In case you haven’t read it already, Laetizia Coronet has opened a competition for designing a flag for the use of Residents. The quaint custom of using the “Eye-in-Hand” logo of Second Life has been thrown into question by the trademark flap, and ‘zia is asking people to send her ideas. With my own design, that should make four entries to date. But, if you’re interested in becoming the Betsy Ross of the Grid, read her article and break out your Paint Shop Pro or GIMP.

Just remember not to waste her time with ridiculous entries; she says right in the article that she won’t consider any Lag Flags (solid grey), anything even distantly smacking of a derogatory nature, and text should be kept to the barest minimum. The best flags combine a clear symbology, expressing a few key points. For instance, this is my own submission:

As I said in my submission letter to ‘zia, “The field is a rainbow gradient, symbolizing both the international/pan-ethnic nature of the Resident Community, and world with unlimited potential of Second Life — a horizon without end.

“The blue canton is charged with a Celtic knotwork, the interlacing, never-ending, multicolored spiral symbolic of the never-ending creativity exhibited by Residents.”

What do you think?  Heraldically speaking, the color combination stinks, but I think we may not need to concern ourselves with that in a virtual world.

I haven’t been getting out much lately. The major reason is that I’ve been working on the store; when you’re building inventory, or rearranging things, or looking for the best rates for advertising, your time isn’t your own any more. RL businesspeople know that as much as successful SL business types. Today, however, I spent over two hours doing a task far too many of us scamp, to our grief –

Yes! I was cleaning Inventory!

In about every book I’ve read on Second Life, you are given a chapter on Inventory control, and you are urged most solemnly to keep a handle on your closet, so that you don’t get drowned in tons of stuff that you have no idea what it is. You’re warned that the larger the Inventory, the longer it takes to load, and you’re essentially walking around with a 500 kilo backpack on your shoulders if you don’t keep it trimmed down dramatically. And I realize these things with my librarian’s training. But I’m not as good as I should be. The Inventory swells, it gets messy, I lose stuff I’ve just bought or built, and it gets to be a headache after a while. So I make myself dig into the sucker every month or so — it should be far more often! — and trim it.

Oh; how much do I have in my own closet? After today’s session, approximately 6,100 items. Allow me to break here while all your jaws drop at the smallness. And now I hear yelps from some of the long-term residents and compulsive shoppers, “Only 6,100??? I’m walking around with 11,000, (15,000) (30,000) (insert your own figure) items, and you have only 6k?!? How do you do it??”

Simple. When you get into this mode, you have to be (a) ruthless, and (b) a compulsive storer.

You like certain colors or styles of hair, but you’re awash in sale fatpacks? Pick out the ones you wear all the time and like the most, and stuff the rest into labeled storage prims. (Labeling is absolutely important, and I can’t emphasize it enough. Since you can’t drag folders into a prim, you must label them to keep straight what stuff you’re stuffing in, and to find that prim later. If you have scads of prims named “Object,” you’ll be even more lost than you were before.) You think you’re still going to wear that purple wig with pink polka dots that you’ve never pulled out of the folder before? That’s fine; as long as it’s in that prim and you don’t delete the prim, you have it. You just have to pull it out when you need it. Stuff it in!! Do this with all those fatpacks: hair, dresses, candles, whatever. And remember: label them, every mother’s son!!

Doing this — and, of course, deleting out the copyable originals that didn’t self-delete on the move into the prims — you’ll probably regain 80-90% of the space you’re eating up right now with all those scads of stuff. Do you want to get back even more? Go to one of the merchants that sell organizers, such as THiNC. I use their organizer boxes, which can hold at least 100 items per box, and scripted to let you scroll through and find what you’re looking for. You could just stuff your unprimmed stuff in one of these, but you’ll maximize your storage if you prim those 50-shade fatpacks up first. Oh, and remember that, if even one of the items in your storage box is no copy privileges, your box will not copy either. And if you delete it accidentally, you’d better reach into the trash and restore it soon, before you forget. Or else the consequences will be beyond (virtually) catastrophic!

