Great Hair from Tukinowaguma

I stumbled across Tukinowaguma hair sometime in the deep, dark past that I can’t remember, and I purchased one of her interesting wigs at that time.  But I didn’t go crazy about her hair until I got a sale ad from the Galleria at Frank’s, which drew me to her store there.  After catching sight of the other styles she had, I ran off to her main store and went crazy. KateForster Akina does lovely bobs, one of which I include in this photo essay; but her updos are fantastic as well.  If you’re looking for big hair for a ball or formal dance gown, definitely try out one of the Tukinowaguma stores, and you’ll find things there to enchant.

Most, if not all, of the styles are scripted for color change, by the way; click on the wig to bring up the menu.  You should either make a copy of the original (preferable, unless you have a huge Inventory), or choose a white shade to bring back the original base color.

I’ve placed the best of the photos I’ve taken in a set on my Flickr stream, and on Koinup as well.  If you like them, please leave comments (both here and there!).  But I’ll give you a small taste here of what I came up with, instead of drowning you in six tons of photos on this blog. As it worked out, I had a mess of Satin Sheen gowns from Nicky Ree on hand as well, and sets of opera gloves from Mimikri; and so I decided to try a themed photo shoot, changing only colors, shoes, hair and jewelry.  A few WindLight tweaks, courtesy of Torley Linden’s excellent package, are also used here.  As long as you have a good default saved to fall back on, don’t be afraid to experiment with those sliders, for both sky and water!

A few notes:

• Nicky’s Satin Sheen gown is available at her store in most colors for L$100.  This absurdly low price for a Nicky Ree original is because she’s offering the original — it appears, from my reading of the notes I found in the packages, that someone’s copied her.  Please patronize the original designers, not the 7th Avenue knockoff “artists.”
• Mimikri’s gloves are some of the best I’ve found on the Grid.  The cuffs are prim addons, so I did a little mixing of colors for effect, to match a few of the gowns.  Buy the whole set, and use the cuffs to show the “lining” of your gloves!

Turn the page and behold!

The Extremes of Prad Prathivi

Prad Prathivi is a fascinating writer, and a good guy to know.  An architect in both RL and SL, he is also an excellent writer, as his deserved win in the first Residents Choice Awards illustrate.

For instance, Prad’s definitely one of the Jokers of Second Life.  He’s the one who devised the famous (or infamous, but definitely desired!) Dedicated Second Life Keyboard, after all, and also revealed the contents of M Linden’s E-mail inbox.  He’s also compiled a two-part glossary of familiar SL terms for newbies that any budding linguist or language nerd needs to check out.  (Part 2 links to Part 1, so I’m linking to that.)

But then you look elsewhere in the blog, and you can find thoughtful pieces such as yesterday’s “Home is Where the Heart Is,” which discusses how we can invest empathy and feeling in things that exist ephemerally, at the best.  I can agree with Prad; I’ve liked most of the places I’ve called home so far in SL, and it does mean something to me if I have to leave for whatever reason.  Prad hits it on the head here.

Keep on doing a good job, man; we’ll be reading you.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

I’m an Ole Tigers Fan from way back; I can remember the days of Al Kaline and Willie Horton, heaven help me.  To see them opening the year tied for first in the AL Central is just beautiful.

Second Life “Adult” Definitions Draft Published

The plans for the new adult continent are proceeding apace at Linden Lab. The Big Blog announced the progress in an article published yesterday, with links to a draft of current proposals for what constitutes “Adult,” “Mature,” and “PG” content. (Adobe PDF copy of the draft document from the Knowledge Base)

The key to the whole enterprise will be to devise a fair and comprehensive definition of what should be tagged “Adult,” and what is “merely” art.  This is something of a concern for me as an art dealer in world, though I haven’t handled any nudes yet beyond a few quite tasteful things by such as Maxfield Parrish.  (His Daybreak is my biggest seller — which is a relative thing (grin).)  At this point, though, I’m satisfied with what I’ve read.  Though I haven’t followed the discussion on the Forums — I have enough to read and process every day! — it seems that the Lab is trying to work actively with the Residents to get something workable and that will, if not please everybody, not totally displease everybody as well.  That’s the working definition of “compromise,” by the way.

Any road, come approximately June, the changes will be implemented to everybody with the new 1.23 viewer, and we’re gonna need to live with it.  One can hope that, if the policy needs tweaking, Linden Lab will be open to it.  Such things are almost never gotten right on the first go, and I expect some fine tuning will come.  Just in case, I’d urge a workable appeals process as well, so that someone who gets banged by the policy wrongly can get things fixed.

• Hamlet Au’s New World Notes has additional information.

