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)

So, when my main PeeCee took its last breaths a few months ago, I traded in my land home for a skybox. The land gave me quite a bit of client lag on the spare computer, but the sky seemed much better. I'm not really sure I miss my home on land, because I don't have to waste prims on landscaping and such in the sky.

This will be a huge picture post, if you don't want pictures, just keep scrolling. I am considering changing houses again, but I wanted to show this house before I get a new house again. xD

My skybox is the Purity from Pixel Mode, and is quite modified. Probably most noticeable is the windows. I wasn't fond of the blinds the house came with, so I took them off and made window tint instead. Kamian took the kitchen door off and made the entrance bigger too ^^


Ever since I received a gift from Azure Islands a few months ago with palm trees and a few 1 prim plants, I've wanted to use them. Palm trees don't really go well with grass, which is what Envision has on the land below, so I stuffed them in a pot up in the sky home :D And, after my Fallingbridge Pixel Mode home, I've gotten to love having a hot tub. So, I'm glad this house has one too :D


I've also been wanting this Planket from the Loft for like, forever. I told myself, the next house I get, will have to have a place for the Planket. While this spot isn't really perfect for it, it works well. ^^


Another set of patio furniture. XD I'm obsessed with them, I swear. I guess that's why I love houses with big patios - I have too much outside furniture that needs to be brought out xD


And inside the house, is sitting area number 1. The TV doesn't work... yet, mainly because I am so lazy and can't be bothered to get it set up. o.o;


Sitting area number 2. And, I just HAD to put the Christmas gift Kamian got done for me up. I think it might have been one of the first things I put out for decorating this house. It still makes me happy whenever I look at it. :D


Another view of the sitting area number 2. I am teh fail at SL interior design, but its still fun to do anyways.


I have blogged this before, but its part of the house, and I have to blog it again. xD My awesome kitchen that Kamian made for me. :D I didn't really like the kitchen that came with the house, so he made this really quickly. ^^


The second thing he made for me was this dining room set. Its super primmy, but there really wasn't a way around it. xD I love it still. Oh, and I made the table runner thing, I'm so proud \o/


Another view of the dining room set. The Loft sent the little console table out as a group gift a few days ago, and it looked PERFECT in the dining room, and was exactly what I was looking for for that spot. Its awesome. :D


Lastly, the bedroom. I had a nightmare of a time deciding on a bedroom set. I absolutely fell in love with a set from The Loft, but couldn't bring myself to pay $3,000L for a bed that will never be used. I hunted around, and found an entire set at Aria for less than half the bed at The Loft. This set came with a vanity, little stool thing, bed, attached bedside tables and a dresser (not shown here) for less than half the cost of The Loft bed. Oh, but the lamps were from the Loft, and I made the hanging wall things. xD

The best thing about this bedroom set: its completely color change! I can change the wood, pillow color, blanket pattern, and pretty much everything else. Omg its awesome. :D


While I love my skybox, I absolutely HATE this. I have no idea wtf it is, but it totally messes up my pretty view of the sky. When I inspect it, its called "Moon", and seems to belong to someone who lives on the opposite side of the sim. And I can't return it because its not on my land.

I didn't notice it when I set the skybox up because my draw distance was set too low. Now, its all I focus on. If I can figure out a way to move my skybox up without having to set everything back up, I will do that -_-

I did one of these not to long ago, but figured it couldn't hurt to do another, after Laleeta blogged her brave then/now picture. Here's mine:

So, my computer really has said its final words to me, which is never good. No matter what Kamian tells me to try, it seriously will not work. I am considering purchasing a new computer, which will probably happen sort of mid-February at the earliest. I'm a bit depressed, but will have to get over it. Until then, I have a crap spare computer which averages 4 frames per second - which will have to work until then.

I had to do vendor ads for Imperial Elegance's new release before the beginning of the year though, which was quite painful with Windlight - but not entirely impossible. While I had the client opened up, I thought I'd take advantage of it and take a couple pictures, just because.

I do love playing with pictures, and I vowed to myself that when I get PC fixed (or buy a new one) - I will start playing with photos more, and learning new techniques with post processing photos. I wish to be able to learn highlighting, shading, and general touch ups for SL photos.


So, I think they turned out pretty good. I am happy that I am still actually able to run Windlight, even if its uber slow. I even used one of these pictures as my new plurk theme, as well as my profile photo.

