Skell Dagger

Fixed yours for you, Tommy

Yes, the whole thread. I no longer see it in the General Discussion list.

It means the post has been removed by moderators. A quick way to check is - if you have commented in the thread at all - to look back at your activity. If your comments in that thread are missing from there, then the post has been removed.

Indeed visible and preferably rezzed in multiple locations (if the store is anything more than a very small one), as some people may just use area search to find an item and not actually look around the store, or might have picked up demos the day before and know exactly where they need to cam in order to find the vendor the next day (again, assuming that the "Closed on Sundays" ads might only be rezzed out on Sundays ; there are multiple potential parameters here!). Closing down vendors - assuming those are used instead of the classic click-to-purchase prim ads - with a custom texture would at least prevent any "I didn't even see the notice!" protests from those who don't look around the whole store, for whatever reason. Or possibly a large textured prim could be rezzed in front of the vendors that gives out an information notecard about the Sunday closure when clicked?

Devil's advocate: Shopper has banlines disabled in their viewer because they have an unreasonable neighbour who has put them up and they're visible through the walls of their own home. Store is in a laggy location or Shopper is on a poor connection that means they tend to land, take one step aside, and then camshop. It's Saturday or Monday where Shopper lives, and Shopper has no idea - because of the lack of banlines and the presence of working vendors inside the store - that Store Owner has "closed their shop" because - where Store Owner is - it's a Sunday, and they don't want sales on that day. Shopper gets banned, and has no idea what the hell they did wrong, as they had no visual clues whatsoever that Store Owner didn't want to make sales on that day. Is it unreasonable to expect that - given those very real possibilities - the Shop Owner would either disable their vendors (perhaps with a custom texture on them stating "This store is closed on Sundays - please come back at XYZ time SLT!") or rezzes out very visible and obvious signs to the same effect?

Facial characteristics are defined by both shape and skin appliers. For non-Bento heads you cannot change the physical shape of the head in any other way except stretching it. For Bento heads you can use the shape sliders that are used on your system avatar to further customise more than 30 individual parts of your face shape. Skins will add even further customisation, just as they do on system avatars. Marianne has shown you four different shape and skin combinations used on the Catwa Daniel head as examples of just how different you can look with the same head, and below are some examples of the same head that she used - this time the same shape, but with different skins and other appliers such as makeup, age lines, and facial hair: Skin and skin appliers are different ways of doing the same thing, and which one you use depends on the type of avatar that you have. The skin that you're familiar with is one that you wear on a system avatar. If, however, you opt for a mesh body and head you will need to use skin appliers instead. You still need to wear a system skin underneath it all, as that's one of the four basic avatar components without which you won't rez at all, but any system skin will suffice for that, as it won't show when you're wearing a full mesh avatar. If you've chosen Signature as your body (presumably Gianni, as they also have a body called Geralt) then you need to be aware of the following: check that the mesh head you want is compatible with the body and fits properly at the neck check that you have appliers in the same skintone from the same designer on both head and body Your skin applier options will be dictated by your choice of head and body. For example: Signature body and Catwa head = you would need a Signature-compatible body applier and a Catwa-compatible head applier Slink body and LeLutka head = you would need a Slink-compatible body applier and a LeLutka-compatible head applier There is also the option of Omega appliers. Omega is a cross-brand applier type that - providing you are wearing (or have installed) the correct Omega relay for your head and body - will allow you to wear Omega skin appliers on any mesh body and head. Omega is not a specific skin brand; it's more of a "remote controller" that allows you to wear Omega-compatible appliers made by any creators. If you choose a Bento head then your underlying shape will affect what the head looks like. Most Bento heads will come with a "starter shape" that sets the ideal slider parameters for the head. You can subsequently edit that shape to personalise it to you. Many Bento heads will look very odd if you try to wear them over your old system shape, so either customise the included starter shape or look for a shape made specifically for that brand of head. (And be aware that, for the male market at least these days, many shape-makers no longer offer demos.) With regard to hair, you don't need to worry about shape compatibility. Most hairstyles will work on both Bento and non-Bento heads. Just as you used tattoo hairbases on your system avatar to hide any bits of your scalp that might have poked through your hair, so you can find hairbase appliers for mesh heads that do the same thing. The main important thing is to take your time and try lots of demos. Don't rush into anything - especially an expensive Bento head purchase - without first making sure that purchase can be moulded into exactly what you want. And if you need any more help or advice, keep posting here

