Teresa Firelight

My understanding is that the group bonus has nothing to do with taxes on tier and/or premium fees, but is a 10% extra land allowance bonus. In other words, instead of having an allowance of 1024, you would have an allowance of 1024*1.1, or 1125 sqM. I dont think this has anything to do with tax status.

I am seriously running out of group slots. I know 70 sounds like a lot, but when you are admins in many multi-group projects and own a store and have a RP region of your own. .they fill up fast. I am trying to hold out until Dec 5 when my premium renews and am thinking of upgrading to PP at that time cuz of needing more group slots. I may not be able to wait that long. The 2048 sized linden homes are not a main factor for me... group slots are free uploads are.

As a premium member, you have two choices. You can get a Bellisseria home and put your skybox above it (anything over elevation of 2000M is fine). If you do that, you select a home from the land page and it is 100% free... but there are a few restrictions.. read the covenant to discover what they are. Your second option is to purchase a 1024 mainland lot of your choice. The prices vary widely based on location and on what is available at the time you buy. You will not be charged the Monthly Tier on that house, but you will need to purchase it out of your own linden dollars. The way Mainland works in SL.. there are two costs. One is the initial purchase cost -- that is paid just once up front. The other is a monthly tier cost .. which is $7 USD for a 1024 lot if you are not a premium member. But because you purchased a premium membership, that $7 USD fee for your first 1024 sq M property is waived.

NEW Parade Of Homes Blog - PoH Decorator Tips for 10.10.22 - Decorating A Houseboat https://lastditch.typepad.com/belli_parade_of_homes/ (There will be a follow-on article looking at some lovely houseboats either late this month or next month.)

very desirable location near waterfall and stream just opened up. North Campground Site 4 - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/105/10/283 (note that North Campground site 5 is rented but Sabie Valley campsite still available) Both are $L 260 a week and give you a 130 LI allowance. Pay for 5 weeks and get a 6th week free. Enjoy all the benefits of living at Mount Campion - scenic surroundings, forest hiking, horseback riding, hang gliding, picnic areas, cave exploring, daily social activities, weekly dance, friendly park residents, etc. This is only some of the sites at Mount Campion that happen to be available today. For information on other rentals, please visit our park office and check the rental boards: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Campion/109/89/285 Here is a picture of the new site (North Campground Site 4):

I am not sure they promised 2048 Sized Linden Homes... I thought they said that they were considering it.. along with considering lowering cost for uploading mesh and a few other things. I am not sure it was actually promised so much as floated as a possible enhancement.

Premium membership is not just paying for a bellisseria home... in fact there are actually people who have premium membership and dont want a bellisseria home. Some of the other benefits include: 300 $L stipend, more group slots, higher priority access to crowded places, live chat support, more stored messages from when you are offline, more animesh attachments, generating experiences, and a bunch of other stuff.

There are currently 2 campsites available at Mount Campion National Forest: Sabie Valley Campsite - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/117/176/139 North Campground Site 5 - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/147/7/290 Both are $L 260 a week and give you a 130 LI allowance. Pay for 5 weeks and get a 6th week free. Enjoy all the benefits of living at Mount Campion - scenic surroundings, forest hiking, horseback riding, hang gliding, picnic areas, cave exploring, daily social activities, weekly dance, friendly park residents, etc. This is only some of the sites at Mount Campion that happen to be available today. For information on other rentals, please visit our park office and check the rental boards: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Campion/109/89/285 Here are pictures of Sabie Valley Campsite and North Campground Campsites:

I have a couple of avatars with unfortunate names that I wanted to change. It is actually a bit cheaper to upgrade to PP ($29.99) then use the $15.00 name change fee that to do the basic for $49.99 (or somewhere in that neighborhood... I forgot the exact fee). What I have been doing is upgrading to PP, changing name but trying not to use any other features except the free uploads and then downgrading to basic at the end of the month. That worked perfectly for avatar #1, but backfired on #2 and #3. #2 was PP when the nice stilts were first released, and a friend talked me into using the Parcel Request feature to get a stunning OL which had a lot of water on it and was in a lovely area. So when the PP expired, the alt got downgraded to Premium. Then on #3, a friend landed a lovely houseboat so I decided to roll a few --regular rolls, not parcel requests. On try #2, I got an amazing location. I will have to keep this at least for a few months, so another avatar is going to premium instead of basic. So I guess maybe LL's strategy to entice us to try PP for cheaper name changes is working... However, I am just about out of group slots -- down to just 2 free ones. In my case, due to management of various things plus owning a store, I really do need the group slots. So soon I will be forced to upgrade my main account to PP. She renews in December.. I was hoping to upgrade at that time, but I may not be able to wait that long because of the need for group slots.

