Second Learning

All Pictures in this blog entry were taken at Dream Gardens Arboretum. A location with, as my mom would say, "Pretty peeps." Visit them and help their traffic numbers!

Have you ever been in the position where you suddenly realize that you need to change clothes? Is it somewhere that you cannot chance even the slightest moment of nudity (which may happen if you just drop a folder onto your avatar)? For example, a PG sim filled with AR-happy individuals? Then I've got the answer for you.

Introducing my dressing booth. Want to make your own? It is a 2 m tall cylinder with a 1 m X and Y size. Texture it however you'd like. Attach to spine. Or if you are not a builder, see the bottom of this post for how to get one, free of charge.

Here is Viv Perrin, our loveable EduCube photographer (with her awesome Windlight), and I suppose she should also be called "model" because she's in more pictures than I am. Hi Viv. Everybody wave.

Viv is going to change her clothes for you. But before you get all excited, reread the title of this post.

The first thing that Viv wants to do is locate her Dressing Booth in her inventory, right-click it, and choose Wear.

Now you won't be able to see Viv anymore. And, for that matter, you won't be able to see what she's wearing, which is the point. You cannot tell if she is wearing nothing or anything or just the Dressing Booth. And you cannot get ARed for being a non-human character, in this case "The Cylinder". So you have essentially mastered the Dressing Booth in just one step.



But there are a few useful tricks to help keep the dressing booth in place until you are ready for it to go away.

First of all, you are limited to using your inventory to add or subtract clothing from your outfit. Trying to drag a folder onto your avatar may result in the Dressing Booth disappearing before you are ready and exposing naughty-bits in places you shouldn't be exposing them. Or ruining your big new-outfit reveal. Or any other embarrassing situation you could imagine.

Clothes all have to be handled by locating the item, right clicking, and making use of two inventory commands:



Add to Outfit puts the clothes on/replaces whatever you are currently wearing that is the same clothing layer/has the same attachment point.

Take Off Items does what it says. It removes those items from what you are currently wearing.

You can use either of these commands on whole folders. If you Add to Outfit the folder/outfit you want to wear, and Take Off Items the folder/outfit you no longer want to be wearing, you have essentially done the same thing as the "Replace Outfit"/drop a folder on your Av command. However, unlike that command, you are CERTAIN that your dressing booth will stay in place.*

* Unless you are attaching something to your spine with Add to Outfit in which case it will replace your dressing booth.

So how is Viv doing? Let's look:



The last step is simple, detaching the Dressing Booth.

And with that, you've changed clothes in public without nudity. :)
(Click on the picture to see it in a larger size. The Dream Gardens Arboretum looks amazing.)

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How do you get an (EduCube) Dressing Booth? Well, for right now you have to IM Jasmin Loire in-world. She'll happily drop one on you the next time she is on. However, if you wait long enough she'll eventually put one in her "Freebies for Newbies" vendor.

Labels: clothing, tutorial

Last night, the Forum Cartel hosted a formal Un-Valentines Dance.

The Forum Cartel are the folks who hang around SL's Resident Answers forum (you cannot access it without verified payment info). They pooled their tier and donated it to a group of their creating and built the Forum Cartel hangout. If you go there, eventually someone else will show up, and just like on the real forums, these guys are usually very helpful.

That said, the invitation said:


Formals or Zoot Suits? Aaah! Even though the invitation said "optional", I figured that I must be able to do it.

But before I did, I sneakily dropped by the party. It was before our live DJ had shown up, but the party was already in full swing. I made my green mini-map dot be in a different location from the cluster, but cammed in.

And what did I see? Too many female(ish) avs for the number of available male(ish) avs.

As a very taken RL woman, I knew that whoever I danced with would be all in good fun. In other words, nothing romantic or even remotely romantic about it. So I figured that I'd do my part for gender balance and come as a male avatar. Which, coincidently is normally much harder to do but this time was much easier.

