Bitsy Buccaneer

I should take a look at the coordinates to see what's there now. A friend owned land, his premium 512, and expanded in the direction of the endless granite slopes. At some point I came across the old LM to our first house (close RL friend, he's an architect, I sew, he did the building, I decorated cause otherwise he had a tendency to not get around to it and leave most of it empty ) and found to my amazement that it was on sort of grass!! And that if he'd expanded in the other direction, we'd have been on grass instead of that ugly ugly endless granite slope. Grass!! We could have had grass!! The first house was a large cylinder, semi-transparent from the inside, like modern glass. It had a teleport system - no room or prims for stairs - which I struggled to get it to work so I quickly learned to sit TP from room to room. Now that I know more about building, I realise how clever that single hollow giant prim cylinder was for a base build - a single prim for all the walls above the ground floor. Then he got more land, and built a Roman temple. The sunset playing off it was one of my favourite bits of SL, especially with how often it came around. It was all the more magic because I had no idea I could change the time of day . Then he took the cylinder house down to build a Roman villa and I set up a Victorian-era base camp in front of the temple with velvet living room set, canopied bed, fancy tents and camel. One of the chairs ended up in the sky and we couldn't find it for ages. Because of him, my SL has always been both DIY and appreciating the tricks and talents in other people's work. I'm very grateful for this. I wouldn't have stayed a decade otherwise. For a while the villa was on land where a great many Spanish men lived previously. Sometimes one of them would log in after a time away and not understand what was going on. When this happened, they tended to be inebriated (perhaps the sober ones TPed elsewhere quickly?) which led to many strange and unsuccessful attempts to talk across a language divide. It was all a great adventure

OK. Maybe. It's still a way of letting those who try to control sexuality into their heads though, letting them unconsciously influence their choices and thinking. It ends up giving even more power to those who want to control it. In terms of sexuality, my guiding principle is that it's best to err on the side of consent, exactly because it it both powerful and precious. (And just to state it again, I've NEVER advocated for removing nude or sexual pictures. Only for taking a look at what can be seen from outside and possibly rearranging some things.) Thanks for the clarification Alyona. Where I am it's very much live and let live, and even the gossip isn't that bad. I'm definitely the odd ball but I'm accepted, quirks and all. (Hardly anyone understands life with fibro though, but that's always going to be difficult to grasp.) If your missing piece is what's at the heart of it, maybe the thread participants who are living in constrained situations in the U.S. can see my thoughts not as an imposition from the HOA from hell but just as a reminder that there are other possibilities. SL can reinforce unliked RL things, or it can be a chance to do it all differently.

Do all of you live in this sort of setting then? It sounds dreadful but are there no reasonable alternatives? Can you step outside of it long enough to see what it's doing to your thinking? You're not just letting someone tell you what curtains to use - you're letting them influence how you think. I put forward a suggestion of 10 minutes of altruism and it's been met with derision, misinterpretation and scorn. Look at all the people here who've lost the ability to even think of something differently. All those who just slot it into their preconceptions and prejudices in order to laugh at it or dismiss it. If the response to the self-centredness of others is to become self-centred yourselves, where does it end? From the outside it looks like a circle of mutual imposition of values onto each other where no one really gains and everyone loses. Of all the things to bring into SL - where we can be ANYTHING - WHY bring these sorts of attitudes? Isn't it worth even trying something a little different? Or is it too satisfying to just put different down?

Is Bellisseria strictly private or does it not have a public element as well? I'm inclined towards the latter. I agree that ultimately home ownership rights supersede public rights within our walls. But if a small change can make the outside space more comfortable and welcoming to a broader range of people, isn't that a good thing?