Once you’re certain everything’s where it should be, the last step is to empty the trash. There, and BOY! That backpack sure feels lighter, doesn’t it? The Inventory opens up faster, you can find things easier, and you have a great opportunity to exercise the Carlin option now: go out and buy more stuff!

And the tip is:  before you rent your storefront in a mall or similar, look up the group and make sure the officers have been logging in recently.

“Whatcha talkin’ about?” you say?  Well, yesterday, I had discovered a mall that seemed to have a bit of traffic to it, with what seemed a reasonable rent/prim rate, and I plunked down a week’s rent on it, proceeding to set up my OnRez vendors.  After I did that, I looked up the group to request an invitation to join.  (Just like most rented houses and apartments, you need to belong to a land group to build anything in the plot you’re borrowing the rights to.)  Well, I got the listing for their group — and guess what it said under every visible line in the members box?  Last login:  “Unknown.”  Whoever were the owners of this place, it had been so long since they had logged in that the date wasn’t even listed!  I sent a forlorn request for membership, but I’m not expecting a reply any time soon.

The bad thing is that I lost money.  The good thing:  it was only about £250 or so.  I consider it a small price to pay, but I’m passing the words to the wise on to you.  I’ll save you the money this way if you decide to open your own store.

Oh, my store?  Where is it, you say?  Well, you could click the button in the sidebar and go to OnRez; but you’ll find my little place in Creamy Dreamz.  I don’t have tons of stock in yet, but I’m gradually growing it.

(Okay, it’s the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment. Mea minima culpa.)

The new computer is here, and I’m back in business for the most part. I’m gradually getting things installed on this machine when I can find master disks or downloads (and registration codes, when necessary [sigh]), and finding new programs or workarounds when I can’t. For instance, I can’t find my master disk for Word anywhere so far. Do I run around whingeing? No; I just download Open Office; it seems to have all the functionality I need, though I’ll have to go through something of a learning curve for a while for the upper functions.

Other goodies, such as my chess program, I seem able to run without finding the long-lost Disk 2 that you need for a fresh installation. (It’s curious what will run without needing to be registered with Windows and what won’t…sometimes even a little revealing.) The big stumbling block is my Web-design setup, which I use to maintain my RL church’s site; I cannot find my registration for HomeSite 5.5, and it wants a registration code. I haven’t checked to see if I still have my installation download for WS_FTP yet, but I think I do. If I have to, I’ll grit my teeth — hard — and shell out the 4 benjamins for Dreamweaver. The learning curve on that thing is steep, but I can overcome it.

Anyway, Harper’s back

You remember how my computer was freaking out and shutting down about a month or so ago? Well, Thursday it finally died the death. The bad thing is that it’s between paydays, so I had to resort to interest-accumulating plastic to buy the new machine — and I don’t mean interest in my favor.

The good news is that I’m getting a relatively custom-built machine, with an added graphics board that I’m hoping will let me take advantage of WindLight, for $650 including tax. The store is also harvesting out my old hard drives and plugging them into the new unit. I may have to download Open Office for my word processing chores, but there’s many a person who maintains that this is a better choice anyway. Now if someone could just create a free program with all the power, bells and whistles of PhotoShop….

Any road, this blog will be in suspended animation until I get back up, probably sometime Tuesday North American time. Forget me not in my absence, for I shall not forget you….

Welcome back to Contact Sheet. For this column, we have a fair mix of subjects; this time, we lead with an excellent landscape.

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I don’t rely on just Flickr and Snapzilla for photographs. Tag-surfing is a good way to come up with material for linking and cross-posting as well. I’ve been noticing articles from the blog iliveiSL in wordpress.com’s dashboard for some time here, and have had a mild interest as this avatar or group build a region. The terraforming work is finishing up in some of their areas, and their blog is advertising for realtors to work on commission.

They’re photographing the place, of course, and their shots show how good WindLight can be if your graphics card can handle the strain. I have just one example here, but give a look to the rest of their photostream to see more of it.

