The dreaded skewl has kept me away from my beloved blog, but rest assured dears, my eyes and ears are still to the pavement. Recently there has been some question of ethical blogging. Specifically, is it ok for a blogger to accept payment as an incentive to review. First off let me that I don't get paid for my blogs. I suppose technically I am given review copies because the things I do review are usually free, but then again they are usually freebies ^_^.
As a poor college student I usually don't have the money to spend thousands of linden acquiring cutting edge fashion to review. I've long since made my piece with that. That is why I began to blog freebies and my experiences. In fact, in the near year I've roamed the haunted shores of SL, I have become a connoisseur of freebies. I'm incredibly proud of the fact that I can walk into a room and look just as good (if not better) as every other avatar, for pennies on the linden.
Now since I'm at the bottom of the proverbial blog barrel, its easy for me to speculate as to how I would behave if I were among the "blogging elite". First off, I wouldn't expect to receive monetary compensation. Capitalism is all well and good, but the idea of having my opinion bought and paid for just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. However, I would eagerly and gladly take review copies within reason. I suppose I look at review copies the same way I look at freebie hunts; they are symbiotic relationships. The blogger gets a shot at being one of the first to review a new item, the designer gets press, both of them get a chance to start the tide of an SL fashion craze. Review copies, freebies, and hunts are all part of the swarm to create publicity. As such there are some simple rules of etiquette that do apply, but are all too often left by the wayside.
Just my two cents. See you on the hunt.
As of this moment my computer is crippled. I'm unsure as to why but for the moment I am unable to log onto SL in any way.
Broken!
I think my slashion sense is either broken or has become a bit too discriminating. The blogs and feeds have been afire this past week about a slammin mini dress. Against my better judgement (after all I am an internationally ignored cheaponista and be that besides, am supposed to be saving my linden) to have a peak.As one might expect from a garment reviewed ad nauseum, its fabulous. To a point. The price tag hovers around the 300L$ mark for each color, with nary a fatpack in sight. As I said, it is fabulous, but its coverage makes me sure of one thing...anyone who fancies themselve a hipster, trendsetter, of fashionista now has at least one color burning in their inventories.
Add to that the fact that the dress is far shorter than anything I would normally wear and its usefulness as a member in good standing of my personal wardrobe hits rock bottom. So even though it was fabulous, popular and generally seemed to be well made, I didn't by the mini dress.
Yup...I'm broken.
I have been busy busy busy this week. I've been on vacay in RL but somehow have managed to squeeze in meetings of all kinds, a new SL job, loads of Photoshop practice, and of course Hump day with the lovely ladies of Ch'know.
I've said it before but it does bear repeating, they are possibly the nicest ladies I've had the pleasure of meeting in my SL (F list as it is :-P).
This week's theme? Medical/Hospital.
What do you think? Did I look the part.
Of course with all the work I've been doing taking time out to shop and dance has taken its toll on me. I tried to do some rather simple calculation of lindens and ended up looking like this...
V should probably take a rest soon...Hi friends, hunters, and budding fashionistas! If you've been wondering where your pal V has disappeared to as of late, you need look no further than the following picture:
That's right dolls, I've been learning the fashion trade of SL from the ground up. The battle is being fought on to fronts. Firstly, I've been intensely studying fashion blogs so I can see what's new and what sells. Secondly, I've been learning the art of design on Photoshop. As one might imagine it is taking up quite a bit of my time.
On the subject of fashion blogs, the group at Premiere Modeling Management has officially launched their publication, dubbed simply: MODEL Magazine. One might expect to find pages and pages of clothes that the average humble avi could ill afford...and to a point you'd be right. But far more intriguing are the articles on carving an elite model out of your current avatar. Yes you will have to drop some lindens for the honor (after all don't lindens make this Second world go round?), but for every line recommending you to go out and purchase a super prices skin or shape, there is more down-to-earth advice such as "make sure all shapes are modifiable" or "make your own skirt shape".
