Fabulously Free is a blog I recently started following. It has interesting stuff most every day. They mention the Cherries on Top hunt, running until Feb 28, Free SL Couture, Fab Friends – Advice on SL things, Nail Me – free fashion, and Princess Rose Hunt.
Having watched the blog for a couple of weeks now I have decided this is a good site to recommend to those new to Second Life™, free stuff, advice, and how to’s. And much of the free stuff looks really nice.
The list of hunts Fabulously Free provided this Friday is a couple of dozen long. They list both grid-wide and in-store hunts.
Bitcoin – Hypergrid Business has an article, Bitcoin approaching diminishing returns, by Maria Korolov. Maria is pointing out a major flaw in the financial model some people feel will spell the end of Bitcoin.
Maria is pointing out Peter Leeds, publisher of Penny Stocks, opinion of the problem. From his view those getting involved in mining coins now can only suffer financial loss. They simply are not going to be able to make enough money to pay for the electricity needed to mine a coin. With the Obama White House plans in place for forcing about a third or our energy production off line this year (2014) supply and demand will drive energy costs up. The recent outlawing of wood stoves is devastating rural Americans. They are now driven toward more expensive energy and that increases energy demand.
Promoting Second Life – Jo Yardley is thinking about ways to promote and grow Second Life. In her article Stephen Fry about Second Life she discusses the idea of using meme’s to counter the reputation of Second Life. Her idea is to show people that intelligent and interesting people use Second Life.
Jo makes some assumptions about Second Life’s reputation. For those of us interested in SL our awareness of what is written about it is high. For most of the rest of Earth’s population SL is an unknown. So, targeting a clean slate with ‘corrective’ promotional materials would probably not work well. PR forms figure out how to target their audiences and then deliver material tailored to that audience.
It may be my knowledge in these areas that is coloring what she is writing. It seems she is aware of the targeting, or at least practical enough to instinctively adopt it. Without specifically saying ‘target’ or message customization she seems headed that direction.
SL Market Place – there has been a Twitter conversation going on about the speed, or lack of it, of the SL Market Place web site. That seems to have been improved over the last couple of days. Check it out.
TV Show Seeks SL Residents – Jo has also written: TV show seeks SL couples from the UK. In it she points out the perils of dealing with the media.
I think those unfamiliar with reporters and journalists expect them to be after the truth. That may have been true a hundred years ago. Now they are after what they think will excite, titillate, or otherwise promote their writing. Think of them as sharks looking for lunch.
Jo’s article is worth a read, especially if you are thinking of giving an interview to the mainstream media. She has great advice in the article.
Loki Rant – It’s not that much of a rant and far more constructive than the typical rant. Loki does bring up some interesting points. He asks why we are still asking the question: ‘Why can’t we keep people in SL?’ The answer is simple: because we have not found a satisfactory answer to the question.
Loki does make several interesting points about the viewer and simplifying it. Worth a read: The Interview with Ebbe Altberg infuriates me.
FutureWave ended its event Sunday. It is a SciFi clothing event Hamlet @ New world Note mentioned. I made it by. This is the first time I’ve seen nice shinny done with materials. Its really nice not having the shinny baked in. But, the stuff is still Standard Size rigged mesh clothes I have to change may shape to wear. So, I can live without it.
I was on a slow computer. The region hosting FutureWave was/is Cursed. It has lots of mesh stuff, which is usually not a problem. But, the 3.7.1 (286557) Feb 11 2014 SL Viewer seemed to have a hard time with it. Today it is still the main SL Viewer release. I crashed every hour or so using it. Ugh. On my main machine I am usually on a RC or Project viewer.It may just be that it was the fact this is a Windows XP 32-bit machine. Things seem to run much better on my Win7 64-bit machine.
Elixer had some very sexy clothes there. Nantra has animations for floating in space. Graves is always sexy. Circuit was showing some wild bright makeup and eyes, over the top for me, really eye-catching. I think CM’s android bodies are pretty neat, not my thing to wear, but still neat. MV had a couple of gorgeous dresses. The demos didn’t fit me. I was so down. Hurry up Fitted.
Claudia Dryke has a large collection of video tutorials on clothes making with Blender on YouTube. I just found those. I haven’t had time to check them out.
Marine’s RLV Viewer – Marine Kelley has her RLV viewer out with Fitted Mesh support. See: RestrainedLove 2.8.5.10 with FittedMesh support.
Blender has another nightly build out: blender-2.69-f469cbe-win64. I have not checked the Collada export yet. I have yet to find a version that works correctly. There is a download link in the left column.