Bitsy Buccaneer

We can. But we're all here because we like to talk on the internet. This is something to talk about. We might want to let it go a week before we properly derail it though

I'm hoping that some of the trends are a pendulum swinging out wide in one direction and that it will find a better balance at some point. It does feel to me like there's a lack of balance in these trends, and that's where my discomfort lies. There are still pockets of young people doing things differently, like a favourite musician (he must be about 30 now) who wrote in the liner notes that his recent album is intended to be played as a whole. He's in a non-mainstream genre though, which brought a different thought to mind: What if the shift towards looking rather than interacting isn't just reflective of RL, but of computers becoming mainstream and SL attracting a greater proportion of mainstream individuals? Another question which has arisen is if there isn't perhaps more fear. As in the world's going rather mad at the moment and there's a lot to be genuinely worried about. So maybe there's a greater inclination towards a superficially perfect world to escape to, whereas for some of us who've been here longer, SL has been about pushing boundaries, exploring, taking risks and loving it even if it's never going to be perfect.

I'm not so sure about this Rolig. When you posted pictures of your merself interacting with various things in my underwater garden, it really made my day - because I've been having such a difficult time getting people to be curious and explore. It's surprised me, but it seems like there's been a shift towards looking rather than interacting. There also seems to be less curiousity about what you can do with a prim.

Is there a whiff of Eau d'Troll here?

quick snaps from when a friend dropped in

A few thoughts on this - would it be a proper hunt hunt or more of a semi-organised walk to look at decorations and costumes and maybe RP some trick-or-treating? A walk could be done with an attached scripted object, where you touch a pumpkin at each house to collect a "candy" and when you have enough "candies", you get a nice gift. Anyone who wanted to participate could set out a pumpkin. Or maybe those with creation skills would be willing to contribute a small FP item which could be retextured? Is there much general interest in learning more about making things? It is really cool to think "I need a this" and be able to rez a prim, shape it a bit, add a texture and have something useable. It might not be fancy or mesh, but it's uniquely yours. Want a lollipop? - rez a cylinder, change the dimensions to make it small and thin, rez another small cylinder for the stick, drop a texture on the lollipop cylinder and colour the stick white, link the two together and give it a name so it doesn't become an Unidentified Inventory Object. Add it to your mouth or your hand and position. If you want to get fancy, add an eating animation and a simple script to run it. Done. Every single person in Bellisseria has the ability to make a wee something of their own to give out for trick-or-treat. The kids will be bouncing off the walls for days (About putting gachas and no copy items out, they could easily run out if the event is popular.)

You can do or be almost anything you (or someone else) can imagine. And if no one else has imagined it already, you can learn to make it yourself. It is absolutely magic. Welcome.

Too many possibilities for the why. She might be going through a rough patch or might have a lot of anger inside that gets directed at whomever presents as a target. Or something else entirely. Drawing her partner and the region owner in though will reinforce both her sense of being in the right and their social bonds, so lots of dopamine and adrenaline for her brain to play with, like an extra big helping of dessert. Not the healthiest of options but hard to resist and it can become something indulged in repeatedly. Whatever's going on, they're going to do what they're going to do and it's rare to find someone who's open to change, especially with the positive reinforcement from the group. Not much you can do with that. There was one part of this though which was under your control - where you go. If you don't have a "home" already, find a quiet area where you can set to home and teach your fingers to hit Ctrl-Shift-H automatically. Then when you need to move somewhere quickly, you'll be all set. If you don't want to do that, look for a reliable public area. Stores move too often and someone who owns land where a popular store used to be will get lots of "guests" dropping in, an understandable source of tension.

