Pussycat Catnap

Yes I added a comment. I can think of three major bento heads NOT on the survey: Mel Imako's full perm bento mesh head - $2000L MAYREAL Bento Mesh Head Nadia - $1500 and better than any $5000 head. Angel Rock's Bento Mesh Head - designed specifically for an African look (but I couldn't get my look on it, so I went with Mayreal). $2999. Weirdly does not support her own skins, but instead comes in preset colors with appliers for a few major bodies... The thing about Mel Imako and Mayreal's head is - they have "almost" the same shape as the default SL mesh head, but with the flaws removed. So you put it on and you will look almost the same as you always have, but nicer, and then just a few shape tweaks to improve to taste. Mayreal does a better job of this than Mel Imako (the nostrils are deeper, the tongue worked better with the emotes), but they both do good enough jobs to seriously call into question buying one of those $5000L mesh heads from other sellers that have such unusually custom shapes that you need to spend days fixing your look... I guess the legit question here is... how many mesh head brands are out there? Is it reasonable to expect them to all be in the survey? If not, how 'popular' before it makes the list? Considering how popular Mel Imako's brand is, I'm surprised she's not considered. Mayreal is new by 2 months, but has a lot of traction going. And Angel Rock is the ONLY non-caucasian/asian head on the market for female heads so... kinda glaring to be excluded. Gotta do some whitesplainin' to explain that lack... This is also why I have never given myself a display name. I've always worried the SL system would refuse to let me remove it...

I finally relent and buy a mesh head, and it's not one even on her survey's list: MAYREAL Bento Mesh Head Nadia - with 20 reviews on the product page, I'm surprised it's not there. She also didn't have 'neko' on the 'identify as' list. Nor even the more generic 'hybird'.

EDIT: Nevermind... I read a little further and noticed someone pointed out https://my.secondlife.com/settings/friends already...

That has been true in SL since about 2003. Clubs have never been a profit oriented thing in SL. Where they used to make their money was in the malls outside of them - that Marketplace has since made useless. If you run a social venue in SL, you need to set it up in a manner such that you can do so, on your own money... The function of most clubs could really be perfectly handled on a 512m plot of mainland / estate land just about anywhere... if your goal was actually social. You just need to be able to rez a dance floor that can fit 5-10 avatars... In fact one of the most 'popular clubs' in SL is just that, a flat prim on the ground on a plot on the last western-most sim of Bay City. No DJs, dancers, hosts, no board for anything to 'be on', no 'best in random', or anything - just a stream going 24/7 and a full crowd all day long because it is one of the few places in SL that plays something that is not rock or country from the 1980s, or pop from the 00s / early 10s... - And if you can fit into THEIR scene and recognize you are on their turf rather than trying to get them to fit to you... you will discover they are actually a sociable crowd. (Open you map, type in Bay City, and move the map to the last sims on the west... look for the horde of green dots. With the caveat that my info is about half a year out of date.)

Oh is the forum censoring my name?

That said I do have at least two skyboxes I bought 'on a leap of faith' that had no demo or inworld example but which were very nicely done. I even used one of them as a home for a while. The other one, bought just a few days ago - is perfect for a slightly different mood than I currently desire in my living spot, but I am likely to use it for a 'quiet space'. This one: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Linked-Walls-Cornelius-Apartment-Skybox/8945823 Sat in my favorites list for maybe 2 years... so not having a demo did hurt them, but I got it recently and I actually liked is. Last night I bought this sight unseen: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/PI-Cannabis-Indica-Set/10056918 And it's not replacing a lot of things in my garden... So I will take the gamble sometimes. But not often... Most of the time I would agree with you - and at more than an 'impulse buy' price, I will almost certainly need that demo.

