Alma Palmira

I'm still here, kind of. I had some medical issues, Doc's thought I might die and told me to puts things in order. Along with my RL house cleaning and paperwork, I nuked my two SL alt accounts--Alma and Lucy, and kept my original account. I deleted all my pictures and textures because sixteen years of random hedonism (before I evolved out of that stage) was pretty scary. I deleted all my inventory of clothes and builds and misc detritus except for what I was wearing. It was actually kind of freeing. I went to the hospital in April, went to rehab for a couple of months, and then I returned home where I live on a steady diet of narcotics and am confined 100% to bed. (Although I have hope of walking again as I continue Home PT.) It's been an interesting eight months. Long story short--I'm (vanettda lassard) In the middle of resurrecting my virtual being. As soon as I get stuff together I will be reading and posting and generally being my somewhat normal self. What's changed in SL the last eight months that I should know? Do I need to purchase a new mesh body and head?

I used it to build a deep water grotto (on the bottom of the Sea.) It was a Great spot. very quiet and low lag. The parcel has land included fit for a boat and dock. Ive reduced the price to sell quickly so I can build elsewhere. Get it while it is still available. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Keener/53/242/84

Ahhhhh, the possibilities of a new year! I’m ready for my next building adventure so I am selling this wonderful deep water location. If you were inspired by my build, now is you chance to create one of your own!. land is Priced to sell. It doesn’t include my grotto, but I possibly could be convinced to throw it into the purchase price it needed? Let me know.

It is time to discover new adventures so I am selling the land which held my underwater Grotto. It is Land in one of the older deep-water sims. Priced to sell. Alma's Grotto, Keener (56, 235, 103)

Hello, My name is Alma and I'm a SLholic. I was asked (in 2005) to join SL by my Division Chair to see if it was a viable platform for academic pursuits. I still have that Avatar, and another, and Alma is my third--the one that stuck. For a number of years I guided graphic design students through SL, teaching basic texture creation, tiling textures, alpha textures, basic 3D modeling (prim cobbling) with the purpose of introducing students to Maya. I also taught digital illustration which was my main outside income aside from teaching full-time. (Helpful hint: if you really want to piss off a PhD tell them that you have no interest in tenure because you are making more money working outside the ivory tower part-time than I ever would working inside full-time). In 2015 I ended up at the hospital with a spinal injury. They operated, took out seven (all) sections of my cervical vertebrae (Posterior Spinal Laminectomy). They told me I needed two other surgeries for thoracic and lumber vertebrae. It took me three years to recover from first surgery. I am permanently disabled but I can walk-ish and most importantly--I can still draw and paint although at significantly lower productivity levels and I do it from bed. I live with chronic pain, and tell my neurosurgeon that the only way he is getting me back on the operating table is when I can no longer physically kick and scream to keep myself off of it. In the intervening years between 2006 and today, SL has been an escape, a pressure release, an academic venture, physical therapy, mental therapy, and liberation from the confines of my bedroom. It has also been a dark place, a place of unapologetic binging, a lie and a RL relationship torpedo. Today SL for me is a place of moderation, acceptance, and peace. Like the pain pills I take by the handful, SL can be abused, but when regulated, it can be a tool for which I am profoundly grateful to have access.

I build and occasionally sell stuff. When I have a good month, or if I’ve been consumed with RL work and haven’t logged into SL for a few weeks, I often have plenty of collected linden love to fertilize the economy. But all things being equal, there are weeks sometimes when I’m low on scratch. I often tip generously, but there are times when I don’t tip at all. I can’t speak for all club owners, and I’ve never run a club myself, but my experience doing work with/for a LOT of diverse clubs owners says “please come, regardless of your ability to tip.” I know that in the past simply adding a club to your picks, or upvoting (do people still upvote places?), or inviting friends contributes to a clubs overall health. A simple “thank you” and a smile is a payment we can all use more often.

