If you only follow this Ponderings blog, please go to the main SL for Nowt blog and read my post about the adverts that have suddenly appeared on all WordPress-hosted blogs.
The personal side of SL for Nowt
Good grief. Both this blog and the main one are being hit hard by comment spammers. Usually, Askimet catches on average one or two a day at most. Since the weekend just gone that has shot up to around 10 – 15 per day. That’s an astounding amount. I know that, fairly recently, several large botnet groups were shut down; looks like a bunch of new ones has sprung up to fill their place. The closed-down ones were mainly email spammers, but this level of comment spam is on a par with those.
Thankfully, WordPress has excellent Askimet protection, so none of them have made it through to the blogs yet.
Mar has put together the snuggliest winter outfit ever, and it all happened because of a pair of boots.
They’re the Kimiko Urban High Heel Boots from Dirty Lynx, which she found while browsing footwear on SL Marketplace (never a good idea if you want your L$ balance to remain healthy, by the way…). Once she had those boots on her feet, an outfit had to be built around them.
The first thing to spring to mind was the Warm Sweater in Dust from Aitui (whose 60L$ sale on all female clothing items was still ongoing the last time Mar popped over there). The skirt is from the free Bridget dress set by Elate!, offered at the Gnubie Store. Leggings are the TDR Basics Leggings Brown 2 from Tee*fy: a past Dressing Room item, and the belt is the Low Waist Leather Belt (black/gold) from one of my favourite little stores: Chuculet.
Earrings are the Oversized Hoops in gold, from Baubles (great basics, those!) and the hair is Seth in Almost Goth, from a recent LeLutka hunt prize (always grab the male freebies as well as the female ones, ladies; often they’re just as wearable!) Finally, Mar’s skin is the stunning Castalia Vampire skin from Glam Affair: another recent Dressing Room offering, and her eyes are the blue Zbilja ones from Exodi’s discount room.
Hop behind the cut for more pics :)
I’m in the middle of proof-reading a huge, screencapped inventory management post on the main blog, and my website is glitching, so the images keep showing and then not showing. I can’t publish the damn thing until the website settles down! Argh!
Or so went the tagline for Dairy Milk chocolate: a glass and a half of milk in every bar, and since Mar’s all in cream today it seemed like a fitting title for this post.
Today was a shoe-splurging day. R2 released their new Pumehana boots, and having teleported over to check out the half price offers inside the doorway for three bright colours with added detail (and, erm, buying all three) Mar then meandered inside and splurged on three of the leather pairs inside: black, white, and ivory.
The dress is the simple and yet lovely L$10 Greene one from the Beauty Avatar Couture/Glam Affair Discount Room (find it directly in front of you on the wall at the top of the stairs, high up). Hair is the lovely Tracy from Calico Ingmann’s Red Seal Hunt prize, and skin is Tuli’s Tanya. Mar’s eyes are the blue Promise ones that MADesigns gave as a group gift a few weeks ago, and her bracelet is an old Earth Jewel gift. Finally, her earrings are her favourites from Ticky Tacky: Marta Takes A Holiday – Greece.
Hop behind the cut for more pics.
I’m loving these blue CellFrame Glasses sent out to the Peppermint Blue Subscribe-O-Matic members a few days ago. Mar’s wearing the version with the tiny sapphire detail here.
Her skin is a current offer from Dekade at The Dressing Room Blue: the Dahlia Sunkissed skin. Gorgeous lippy on this one, and it works beautifully with all kinds of lashes (which, obviously because of the glasses, Mar couldn’t wear).
Matching up the blue, Mar opted for the Under the Boardwalk earrings and bangle set from Ticky Tacky, and Sn@tch’s Fling Top in blue. The look is completed with Zaara’s fabby basic Jeans Blue (slouchy version) and Kalnins’ Plastique shoes, together with Uncleweb’s Reed hair and MADesigns Promise Eyes in blue.
Shoe Fair. Hair Fair. Clothing Fair. Skin Fair. Etc etc.
How can I always tell when one of the myriad SL Fairs is underway? Simple: ARC and lag suddenly hit the search terms on the main blog. Normally I’ll get maybe one or two search queries per month about ARC and lag, but this is from just since Hair Fair began a couple of days ago:
second life why is my arc so high?
emerald arc low prim
low lag hair
avatar rendering cost in sl
It’s a ‘schlep around the house’ day for me; the last bank holiday in the UK before Christmas (OMG that’s a long haul of work until we get there – *sob!*). So Mar’s dragged out some nice casuals for hopping around the grid.
The top is Tyranny Designs’ Just Relax tank in sky (which, shh! is one of the 0L$ offers in the secret sale that’s running until September 1st). Pants are from Sn@tch’s Lowrise Pinstripe Jeans fatpack, and the shoes are Tesla’s fabulous freebie fatpack of Jane pumps on Xstreet SL (these are the ‘ocean’ shade). Mar’s hair is an old ETD favourite: Flapper.
So I was going to blog the new Dressing Room Blue collection, having spent quite a considerable sum of money there today. On trying on the first outfit I received repeated ‘attempt to rez an object failed’ messages. My teleports had been horrendous (two to three minutes to get anywhere and I’m currently trying to get home without any success at all) so I decided to relog.
As SL shut down I saw a weird message I’d not seen before: something like ‘saving final status’.
On relog, I was wearing only part of the system clothing sections of the outfit I’d been wearing before I started to change into the Dressing Room outfit. So I opened up the Recent Items tab of my inventory, set the filters to ’1 hour’ and… nothing.
I set the filters to ’1 day’. Nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. The notecards I’d been sent today, plus a couple of group gifts and the final two TDR items I’d purchased were there. But the first five TDR items? Completely gone.
I cleared cache and relogged back into Pooley, which is the sim that Support often recommend you try when waiting for inventory to load. I stood there for half an hour and waited. More of the TDR items came back, but not the one that had given me the error messages, nor another one that I’d really wanted.
*sigh*
So I’ve opened a support ticket, which I don’t expect will get me anywhere, and will probably have to repurchase those two items before this TDR collection finishes, since I know how slowly SL Support moves.
Ironically, the missing items were the two that I loved the most in the entire collection this week :(
Sometimes there are days when I can’t put together something that looks put-together for the life of me.
There’s a new Dressing Room collection out, and it’s stupendous this week. Lots of lovely things, from a stunning open red shirt by Aoharu, to lovely jewellery from Magic Nook and GLOW Studio, pretty lashes also from GLOW Studio, three skins (including another gorgeous Gina from Tuli), eyes… you name it, it’s there. Even a fabulous male skin with shape by CheerNo.
Mar splurged in there, but when she got home do you think she could put a look together around anything? Nope. Today is a fashion funk day, and fashion funk means a crabby Mar. So she resorted to what always works when nothing else does: black and the comfort of stuff she knows already works well.
Hop behind the cut for styling info and commentary.
