Not following? Or not believing? Well, here’s some polaroid - you know we can’t cheat with polaroids, it’s instant! - proof. We start off attaching ‘Serina Tyra (L) Blonde - Golden’* to Vint’s head. Immediately after that we attach ‘Serina Tyra Hair Tie-Owner Only (L)’ and look! Wow! I’m tying my hair up into a lovely ponytail. Cute, no? Beware, it becomes even cuter!

* I know, I’m not a natural blond avie, but the demo was blond, and it really fitted the top I was wearing. But of course, besides the Blonde Pack, I also purchased the Black Pack. =d

Now, let’s assume I see a hansom male avie passing by, and I feel more seducing with my hair loose. I can go searching in my inventory for the matching loose hair style, but no… it’s not even that hard. I just click my ‘Hair Tie’ object and select ‘remove’… et voila… whilst being extremely cute, your avatar unties the lints keeping it’s hair together and lets it loosely slide over her shoulder.

Back up? No problem! Re-attach your Hair Tie from your inventory or type ‘/2 menu’ -> ‘Hair Style’ -> ‘Hair Up’ to tie your hair up without using something to suspend it. Amazing, no?

Some more kewl functionality from my new beloved prim hair:

1. You can recolour the Hair Tie to match your outfit.
2. The Hair Tie comes in an ‘owner only’ and a ‘everybody can play with your hair’ version.
3. It comes with a facelight, for which you can adjust on/off, colour and strenght.
4. You can wear an ‘up do’ with our without Hair Tie.
5. Doing ‘Up! Down! Up! Down! Up! Down!’ with this prim hair will amuse and entertain you for at least 20 minutes.

Drawbacks

1. This won’t work in non-script areas, or looks rediculous if the sim if there is lag.
2. I did not find out how to adjust my hair to cover my ears. (I have neko ears, so the human ones are obsolete.)

Where did I get this great prim hair? At the Hair Fair 2008, of course! But I would have never known about this new revolutionary hair, if Miss Weyland did not show it off to me first. I guess that answers Crap Mariner’s question too. ;)

fashion, hair, SLinovation

]]> http://www.vintfalken.com/sirena-hair-up-down-up-down-up-down/feed/ http://www.vintfalken.com/sirena-hair-up-down-up-down-up-down/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VintFalken/~3/376643812/ http://www.vintfalken.com/second-life-web-resources-for-august-26th-2008-through-august-27th-2008/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:30:14 +0000 Vint http://www.vintfalken.com/second-life-web-resources-for-august-26th-2008-through-august-27th-2008/
3. Dusan Writer’s Metaverse - A possible speech - Dusan Writer’s layout for Mark Linden’s speech at SLCC08. Have a chuckle, cry, rejoice, … whatever it makes you feel like, but there is a high probably M. Linden will use this! ;)
4. Linden Lab staff gagged unable to post to official blog - Silence on the official Linden Lab blog. How come? No more Torley. No more personal stuff. No more important updates about releases? No more info? At all?!
5. Lauren Weyland, Live in RL & SL (great comedy) - Saturday, at 3pm SL time in the sim of IVY FALLS at the theater, Lauren Weyland will be doing a show that will also be broadcast into a theatre within first life in Amsterdam. From what I understand this will also be interactive. If plan to attend, so say ‘hi!’ when you see me. (And do give Lauren a great applause!)
6. Sinewave promo video - Impressive! Who says we should do stupid, dumb not real life like animations? Hat tip to Codie for posting this one on Plurk.
7. Rezzable CEO RightasRain Rimbaud on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe SLCN - The title probably says it all. Jonathan Himoff on voice (and with avie) answering questions about Rezzable’s past & future plans, greenies & black swan entrance fees, etc. Don’t ask me all the time, go and watch this vid! Extra bonus is NPIRL’s bettina tizzy.

Theyneed high resolution screen shots from your builds, ideally these should be captured at a minimum of 1600×1200 pixels (if you are using the Second Life™ viewer, the “High Resolution Screen shots” option works well)*. All settings should be set to maximum, ideally with anti aliasing, screen shots should have a minimal amount of adjustment (limited to cropping, brightness) and originals should be provided.

