the when, because I've only gone through the realm of the Sky Pirates with a couple characters; it's the one region of Neverwinter that I absolutely cannot stand. So I'd say, with all the mentions of learning lore that I'm trimming, this likely would've been the turn of the year 2014, or even as far back as November of 2013.

The bug they're talking about seems unique to this zone, too, and I have no idea if it's fixed yet, because I tend to avoid that zone. What the expected behavior is with maps in a new zone: you pull up the map, and see where you are, and--if you have an active quest--where you need to go.

Simple.

But this zone is--or, at least, was--deeply flawed, in that you'd pull the map up, and just see white. No landmarks, no 'You are here' note, no 'go here' note. Just...a white blank map.

[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: LoL this double xp is like cheating I just leveled and I am now halfway to the next level lmao

Well, yeah, that's kind of how double XP weekends work...

[Zone] Sir Krycii@dyllethia: 10 levels in the past 2 hours.
[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: I was 35 today I am now 45
[Zone] pikkem anflixem@nagrown69: they want us ready for the 2nd

Ah, right, there's another clue--the second module for Neverwinter was released in October 2013, so this had to be either before the end of the month, or September.

I think.

[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: They raiseing the cap?

Nope, but they added the Hunter/Ranger, so you could shoot things real purty?

I know, it's not the same, but hey, new class! (At the time.)

[Zone] Neid@wyldeacid: learn to read guys, it's all been posted weeks ago.
[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: I know how to read there is no need to be rude
[Zone] Neid@wyldeacid: im not rude, just telling you what should be obvious.
[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: I dont read everything there is to know
[Zone] pikkem anflixem@nagrown69: by the time you typed that you coulda answered the question

Yeah, but seriously, when has that ever stopped anyone before?

[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: was just a honest question
[Zone] Neid@wyldeacid: i did answer the question -_-
[Zone] pikkem anflixem@nagrown69: or just be quiet
[Zone] NecroRogue@necrophilism: I agree with Neid
[Zone] Linea de Vir@geralddevir: Calm down guys.. nobody is perfect..
[Zone] Neid@wyldeacid: Maybe you ain't .. but i am =/

Yeah, no, but thanks for playing. Next?

[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: Its whatever really
[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: I mean I have a right to ask a question even if I didnt read the posts
[Zone] Linea de Vir@geralddevir: thats right
[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: and to be told to go read it is rude sorry just me
[Zone] Neid@wyldeacid: And i have a right to answer as i please.

Sure, everyone has a right to speak, and everyone listening/reading along has a right to be a decent human being, or a jerk. We know this, move on.

[Zone] Ezeron@stradar1987: I see that neid but I think you need to find a better way to talk to people
[Zone] Yokki_DC@yokki1: reading posts sucks. i am waiting for the movie

Might work out better in the long run.

In the meantime, Japan is setting up the first steps towards WestWorld....sort of: they're planning a robotic hotel based on the clean construction lines of...the Netherlands??...for the comfort and security of their guests. Robotic staff, robotic check-in, and facial recognition software instead of locks on the doors...Yeah, okay, it's not Yul Brynner being evil with a gun, but I'm much too paranoid. Something's going to go horribly wrong.

Also in Japan, the Japanese Army decided to invade the Sapporo Snow Festival--kind of literally. It took bulldozers and over three thousand tons of snow to help the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces’ 11th Brigade do what they wanted to do for the festival--build a monument to Stormtroopers and Star Wars. And I have to admit, it looks AMAZING.

And lighter fluid you can pick up anywhere, camping gas for lanterns and the like is available almost everywhere else, so this could be the next big thing to keep gadgets up and running off the grid. It's already halfway to its goal; I hope they make it.

Finally, do you remember Bob Ross? Remember his series with all those happy little painting tips?



Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can now watch the entire series. For free. Thank you, Wayback Machine!

open atmosphere, take me anywhere

(The below photographs all come from the "Passage of Time" exhibit at SL10B in Pizzazz. Part one is here.)

(from the events album; the "Passage of Time" exhibit in Pizzazz)

I was on the grid in September of 2006. I was working at the Enigma still--my first, and, in some ways, best job on the grid--when the hacks began. Between "grey goo" infestations, rezzed-out pose items spontaneously ceasing to work, and griefing objects in a dizzying and disorienting array, we also had the first major hacking strike to the SL servers themselves. It would not be the last.

