Thursday, May 30, 2013

I Rethink My Southwestern Jewelry


When I was about six months into Second Life I set out to find some Navajo-style turquoise jewelry. Why? Because I like it in real life. I found lots of high prim fancy bracelets and necklaces and armbands, but not what I wanted-- and so I set out out to create some.

I'd had a few months to learn the SL interface and building tooks, but I was still a novice. I didn't quite know what I was doing (in fact, one prim I came across this week is named "Gem-- Don't Know What I'm Doing," but somehow I accomplished my goal. I was soon wearing belt, necklace, bracelets, and earrings in silver turquoise.

People responded well to the jewelry and I set it for sale. I maintained a half-ass store area, but most of my sales were on the twin websites On Rez and XStreet-- and, when Linden Lab purchased them, on the Second Life Marketplace.

Not wanting to co-opt the Navajo Nation, I called my jewelry Southwestern. I had nine pieces (two belts, two bracelets, three necklaces, and two pairs of earrings) in nine stones, available in both silver and gold. That made (quick math exercise) 9 x 9 x 2 items, for a grand total of 162 products to build, photograph, package, and set for sale in three different places.

That pretty much shut me down in the sales department.

I don't know why I didn't figure this out in 2007, but it would have made more sense to have nine products with a script to change their textures.

When the Marketplace did away with magic boxes and I was faced with re-doing all those products, I belatedly realized I need to change my strategy.

And so I wrote a script that allows the owner to select from nine semi-precious stones. The script not only changes texture, but color, and sets the texture density.

I toyed with the idea of including a command to delete the script, but as each piece contains only a single touch script, and since the jewelry is modifiable, I decided against it. I also decided against having the script change the metal.



I now have gold and silver sets in vendors at my store space 4000 meters above Whimsy. Within a day or two they'll be available at the Marketplace.

I'm going to move forward with creating a real store. Flights of Fancy will be athe wonderful (and huge!) Sub-Orbital Asteroid Retreat here.

I've set the vendors to give a 25% discount to members of the Flights of Fancy group; I'll also be sending gifts to group members twice a month.

I'll be documenting all this on my Flights of Fancy blog. I'll only occasional post store-related material here-- mainly when I'm excited about something.

Photos of Jewelry are below the line.

Monday, May 27, 2013

FLICKR Gets New Look, Unlimited Photos


Yahoo owns the photo-sharing website FLICKR (and now TUMBLR). Last week the company rolled out a new and much-improved interface for FLICKR. Even better, the old limit of 200 photos for free accounts is gone. Now you get 1 TB of space (think a half million full-sized photos) and lots of space for videos. The 4-set limit is gone, too! Read about it here.

My FLICKR account has been mostly static since I used up all my slots years ago. No longer. I spent most of yesterday putting in photos I couldn't before. They look wonderful in the slideshow mode.

You can view my (free!) FLICKR account here. Try the slide show.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Virtual Steampunk Characters

The White Elephant Burlesque Society at Steampunk World's Fair 2013
Last week Sweetie and I drove from her fortress of solitude in the Ramapo Mountains to Piscataway, New Jersey for the Steampunk World's Fair.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

I Would Bend Over Backwards for You


While browsing through my Second Life photos I came across this one of me, taken by the notorious Sweetie.