My non-negotiable list: When you see me, ask for a hug. I'll never get over the virtual feeling of hugging. It warms my cheeks and heart in the real world. Send me all the invitations, TPs, or unasked for conversations you would like. I am perfectly at peace with saying no as well as saying yes, It doesn't threaten me and It shouldn't threaten you, and truthfully, sometimes I just need the kind of distraction that a blind TP offers. If I want to be alone I have three avatars, one of which is a hermit with no friends or groups. So if you see me in-world it's on purpose--please jump in my Lap and say "howdy stranger!" I love dancing in SL. Dance with me! Its not an engagement ring, it's an opportunity to listen to music and connect. The actual animated dancing is tertiary in importance and mostly camouflage for profile surfing, witty banter, and online shopping. Besides, most of the time my cam is focused on the ceiling because...FPS yo! I don't apologize for talking to people I don't know. It sometimes feels like SL is the worlds biggest introvert party where most everybody is afraid to say a word to anybody. Which is also why I always tip a good hostess. A good hostess will not only welcome people to an event they will engage and draw people outside their bastions of comfort. Speaking of tipping; tip generously. Tip the hostess, tip the DJs, tip the venue. Every linden does make a difference. Be friendly peoples, good neighbors, and exceptional finger linguists. We are all RL refugees hiding from tyrannical rule imposing nut jobs in a virtual world that soothes the soul and enlivens the spirit. Revel in this.

If not, it’s close to the same idea. Although the chutney I’m familiar with is South African Indian, chutney in India is very broad and varied and if it contains fruit, sweet, savory, spicy in a vinegar compote it’s called chutney. I once had a peanut chutney that was thrilling, a new and unexpected flavor experience.

ProNutro is served with milk and is creamy. It has the odd characteristic of absorbing the milk over short periods of time, so that you eat it fast or continuously add milk to it until it is gone. The flavor is somewhat unique—neutral but pleasant, and it is packed with vitamins and if eaten in the morning wil carry you through till later afternoon. chuntney is the ubiquitous condiment in South Africa—like ketchup but with a kick. Mrs balls is made from fruit like a preserve. It is sweet,- but it also has a mild spicy kick. The flavors are sewn together with a vinegar base that explodes in your mouth:sweet sour, savory, spicy. I’m not sure what fruit in in mrs balls chutney. Certainly sultans, maybe appricots? Mango chutney is pretty common in South Africa, so maybe that’s what’s in there? It’s the type of condiment (like ketchup) that accents already great dishes, or you can put on food you are not fond of and bury the flavor under a chutney mask.

Feeling nostalgic, I started off my day with a bowl of ProNutro and tonight I’m making chicken biryani with a healthy dollop of Mrs. Balls on top. And yes, I will eat it with my hand. 🙂

I’m not sure, but the last time I looked I think K.R. Engineering has a poker table? Karsten has been around for years and his games are the best. (Spoken as a unrepentant greedy greedy player.)

Ah… well, by circulating water from outside, through my water columns inside, I create a positive pressure envelope that effectively keeps me warm and dry. as a side note… if you are “flying/floating” underwater in my home and your AO includes a swimmer, you will breaststroke from chair to chair. SL is all about embracing compromises 🙂

Thank you very much. My last home was a fallout bunker buried beneath a grove of pine trees. I guess I have a thing for secret hiding places. Building has always been a great way for me to self medicate. Very zen-like. I still love to cobble prims togethers. My inventory object folder is full of “object” builds that go nowhere. Lol. BTW, happy Rez-day! They should give us awards at 15 years.

Where is this? I would love to explore.

They can be, and expensive too. I found one that had an astronomical price on it, and made a fair counteroffer. We negotiated a bit and then it was mine. I love how dark it gets at these depths. Also, like a sky box there are rarely neighbors sucking up FPS.

Though I am the last person to judge (or even comprehend) what is normal or not normal, I do think that SL often strips away a layer of RL pretense exposing deeper psychological needs. Is it the anonymity? Is it the softened consequences of jumping off virtual (metaphorical) bridges? Why do you think that is, why are they normalized?

IKR? When I first joined, I spent three months as a furry. Furries were one of the first “communities” in SL. I was a rabbit with an avatar completely made of tortured prims. My furryness didn’t stick, but I treasure those times. They are a great group of people. I’ve never met an angry or intolerant furry. Before SL, my only connection to the furry world was in Stanley Kubricks the shining.