Date: Sat Oct 1, 2022 Time: 9:00 AM SLT (pls try to arrive 10 minutes early) Duration: 90 minutes Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/32/219/130 About the Tour: This is the park’s Main Tour, and it is guided by park Rangers. It takes you to 50 locations in the park, including serene trails, scenic lakes, streams, waterfalls, etc. It also ventures briefly into Mt Campion’s massive underground cave system. It addition, for BBB and CPCB passport holders, there are two stamps you can collect during this tour. Wear comfortable shoes, because you will be doing a lot of walking. The tour is given both in SL voice and in Local Chat (for those who do not want to enable voice). About Mount Campion National Forest: Mount Campion National Forest is a large forest park that surrounds Mt. Campion, the highest mountain in mainland second life. The park is very large, spread over six mainland regions, and containing over 150,000 square meters of land. The park roughly surrounds the summits of Mt. Campion in the east and mount Campanula in the west The park is bordered by SL route 3 in the north and SL route 6 in the south. Along with miles of trails and pathways, below the ground we have the largest natural cave system in second life. The exact extent of the cave system is unknown, but so far passages have been discovered on four of the parks regions and it is possible to cross the mountain range completely below ground.

Thank you!

@Abnor Mole Thank you for taking the time/effort to explain why drop boxes are problematic. I actually dont have any issue with them being disallowed... I simply did not know they were not ok until the covenant was updated to point that out. I think my point might have accidentally gotten missed: when the covenant is updated, it would be helpful if the updater could put a sticky post/thread letting us know what the change is. I used the example of the backup dropboxes... they were not against the covenant (at least not explicitly spelled out) when I put mine out. IDK if I removed them before or after that modification was added, because I am not sure when it was added -- but the point is this... there was a covenant change that made something I did "illegal" and I had no idea the covenant had been changed to disallow that. I would never intentionally violate the covenant... I have too much invested in SL to take a chance on getting in trouble. But if you change things and dont tell us, we dont know it is changed and we cant correct our behavior. It would be helpful if you could get the word out when you make a rule change (or clarification) in the covenant. One way to do that would be to have a sticky read-only thread on the linden homes forum that informs us of the changes each time the covenant is updated, and identifies what was changed.

The caspervend system makes it possible to query dropboxes by location, regardless of name or whether or not they are hidden. I am not sure why you would want to do that... but it wont prevent LL form finding dropboxes if they want to go looking for them.

in case you cant get to the park to get an info card, here is the information about Saturday's Tour (Oct 1 at 9 AM SLT): ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ranger Hex Shinging North Star will lead a tour of Mount Campion National Forest. (This is not to be confused with the Bear Paw Tour that was offered a couple of weeks ago, it is a separate tour that goes mostly different places.) Date: Sat Oct 1, 2022 Time: 9:00 AM SLT Duration: 90 minutes Where: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/32/219/130 This is the park’s Main Tour. It takes you to 50 locations in the park, including serene trails, scenic lakes, streams, waterfalls, etc. It also ventures briefly into Mt Campion’s massive underground cave system. It addition, for BBB and CPCB passport holders, there are two stamps you can collect during this tour. Wear comfortable shoes, because you will be doing a lot of walking.

personally I use this: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Continent-Locator-Globe-Transfer/6731520

Actually the last time I looked at the covenant was when the Newbrooks came out and it was updated to specify that we could not add non-flat roofs. At that time, the section about dropboxes and delivery servers wasn't there yet. It is interesting how people interpret things. In my thinking, backup copies of dropboxes were not "commercial," they were simply storage units used by a commercial system on another region. I did not consider them as actively selling stuff in Bellisseria. (But now, after the fact, I can see how they could be interpreted as commercial.) As it turned out, I landed a stilt on a Release Candidate region a couple of months before Newbrooke was released. I carefully checked the covenant and did not see anything forbidding Caspervend Dropboxes. So I put up a skybox and kept my backup dropboxes there for a couple of months. When the 512 Newbrookes came out, I found one I loved. So I decided to use the other 512m allowance to get a parcel on an RC mainland region. I moved my dropboxes there -- I guess it was a good thing I moved them, because apparently LL considered them "commercial." I was accidentally breaking the covenant without realizing it. That is why I thought the section about Dataservers and dropboxes was new -- today was the first time I saw it. If it has been spelled out back when I first got the RC stilt, I would have never put my dropboxes there. Fortunately, I moved them before anyone got upset about them. And now that I understand the covenant better, I won't put dropboxes in Bellisseria again. But the point of all this is that a change was made to the covenant to make something I had done become illegal, and I wasnt aware of that change. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a sticky forum thread that deals with covenant changes.. . and a post is made to spell out covenant changes each time they are made.