(from the events album; the "Passage of Time" exhibit in Pizzazz)

I have heard distant (and unfounded) rumors that gambling may be making a comeback. I'm not putting any faith in them right now, but I do agree that when gambling services and virtual banks left the grid, the grid economy never really recovered. Granted, there were large (and occasionally, scarily corporatized) interests behind the gambling industry, but on the ground, all we saw was commerce easily flowing, rent being fairly effortless to pay, and a naïve sort of financial exuberance (with an accompanying naïveté as to exactly what was happening).

(from the events album; the "Passage of Time" exhibit in Pizzazz)

The launching of Windlight I remember most vividly by how jarringly unhappy my graphics card was with the system. At this point, three entire engines later, changing Windlight settings is as effortless as thought...but at the time, it was a terrifying, unnatural thing for me.

(from the events album; the "Passage of Time" exhibit in Pizzazz)

It's still hard to believe that five celebrations ago, the controversial "no nipples" policy of SL5B was enacted by fiat. Of course, soon after Ursula-then-Zindra rose as the new Adult continent, and we all discovered we had bigger things to worry about.

From the transcript of Mitch Kapor's closing keynote remarks from SL5B:

So the first is, in the earliest wave of pioneers in any new disruptive platform, the marginal and the dispossessed are over represented, not the sole constituents by any means but people who feel they don't fit, who have nothing left to lose or who were impelled by some kind of dream, who may be outsiders to whatever mainstream they are coming from, all come and arrive early in disproportionate numbers.

It was the way the west in the U.S. was settled. It is the way Second Life has been settled. And in fact those early pioneers find a very arduous environment. In the early days, you really have to want to be here because life in certain ways is very very difficult, in fact too difficult for most people. It is unavoidable in some sense that there will be a very high attrition rate in the early years while a platform is being built out. It doesn't stay that way of course, it can't, but the difficulties of conditions cause those who stay to really bond together, have something in common.

And that sort of arduous frontier conditions really give these environments their charm and their character, but also their challenges [...] I think the larger prospect is bringing the value of Second Life and virtual worlds to the world at large. And to do so, it has to be opened up, it has to be made easier to use [...]

So the first thing is a much more realistic looking avatar and particularly for business meetings and meetings between people who know each other, the ability to look more like yourself when you want to, would be a positively good thing. And there are some technologies that have been developed that will create an extraordinarily realistic avatar out of a single digital photograph and a lot of algorithmic magic. These are not Second Life avatars yet, but they could be at some point.

I still find it baffling, and more than a little irritating, this insistence--from Kapor and others--that all anyone wants to do in Second Life is to log in painlessly, shop in permitted areas, and wander around looking as much like their RL selves as possible.

Don't mistake me--for those people who want to resemble their RL selves, I say more power to them. I have a friend who's done everything he can to match his RL self to his SL avatar, down to changing his in-world glasses and hair when they change. How'ver, far more of us want the creativity in SL to attach to our virtual selves as well.

Perceive it this way: I communicate one message when my RL self is in front of someone. Partially, that message is out of my control, because it rests within the viewer's internal perceptions of me or people like me. I only have my personality, my words, my body language, to communicate on my side of this interchange. Everything else rests on the perceptions of that viewer.



In SL, I can substantially increase the amount of communication on my side. Because it is my choice of presentation, my choice of avatar. Good or bad in the eyes of the viewer, these are choices I can and do make on a daily basis. As odd as many of my avatars have been (and still are), I have gone to scathingly few events where my choice of virtual appearance was wholly out of my control. In SL, what I think, what I feel, what I believe can become part of my avatar identity because of how I choose to appear on the grid--from footwear to ears and everything in between. It takes "Your World, Your Imagination" and makes it "My avatar, my identity".

While there is still perceptions on the part of any viewer that I do not control, it's far less haphazard than in RL, where I cannot as easily change hairstyle, eye color, skin color, and outfit. Which doesn't even factor in entire species shifts, or as Miss Neome is frequently seen in, avatars that are less "avatar" and far more "idealization of the perceived interior".

This is not a long-winded way of deriding people who choose to match their RL selves and their SL selves; it's a valid strategy, and for many people, it helps them adapt to virtual landscapes. But just as studies have shown that imagining a thing paves the way for that thing to happen (think studies that have proven a concrete link between disabled people visualizing walking, and subsequent physical muscle changes that would help them with the right equipment walk again), so it is with avatars. What we see ourselves as being, becomes part of our mental and emotional landscape beyond the grid; something Mitch Kapor denies at his peril.

on a bed of spider web I think of how to change myself

The Oculus Rift VR device got an insane influx of cash recently. So, whereas they were going to be the toy of the privileged few--if them--now they have the means to justify putting one within (fairly) easy reach of most of us, depending. Either way, that kind of money can change the face of gaming, because far more developers are going to start coding for the Oculus headset.