Late News: Herbert Estate Comes Down on Dune SL RP Sim

In the several pieces of news to come down the Grid since my computer went into the shop, the most interesting — not the most important, probably, but the most interesting to me — is Hamlet Au’s report on how a major player in intellectual property has stepped in with objections.  Trident Media Group, the agents of the estate of Dune’s Frank Herbert, have sent a cease-and-desist order to Linden Lab, which passed it on to the Dune role-playing group.  They have complied with the order by removing as many references to the Dune franchise as they can find within their power.  However, they plan to continue the game as a more generic environment.  (See Ham’s article for the details.)

This article kicked off quite a discussion, with 25 comments as of this writing.  At least one of the best-known pundits in SL, Crap Mariner, has weighed in; and the flap has even attracted the attention of the master of the open source movement, Richard Stallman, with an interesting take on the legality of “intellectual property.”

I won’t take a position arguing against or for such eminences, at least not knowingly.  What I will say is my own opinion:  that the Herbert estate has the right to defend their legal copyrights, which means anything connected with the Dune series and its sequels by Brian Herbert — but that it’s darn silly to be picking on such a small community that simply wishes to celebrate the fantasy and live the dream.  No money is being made here, except perhaps by Linden Lab in terms of tier for the regions.  Speculation: this is probably the basis on which the cease-and-desist was issued — in which case, Vooper Werribee and his comrades are “collateral damage” in the battle, innocent bystanders who are being given the finger unwittingly by Trident Media.  This could bring the franchise more ill-will than good, especially if Crap’s own speculation that Trident plans to start a Dune sim of their own are correct.

At least, in all the fooferaw, Vooper doesn’t seem to have lost his sense of humor.  From Ham’s article:

…I asked him if he planned to remove his remaining Dune-esque objects from Second Life.

“No,” he answers. “We’ve made all the compliance changes we intend to now. Basically we’ve removed the words ‘Dune’, Bene Gesserit, Atreides, etc. from as many object names and descriptions as we can find. But we still intend to keep the place as a ‘generic’ sci-fi desert planet with spice mining. And still intend to roleplay here.” Ironically, he tells me Star Trek roleplayers have expressed an interest in using it for “first contact” scenarios. “Some Star Wars players are interested in using the place as a ’spice mining’ base,” he adds. “As Star Wars has ’spice’.”

“The spice must flow?” I suggest.

Vooper Werribee laughs. “It sure must!”

“…and thereby hangs a tale” — My SL Box was Infected

Download 16 tons
‘n whaddya get?
Some Trojans, worms, virii
And ways out of debt

“Download Sixteen Tons,” filk based on Tennessee Ernie Ford’s song

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‘…And thereby hangs a tale.’

Shakespeare, As You Like It:  II,7

The desktop is back from purgatory — also known as the repair shop.  Sadly, it is without that 1-terabyte drive I was thinking of getting.  Not that I’ve stopped thinking and planning on it; it simply turns out I don’t need it right now.

You see, it wasn’t a hard drive problem.  I was actually infected with a virus, which was murdering Windows for me.

In fact, I had seven viruses.  Not to mention a mess of malware, for which I take responsibility for not scanning for a year.  But I was running Symantec’s Norton Internet Security fairly regularly on this machine, and it never said I had anything worse than a tracking cookie.

Peter Norton’s software used to be some of the best in the industry; his Norton Utilities may still be good (under a different brand name now).  But, if he knows the level to which Symantec has taken his quality and good name on what is now the up-front products of the company he sold to them, he is probably cursing.  And I wouldn’t blame him; a good true-hacker always takes pride in his work, but a corporation doesn’t care, apparently, as long as they get their dollars.  This program was written by a company.

I’d encourage readers to do these things:

1. Scan your computers regularly, on a bi-weekly basis at least.  You can often set timers to run the program at night, while you’re sleeping, in Windows accessories if nothing else, as I recall.  (I’m unsure about OS X [as I don't use a Macintosh] or the various mutants of Linux.)  And scan all your hard drives, not just the system drive!  It takes a while, especially if the drives contain more data than a few dozen gigabytes, but that’s what sleep time is for (grin).
2. Also scan regularly for malware.  I’m unsure what’s the best product for this; there are quite a few out there.  I’ve used Lavasoft’s AdAware in the past, and been generally satisfied with it, but any program will let some intruders through.  Any road, there are plenty of freeware or low-cost alternatives available.  (My computer store installed Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.)  Purging malware from your system can improve performance tremendously.  (Who knows but that may be part of what’s crufting up Second Life for many of us.)
3. Avoid Symantec’s products like they were carriers of the plague!  I like Peter Norton, but I distrust the company he sold to.  My computer store recommended AVG Antivirus Free, which was installed on the machine — and Norton uninstalled — when I picked it up from the shop yesterday.  I’d encourage you to talk to your local independent computer store — where I bought this box a year or so ago, hand-rolled — and heed their advice.  My apologies to the Geek Squad, but I wouldn’t be sure that you’re not shilling for Best Buy’s chosen products in this case.  An independent often has no ax to grind other than steering his/her customers away from the bad stuff, and onto the good stuff.  My computer store doesn’t make a nickle out of telling me to install a freebie.

