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Kate Amdahl

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Everything posted by Kate Amdahl

  1. I'm hoping to put together a list of LGBTQ groups and destinations in Second Life for a post on my site. Do you have any suggestions? Clubs, not clubs, adult, PG, everything's helpful!
  2. Over in the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS) , we're experimenting with setting up circles of portals to carefully picked destinations. You stand in the middle, and through each portal you can see a picture of the place, while a sign above tells you the name of the spot. You can touch the portal for more information or use sit to teleport to the location. We thought this might be a fun and useful way to find new favorite places by looking at them instead of searching through text, with the added encouragement that they're vetted and up to date. Our first circle of portals is for museums, exhibits, and galleries. What are your favorites? What should we include? Some that we've visited already include the SL Historical Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Neufreistadt, and the International Spaceflight Museum. I'll post the landmark for the circle here once it goes live. :) ^^^\ Kate /^^^
  3. Our little democracy is throwing a big steampunk Halloween party in the castle dungeon this Saturday, 10/29. Here's the announcement: *****HALLOWEEN PARTY TIME!!!***** Time to get your punk on, as in Steampunk . . . as in the CDS “Ghouls and Gears” HALLOWEEN PARTY on SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29. Put on your best Steampunk-themed costume (or any costume), push aside the cobwebs, sneer at the ghosts and goblins, and join your friends in the Schloss Neufreistadt dungeon for two hours of ghoulish merriment. Yes, the castle has a dungeon! But not just any old run-of-the-mill dungeon . . . one tricked out with the Steampunk mills, dirty engines, and grinding gears of a bygone era that never was! And here is the best part: the entertainment! 1:00-2:00 pm SLT . . . DJ SQUISHY PAINE will spin tunes that will put steam into your Halloween! 2:00-3:00pm SLT . . . NAFTALI TOROK will perform folk melodies that will keep the dancing extreme! Y’all come! All y’all! Bring friends, whether CDS residents or not.
  4. Become invisible Ride a dragon Become a member of a working virtual democracy Explore a sim on horseback Have a balloon race Watch fireworks Sail the Blake Sea Dance with five people in an evening Tour the Confederation of Democratic Simulators Get stuck in a rainbow laser glitch (very difficult! Pictures of me and a friend accidentally doing it here: https://kateamdahl.wordpress.com/2016/08/07/an-evening-in-second-life-walking-riding-lasers-and-the-ocean/ )
  5. This is a very low-tech solution, but couldn't you have a greeter that mentioned the setting and offered a link to a website where it was available? I think many people would just ignore this, but at least everyone would have the opportunity to use the suggested setting.
  6. I don't have any information you don't have, but...well, if I'd bet that the partner is actually a German-speaker. It wouldn't necessarily mean they're in Germany, though: language isn't location, right?
  7. I've been looking for some time for a very good black woman's skin in Second Life that has a friendly expression (many of the faces of skins of every shade and color look pouty or sullen to me!) and for which I can get a Maitreya applier. It should ideally have proper attention to detail, with appropriately-colored nipples, light palms, etc. Does anyone have any suggestions? I found a discussion from early 2015 about this, but was hoping there had been some new and wonderful additions since then. ^^^\ Kate /^^^
  8. I'm curious about answers to the original question, but I imagine a venue full of beautified-to-the-limit avatars would lag terribly, and then people would stop going, and it would fail. Am I being too pessimistic. I laughed at how true Amythest's statement can be. Fashion can be a full-time obssesion -- I mean, occupation in Second Life, and clubs can get boring quickly (for me, anyway!) if you can't find one that has interesting people in it. It's always a roll of the dice. I sometimes go to clubs with friends, but more often visit each other's homes, so my club time is only a small fraction of my total Second Life time because of the number of friends I'm always trying to catch up with and because I have a bit of a fashion addiction.
