Good hair day

[Safety advisory: those of my readers who are faint of heart - especially the female ones - are advised to be safely seated before proceeding with this post. Please keep a telephone handy for emergency calls. If you need something to calm your nerves - like a glass of eggnog - please take it as a precautionary measure.]

I love my hair! My first hair ever after my newbie hair was "Spike Brown" by Adam'n'Eve, and it took me many weeks until I settled on "Luth" from Elikapeka Tiramisu Designs (ETD). My budget was tight back then, and I only bought a pack of 3 browns, but it was exactly the style I wanted. Short, a little bit messy, youthful. A great style - and it did not bother me that it was marketed for women. No, I actually enjoyed it that it set me apart a bit, being probably the only male avatar wearing it. ETD's "Luth" defined the way my avatar looked since I bought it, and with very few exceptions I wore it all the time since December 2007!

I'm sorry, Ladies, yes, I wear the same hairstyle for 27 months straight

Recently my friends Faerie Hax and Dunan Wilder suggested to me in a kind and subtle (cough) way that my hair is outdated, and as a consequence dragged me through countless hair stores, among others Find Ash, Zero Style, Sadistic Hacker, Truth, Exile, Little Heaven, Novocaine, Tiny Bird and Tukinowagima - I ended up with 27 demos that were considered as finalists! Alas, while there were many nice styles among them, none of them "clicked", and ruefully and under the disapproving gaze of Faerie I returned to ETD's "Luth".

And then, a few days ago, I saw the advert for Truth Hawks' new style "Peta". (As a sidenote, don't ever try to google for "peta truth" - it gets hundreds of results - none of which is relevant to SL hairstyles). "Peta" immediately clicked. I could immediately see me wearing it and got the demo. I wore the demo for two days, and asked my friends what they think of it. All of them loved it. All of them said it is the right successor for my old hair - similar in style, but more modern in appearance. So finally, after more than two years, I changed my hair.

Copybutt

I experience weird graphics card glitches quite often, and seeing part of my body-texture plastered all across my body in a WRONG way is not unusual. But seeing my eyeballs on my lower body was actually the weirdest and grossest glitch so far.

So, yeah, it's my copybutt :-)

Bare Rose Roulette

Buy the first outfit that rezzes.

(Initially started here - for those who don't "get" the joke, find "Bare Rose Tokyo" in the SL search and teleport there. And take some time :-) )

Beauty is skin deep

It got suggested to me a while ago, that the skin I used is not up to speed anymore. I know (female) friends who change their skin all the time, and spend literally L$-fortunes on getting the latest skins. And while I admire the quality, it is rather confusing to me nonetheless. My SL sister Trinity is just like me - she used her skin for ages until recently she changed it for a new version. Since I was honored to give my feedback I know that she shopped around for a long time, until she found a skin she was comfortable in.

I tried a few demos of male skins, but they all changed me. I spent a good deal of time tweaking my avatar. I don't like the majority of male avatars - many look like caricatures, using Conan the Barbarian and the Incredible Hulk as role models. Grossly oversized chests on ridiculously small hips - muscles exaggerated as well. The market for male skins seems to cater for that - hairless chests and shiny "sixpacks" dominate. However my shape is rather small, with realistic proportions. Peter Stindberg is a fragile avatar with a subtle maleness - not a bodybuilder.

What made me most reluctant however was how a skin changes your face. I like my face, I like the expression of softness, affection, empathy and curiosity with a subtle smile. All the demos I tried ruined this.

My favorite elf and wonderful friend Elusyve pointed me towards Hart Larssons PXL Creations and urged me to get some demos of the new "Jude" skin. I tried the demo and my mouth fell open. What I saw was me, but in a new, enhanced version! The face stayed the same, the body features stayed the same, but all of it had a subtle enhancement, a fresh polish.

Well, enough words, let the images speak:


The chest hair (which I like despite any fashion trends) is much finer than on my old skin. The pubic hair is a bit strong, but usually invisible anyways.


Extremely important for me is the face. I remained the same unshaven look. They eyebrows are more defined and my eyes come out more prominent.


The butt on my old skin was a bit more contrasted, but then again the shadow in the butt crack was a bit too strong. With the new skin the shadow might be a tad too subtle though. The arms and back of the hands are more defined.

The skin came at a whopping 2000 L$, including a set of 15 different body-hair options, but only one face. Since I only ever wear the same body hair, I would have preferred a pack which would include all 10 different face options. I might spend another 2000 L$ and get the clean shaved pack.

Despite this minor issue, I am extremely happy with the skin. It is still me, does not change me, subtly enhances my characteristics and features. Thank you everybody who encouraged me, who gave feedback - and thank you Hart for such a beautiful skin!

Plus d'images - moins de blahblah (English post)

Many years ago I was driving a car late at night through France, and I urgently needed some upbeat music to keep me awake (that was before every car had a CD player - yes, I'm that old). Unfortunately, all the stations seemed to have talkshows on - whenever I found something with music, as soon as it ended there were people talking without end. Finally I found a station that played a good song. And another good song. And yet another good song. And then came the jingle "Radio something - plus de musique, moins de blahblah" - more music, less chitchat. It brought me safely to the border, from where on my known stations took me home.

I am interested in SL fashion a lot, and I read many fashion blogs and metafeeds. However the output rate of all those blogs is massive - a day without monitoring the feeds leaves you with 100-200 unread posts or more. A few weeks ago I used Yahoo Pipes to rinse, clean, sift and sanitize the fashion feeds so I get a dupechecked and filtered result. That was tremendous help and brought down the daily posts to ~30.

Over the weekend, I refined my process further, and now have a complex pipeset that still rinses, cleans, filters and dupechecks the feeds, but now only shows the images from the posts! Except for the very few designers whose blogs I follow seperately, what interests me from the fashion feeds are the images. If I like something, I click through to the original post to see what the reviewer wrote, and to see what stores are actually featured.

So, here we go - please feel free to use and clone the pipes, or to simply subscribe to the resulting feeds:

1. 7 sanitized and dupechecked fashion megafeeds, including the text: webpage, RSS feed
2. The same 7 feeds, but images only: webpage, RSS feed
3. Freebies and Dollarbies listed on Xstreet SL and SLUniverse/SLShopper: webpage, RSS feed
   

Enjoy!

Ornamental Christmas

It's all Ana Lutetia's fault! Back in October she blogged about flirting in Ornamental Boudoir, showing the jewellery creations of my girlfriend Skinkie Winkler together with some beautiful lingerie from a designer I have not heard of before - Shir Dryke of Ornamental Life.


Photo courtesy of Ana Lutetia

I visited Shir's shop on a few occasion since then, and I really like the quality of the creations. Her lingerie brings fresh colors and original concepts, and her regular clothing has a casual chique that can be combined with a lot of outfits. And - as my friend Ivanova points out - finally a designer who is "Not afraid of the color green".

Recently, Shir Dryke announced a 50% storecard sale with a rather sad photo. I emailed her and asked about the reason for the sad face, and she shared some RL issues with me. I respect and admire her request for not dragging those issues into public, but if you like Shir's creation, I would like to urge you to take advantage of her storecard sale - you really help her with that.