I thought I would include some user data currently for Second Life. I was afraid Second Life was losing ground, but this data shows an upward trend.

Population

[source]

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Hey folks,

We are looking for a new SL Exposed writer. If you are a seasoned Second Life-er and would enjoy sharing your knowledge to the world, we would love to have you write for this blog!

Alternatively, you can submit an individual post. Always appreciated.

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I was browsing through Youtube today and came across some fantastic SL tutorials from the wonderful Torley Linden.  He really does put so much effort into making his video tutorials so informative and fun to watch. 

I myself am working on a little tutorial for using clothing templates so hopefully I’ll have that up and running very soon. Though it most definitely won’t be as ‘polished’ as Torley’s, I’ll do my best…  I’ve had so many people asking me about in in-world that I thought I may as well go ahead and do one.  As with nearly everything else in SL, all it takes is practice and lots of it.  I was sorting through my textures yesterday and I couldn’t believe it when I came across the TGA file for the very first item of clothing I created….not a pretty sight…lol

But the more I practiced and experimented, the more I improved and I learned something new everytime…

By the way, if you’ve found any great tutorial links…please feel free to mention them in your comments…

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Can someone please please tell me why people insist on using the term ‘Patty’s Day’?????  I’ve been reading through various classified’s and everyone seems to be using it.  Who on earth is Patty?  Is she someone’s grandmother or is it a bloody hamburger???  For Christ’s sake it’s ‘St. Patrick’s Day’….is it so hard to write? It’s only a few extra letters and they don’t cost anything to use.  Other phrases which seem to have me slightly on edge lately are ‘faith and begorra’…’top o’ the mornin’…..  Seriously folks….not one Irish person I know or have ever known has ever said anything like this.  One classified ad actually suggested to people that they ‘bring their shelaya’.. if you’re going to go the ‘Hollywood’ route the least you could do is spell the bloody words correctly.

Don’t worry though, I think this is a temporary rant and it’ll probably ease off once St. Patrick’s Day is over and done with.

So, just to clarify things a little..

We don’t all wear green and we certainly frown upon green beer.  Leprechauns are not the joyful little creatures such as the one on the Lucky Charms cereal boxes, they can be evil little bastards!  Potatoes are not our main diet (though I will admit that during the Famine, they were sorely missed!) Not all of us have freckles and red hair and  we NEVER say ‘top o’ the mornin’…never ever!

That’s it, rant over…well at least for the moment

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Here are the rules:

1. All entries must fall into one of the following 3 catagories - Landscape (no avatars in the pic), People (species doesn’t matter :-)), Favourite SL Moment (self explanatory).
2. Submissions must be 512×512 and full perms - however they will only be showcased on the blog and not sold or altered in any way.
3. All pictures are to be submitted to me in a notecard with the catagory you’d like your picture to be placed in, your SL name and any other revelant info you’d care to provide.
4. Pics must not be overly-photoshopped……just let your natural talent shine through…
5. All entrants must also subscribe to SL Exposed before being eligible to enter the competition.
6. This Competition runs untill the end of March, winners will be notified by the 7th of April.

Now to the fun part……..

There is a 300L$ prize for each catagory winner and the overall winner receives 1000L$.

Send submissions to Pocket Pfeffer in-world..

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Maybe I’ve just been spending too much time in SL, but today, I discovered that St. Patrick’s Day this year will be held on the 15th of March as opposed to the 17th!!! What on earth is going on?? I’m such a confused little Paddy, my head is about to explode! Oh I know that it’s related to the leap year and Easter etc…but I mean…come on!

Next of all, there’ll be some politician with a very important engagement to go to on the 25th of December, so will that mean that we’ll have Christmas somewhere near the end of November??? One can’t go around changing time-honoured traditions, the world as we know it would descend into unbelievable chaos. We get enough ‘unbelievable chaos’ in SL so we definitely don’t need it in RL as well.

Anyway, enough of my ranting away…. I have to sit down and organize the ‘Photography Competition’…which will begin on Monday. I’m still trying to come up with some interesting catagories etc…and I promise that I will have them for you by tomorrow evening, along with the rules..etc I’m going to have the entire day to myself…oh joy! so I’ll have plenty of time on my hands for important matters.

