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Bitsy Buccaneer

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Posts posted by Bitsy Buccaneer

  1. I wonder what would happen if you made a game out of it. Wear a prim like it was a skateboard and laugh about it in local chat. Give the skateprim out to others and encourage them to jump in front of the bumper for a free ride. It's a way of taking an element of control back from the griefer and finding fun in a difficult situation.

  2. C'mon everybody. Entity needs a great big giant group hug. :matte-motes-smile:

    There are great people of all ages in SL and a tremendous amount of creativity and generosity. There's also attitudinal drama and trolls and people who insist on seeing everything negatively and that they're always right, but that's true all over the internet. What is different for me is that I've had much more success in reducing my interaction with the latter in SL than just about anywhere else on the net. What matters most to me is how much success I've had in finding others who share interests, inspire me with their creativity and humour, encourage me in finding new ways to express my own, and are willing to share skills and knowledge.

    With so many different pockets of interests and temperaments, it can be hard to find those which suit you. Probably are several around if you're willing to look, but you do have to look. If you don't put much effort in, you probably won't get much out. Money is another matter. You can spend as much or as little as you want, and when you decide you want to.

  3. Since the broader situation around Complexity has changed and it's now a mainstream concern, it might be time for a new, more mainstream-orientated version of that article.

    The way I read it, Penny's article is about her experiments in what can be done to reduce rendering complexity and the main point is that it can be achieved without any loss of quality. I found the hows of it fascinating, but it seems some readers are getting lost in the details rather than seeing the bigger picture. (And to reiterate, the bigger picture is that quality can be maintained and even increased while significantly reducing rendering complexity.)

    I think there's also the difficulty of consumers wanting simple solutions immediately (thus the popularity of turning it all off). A lot of them don't want to know how SL could have done it better, they just want to know how to get themselves sorted right now and carry on with whatever they're doing in SL. The simple solutions will take time to roll out, as they always do. Is there any point in suggesting patience?

    I think an article like Penny's is valuable to the general public by showing what CAN be done, that it is possible to have a visually complicated, well made avatar with low rendering complexity. Consumers can take things forward by asking questions of their favourite creators, encouraging those who build inefficiently to improve their work, and sharing information on who is already doing it.

  4. I don't think anyone has said anything about you needing to lower your complexity rating, Nova. My comments were a joke about the "Blame it all on someone else's computer" attitude we see so often here and the observation that entering a club would be a sensible time to lower the setting temporarily. I explained further in a response to Kylara on the previous page. It's in between two of her thread flounces.

    Of course, you're free to ignore my meaning too. :matte-motes-smile:

  5. It was a tongue in cheek joke (note the smiley at the end which you cut off in quoting me) in reply to a post written to someone other than you. I believed you when you said you were leaving the thread too, so I didn't worry about trying to incorporate your specific brand of assumption about complexity settings and other people's computers into the quip.

    Those sorts of assumptions come up frequently, not just in this thread, and my joke was in reference to them as well. Hopefully it made some of the forum regulars smile. The post I quoted and replied to used an example for which a different reason is quite plausible and probably more likely than her assumption that nearly everyone (her words) rezzing in had a craptop (her word) which forced the use of low settings. That kind of assumption isn't going to help anyone. It's unfairly divisive.

    In the meantime, I came across a post on the Mesh Body Addicts site which mentioned using a 40,000 setting for events. Given the popularity of that site and the respect accorded it, I'd put even more money on a situation in which the majority rezzed in with a reduced complexity setting being due to their choices (and perhaps shared information) rather than the age or quality of their computers.

    That was the context of my reply to someone else's post.

    I didn't think enough about you to dislike you, whine about the quality of your computer or anything else. My early impression wasn't entirely favourable, but I really didn't worry about it. I am curious why you chose to respond with divisive and presumptive wording like advising me to turn you into a jellydoll or mute or derender you. It seems you are continuing to make unfounded assumptions about other people in SL. That's not fair or helpful to anyone.

  6. I agree with ChinRey and also think that a thread with this title is an excellent place for further discussion since it will benefit those who look it up in the archives. If it was simply the answer to the OP's question, it would reinforce the mistaken idea that the best solution is to just turn it off.

