The Birth of Bone

In preparation for a new non-SL blog, decided to delete my old one. But before I did, I wanted to make sure I grabbed all the stuff I really wanted to keep. I stumbled upon the following post relating the first few hours of Bone’s existence. Thought it was worth sharing — even though, it’s horribly written. A blast from the past

What do you get when…

…you give thousands of people the ability to shape the world around them? Second Life.

Sounds like a cheesy marketing line right? Well, yah. It does. But! It’s true and the result are, well, let’s say interesting.

Recently I made a SL account through the CSI promotional site. The CSI area is actually kind of cool, but it’s a controlled environment and the really interesting stuff is out there, in the wilds.

Once I finished with my CSI training I headed out to an Irish bar. There I immediately started hearing whispers… from the whiskey. Just like in real life! I shot the shit with a couple of gents for awhile. On my left was a bearded man with tiny head. One my right, an anthropomorphic fox in a cowboy hat.

From there, I went to a steampunk themed island where I was hit on by a gay anthropomorphic rabbit who looked like he was tripping on E. Soon after a woman appeared. She asked if I liked girls? I said I did. She told me she was an escort. I asked if she would accept jokes as payment since I didn’t have any money at the time (also wasn’t terribly interested in soliciting a virtual prostitute.) She said no and flew off with the psychedelic rabbit.

This all happened within the first three hours of my avatar’s, Bone Mosten, existence.

The Battle of the Century (or maybe just this week)

Business Owners vs Consumers

Image Source

It seems that Metaversally Speaking’s Prad Prathivi’s post Entitlement has caused quite a bit of a stir in the community. I’m personally of the opinion that Prad makes some very good and valid points regarding freebies. But because it was written by a business owner about consumers — throw in a controversial title — my gut reaction was a bit confrontational.

As not to add more fuel to the flames, this post is not a direct response to the whole freebie issue. The original post simply made me want to write some points about what feels (to me) like an escalating battle between business owners and consumers from a consumer’s perspective.

1. I think it’s important that we differentiate business owner’s and content creators. While there is plenty of overlap between the two, content creators aren’t necessarily making (or expecting to make) a profit. Business owners are making or have expectations of making a profit (and if you aren’t, you’re doing it wrong.) Whether this is a significant real life profit or a modest space buck profit is not important.
2. There are assholes in this world. And these asshole tendencies come to the surface far easier in online environments. Assholes aren’t more likely to be business owners. Nor are they more likely to be consumers. They just are. Since there are more consumers then business owner’s out there, it is reasonable to expect that one will see more assholes who are consumers. But there are asshole business owner’s. Trust me.
3. Consumers aren’t entitled to free wares and services from business owners. Nor are business owners entitled to the consumer’s money. Just because you made it, doesn’t mean you’ll be compensated for it. And just because it’s been made, doesn’t mean you will get it for free.
4. Except for a fortunate minority, we all work for our space bucks. Business owner’s may toil away for hours in Photoshop to only end up getting a modest amount of spending cash, sure. But I’m pretty sure there’s someone who just embalmed a corpse and is using that money to pay their credit card which was used to buy your virtual thingamajig.
5. I have to assume that business owner’s are grateful when their content is consumed. And I know consumers are happily consuming their content. Do we really need to stroke each other’s boners too? We really shouldn’t expect or need anything more then silence after a space buck exchange for goods and services.
6. I thank a friend for buying me coffee. I do not thank Starbucks for providing me with a free sample of their new biscotti (that doesn’t mean I am not thankful for the mouth treat.) And I definitely don’t get pissed of when you aren’t worshipping Ronald for giving you a free toy with his happy meal.
7. Consumers aren’t just statistics that make you money. And business owners aren’t photoshopping script monkeys that do your bidding — For that matter, they aren’t small gods for us to worship either (all praise Greasy McClown, though!). We are all regular people and we should treat each other as such.

By the way, Rock’em Sock’em Robots holds up just about as well as Hungry Hungry Hippos. In other words, not very well. The name’s Bone and I crush childhood memories.

