Another of my long-awaited, very simple wishes has come true! In Second Life Preview 1.9.1.17, you can now specify WHERE you want to login at the splash screen. As opposed to having the whole secondlife://Plum dance. There's a new Login Location field you type the region into, or use the dropdown to select, and login as usual! But wait, before I get ahead of myself, it isn't quite working yet. In 1.9.1.18 I hope! So close, so close.

I remember first bringing this up for discussion, and the counterpoint at the time was, "Well, that defeats the whole purpose of having a home point, doesn't it?" which faded quickly, as society changed to P2P TPs (aka P@P ROX!), and the baseline realization that going home can always be done inworld, whereas this would be very, very handy as an emergency procedure to log into another region should something be borked with yours. As did happen during the weekend—we learn from experience.

Blogging this for the record so I can celebrate when we get a "group teleport" mode. I used to call it "party on!" or something. We're so social inworld: we can walk, run, fly (less easily), or be transported in a vehicle (used to be harder with patchy sim crossings, better now)… so where's our "group teleport" mode? Bring a bunch of friends from one place to the next at the touch of a button. Ah, now that's a promise of the future! Currently, doing the ol' "Offer Teleport" again and again simply doesn't work for those extended adventures across many islands, or even the epic retail therapy that finds you going from one end of the gridverse of the other. Would be nice to have a party, like an RPG, with a ringleader—think of skydivers holding hands here. Ringleader might as well be a tour guide in some circumstances, and… well… leads the way!

If you make (made?) cool tools to teach your Second Life skills classes which automate the drudgery and make the fun parts even more rewarding, give me a holler. Linden Lab Community Team wants to check 'em out , and thus far I've come up with a disappointing dearth (death?). Did not realize it'd be so hard to find more teaching resources. This does not include notecards by themselves, and to give a clearer idea, I'll point to an actual example by Mera Pixel.

Little-known but good to mention: right-click your Mini-Map for extra levels of zoom.

Right now I am in the process of asking Infohub creators to send me their preferred land names, descriptions, and pictures so I can polish the presentation for the Find directory. They after all, built these fab community centers, so I'd like to know how the words, and the visual equiv. of 1,000 words, as they say, fit the place. Watch as they develop!

Yeah, I got new hair. It's by Elikapeka Tiramisu. I was influenced on this one! I was in the DAMB WA, see, and saw Lily Fauna and Gia Reymont. Thanks to them, I followed the watermelony trail… sorta! It ain't exact, but close nuff, and I've asked E. if she makes a more saturated style. The ol' <1,0,0.5> and <0,1,0> in color vectors.

It's long hair I've got, and longest I may have ever had—I usually stick to shorter or mid-length styles. However, it spoke to me.

When I shape myself, it raises a lot of questions. As soon as I've got several articles and clothing put together, it evokes certain directions, and as I continue, it becomes more specific. I usually stay with it for awhile until I have a crazy dream and change it up…
 

EVOLUTION OF AN AVATAR

I was on a Caledonian kick. I thought, "What might a neon steampunk look like, and how can I go back to my goth roots at the same time?" and got the "obscurite" from hyasinth Tiramisu. Foundation. After that, I ended up on Combat Samurai Island and things shifted towards more of a "lethal schoolgirl" from Kill Bill. Alrighty. So with a sword at one side (sheathed), I looked for accessories to balance. One eye covered by hair, so the other had to have a monocle on it! This was specially colored by Phedre Aquitaine. And as I thot "How else I can I return to my roots?" music is the answer. TPed and synchronicity hit me again: found a kickass boombox made by Nylon Pinkney. Sadly, not in my colors, but that was perfectified in short order! Thanx Nylon!

So, here's another item on my checklist: an interior transport hub worthy of Toronto's Union Station. OMG! Naw, it need not be realistic, but the tiles should be reflective. There should be lots of newspapers (datacubes?) to read. And there should also be a train traveling… somewhere. AND people around.

Gadget is a game I wanted to play but never have. It features hotels and trains. Ah, how I assemble the fragmented memories of my life ten years ago, but never do it exactly, so it keeps coming out… different.

That's what made me such a poor imitator in art class: couldn't even color by number well.