Getting into the creating side of SL and having my own shop have proven to be the best things I've done to find meaningful friendships here. It's a shared interest, hobbyist creators and dabblers seem to be more likely to stick around long term as there aren't many competing alternatives elsewhere, helping each other with problems creates/strengthens bonds, we give each other stuff we've made which also strengthens bonds (it's not just a gift, it's giving a part of yourself too), and my shop is always there as a representation of my interests. It's led to many conversations and several friendships. One of my closest friendships started when I was helping her lock an MM board for an animation she especially wanted. It took a few days so we added as "friends" to make some part of that easier, then got to talking about what we made, which led to discovering shared interests and senses of humour, which led to a very solid and genuine friendship. Another very dear friend is my best customer. After far too long I finally got up the courage to say hello to him while he was in my shop and we've been friends ever since. And from that comes my suggestion for an often overlooked source of friendships - the people who make and assemble the things and places we enjoy in SL. If you especially enjoy or admire something, drop the person who put it together a note or IM. You know you have something in common and even if it doesn't lead to a friendship, an unexpected compliment can make someone's day It's also a way of broadening the possibilities beyond who's inworld at the same location you are and at the same time. Shops run themselves so the owners can be anywhere.... (P.S. This is about finding friendships more than romantic relationships. I am not one to give advice on the latter )

It's only the individual region names which come up in search, not the continent. But you can find groups like Bellisseria Community and Bellisseria Citizen in group search. Both have group notices with a HUD for a tour of homes which are open for people to have a look at. There are also slurls in some of the threads in the Linden Homes section. Very helpful information there too about releases of new regions, getting a home and things you can still do (depending on your time zone of course) while you're waiting. I won a month on a houseboat in the Bellisserian newspaper's raffle and have one until the end of August. You're very welcome to hang out there, it's especially lovely in the moonlight and there are silly things to do too. The slurl is in my sig (so I can make it poof with my month there is up).

My main and building alt wear bikinis under just about everything these days. That way they're always covered no matter where they go or how long it takes for their clothes to arrive after them There's a store called Seldom Blue (I think) that has some lovely light pink underwear for free. It's for system bodies only, but the strapless bra works very well as a modesty layer under most clothes.

Man, those mesh heads are going to extraordinary lengths to convey realism these days.

From your clarifications, my reaction is that anything which makes the process simpler increases the chances I'll actually be able to manage something rigged. If I've understood your project correctly, it sounds great and would be very useful for many people. I wish I had more experience to be able to offer concrete and useful suggestions on it. Good luck with it. This forum is such a tiny microcosm of users, so don't be put off by, well, anything. Your project might be the step which helps someone make the leap successfully

Add me to the list of people with little useful to say too, though I'm chuffed I was able to follow the jist of it without having used Maya or rigged anything. Maybe that helped though, because I didn't get overly caught up in details. This is the first I've seen the thread and I largely clicked on it because it came up on the Forums overview page and I tend to write LoD instead of LOD so I wondered if it was an old one of mine I'd lost track of . And besides, it's always good to learn more about LoD. Anyway, what I understand it sounds good. As for suggestions, all I can say is, it's August. Things tend to be a bit slow so maybe give it more than a couple of days? Just occured to me - are there many here who make clothes? Most of the regular posters I can think of seem to work more with rezzed objects. Maybe a cross post in the Fashion Creation forum? Though that's been over-run by people looking for help wearing their clothes not making them.

I have a wee story on this from probably 8 or so years ago, back when I was trying to do the SL dating thing. Sometimes when this guy I was seeing would say he was logging off there would be the normal delay, but it started becoming immediate. That seemed odd. Some how I had a free online checker, a gift or maybe in an MM board or something. Anyway, I used it to see if he was still online when he said he was logging out and the notice arrived immediately. Turns out he was. It wasn't a big deal. His behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic and the initial friendship was waning so I was content enough to let it go. I just wanted to know - with a minimum of fuss and bother - if he was indeed lying to me before I decided. If I'd wanted to keep dating him or try to develop it into a relationship, I would have asked and talked it through with him. As an end note, we stayed as friends for a while but his mental state deteriorated more and more. I thought mental illness, a friend who knows more said it sounded like cocaine. Either way, he was in a bad way and it wasn't something I could even begin to help a stranger with over the internet. I don't know what would have happened if I'd tried to talk about the logging out thing with him. Paranoia became part of his mental make-up and there may have been signs of it earlier. It was never directed towards me, but if I had questioned him or pulled on the thread...? I think my instinct was sound to take the less risky route, though that depended on me accepting the information rather than using it as a weapon. I've also used groups to see if friends in other time zones were still logging in. Both have serious health problems. One had a dodgy internet connection so that was probably why she disappeared. But the last I heard from the other she was going into hospital for a major operation. She unticked and reticked people as her energy levels fluctuated, so that by itself wasn't worrying. She never reticked me after the operation though and when I worried about her, just wanting to know if she'd made it through or if the world had lost her, all I could do was send an IM to a presumably capped account and check a group we were both in. So that's two, or perhaps three. To avoid drama or misunderstanding by using a means other than asking to confirm or contradict a suspicion. To see if someone's stopped logging in (on that account of course). And as a probably pointless thing to do when there's very real reason to be worried about someone and it's all you can do.