Fashion is Not a Lot of Things, Including a Lifestyle

Of course it actually is a lifestyle in Second Life, we know that’st true. Avatars exist with the sole purpose of jumping online, grabbing some newly released items, dressing up, taking pics and blogging the outfit. And that’s a perfectly acceptable way to virtually live.

Image stolen from Sai Pennell (who’s way hotter without my headed pasted on, FYI.)

I want to talk a bit about fashion. Lately I’ve been rocking the female alt. Participating in hunts, computer crushing sales, and general fashion shenanigans that don’t quite exist for the male avatars out there. I’ve learned one thing in the past few weeks of walking around with mammary glands. I suck at women’s fashion.

And I’m cool with that. I’m a guy. I haven’t had years of practice of wearing women’s clothes — Despite the evidence found on this very blog. But the problem is the more I try and fail to successfully dress my virtual tranny, the more I doubt my fashion sense in general.

Someone plurked about about (ir)regular guy a few days ago. Ignoring the tinge of jealousy of seeing a bunch of women drooling over him (hello, 2008’s hottest male avatar over here, lookit me, lookit me!), I can confidently say, “yep, this dude has style.” But I what I can’t seem to wrap my head around is why.

So back in Bonerella land, I decided to get some one on one fashion consulting. The idea being, if I have someone helping dress me, I’ll learn through the process. First of all, I finally get fat packs. “Do you have that in X colour?” came up more then once. And I shamefully had to admit that I only bought one colour because I thought I was saving money.

I digress. So, I’m getting told to try this item with that item, and I decide to take the initiative (bad idea, Boner) and put on a silver bracelet. It was sparkly,  and pretty. My primitive man brain beamed with pride. Nope. Having only one silver item is a nono. Damn. Oh well, at least I have a rule I can follow. A couple of outfits later, I was told to put on a sole silver bracelet. “But!” I protested, “What about the one silver item rule?” (Insert feeling of smugness here.) Well, apparently that doesn’t apply when putting together a black/grey outfit. (Insert long exacerbated sigh here.)

My fashion consultant pointed me towards Uma’s Style Diary as an example of someone with a great fashion sense — which I have to agree (but again, a little iffy on the why.) So, being a little bit frustrated with the process at this point, I figured I’d find something I like from her blog and copy it. This is when I learned what fashion blogs are not. Recipe books. I know! Here I was thinking fashionistas were blogging looks specifically for people to go out and emulate. I mean, they append their posts with a handy little shopping list AND slurls!

ANYways. You’d think, being one of my longer and more rambly posts, there’d be a point at the end. A lesson learned. Some wisdom I could pass on to you, my readers. Something. Nope, nope. I’m afraid not.

(I’m a frayed knot. Hehe.)

Oh.

Viva la Buttcrack!

Snapshot Dump

Gomez!

She says she didn’t do it…

You’re a tall one.

It’s a good feeling.

Not again!

He did not want to partner Pumpkin.

Okay. Glow is cool sometimes.

MyBrute and Other Stupid Games

(Click the image to watch my brute kick the crap out of Daila’s brute.)

Plurk is a strange beast. Trends spread faster then a zombie outbreak (the fast kind of zombies — not Romero’s shambling zombies). The latest trend seems to be MyBrute.

It sort of reminds me of a cross between an adorably cute Duels and MyMiniCity.

Do you have a MyBrute? Comment with a link.

Dog and Pony Show

Ex-elfin fashionista, Sai Pennel plurked this awesome photo (below) yesterday using the 3rd party Shadow Viewer client. I needed to try it for myself.

I followed the instructions to the best of my abilities (the Shadow Viewer.lnk in the program’s directory didn’t work) and booted her up. It was buggy, but not terrible. Glow seemed way more intense in this viewer then the official one, though. And alas, shadows would simply not show up on my machine (ATI Radeon 4670.)

So, I cautiously updated my graphics drivers in hopes that I too could enjoy some shadowy goodness. Still no luck.

And of course, by updating my drivers, the official client started to wig out on me. Randomly my avatar would explode into heap of flickering polygons. Fortunately, Sehra was around to walk me through my very first driver rollback.