Thank you for responding kindly Lyrical. I appreciate it. I'd like to use your post to hopefully clarify a few things which may be being misunderstood by others too. I hope that's ok. Everyone who's gone into any sort of detail with their criticisms of my suggestions here has exaggerated, added into or even reversed my position. I'm not saying a comprehensive investigation but just taking a glance through to see what it looks like. It took me less than 10 minutes to check out mine, including walking along the pavement from both directions. It really wasn't much. I did find something I don't like, a change in visual impact of a piece of art through the windows due to the dark wallpaper I'd been playing around with. Do others not do that sort of thing too? It seems a natural part of setting up a home for yourself, all the more so in a neighbourhood. To my amusement, I also discovered that I have more ancient nudity/partial nudity than I realised. Comes of sliving with and studying Roman art for all this time I suppose I remembered Disco Bacchus (though with his bright blue disco ball, pride flag, flower lei and glittery high heels I suspect his wee marble member is the last thing most would notice) and the Venus on the half shell, but I'd forgotten about the other Venus, the Tellu Mater/Ara Pacis relief, John Bauer's very Venus-like Freja and that the Ladies in Blue in the not-really-Minoan fresco have jackets but not bodices . I'm really curious now how others would react to all of this. Does it read as curious old art or something else? My eyes are clearly innured to it. Might this not also pertain to those who've taken issue with my suggestions as well, especially when they've changed it to suit themselves? It's an opinion on a discussion forum, that's all. Without the pushback, I wouldn't have felt a need to clarify and that would have been that. But maybe it's been good to clarify? At least if some take the time to better understand the point of view I've been trying to express. Of course it's impossible to please everyone, my line of thinking has never been about trying to do that. But with a small bit of give and take - like putting something which might be controversial on one wall instead of another - maybe we can make an environment which is less Fortress MINE!!! and a bit more inclusive to a variety of points of view. I personally think that is something worth working towards. I don't see how we're going to get out of our current societal messes any other way. Do we give up or do we try to rebuild societies so they work for more people?

I'm feeling less of a numpty for not understanding all of these have to's now.

I don't remember what I tested as for Myers-Briggs except that it was introverted. I'll try to do the test again when I feel up to it for you guys. I definitely need time alone to recharge after anything. But then I've had fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue for perhaps my entire life. I can be easily overwhelmed by a whirlwind of input, and that makes many social situations both exhausting and more than I can cope with. But if it's organised, then I love it. Like certain types of music where the musicians are working together to make several complex parts a unified whole. I love being in the audience for that and how we'll respond as a complex whole. Something about that kind of music can settle my brain when it's misfiring and I regularly use music to postpone seizure activity when I have to go through a neurally difficult situation to get to a safe place. One of my strengths was informal teaching, improvising as I went based on what that particular group gave back. Whole-school assemblies were brilliant. A day going to every class was energizing, though the fibro would take over when it was done. The same thing happens with any extended period of concentration though, whether alone or in a group. But now I look back and see how much farther I could push myself in that kind of setting and I wonder if my true personality might not be more towards an extrovert than my body has allowed. A big part of what I like about SL is that the demands to be social are less than in person. There are the pauses while an IM goes through. Longer pauses are more acceptable than in RL, and they don't always need to be explained or can be explained simply. Saying something like "I need to RL for a bit, talk more later?" lets me end a conversation in a socially-acceptable way when my brain decides its had enough and the person I'm speaking with can't see my eyes losing focus or any of the other things that happen when my internal computer starts to power down. I also don't need to then get myself home safely. Anyway, that's just me and besides being neurally different, it's being made abundantly clear to me in the forums that I'm an outlier values-wise and in how I approach things so who knows if my data point counts for anything.

That was me. I honestly didn't think it would be so controversial. Not that a person shouldn't have what they want in their home but to simply be aware of where it's more likely to be seen as part of the process of arranging things, and to consider taking that into account. It's just a recipe for getting along so more people's preferences are met. Why is that seen as such a problem? I asked for help understanding this earlier but that's been ignored. I honestly don't understand why suggesting this sort of awareness is controversial. What am I missing?

Are any of the thread participants advocating doing that sort of thing? Maybe I missed one but I don't recall any.

The amount of traveling friends and I did in my early days is a big part of the reason why my default is IMs. I followed a RL friend who lives on another continent into SL so I came into a social setting. We did a lot of exploring, then a lot of hunting, then more hunting. We had his land group to use when there were more than two of us. So basically local didn't work because we were always leaving it behind And of course talking about hunt prize locations in local wasn't cool. My habit is that local is for group conversations in one place, and IM is for everything else. My friends and I are often in different locations, working on our various projects so IM just makes sense for it. That leaving local behind probably plays a bigger part in my default than anything generational.

