52 weeks of color - Week 42

AANNNDDDDD I'm back! Ended up being way longer at my folks then originally planned

Week Forty-Two: Chartreuse

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Outfit - ::: B@R ::: Flower Doll - green SLURL Hair - /Wasabi Pills/ Pompon Hair - SLURL Pose - *~*HopScotch*~* The Elementalist SLURL Sim - Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology SLURL

I had thought I'd have a super hard time with this color, but as it turns out, I didn't. Found a dress rather easily. Then the destination guide once again gave me a fun sim to explore for it!

The Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology is defiantly not a place for those afraid of color or glow. Because its full of both.

According to the guide the textures in the sim are supposedly derived from actual nanoparticles. Which you can believe when you see how organic and wild they are. The place is also nearly all glow or full bright, with a lot of animated textures and particles as well. I had to play with sky settings to find one that both allowed me to see through all the glow, but didn't change the look of the place to much. I can't remember what I ended choosing other then it was one of Torely's midnight settings.

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The build is very organic in feel, full of rolling hills and alien like trees. The spaceship like building to one side and the lap in the middle adds to the alien feel. While I would have liked a bit more interactive places it was a fun explore. There are several big tubes you can climb up into that curve over the sim. But the real highlights are the trees, Which come in just about every color you can think of


Now there are a few hard to find pose items about. Most come up as a surprise and some don't even look like a regular pose ball. So if it looks sitable, sit on it!

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In the middle of the sim is a "research building" I guess for researching Nanotech? There wasn't much of an explanation. On one side is a lecture hall, with the seats doubling as lights unless in use. On the other side is a lab full of equipment that I wish was interactive. That would have made it a lot more fun! But alas, none of the microscopes I clicked on did anything.

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The sim also has a few ponds about, one has some inner tubes others have weird moving floating ball things. All are surrounded by the exotic plant life. The centerpiece of all the trees is a huge black one. It was quite impressive.

I think it would be most interesting to have this sim developed with more back-story to it. Maybe some creator could come up with native fauna to go with the flora! As a curiosity explore the sim is fun, but it has such potential for role-play use for those that like a bit of science fiction in their RP and don't want to just go with Star Wars. Which SL has lots of.

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I would recommend a visit to this sim taken with an eye for turning it into an adventure. It could be such fun in a group exploring it in space suits or something akin to that.

Just be aware before going in of the glow and animation!

You can see all my photos of the institute at http://softpaw.org/LJimages/SL/nano/

Now to go dig through my inventory and hope I can find something that works for the next color, LIVER. REALLY LIVER LUNA?!?!?! It's a gross nasty food and the color is a dark grey brown that I so would never wear.

out of town

I've been out of town visiting my folks since last Friday. And wont be getting home as soon as I thought i would be. I'll be posting the 52 weeks when get home. Both Chartreuse an liver! Liver will take a bit I haven't got access to SL to try to find anything and take photos but Chartreuse is ready and waiting. I COULD post it, but it would be creditless.

Expect at least chartreuse by Saturday!

Second Life Origins

So in the destination guide there is a whole group of places to go filed under Second Life Origins.

http://secondlife.com/destinations/origins

One day I decided to go visit them ALL . I was half tempted to put on my original avatar. Well semi original. The one that Kain hooked me up with,my original luskwood and hair and stuff. Heck I still wear the wings he got me. I do not HAVE the "lemur hooker" I started with at sign up anymore and can't find it in the library.

I started with the Cornfield and just went down the list.

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The Corn Field

Now the cornfield has clearly been updated since its days of being used as an actual punishment. Some of the items on it are way to new to have been around then. It was four sims in total and each sim had the same items on it.

The SL Historical Museum was mostly a lot of reading text or hover text and clicking through images. There was some sound or video thing that I couldn’t get to work. One thing you can get there is a copy of the original Primitar avatar for free. Which I didn't try on.

The Man Well its a really big art decoish statue. Nothing else was there at my visit.