No. You are ascribing intent to my words that was never there. I simply pointed out the difference between the two words, as per: alone - the state of being in solitude (a physical state of being) lonely - the state of needing/wishing for companionship, often as a comfort (an emotional state of being) The two do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. One can, of course, feel lonely in the middle of a crowded room. You say that you understand the differences in meaning of those words, but again, below, you use the words "loneliness" and "lonely" (words that describe an emotional state) when "aloneness" or "solitude" and "solitary" (words that describe a physical state) would have been more accurate to the context of your post: You even mention the stereotypes of men being self-sufficient (ie: not needing others around them for emotional support) and women being "emotionally dependant" upon community. Saying that men "feel insulted by the implication of loneliness" when they are simply pointing out the difference in meaning between two words is one hell of a stretch. That is the dig you're making here, not the implication of insult that you perceive to be present. For example: I love solitude. I thrive on it. I can be as sociable and garrulous as any other little butterfly when I'm in a room full of people, but I prefer to be alone. The only times when I actually feel lonely are when I'm feeling really down about something and could do with a hug, but I have nobody nearby to offer that hug at that precise moment. I cannot see where any man in this thread has taken the "implication of loneliness" as a "deadly insult" (emotive and exaggerated language use there, too, by the way). In one case word use - yet again - is being countered, as Callum has taken issue with your using a gendered stereotype (male-pattern baldness) in the thread title. Jokey or not, consider the female response if a man had used "nags on the rag" (as a loose, off-the-top-of-my-head example) as a title for a forum discussion about b!tchiness or drama among some groups of women in SL. Using a gendered stereotype as a title's basis will tend to immediately colour the reactions of those responding, before they even click to read the body of the post itself. "Nags on the rag" as a title would - quite rightly - set the post on a dead course toward a large distaff iceberg. Your post goes on to invite discussion as to why men don't appear to socialise with each other in SL, but because you used emotive language ("loneliness") to equate to a physical state of being ("solitude") in the title people will read your post with those headline words already in their mind. You joke about the title being click-baity, but I think we've all been stung by such titles wherein the click-bait immediately sets our expectations, but the text that follows lets us down in some way. Words matter. As a feminist and a woman you know that all too well. One only has to consider the 'animal insults' and phrases aimed at women (cow, b!tch, henpecking, etc) whose opposites (bull, dog, c0ck-of-the-walk, etc) are actually complimentary when aimed at men. As to the overall contect of your post, the characteristic homosociality of women vs men most likely comes down to simple prehistory and the millennia of male-female roles that have only been upended in relatively recent times. It takes a village to raise a child, but it was probably Ogg and Ugg who undertook the dangerous task of hunting meat for food, while - tasked with bearing, rearing, and protecting the next generation - Oggette and Uggette stayed close to the cave, emerging to forage for berries and fetch water. There was no infant formula back then, so if the women were killed in the hunt there would be nobody to feed the children and the survival of the tribe would be in danger. Women were the security of the tribe's future, and they built the social networks that would help them maintain that survival. Yes, there are endless discussions to be had about male advantage, privilege, and domination in more recent times, but the vast majority of social conditioning is most likely based on that ancient and very real necessity.

All of those sites create connections at the expense of communication. The advent of the like/heart/reaction button absolved people from having to type comments in response to others' posts. (Yes, you can comment on most of them, but the majority of people don't bother.) I've been fairly active on social media in RL for many years, and the last time I felt a true connection to people who followed my account(s) - in the sense that we communicated back and forth with actual words, rather than clicking a heart or a thumbs-up or a sadface - was back in the early days of LiveJournal, until it was sold by its original creator. Before Facebook came along, LJ was a social network that felt like it had heart behind it, and I've not found its like since (although pillowfort.io is looking promising). Even back then, there was a lot of debate about the LJ term 'friends list', with many preferring to use 'contacts' instead. I had around 275 people following me there on my main account, and I regarded maybe four or five of them as actual friends. The rest were people I commented back and forth with, but regarded as acquaintances, not friends. These days, many people seem to determine their worth by the number of likes or followers they have. If they regularly get 100 likes on a post, but then they post something that only gets 70 they might worry that it's not a "good enough" post. The same goes for followers: some people collect followers (or 'friends'), and the more followers/'friends' they have the more validated and/or secure they feel. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I have regarded as friends in my 11.5 years in Second Life.

