A Second Life Shopping Spree

Maker's package

I needed a break in RL so I jumped onto Second Life and decided to what any fashion grrl would do. I went shopping!! My first stop was at a new shop called Ella Onda Fashion. I was "suckered" in with a notice from one of the SL fashion groups I belong to. It promised new designs and the prices were pretty low (about $60 - $90L). So off I went.

I looked carefully at the package photos but couldn't tell much from them since the sizes were all fairly small and the resolution seemed like it was at 256x256 or something. I finally found an outfit that looked  cute and bought it for $99 (see Gina at right)

What a disappointment! While the texturing was OK in most places, the straps and side panels looked very painted on. Plus the outfit (in two colors black & red) was only supplied on pants/jacket layer with very simple and not quite matching miniskirt prim inserts for the crotch area. Blah. (Thanks to Lalo Telling for pointing out, obliquely, that I really needed my own photo of the outfit to show the problems. Click on any of the images to see in original size.)

Close-up of Gina Outfit

In looking at their other items, I recognized a few template store-in-a-box type outfits including a retextured version of those tired old lace up booty shorts. Feh! What can you say -- the price is right. Sort of.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tuscarora/77/139/23 <-- Ella Onda if you dare

Bare Rose - Quality at a Great Price

Now I was in need of a real fashion fix. Feeling a bit frisky, I decided to head for Bare Rose having not visited there for at least 6 months. And OMG, I went crazy and bought 5 outfits including a very wild one I didn't really pay close attention to. More on that in a sec...

For the price, I don't think anyone can touch Bare Rose for quality, style and a totally unique look.

TongPu in Pink (at left) is total Japanese Kawaii-style (cuteness) at its best. I am a sucker for pink (Hello Kitty) and this outfit about made me wet myself! The texturing is phenomenal, the prim parts fit and match perfectly AND it comes in red along with the pink in the box!!! The hair poofies are to die for and the upright collar ads a touch of aggressiveness than goes beyond simply cute.

All for only $160L. (The shoes are color-changing platforms from HOC.)

So, this just puts that $99L outfit all to shame doesn't it?

Now continuing on with my B@R spree, here's the funny one.

Another pink outfit caught my eye and without batting a virtual lash, I bought it. Only when I tried it on at home did I realise it was a bit more risque than my usual fare.

It's called Deka Ribbon and it's supplied in black and pink. Naturally, I'm showing you the pink. And you'll notice I'm wearing the strategic nipple covers because I'm usually a very modest kitty and this outfit is really designed to be worn bare breasted. :P

Hopefully I'll find a matching lace bra or something for it but for now, what you see is what you get.

Bare Rose really has a way with unique prims. From the hair flirts to the ribbons, collar and cuffs, it all makes for one very smashing outfit. Price is, once again, only $160L and includes both pink and black versions.

When I get time, I'll post up the other outfits I bought.

In the meantime, if you haven't visited for awhile, stop by Bare Rose!

Bare Rose Tokyo -- Bare Rose

New Dresses from Inga Wind - Keisy

Inga Wind has just released her Keisy complete outfit in 4 new colors -- blue, silver, sand and my fave color PINK!!! Yay!!! What I really like about Keisy is that even though there is a lace texture layer on top and bottom of the skirt & dress prims, they don't compete with the main prims for attention in SL.

You really have to see this outfit in-world to appreciate the details. It's an embroidery festival! And did I mention I love pink??

Keisy comes with both cocktail and formal lengths as shown plus basic matching heels and a cute little hairpiece. Price is normally $1250L but Inga's group member price is $650L.

Hair is Pya by Damselfly, skin and shape are by me. :)

Inga Wind Clothing SLURL

The Redzone Saga

For the past month, like the guy in the Geico commercial, I've lived under a rock -- at least as far as Second LIfe is concerned. I won't bore you with all the reasons but it's mostly due to my interests in Second Life shifting from content creation to just enjoying and being with friends. It's also because I'm more caught up in real life (as we all should be).

Anyway, today when I logged in, several of the merchant and fashion groups were literally buzzing with chatter around "Redzone" and the banning of it and its creator, zFire Xue (and his alt TheBoris Gothly)
from Second Life. Normally these groups are slow (ok they're dead Jim), but today it was like a non-stop stream of consciousness flow. Yikes!

I've been marginally aware that Redzone is/was a product supposedly designed to prevent copybotting and that many merchants in SL used it or CDS to patrol their stores. But as I started reading the group chatter, the terms "password theft", alt exposure, privacy violations, etc. kept showing up and it all started sounding very spooky.

Being a curious kitty, I did a little research. All I can say is OMG! It's like a geek version of the Sopranos.

It turns out Redzone was probably little more than an elaborate scheme to facilitate password theft, griefing, alt exposure (and maybe blackmail), credit card theft and data mining. According to several blogs and forums, zFire Xue is a convicted felon in real life.

Today, after being presented with all the evidence by a very activist anti-Redzone crowd, Soft Linden and Linden Labs stepped in with a modified Terms of Service to make sharing alt information without consent a violation, banned zFire and his products, and shut down the sim they were on.