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The Climbable Beanstalk was actually kinda fun. Though I am admittedly still horrible at navigating while jumping even now. I got up a good distance before falling off. The stalk itself is around 100M high. I do wonder how tall they could get it now. And once the new larger prims are grid wide.

The Stillman Giant Bears are well, two really big bears. and apparently in the same sim as a lot of the other items on the SL origins guide.

Baffin Island and Boardman Themed Community where both rather empty and to me rather boring. TheBeta Contributor Wall was interesting in only that it hey, these people helped make Sl.

the Pooley Foot gave me some amusement. But more in the group of..people, that where there. WOW, I hadn't seen bling like they had on in a while! Or maybe its just due to I hang out at sims with nicer dressed people?

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I then went off to the orientation island near it. And decided to go through the entire orientation again. Which was different then the one I went through in 2008. Well half went through as Kain TPed me off it to make me look not like a Lemur Hooker anymore.

I have to admit I didn't know about the grabbing physical objects and moving them around bit you learned with the beach ball. The whole thing was rather pretty in a tropical island way. I seem to recall my entry being into a more castely building like place. I followed the sign at the last stop to the help island and found myself near a sandbox. Someone made land sharks..or something..

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Mocha Cathedral was a nice build. Though these days there are nicer cathedrals. It wasn't nearly as big as I thought it would be. I did take the time to look at the candles and snagged one.

Governor Linden's Mansion was fun in that "oh hey I'm snooping in someone’s house way. I loved his fish tank. The stuff under the pool was interesting in historical sense. And seeing just how FAR building has progressed from early days. A lot of it just in texture work alone.

I went to Da Boom but didn't spend as much time there as I probably should have. Mostly due to things stopped rezzing properly for me there. JUST that sim too. No idea what was up with that. Had fun messing around the playground but didn't venture much farther then that.

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last stop was the Old Orientation Stations at Dore . I didn't bother to go through the whole orientation again. Since it was a rehash of what I just did up near the foot.

And that was my foray into early SL. It was fun but a lot of the items underwhelmed me. Maybe if they provided a bit more information it would be better? I dunno. You can see all the photos I took from this trip at http://softpaw.org/LJimages/SL/Slearly/

For the curious..

Bodice, belt, backpack - *{ SeVered GarDeN }* Bambetta *Strawberry SLURL
Sweater - Lady Thugs Sage Crop Top SLURL
Skirt - :::Sn@tch Beach Skirt (Peach)::: - SLURL
Hair - >TRUTH< Lucia SLURL

52 weeks of color - Week 41

I had waaayyy more fun with this color then I thought I was going to.

Week Forty-One: Jazzberry

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Outfit - *katat0nik* - Romper Stomper Outfit SLURL Hair - /Wasabi Pills/ Trish Hair - SLURL Skates - [Babycakes] Master Color Lace Boots SLURL Bubble gum - [PF] Yum Bubblegum! SLURL Pose - :KH: Ice Skate AO SLURL Sim - East End Skating Center & Arcade SLURL

For this color I wanted a change from gowns. I remembered I had this outfit from katat0nik and then thought. "Oohhh this looks like a roller skating outfit! Lets go do a Roller Skating shoot!" I dug out my skates from my inventory to use. This did not work. The skates I had worked with my old Luskwood avatar which had plantigrade feet. Not so much with the new Anthroxtacy with digitrade legs.. If I wanted my feet to fit in them they had to be ridiculously HUGE and did not look good. Now I could have just taken the alpha layer and lower legs off and worn them anyway. But I've taken to liking my legs now. So I went looking for something on the market that would work better.

What I found was knee high boots that you could turn into roller skates. As well as change the color of them. And one of the colors matched the outfit perfectly. I love them, they are rather epically awesome. I don't mind boots that go up to my knees. The only down side is they have an invisi prim that acted up on some floors, and they are no mod so I couldn’t take it off myself.. I sent the creator a note card about a version with out them, but no word back yet.