My favorite tip concerns Atmospheric Shading. If you've ever noticed that on Windlight your avatar always seems to have oil slicked T-zones, meet the culprit. The magazine recommends turning them off and here is why.
With atmospheric shaders on, even my beloved Gaussian Blur can't hide the lines and shadows.
The trade off is that the backgrounds don't look quit as pretty. It occurs to me that this situation could be solved by taking two pictures and combining them.
Skin: QS Skin Cream Mat Additional for Model (free)
Shirt: Nyte'N'Day Camer Cami (free)
Hair: ETD Trinity (not free)
See you on the hunt!
It was my intention to post a blog about the Hump day party. But Blogger is deciding to be a little b*tch. So alas, it just isn't meant to be. but it was a good time had by all, and Alicia's dj skills are hot enough to make even country seem cool.
And it goes without saying that all the ladies and gents looked fabulous!
~V~
I love freebie hunting. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is nothing like the rush of finding a fabulous item at a real bargain. I even love standing around in stores looking at all of the beautiful inventory I would purchase if i had more lindens to spare. Given my love of the hunt, it should come as no surprise that my favorite event is...the formal freebie hunt. Give me a sim jam packed with loot to search out and I'm a happy girl.
But I noticed early in my freebie days, after only a couple of well stocked hunts...inventories become jam packed with loot, majority of which I will never use. Lately I've been working on formulating a game plan. It may or may not work for you, but it works pretty well for me so far.
1) Do a general scout of the store/designer providing the freebies. If the clothes on the wall are not your style, the clothes in the freebie probably won't be either.
2) While hunting, make a separate folder for all item folders and actual items given. Put everything into that folder as soon as you get it.
3) Continuing with point number 2: Never, ever rely on the recent items tab to sort your hunt finds for you. This tab is only useful when for your current log in session. I can not tell you how many times I've made the mistake of relying on the tab only to log out from sheer lag frustration...and then have no idea where any of my items are.
4) Post hunt, sit down and sort through all of your finds. If its mostly clothes or skins, now is a good time to camp. Even though you are sitting you can usually get a fair idea of the cut and style of garments. I have found that independent of cut, if I don't like the pattern of an outfit it will never see the light of day.
5) Make the hard decisions. With each hunt you will find more new things to fall in love with, and that means more old things will disappear into the back of your closet. If its not your style, you have something like it but better, or you are just over it, trash it.
Now these wont keep you from accumulating tons of items. But with careful organization and some item control, you can at least keep on top of things.
See you on the hunt.
Nothing gives me the rush of an utterly fabulous freebie, even if its only found stalking lucky chairs. *giggle*. Earlier in the day I stopped procrastinating and joined the Ch'know group. First off these are probably the nicest, friendliest ladies and gents I've met yet in SL. Alicia is very generous and has made several gifts for group members. They aren't thousand linden items but they are funny and drool worthy none the less.
Here is my favorite
After a hard day of freebie hunting nothing is better than chilling out in a inflate-a-pool with tequila and tunes. Me likey!
Later in the day I moved to Tesla for some chair stalking. So far I have nabbed Mary Jane's, two sunglasses including this fabulous pair:
Even with the skin splurge I think I have once again proven that with a little effort, every woman can look fabulous in SL for pennies.
See you on the hunt.
I am at present in an SL relationship. But it is very new and as such still in a period of growth. I met my boyfriend, Thallanor, in the lobby of the main building at the United Federation Starfleet sim. At first I thought he was overly friendly and a bit shy, So I basically ignored him. A day or so later I was decorating for the UFS St. Patrick's Day party and ran into Thallanor again. He and another person were doing a silly dance to the music and I joined in, although I was using a Sine Wave dance.
At that point I realized that Thall was a sweet guy, and I really had nothing to worry about from him. So for a good while we were friends and now we are dating. I don't think if we had met anywhere but Starfleet we would have ended up together. The most active members at Starfleet are like a family. Many of them are like my brothers and sisters. In that environment I don't worry about whether or not I'm being taken advantage of.