Thank you and I agree. I also didn’t want anything hard science fiction like, nor did I want a mermaid lagoon, nor a sunken relic. I wanted something organic that looked like it belonged on the ocean bottom, integrated with it instead of built on top of it and I wanted warm cozy comfort. I’ve built plenty of things that missed the mark, but it was nice how this came together almost effortlessly. I’ll be happy to call this home for a few years.

About a month ago on another thread I reminisced about owning a deep water grotto that I once lived in. After thinking about it, I decided it was time for a change and and purchased a deep water location for my new home. After sharing the process of how I built it, It was suggested that I post it in the community forums. It's really nothing spectacular, but for better or worse here it is. Step one: I thumbnail sketched on my iPad what I roughly wanted to accomplish. Step 2: I purchased a deep water mainland plot and prim sketched it to fit. I then saved it and imported it into Blender as a .dae file. Step 3: Part of my Idea was to create a dome with a quasi-organic feel to the lattice work. I created this in Adobe Illustrator, saved as a .SVG file, imported it into Blender and used the vector as a projected knife cut onto my dome. Step 4: I created a "duck blind" based on my SL 3D sketch that would match my parcel location and texture. Step 5: Underneath the "duck blind" I integrated the grotto and dome as well as a few architectural accents. Step 6: I textured the dome and lit inside of the grotto. Step 7: Furnished and finished. I was lucky enough to have 90% of my furniture in inventory so furnishing it went quickly. I went with a eclectic Art Studio feel, that had a few conversation areas and places to hang up selections of my RL illustration portfolio as well as a few paintings that I really like. I love my new home! Feel free to ask questions or visit in World. (Located in my picks in Profile.) It will never be really finished. I will constantly be diddling with new things. But it feels great to be secluded under the sea!

One of my first friends in SL was a scantily clad stripper from Ireland who in RL was a grandmother, and spun and died her own wool. Another dear friend of mine was a college student from the Netherlands with debilitating agoraphobia and a foot fetish. These and hundreds of others of interactions with real people behind fanciful avatars have taught me that the world is much smaller with far more diversity and similarity than can be imagined. Here are a few lessons that added clarity to my life. With respect to Alan Jackson’s light-hearted anthem of libation libertinism … It truly is always “5:00 somewhere.” There are a host of people in the world who are fluently bilingual, but most of them don’t live in North America. Humans have more dreams and aspirations in common with one another than politics would have us believe. Fart jokes are universally funny. What have you discovered about the diverse RL world through the common SL virtual reality?

/me sheepishly try’s NOT to locker-room stare at the ridiculously well hung FPS that dangles between his legs while whispering to myself, “size doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it that counts.”

Sold! One week and done. Woohoo!

Thank you both. I cleaned (simplified) my node tree using the bdsm shader (that was a joke) as the anchor before going to material output. I also switched to diffuse which allowed me to play around with color, indirect and direct, lighting outputs (I added a light). Learning nodes is like learning a whole new program inside another program. There is a certain hierarchical logic to it that eludes me, but is slowly becoming clearer. YouTube help in this area is sometimes more dangerous than helpful. Thanks again. This community rocks!

I've been doing my best to learn how to use procedural textures in Blender (nodes). Once again I know just enough to get me into trouble. In this screen shot you can see the build I am working on, as well as the node tree that includes my AO as well as my base texture. It seems to be working on the screen, but when I try to bake the result so I can upload the AO part is not rendering. I am using cycles and have the baking set as combined but still no go. I'm obviously missing something in my gap-filled vertical knowledge silos. Maybe I don't need to bake at all? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

I have two mainland parcels for sale in a very quiet, low lag sim. I've lived here for 2 years and it has been a dream. Protected Linden Road access. 1218 m2 and 1536 m2. Both pieces are next to each other and I'm willing to sell separate or together. Very affordable with great, tasteful neighbors. Im moving to a deep underwater grotto in another sim, so no need for these. Check it out, these will go fast. First come, first served. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Desire/172/150/105