* (You can also go into ’snapshot’ and then change the dimensions of the screen capture there. Normally, you should be able to go up to 3000px at ease.)

Do mind, preferably NO POST PROCESSING! And errr… the deadline passed a few hours ago. But I assume good images of OpenSim areas are welcome always. You just won’t get a prize! ;) A good place to - for instance - showcase your shots is the Flickr OpenSim Group.

OpenSims? Errr.. how to get there?

An overview of a few of the OpenSim grids - multiple sims connected together - can be found on opensimulator.org. Login information and a quick ‘how to login’ is also provided for. Have fun exploring and snapshotting!

More specific rules:

1. High Resolution - We’re printing onto a 300 DPI surface, this means we absolutely need the highest possible resolution when printing to make sure we have crisp clean non-blurry images. While there isnt a definition of what is or isnt high resolution - try submit screenshots at least 1600×1200, higher is preferred.
2. Submit in a lossless format - We need images provided in either 24-bit PNG, TIFF or BMP. As these files tend to be rather large, please zip or rar them with maximum compression.
3. If you are submitting a manipulated image, the original is required as well. There is no guarantee that the manipulated version will be used. (We are trying to provide accurate but nifty portrayals of what OpenSim can do.)
4. Deadline - submit your images before Wednesday, 27th August 2008. Sooner is appreciated as they will begin incorporating images into the layout as soon as they are received.
5. How to submit images - Please use a service such as yousendit.com to transfer the archived files, send your message to “adam@deepthink.com.au”. His inbox will reject files larger than 10mb, so please do not send these directly.
6. Judging will be done by Adam Frisby in conjunction with the other people sponsoring the booth. Decisions whether to utilize an image will be based on constraints such as whether or not we can work them into the larger montage and do so in a way which highlights OpenSim in a positive way.
7. Some tips - People/avatars always look good. Eye candy is always a plus. Showing scenes where this is in production and potentially useful for people interested in using it are also going to be in demand.

What ‘ya getting for it?

Nothing anymore. Contest deadline has passed, if you shoot, it’s just for the fun. ;) Accepted and utilized images will get 6 months free standard-class region hosting from DeepThink to a grid of your choice. The Judges may provide hosting for images of excellent quality which are unable to be used, however this is soley at the discretion of the judges.

‘We are not currently accepting sets that feature men or sets that feature more than one model. We are also currently only accepting “real” human content.’

Guess that is it then. For Vint. And for now. The nice part of the news was for my human: ‘Thank you for submitting your portfolio shots to us. I certainly think it is worth it for you to submit a set to us.’ Now just need to convince one of the atomic friends to (partly) undress & model. That’s way more easy to get done from avies! :p

According to Joe ‘Linden’ Miller, SLim will be a very thin - lightweight, thus - client that is designed to stay in both voice and text - prioritize, please: text & voice thus - contact with your friends: ‘If you want to participate in a meeting but can’t actually run the SL app to do it, you’ll be able to do that with our thin voice communication client.’ I wonder if they’ll count is as an extra agent count on the sim? (to fill up the former orientation islands? ;) But overall, this is good news. This means people with old laptops might even still be able to enjoy the last weeks of summer outside, chatting to their SL friends, without having to know about AjaxLife.

Announced for ‘the end of 2008′ was ‘real world telephone to second life’, which seems to be still on schedule. SLNN quotes Joe Linden: ‘“This will work two ways: you’ll be able to sign up for an access number that will give people who are outside of SL (perhaps on a cell phone) the ability to reach you in-world. This is distinctly separate from the ‘SLim’ communication client.’ Of course, this comes with voice messages - if you want to - delivered to your email - if you want to. Is it just me, but if I want someone from outside SL to call me, I just give them my cell phone number?! Imagine: ‘No mommy, you can’t reach me on my phone. You can call me in-world though. It’s an USA number. *grin*” Hmm, I think I suddenly see a use! ;) Anyways, ‘real world calling to Second Life’ will not be part of the SLim client, just an addendum to their current grid services.