Now because I am a Starfleet officer, was a maiko, and have always been a freebie hunter, I just don't go to places where I am likely to get hit on. In fact until recently my SL schedule was so packed that even stopping by and hanging out with my friends was nearly impossible. So I suppose that is further support to the idea that if Thall and I had met anywhere other than Starfleet we would not be together. As for blogging? I've never mentioned that I blog. So it is a non-issue.
If you spend even a millisecond of time on the "fashion police" blogs, you'll notice that the most common fashion faux paux in SL is...disproportionate shapes. Now I freely admit that when I first started SL I was slider happy, but in the wrong direction. I had almost no meat on my bones. Even with my "too skinny" sins, I was able to look at the freebie shapes I picked up and realize that they just weren't workin.
When I began working and studying to become an SL geiko, my first instructor sat me down and had a chat with me. My face was far too harsh, I was way too tall, and my chest invoked images of silicone. It took about 20 minutes for me to adjust sliders and give myself a face that is all my own and much closer to my personality.
20 minutes.
While I prefer small slender figures, my sister prefers small fullfigured shapes. Both of us designed our own shape. Each of us has done tweaking. But the basic ideal is: WE LOOK LIKE WE COULD BE HUMAN!!!
So please, deflat those watermelon rears.
Realize that it ain't cute to have boobs that your back couldn't support.
If you have a size 0 waist, a DDD cup, and a size 45 seat, you are out of whack.
When you pick up skins and clothes that don't quite fit, tweak the sliders a bit. Most of the time you wont look that different. Alot of times it will make you look your best.
And stop with the glamazon look! It just makes you a target for ridicule.
It ain't that damn cute!
If you find yourself unable to judge your own skin with an impartial eye. Find a neutral, female (sorry fellas) party and ask them to give you a clue. The anonymity you save may be your own.
PS...thanks Alicia.
Three weeks ago I completed TUi's Instructor Program. I now work there as a teacher. If your ever not busy stop by one of my classes ^_^!.
This week I moved to the maiko stage of my geiko training. Maiko is otherwise known as the point in training where whore makeup and really tall shoes are worn. So this puts me one step closer to becoming a fully fledged cyber geisha.'
And last but not least I went and joined Starfleet. If you are counting that is three completely unconnected hobbies. I wonder how many more I can cram into one second life...
Well I have decided that for benefit of my virtual wallet, my next hobby must be something that generates some revenue. As fashion design is still well beyond my grasp, I'd though I would delve head first into the world of jewelry making. Imagine my surprise when I did some research and found that one school is charging 35,000L$ for their program. With current exchange rates that is over $100.
First off, even if all materials are provided I have a hard time believing that the owners aren't making a huge profit off of that program. My SL family owns a parcel on a Class 5 server and our rent is only 9,000L$ a month. Now maybe they have bought a full sim for prim purposes. But even with it being a full sim the goal should be a gross of 50,000L$ per class, not nearly that much per student. Perhaps they are charging that much for the textures, but I have a hard time believing that they find or create an entirely new texture set for each class.
And at those prices it would have to be a very realistic texture set.
This brings me to something I've had on my mind for a while. Greed in SL.
It is on both side, consumer and producer, and in both cases it is mildly disturbing. Let us examine the recent case of a very well known designer no longer offering support for unreceived no transfer items. I can understand not offering support more than 1 week
past the purchase date. Beyond that point its just as likely that the person messed up or accidentally
deleted the item as it is that SL ate it. But if the item is no mod and no transfer, as almost all skins are,
then really what is the harm of replacing the item?
There isn't one except for pure greed. It doesn't take much to figure out that its better for me to receive money twice rather than once. And it's much easier to just
put a message in my profile saying I won't provide customer service. Or designers who make
freebies to get people into their store but rant and rave and call people ungrateful when they don't
make purchases. Now I agree, it is bad form to ask for more freebies, yell at a designer, accuse them
of false advertising (unless they are actually doing it), or fly over a sim being obnoxious. But its also
form to play the freebie game and cry about the rules. Freebies are a give and take.