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My original idea was to just go to a rink take a photo and go. But hey what's the fun in that? Then I thought maybe I'll go to several. But most where small or rather boring. The rink I ended up on though, has a huge rink and a lot of other fun things to do. I spent a good while just skating about playing with things.

While looking for the place to shoot at I ran into one of those bubble gum gatchas. It was empty, but it made me want to be blowing bubbles. So I tracked some of THAT down as well. I had SO much fun watching the bubble get bigger then pop. And skating around. I already had a skating hud and it's fantastic. The skates added a roller noise to my walking also.

Playing Tron amused me more then it really should have.
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About the area are several arcade games that are pretty much props only, even if you could pose on them. But a good number of the games are interactive. They have Duck Hunt, Bowling, pool, skeeball, darts, Air hockey, and if you take a tunnel down bumper cars! And lots of other games.

Duck hunt still has that blasted sniggering dog. It was harder then I thought it would be. Oddly bowling was WAY easier, I wish I bowled this good for real! I couldn’t get the hang of the pool table. Skeeball gave me about the same problems I have in real life.

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The bumper cars would be way much more fun with someone else. Several of the games would in fact. I wanted to play air hockey but couldn’t. Back to the cars, they had two types, normal and battle, need another player for battle mode!

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The last bit of fun I had was with a photo booth. No really, I had a ton of fun with it. Testing the poses and backgrounds. It's rather easy to use as well, and has a lot of options. I think if you have more then one person it would still work.

And a nice touch is that if you click the panel that says get photos here, you get given a full perm photo strip, that you can put the photos you just took onto! That is if you upload them to SL. Which I totally did.

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I am hoping to grab Ambrose and anyone else that wants to come to go to it again to goof off at. I highly recommend grabbing some friends and having a go! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Life%20and%20Everafter/206/215/704

Oh and I do think I saw a free skate dispenser so if you didn't want to pay for skates you don't have to. And all the games are free to play as well.

All my photos from this can be seen at http://softpaw.org/LJimages/SL/Roller/index.html

Next weeks color is CHARTREUSE!! GAH!! I don't think I have anything even CLOSE.

Wanders off playing Xanadu...

Anna's Many Murders

Anna's Many Murders is one of Bryn Oh's amazing builds. It is going to be vanishing soon, So go before it's gone!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bryn%20Oh/69/209/186

You'll start at a landing point where you can click to be given some information as well as windlight settings. USE THESE! Or set your viewer to accept the sim settings. It makes a HUGE HUGE HUGE difference in how you experience the build. To show the huge difference on the last pages of my photos of it are some taken with midday settings.

Let things rez a bit, this build involves reading. It's not very interactive but it tells a story. A rather, dark macabre story. It's not gory, but surreally beautiful. With many breathtaking scenes. I am still in awe of the tiny details she puts into her builds.

Also at the landing point, you'll first meet Anna. Wait a bit here as there is a bit of animation to the build that you can miss if you rush through it. This is true in a few places in fact. After you head out of the building and go you then BAM, suddenly a THING looms over you..

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Your in the middle of a corn field on the edge of a large, deep, canyon. The corn helps guide you along to where you need to go. You'll meet Anna again. Pass by her and head into the creaky building. After that your pretty much guided in the right direction with out much of a choice of which way to go. Take your time to look at the details Bryn put into the build. Sometimes its the smallest things. Like bugs. The little bugs are amazing.

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Make sure your able to hear the sim sounds. Many things have tones as you step over them, and at one point there is music. And be careful to not fall off of platforms! The sim is damage enabled, and you can't fly. So if you fall, you get teleported home.


At the end of the storyline Bryn has placed her Mayfly build from RFL. It fits in with the storyline as well.

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Once you reach here look around till you find a glimmering diamond object and click that, it will teleport you out and near the rest of the build. Explore the funny mechanical animals. There is a metal fairy as well. To get to the other side with the giant bug thing you have to walk back towards the landing point and go around it. Took me a bit to figure that part out.