I had a male kit (shape, skin, hair) in my inventory that I'd been collecting for just this sort of occasion (get your own Jack in a Box for 1 L$). And since I'm not normally male, I didn't mind at all that I wasn't going to look as stunning as the female avatars, because all I was there to do was get some of the gowned female avatars off of the sidelines and on to the dance floor.

I TPed off to the SS Galaxy: Queen of the Sagittarian Sea (which is an amazing build and much deserving of exploring in its own right). I headed directly to their Zodiac Ballroom (which again is a stunning build in its own right). There, they have two stunning gown (sets). The one from Blaze (remember how Viv drooled over Blaze?) is free but you can only look like the image. The other one, from Matahari, comes with a variety of customizable options for making it look the way you want it to look.



But the main attraction is the tux on the Blaze sign. Free. A free tux. From Blaze. It was mine faster than you could say, "I wonder if I'll look good in gold."

Then it was off to EduCube Headquarters where, in the privacy of my own temporary skybox, I changed into my male avatar. I convinced Viv to snap a picture of me and her as male-me and female-me ... both in the same tux. Isn't it stunning no matter what the gender of its wearer?



My female-hair, while very not free (150 L$) came from Sirena and had two styles, depending on whether or not I was wearing hair sticks. Well worth the hard-earned money. Here is an image of me with the other style (on left).

Where'd I get the money for such fabulous hair? Well, I warned you that I was paid for a previous tutorial. I was paid enough for the hair :)

It turns out that with every Blaze gown that is purchased from the main store, you get a transferable color-matched shirt/vest/tie clothing item (they call it a vest) for your sweetie to wear as part of his or her tux, provided they already have the jacket and pants. If your sweetie grabs the tux from the SS Galaxy, then the jacket and pants won't be a problem.

Or perhaps you are a female avatar who doesn't mind going to formal occasions in a tux? See if anyone around has a Blaze gown and no use for their tux vest. You can then be amazingly stylish in it for free.

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!! ~ Some Pictures from the Evening ~ !!

My RL boyfriend who is in control of the avatar Lupus Yokosuka, usually plays large amounts of World of Warcraft and avoids Second Life like the plague. He'll even be busy washing dishes or folding laundry, when I ask him to come in-world. Well, since I pointed out how important it was that he log in to even out the gender balance, he logged in and tangoed me around the dance floor for a bit.


^^ Thanks honey. The gown I'm wearing was cobbled together from the skirt of the Blaze gown offered next to the tux, and the top of the LaynieWear Lavender Hibiscus Dreams gown (which wasn't long enough of else I would have worn it by itself). I tossed in some free gloves that I found at the Tete-a-Pied Fleur sim (my skin is TaP as well and available for free to those who are 30 days old or less), and a resized/tinted ribbon belt made by Jen Shikami (from Seven's Selections; landlord of the fabulous Flotsam Beach).


This story is actually being told out of order, because I hadn't realized how amazing I'd look as a female in a tux until I was dancing with Madhu. She had seen me around before and knew that I was a female and told me that she swoons for females in tuxes, so could I change back? And so I did. Which is what led to the pictures above of Viv and myself rocking the tuxes. Thanks Madhu! Go on with your blue self!

This is Jasmin Loire signing off and dancing the night away!

(more pictures than you'll know what to do with)

Labels: clothing, news

One of the things I like about the TUi Instructor Training Course I'm taking is that my group is made up of really great gals and we seem to mesh as a group. I've heard murmurings from others in the class that their groups are a little less cohesive. The deal with our group is that we all have familiarity with the same SL gadgets, so we spend less time telling each other what an individual item does, and more time discussing practical uses of such.

That said ... one of my group-members - and dare I say internet-friends - and I had a chat today about identity. You see, we are not of the fashionista movement that appears to have overtaken Second Life. One of the things I mentioned, having no evidence at all, was that I think that a greater percentage of people in Second Life are into more daring fashions than are available in Real Life.