You can bet that I won't be back to your store if I feel that look down on me. And yes I fully expect
that if nobody ever buys any freebies from you, you will go out of business. But consider that
perhaps your items are too expensive for the average SLer. Or the price does not match the quality.
Its called a supply demand graph. Simply put, if you have too great a supply and not enough demand you will lose money.
If you have too great a demand and too low a supply you have an inefficient business model. The trick is to find the sweet spot where supply and demand are in harmony. If your graph is out of whack no amount of advertising or sample giving is going to fix it. And bellyaching is only going to alienate the very people you are trying to court.
I've been a bit occupied with cheering up my sister. But I had to make some time to blog about a members only dress at bossa nova. Its Olivia, the color is aberdene.
Thank to some of the group members I also found a lovely set of hairs from RAC for free! Jump on that too.
See you on the hunt~!
yes I'm still here, yes I'm still hunting. And I've mostly gotten over the loss of two weeks work. There was a bit of upheaval in my second life business and I needed to devote my attentions to that, so this weekeneds hunts were more or less nonexistent.
In place of delectable fashions I present you with...a meme!
1. Do you remember the first person who helped you in SL, and are you still in contact with that person?
Yes I remember him, but we do not keep in touch that often anymore.
2. Do you stick around in SL for business, or for the people?
Not a fair question because I do not yet run an SL business. Now if the question was between people and activities I'd say its 70-30 in favor of people. I adore my sisters and probably would not stay if not for them, but activities help keep me anchored too.
3. Who is the most positive influence in your SL?
Probably Maj. She always has a wonderful sense of humor and she got me into freebie hunting.
4. Is there someone who makes you roll your eyes and groan when they IM you or if you run into them somewhere?
Not really.
5. Is there someone in your SL that makes you smile whenever you notice their name on your friends list, even if they're not online?
Definetly my sister Maj.
6. Do you let people map you? Do others let you map them?
All of my sisters can map me and be mapped by me. My teacher and building partner can also find me and be found by me.
7. If we found out tomorrow that SL was closing, do you think you'd still remain in contact with your friends?
Not all, but I'd try to remain in contact with alot of people.
I've been a bit disheartened as of late. As many a freebie hunter will tell you, this has been a busy season. There have been several fabulous hunts, the most ambitious in scope was the Gride Wide Valentine/Anti-Valentine hunt. Two days ago, as I was wrapping up a week of very enjoyable hunting, I begane to have SL problems. I had to log out twice before it resolved, but when I signed back in I notices that some of my items were missing.
Specifically the entire folder containing the fruits of my hunting had poofed into thin air. I can only Its been two days and the file (containing several hundred items) has not returned. Now I have a particular way of looking at my inventory. After a hunt I try on everything. If I can't mod it, it doesn't look good, its is no transfer (so unsuitable as a gift to a friend), or in general just isn't something I'd wear it gets trashed. Now that I have a blog I'd also been seperating items which I would not likely wear (such as a gorgeously done tatoo set) but that warrented blogging just for the sake of exposing quality. Undoubtedly quite a few of the items in that folder were not going to be kept in my inventory, but a majority of them were to stay with me. In fact I was tickled pink by the quality of the loot I found on the last couple of hunts. Particularly the Grid Wide hunt.
I was able to recover a few items just by rehunting. But saddly, it was not to be for the grid wide hunt. So rip items from the grid wide hunt, I hardly knew thee
-A wonderfully punky outfit from Reaction Girl. I adored you so.
-a pair of black heart pattern mules that had already become my new favoite shoe.
-The breath taking abode gifted so generously by Elite Designs. I'm weeping with regret.
-assort dresses and pjs that i was delighted with. I was already planning on seeking permission to use them as examples of quality freebies in my classes. But alas, that shall never be.
-And all the skins and all the jewelry, hair, socks and gorgeous things I shall now never know. May flights of angels wing you to your rest.
*sniffles* I'm still not over the loss yet.