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All of my photos of Anna's Many Murders can be found at this link

Clothing Credits

I got the ensemble idea from a blogger who's name is escaping me right now.

Top and belt * May's Soul* clover pink - SLURL
Skirt :::Sn@tch Beach Skirt (Pink)::: - SLURL
hair [Shag] - Sweet Treat - SLURL


Also..um..I gotta do this

YAY I got onto http://iheartsl.com!!

tails and shadows.

So, using a bunch of full perm stuffs I got on the marketplace, I made myself a new tail. It's more fluffy then my old one. I'm still getting a bit used to it. The texture work is not done. But adding the transparent texture to the bottom of the fluff cones is a PAIN so I am only grabbing a few at a time.

I kept the jeweled star look, but added flowers and a butterfly. I WANTED to make the butterfly's wings move, but all the butterfly flap scripts I have need them to attach to the base prim, which wouldn't work.

Anyway, photos!




The fluffiness has alpha problems. But then nearly everything alpha does. And I don't know enough about alpha levels to fix it.

I also played with shadows recently. Which did not end well at ALL. You will not be seeing shadows in my photos till I get a computer upgrade, and Adar needs one of those before I do. The trial run was a disaster!!

I took them on Humanoid on a beach, with my skirt off. But other then that I took NOTHING off between these shots. I took a close up and a distance shot.

First, shots with out shadows going so you know what things look like normally.

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Everything’s nice and fine.

Now for with shadows, and taken using the client.

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Notice a LOT of stuff missing? Like, the water, the sky, anything alpha...Heck not even the wanted shadows show!

But this is not what I SAW..oh no..I had to use the print screen button to capture that!

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Its not To bad looking, especially compared to above. but the alpha layer on my avatar doesn't work. as you can see on my legs. And HEY you can see shadows! Which you can see in the full body shot.

I have no idea why the viewer wouldn’t take proper photos when I had shadows on. But, wont be using them! Even if it took proper photos uuhh..the alpha layer is an issue. I am HOPEING that people who are using shadows don't see them. As I am assuming they have a computer that can properly run the thing.

Now to go off to take the shots for the next color challenge and finish exploring this sim I'm at right now! They are not the same things either.

52 weeks of color - Week 40

This week was another Food color. And I knew just the dress for it.

Week Forty: Apricot

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Dress - Evie's Closet Muse Gown - Peach SLURL Hair - !!Calico Creations!! Isis 2 SLURL Pose - Serenade fairy Pose 17 SLURL Sim - HuMaNoiD SLURL

The Sim I picked this time was from the Destination guide and is called HuMaNoiD. It's an old LM of mine so I am not sure if it is STILL in the Destination guide or not. I was reminded of it by someone’s blog post, forget who's, so went to take a look to see if it would inspire me for this week.

It turned out to be another water sim like last weeks. But has these skyboxes as well. Six of them you get to via anywhere doors set in a circle. The sim has custom wind light, but the skyboxes seem to have a different setting then the rest. I got a bit confused in fact, by it asking to change all the time. Either that or my viewer was acting up, which is entirely possible.

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Apart from the sky boxes it has a few other islands, rather pretty ones, scattered about. As well as these weird leg chair things. I've seen photos of them before and always wondered where they are at on the Grid. Guess I found them! Wootage

The sim had no music feed but a number of items that produce music. Which made it a bit different to listen to the sim. Now while I do play music while on the comp, I like to hear the sounds of a sim, apart from a music feed. In fact except at dances I usually don't have the feed playing. So the items playing music was a pleasant surprise.

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The six sky boxes all have names, I chose the one named Zen Moment, which was a boat in a lily pond, for my color portrait, but I did visit the others. Some, are nicer then others. dream in blue has a lovely bird cage and Butterfly build, Lost Generation, kept asking me to play a video that never played and had a very simple awning and some cubes in it. Dance to the Music is a Ballroom with two statue dancers in it, a radio and sheets of music scattered about can be clicked to hear music. A rather Arabian themed box was called Delight. It has Studio Sidhe's moon goddess prop in it with a retexture done to it to make it look like bubbles. And the last one is a shiny tree and some chairs called Dare to Dream.

