Orwar

I mean, now I'm curious.

AHA! I knew I'd seen that option -somewhere-, but I was staring myself blind at the Preference menus without finding it. Thanks!

Oooor ...

Just had a quick look - no, you can add the first system layer rather than wearing it. No, things that you can only wear one of (and always have to wear one of - skins, shapes, system eyes, system hair) doesn't have any add option. I wish you could at least change the default double-click action from being 'wear' to 'add' so that if you accidentally double-click something in your inventory, you can just take it off again without having to run off to put your head back on (although to be fair I probably shouldn't wear my head on my right hand - but even when* I do get around to fix that, it'll be my trousers or shirt instead). *Soon™ I also wish creators would put it into their in-world routine to change the attachment point of their stuff before boxing and shipping their stuff ... But that's not happening. ... Come to think of it, the last time I did double-click an object in my inventory it was my beard that got knocked off - I now have it attached to my jaw instead. Woo, progress!

Indie music is by its own definition not really supposed to be found on any mainstream platform. Spotify have made it much easier for people to upload their own music as of late though, I know quite a few people who use it for their own music projects.

Spotify absolutely isn't 'all edm'. I've discovered a fair bit of new music through it in several different genres. Sure, if you use the Spotify radio you may get stuff that isn't for you (just like listening to a radio station might not always play good music), but you can just skip a song if it's not to your liking. There also are countless playlists that you can look and listen through. For browsing and discovering new music, it's great. Another way to find new music is to listen to radio channels (there are thousands of free radio stations around the web), or if you're into a specific genre you can discuss that music on various forums or keep up with music bloggers.

I know. It's better than a cat!

As ValKalAstra said, it really depends on what sort of preparations and editing you want for the shots. I've seen people offering to do profile pics at L$50 a pop here on the forums, and I know of people who'll charge you L$7-10K for the same. Well, not 'the same'. Price isn't necessarily an indicator of quality - always check the portfolios of any potential photographers before you decide whether to commission their services.

That's been another thing which has been discussed a bit (buy clearly not enough) here. As people of my generation start popping out kids, my FB feed has largely turned into a peculiar mix of people screaming political nonsense back and forth, pagan crafts, and naked children sitting in sinks or being snuggled by Rottweilers. Those infants have no say and no control over how their parents portray them to basically the entire world, and if people are careless with their privacy settings (which most don't even seem to realise), that has the potential to be used against them - or worse, end up in the hands of paedophilic networks. Posting pictures of your kids on FB is nothing like when my parents put a photo of infant me sitting in a wash bowl in a frame on a living room side table; that could only be seen by people who were invited to our house. Personally I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's an issue of not receiving consent from your infant children, but it is always risky putting up private pictures on the Internet. Especially on sites where people's private information is the primary commodity.

It depends entirely on what you want to do with it. It is a great tool that does have a lot of features, but you don't have to learn them all. The workflow for creating an alpha texture in Gimp is very straight-forward: Open the UV map for the body you are using in Gimp. Make sure that the layer has an alpha channel (this can be done either by clicking 'Layer -> Transparency -> Add Alpha Channel' or by right-clicking the layer in the brushes & layers window and clicking 'Add Alpha Channel' there). Select the eraser from the toolbox, and select the brush you want to use in the brushes & layers window (for alpha masks I prefer sharp lines, so the circle with 100 hardness, i.e. no gradient, is my go-to) Look at your avatar in-world whilst wearing the UV as a guide, see what lines are visible, then erase everything that you can't (or shouldn't) see under the clothing you are making your alpha for. Once finished with the eraser, export the image as a TGA or PNG file. Try it in-world as described above, and once you are happy with the result, upload the texture into SL to finalise your alpha mask. You could basically do it pretty much the same way in MS paint. The learning curve for Gimp doesn't start getting any steep before you get into editing photos, and even then the tools themselves aren't the difficult bit as long as you know which features you wish to use and how to plan your workflow, the 'difficult' part is generally knowing how much (or rather, how little) you want to change for the image to not turn into a weird mess. The trick is to just play around with it, see what things do, maybe read or watch some tutorials for how to do specific things (there are tons of tutorials on YouTube for various features, from how to adjust colour balance and exposure to how to draw hair and make different effects and using different filters). Gimp is pretty much comparable to Photoshop as far as image editing goes - the basics really are basic, but it has the potential to do very advanced things as well. Even then, it's a matter of learning how to use the tool comfortably and figuring out how to apply it to achieve the artistic effect you want for your images. I have been thinking about making a tutorial for photo editing on the forums, but I figure it's a tutorial best done in video format since there'd be much too many images to post, to show each step in detail.

And be quick to clear the landing point when you go event shopping, to avoid getting knocked over yourself!

I'll just throw the obvious go-to shop for mainstream fashion out there: Blueberry. Quality is generally consistent and maintains a high standard which, in my mind, certainly is a requirement for photography purposes. Price is usually around L$250 per piece (so L$500 for a top & bottom combination - and whilst they mostly sell their items as sets, you absolutely can mix & match them). I'd also suggest you check out the weekly sales; Fifty Linden Friday (FLF), Saturday Sale, Weekend Sale, and Humpday Sale are weekly events that offer a wide variety of stuff (not always just apparel though). You can find galleries on Seraphim / Facebook so that you don't have to visit all the stores every week - prices are usually L$50-L$75, and sometimes it's per piece and colour, and sometimes it's for fatpacks. As those sales include a large number of creators, the quality varies a lot, but there's usually some absolute bargains in each round. Yesterday I got these jeans for just L$75, for example: They're designed for high heels though, hence the feet clipping - still haven't gotten Mina any heels!

I do think that there is room both for niche bodies and more 'mainstream' mesh bodies, especially if made right. Two of my friends decided to try on a demo of the Mirana body to play around with shapes and check out the mesh, and compared it to the Kupra. The hands are really quite nicely done, and the bottom half of the body can be shaped quite nicely. The breasts however begin to look weird if you reduce their size, they get 'squished up' in a rather unflattering manner. It does seem like it is made for a niche that already has plenty going for it though, competing with the likes of Kupra (which is doing fairly well by the looks of it; it has a decent amount of support as far as I've seen). If someone were to make a nicely meshed, female BOM-only body that's more athletic (being able to have a smaller butt than Maitreya, the breast sliders being more focused on detail within a more restricted maximum size, etc), I for one would jump on it pretty quickly. As far as pricing is concerned, I wouldn't honestly mind paying L$5K or thereabouts for a good body, it's something you get so much use of after all - but then it has to be a good body, both out of a technical and aesthetic point of view.

I saw an interesting documentary on Netflix recently about them big tech corporations. There absolutely is reason to be concerned when they get involved in deciding whose ideas should reach the public and whose shouldn't (and in doing so, only get even more attention, which is what they want to get more people to sign up). I'm no doomsayer though, I figure things will pan out ... Eventually. Just hoping it's within my lifetime!

They've all been spent.

Some variety from those chicken nuggets, huh?

But where do they find all the Neils? And what does customizing them entail?!

Hate the creators. Had you not known, you might have bought it, put it in your home, along with similarly laggy trash, and before long you'd notice that you couldn't be in your own house due to how sluggish things would run. Besides, I've found that you can wring a lot of enjoyment out of simply laughing at the creators, and then at the poor sods who buy their stuff. Schadenfreude - the path to true happiness!

And sometimes when just attaching or detaching apparel or accessories. Whilst T-posed. They just sort of spring to life!