I think the "surge of snapshots" is back in me. Y'know that saying, "getting in the zone"? I feel like sometimes, if I don't feel sufficiently motivated to something, I can tip myself by accumulating little deeds, and chaining them up. Like, if I'm not in the mood to draw, then I do a doodle, then color in it, then texture and detail it richly. By the end, I feel much better than I did at the start.

This week's been such a blur; at the same time, I really got some nice picturetaking done. I'm always looking to boost an edge on my captures, so here's some of my adventures. Click through any one to visit inworld via the SLurl:

Kickass "yellow fog" bug; some of you may remember a similar variant awhile back. In this case, I was selecting an object while taking a snapshot. The result? It's beautiful, yet unintended. I reported it as an issue and pleaded that there be some way to still do this. Oooo how I want it both ways.

More yellow fog, which totally worked to the advantage of an almost silhouette'd comic book-style shot. That's Tess Metropolitan and I. She owns METRO-HOLOGRAFIX, and I gotta say, you don't find many comic book shops in Second Life. Tess put in oodles of details, references to classic video games — like Syndicate, one of my cyberpunk faves! — and enough textures to give my graphics card a good workout. Fortunately, I was on the First Look Viewer, which has raised my avg. FPS about 4-5+. When I was a kid, I often went to a similar store called Ebenezer's, so this is really like reliving my youth. Tess and I had a really lively convo; like Ash Garden, she has bitone eyes.

Linden Village! I got a whole album for it. I took pictures of every Linden home I could find, I'm kinda like the L-Fam's paparazzi. On the left is Pathfinder's office, and the right is a picture taken way up with 512 m2 draw distance. If you look carefully, you can see Char's Pooley foot on the left. Wonder what's there? Fly inworld and find out.

I revisited Imogen; nice, nice folks there. Owner Haver Cole likes Imogen Heap, and we got totally geeked out on chatting about music and Dune. She went all Bene Gesserit on me, and that lead me to TP to a desert where the sandworms live, as LemonYellow Oxide gave me a tour of the facilities, including a Guild Navigator in a spice tank! I gotta say, sunrise also looks so beautiful over Dune…

… but watch your step or you might be eaten!

Just today, I visited with Arcadia Asylum. I met her awhile back and it was rewarding to followup and found what she'd done: with her resourceful texturing, her 133-prim CITY MISSION has improved vastly, and even has land near Calleta's Infohub. This is a spectularly eclectic location, and I believe not even many pictures will do it justice.

As you can see, lots of freebies are on the wall for your taking, and they're all full-perms and Open Source. Arcadia's quite a crafty hobo and doesn't have much need for L$; rather, bartering for goods and sharing knowledge are key. Sadly, the recent upgrade appears to have broken her public access terminal because the screen no longer scrolls.

We also went next door to visit "Tooter Town" by the eponymous Tooter Claxton. There's a lot of hobo-mentoring going on as they share their skills; I IMed Orhalla Zander, father of the Calleta Infohub. It'd been ages since I talked to him and I want to thank him for all he's done expanding the place. I remember when it first began — almost a year ago. Now that's nostalgia. Texture and clustered placement of well-primmed objects make such an environmental difference… and speaking of, prims are versatile!