Gabriele Graves

Mo, thanks for organising the party at the hangout. It was lovely getting together with so many familiar names again, the music was fantastic and the chalkboard game was a hoot. Sophia and I had a really great time.

I like the mesh eyes from Avi-Glam, very pretty, lots of choice and very reasonable price.

I first read this as "Do you give your avatars backsides" after that any attempt at a serious answer faded for some time. For me, yes my avatar has a backstory but that is only one aspect it which is fused with the real me. It is difficult to know where one starts and one ends at times. Related questions: Do you find your SL avatar behaviours bleed over into RL? and do you ever dream of being your SL avatar in RL?

These are the places I hide my victims who may be only at the point of death. Often they are underwater, people just think they are sorting their inventory or changing clothes but I know better.

I was dancing at Franks not too long ago and I was IM'd by this guy who asked me if I was a FinDom. I have to admit that though I have been around a bit, I had to look that one up. I told him that I would check, after a small wait said that I had thoroughly checked several times and was pretty sure I wasn't. He thanked me politely and left. SL is definitely the place to get your strange on.

I would like the ability to manipulate inventory via scripts. I realise that this is dangerous but the benefits would be great to me. There are just so many inventory tasks that are boringly laborious and would benefit from automation. I do like the offline idea too though.

No touching up here, just the good old SL camera:

Morbidity only occurs when we are unsettled by the subject matter, there is a need for people to ask these questions. It reminds us to reflect upon the bigger picture from time to time, even if that unsettles us. I hope you continue to ask questions like this.

*Is drawn to the presence of death in the thread* Fascinating question. For me, I seek knowledge, wisdom and the truth of all things in this life and so I would want to know. Yes I would open it. Do I think it would make me happy to know?, I expect not, it could quite probably sap all enjoyment out of the rest of my life just as surely as if I just learned I had cancer and only a short time to live. There is never enough time, no matter how long away it may seem. Knowledge often doesn't bring happiness but that is no reason to resist seeking it.

Happy Birthday Mo!

Sadly, it cannot be fixed by just adding a nice beach to these sims. The whole design is now based around a solo "Experience" where you perform tasks and get rewards to gain proficiency in using SL. They really are designed to move new residents off to other places once they have gained a basic level of proficiency. In effect, its purpose is really the same as it was for Orientation Island and really "Social Island" does not describe what they are now. It isn't really designed for them to come back, mix with older residents and socialise after they have done that. I believe this was a deliberate design decision on LL's part so that the islands didn't stay full so that new people couldn't start there. This is understandable but sadly destroyed the most magical part of what was happening there. The whole set of sims were beautiful with wonderful little touches in each separate area (like an oriental gazebo with rain outside, seats with nice poses in, etc). The beach area was beautiful and had these lovely tiki huts that gave some (illusion of) privacy, places to sit, a campfire which became the focal point for folks hanging out. It cannot be understated how important these little touches were for making a really attractive space where people want to hangout. What I saw there led me to believe it was a very successful formula for retaining a new residents for longer than would often otherwise happen. The new residents got to mix with older residents immediately, saw what was possible, asked questions, listened to the experiences, histories and stories of others and got to goof around as well. This is so different and far more personal way of integrating new residents with older ones. Mentors stood around fielding questions and helping with problems which whilst incredibly valuable too, can sometimes be clinical, aloof and brief as far as interactions are concerned. The old islands had this as well though if you did just need a answer to a quick question from someone who was specifically there to mentor in that way. There was generally a buzz about the place which I hadn't seen for a long time at a new resident place. New residents would form (and break) friendships and as well as deeper relationships there. They would go to other places, develop their avatar a little bit more, come back along with their own experiences so that they could show, swap stories and information with their new friends. I saw this pattern repeated many times. It became a base to keep coming back to without stopping them exploring the rest of SL. This happened without any of it being artificially induced. There were no "Socialise Here!" signs or get a reward if you add 5 friends to your friends list for example. Forming these communities is difficult and destroying them is so easy. Sadly, once done, you cannot simply undo the damage.

I also miss the Social Islands of the above older design, they had just lovely beaches and there was a great beach-side community on #3 which has all gone now.

Ooops I didn't read far back enough to realise that it was Amara who started it off, that'll teach me. Still definitely a fab idea Amara

I pretty much have the jellydoll feature disabled all of the time. I am a firestorm viewer user and I have the option to see the complexity information avatar in the name tag turned on. In preference to seeing jellydolls, I use the derender feature for avatars I don't want to see for whatever reason. At extremely laggy places such as shopping events, I switch my settings to "Show Friends Only". I would say that the addition of the complexity information has been helpful to raise my own awareness of the impact avatars have on other viewer and the sim. The jellydoll feature not so much for me. However, I cannot say if it would be different if I was using the official viewer because I don't know how many of the other options I use are available there. For my own avatar, I tend to float between 40K and about 130K depending on what I want to wear but mostly in the 40K-80K range. I tend to be more conscious of avoiding high complexity for my own outfits when I know I am going to be in a place with a high avatar count and/or high lag. I am finding that newer mesh items are more complexity friendly which I do tend to notice when demoing items and will prefer when buying.

