Yay, the BBBC has started, and I'm totally excited! \o/ I've been somewhat slacking these past couple days, because I wanted to have something to blog about for this week. I'm getting caught up on a lot of things I listed, dropped my build, almost done making my new pose set, and now I have a little spare time to breathe, relax and blog.

Something I've been wanting to blog about for a while - my little Sion chickens. It seems everyone has them now, and after lots of "OMG, my chickens just had an egg!" and "OMG, my chicken died!" conversations in Ch'Know group chat, I finally broke down, built a chicken pen, and rezzed the couple eggs I had in my inventory.

So, a lot of people already blogged pictures of their chickens. To be slightly different, I decided to go take pictures of my chickens by using Boy Lane's Shadow Viewer \o/

The chicken pen I made (if anyone wants a copy of it for their chickens - just poke at me in world). Turned out well, I like it, the chickens appear to like it too. They roam around, play with their little toy ball that Meara gave them, and cluck away.


I never thought that these little Sion chickens could be so amusing. It seems every day when I log in, I have to check how much food they have left, if they are at breeding age yet, and if they are both still contained in their pen.


I only have two right now, named Ueda and Hana. I didn't really want to name them after friends, because I'd feel really bad and guilty if somehow I killed one. xD They are only at 3% age, and I hear once they get to 4%, they begin to breed. So, hopefully soon, I'll have another chicken family member. :D


A closer view of one of my chickens. This one is my male, Ueda. I think the male chickens are ugliest, because they like, turn green and all different colors. But, he's still got his own charm that makes me luff the little guy. :D


Because the Shadow viewer pictures made them look really dark, I turned off shadows to get a better picture of just them. :D This was taken at the regions' normal night time, so they were both bundled together sleeping, which made for a better picture. ^^

Alee and I visited Japan Kansai and the surrounding sims a little while ago, but I didn't somehow grab any pictures. So, I decided to go wander around with the Shadow Viewer again, because the place was just so beautiful, I wanted to grab pictures with shadows.

It was actually much more productive just to go and snap pictures. I love trying to find the best lighting, and the best angle for a photo with the Shadow Viewer, its so much fun.


But then you throw in the beauty of a historical Japanese sim - and I'm in total heaven. There's just so much to take photos of, I had no idea what to take pictures of first. xD


Normally, I'm not a fan of local lighting, and usually have it off - but this sim did such a great job with capuring moods and such with their lighting, I had to leave it on :D


There are tons of areas to explore at Japan Kansai, from foresty places, to teahouses, to rice fields, and even temples.


And even loads of places to take fantastic photos at. :P


It looks so realistic, even broken down boats are just laying around. ^^


Foresty place. Its so cute - it even had a little wooden plank walkway above the water to cross.


A palce to sit, and admire the... monkeys? O.o;


This was a little secluded place in the middle of the water, you can kneel on the pillow and watch the scenery as well :D


I loved the boats on this sim. They are really well done, and they even rock with the waves of the water.


I think the Shadow Viewer makes things tons beautiful, even the prettiest sims in SL can be made 20 times more stunning by just snapping up pictures in using shadows.


But the sim itself is still really beautiful, and definitely worth a look, if you like Japanese sims. It didn't seem like Alee was much into it as I was, but he still was having fun (I think) :D


Aaaaand, since I always have to snap a picture of me in the sim - here's this one. :D

SLURL: Japan Kansai (128, 128, 2)
Viewer: Boy Lane's Shadow Viewer

Still really depressed from what happened a couple days ago, I decided to play around a bit, and explore somewhere beautiful. I couldn't find anywhere really fantastic that really caught my eye, so I decided to do something really different. Install the awesome Shadow Viewer and explore somewhere that would create incredible shadows!

A couple notes about the shadow viewer first: I would suggest running it on a semi-decent computer. My Nvidia GeForce 8600GT graphics card was not very happy, and grumping along as I snapped these pictures, but it wasn't entirely impossible to do. I can't see myself using this viewer often, probably only to snap scenery pictures. But, just to capture these fantastic shots, makes it totally worth it all.

So, the sim I decided to play around on is called Error. It was filled with lots of rocks, trees and random other things, so I thought this would be perfect to see how the shadow viewer looks.


I think this was some kind of store. There were a couple little furniture (I think that's what they were), and little ladder things for sale in a small-ish building. Also if you poke around the sim, you can find little signs with free stuff in them, that you get just for exploring around. So, its kinda like a... *gasp* hunt!


This probably isn't one of the best shadow viewer pictures I took here, but I still think it turned out pretty nice. It shows a little bit of the shadows :D


When windlight first came out eons ago, it was so amazing to me - it was kind of living in the dark, then suddenly having a light switched on. That's what this new Shadow Viewer did for me again. Its a completely new Second Life experience, and makes you see things in ways you never did before. Really.


As for the sim itself, it kind of reminded me a bit of Miriel's sim, but only with sand textures, and dead trees. It was still really pretty to explore, take pictures in, and experiment with shadow viewer settings.


The really sad thing about this viewer, was that my settings in other viewers weren't saved in this one. I had none of my windlight presets, and took all my pictures, without even realizing I had "High Rez Snapshots" turned off. So, I had to go back and retake all my pictures, and install windlight settings. It was total epic fail. xD


I actually had more fun snapping photos of the rocks and beachy area more than any of the trees and structures. I think they showed the shadows I was going for so much better than the trees did.


The sim had kind of a... lonely feel to it. Or maybe it was just my mood at the time, I don't know. But, it was the kind of feeling where you would just want to sit on the little dock thing here and wait for a boat to come in to the island. xD


This is probably my favorite picture out of this exploration trip. I love the rocks, the shadows, the trees in the background, everything. Its really great. The Error sim is really fantastic, it seems to be all over everyone's Flickr stream right now, so its definitely the place to be. I would totally suggest visiting it, and if you can, try out the shadow viewer there, its pure awesomeness.


However. What happened to my prim lashes in this picture? It said I was wearing them, but the viewer decided it wasn't going to show them to me. :( But, I was pretty impressed shadows worked on avatar attachments as well :O

Download the Shadow Viewer here: Shadow Viewer 1.23.
Explore Error here: Error (118, 176, 38)