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Hawaii Five-O’s classic closer, as McGarrett tells his trusty sidekick to take the bad guys away, just wouldn’t be the same as “Notecard’em, Danno!” Similarly, while a lot of good information can be sent around effectively using a notecard, it’s just not the same as a book.

You can’t format notecard text much nor can you include photos. Enter the SL book, where each page is a texture, and you have complete control over its appearance. You’ve seen them around I’m sure. You can rez them and flip through the pages or wear them as a hud to do the same.

Ok, you don’t have mascara on your cheek, but you know how you can be at a party or a meeting and someone does? Or parsley from lunch on their tooth? Or, God forbid, their skirt caught up in their pantyhose? Do you mention it?

Can we talk for a second about photo aspect ratios and profiles? I’m never sure if I should mention it, but a lot of folks walk around SL with profile pics and shots in the pick list that are just WRONG. That’s because your profile pic isn’t square. Photos in your picks aren’t square either. If you use a square cropped shot here, the effect is NOT slenderizing.

The pick example above is a case in point. It’s a classic 1024×1024 square cropped portrait dropped into a pick photo. Holy wide faces. We’re doin the chipmunk thing.

No. It’s an ornithopter (from ornithos “bird” and pteron “wing:), an aircraft that flies by flapping it’s wings. Ever since I read Dune by Frank Herbert I’ve wanted an ornithopter. Unlike RL where most ornithopters fly badly if at all, and like Dune, ornithopters in SL actually fly.

This has been a busy week in RL and SL. When the heat is on, sometimes the fun factor kinda gets a bit thin. Isle and I don’t get out as much as we used to because of her bandwidth issues. A lot of our SL time is about getting stuff done when we can.

But this week, we got some fun in. We managed to spend a couple of hours exploring NeoKowloon, which is one wacky cool place. Tucked in a shop, what did I find? An Ornithopter! 200L!

So last night, we spent twenty minutes of silly hilarity takin it for a spin.

I’ve been approved to teach on the Teen Grid since March 31st, 2007. I’ve met a lot of wonderful teens that eventually turned 18. On that fateful day, their friend list is wiped and groups removed. They are then shipped off to the Main Grid, the adult world they’ve been sheltered from for years. They don’t know anyone, where to go, what to do, and soon, they just stop logging in.

From the Teen Grid, Arwyn Quandry is one of several teens that keeps a careful eye on content thieves, uploading pictures of theft to flickr so that Main Gridders can identify and report their stolen content for removal. While the Teen Grid is losing a great asset, we’re gaining one, which is why it’s essential that we make her feel welcome right from the start. To that extent, she has admitted that she has never snuck over to the Main Grid. A true MG virgin.

What do we do with virgins? We sacrifice them, of course. Come to Rouge on Saturday, August 1st, at 5pm SL time where we will take Arwyn’s (non-sexual) Main Grid virginity by showering her with gifts and friendship offers. We’ll also be celebrating her 18th birthday. Many thanks to our DJ for the night, Nexeus Fatale, and location host, Codebastard Redgrave. If you cannot attend and would still like to give her a gift, she will not be arriving on the grid until after 8am SL time. You can also drop a transfer gift to moo Money, who will ensure that it gets to Arwyn safely.

I learned to read combing through my Mom’s anatomy texts. There were these cool pages of clear illustrated plastic. You turned the pages to go from skin to muscle to organs to bone. Mesmerizing. I learned then that every part of the body was useless without all the other bits. It was a system, a whole.

Let’s do that with the process of making a photo. Look at the whole, but step by step.

You might remember this shot of Isle, “Remembering Crimson Shadow” from her Friday Focus a couple of weeks back.

This shot was an eight hour labor of love and sometime frustration (even desperation). The story begins Thursday morning with Isle laying out the post’s concept;  A tribute to Crimson Shadow on its closing. She wants to wear the bloody angel outfit from Carnival of Doom, another Rezzable sim that’s already gone, using an emo skin that’s good and sad.

We are chatting  in Live (MSN) Messenger. This is our mainstay gadget for communications, day and night – our “nerve system.”

The workflow on this shot moves in and out of SL throughout the process.

… what I was wearing last week for the Gadgets N’ Gear spy post I thought I’d fill ya in.

I went shopping for a new outfit a couple of weeks back so I’d have a new look to wear out to the Rouge Lounge and Club Fusion. It’s hard y’know, keeping up with Nexeus Fatale in the cool department. Well, I got a stack of rawrs and Isle and Jori keep asking for my bald look.

So here are the details.

While checking my blog stats this morning, I noticed that a new site, SLaggr, had a referral link to me. When I checked the site, I noticed that it was an aggregate feed of multiple mega feeds, such as IHeartSL. I found a feedback button for Get Satisfaction and expressed my disapproval of such practices. The owner, however, became very defensive.

After mentioning it on Plurk, Codebastard Redgrave and Cyclic Gearz also inquired as to why he would do that. He marked the problem as “Owner does not see this as a problem.” After several back and forths, he pulled the site down, but it leads me to the question, Is it okay for mega feeds to add your blog without permission? Weigh in below.

While browsing the feeds, I stumbled upon a post about events going on at Seven Ultra Lounge today. The post was titled, “The Last Sunday @ Seven“, so naturally my curiosity was piqued. Surprised I didn’t see anything mentioned about it on the feeds, I went to google, which came up with a tweet by Crap Mariner from July 24th about it. Bianca Darling’s Twitter page didn’t show anything about it until an hour ago, though. I’m not sure how Crap found out so early.

Tweleted, however, told a different story:

BiancaMalise says Seven Ultra Lounge closing for good next week. Get in and party while you can and make sure we go out wit… http://plurk.com/p/1d6u8x Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:05:28

A quick visit to SUL confirmed that they are indeed shutting down forever after today. If you have any pictures you want to share of your time at SUL, please email them to machinimoo@gmail.com.

Read on for a brief history of Seven Ultra Lounge and the final schedule…

… it’s a nasty business, this spy stuff. Need a fixer?

This isn’t gonna be a nice, feel good post. It’s gonna be a real post. You’re used to a measure of privacy in RL, but this is SL. There ain’t no privacy.

You probably know someone in SL who has been stalked, hunted and/or spied on. There are RL hired PIs, SL ex’s, insecure lovers, wanna be lovers, business competitors, the idly curious and creepily voyeuristic, there is no shortage of those that want to track our activities.

Welcome to SL’s dark side.

… any seat you like. Do it yourself. It’s easy if you know how.

You know the deal. You love the furniture and hate the sits. You can suck it up and tolerate the sits to get the great style or pass it by. If you buy it, sooner or later you’ll file it in the FAIL folder.

Ever since I first faced this quandary, I vowed that one day I would seize control of my destiny and lounge about any way I please. The day came when I purchased the spectacular ”Midnight Fairy Oak with sits” from Natural Fantasies earlier this week.

I love this tree. It has a magical tone to it and broad flat limbs that cry to be climbed and sat upon. Out of the box it comes with three sits that are assigned in a fixed order as people sit down. I wanted more. More sits. More positions. More people. More control. More, more, more.