Scylla Rhiadra

Well, ordinarily, I'd say "doubtful." But this is really a rather sweet post by Dres. I totally understand what he means about missing people here. And I really wouldn't want him to think that he wouldn't be welcomed back, because he was a pretty important (if sometimes slightly grumpy) voice here, and I know he's missed. So I say we expedite his application, should he choose to apply.

He missed me (from his list). Well, fiiiiiiiiine. Pfffft. 😝

My own approach most resembles that of Orwar, with a bit of Matty thrown in too. Rather than repeat what they've said with slight variations, I'll just throw in some fragmentary observations and suggestions. 1) Composition is for me the most challenging part. One rule of thumb (which, like all rules, should be broken sometimes) is to use the "Rule of Thirds" to set the focus of your picture's attention. This involves dividing the pic into thirds horizontally and vertically, and trying to place the picture's focus (for instance, your face) at one of the intersections of the horizontal and vertical grid. So, for instance, in the last picture i posted here, you can see that my face, and specifically my mouth, correspond with the upper right-hand intersection. It creates more interest in the picture, although, again, I think it can be overused (and I think I do overuse it). 2) Depth of field and shadow can be really important, but be aware that if you are using a really high resolution picture, one that is significantly larger than your screen resolution (my pics are usually 4999px or 6000px wide), the expanded size will severely weaken the effect of DoF and shadow blur. I ramp both up significantly (esp. shadow blur, which I use all the time, and which I generally manually set at 12 or 16), knowing that the actual effect when it appears on the saved image will be much less pronounced that it appears in my viewer. 3) I don't use Windlight nearly as often or so well as I should, but one thing I sometimes do is set the scene to Ambient Dark in the presets. This effectively eliminates any ambient light, leaving just local lights working: it allows me more control over the precise lighting and shadow, using projectors and non-projector lights. Remember too that you can change the time of day in Windlight, and adjust the angle of the sun/moon, so that shadows are cast in different directions. 4) Two settings in Phototools that it's easy to forget, but that can make a difference, are under the "General" tab. LoD, or Level of Detail, adds, yes, more detail to objects, esp. mesh. I try to set it to 4 or so. And Anti-Aliasing, at the bottom, should also usually be set high (I have mine at 16x) so that rough edges on curves and circles are smoothed out a bit. Both of these can impact your computer performance though, so be careful! There are lots of other things too, but that's probably enough from me for now! We really need a separate thread for this kind of thing in the Art, Music, and Photography forum.

Oh, interesting! I didn't know that. I'll stand by my basic point though: all of these instances are specifically about wearing a uniform, and doing so to impersonate either a soldier or veteran. That said, I note that the US law is specifically about impersonating someone who has received a military award with fraudulent intent to gain. However one wishes to parse these specifics, I am still convinced that there are some very real and tangible differences between how the US feels about its military, and how most of the rest of the world does. I don't mean to imply a value judgement in suggesting that: it's just a cultural difference that explains, I think, the response of non-Americans in this thread.

True. And I remember that incident. The specific context there was the use of a uniform by someone pretending to be currently in the military.

The point I was making, Ceka, is that you and Shudo are talking -- I think, and he can certainly correct me if I'm wrong -- about two different things. You are talking about Americans, and I suppose the OP specifically, as individuals. Shudo, and I think most of the non-Americans here, are responding more generally to this aspect of US culture. I know of no other nationality that reveres its military the way the US does (although sometimes maybe the French come close). As a nation, you have an actual law about this issue. For most of the rest of us, this is really odd and puzzling.

It depends on where you are standing.. I've lived in cities and out in the country.. In the cities you will find many weird,strange and creepy people..Mainly because they are so packed in there like rats and scared to death of each other.. Out in the country you will find some crazy people.. Mainly because they are more free and more room to let loose..I mean the, Hang on to mah beer for a minute, kind of crazy.. Not scared one bit of just about anything.. hehehehe There is a lot of people just chugging through also in both areas,like anywhere else in the world.. Shudo can correct me, but I think what is being got at here is that there are some aspects of "American culture" that seem very alien to those of us on the outside, rather than that individual Americans are "weird." (I'm sure we all of us have our share of "weird".) One element of that is the relationship that the US military has, or seems from the outside to have, to the rest of American culture. Certainly, your armed forces are much more visible (on the streets, but also in popular and "elite" culture), and much more significant in a sort of "mythic" way to understanding how you see yourselves, than is the case here in Canada. That's pretty understandable, given our different histories, and very different positions in the world order. Yours was a nation built out of a successful war. Mine, by contrast, was founded -- at least, the non-indigenous part was -- by "losers" in war: French colonials conquered by the British in 1759, and British loyalists fleeing the 13 colonies after the Revolutionary war. We have a much smaller military presence in our society and, despite the periodical attempts by our right wing politicians to emulate the US approach, it is a very much smaller part of how we see ourselves.

