MoiraKathleen

I do a long click and drag the mouse off the bucket, and then I get a message in chat that says how many candies have been given out.

I haven't seen any store names that have done this, so far. I would think they were doing so to make their store name stand out - I'm having a hard time making the leap to think they would be doing so in order to make people think they had a 5 star product.

It's worth checking periodically through out the time you're online to see if any ranch homes are available - you may just get lucky and check right after someone has abandoned theirs. I've had to do this for Trads or some of the popular stilt styles that often have 0 availability, and usually I've been able to get one within a week or so of trying.

I had a couple of instances where the number didn't increment on the HUD until I walked out of the parcel to the street. I thought I read a comment somewhere here or in the Belli Citizens chat, that the HUD might not display the updated count when on parcels with scripts turned off, but the HUD counter display would catch up once you were back where scripts were active. I took this to mean that the actual count is being incremented and stored even if the display doesn't reflect it right away.

I don't know if it's related to this blog entry from LL today or not, but it might be worth reading.

I did end up using the list last year and will use it again this year, but I TP to the region from the list entry (not to the exact entry SURL) and then walk the region looking for the home on the list, plus any others that I might find. I feel this is a good compromise between fully walking the ever-expanding number of Bellisseria regions and just TP'ing directly to each entry. It does take more time, and I'm not sure I finished the entire list last year, but I'm just in it for the region explorations and to get some lower level participation prize, as I know I don't have the time or the patience to go after the top prizes. I also added my location to the current list this morning.

I've been trying to follow discussions I've seen here in the Forums regarding PBR materials, but most of it has been beyond what I'm able to easily understand, so I have even more questions than you probably do about how it's all going to play out. From my experience with other features like BOM or EEP, there will probably a period of time between when the feature is made available in the SL default viewer release (with any accompanying server side changes) and when it becomes available in the other 3rd party viewers.

Which release number of the SecondLife viewer are you using? The current default release is 6.6.15.581961 - and the check boxes for "Atmospheric shaders" and "Advanced Lighting Model" are still on the Graphics tab in Preferences. I'm wondering if the release you are using is 7.0.0.581684 - GLTF Material Import viewer (still being tested and not the current default release viewer yet, but available for people to try out). I have heard rumors that in the GLTF PBR Materials version, ALM (Advanced Lighting Model) will always be on. This viewer has features that are not yet in the current Firestorm viewer. Regarding the Second Life viewer, I have not heard anything about any possibility of it being abandoned - it is the viewer that gets the new LL developed features before the 3rd party viewers like Firestorm get them to include into their viewers. LL is working on a mobile viewer, but that is a separate viewer project and I have not heard anything about the existing PC/Mac veiwer being replaced by the (still in development) mobile viewer.

I've never had anyone ask me for this type of information before. For clothes or shoes I'd probably tell them both where the item was from and what it was called. I'd probably tell them what brand body or head, if they asked. For skin or eyes, I'd probably just tell them what store they were from, but not which specific item or color. If they asked about my shape, I'd just tell them that it is a custom shape I created myself.

harvest was a little late this year

Definitely, in my opinion... and LL has found a way to oversee it all, that for the most part, it seems to me, works for the majority of us.

I'm aware that SL and LL aren't perfect, but if I focused on all the problems and negative things I see and hear, I wouldn't be able to stay around. For me, fortunately, there are enough good things to make it an enjoyable experience and place for me to spend my time and money. I am glad that SL is still around after 20 years, and that LL continues to work on improving it (even if other users question their choices of fixes and improvements). I'm glad that SL is an open-ended type world, where I can make so many choices about my experiences here and how I want to live my inworld life, and that there are so many creators and other users here providing so many services and products to enrich the experiences of all of us inworld. Mainly though, I'm just glad that SL is here. I've been feeling a bit unsettled and displaced in RL the last couple of years, and SL for me right now, is a place where I can have some say and make my own choices in creating spaces where I can feel settled and in my own place.

Out at Natthimmel

Finally made it out to visit Natthimmel. I really liked these yellow flowers and ended up buying some for myself from MP.

That could be, but I wouldn't think of that as necessarily stalking someone - it seems to me like that's a trial and error situation if you're looking for a specific person.

Interesting. I don't know anything about that vampire system. Did you ask your friend how you could be "marked"? Is it something as simple as your name on a list (which wouldn't provide any information about your location or how you could be found at any given time) or is it because of something that you're wearing (either intentionally or unintentionally)? I'm just curious as to how they're able to stalk you, otherwise.

I haven't used Firestorm for years - I think it was when bakes on mesh went live that I switched back to the LL viewer. If I'm in an area where there is a lot of texture swapping, I'll switch over to Kokua which lets me increase the size of the texture memory used - other than that I'm generally fine with the features in the LL viewer. Kokua has pretty much the same interface as the LL viewer, so it's easy to switch back and forth between them, if needed. Kokua has also picked up some other features from TPV's such as area search, ability to turn off group chats without turning off group notices, session or permanent derender, to name a few. Kokua is usually updated shortly after each LL viewer update.

Forget real life stresses

Thanks! I've found it to be a very relaxing room for myself. I really like being able to see trees outside the windows of a room. The trees came with the little lights in them - they are the "Whispy Twinkle Trees" from [DDD] ~ Dysfunctionality. They are a great set of trees - there are 4 different sizes, 3 of which have no-twinkle versions included, plus a HUD for an assortment of leaf color changes / leaf theme changes. LI for each tree is very reasonable.

There are non-open floor plan versions of the ranch homes in the home controllers now. I don't remember exactly which one is the non-open floor plan for the Knotty Pine, but if I remember correctly, it divides that big main room into 3 sections.

Back to the initial topic of event gifts being at the main store rather than the event, I didn't mind gettting a LM from clicking on the event gift box, providing there was something displayed about the gift being at the main store (or an included picture of the gift in the box with the LM). I didn't like it when clicking on the gift box brought up the map to TP directly to the store, because I didn't want to be constantly TP'ing back and forth between the event and various stores, I did not TP to those stores. I'd rather collect all the gift boxes from the event first, and then as I unpack them, decide whether or not to visit the main store to pick up a gift.

I don't have a problem in general with items or clothes made from full-perm templates. Like original mesh, what I look at is whether the item appeals to me or not, and how it's textured. The texturing, especially in terms of clothes, can make a big difference between the same template used by different creators, and I appreciate those that do something unique with how they texture or put together/arrange their offerings. For a LL sponsored event, I think it's fair to include non-original mesh creators.

New Strong head W003 using the standard SLUV and The Skinnery Isabel BOM skin for Genus, and one of The Skinnery Frecklez BOM face tattoos for Genus. Also using the Lelutka Mature BOM addon for the little lines beneath the eyes. I'm really pleased with how this turned out, and I think this will be the one I'll be sticking with.