  9. Hi Marisol. I have a good option for you to consider! I recently was borrowing a friend's laptop, and, and it ran Second Life very nicely, considering it's not a dedicated gaming computer. I e-mailed him to ask what it was, because he had said at the time that it was very affordable, and it's an Acer Aspire E-15. I looked up the specifications, and it has a solid state drive (starts things up much more quickly!) with 8 GB of memory and a good (not amazing, but good) NVidia graphics card. The processor must be pretty good, because I had no problem running Second Life. I haven't ever tried Second Life on a high-performance gaming computer, so I'm sure people who are used to the best hardware wouldn't be as pleased with it, but compared to what you've had, I think you'll love it to pieces. I didn't have to limit draw distance or really much of anything else. It has Windows 10 and a backlit keyboard, which makes it easy to use in dim places. I don't know what he paid for his in the States, but I found it on Amazon UK for £480. (Maybe they sell it for less elsewhere in the UK; I haven't done any comparison shopping for you.) Good luck! ^^^\ Kate /^^^
  10. What wonderful stories these are! I hope we'll hear a lot more of them. Deltango, early congratulations on your tenth rezday! I just turned ten myself. Are you doing anything to celebrate?
  11. My home sim (Alpine Meadow) was offline when I tried to log in earlier, but I had no trouble logging in. Are you getting through now, or still having trouble?
  12. In case anyone's interested, I did eventually find a good (and affordable) option: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Starburst-Dance-Ball-Mesh/5126637 . It costs L$99, works nicely, is resizable, offers several options for effects (including effects off), and includes a number of acceptably good dances. I took most of the built-in dances out and replaced them with a dance pack from Abranimations, but there's nothing wrong with the freebie dances they include, and for L$99, you can't beat it. They have a couple of other designs as well, with the same features and at the same price.
  13. Pamela said If you are shy, try role playing someone who is not. In SL you can do that and no one will know I wanted to add that this seems like very good advice to me! My Second Life personality is much like my First Life personality except that I'm much more outgoing in Second Life. I'm not shy in either life by any means, but I'm more socially daring in Second Life, partly because I'm there specifically to be social, while in First Life I have many other things to occupy me, so that socializing is something I can only fit in now and then. I have acquaintances who did describe themselves as shy in First Life, but whose personalities gradually changed through stepping up and being more outgoing in Second Life. Some of them have talked about gaining confidence or comfort in social situations this way. ^^^\ Kate /^^^
  14. I would add "fill out your profile, and put some thought into what you can write in it that will get the attention of people you'd like to meet." I don't know, Alwin. I agree it would be shallow to snub or mistreat someone just because they hadn't put time into their avatar, but I do agree with Steampunk that putting some effort into having a nice-looking or interesting avatar is a better way to make friends than ignoring it. Consider: Our avatars are an expression of ourselves, and people don't have a lot to go on at first beyond our profiles and our appearance. If you're friends with someone, they'll be seeing your avatar a lot. Is it not a kind thing to make the experience of seeing you all the time an appealing one? People who have put no time or attention into their avatars are sometimes (not always!) people who are unwilling to put attention into other socially positivate behaviors. Finding friends in Second Life is difficult with a sloppy avatar in the same way that finding friends in First Life is difficult if you dress in shabby clothes and decline to shower. Working on your appearance offers a topic for conversation, if you want to have those kinds of conversations. I don't blame you if you don't, but for some of us, they're a lot of fun. Since you can put an appealing look together from free things, mainly what nice appearance requires is a bit of time and a bit of effort. There's no need to go crazy with it if the process isn't fun for you: one nice outfit is much nicer than no nice outfits. Just to emphasize, though, I certainly agree (and I expect Steampunk would too) that looking nice isn't an obligation -- it's just useful and pleasant.