I got in a HUGE blowout with some asshole on the road this morning, so I figure I'd make a blog post, to try to calm down. Its been like 3 hours, and I'm still seething. -.- I really wish people would stop being such jerks. -.- So, I apologies if I seem negative today; I'm not in a good mood XD

Anyway, I took this picture a while ago - after I purchased additional makeups for my favorite skin. I was playing with windlight settings, trying to get the sky and environment to match my makeup. I failed, considering the sky is more purple than my makeup, but I was ultimately pleased with the outcome.

My boat is a fantastic place to take pictures - There are just so many different ways to pose around it, that it makes it really fun. I've also taken a liking to fishing on it - its fun. :D


And, I took this picture right after fishing. I've been wondering why my water doesn't sparkle with my windlight settings - but after playing with the sun position, I've finally fixed it. I get really fantastic sparkly water now - so this was made to show that ^^

I've been dealing with the linden support people on an issue I been having with the standard client (It immediately crashes on me), so, they suggested I uninstall and reinstall both the standard client as well as the RC one to see if that fixes it. I did it, and I felt incredibly angry at myself for not backing up my windlight settings before I did that. I spent hours configuring several of them, so I will be using this page to document them mainly for myself (so I always have a backup here), but if anyone likes them, feel free to check out the settings and copy them to your own viewer :D

This is the main setting I've been using for Fashion Labyrinth photos, and just picture taking in general. You can see the effect on avatars, land, sky and water in this picture:

And, here are the settings to get this. You may want to click on the above picture to be directed to my Flickr page where you can view it in a larger size. :D Also note that while it isn't necessary to wear a face light, I do, in fact wear one made by Caliah Lyon (which you can find in her windlight setting notecard at her store, Muse).


I do hope these work for you, and make your windlight experience better. The pretty skies aren't all that intimidating as you may think :D

Now, last night was a horrid experience with installing a graphics card. I guess now that the panic is over, I can talk about it a little. I did my research before I bought a new one. I found that I had a integrated video card, opened my computer up and seen it - and seen at I had 3 white PCI slots, and 1 black empty, opposite facing slot that looked the same. Ok, so I still had no idea what I was doing. As a matter of fact, I have never even seen what a video card looked like.

I wrote down all the graphics cards that were recommended to play SL, and went to Fry's. While walking in there, had the thought in my head that I was going to ask a worker for help while I was there. As I stood in the video card section, completely baffled and clueless about what I was looking at, I seen the GeForce 8600GT was on sale at $119 from $149 (with a $50 mail in rebate as well). Cool :D

Excited, I grabbed it, and hunted down a victim to ask my questions. I found some dorky looking guy, who was a total jerk. And, because he was not nice, my questions to him was limited. I told him what slots I have, and asked which one it should go into. He told me the black slot, and that it just slipped in there. Seemed easy enough. :D

I get home, immediately set it on the kitchen table, open the case up and rolled back my sleeves. I opened the package for the video card, and omg - it had the cutest little fan on it XD So, I gently started to put the card in the slot.... but one side (the piece of steel that pops out the back of the computer) was stopping one side from going in all the way. I struggled to fit it in there for about 30 minutes, and was even considering cutting off the offending steel appendage that was pissing me off.

Eventually, I grabbed a screwdriver and pulled that side of it farther out, so it would fit into the slot it was supposed to be in ( I'm sure this doesn't make sense - but it made sense to me at the time XD). It snapped in, and I was thrilled. I closed it all up, took it back upstairs and hooked everything all up.

Turned it on, and my monitor got no signal. Great. I spent the rest of the 6 hours disabling the onboard grapphics in the device manager, trying to figure out where to disable in in the bios (I did keep the primary to the PCI-E slot, but it still didn't work), updating the bios software.... everything. I took the dog for a walk and pondered what to do next. I decided I'd send a call for help on my blogs, wait for the rest of the night, and then make a phone call to NVIDA first thing in the morning.

I posted my cry for help on 2 of my blogs, and then decided to try one more thing, before I shut it down for the night. I wanted to start the process all over again, the way it was meant to be installed. I brought the computer back downstairs, took out the new graphics card, brought it back upstairs, hooked it up, and turned it on. I then disabled the card via Device Manager, and made sure the BIOS said PCI-E. Turned it off, took it back downstairs, and put the new card back in. Brought it back upstairs, plugged everything in, and turned it back on. It started right up.

I went around the house screaming that I fixed it, and was totally thrilled. :D :D I installed the new drivers, and everything worked perfectly. OMG. I was sooooooo happy.