The above picture was taken in our second skybox (yes, we live excessively), the “girly skybox”, which, as it turns out, isn’t all that girly. We’ve been having some issues with full bright furniture. So I’d like to submit this formal plea to all content creators:

If you insist on making your stuff full bright — even though it makes no sense having a glow-in-the-dark dresser — please, please turn on “modify” permissions so we can fix that shit.

Same goes for you, Mr. I-Add-Glow-To-Everything.

Daila and I putting on a dog and pony show.

She’s awesome like that.

Education Friday: “Perfect and Easy Compositing!”

I’ve been experimenting with different types of green screen techniques in Second Life/Photoshop recently. In generally, it’s fairly easy to pop an avatar out of its background with the magic wand. Problems arise when the avatar makes heavy use of alpha textures. I’ve found this rather long winded tutorial about real world green screening to be useful. Not perfect, but useful. However there is a better solution.

The always helpful QueenKellee Kuu of Royally has posted a tutorial that shows a brilliantly simple and elegant way to create composite photos through the use of creative windlight settings.

Check it out!

Love Thursday: Skull Island

Don’t expect much in the way of me participating in “Love Thursdays” but since I kinda love it and it is Thursday…

Recently I decided to buy a boat to sail around the grid in — I’d end up calling her My Old Nemesis  — but I also wanted to moor her on our land. The problem: We were rapidly running out of prims.

Last weekend Sehra and I systematically walked around our property and evaluated the need for every object found there. This process was actually quite painless. It turns out we are both very accommodating, not at all stubborn, and share many of the same tastes. We managed to get our prims down enough that I could drop the boat and have just enough left over for Mason and Pica (the dog and cat, respectively.)

While the process was painless, as it turns, it was also unnecessary. Our wonderful neighbour, CeN, had decided she’d be giving up her little island oasis. And while we were sad to see her go, we were happy to have the opportunity to expand double our land.

Last night, Sehra and I got to work building our own little island oasis. I handled the landscaping (free sculpty rocks FTW) while Sehra took care of the shack and its interior. I think we did an exceptionally good job and it really is fun hanging out and working collaboratively.

I’ve decided to name the island “Skull Island”. Sehra may well veto this decision (since I haven’t told her yet.) But before she does, here’s 4 reasons why the name should stick:

1. I’m a dude named Bone.
2. I’m a dude named Bone living on an island named Bluebonnet.
3. I’m a dude named Bone living on an island named Bluebonnet who is also a nerd.
4. Giant monkeys fucking rule!

See y’all later for Bitter Tuesday.

Bone has Sex with Animals

I’ve not been the most, um, enthusiastic blogger lately. It used to be that seeing my hit counter drop close to zero would inspire me to post something – anything. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending who you ask) ever since I posted my article, Some Players have had Sex with Animals, I’ve had quite the steady stream of people finding my blog by searching for “sex with animals” or some variation thereof — my favorite being “moral people who have sex with animals”.

When I initially shot these photos, the plan for this post — the joke — was I’d finally give these people what they were seeking. The original post only teased about donkey shows and highly aroused penguins. Surely a disappointment to people expecting some hardcore human/animal relations.

Of course, while I put off actually putting in the effort of writing this, Linden Lab announced plans for the segregation of adult content on the grid. Now, I’m not going to weigh in on whether this is good or bad for Second Life. However, I would like to state:

The overly-sexed culture of Second Life is part of its charm. I like randomly running into hermaphrodite anthropomorphic raccoons having  sex in furniture stores. I like being intrigued or repulsed (or both) by people’s odd kinks and fetishes. And I like being able to say, “hey, I need some pictures of me having sex with pink-haired bunny for my blog, can you model for me?” without feeling like I’m crossing some sort of boundary of acceptability.

T-Bone

I had a random idea: Take a picture of myself wearing every t-shirt currently residing in my “T-Shirts (Jacket Layer)” folder and create one huge picture with the images. It worked out well since I have exactly 27 tees, forming a perfect grid of 3 columns and 9 rows.

The picture is rather large so I’m putting it in after the cut.