  15. Hi Faceless, Yes, search is your friend! She's a lazy friend with limited skills, but she's mostly there when you need her, and ultimately she really does want to help. Where to go to meet people depends on what you want to meet people for. If you want to just go be with some other folks and don't mind if there's not a lot of connection or conversation, there are plenty of dance clubs where you can go, and that would be the thing to search for. Use the drop-down to narrow your search down to places only. Some of these clubs may even have people at them who want to meet other people or have conversations. Others will mostly have people dancing and perhaps yelling things out from time to time (hello, great song, woo-hoo, that kind of thing) but not much in the way of actual connection. If you have special interests that you want to share with people, search for groups using that same search feature. Some of the groups will be old and defunct, and there's no good way to tell, but often groups with a lot of people are active. Some of these groups have places connected with them, like churches or nude beaches or residential areas. If you want to meet someone romantically in a PG context, try Frank's or Sweethearts Jazz, both of which tend to be about single avatars appearing and finding other single avatars. These are mostly for straight people, though there are some other destinations that work well for other sexualities. If you just want to have sex, I suppose you know what to type into search for that! For conversation or connecting with other people, try discussion events, or just teleport to a hub, like London Town, where there are always a lot of people milling around. If you want to meet people serendipidously, go to one of the more popular "wander around" destinations like DaVinci Gardens or whatever's being touted by Linden Labs currently in the viewer. Browse around and see if you run into anyone interesting. If you want to stack the deck, use the button that looks like a dot inside several circles (on the Linden Labs viewer that you're probably on if you're new), which brings up a local map. Try to move your green dot closer to the other green dots you see, if any, since each one is a person. If you see a little green V or ^, that means the person is above or below your level. I'm sure there are other ways, too, so hopefully other people will suggest those. None of these methods are sure-fire, I'm sorry to say, but if you keep at it for a little while and do things you're genuinely interested in, you'll start running into interesting people and can build a list of friends you want to spend time with. Then, whenever you log on, you can just see if any of your friends are around (and available).
  16. Thanks very much, Walter! I'm glad to say I was able to find a DJ. I think your post may help others if they're looking for DJs in the future.
  17. Keep reading to get up to date with what's been written. You'll get there Phil, if you really mean this to be encouraging and not insulting, I'm not sure you're achieving what you intend. If I read that kind of statement directed toward me, I'd take it as a man being patronizing and belittling because he didn't like what I was saying, not as someone who actually knew something I didn't being supportive of a learning process. I'm not sure if this is partly because it's women who are giving you pushback, but unfortunately, it comes off to me as a poorly-considered sexist put-down.
  18. About the point you made, Phil, about dressing yourself right away when joining Second Life being a choice, I do want to say that the choice for many of us feels like a choice between "Do I want to buy this dress (and those shoes, and this hair, and my God, I even need these feet...) or do I want to be shunned as an ignorant newbie who looks terrible?" I'm sure this doesn't happen to everyone, but this point of view is heaped on women, and I'm not sure it feels like a real choice to most of us. Technically, yes, a choice. In practical terms, it may feel like there's no point in trying to proceed if you're not going to buy the dress and learn how to use it. As someone who's watched concurrency and sign-up graphs side-by-side for years, the numbers that give up climbing the curve are not insignificant. This seems like a different, useful angle for talking about the learning curve. I mean, we can't be sure that so many new users are giving up on Second Life because it's a pain in the neck to learn to use it in the ways they signed up to use it, but that sure does seem to be the way to bet. I don't think most people are leaving because it's too expensive, or because it can't deliver the experiences that the advertising suggest, or because of glitches and shortcomings--although I bet some gamers are disappointed in the graphics and so forth, because there's so much lag-inducing, poorly-designed material out there on the grid. From that point of view, the steep learning curve that many (but not all) of us have experienced has been killing Second Life for thirteen years or however long it's been, and fixing that learning curve might completely change the popularity and power of Second Life. Except of course Linden Labs isn't going to do this, because they have a new virtual world coming along. Let's hope they've learned this lesson for that world and have found ways to make it easy to be there without giving up all of the creative tools they offer in Second Life.