The most interesting on the whole voice deal might be ‘the ability to associate a standard telephone number – PSTN number – with a group, and that number can be used by a number of folks to join a group conversation for the purpose of meeting from outside of SL as well.’ Although, I remember the ladies over at BlogHer SL already used this in combination with mediastream, so just making something existing standard Second Life functionality?

A very positive message in the last sentence of the article: Twitter functionality will not be added in to the new SLim client. Yeey! :D Can’t wait for the SLim Release Candidate! =)

1. th place to Miss Rheta Shan, for an incredible re-design from the Second Life UI. She threw the current design completely out of the window, and realised a design that focusses on ‘what the user actually wants to do/achieve’. A deserved win! A Flash execution of Miss Rheta’s concept can be experienced on Dusan’s site.
2. nd place for Miss Jacek Antonelli. Ground breaking in Miss Antonelli’s design is an extended - and way more intuitive - design for inventory management.
3. rd place goes to Roy Cassini, who focuses on ease of learning for newbs. Getting rid of all orientation islands (<- check, but lost the link) and implementing user orientation in the viewer, teaching him basic functionality as more functions become enabled.

May we have a round of ‘woot!s’ and ‘applaud gestures’, please? I’m so glad I get to use my ‘SLinovation’ tag on this blog again! ;) Of course, as stated before, all the entries contained great ideas and a mixture - Frankenstein, I believe Dusan called it - of all the proposals would be a killer-client. (But Lindens, for starters, could you please implement Jacek’s inventory management ideas? ;)) I also owe Vincent Nacon a huge apology, as I skipped mentioning him in my previous overview post. Yes, his was a ‘late’ entry, but definitely worth mentioning. View it here!

More on the winning designs - and illustrations with their entries - can be found on - of course - Dusan Writers’s blog. You’ll also want to take a look at New World Notes, where Hamlet Au highlighted some of the most ground breaking ideas from all the contestants. Not very fond of reading? No problem, SLCN.TV filmed/machinima’d the Metanomics ‘Enhancing your View’, where Mr Writer announced the winners, and where Adam Frisby, known for heavy involvement on OpenSim - Adam Zaius inworld - shared his knowledge about XBAP and Xenki (and a whole lot of other stuff way above my head!). Running joke of the evening was ‘rendering virtual worlds in the clouds’, a reference to this techcrunch article. Oh yeah, almost forgot, that SLCN.TV video is here.

As for a very, very late entry, there’s an idea from Bob Wellman, which I’m rather sure he feels strongly about, as he could not help himself but posting it on two of my blog entries relating the User Interface Design Contest. So, here’s Mr Wellman’s idea:

What I would like to see in the UI is maybe not possible (you tell me). A screen that’s too crowded with too many things in one small space is the problem. Rather than try to find better ways to fit too much into too smaller space why not rethink the issue. How do we get more space?

I would like the option to use a second PC screen/monitor. One PC screen/monitor would contain the view of the SL scene that I am looking at and nothing else. The second one would contain all the controls and pop up windows. This way I can see where I am going and do stuff and chat at the same time. For building especially this would be great. Lets face it many people have PCs that can control 2 monitors and maybe even old screens that could be used for the second one.

Is this a radical enough redesign for you! Maybe the second screen could have an option for beginner, normal and expert mode, allowing new users just the basic options to get started and expert allowing all options. Also given a whole screen to play with gives more scope for laying out controls in an easy to use way. I am sure that there are many reasons why this will be difficult to do but my first question is if it can be done should it be?

Feel free to pull this apart or adapt the idea as you see fit guys. Lateral thinking is needed here.

Personally, when I feel I have to much on my screen, I just make the UI smaller. And one could of course also buy a bigger screen. Still, worth a few thoughts, as having one screen just for ’seeing’ SL, without HUDs, without inventory, without buttons, just virtual world, would be a great ‘immersionalistic’ experience, no?

And now? Rest of the pictures time! (If you got that far, looking back at the amount of linkage in here, that is.)

* Does somebody know how to get revert the counting of an ordered list in html? Or is it impossible? Yeah, so it goes 3, 2, 1 … in stead of 1-2-3. Duh! ;)