There is a vast difference between 'being alone' and 'being lonely'.

Catwa products are sold by Catwa Clip. Her Marketplace can be found here and the inworld store is here. (Note that buying at the inworld store gets you store credit to use against further purchases, whereas buying from marketplace does not.) Pick a head that feels like you - which is where lots of demoing comes into play. Never buy mesh bodies and/or heads without demoing! Demo not just the heads, but also various skins with them. And don't forget that with Bento heads you can use the shape sliders to change the shape of your face, which adds further customisation.

Credits Tank: Cubic Cherry - Kai Tank Top (plain black) (Slink, Geralt, Gianni) Jacket: FAKEICON - Fouri Furcoat (black - unisex) Hair: Dura - U85 (fatpack A) Eyeshadow: Zibska - Noir Pack Vol 14 (Catwa, Lelutka, LAQ, Omega, system) Face tattoo: Zibska - Pica (Catwa, Lelutka, Omega) Eye appliers: Avi-Glam - Sinister Eyes (Catwa, Omega, own brand) Skin: Insol - Tyson (ST1 - Catwa) Head: Catwa - Skell* (Bento) Ears: L'Etre - Olympe Mesh Ears *review copy

Possibly, but when I checked the contents tab on MP of the ones using Catwa ad images they contained things like "Toxic Templates Full Perm Mesh - Kyoko Top".

Ain't that the truth. In the Catwa support group (and I'll bet this also happens in other large groups, such as Maitreya Lara Friends) we get days when we're pretty much SL101 tutors, as we have one-day and two-day newbies arriving in chat. Someone told them they must have a Maitreya body and Catwa head (or a Signature body and Catwa head) and these poor people have no idea what a HUD is or how to wear it, or what an alpha layer is. We've had people who don't know how to unpack things, how to open and/or search inventory. We have people who say they "put on the head" they purchased and it's not there and now their whole head is missing (and we have to explain patiently that they need to wear the head as well as the alpha.) We have people who don't know how to use their viewer and ask questions about that. Try to explain what to click when the person you're explaining to has no idea what you're talking about, and you have to describe in infinitesimal detail what you need them to do. Anyone got an elderly relative (and I don't mean the savvy ones who pick things up quickly) whom they've ever tried to explain computer stuff to? Translate that into SL and working with a complete newbie to mesh body parts. We try to help as much as we can, but once we realise that Person X is so new that they will monopolise chat with non-relevant questions about how SL works we always try to guide them gently toward places where they can learn about SL, rather than taking up hours of time in a support chat that's dedicated to a specific product. It's becoming more and more common these days, and it can honestly be exhausting when the newbie in question has already been getting some help from a friendly group and is reluctant to go somewhere new to learn how Second Life works in general. We're also aware - because people send us messages about it - that the above puts people off asking questions in chat about what we're actually there to do: which is help with Catwa head questions. The whole situation isn't helped by some of the people who told those newbies to buy mesh heads and bodies also telling them that "Catwa chat will help you with anything, because it's busy and there's a lot of people in it". Many of the body and head main HUDs have resizing options these days, but some of them are so big (I'm looking at you, Maitreya!) that you can't size it up much more without losing some of it off the bottom of your screen.

You kind of did, indirectly: However tactful you think you were being, you named a store and its owner, stated that you paid them a lot of money, and said that the items weren't delivered. It's a long weekend in the States, and that store owner is very likely offline and spending time with their loved ones. Instead of understanding that and waiting patiently for a reponse to your inworld contact, you decided to come on here and ask if anyone else had had a bad experience (late/non-existent delivery being what could be termed a 'bad experience') with that store. In essence - whether you think that's what you were doing or not - you have given them bad publicity. (Also, 'naming and shaming' is not permitted in this forum.) You cannot edit posts in this forum after 24 hours, so when that store owner comes back to you and explains what has happened to cause your problem (most likely the huge issue that many creators had inworld with the biggest vendor system in SL going offline for several hours) you won't be able to return here and amend your post to remove the mention of their store and their personal name. Which I'm sure you would have done, of course - in the interest of fairness - once your issue had been resolved. (Because it would be bad form to leave a post standing like this without being corrected.) That particular creator has been inworld for longer than I have (and I'm at 11.5 years) and they would not have had such a successful career if they'd made a habit of giving bad service to their customers.