This thread in the LSL scripting forum, I think. Good luck working your way through that, btw: I think I understood about one in five words posted there. 🙄

/me creeps up on thread, pokes it with a stick to see if it's still alive, and jumps back hurriedly . . . just in case it is.

Aaaaaaah I meant real coffee! 😀 /me goes to kitchen to load cafetière

Great lighting in this! (Also, where'd you get the coffee??? Needs!)

See? Posts like this are why they won't let you back into Hell, Maddy. You p*** everyone off too much. (What you can't see in my pic, because I cropped her out, is Maddy at knee-height, sticking her pitchfork into my foot.)

Elevator to . . . ?

I know exactly where you are, and it's never looked as good as it does here. The slight vertical distortion is a really great effect, too!

This is beautiful and intimate and sweet. You capture so much here!

Have you ever had one of those evenings when you decide to take a picture you've been wanting to take for a while but haven't really thought through very carefully so you don't really know what you're trying to do, and you've been drinking wine since, oh I don't know, about 8 pm and probably shouldn't be allowed to dress yourself, yet alone take and publicly post a picture, and on top of which your computer is acting up and you crash after taking two pics and can't be bothered setting it all up from scratch again so you decide to post it anyway even though you know it's not good and you'll hate yourself in the morning? Yeah. Me too.

Wow. Yeah. Beautiful pic, Coby!

And you carry a pointy stick.

Yeah. Kinda . . .

So you should be, still. I miss the days of making things myself. (Well, I still do, but only for photo shoots. It's not the same.)

The Linden Homes Preview thread has triggered memories of my first two homes in SL. The second one I had, I shared with a friend (and my business partner), and was a huge Victorian house. It was pretty and well-built, and spacious, and of absolutely no intrinsic interest to me at all. The idea of filling the rooms with fusty old prim furniture really did nothing for me, and so I left the decorating to my friend, who had a lot of fun, I think. But my first home in SL was one of those tiny little pseudo Frank Lloyd Wright houses that were, at one time, almost ubiquitous: squarish, with huge picture windows or entire walls of glass, and square-cut stone. It had, I think, all of two rooms: a living room and what was supposed to be a bedroom. Well, I bought some cheap 1 and 2 prim furnishings for the living room, but I had no need of a bedroom, so I decided to turn it into a miniature 60s cocktail lounge. I bought a small round table and a couple of chairs, and two bar stools -- and I made my own bar, all in black, with a backboard and bar rail that glowed a neon blue. And I set out some couples dance balls, and put scenes from La Dolce Vita up on the wall. It was the only time I ever really put any effort into interior decoration (except my store, I suppose, a bit). God, that was fun. (My little cocktail lounge proved my undoing, though: it was the first place I ever . . . well, you know. I'd probably have been safer with a bedroom.)

I've been to the laggy popular blues club that you work at (although not recently), and I like it! I don't know why I have tended to go to the other popular laggy blues club -- except that I have old friends who go there.

The specific make of mesh head and body would help, and possibly the skin demo as well. That's assuming that you are talking about a mesh body and head, and not a system avi with system skins? Do you have an applier for the skin you were wearing before, or did it come with the body or head? And, although I'm a bit unclear on this, you seem to be saying that both skins are now on your avi? Do you mean that you've applied them to different layers? And what do you mean that you can see the demo skin "in your inventory"? If it's an applier skin for mesh, you should see the HUD, but there shouldn't be any indication there of what you're actually wearing? Maybe a screen shot of the relevant folder in your inventory might help?

It's a little unclear what the specific problem is here: perhaps you can provide some more detail? It sounds as though you've demo'd a skin on your mesh body and/or head, and it's still there? The mesh bodies I've used won't let you simply "remove" a skin: like the skin on a system body, you have to replace it with another one to get rid of it. Have you tried reapplying your default skin (that is, the one you were using before)? That should remove the demo. Alternately, assuming that you still have a fresh copy (which you should), replace your current body (or head) with a new copy made from your original, and start from scratch. But I should think that reapplying your old skin should do the trick.

My birthday isn't too far off . . . I don't suppose you lend out your friends, do you? (Happy Belated Birthday!)