(Just to stay on the level, I’m not shilling for them; I simply like their photography. I haven’t even been to the region to look at it, since Hrosskell contents me completely.)

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Humor Department: I think Anessa Stine was feeling rather warm this day; but this is going to extremes to cool off….

And Hitomi Mokusei has quite a story behind how this plane got into her house. No, it has no relationship to The World According to Garp. (I offered to leave this out, but Hitomi wouldn’t (ahem) agree to a payment schedule [grin].)

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A newcomer to Contact Sheet: the blog SL Fashion Diva and contributor Rio Hamaski posted a lovely cocktail ensemble recently. The dress comes from Cachet; remaining details are in Rio’s article. I like most the skirt of this flirty dress, which reminds me of certain Eighties styles that for some reason many people decry today in RL; and the shrug about the model’s shoulders.

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Here’s a return engagement from Ryou Yiyuan, who I think has a preference for medieval and similar role-playing locations. This shot, of an expedition or raiding party, was taking somewhere called the Kingdom of Sand, and is just one of several she’s done here.

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Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life. 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 or Snapzilla page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, if you have an account on the appropriate service.

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

Sinnocent Mirabeau, whose real life medical problems with her dog I wrote about last week, has told me that the surgery has been scheduled for this week. However, she’s still some $300 short for the veterinary costs. And we’re talking real New-nited States Dollars here, folks, not linden dollars. Sinnocent is still running her BOGO sale at Sinsation (I finally got the acronym right), and I urge you to take advantage of it. Allow me to demonstrate some of my favorite “wigs” here for your temptation! (These photos won’t be pretty; more quick and dirty, as I want to complete it and help her; but if it helps get her that last $300, it’ll be worth the artistic sacrifice [grin].)

As a sweetener to the pot, send me a picture of you in some of your new Sinsation hair in front of the poster at the Sinsation store, and I’ll send you my current package of prints from Harper’s Fine Art. That’s 21 framed pieces of art, at least a L$2,000 value — for free. Can’t beat that, folks; you’ll be doing well, you’ll be doing good, and so will Sinnocent and myself! Come on, and give the lady a hand!!

When Alchemy announced a 50-linden clearance sale about a week ago, I rushed over to check things out.  There was probably more I could have spent my cash on, but I picked out only four dresses, two pair of each.

This dress is called Dream in the Inventory, and it’s definitely a dream design.  I like the slingshot halter top especially — not surprising, I guess, considering a similar top is in the custom Droxine gown I commissioned a few months ago — and the skirt is reminiscent of Marilyn’s in The Seven Year Itch.  I’m not sure if it’ll still be there; I’ve been catching up on other things, including starting my art store.  But it may be worth a look!

Announcing, with a tasteful fanfare of trumpets, the opening of:

my new store in OnRez.  My collection of quality RL works for your purchase (at prices below £250) is small at this time — only 11 items — but I find more work to frame and offer for sale almost every day.  I’m currently working on a collection of portraits and scenes by John Singer Sargent, and I already have several items related to the 1920s for your examination.  As the collection grows, I plan to offer fatpacks of multiple items at discount for mass purchase.  (If my own photography in SL improves, I may start offering my own work as well — and I could consider acting as agent for others, on a commission basis.)

Have bare walls?  Looking for gifts?  Come to Harper’s Fine Art and Photographs! I’ll be glad to work with you.  Commissions accepted, beginning at £350.  (No pornography, please).

Katt Linden has introduced herself to Residents at the Big Blog. Katt is the new Communications Manager for Linden Lab, and the comment section to her article is filling rapidly with “friendly greetings” (thank you, Torley!) and wishes for success, as well as hopes for improved communications between the Lab and its customers.

As I said in my own comment, I don’t envy Katt her new position at all. Reading many blogs and comments convinces me that Residents can be a cantankerous, demanding crew even at the best of times. And, any road, being the PR mouthpiece of any organization is a thankless task when the times go rough. But I hope that Katt will have success in her new position, as well as help mend the fences that have been rather strained over the many issues this past year has raised.