Remember, just to increase your paranoia, those suckers are out there, waiting to sneak through your defenses.  You gotta make sure those defenses are good, and use them regularly, or at least often enough to stop the attacks from penetrating.  Else you’ll be facing down time and a couple hundred bucks of repair bills yourself.

Out of World for Several Days

My desktop has gone toes up, so I’m unable to log in and do stuff in Second Life.  This is more of an announcement than anything. Looks like it’ll be what news I can scrape up.

UPDATE, April 11:

Well, I was going to say that I’d coaxed some better performance out of this laptop I’m working on right now, but writing this update is like working in treacle fudge — baked by Hagrid of Harry Potter.  It’s getting a little better, but not much.  The good news is that I have the desktop into the shop; and not only should they have it fixed by Monday afternoon, but (if the problem is what we think it is) I’ll be getting a 1 TB drive out of it for about $200.  I’m not going to turn down that bargain!  Wish me luck.

Contact Sheet 15

Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. Images used in this article are used under permission of the owners via their participation in the Creative Commons license; otherwise, all rights are reserved. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog, Flickr, Koinup or Snapzilla page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here), if you have an account on the appropriate service.

Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below. I can also be reached on Twitter (Harper_G) or Plurk (Harper G. — include the period!), but the message may get lost in the luminiferous æther.

NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.

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I was planning on putting an article or two on something other than art/photography between columns of “Contact Sheet,” but the in-world news isn’t cooperating with me (grin).  So here we go again.

Incidentally, I’ve set up groups on both Flickr and Koinup for collecting all those artists whom I feature in these columns.  If you’d like to see the entire “gallery” at one stroke (or as much of it as the owners are willing to add), click on the links.

Another thing:  in going back through the old columns to invite artists from Flickr, I discovered that I used to link to their profile, either on Flickr or Second Life.  It seems like a good custom to revive, and so I’ll try to do that where possible.  In Koinup, that means basically the person’s home page, since they don’t seem to have another place to say anything about themselves in detail.

In order to get the Koinup group rolling, this column will be purely from that service.  Most, if not all, of the artists whose work you’ll be seeing today will be new to “Contact Sheet.”  Welcome to them, and I hope to see more good work in future!

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Costumes –

phaylen works in Second Life, and appears to do both commercial photography as well as artistic and personal shots.  In the first shot, a trio of ladies are channeling the days of Marie Antoinette and her court, possibly in the replica of the chateau at Versailles, and they do an excellent job of it.  The second is titled Witches of Avalon — possibly Avilion, in this case — but the first thing that came to mind for me was The Witches of Eastwick.  It’s not an inappropriate comparison, actually, although the book and film were set in modern times.  Here, the costumes are definitely mediaval in character, and the ladies look ready to weave a spell or two in this woodland setting.

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Next, Eves Rodenberger gives us Hunting Chicks.  This does not look to be part of a series (yet), though the title is surely referring to the model, not the quarry.  The fantasial heroic female is becoming more popular, especially since Mercedes Lackey’s Velgarth novels.  I’m most familiar with those, and so the character that comes to mind is Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, though the resemblance doesn’t truly occur here.

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Mermaids are popular avatars in Second Life.  bark Aabye combines this with smashing costume pieces by Tekeli-li, and gives us this view, one of a series.  The model is Kyota Spitteler.  You’ll be seeing much more from bark in future, as she’s done a batch of monochrome images I intend to offer samples of.

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World of Warcraft makes its debut in “Contact Sheet” and Around the Grid, with this image from Maiyya called vrykul Ice Maiden.  I have no idea of the ways WoW works, so I don’t know what powers this warrior has.  Some sort of cold effect is implied here, however.  The aurora in the background only emphasizes the concept.

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This WoW avatar is called Azzurra, and the appelation is appropriate.  Arowhena shows her in a throne room or place of ritual; judging by the glow in the subject’s eyes, this must be a place of Meaning to her.

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Closing out the collection for this column, Magggg gives us our first image from The Sims, entitled Ruled by Darkness.  This subject shows that, no matter how beautiful the package, imbalance in the soul has its consequences.