Prove me right. Take my poll so I have some data. The poll (survey?) asks how many outfits you've collected over your Second Lifetime. Don't worry, your answer is completely anonymous.

So what are you waiting for, I need data!

For the record, I have 7 outfits put together right now. I soon will have 8, since I find that I keep ending up in Vampire/Dungeon parties (which have no sexual overtones, thank-you-very-much) so I figure I need something a little more appropriate to wear than my usual t-shirt and jeans.

Labels: clothing, news

There are, of course, other places besides Manpower Sim to find professional clothing.

Because I so completely fell in love with the business suits that were offered by Blaze, I decided to head out and find a business suit that I could wear on my newbie-friendly budget. Since surveys pay out around LS $35 a pop, I figured that would be the upper limit of the budget.

Tipped off by Girl Meets Second Life and Illusions, I decided to see what this Bare Rose store had to offer. After all, if they have male business suits, perhaps they have female ones as well?

First, here is what Illusions had to say:

::BareRose:: - If someone asked me what I thought was the largest and most popular store on SL, without a second thought I would say Barerose. They have the largest concentration of awesomeness in the virtual world, and if any place deserves the term "mecca", it's B@R. Their prices aren't exactly freebie price (although they do have a freebie corner, and a 10L store), but their prices are so insanely low for the quality of work you're getting (125L for a full color pack of gothic wear you'll worship and adore), I'd be a horrible person if I didn't list them here. From conservative to uber goth, to ethereal elf lady to cyber queen, from slinky lingerie and swimwear to traditional Japanese kimono, they have something for EVERYone.

So I popped on over to Bare Rose to see what I could find. They mix their dollarbies, and cheapies, in with the rest of the general population of the items at their store. And the store is massively overwhelming. This almost made me want to hire a personal shopper to navigate for me to find a cheap business suit for women, so that I could write this entry for you. Which, in turn, inspired me to create the current EduCube contest. But, armed with grit and determination, I pressed on.

Before I go any further, I'd like to take a moment to explain how I am indicating the locations of things after this point. I am listing locations as (X, Y, Z) for the x-coordinate, y-coordinate, and z-coordinate. How do you use this? Well, you can walk around until you luck out on the right set of coordinates, or you can open up your map and at the bottom right there are three coordinate values. Change these to the ones listed, and you should magically teleport to the locations I have listed. If not, it is back to walking around until you figure out the right set of coordinates.

(130, 30, 30) The first suit that I stumbled upon is called The President. Even though it is being modeled by male avatars, I have no doubt that it would look equally as good on a female avatar. You get both the blue and the brown double-breasted suit, along with all three tie color choices for a cheap (but pricy for our budget) 140 L$. Youch. We need something cheaper.


(61, 49, 30) At 100 L$, this is cheaper than The President and you can, of course, wear it without the apron to give professional talks at formal symposia (such as, say, accepting the Nobel Prize in Economics), but then if you were going to the Nobel Prize awards in Second Life, you could also afford the price tag associated with this outfit. For our purposes, however, it is still considerably outside of our 35 L$ budget. Moving on.







And look at that, our prayers have been answered by finding the section of Bare Rose (NW corner) where everything is 10 L$. Of course, this also means that there is no rhyme or reason to the layout of the store, as it is picture after picture after picture after ... well, you get the idea. With that in mind, hopefully you can use the picture that I have to help you narrow down the exact location of these amazing finds:

(239, 229, 34) Remember that you can click on the pictures for a larger photo so that you can better locate the find. What we see here are three business suits, each priced at an affordable 10L$. There is Business 101, 102, and 103; each different from the other by color alone. Also, next to the suits are three different bowtie outfits (I think they are the complete outfit, but I did not have the L$ to check). For the purposes of my shopping, I decided that the blue suit would complete my look so I purchased that one.

Right click on the box and select "Buy" to purchase.