Oh and by the way, if anyone happens to see me in-world, about to buy something, I’d really appreciate it if you could come up to me and tell me not to…my poor wallet can’t take much more!

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Well, for the last little while, I’ve been sticking to my strict rule of ‘NO MORE SHOPPING’….but unfortunately yesterday, I broke that rule…and to be honest, I’m glad I did.  The sale at ‘Last Call’ began again, and I just had to grab some more beautiful outfits.  It was actually difficult to spot items that I didn’t already have, but I perservered and picked up some more items to add to my already ‘overstuffed’ wardrobe…  So if you’ve a few spare L$, get yourself down to the sale at ‘Last Call’… all the outfits are priced at L$100 and believe me, they’re well worth it at this fantastic bargain price.  ‘Links’ don’t seem to like me very much at the moment, otherwise I’d post one, but I’m sure if you do a search you’ll have no problems locating the store.

I also bought myself yet another texture organizer….from Opus. As I may or may not have mentioned, I’m a bit of a ‘gadget freak’ and I like to buy them whether I need them or not.  This particular one has so many ‘bells & whistles’ that it’s hard to figure out where to begin, but once you get the hang of it, it’s great. I’ve reduced my inventory textures to the bare bones and if I need a particular texture, I just wear my ‘organizer hud’, find the one I want and take it back into my inventory.

‘Fleur’ skins are having a great offer….. you join the group, pick up your free gift card worth L$500 and you can use it to purchase any premium skin from their entire range of skins.  Though I’m not too sure if there’s a time limit on this offer but it’s certainly worth checking out.

After all that shopping, I do feel a little ‘drained’ but believe it or not, I may still have some energy left to do a little more!!

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Without a doubt, shopping is one of Second Life’s most popular activities along with clubbing and dancing the night away. But if you fancy something a little different then I’d suggest you visit the Nickel Arcade run by Rhaorth Antonelli…a very cool person indeed. Well, anyone who could come up with such a fun little place has to be cool!!

The Nickel Arcade is by far one of my favourite places to visit and play a few old-school arcade games such as ‘Whack-a-Mole’, ‘Invaders’ and almost every other arcade game you can think of. There’s even a great looking pool table and a dance

floor. You can pick up a ticket roll that you can wear whilst playing the various games, earning you ‘points’, which you can then exchange for some fun prizes.

This place is very authentic and I just love the arcade atmosphere……it’s very like the real thing. So if you’d like to visit Rhaorth’s ‘Nickel Arcade’ then here’s the slurl..

Nickel Arcade
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jeogori/183/103/97

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Guess what, I’ve found myself a new addiction….and it’s nothing to do with buying more hair and even more clothing…  I’ve found myself becoming attached to my ’sculpties’…. in a manner of speaking of course (mind you, when SL isn’t quite behaving as it should, I do mean that last statement in a very literal sense).

I enjoy a wide variety of activities in SL, building being one of them.  I enjoy trying to build things with low prim counts, as low as I can make them anyway.  I hadn’t really experimented with sculpties before so I thought I’d give it a go.  I downloadedSculptypaint and messed around with it a little.  I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing or what kind of sculpty texture I’d end up with, I was just ‘going with the flow’ so to speak.  Anyway, quite unintentionally I might add, I ended up with a type of pillar/column thingie…. uploaded it into SL and voila!  I had made my very first ’sculptie’.  Not a very exciting one, but at least it was all mine.  Well, this got me thinking about ’sculpties’ in general and how they can help to lower prim counts on builds.

I went shopping for sculpted textures and I came across some really interesting ones, particularily from Cel Edman, who has a wide range of sculpted texture packs that can be put to all sorts of good uses.

So far I’ve made a nice comfy couch, a teddybear, some ballet slippers (not too keen on those though) and an extra set of dishes just in case I have extra guests for SL dinner….lol

Have any of you had experience with creating using sculpted textures?  If so, let me know useful you may or may not have found them….

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