  19. This made me giggle several times -- who can't relate to the inexplicable mortification of finding oneself naked in a public place in SL? Why was it so awful? I wouldn't care much now if I lost all my clothes. That still happens to me every once in a while, because I change outfits often and have gotten used to doing it in public, usually without incident. But then I'll forget that a particular clothing layer needs to be added with an applier and there I'll be, in the middle of the street or in conversation with someone or at a store, naked as Lady Godiva. Usually I get it under control within 15 seconds, but it's painfully embarrassing! My Second Life self really is me in a virtual body, so doing things that look incompetent or carelessly slutty makes me feel terrible (even though I don't give it a second thought when it occasionally happens to friends, although most of my friends are more careful than I am! So isn't that strange?).
  20. If I've understood you correctly, you're saying that the phrase really means that there's a lot to learn in order to use SL in the way that the average user uses it (knowing how to do all the usual things), and that some of those things can come very soon after first logging in. Is that a good understanding of what you said? Yes! Thanks, that's a good summary. I think I'll accept that. I'm not sure that "steep" quite fits it though, because, to me, it implies 'very hard', and I don't think it is. A bit confusing maybe, a bit time consuming maybe, but not very very hard - imo, of course. Oh, that helps me understand a bit better what you're talking about. "Steep" makes me think "lots to learn," but if a person thinks of it as "difficult to learn," then I agree, it's not hard for a person who's comfortable with technology so much as just requiring a lot of perseverance. Apparently all of us here have some of that!
  21. Why did you sign up for Second Life in the first place? What were the first things you wanted to do? Were you able to do them? Were you hooked early on? If so, what hooked you?
  22. Phil, I think we might be running into some confusion in this thread just because of differences in different people's priorities. You mentioned, "When a new user first arrives, they need to quickly learn how to use SL - things like movement, TPing, and communicating. When they've learned those things, they can use SL "properly". They don't need to learn anything else to happily use SL for hours on end, day after day." I'm sure that's true for some newcomers, but for many of us, the experience is very different. When I came to Second Life, of course I learned to move around and communicate quickly, but as I moved around, my experience was dominated by all the things I couldn't do. For instance, even though I knew how to teleport, I didn't have anywhere to teleport to. I needed to learn to use search (which was even more limited then, in 2006, than it is now), but I didn't realize it at the time. So I wandered around on foot and eventually found a club full of furries, which was confusing, although the people there were very nice. So then I needed to learn to dance, which wasn't trivial. And of course wandering around and meeting people very quickly made me realize that I didn't look anything like I wanted to look yet. I'm sure this is often less of a concern for men than it is for women, but I felt embarrassed and disappointed not to be able to dress nicely. It was important to me within the first day I arrived. I think you're absolutely right that people can wander around and talk for hours on end with little idea of how everything around them works, no sense of where to go, and looking like a default avatar. I question, though, how many people actually enjoy this. I think it's natural to come to Second Life with expectations that you'll be able to have a particular kind of Second Life, and that fairly soon. Whether you're coming to dance and socialize (in which case you will probably want to look good, which opens up a huge list of things you have to learn, especially if you're a woman) or to have a mansion and a speedboat or to kill vampires, a lot of people are coming to Second Life wanting to do something specific that Second Life can definitely do. However, getting from just being able to walk and talk in a default avatar to living the life you pictured when you signed up can require teaching yourself many, many things. That's what we mean when some of us say that Second Life has a steep learning curve. It doesn't apply if you'll be happy for a long time with the absolute minimum Second Life can offer. Many people, though, are not. ^^^\ Kate /^^^
  23. I'm setting up for a party coming up the week after next and am looking for a good single person dance object. I do have a couples dance object that does well on that end of things. I don't mind buying some dances and stocking them in the object if that's what it takes to do this right, but it would be easier if I could get one that had a selection of nice individual dances (even if it wasn't a very large selection). I'd like to keep it within L$1000, but I don't know for sure whether that does the job. What would you suggest? If I should buy the dances separately, is there a dance pack you'd suggest? Do you think one object for men and women, or separate ones? Thanks for your ideas!
  24. Oh! It's short for "residents." Sort of "citizens of Second Life." I use it a lot, and some of my friends do as well, but I guess I don't know how widespread it really is.
  25. Because it's short and friendly. Why, apart from formal communications, wouldn't someone say "resis"? Too colloquial? Too cute?
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