    Hopefully those who think to use the archive search instead of making a thread to ask the question yet again will be more receptive to the whys of it all.


  7. Nova Convair wrote:

    Lately I was at a club and had the 2nd highest complexity. ( about 60,000 ) Nearly everytime someone rezzed I got that message that I'm not seen by everybody .. blah blah. It was obviously the rezpoint of SL's craptop user club with low settings as a must.

     

    These blame it on other peoples computers assumptions are getting tedious. Can we have a debug setting to turn them off please? :matte-motes-wink:

    Surely entering places like C88 and clubs is a great time to lower the complexity rating and then increase it to whatever works best for the crowd there that day. It seems an imminently sensible use of the feature.

     

  8. It's possible it was a mistake whilst trying to set up a scenic backdrop or something, and if it's invisible on their side they might not even realise it's rezzed.

    It could well have been griefing to try to get you to abandon, but it might have been a mistake. /me remembers leaving an eyesore out accidentally when I was new and didn't know to look on the back side for a prim that had disappeared. Learnt two lessons later that week. Walk past where you rezzed (my camming skills were non existent) and beware goods marked Free. :matte-motes-tongue:

    Derender can be fun when things are irksome. It turns a problem into a game. Glad you got yours sorted.


  9. llaneel wrote:

     

    and if if these educators acted upon this new style of teaching I think enrollment would have

    sky rocketed. BUT sadly i can predicted that they probaly used their own self styled WRIT and ROTE

    technique.

    Besides education should be free.

    Well you can always expand your holdings and open up an education facility to test out your theories about this new style of teaching. :matte-motes-smile: I'd offer to help teach, but I'm not sure I'd measure up to your ideals.


  10. Pamela Galli wrote:

    You have at least two kinds of sellers: those running a business and those role playing running a business. For the first group, twelve dollars is not a significant barrier, for the latter it is.


    I'm not role playing running a business. My shops are an important creative outlet, but are unfortunately subject to the ups and downs of long term disability and health problems. Three thousand lindens is still a significant investment for me. Please be respectful of those of us who are doing the best we can.

    I think there are far more people in circumstances similar to mine than those who are just "role playing running a business". We're creating because we enjoy it and enjoy sharing our work with others.

    As for full perm items, they got me started in a new direction. I learned a lot by working with mesh items other people created and eventually set out to learn Blender myself. A good friend is a texture dropper, but spends a lot of time getting her textures just right. She's also good at cobbling scripts together and making humourous, quirky things. As SL tech keeps raising the bar for creation higher and higher, full perm helps more people with a broader range of skills and interests participate creatively. That's what keeps me in SL.

  11. SL has been a lifeline since I had to give up RL work. Both the creation and social aspects are important. My physical limitations matter less here and I've found good friends who recognise and appreciate my strengths.
    So I think it's worth trying, especially if centre members are willing to help each other get the hang of SL. The learning curve can be a bit steep, and that first run in with griefing can be a bit difficult, and the open endedness of it all can be confusing, so it's good to have some support and friends.

  12. Appliers are basically system style clothing for mesh bodies. They are "applied" (thus the name) to the mesh body via a HUD. So you wouldn't have to learn how to build original mesh, just how to set up the HUDs for your clothing textures.

    The whole clothing market keeps getting more and more fragmented. Do you have any sense of how popular mesh bodies are amongst the 50s aficionados? The retro circles I'm most familiar with aren't particularly bothered about them.

    There's no way a creator can build for everyone, so create what you love and what works for you. That's what you understand best and what you'll do best. Then if you want to expand and explore, go for it.

    In my opinion, of course. :matte-motes-smile:


  13. entity0x wrote:

    As a merchant, I don't like the fact that I can't track purchases inworld - I can't offer service or refunds to people because I can't even find their transaction possibly - or it's a lot more work, and SL only allows me to go back over transactions of 30 days.

    What's so hard about downloading the month's data on a regular basis? Compiling it in a spreadsheet is useful for confirming trends, but even without that you can use the computer's search function to find a customer's transaction data quickly. It doesn't take long and you'll always have it.