This little freebie hunter is hard awork at shifting through the masses of swag she's aquired. 4 valentine hunts and assorted freebies in two days. I'm exhausted!Let's recap.
The grid wide hunt began on Saturday. My plan was to work my normal shift...
...yes. There is a bouncehouse in the middle of the club. My boss is as bad a freebie collector as I am! Then I'd get dressed and chill in my new house (yes sometimes it takes me that long to dress...I know. It's shameful) and then head out to the starting point. At one o'clock I clenched the insturctions in my trembling fingers and set off like mad around the SL grid. Now as any veteran freebie hunter will tell you, things can get ugly on freebie hunts. They are becoming increasingly well publicized. In my admitedly limited experience, around 30 people and a sim will begin to lag. Around 60 people start having trouble getting in. Somewhere between 65 and 70 anybody who tries to enter gets bounced...
There's 1500 people on the Free*Style group list. All of us trying to snag as much loot as we can stuff into our bangled arms and carry on our stilletoed heels. You get the idea.
Well While I dive through my pile let me show you some of my favorite items so far.
It's a clean, simple design that I'm sure will prove its versatility long agter the holiday has ended. Bravo Carlonie Apollo!
I love this look because it taps into my latent punky side!
Oufit: HeartBreaker (Reaction Gir)
Necklace: DS Triple heart Sculpt neck lace (DS during the La Reina hunt)
Gloves: Broken Heart gloves (Vitamin Ci)
Shoes: AC Serenity (Aphrodite Creations. Freebie from New Shoots II)
Ooh I feel like having a night on the town! Or...going to hunt more freebies. See you on the hunt.
The Grid wide Valentine/Anti-Valentine Scavanger hunt is in full swing. So far I've had a pretty decent haul, which I will make posts about later (yes posts, there's just that many items). during my outings I've come across quite a few first time hunters. Here are just a couple of tips to help get you through baby hunts and monster hunts.
1) Get cozy with your controls. Camera controls, Flight controls, Inventory Controls. These are the backbone of any good hunting expedition. Learn them well. You're going to need them.
2)If you have a home base, periodically go there to decompress. There are alot of people trying to get into the sim at the same time. If you're like me eventually you'll just want to get away. If you haven't got a home base in game, back away from the computer and have a snack or just relax.
3) Speaking of the large number of people, expect lag. Lots of it. Not just the store but the sim, your client, even your computer. If you can't put a happy face on it step away and get a snack, or see tip number 2.
4) If you absolutely can not find something, first ask those around you. If they dont know where it is, keep looking. Then and only then should you message the store owner/designer. Should you have to do so, remain polite and calm.
5) Talk to people. You're probablly going to be seeing the same people over and over again. You could use the help and there is no such thing as too many friends.
6) When you stummble onto a wonderful hunt, let your friends know. It's bad karma to make yourself look fabulous and leave them in the dust.
7)Periodically break from the hunt. And no I dont mean by going home. I mean periodically spend some lindens. First of alot of designers have excellent wares that (while their freebies are good) are of a better quality or more versatile than a freebie. And again, its just good karma to periodically make purchases.
And the most important thing
8) Have fun. It's cliche I know, but when you stop having fun its time to go do something else with your second life.
For those of you that have yet to hear, there is a major gridwide treasure hunt going on. Join in and see how much you can hall. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sweet%20Sorrow/220/37/369
and if you happen to see me please say hello.
There is one constant in Second life, whether in persuit of skills, a fabulous clothes, or baser desires, if you engage in a particular activity often enough you'll start to see the same people over and over again. Just as true, but not always as evident, is if you are freebie hunters...you'll likely bring some of the same sims to a screaching halt.
And yes that was my poor attempt and a profound inaugural post. Yes I am perfectly aware that it left much to be desired. ...let's try this again.
I'm Violeta, V for short. Herein are the tales of a zany girl just trying to find her place in the life we call Second and look fabulous while doing it. I have many interests and they will pop up over and over again in my writtings. Along the way we'll talk some fashion, maybe some events and oh yeah, hunt some freebies.