Are you using the shadow texture on mesh plane inworld or a prim? If it's a prim, have you made the four sides transparent? Also try changing the texture repeat slightly, to .98 or so and see if that improves the situation. SL has a bad habit of showing a line of pixels from the opposite side of the texture at the very edge. Depending on what your texture is, that can be a problem. These are the two issues I run into and they're easy to check, so worth ruling out if nothing else.

Yeah, I'm in Scotland, where there's still a sense of community and just getting along. If the pushback is due to cultural differences, can those who disagree with me please help me understand what the attitudes behind it are and whether you think they're helping things in the U.S.? From an outside perspective, it looks like an insistence on mutual imposition of values onto each other, with that leading to increasing polarisation and every one just digging in even deeper. Is there no way out? Or is there simply little desire to find one?

No I'm not saying that. But thank you for asking instead of dropping a hateful meme on me this time. For starters, I haven't used any "should" language at all. Please don't add it in. The Winchester is the ubiquitous traditional model so I thought it would be useful as an example. My apologies for not realising you wouldn't know it off hand. It's the biggest traditional. The front room is small but has three windows, two on the front and a double on the side. Whatever is put on the remaining wall can be quite visible from the street, especially if it's large. The back room is hardly hidden away, that's a bit of a leap you've made there. It's larger, with a big open doorway from the entry hall, two windows and a windowed double door to the outside. I used it as an illustration of how placement can change an object's potential impact and an example many in Bellisseria would be immediately familiar with and able to visualise easily. There's a bit of wall between the two front windows. Something placed there wouldn't be visible from the street either, but the positioning could be awkward aesthetically. A display of standing photo frames on a table in front of the window would be better for that space I think. Again, this isn't prescriptive. It is just an example of how doing something a bit differently can change how it might impact others. Put it on one wall, anyone walking by can see it. Put it somewhere else and they'll only see it if they work at it. You and your guests would be able to enjoy your tasteful nudes in the front room. Those passing by would have no idea they're there. Adding some landscaping is fairly common for the house dwellers, so the idea of putting something in the line of view (if the Linden landscaping isn't enough) for the back isn't wasting LI. It's just a variation on the point I've been trying to make throughout - changing the position of something can change who might see it. Again, none of this is prescriptive. No "shoulds" at all. No anti-nudity or anti-nude art. (I've been selling Roman antiquities for eight years after all ) It is simply putting forward the suggestion that we can choose to be aware of how what we do might impact neighbours and passersby and we can choose what we want to do with that awareness. You suggested before that this would stifle creativity. I'm saying a little creativity in how you organise a room can make it work well for everyone. That's all. Please don't read things into it that I haven't said.

When I was back on RL dating sites around 5 years ago, I noticed a big change from when I'd used the same ones close to 13 years ago. The earlier time, paragraphs (and usually a few) were the norm, a little bit about the writer, some about what interested him in my profile (or vice versa), and an invitation to continue the conversation if you'd like. The later time, most went right into short back and forths, like texts rather than e-mail (even when it was nominally still an e-mail system on the site). I think it was the shift to phones, texts and constant notifications rather than computers and e-mail which was the biggest influence, more than social media, but it's all part of the same ecosystem. I'm not sure how that would play into local v IMs so I'm just throwing it into the pile for consideration. Inworld, I'd add group chat as a primary social avenue. It could be changes in which groups I belong to, or maybe even just changes in the interface, but it feels like group chat dominates in a way it didn't several years ago. What do others think on this? For me personally, I've never been great in large social environments and much prefer smaller conversations, both in RL and SL. Free-flowing local chat can be interesting to watch but I've never been quick enough to get my response thought out and typed. As my health worsens though, I struggle more and more with multiple streams of conversation going on. The frequent changes of focus just exhaust me even when I'm not trying to reply. (Time zones and US-centric scheduling doesn't help either.) The years before my surgery were like this too, and that's when I stopped trying to participate in larger social settings. Which is a long way of saying, I wonder how many of the IMers are simply more comfortable in smaller conversations for their own reasons?