The first thing I did was start Second Life. It was so incredible, because I have never been able to experience SL the way it was meant to be. I always had my graphics at the lowest settings, because I get major computer lag, and I can't move otherwise. Now, I can boost all my settings up to the Ultra option, and really see what Windlight is all about. Its amazing, and really stunning. I am so happy with my new card, and it made all that work, stress and time really worth it.

I spent this morning tweaking the settings to make avatars look good, and I think I have found my setting:

I have taken off all 4 of my face/body lights, which is really amazing to me - and I am only wearing the face light that Caliah Lyon made. I never thought I'd be able to part with my lights, and it makes for a more amazing SL experience. :D

I am also noticing little problems here and there - for example... my ears no longer match my skin tone, and my photosphere is no longer a "neutral" with this setting. But, I am still experimenting and I hope to get it down soon. ^^

Every 5 seconds I've been telling the people around me IRL that "I looooooove my graphics card" XD I am so excited about it - this definitely opens loads of photographing opportunities for me ^^

So, so far, I've installed a new hard drive, twice as much RAM, and a new video card... and it hasn't exploded yet. And, its also important to know that I had no idea what I was doing in any of those times. O.o;;;

I think I may be the only one who absolutely loves the Dazzle interface. I had really loved it before Windlight® became the main viewer, but I hated the old Second Life skies that it had - so I never used it. I've been hearing about this new ARC feature that Dazzle has, and considering I have plans to go to the Bellagio for a wedding fashion show today, I was curious about how much lag the outfit that took me 5 hours to decide on would cause.

So, I downloaded the Dazzle viewer, expecting to see the old, crappy Second Life skies. However, I was totally shocked to see the newer skies on there. O_O So, I think the Dazzle viewer will become my new favorite one. ^.^ I was also happy to see my outfit was 844 ARC - still in the yellow, but better than in the red.

And while I am on the subject of the new skies, I have to say: I think Atmospheric Rendering with avatars look like crap. I think the rendering looks amazing with scenery photos, and pictures of things - but when it comes to avatars, I haven't seen a single preset that looks somewhat decent. The avatars look white, washed out, and blah. There are a few fashion blogs on the feed that use settings that make the clothing look terrible. Especially skins. Seriously, taking pictures with washed out presets is soooo bad. What were my favorite blogs - after the switch to the new viewer - became my least favorites now.

Personally, I never have the atmospheric rendering on. One: because most of the time, my PC can not handle it. Second: I can not get anything to look right. I had tried several presets - including the praised Caliah Lyon's settings, but still doesn't look right. I am at the point where I don't really care what I look like in other people's viewers. I will keep my 7 face lights and no pretty skies... as long as I look good to myself. ^.^

I am soooooo excited about this latest Windlight release! For the past couple releases, I got no water reflections, unless I render the pretty sky too. That was a real bummer for me, because I loved the water more than the sky, and when I turn on the pretty sky option, my PC has spaz attacks. However, this release brought back the reflections without the sky for me! OMG, I'm so excited! I wanted to take a few shots with the water, so I put on a bikini and headed out to the place I spend a lot of my time - the beach of Bats' and my home.


Another thing I'm excited about - transparent objects stay transparent! OMG, it was sooooo annoying zooming out of something, and seeing all the invisible things. Really messed up pictures with various particle emitters, facelights, and hair with alpha textures. It really drove me nuts.

I wish though - that snapshots would be fixed. I can't use snapzilla anymore because everytime I attempt to send anything smaller than my screen size, it only captures a tiny bit of the image. TT_TT So, to take pictures, I have to save them to hard drive, resize them in Photoshop, and upload them. So much work TT_TT

I have been waiting MONTHS for the return of Windlight - and its finally back! .... However, it isn't all I was hoping it would be. I downloaded it yesterday, but finally played with some presets and settings today. And, I was standing at home while I did this, so my pictures of the awesome Windlight is taken at Bats' and my SL residence. Hehe~


Yes, Windlight is amazingly pretty. I love it. However - my PC is over a year old, and apparently can not handle many of the features. When I turn on the pretty clouds, my SL performance goes downhill. It becomes very choppy, which is very annoying for me. The clouds are great for picture taking, because my computer can't handle them all the time.


Another thing - it messes up my facelight. For those who know me well, you know that is catastrophic for me. Anything that interferes with my facelight is trashed. Because of this reason alone, I don't think I will be using this viewer too often. Also - I also noticed that after moving the camera around, and reseting it - things refuse to rez. This morning, I was out shopping, zoomed in on something, and my avatar refused to rez when I reset my camera. I had to relog to be able to see myself again. O_o