Amara, Lindal lovely to see you and everyone else here too *hugs to all* Lexxi, I know that sadness too well myself unfortunately I love the oldest picture theme, Lil', so here is the oldest picture of me (pre-turned too) in SL I could find: I have also brought along something for us all to have a toast with, raises glass to one and all:

Ahh, OK. I agree though that "painted on" clothing will always have their uses even in a mesh world.

Clothing appliers for mesh bodies are just like system layers except instead of painting on the system body, they paint on the mesh body. These are very popular for underwear, etc.

Vanity, thy name is Gabriele...

*waves* to @Macphisto Angelus Hey Mac! Nice to see you around again

This is very long but it roughly chronicles my journey from a staunch "not-going-to-go-to-fully-mesh-ever" person to being 100% mesh today: I bought mesh hands and feet when they became available just like many others because the system ones were so bad. I was very happy with them, they were a big improvement. That was the start but for the longest time I kept my system body and head which was perfectly fine when I was wearing system/flexi-prim clothing. Soon enough mesh clothing started to appear. Mesh clothing was enticing because it just looked so much better and before long I was mainly buying mesh clothing. It didn't take long though to become really frustrated with alpha cuts. Often the ones supplied were very inadequate, missing and in many cases you could still see the cuts with the clothing on. I found myself trying to get alpha's from demos of similar clothing to see I could improve things. I am not good at making alphas and after giving it a go, I realised that this wasn't going to work long term. This was also at the time before fitmesh and none of the clothing responded to shape sliders. I had tried a couple of mesh bodies but at that time the ones available didn't respond to shape sliders either and it seemed complicated make existing mesh clothing work with them. Most mesh clothing was standard sizing at this point - none targeted specific mesh bodies except the ones from the mesh body creators and they had only a small selection available. One thing they did have though was the ability to *easily* customize the alpha cuts with the HUD. I really liked that, a lot. I really felt that LL could have made system alphas that easy with a bit of effort, but I digress. The alpha improvement wasn't enough. Part of my reticence was because I wasn't ready to give up my investment in the many, many system outfits I had bought. That wasn't really the fault of mesh though. Due to this and the limitations, I wasn't convinced that scripted third-party mesh bodies were ever going to be the answer. I stayed with my system body for a very long time after this point and hoped that LL would update it. Time passed and I got by with mesh but wasn't really happy with the results. Fitmesh came along, things were a little better and I had a good selection of outfits that worked well. They were far better than any of my system clothing. More time passed and I was persuaded to give the mesh bodies another go. At this time at least two of the mesh bodies I had previously tried had been updated to work with shape sliders. Also outfits from third-parties had started to appear for at least two of them. I took the plunge, bought one and everything was much better, I could buy clothes that fit much better than they had before and were made specifically for the body I had. Most fitmesh could be made to work because of the easy alpha cuts and even some of the non-fitmesh could be made to work as well. The feeling that I really wasn't enjoying SL as much started to lift and I enjoyed clothing again. This phase lasted quite a while and I really didn't think I would want a mesh head. At this point mesh heads were static only and the chances of finding "my look" was slim. The system head was simply a better option to me. The only thing I was unhappy about at this point was my visible neck join which I couldn't seem to shake under all lighting conditions despite have the several correct sets of skin appliers. I could live with it - I wore chokers, etc. Then Project Bento happened, waited to see how things would play out for a while and then got the Bento demos and took a look. Even with the demos, I could test the appliers. The neck join had disappeared. Some heads were very responsive to the shapes sliders and some not so much. I spent a few hours trying to make the demos look "like me" and ended up with results I was happy with. I bought a bento head and immediately it felt like the missing piece of the puzzle fell into place. My avatar looked whole again and the anims and options were great. Undoubtedly there was a learning curve at each point but that passed reasonably quickly with patience. After all, I was in no hurry - it wasn't like I had had to eat the whole enchilada at once. Because I moved to the mesh body first, I had time to adjust to how it worked, get used to appliers before tackling the how the head worked. I realised at this point that I would never go back to any visibly system body parts. I was ready. I deleted over 30,000 items of system clothing, alpha layers, etc. and have never regretted any of it. Wearing clothing is now far far better than it was before, the difference is quite profound. I certainly don't miss trying to get flexi-skirts and prim/sculpty attachments to size and position properly. I am not saying that any of this would be the same for anyone else but I was more surprised than anyone to find myself changing views so radically even though it took a lot of time. My recommendation to anyone is to keep an open mind, use the demos to keep playing with it all, become familiar with it and maybe one day it will seem like the better option. I believe that the eventual results are worth the time spent persevering with it.

I am fashionably late to almost every party...Hello to everyone

Come to Second Citizen Mk II, you can name and shame there: http://secondcitizen.net