Sadly, as Theia Magic points out in her blog, this won't end the problem because the very thing that makes programs like Redzone work exploits flaws in how Second Life handles streaming media and audio. Those flaws aren't likely to be fixed any time soon meaning anyone with mad skillz can make their own Redzone. Plus, the idea that copybotting can be solved through the methods supposedly used by Redzone and others is just silly. Anything that must be rendered on the local PC can be captured and copied. Deal with it.

Anyway, it all makes for interesting and distracting reading. For an incredibly detailed summary of issues, events and stuff, read the SLUniverse summary thread here. It will turn your brain into cottage cheese.

New Release from Inga Wind - Naida

I know it's been a long time between posts but fun, family, friends and holidays have taken a front seat to bloggy posts. So nyah!! :P

Anyway,  Inga has released another of her wonderful fairy outfits -- this time with a water/dolphin theme. Naida in Blush (shown below) is the first in the series and has been followed by a version in silver. It's absolutely magical!!! Sort of a cross between harem silks and a filmy formal, Naida comes with matching shoes, tiara wings and an animated dolphin you can ride should you decide to get wet.

As usual, the detail is exquisite and the textures all line up perfectly from top to bottom. If I had one very small nitpick, it's that the dolphin detail above your belly button is a bit hard to discern. Regardless, it's a truly wonderful outfit that gets oohs and ahhs wherever you go. I'd love to see it in aqua and pale yellow!

For members of Inga's group, the outfit is $500L, regular price is $950L.

Second Life attachment points

New fashion release from Inga Wind shows limitations of SL avatar attachment points.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Inga Wind is a friend and my fave designer. When I got her latest release, Cosette, I fell crazy in love with it simply based on the package photo!

When I put it on, I was blown away. How would you describe it? Professional? Yes. Perky? Very. German hofbrau? Kinda. Totally cute? Definitely!

The outfit includes everything you see in the photo. Skirt, top, glitch pants, belt, sleeve ruffles, shoes and a prim bow for the bodice. The total price is $350L or, $150L for her group members -- a total bargain!

However, in trying to do the photo shoot of the outfit for this blog post, I started going crazy because the belt would "dig" into the skirt with some of the fashion model poses that move your hips sideways. So, I started playing with the belt trying to see if I couldn't make it behave better with my hip-shifts!

After 15 minutes of fooling around, I moved the belt to the spine and the bow the "left pec". For my fashion shots, it all worked fine that way. In fact, I thought to myself, wow, this is how it should be.

So I went to see Inga in person to show her what I'd done. After turning on my AO and standing in front of her, she (very graciously) pointed out that now the bow was moving up and down the dress as I breathed! Ughh. Plus, when my AO switched to a different stand, the belt was now digging into my stomach which looked awful! I had solved one problem for my photo shoot but created two new ones that didn't work for normal wear. :P 

Bottom line, Inga HAD indeed picked the best attachment points in the first place. She has tried the different spots I had and what comes out of the box is the best you can do given the limitations of Second Life. Normally belts and skirts are linked together so they move as one. However, the outfit is designed so the belt rides higher, almost like a mini-corset. That means it can't be part of the skirt or it would move completely outside your body with any twisting or shifting motion. Sigh.

Anyway, it's a gorgeous outfit and only those terminally picky and slightly anal retentive people like me would ever notice this stuff. :P

What's in your SPAM folder??

This is sort of an off-the-wall topic. You see I actually bothered to look in my Gmail Spam folder today for my Second Life email account and for my throwaway real life account. I don't think I've checked either for maybe a month. I was surprised to find that, in both accounts, 90% of the ads were for male enhancement products with the remaining 10% for Canadian pharmacies.

Since Gmail does a pretty good job of filtering spam, I'm not as reluctant to give out my Gmail addys as I am with my professional personal email. So I'm not surprised that I end up with a fair amount of spam. I've read that spammers try to guess your email address on Gmail using names they find by searching on the net. So if you're "Snickers Snook", they try every variation including snickers_snook, snickerssnook, snickers.snook, snickers-snook, snook-snickers, etc. which in my case, happens to work for my SL account.

It doesn't quite work for my RL Gmail account although my name is part of the address. However, both accounts have clearly female names (well OK Snickers might be a little ambiguous). Yet, both accounts are mostly filled with ads designed for men with serious inferiority complexes, stupid streaks and / or excess money.

On the other hand (or body part), I can't recall ever seeing a spam for breast enlargement. Oh I get a few here and there for diets, wrinkle creams, random household products, African money schemes, lotteries and porn. But the ratio of male-oriented stuff drowns out everything else. Does that mean women are smarter than guys about this stuff so spams targeting females don't work as well? Or are there lots of women who buy online Viagra and penis enlargement pills for their BF's or husbands?? (Here honey, I got these pills for you for my birthday.)

Now spam in my RL professional account is very different from Gmail stuff. There I get mostly pitches for seminars, unreadable foreign language emails, African money schemes and lotteries with few, if any, male-oriented pitches. Weird that they're so different in content. Maybe it's a difference in filtering?

So I'm curious. What's in your spam folder?

More aDiva Stuffa

Just to show that I can still acknowledge a good outfit in spite of the mistreatment I may have received by its creator, I wore AnneJoy Paine's "Blood Red Bitch" outfit to a large Halloween party in SL the other night. I received several compliments on it but especially on the cape. To the one person who really wanted to know where I got it, I gave him a LM to her shop. :P