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That’s all for tonight.  Please remember to leave comments on the artists’ works if you have an account on Koinup — and comments are welcome here, too!  Also, if you know of anyone whose work I should take a look at, Plurk me at “Harper G.”, send me a tweet on Twitter at “Harper_G”, or send E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com.

Contact Sheet 14

Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. Images used in this article are used under permission of the owners via their participation in the Creative Commons license; otherwise, all rights are reserved. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog, Flickr, Koinup or Snapzilla page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here), if you have an account on the appropriate service.

Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.

WARNING: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.

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Lord, it’s been since December since I wrote this column.  I wasn’t planning on that much lag time between installments.  The good news from this, though, is that I’ve added a Koinup account to my multitudinous multitude of accounts, and so that gives me access to even more artists — including on other virtual worlds, such as The Sims and World of Warcraft.  So “Contact Sheet” will now expand to cover more grids, and showcase even more talent.

Since I have such a backlog of material to go through, and I’m looking for more columns and articles to publish, I’m going to do a series of themes for a time.  (Indeed, you may see a raft of columns here for a week or so, while I go through all the material I’ve chosen this time.  Stay tuned!)  So, for this turn, here are seven pieces from Second Life in the theme of –

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Art and Portraits

siestabril Nitely offers a pair of dancers in what appears to be a night-time field of flowers.  This is very reminiscent of Impressionist painters to me, though I can’t say which particular artist it reminds me of at the moment.  There are a few more in the series, so be sure to check the rest of her stream!

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lumir beleza offers the reminder that all you need is love…which is a dream fond to my heart.  (Again, she has several in her stream; this is the one that struck me first or most.)

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Kiya McMahon offers I2I, which is hard to describe, except that it’s compelling.  At the time of this writing, there are 182 comments and 29 favorites on the image, which should say something there!

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After that last photograph, I need a drink.  Of course, one has to wonder what the bartender was thinking when he came up with this cocktail….  Dee Dee Deepdene offers this concoction stirred, not shaken.

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Rebecca Bashly’s lovely, etherial harp reminds me of old movies I’ve seen, such as Ziegfeld Follies or Ziegfeld Girl, where such conceits would be offered up by the director and costume designer.  Very lovely!

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An old hand in “Contact Sheet,” Florence Babenco shows that the legend of Medusa is still with us — but never was there such a beautiful Medusa as this….

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And, the last for this column, regular Nessy Shepherd gives us an appropriate farewell.  How often did sailors have, as their last glimpse of land, the face of their loved one on the widow’s walk?  It reminds me of Gordon Lightfoot’s song, “Ghosts of Cape Horn.”

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It’s more a case of I’m out of time today, than lacking desire to add more to this column.  Keep your eyes on this blog, and I’ll have more to offer very soon!

Resident Design Awards Have Launched

The voting has begun on the Second Life Resident Choice Awards.  You can go here to vote for your favorites in world in 35 different categories.  The polls will be open from now through April 7.  Only one vote per Resident, please, else your votes will be disqualified.

The categories are:

1. My favorite place to groove on Live Music
2. My favorite place to Buy Stuff inworld
3. My favorite place to Dance my prim toes off
4. My favorite place to RP or Play Games with friends
5. My favorite fabulous Fashion Designer
6. My favorite house-rockin’ DJ
7. My favorite massively talented Musician
8. My favorite visionary Machinimist
9. My favorite awesome Architect/Builder
10. My favorite wizard-like Scripter
11. My favorite cuddly Linden Bear Museum
12. Best place to buy a Virtual Pet
13. My favorite place to take you Back in Time
14. My favorite place for Intellectual Conversation
15. Best place to Learn Another Language
16. My favorite culturally consequential Museum/Art Gallery
17. My favorite brainy Science Experiment/Exhibit
18. My favorite source for Second Life News
19. My favorite finger-on-the-pulse Resident Blogger
20. My favorite unforgettable Memorial
21. My favorite place to take a First Date
22. My favorite place to bring Business Colleagues
23. My favorite place to Chill With My Friends
24. My favorite place to get down and Get Furry
25. My favorite place to get your AO on and Be Tiny
26. My favorite place to Victorianize and get Steam Punky
27. My favorite place to be all helpful and Help Newbies
28. My favorite place to plan for the Robot Rebellion
29. My favorite romantic place to have your First Avatar Kiss
30. My favorite depressing place to Be Emo
31. My favorite trashed landscape in which to enjoy the Post Apocalypse
32. My favorite place to put the hammer down and Drive
33. My favorite creepy place to Be Goth
34. My favorite meshtastic Sculpty Artist
35. My favorite nom-nom-y Prim Food Artist