There's a lovely Flickr project called Blog Memes for Second Life Bloggers; what it really is, is a thoroughly ingenious set of reproduced movie posters starring SL avatars. Lovely, lovely work.

Did you know there are pop-up activity books for adults? No, I don't mean Adult adult; I mean grown-ups. Or at least people who think they are.

On the other hand, I've thrown crayon parties before where no one was under drinking age. Adult beverages in the fridge, chips and veggies on the table, butcher paper on the walls and all horizontal surfaces. Everyone gets a box of crayons when they get in.

Those were a lot of fun, as I recall. Pity our current place is so little.

There's, um...how do I put this? A Reddit user has decided to make fanart of the Mindcrackers for potential calendar use.

Pin-up calendar use. Oh, my...and is it sad that I downloaded the one for Pause Unpause?

Courtesy of Slate and Pinterest, I've found another small trove of Victorian (with a scattered few earlier) images, but yet again, it's slightly off-beat. In the case of Corsetra's Pinterest board, it's devoted to breastfeeding art and photography. Who knew the Victorians were so keen to have their pictures taken with attached baby?

But then, in a culture that allowed women to breastfeed (as opposed to one that seemingly goes into frothing hysterics when any hint of a bare breast is divulged), such images would be both common, and acceptable. I never thought of it that way before.

(Just FYI, Corsetra herself is rather a find--I would say easily half of her boards are related to Victorian/Edwardian/Regency concerns, over a wide spectrum of topics. Highly impressive.)

Ten thousand gamers cried out against oppression, and Microsoft backed off some of their plans. So...yay? But family/friend sharing is now out, it seems, along with not needing a disc in the tray to play (something the XBox 360 allowed). I guess that's mostly good...ish...

Facebook, in a landmark reversal, is going to allow mastectomy photos to be posted to their site. This has been a hard, arduous fight (though still a cakewalk compared to having a mastectomy), and many women are overjoyed for Facebook to acknowledge the empowerment that seeing these photos can give women facing breast cancer.

A random perusal of Tumblr a day back brought the String Rabbits to my attention. From there, I found this article, which led me to this article, which led me to the Zoorasian Brass Emissions Orchestra's YouTube account. I highly recommend "Bear-forest", "Ainekuittsu Show Time", and their "Railroad Fantasy" performances, but they're really talented in everything they've posted.

(Oh, and they all have nicknames. For instance, the saxophone players are colloquially known as Saxofox, the string section as String Rabbits [Tsuru-Usagi in the original], the clarinet quartet are the Claricats, etcerera. Fascinating.)

stood on the edge of your bridge until I felt the rain push me away

Some of this year's Twisted hunt.

(from the scavenging album)

I would like to assert I am not a Petite in this image.

(from the scavenging album)

I am actually standing 5'7", including the (admittedly low) heels, yet I cannot make it up the steps to AD Creations without flying.

(from the scavenging album)

Shame on you, AD Creations. Fix your stairs!

(from the scavenging album)

Seen at LoveCats: giant follower cubes. Cute and creepy. They don't actually go into the store, but they do come close.

(from the scavenging album)

Seen at CatniP underneath the Carnival. I'm fairly sure the Carnival goes away at the end of the month, though I could be wrong--either way, it's likely you should check it out now before it's gone! (Though a word of warning: if you don't like the sight of random dead bodies, don't go.)

(from the scavenging album)

Seen (briefly) in Steelhead Harborside. A stunning center build.

Found in the description of a random group along the way:

I am a cat; we dare to sit on the Thrones of Kings and in the laps of Gods. If you want to collar something get a Dog. Dogs have Masters. Cats have staff.

Indeed. Amusingly, the avatar who put this in her profile was in human skin for her SL pic, and as actually encountered in the store. This, of course, does not mean she doesn't sprout cat ears and a fluffy tail at other times; just that she, as seen, wasn't feline.

(from the scavenging album)

Seen at Post: the very practical 'house rules' list. Also, do check out the store in general--the texturing and shading work is breathtakingly good, from the store itself to the products on offer. And for that excellence of texturing, the prices are eminently reasonable.