I have a very long block list. I freely block people with no comment whatsoever. I just block, and move on with my life / SLlife. I do this in all forms of social media. In RL - when I was young, I learned to just open the door and walk out of a bad relationship. My sister has dealt with two bad ex-husbands for 20 years now... one of them she more or less moved on from but the other one seems to have an unusual habit of ending up in her bed again... She also wanted to help that nice gentleman from Nigeria with his banking problem, she wanted to be the 'bud' of the guy offering to be your 'bud' on Haight street decades ago... she had a guru who somehow ended up in the bed of all his women clients (he ONLY had women clients), and when she was a teenager her father had to rescue her from a cult... Some people just don't figure this out, others figure it out too easily. After all, my sister is very active in her community, hobbies, and her church, has dozens of friends, ex-lovers, current-lovers, contacts, bounces up and down in mood from happy to depressed, and so on... and I am basically a quiet person with about a handful of friends, not too out there, and just fine with that. So I get it that... if you're very social, you're likely hardwired against taking my advice. I have noticed that in some cases where I have blocked someone... one of my friends would end up in drama with them... I'd suggest the block button, and it might take weeks of more drama or they might just block on the spot... Sometimes the WORST thing that can happen to you is you get a hero that wants to be your champion and fight the war for you... Everything is a lot easier if you just block and move on, no drama. Sometimes for both sides. Some of these blokes don't start out as bad as they end up... If you enable someone down a dark path, many are those who will walk it. Better to just shut the door and walk out. Every so many months... I do review my block list, and if I cannot remember why a name is there, or if the reason was something temporary (I've blocked people because they had an annoying chat script going for example) I remove them from the list. If I remember them... and the reason is something I suspect won't change, I leave them. That is actually something I had to TRAIN myself to do... because my instinct is not to look back, ever. If a guy has made 12+ alts to keep up the fight, it is probably because someone is giving him just enough feedback that he knows he is having an impact... One of the smoothest things I've done is block someone without banning them... they had no idea they were out of my world... and eventually they must have just assumed I was AFK or I didn't care... and they moved on.

A LOT of the people on those poles and dance things that you're paying a tip to are AFK or bots... If you want to actually tip a person... chat with them or otherwise figure / know its a real person who is not using a 'chat/interaction script', and then right click their name in chat or your radar and choose the pay option.

I got stack heap errors a lot when making a small HUDless AO script. All of them from memory issues. This script: https://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/low-memory-bento-animation-script-without-a-hud/ I fixed it with this: testMemory(integer verbose) { llScriptProfiler(PROFILE_SCRIPT_MEMORY); integer usedMemory = llGetUsedMemory(); memoryLimit = usedMemory + 500; // a tiny buffer to please my sanity. llSetMemoryLimit(memoryLimit); if (verbose) { llOwnerSay("Limited Memory " + (string)llGetMemoryLimit() + "\nUsed Memory " + (string)usedMemory + "\nFree Memory " + (string)llGetFreeMemory()); llOwnerSay("AnimationController script used at most " + (string)llGetSPMaxMemory() + " bytes of memory during Test."); } llScriptProfiler(PROFILE_NONE); } I run this function after most interractions, on rez. attach, animation change, and so on. The key for my fix was find the actual memory being used: llGetUsedMemory(); And then to set my memory allocation ABOVE it. In the example above, I set it 500 above. For another script where I used this, I had to go to 1500. When a script kicks off it allocates some amount of memory... and then if it actually uses more... it gets a stack heap error... So I manually allocate an amount of memory, that I know is above what I will need, and then I re-allocate often. The key is the re-allocation. In my case I am polling my avatar every 2 seconds to see if my animation state has changed, if it has, I clear my current animation, re-allocate memory, and then set a new animation. This example is for a bento tail so 2 seconds was a fine delay... When the script first starts, I set an initial memory allocation WAY ABOVE what I need, but then run this function at the end of my setup... so that I get a proper 'above by just enough' value. Since doing this I have been 'stack heap error' free. The 'verbose' thing in the above function was so that I could make a chat command that when called, calls this function in verbose mode to tell me what I'm using... that was how I found out I needed to put that buffer of 500 there... The actual use 'bounces around' a little bit... So I doubled the amount it was bouncing and then rounded off to a 'smooth to human eyes' number.