Thanks for the heads-up, Vanity. I've alerted Catwa about her images that are being used to advertise that full perm stuff.

For those who may have lost their way a little bit, a friendly reminder of the original question:

How to tell that there's a sale on at Signature: the view count for my "Gianni vs Geralt review" blog post has gone through the roof!

Not my own personal shape, I hasten to add! It's a shape created for the Catwa 'Skell' Bento head.

I've just thought of another one: "Would you be my friend?" As in: the friendship offer popup, but especially when it appears without anything leading up to it. No conversation, not even a "Hi". Since I became a CSR for Catwa and I'm always in the group chat helping people out whenever I'm logged in, I frequently receive those friendship offers out of the blue, far more than I ever did before. Prior to that I received maybe one or two every few months; now it's five or six every week. It's fairly obvious why: those people just want a CSR on call whenever they need one, and they're too lazy to search for the name each time they need help, so they assume that having me on their friends list is much easier. They always get the same response: And the answer is always... silence.

I think a bit of confusion has happened here What Ethan was referring to when he said the following - - is what I said earlier in this thread, which is: In short he was confirming what I'd said, a la: "Skell mentioned already in this thread that I hadn't made any tweaks to my head". When he later mentioned my Flickr and blog he meant to find - as he put it - "more advanced looks". Basically, I spend a lot of time styling my avatar, and I credit everything I wear so that people can find the items that they like from the looks that I put together and post on Flickr and my blog. He's not actually expecting you to go hunting through the forums to find every post that I've made Incidentally, the tweaks that I made were fairly minor, and amounted to literally twitching the sliders just a few points away from the base shape. The way that sliders work on mesh heads is that their effects are compound, relative to each other. If you move Slider 1 without moving Slider 2 you will get one look. But if you move Slider 2 first, and then move Slider 1, you will get an entirely different look. Add in Slider 3 (either before or after you move Slider 1 or Slider 2) and you'll get even more different looks. Everything else in my image comes from the skin, the makeup, the angle, the lighting (in this case the Windlight setting used), and the post-processing (which, for me, is just a couple of filters; I don't photoshop my images intensely or anything like that. In fact, the main thing I do is just blend the mesh ears). That's one reason why - under the pic in this thread - I listed the stores I got the items from. This is a crop of the original shot without any filters added (sorry; I don't remember which Windlight I was using!) - And this is the exact same look taken in a bright Windlight setting. I just logged in especially to take this one, and I made sure it was front-facing, as Ethan (mostly) is in his images, so you can see the comparison. If you look at just the shape of the face, you can see that it's not all that different from the others shown here. The changes all come from the appliers used. Yes, the jaw looks a little more pointed and angular on Ethan's pictures, but I'm not sure if he uses the same camera zoom (CTRL+0) that I do. CTRL+0 doesn't elongate the face like the scrollwheel zoom does (an example of the difference those two zoom types make can be found here), but gives you a more accurate representation (in your own viewer) of what you actually look like -

Congrats! Great combination I just made minor tweaks to the lips, nose, and cheeks. I don't think Ethan has made any tweaks to his, since I'm fairly certain in another thread he said those images were straight out of the box with the standard shape. Skins and lighting matter greatly with a head, so trying some skin demos will be worth it.

I just found another one that I've been looking for, for bloody AGES! A dance inspired by Uptown Funk. This video is me and a fellow Catwa CSR sync'd up at A&M Mocap Animations. And, of course, the music:

The HUD is identical to the female Bento HUD, with the exception of a couple of icons. And he'll have a hair and beard HUD as well, but that works in the same way as the Master HUD

Ah, I wasn't aware that the Geralt head was also on sale. Be aware that you'll probably struggle to find any appliers for it. I've seen exactly one Signature head applier in the last few months. There is only one head that's half price at Catwa today: the new male release mentioned above. No other Catwa heads are discounted.

Mine is the Virtual Bloke blog that you saw the Gianni/Geralt comparison on, yes The Catwa 'Dude' head? Absolutely worth it. The offer is only on until midnight tonight, though, so make sure to grab the demo as soon as you can. This is how I had it looking after about five minutes of tweaking: (Skin by Birth, facial hair by CDC Creations, eyes by Avi-Glam, eyeshadow by Zibska, brows by Identity Body Shop. ears by L'Etre.)