(from the scavenging album)

Finally, seen at REDRUM: Preservation, and again, impressively detailed. I have no way of knowing most days if something is actually mesh, or not, because I have a mesh-enabled viewer. But I'd suspect it is, because that many tiny prims assembled together would be ruinous on sim performance. But it's well worth a visit for the macabre set.

and a strange voice sings a melody

You don't have to go to the One Voice event to participate--here's a list of stores who have One Voice vendors on their own sims:

*tuttiFruitti*
.HOD.
A and S Visions
A.D.D. Andel
Addiction Jewelry
Adoration Home & Garden
Adorkable Poses
AlterEgo
Anna Shapes
Anymore
Art Dummy!
Avisage
Belleza
Bent.
By Snow
coldLogic
don't freak out!
elymode
English Muffin
Essences
Faerycat Designs
Fallen Gods
Flowey
Fri.Day
For F's Sake
Geometry Clothing
HANDverk
Holli Pocket
Ingenue
Insatiable Designs
isoMotion
Izzie's
Ju
lassitude and ennui
Manna
Mayfly
MINA
Mon Cheri
North West
PnP
Pulse Skin
RnB Designs Furniture
Sakide
Sax Shepherd Designs
Schadenfreude
SHUSH
silent sparrow
Sleeping Koala
Solange
Sugar
Sugar and Cyanide
Sway
Vanity Hair
Zibska/Zibware

There are likely more to come; I'll keep you posted.

And if you can't get in to the event yet, you can always try a fun little trick--going to Apocalips Kansai means you can cam across into the event itself and look through things that way, plus, it's really an excellent East Indian temple build.

Now, just so you know going in--they're keeping a viciously tight count on scripts. Not prims, per se--I saw a full fur with extravagantly bound tail and wings perusing the various vendors with the rest of us.

While I took out all the SLUrls from the now three notecards listing offsite participants, I was standing next to the main port point for the sim. This is a partial transcript of local chat:

[16:58] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home mxxxxxx.mxxxxxx [2㎆/85] Mxxxxxx Mxxxxxx
[16:59] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home cxxxxxx [8㎆/120] ⓒⓗⓐⓓҳ̸Ҳ̸ҳ (cxxxxxx)
[17:00] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home pxxxx.dxx [12㎆/185] Pxxxx Dxx
[17:02] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home kxxxxxxxx [11㎆/188] kxxxxxxxx
[17:02] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home lxxxx.rxxxxxxxxx [5㎆/86] ˡʸʳᶤᶜღLYRICღˡʸʳᶤᶜ (lxxxx.rxxxxxxxxx)
[17:02] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home lxxxx.rxxxxxxxxx [5㎆/86] ˡʸʳᶤᶜღLYRICღˡʸʳᶤᶜ (lxxxx.rxxxxxxxxx)
[17:02] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home lxxxx.rxxxxxxxxx [5㎆/86] ˡʸʳᶤᶜღLYRICღˡʸʳᶤᶜ (lxxxx.rxxxxxxxxx)

Poor Miss Unpronounceable "ˡʸʳᶤᶜღLYRICღˡʸʳᶤᶜ"...she just didn't seem to get why she was being bounced home all the time, and kept trying to get in. Over. And over. And over again, each time never changing the resize-scripted items that were throwing her out to begin with!

[17:03] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home nxxxxxx.sxxxxxxxx [7㎆/190] Nxxxxxx Sxxxxxxxx
[17:03] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home nxxxxxx.sxxxxxxxx [7㎆/190] Nxxxxxx Sxxxxxxxx
[17:09] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home mxxxxxx [6㎆/91] ɱïℓεγ ɱεℓσđγ (mxxxxxx)
[17:10] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home mxxxxxx [6㎆/91] ɱïℓεγ ɱεℓσđγ (mxxxxxx)
[17:10] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home cxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [10㎆/170] ςнεℓş (cxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
[17:11] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home bxxxx.bxxxx [3㎆/51] bxxxx Bxxxx
[17:11] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home mxxxxxxx [10㎆/324] Mαεlyndα Cεrnα (mxxxxxxx)
[17:12] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home vxxx.sxxxxxxxxx [12㎆/557] Vxxx Sxxxxxxxxx
[17:13] PDS HomeSecurity Orb 1: (Weapon) Teleporting Home sxxxxx.bxxxxxxx [3㎆/50] Sxxxxx Bxxxxxxx

I think you get the idea. Basically, if you go in with resize-scripted hair, shoes or clothes, or you have a multifunctional HUD attachment--you're going to be bounced. You can always come back--that is, if you can get in at all--but they're not allowing anything much over the bottom line into the sim.

As a result, while there is a high amount of lag, by the time I actually got inside the sim, there were very few vendors grey and unrezzed. There was some texture blur, which frankly owes as much to http-protocol fetching than anything, but even that cleared up fairly quickly.