Meeting number 7: Date: April 11, 2017 Time: Tuesday 8:15pm SL Time (Pacific Standard Time) Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Keroo/231/25/4086 ****************************************************************************** Think Tank topic: How do we avoid the trap of denying identity / civil rights and wrongly blaming economics for social injustice? When: 38% of America's white population believe non-whites are less evolved the median income of a Trump voter was $72,000, The first policy of a new president was to attempt a muslim ban Brexit campaigners used images comparing muslim refuges with anti 'black panic' messages of a generation prior. DAPL was re-routed from a white community through "sovereign" Native land without consent. Native Americans and Blacks are vastly more likely to be killed by police than any other demographics. Laws restricting the reproductive rights of women are rapidly working their way through the states of the USA. Laws are restricting bathroom access to people based on what/who they are. Laws are trying to give peolpe the right to discriminate based on "religion" (generally in defiance of the teachings of faith founders). When we are facing an onslaught of attacks against civil rights around the world, in all forms... 1. Why do we keep turning to economics to try and explain it? 2. Why do we let some use economics as an excuse to avoid addressing or even admitting the existence of hate? 3. How do we get back on target and protect civil rights, without letting the 'right wing' weaken our protections by the slander of so-called 'identity politics'? https://niskanencenter.org/blog/defense-liberty-cant-without-identity-politics/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/12/06/in-defense-of-identity-politics/?utm_term=.75f5b225bc1a http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/21/here-s-why-democrats-must-not-abandon-identity-politics.html http://www.argotmagazine.com/first-person-and-perspectives/now-more-than-ever-identity-politics-matter http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-palumboliu/the-whiteness-of-a-libera_b_13177492.html https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/the_majority_of_trump_supporters_surveyed_described_black_people_as_less.html http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/9/13570922/trump-election-2016-racism http://www.cracked.com/blog/dear-white-people-stop-saying-everything-will-be-ok/ https://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/white-america-wants-me-out/

I think I got one of those ages ago, give or take. Never bothered with it. I don't own any face-mounted-octopi and I like typing on a keyboard rather than voicing... so VR is a bust for me.

Only the lack of them. It's a brand new body - no one is supporting it yet in terms of fitmesh. I do not even know if a developer kit exists yet. There was an older 1.0 version but in the 2.0 she completely redid the mesh and it's weighting - so everything is new other than the brand name. It is copy/mod perms. You can directly edit it. It looks really cool by the way, when you set the texture to 'glow' (but I don't know of any copy/mod mesh heads, so this 'cool' look goes away at the neck) - but you CAN copy/mod the clothing layers too... so on my alt I made a glowing leotard using applier clothing. Technical glitch: there is a seam where the lower and upper meshes link. My alt was told this was an upload error soon to be fixed. Otherwise I would have rated it a high concern. I consider the Belleza HUD to be the best on out there. Others might have different opinions. I feel the Belleza HUD perfectly lets me do what I want to do with my body... other than well... make it glow or delink some of the prims... For a copy/no-mod body, it is as good as it gets. A LOT of the complexity of Belleza would vanish in an instant if it was sold as copy/mod... The same is true for all of the other bodies. The makers of SelinA and Lena Lush both realized this... so this is actually a MASSIVE ADVANTAGE for their bodies. Furry makers have known this since 2003... If you like applier clothing, or are a full-time nudist, in my opinion there ONLY ONE GOOD CHOICE on the market: one of the SelinA bodies that just came out. Being Copy/Mod is such a huge advantage that it overcomes every other single issue the body has or might have. If you want fitmesh clothing... then your choices get more complex.

The terraforming thing only tends to stick for an hour or so. Until something 'passing scan' SL does passes by and scans. In all likelihood you have an actual ghost object... Something which the physics of SL thinks is there, but all other metrics do not. These are very rare... but it is what I had many years ago. They can sometimes go away on restarts - but I hear they usually take a support ticket to zap.

