Vandeverre's Emporium

For those of you who play in SL, I'll be selling my parcel in Caledon Brigadoon. Comment or email me for details.

I have an Edwardian evening gown I'm working on, but no big plans other than that. Any requests?

I haven't been spending a lot of time inworld, as summer and a brace of twins who aren't in school keep me rather occupied, but I did sell my secondary plot of land and am working on transferring all the catacombs over to the new owner. I might end up putting catacombs under my own shop as well, and connecting them.

It is Spring/Summer where I live, and not only have I taken up organic beekeeping, but the garden, and my twins playing outside, have seduced me away from Second Life for quite a while.

However, I found tonight that the newest Release Candidate seems to have finally solved the "Mac crashes in 3 minutes with Windlight" problem, at least for my MacPro. Whew!

I'm still selling my second plot in Caledon Brigadoon, and I am still planning to make houppelandes. Feel free to suggest creations of a historical nature.

I am likely selling my lesser-used plot in Caledon Brigadoon -- the one that has the Catacombs under it -- for the cost I bought it from Mr. Shang. Comes with or without catacombs. I'll be sending a note to Mr. Shang in case he wants to mention it to someone on his waiting list.

Slurl for my store; from there, turn South; it is the flat area with the walkway, surrounded by the colonnade.

This week's item, inspired by John R. Neill's illustrations for the Oz books, starting in 1908:



Second floor of my shop. The SLRFL Bartholomew hat is also on display out front, so you can watch the little hats go bouncing.

Finally got this into the SLRFL vendor also!

I have a silly item available in a Relay For Life vendor at my store in Caledon Brigadoon. It's inspired by the book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. It also drops hats which drift about in the wind and stream off into the distance (but only 13 at a time.)



L$ 150 donation to the cancer charity fund; comes with two sizes and a notecard about editing if you don't want the dropped hat function.

Slurl to my store Vandeverre's Emporium.

This is what I'm working on:



Source:


Edit: ... I could make replicating particles with a hat image on them... don't know if particles can be told to stay above the ground level, though. *ponder, ponder*

LATER: Got them particles working very well. I should get to sleep though!

Just finished it tonight; probably needs another small tweak or two. Argent Stonecutter's script, my design otherwise. L$30.




This also marks my first use of PNG instead of TGA -- somehow I missed the announcement that you could switch to PNG, which obviates all of the Alpha layer tricks. Whoohoo!

Actually, a public service is the project release this week. There has not been a rail stop for the Caledon Rail in Brigadoon, so I have consulted Mr. Boomslang and Mr. Shang, and this evening finished its installation. The train will start pausing there tomorrow.

It is a bit visually confusing, as that corner of my land is a bit crowded, but maybe I'll think of something else to help set it off. The plantings around the platform have helped somewhat.




The groined vaults are sculpies by Ms. Dimsum; the column decorations are also a sculpie, this time from the free sculpies in Victoria City. I've used several textures which I already have on my land so as to minimize texture lag; the only new texture is the 512x128 "Caledon Brigadoon" sign. The shelter was inspired by a number of Victorian-era train stations and shelters.

Should anyone else like a rail shelter like this one, please speak to me. They're cheap. ;)

One pair $L50, Box of two pair $L75. Requests for other colors welcome.

I keep running into people that don't know about the lag meter, so I'm going to mention it here, hoping that you all know about it already.

The cool thing is, it lets you know if you get to blame the Grid for lag, or if it's your own setup. Or possibly, your ISP.

Firstly, it's covered in this Tips & Tricks video: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/22/tip-of-the-week-12-how-to-easily-boost-viewer-performance/#more-1412

But the quick answer is, it's under HELP in the regular menus. ( Here are some screenshots )

Amping the signal:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1715

I've voted and commented on this one -- basically Windlight freezes my computer so hard I have to manually reboot (use the power switch.) Other Macs are seeing this also, but I am worried, as if this becomes the regular viewer, I will not be able to use SL.

And of course I miss the graphic effects that everyone else is getting.

As today is Valentine's Day, I'm offering my Vengeful Venus Day Tshirt for One Linden, at my store. Just the thing for anyone unlucky in love -- or who dislikes popular gooey sentiments.

This design is adapted from a Cranach painting of Venus. They didn't have AK-47s back then, so I added one.



These SL shirts are modifiable to any color you can find on the color picker. They are composed of two layers: a modifiable shirt on the Undershirt layer, and the design elements on the Shirt layer.

Vandeverre's Emporium, Caledon Brigadoon, SE corner

The new tunic colors are finally done, and for sale in my shop in Caledon Brigadoon. These are the outfits based on a tunic which was preserved through the centuries -- there are many fantasy medieval outfits in Second Life, but this one is completely based in reality! ... well, of course it's all pixels, but other than that... :)



Colors:
Original Blue and red

New:
Green and red
Purple and red
Black and red
Burgundy and green
Charcoal

Comes with three prim skirts, pearl cuffs, shirts and glitch pants/skirts on all layers, and extensive historical information.

I'll be making a fancier "poster" later, but this is enough to show the colors.

Many (though certainly not all) of the avatars in Second Life suffer from proportion problems. Arms too short, waist too nipped in, legs too long, and so on. It occurred to me today, that if I could find well-proportioned RL people, I could take a photo of them in their skivvies, in the "adjusting appearance" pose/position. Then someone could stand against it while adjusting their appearance, using it as a template.

I don't know if this is a brilliant idea or simply an insane one. What do you think?

Edit: Sure, I could sell shapes, but that wouldn't educate people.

Went inworld today for the first time with an alt*. They sure have changed Orientation Island compared to a 14 months ago! Much simpler. A little bit silly. Good for them. Help Island looked to be much the same as it was, but I didn't check it out.



*Those of you reading this who don't do SL, this means another account, not your main one. Alts are useful for testing things out that you want to have work correctly for your customers.

Getting in a bit early with my product for this week, on the plan to do one per week this year, we have the Daffodil Avatar. Some of the leaves are flexi; fully modifiable. L$175.



Also started the other part of my business plan: advertising. Currently on Mr. Longstaff's Caledon Forums.

A product I made about a year ago: The Vengeful Venus Day tshirt. The fun thing is: you can buy one for your avatar, and you can buy one at CafePress to wear in real life!



And here's one of the RL t-shirts:


As you can see, the SL version has Venus in a green oval (due to the constraints and size of SL meshes) and the CafePress version has the whole image.

CafePress Store

SLURL, Caledon Brigadoon SE corner