Everything is clean, easily laid out, and as low-prim and low-scripted as possible. Anyone wanting to run a large charity event really needs to talk to the One Voice crew to get their tips on how it's done.

And yes, I picked up a gorgeous, but ultimately useless item (at least, for the couples' menu options) from WetCat at One Voice:

(from the Charity efforts album; WetCat's "Clouded Lotus" swing and tree set)

This retails for L$398, half of which goes to the fundraiser, and features two sets of pose options: poses for couples and singles in the swing, which does swing if the top branch is touched, and poses for couples and singles reclining on the ground pillows. Be sure to pull something nearby into Edit when you rez it out, because as usual, for the swing to work means it's unlinked from the rest of the tree.

I'll go through pictures later that a friend sent me; my trip through resulted in an inability to pull up profiles or snapshots while I was there, so argh. But watch for future entries, and remember, this event only runs until the 15th, so go while you can!

do I know your face? does my mind wish to forget?

This is odd, and passing it on for the oddity--I haven't received one, but then, I haven't made a new account since the store girl, lo these many years ago.

Fascinating profile I came across while wandering through Pocket D in City of Heroes:

Zarah Neman
Level 50

Description: ((RP))

It is called Zarah, or Narah. By the way that men reckon time, it's ancient beyond imagining, having witnessed the earliest sunrises and sunsets of existence, though turned its gaze from them, preferring its native lands of Faerie. It wasn't until humanity first dreamed that this attention returned, transfixed by these new beings. And so it became real, forsaking Faerie, a story told to the waking world on rose-red flame, and has lived here ever since. It is to Modern Fae what Cavemen are to modern man - primitive, brutal, and disturbingly clever.

• Scores an 11/10 on the Fae Chart.
• Aura is not hard to read, though it's wise not to observe deeply, lest curiousity work [its] proverbial murder.
• When surrounded by tongues of flame, they are cast by dozens of tiny fae in orbit

Everyone gets one chance. Be polite.

Vaguely demonic in appearance, in a precisely tailored suit. Fun.(I did change his "it's" to "its" in the description; it's a long-standing pet peeve. Otherwise that's exactly the bio I saw.)

In more JIRA news...this one's really, really odd. A comment on the script throttling the Lindens initially enacted pretty much doused the comments in kerosene while on fire:

You are really some cry babies. That's typical, when they do a change which benefits the players, all of you spam sending scum cry around.

They throttle it even more to 100 per hour. I fucking hate it when I get in a sim just to get 10 item accept request. Fuck spammers, rot in hell

In all honesty, when I was going through my emails this morning, I didn't even realize this was a JIRA comment until I'd mentally backed up and looked at the header.

So, I looked her up while I was closing down other research windows. I kind of wish I hadn't now, but...yeah. There she is. Decanted in 2008, no bio, very few groups, so back to being severely puzzled about the whole thing. (Oh, and that pic? NSFW. For just about ANY work.)

There's been one comment so far taking her to task for saying that, but seriously--that particular JIRA was doing fairly well as being more useful for the Lindens than your run of the mill complaint-go-rounds most JIRA posts turn into after a while. In fact, the last comment posted was near the end of March. Then Odessa comes along and explodes for no reason. What the hell?

Plus, again, how exactly is the original drastic script throttling "a change which benefits the players"? It seemed to be hurting more players than it ever helped, and just from my perspective, I've never--in six years of playing SL--gone to a sim which tossed me ten items to accept at the same time.

I'm sure I don't go to the sims Odessa goes to, but the max I've ever been tossed is three--and usually, those are heavy roleplay sims, so it's generally a rules of conduct notecard, the landmark to the sim, and a landmark or notecard for the shopping area. Period.

Say hello to Mild Insanity--it's a customized map for Trials: Evolution, which I believe is an XBox game. This is two of the Achievement Hunter crew discussing the then-new game, that works as a pretty good introduction to the game, and mentions the absolutely insane amount of customization options available in the in-game Map Editor. So why is that so amazing?

Well, because you can make your Trials game look like Portal. Or look like op art (that video gets full cuteness points, too, for Geoff's take-your-daughter-to-work-day episode). How about putting dragons on your map? Or riding your dirtbike through medieval ruins? If you're a fan of the "Wipeout" show, there's a map for that. Or if you really liked Missile Command on the Atari system? There's a map for that. If you really liked Mario Kart? There's a map for that.

Really, if you like inventive games with a mind-boggling amount of diversity and creativity--and, more importantly, you have an XBox 360--checking out Trials: Evolution wouldn't be a bad thing. If you only play it for the custom maps, you're still getting your money's worth.