I'm usually nude at those events. Actually it's also one of the most common places where I see other nude avatars. Often more than at so-called 'nude beaches' in SL... It's more practical with trying demos. Also tend to frequently wander M land in the nude, unless I see a sign saying otherwise or get a 'vibe' from a scene that it's not welcome. This is just because that's how I feel comfortable. I'd guess that about half or more or all nudist venues in SL are on 'M' land rather than 'A'. Many do that to avoid sex-tourists. Others go for 'A' because they want to encourage or at least allow open sexual activity. But most of the nudist venues are just boring places where people sit on chairs AFK... A dance pole would collect dust... /sigh... There's a general paranoia among some against child AVs, but I almost never see them on 'A' land and if I do, it's only in places that just happen to be on 'A' land. Everyone I've met who used a child AV was a very mindful respectable person, quite often capable of very sophisticated / educated dialog. They just like to present as a child in SL. The funny talking types - I've seen maybe one or two at a 'distance' in all my years of SL. I always pegged that sort as 'tourists' - people messing around on a look rather than part of it's community. Much like how many griefers only use a furry avatar when griefing... and act weird. Whereas regular furries act pretty nicely most of the time, when I can follow the conversation and it's not about video games or heavy metal or something.

Topic for this week: Internet Privacy: how has this become a partisan issue and what can you do to protect yours? See: https://www.privacyinternational.org https://qz.com/948340/congress-will-let-internet-providers-sell-consumer-data-so-rebels-devised-a-way-to-trick-corporations/ http://www.inc.com/joseph-steinberg/no-https-wont-keep-your-internet-usage-habits-secret.html https://www.cnet.com/news/congress-just-killed-the-online-privacy-rules-now-what-faq/ http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20130625-your-private-data-is-showing http://www.networkworld.com/article/2164315/lan-wan/4-internet-privacy-laws-you-should-know-about.html http://community.scarymommy.com/thread/6904/internet-privacy-countries-world?page=1 Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Keroo/231/25/4086 There's a notecard giver on the wall by the seating that has more details and info about the meetings. Tonight is meeting number 6.

Items that are set transparent with 'alpha masking' will remain invisible even if you turn on 'show transparent objects' unless you also turn off 'basic shaders'. Did you try this? If this, and the bounding boxes solution fails... many years ago I had this issue until a rolling restart zapped something on the sim...

Add a topic to them. And a theme. I think I started mine after you started yours. Only 5 weeks ago - and I have a few regulars now, and have managed to hit about 5 people. I have a pretty narrow theme too: Progressive Liberal Think Tank Discussion. Yes that is tiny compared to a '$1000L on the board best in noob-wear TP in your spam-friends' contest... But it's great for an active conversation. I'd wager you want to have from 5-10, and up to 15, for something like this to work. And if your topic has broad appeal AND you have a theme for your discussions - this is not unreasonable. Now you probably DO want a somewhat focused theme and topics... but not as narrow as mine is. It should however be something for which there is regular media out there in the world that you can grab 'hot topics' from. Also I noticed the group you use to promote your event requires a fee for others to use it - so there may be disinterest in joining, and well... I think almost everyone attending my meetings came from cross-promotion. Don't view people posting their event in your group as competition, view them as potential people to come to and promote your event.