  14. I love your swimsuit ads, Trixie. All of your photos have a retro SL feel as well as a retro 50s vibe and a sense of humour, so I think you're off to a good start. Pricing in SL is a nightmare, there is no right answer. Depends on your niche and competition and customers. Have you searched marketplace looking for similar items and what others are asking? Be sure to check their reviews too.

    My gut instinct is that your pricing for the swimsuits is spot on. The skirt suits might sell better at a lower price. If I were doing this, I might keep them as they are for now, but make some more and lower the price to say L$150 and hope customers bought two. That's not a very 50's approach though, is it? :matte-motes-smile:

    You're working with a strong, well defined niche. Are you using appropriate keywords like 50s, fifties, etc in your listings? That's a must so your items come up in search. My guess is that theme-specific advertising inworld will make far more sense for you than anything like marketplace enhancements. Are there any 50's related SL blogs? The Historical Hunts group has a Rte 66 event thats 50's themed (I think), but you just missed it this year. How about the sims you hang out on inworld to wear these things?

  15. I'm trying to decide if this is trolling or someone extending her role play into the forums.

    Let's go with the latter for interest. Pam, you do housewares so grab some towels. Sassy is in charge of cutting prims as needed. Alwin can boil water. Amethyst, Freya and Pixieplumb will be lead midwives and the rest of us will crowd around getting in the way. Someone needs to faint at the sight of blood and another person needs to get hysterical. Oh wait, the mum to be already has that covered.

    All set? Let's do this.


  16. Chic Aeon wrote:

    Recently a well-know blog did a survey and found that
    38 percent of SL businesses "are
    already
    preparing to launch their brand in Project Sansar".

    38% of businesses or 38% of respondents to the survey? I think the former is absurdly difficult to estimate given the number of small businesses in SL, and how some are marketplace only, inworld only, both, or an abandoned marketplace shop that will exist into eternity. Respondents to the survey will probably favour those who are preparing or think they are, whatever that means.

    So I guess I'm agreeing with you and just adding another question.

  17. (reply in general, not to Pixie....)

    Maybe there needs to be a bit more awareness and understanding on both sides of this issue.

    Certain subcultures include adults who choose to emphasize traits and features commonly associated with youth or androgyny. It's part of their aesthetic and they read it as an adult role within their subculture.

    People outside of these subcultures aren't always familiar with these aesthetics and quite naturally read these appearances as underaged. Some of us have other reasons as well, like the years I spent in a job which involved child protection concerns. It really doesn't say anything about my sexuality when my brain thinks "vulnerable young person" on seeing an avatar with many physical traits of a 15 year old wearing a sexualised outfit. And I do think the avatar in two of the ads given as an example has many physical traits of a 15 year old. (Muscle tone maybe a bit older, face definitely younger, proportions about 15. See the chart given a few pages back for proportions at that age.)

    Both of these groups are thrown in together in situations like the marketplace or forums. That is going to create confusion, misunderstanding and reactions.

    Being able to repurpose items originally created for one age group to another adds to these problems. The mesh body in question was apparently created for kids. Put a different skin on it and change the sliders and it fits the aesthetics for adults in a subculture who are choosing to emphasize traits and features commonly associated with youth or androgny. It's serving two purposes, which is great. Except that sexualised items made for that mesh body and legitimately intended for adults can also be repurposed in ways which are illegal and against ToS.

    I don't know what we can do about that unless the mesh body creators are able to put lower limits on height and such or build adult specific physical traits directly into the mesh. Or maybe it would help to just have mesh bodies designed specifically for that market so there's less repurposing of bodies intended for underaged kids.

    I do think that there is plenty of room for people involved in those young-appearing subcultures to make their intended purposes clearer on a very public, open to all marketplace. Two of the ads given as examples include the wording "For boys with female based shapes". Why not change that to something like "For male adults with female based shapes" instead? Even "male avatars" would be better than boys, which has a very clear meaning of underaged for the majority of people.

    Basically, I'm suggesting that creators who are making things for these subcultures take a moment to step back and look at their ads from the point of view of a mainstream person who stumbles into it not knowing. Mainstream folks need to be a bit more understanding sometimes, but those involved in the subcultures do as well. If they don't provide enough information for a random passerby to grasp that there's something different going on, they can't really get upset when said passerby interprets it in ways other than intended.

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