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I had a very pleasant time at it. So I do recommend it for a visit! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gilmour/92/119/21

You can see all my photos from it at http://softpaw.org/LJimages/SL/Humaniod/

Next week color is Razzelberry, a kinda purplely red, which I think I have a ton of in my inventory so finding a nice dress for it should be fun!

A Yay and a Boo

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SEE THE GIRL!!

That's one of my bestest RL friends and fellow OKRF fae. Arrow, in SL her name is Caelii. She just joined!

Ambrose, who's also met her in RL when he came to guest cast with us at OK the last weekend, and I are going to help her get settled and un newbie her.

But BOY have the newbie avatars come a long way, her starter avatar is already quite put together.

That is clearly the YAY


The boo is that I just got a notecard saying the sim my last post is about, Fungus, is going away! Ross is having some issues so POOF goes Fungus!

Go visit it before it goes away!


I'm currently in world in a sandbox building with Ambrose, He's working on some cakes, I'm creating what will possibly be a new tail for myself.

There is a Fungus amungus!

I found this sim by the destination guide, and then shortly after I started Deoridhe of Primdolls made a post. In fact I think I first found her blog looking for more information on the sim.

Mind you I was there back in June, and it is now August. I had started it, then gave up for a bit. Then dove into it as a distraction from the week from hell. And then due to RFL and a variety of other things, one of which I am a LAAZZYYY fae kitty, I haven't gotten around to posting about it.

Oh and what sim is it? It's called Fungus SLURL

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The build for the sim itself is very nice and colorful. And lots of Mushrooms! And everyone knows how much I love Mushyrooms. Which is one thing that got me there to start with. The other is it has a quest!! A rather complicated and hard one but it SUCH FUN! It's a mix of a hunt and puzzle quest. And can take quite a bit to finish. Your goal is to help restore the land. All of its inhabitants have left suddenly.

The creator is Ross Myhre and he is very friendly and helpful, and doesn't mind if you IM him if he's on. I did have to ask him for a few hints in fact. Not outright telling me where something is, just a gentle push in the right direction. I got really confused at not being able to find something. Turns out his clue had disappeared from the place it should be! So he had to go put it back.

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You'll start at the landing point, and be given a hud and a notecard to give you a clue to where to start. And then you set out. Some of the items your looking for are TINY but there are things set up to help you find them.

Once you get all the stuff found, you venture Underground as well as Underwater, and then the puzzle part starts. You get given things and can collect a few prizes along the way. The prizes all have either a mushroom or a snail theme, or both. Ross also has a store on the sim with some fantastic mushroom themed stuff. I picked up a mushroom hammock, mushroom drum set and some mushrooms designed to sit on while fishing.

Ross built a world that is so very immersive and interesting. Both scary at times and stunning. I was knocked breathless several times. And driven mad by the puzzles! A lot of them involve just getting things timed right.

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While you can explore the upper parts of the sim with out doing the quest. To get to the underground parts you have to go on the quest. But it is sooo worth it.

The sim has a custom windlight setting, which I used. It messed up the coloring on my prim body parts but eh, not too bad. Comes with the territory of being a fur. And just as I was getting underground, my monitor went screwy on me and was showing things darker then they are. For a while I had to go full midday AND wear a light just to see all the nooks and crannies of the build.

Go..explore, play! Have fun in this sim!

You can see all my photos here http://softpaw.org/LJimages/SL/Fungus/

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clothing credits
Outfit - ::: B@R ::: Mimo SLURL
Hair 1 >TRUTH< Danni Halfway though it all I switched hair Hair 2 >TRUTH< Astrid Truth SLURL

Any items you see on me other then my usual and the above are part of the quest