Even though this suit was modeled by a male avatar, I decided to try it on anyway. And what do you know, it looks just as good on me as it did on the avatar model. Or at least I think so! Please excuse my photography skills, I don't know enough about lighting to fix the lighting in this picture, and because everyone and their brother is signed in to SL today, it is laggy and I didn't feel like fixing it anyway. Just wanted to take a quick picture and then move on from there.

By the way, I take all of my pictures in Windlight, the First Look viewer (more on that probably next week -- I'm halfway done with writing that entry). Isn't it amazing how well the water, sky, and clouds texture? It almost really /is/ a Second Life.



-= Jasmin Loire =-

Labels: clothing

I scooped FabFree! Awesome! (Update: It appears that they have since blogged about the fabulous find as well, but when I left a tip on their tip line, they still hadn't.)

I'm on Wilted Rose's Subscribe-o-Matic group and when I logged in today I was informed that there was a new outfit out by their tree. A new outfit and then some. So I've gone from looking like the image on the left, to looking like the image on the right (click for bigger picture), at least until Christmas has passed.



Here's how I did so for 3 L$. Need money, get it with no money down.

Skin: S4 Creme from Tuli - 0 L$
Hair: Candy Cane Valentina from Wilted Rose - 1 L$
Shape and Eyes: Eve from Style Your Destiny - 1 L$
Shirt, Pants, Cuffs, Shoes, Socks, Scarf, Ear Muffs: Winter Outfit(s) from Wilted Rose - 1 L$

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And don't forget our wreath building class with one session offered just for blog readers.

Labels: clothing

I bet you think I forgot that this was a weekend. Nope!

So you want to dress professionally so that you can teach your students, but you do not want to spend your hard earned PowerPoint L$ to do so? There are many different ways to update your look for free or cheap, but today I am going to take you on a photo tour of Manpower Island to show you my best way for getting outstanding professional clothing with very little money down.

First, Manpower Island is a staffed sim, meaning that there is always a greeter around to welcome you. So do not be shocked/rude/taken aback when the greeter does just that. If you'd like them to go away, so you can get your shop on in private, just tell them that you've visited before and you'll be sure to let them know if you have any questions.

Your first stop needs to be inside the Manpower lobby. To get in, you will need to touch the double doors. If you have trouble doing this, then please feel free to ask the greeter to help you arrive at your destination.

By the way, here's Manpower's official website about their presence in Second Life.

Please meet Viv Perrin, my official model who will be photographed for the purposes of this blog. I created her using OnRez's CSI: NY avatar creation form. Why? Because I wanted something more than the default noob look for a model for this blog. Anyway, Viv is sitting on a chair in the Manpower lobby.

This is Viv's default look. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but also not the most professional for leading a class. Let's see if we can fix that for no money down.

Over along the rear wall of the Manpower lobby, there are some posters that advertise a few designers in Second Life who have created business, or business casual outfits. However, these outfits are not cheap. There is also a wall full of potential packages entitled "Decosta Limited". We like this. This is free. Grab the avatars and/or the avatar parts for the gender you have chosen.



Since Viv is a female, I grabbed the female avatars and the female avatar parts. Then, it is off to a sandbox.

To get to a sandbox, remember that you are going to need to do a search in "Places" for the word "sandbox".

Once there, we are going to open the boxes that we received to remove our items. Remember, right-clicking on the item in your inventory and choosing "wear" will place that item of clothing on your body.

I managed to give Viv a more professional look by using the formal attire pants and the black crocheted dress shirt. I had to remove about six pieces of clothing to pull this off, but in the end I think the look doesn't overwhelm the students with feelings of insecurity (this is what I picked up from any suit-wearing professor) but at the same time says, "Leave your toys at home, this is a place to be serious."

Coincidently, back at Manpower, there was an advertisement on the wall for Blaze and their selection of suits and powersuits. I went over to the Blaze store to check it out. 500 L$! Youch, but I so want ... Perhaps one of my students will be extremely generous with me during my next class.

Labels: clothing