OH no need to apologize... it is still a great find and there are places I can use it... tiny rooms and hallways, for example

I got a notice (in Bellisseria Citizens chat group) this morning that the Bellisseria Covenant was revised on Sep 22, 2022. I wish that when LL updates the covenant, they would do a forum post indicating exactly what changed. I read it and the only thing I noticed that was different was expanding the no commercial rule to explicitly state that delivery servers and drop boxes are not allowed: "*Activities and items that could be construed by Linden Lab as commercial and for profit are not permitted in the residential homes and houseboats in Bellisseria. This includes using parcels for storing delivery servers, dropboxes or working vendors." However, I dont claim to have the covenant memorized, so it is entirely possible I missed other new stuff. Does anyone know for sure what the new parts are from the most recent covenant update of Sep 22?

Exciting news!! There will be a Ranger-Guided Tour of Mount Campion on Saturday Oct 1. The tour will commence at 9 AM SLT, led by Head Ranger Hex Shining North Star. Hex will be assisted by some of the other park rangers. The tour takes about 90 minutes and covers about 1/4 of the park, including scenic and beautiful forest trails/areas, glimpses of some of the Mountain's wildlife, a brief tour of the caves and a visit to two BBB Stamp Dispensers. (Please try to arrive 10 minutes early if possible). http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/33/220/130

There are currently 4 campsites at Mount Campion... all are only $L 260 for 130 LI allowance and all of them are very scenic. South campsite 1 - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Campanula/166/250/273 North Campgroud 5 - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/146/8/290 Sabie Valley Campsite - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/116/177/139 Pinecone Flats Campsite - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Highflyer/39/175/133 Pay for 5 weeks and get a 6th week free. Enjoy all the benefits of living at Mount Campion - scenic surroundings, forest hiking, horseback riding, hang gliding, picnic areas, cave exploring, daily social activities, weekly dance, friendly park residents, etc. This is only some of the sites at Mount Campion that happen to be available today. For information on other rentals, please visit our park office and check the rental boards: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Campion/109/89/285 Here is a picture of one of the sites available today:

you can use your premium allowance to pay for a 1024 mainland lot. If you want adult, there are some adult mainlands... but they are rather expensive to purchase. For example, Horizons seldom has lots for under $L 80,000 and if you want a "nice" location, expect to spend at least $L 100,000 to $L 300,000. Those prices are so high that it precludes most people from purchasing them.

thought chair was interesting so when to marketplace and then went inworld to try it out: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/CHEZ MOI FURNITURES/56/140/2098 Bought from vendor and got a 40% refund which was a nice surprise. However, after I stepped about 4 steps away from the chair to do some more shopping, the arms and legs on it disappeared. (I use the default LOD setting in my viewer) and the LOD on this chair is not really very good. It will still be useful for small spaces and 1 LI is nice.. but with this low LOD, I wont be able to use it in a normal room because it will disappear from across the room.

Deleted -- was tryign to quote another article and somehow the quote did not work.. my post did not make sense out of context.

I am not sure if this is the same thing that happened to me when I was building a large set of hairs, but I suspect it may be. I had rezzed out about 27 hairs (7 colors individual, 7 colors demo and 7 colors for a fatpack). When I was far away I could see them, but when I zoomed in closer, about 1/2 of them disappeared. I submitted this as a firestorm bug and the response came back, that this was expected behavior and not a bug. They explained what was happening. The Viewer can only handle a certain level of complexity in a scene. When the scene gets more complex, it stops drawing some of the stuff. The way mesh works, its complexity level goes down as you get further away, and goes up as you get closer. If you are close to the hairs, the scene is too complex, but as you back away from them and the revert to a lower complexity level, the scene becomes less complex and does not overflow SL's complexity limit.. so it draws them in their less complex state. That is why you can see them from a distance but not from close up. So what can you do? You can try to figure out which piece(s) of furniture have the highest complexity and replace them will less complex pieces. This can include: the number of triangles in mesh objects and use of very high density textures for small surfaces. In other words, a tiny vase with 10 textures, each of which are 1024x1024 has a rather high texture complexity than a vase with 10 256x256 textures. I believe the number of triangles effects it way more than the texture complexity and it is easier to find.. Edit the mesh, and go to the object tab. There look at Mesh Information -> number of trianges. If one or two of the objects have a much higher number than the others, try replacing them with lower triangle objects and see if the scene visibility improves

NEW Parade Of Homes Blog - PoH Decorator Tips for 9.25.22 - Landscaping On Sand https://lastditch.typepad.com/belli_parade_of_homes/ (This is my first time of publishing the blog instead of giving the article to Prudence to format/edit. So please be patient if you find any grammar errors or typos). I hope you enjoy the article.