I think we can take into account how our choices might impact others around us. As I suggested in my first post we can look to see if there are ways which let each of us have what we want while being aware of others, like how we position and arrange our items. Think of the Winchester house -- put a large nude on the big wall in the front room and it will be visible from the street (and perhaps the neighbour's front room) unless something's done with the windows. Put it on the big wall in the back room and it won't be. If there's a neighbour back there without sufficient Linden landscaping, maybe add some. That's all I'm really suggesting. Personally, I'd extend this to political and religious imagery too. I'm in no way saying don't have it, just suggesting that we might be aware of how much we have, how readily visible it is and also things like how controversial it might be. One campaign sign out front will carry a different impact than a "shrine". Just keeping this sort of thing in mind certainly doesn't have to lead to Stepford or stifle creativity. Far from it. My creativity is wacky, cheerful and abundantly colourful, so I'm careful how I use it. I want it to be inviting not an eyesore. In my mind it's like being careful to find flowers with a good LOD so they don't look like a heap to the neighbours. Ultimately, it's a good thing we can derender and it's better to derender than argue over a neighbour's decor choices, but there's room in that to give a thought to where we put things and whether or not it might impact on someone else. It's just being mindful of others.

But sometimes, depending on style used and location, a person might unintentionally see in through a window, especially if they're moving about the region in an immersive fashion rather than TPing. The houseboats are jammed in so close together I think it's worth thinking about it from the point of view of the neighbours' windows and outside seating areas. What might fall into their field of view? I think it's worthwhile, in the interests of just being a good neighbour, to consider placement and perhaps something in a window to minimise what might be unintentionally seen from the outside. One-way blinds are an option, but even a plant in front of a window might do the trick without making it look closed-off. I think it's something to think about, like taking a look at it all in midnight settings to see if anything set to full bright is adversely affecting the neighbourhood.

I think quantity and visibility from the path and from the neighbours' parcels matters. Some of your examples above show views through the windows with quite a few photos blacked out. How much will be visible from outside your parcel? Depending on which style houseboats your neighbours have chosen, it could be very little. Or perhaps not. This is in no means anti-nudity or anti-nude art. It is simply putting forward the suggestion that positioning within the house factors in. How much will the neighbours see? Is it mixed up with a lot of other art and visuals? Is there a way to arrange it that's pleasing to you, and allows you everything you want but offers more neutral views to passersby and those living next door?

It seemed like it to me.

If it just became fashion and minigames, I'd be gone and so would at least a couple of my friends. Fashion and minigames might draw in new residents, but how many would be transient rather than lasting a decade and more?

Is there a reason why you want to do it out of individual nano mesh pieces instead of incorporating them into a single mesh? The more pieces, the more data load.

I hate to break it to you, but we're all going to die some day.

It's a rest of my life kind of thing but thank you for your kindness x

The friends who've stuck with me through the worst of my illness and disability are all in SL. They're what really keeps me here.

Emphasising that bit about mesh bodies being made from all of those individual meshes.... A single mesh piece can have up to 8 areas which are set to allow different texturing. You can get an idea of how much data this is by going to the alpha cuts hud with your mesh body and counting up all of the groups of 8. That's how many individual 8-faced meshes are on ONE LAYER of your onion-skinned body. Now multiply that by the number of layers your particular onion-skinned body has. Every one of those meshes adds to the download and render weight for your body. Every face adds to the download and render weight of your body. BOM allows for the possibility of returning to a single custom alpha clothing layer and that allows for mesh bodies with enormously fewer individual mesh pieces and faces. And that means less strain on servers, downloaded data and your computer - every component of the pipeline of getting your appearance (and everyone else who switches) rendered on your computer.

It was annoying when someone spread an outfit out over three stores in a hunt, and hunts are all about traveling around and having to search things out. The hunt organisation put in a rule saying only one store per person too so it wasn't just us feeling that way. It made us cross with the creator, even though we liked her stuff and the only price was the effort. If it was for sale though, and involved getting demos from different events and searching out all of the pieces, more than getting annoyed, I'd probably just lose whatever interest I may have had.