Thanks Molly. I will try this soon, probably tomorrow as I've been over-doing again. Thank you

Wonderful Maddy has been sending me test scripts for the last couple of days. One is "tire swing" and it rather distracted me from Very Serious Matters that I should be working on like ancient Roman oscilla. It being somewhat difficult to adequately capture in a picture, you are all most cordially invited to come try it out for yourselves. Slurl is in my sig. (Technical info, fish is a child prim on a path cut "string" which I alphaed out cause it made more sense in context. Script is Maddy's modification of Gao's.)

Interesting idea, but it's a wee decorative thing that absolutely cannot command 15 LI. I love outside the box suggestions though, as you'll see below

But that's not what I did. Is the "woe is me" comment a dig at me for being honest about my health problems? It feels that way. I dissemble about them enough in real life, it would be nice if I could be honest about them here. They do impact on how I'm able to interact with the Bellisseria community. Do you feel I'm wrong in being open about it?

Apologise? Where did that come from? Not me. And the insults? They're not really called far. I didn't attack you or anything. Simple disagreement with what I wrote would be fine. Anyway, I said my piece. You're not interested. I'm going to take my own advice and leave you to it. All the best.

There will always be a few who are either attacking or come across that way. Responding in kind just escalates the situation. The impression I have of you is that you enjoy some aspect of that escalation though, like the adrenaline rush (which is addictive) or maybe feeling like you're better or maybe the support you often receive from your friends afterwards. Even if you don't like the escalation, the love-in from your friends will reinforce your pattern of contributing to this recurring situation. It's what you do that you have the most control over. If you enjoy escalating things, then own it. If you don't, then look to change what is in your control.

Expressing the frustration makes it easier to go through the process of trying to get one sooner rather than later. With regions being released as they're finished, many of us consider it worth continuing to try. For myself, my interest is in making a quirky place for the community to explore and engage with. Because of crappy health, I can't spend much time inworld so it's a way I can still maybe feel like part of the community. I'd like to get in with a permanent place before the exploration dissipates and the sense of community is diluted through size. That's already happening. This is why I keep trying and hope to get a place of my own soon. The longer that takes, the harder it will be to make the rest of it happen. The clock is also ticking on my alt with the available tier (took the plunge before the price rise and before I realised how difficult it was going to be) and I'd like to be able to give my idea a proper go before it's time to decide how much more money to put into trying. This should be just a thread for people to let out their frustrations, find others in the same situation and maybe share some advice on how to approach it all. So what if a few get dramatic about it? It's the internet, of course that's going to happen But it does help to vent sometimes.

The fish went in before it opened to the public, I just hadn't thought of anyone else being up there with them until reading the mermaid posts here. Thank you and @Kotelle for the inspiration. I'll avsitter the other corals up there today. It's been a surprise how few people look up despite all the colour, but you certainly have an excuse since it's land . The fish and coral are all from Alial Allen's Something Fishy shop, the "wall cover" plants are from her Fantasy China full perm shop.

Sorry I missed you. The mermaids got me thinking about the mermaid-friendly area in the houseboat itself, and one thing led to another.... Look for the most colourful coral amongst the fish. That's all I'm saying for now

It doesn't need to care about wind. It just needs to give some semblence of movement akin to what you'd see in a gentle breeze. A bit of x and y would be nice, but even just some rotation around the Z axis would be sufficient if it's not overtly regular. I tried your second script in my mesh and it sent the suspension string all over the place. Oh, that would be a matter of the origin being in the wrong place. I'll try it with the origin moved tomorrow, need to have a wee rest now. Thanks Maddy x