That is going to be true for any mesh body that has an applier system. If you're shopping for a mesh body you should really demo all the choices rather than rely on what other people recommend. The differences will dictate what YOU look like for the foreseeable future so you really want to get the one that speaks to you. If I had to give my opinion, for looks I like Belleza Freya, the new SalinA Tina, then new SalinA Alice, then Lena Lush Perky, Then Belleza Isis, Then Venus, then Maitreya, Then the original Slink, then the Slink Hourglass. - Despite liking bodies that can go curvy, I only like the ones without extreme jagged curves. - This is of course extremely subjective, and why you need to demo them ALL. And not just with the included shape nor even your own shape. Mess with the shape sliders and see what you can get. If I rated these by how well they did 'avatar physics' they sort almost the same - except Belleza Isis and Belleza Venus rate with Freya, and all of the new SalinA's come right after, and Maitreya is dead last of them, but above all the ones I did not bother to list... - You need to demo them all again here, with a very 'bouncy' physics and a super active dance pose (or a sex pose...), and again with a very 'firm' physics and the same poses. Some bodies that have looked really good to me in the past are not even on the lists here because I found such extreme issues with more 'bouncy' physics.... If I rated them for lag, the new SalinA gets the top marks, then Belleza, then Lena Lush that has beem modded to remove layers, then Maitreya, and an unmodded Lena Lush is so laggy it should not be worn. If I rated them for customizability... SalinaA gets top marks - it's a moddable body. Then Lena Lush, also Moddable but you have to nearly 'destroy' all of its features when you mod it. Then Belleza because while no-mod, the HUD allows for so much. The rest are all about equal. If I rated them for technical glitches... Belleza has the fewest, SalinA's new bodies have the most, everyone else is about the same. Now if you rate them for fashions available... Maitreya, Slink Hourglass, Belleza Freya, Slink Classic, Belleza Isis, Belleza Freya, Eve (note how I left Eve off the other lists), Lena Lush/Perky, and then every other body... The gap between Maitreya and other choice is wide... BUT I use Belleza Freya nearly exclusively and have no trouble finding way more fashions than my budget tolerates... Male bodies... the male choices just don't seem that good right now. Adam is good in both issues of lag and general look... but he's still laggier than everything I've listed above except for an unmodded Lena body. Slink male has the male parts always on... and they just toggle to hidden. I imagine this makes using a 'desired interactive brand' awkward... I also know that it means when there are slink guys around, if you have 'see transparency' on... you see that tiny thing there... and I say tiny for a reason... that thing just looks very small... I should measure it... I have no clue which male mesh bodies have good fashion support... most of the human-male avatars I see in SL are either nude, or running around on noob avatars... or both... or such high avatar complexity I just see Jelly.

Thanks for including the complexity numbers for things you blog. That makes me hope your blog is popular and growing. While I can't do it here, I have and continue to call out designers who do bad complexity - and it did force me to change shoe brands a bit back (though I usually go barefoot in SL). I don't bog fashions and such - but when I do blog something that includes mention of a product, I call out good complexity as well.

That's a good point. Also - if the HUD contains a mesh model, like the Belleza HUD which contains a copy of the mesh body that can be rotated - I imagine this would tax your own system some. Generally a good idea to not war HUDs unless you're actively using them. This is the major reason why I've stayed with Firestorm - moving my AO out of a HUD (first went with it due to a stability issue on my Macs with the official viewer, but that was a long time ago. However the built in AO kept me there). (I've written some no-HUD bento-part AOs now as well, using command-line controls, but they require a bit of recoding for each user so I've yet to distribute them).

Bad laying of transparency maps, and too complex of a mesh in there. Are these by any chance eyes that have multiple layers in them for a pupil, iris, cones, cornea, reflection, roswell aliens, and stuff? That is likely to brand I used to use... To me complex eyes make a lot of sense for why they have a high cost. All those multiple layers and each using an alpha blend transparency, and likely a very high LOD so that each individual eye-cone on the back of the eye still renders 1000m away... I actually use prim eyes now. Not mesh, but prim. Two spheres on top of each other with one bumping out slightly holding the pupil. Forget who I got them from - but they looked great and were super low ARC. They were like... 15L in the 'discount section' of a merchant that is not on the 'cool' list anymore... but used to be years ago...

I work very hard to keep my draw weight low. I've also made several guides on this topic. In a number of places I frequent, there are a select number of visitors that actively argue AGAINST lowering draw weight. Not just for their own avatars, but they will jump in and tell others to disable the feature and to ignore any advice on draw weight because of things like: 'my SL, my freedom' or 'I have a good computer' or 'only scripts cause lag' or 'it just tracks textures and flexi which don't make lag', or 'I don't like mesh', 'flexi hair/dresses look better', 'my computer it old, 'I have too much lag so I can't do new things', or 'it's too complicated', or 'SL is laggy not matter what', or other reasons that baffle me in their logic (or lack thereof)... Yes... I actually have people say they won't try to fix their lag because they have lag... Usually not directly... more along the lines of "I won't take off the emergency brake because I'm going too slow" - as in complete failure to understand what they are saying and refusal to learn. That said... by setting my Firestorm to limit me to 80,000 seen, I can see about 1/3 to 1/2 of the people around me... (yeah, that bad)... But I have just gotten used to not seeing the other people because even though I have a $3500 laptop and get 120mb/down... if I can squeeze out 1 more FPS, I will do it... As for why I work to keep my own draw weight and my own scripts down... Well, I happen to feel I should not be the cause of anyone else suffering lag. I feel that's just being nice to other people. I do wish others would consider logic like that... don't just think of yourself - think of the lag other people around you have to suffer, and work to make their experience better. Oh on shopping and avoiding those people that use the LOD tricks to lower their scores on these things... I keep my SL LOD at 2.75 all the time... if I can't see your stuff as a result... I buy the other merchant's stuff. I don't care if I have a suped up machine... I'd rather squeeze out every bit of optimization I can as well as not lag any of my neighbors.

Lindal Kidd wrote: Also, have you noticed that Mesh avatars (and mesh clothes) often have a LOWER complexity than traditional avatars with old style prim and sculpty clothing attachments? This is really brand dependant though. On both ends of the spectrum. There are very laggy pre-mesh items, and very laggy mesh items. There are very lightweight pre-mesh items, and very lightweight mesh items. It helps to start reading some blogs that discuss how to monitor things like avatar complexity, land impact, client-side "perception of lag" and so on. I've written on the topic often. So too has Penny Patton. Not enough others join us in this - and some actively avoid the subject or ridicule attempts to improve their own experience. I could easily see the original poster encountering some of the bad mesh, and drawing a conclusion about all mesh. I've demo'd the male bodies again recently - and found they're all kind of badly done in this department compared to some of the "better" female options (like Belleza). And when you add in the male 'prop' it can get amazingly bad. (The original poster's name sounds male - so I'm making a guess here that he might have suffered undue lag after trying some male mesh avatar products and props.) I cna also certainly understand missing the days when so much of what was in SL could be built inside of SL - and when even the things built outside of SL were not that complex to learn to build. We did have a LOT more brands putting out goods back then - though at the same time the volume they sold I suspect was a lot less. That said, for me - the mesh has been a great improvement in helping me define "myself". I was OK with myself before it, but I'm happy with what I have now that I've got it.

Klytyna wrote: That's why colonial rebels STILL pledge aliegance to a document rather than to a nationality, a place or even a leader, it's all about upholding an out of date text designed to create a pipedream agrarian utopia, where almost everyone would live in "The Little Hovel on the Praire" except Squire Washington, Squire Jackson, Squire Maddison and their crew, and a small number of skilled artisans who made nice furniture clothes and so on for said squires who would be allowed to live in unpleasant but useful towns. The fact that we swear allegance to the Constitution and not the Feurer is perhaps one of the greatest saving graces our system has. Can you imagine if Americans had to swear fealty to Trump? Instead I can tell him to kiss my Chicana butt, and point out openly all of the horror and illegality of his actions because he is NOT my sovereign. He's just a bloke with a better paying job than most of us, and free frequent flyer miles. Swearing loyalty to people, ethnicities, or pieces of dirt is for fools. I swear my loyalty to ethics and ideals. That makes me a citizen, not a subject. I have a whole lot of issues with the status quo in the USA - but it is my right, in fact my duty, to voice them, and to fight to fix them. Because I am no subject to any in-bred trailer-trash living in any palace. I am a citizen. This nation may have been made to commit a genocide against my northern cousins, and to enslave my African ancestors - gut it made the mistake of making it's people citizens - and that is why we who it was created to destroy, have managed to find power in using its very ideals to stop its worser intentions (this is why so many Native Americans started joining the US military after the "Indian Wars" - because those so-called "illiterate savages" read the document of their conquerers and found a weapon for freedom buried within).