avatars – Ahuva’s Blog

That 10-yr Challenge

Or, Why I Love My Avatar.

I have no intention of participating in the current “10 year challenge” that is happening on social media. ahuva-in-sl First because I’m sure it is another attempt to mine personal data for someone else’s benefit, not mine. Another reason is that often my profile pic is not of my face, but of something special – flowers, the ocean, a cityscape. That type of picture does not lend itself to a 10 year comparison.

When I began this blog all those years ago to document my life and adventures in Second Life, I set up a Flickr account as well, for all the pictures I enjoyed but would not be posting to the blog. Lately I’ve been seeing emails about “Your Flickr Account is Changing!” I confess that I tend to ignore those types of emails. As it happened, however, I wanted to login to Flickr to see and like someone else’s photos. just-2-weeks-ago Once I was in, I got a warning that “Your photos might be at risk”. Apparently the free accounts will be limited to 1000 pictures. I didn’t think that would matter to me but I was somewhat surprised to realize that I had well over 1000 pictures posted to Flickr, including pictures from First Life, not just Second Life. I began opening my photo albums.

Well. I have thought that I am aging fairly well. Taking care of my skin, my hair, my weight. I thought I was not doing too badly. Ouch. I saw a picture of me, Shen & Oura from about 9-10 years ago. Oh my, I looked SO GOOD!!!! I will go so far as to say I was ‘hot’. I looked at that picture, I thought about what the mirror shows me. I am going to have to revise my definition of “aging well”. *laughing*

In the meantime, Ahuva looks great. *grin* As good now as she looked 10 years ago. 🙂

Hair and Shoes

Look. Say what you will. I admit it. If I don’t have hair and shoes, SL is not worth living. *grin* So when Calli IM’d me to invite me to try out a new avatar, I was a bit reluctant. But I’ve learned to trust Calli’s instincts. I don’t think she’s steered me wrong yet. So I went to see her new “look”. *grin* She still had hair – her hair. No FEET, but she had shoes. I was convinced. Calli decided that Honour needed to share in the make-over as well. I taxi’d Honour in for the viewing and she agreed that it was a look made for her as well.

Calli tp’d us over to Car Wash. I’m not sure what Car Wash is exactly. We were too busy getting ourselves unicycles – oh excuse me. Getting ourselves Jarhead Unibike Avs. Car Wash appears to be a shopping center with stores and kiosks. Calli had discovered the kiosk for Altya’s. Altya’s has some great avatars and outfits. The main store is in Archers. I stopped there briefly to take a look. It reminded me a lot of a crazy place I went to with Hunter last summer, when he treated me to my propeller hat. I would say that both Car Wash and Altya’s are worth a visit!

So Honour and I put on our Jarhead Unibike Avs and posed for Calli. The horns on the bikes actually sound, so we had great fun tooting the horns, our own and each other’s horns. /me looks at you reprovingly. Oh puh-leeeeeeze. We rolled about Car Wash, emitting puffs of smoke, until we found a spot for our portrait. Notice that *I* have feet. That is because my feet are prim feet. 🙂 They are part of the shoes. *grin* if I had been wearing just shoes, without feet, my shoes would have been there. But you know me – I neeeeeeeeeeeeed hair and shoes. *grin* And my wonderful Taboo Paris Rose shoes were what I had on at the time. I LOVE my Taboo Paris Rose shoes by Siam Quan, you may have noticed. I may have mentioned. I think I blogged about them after Nat did her post on them.

This is a difficult time of year for me, and this week has been particularly difficult, as many of you know. So some time spent relaxing and being silly and tooting my horn was just what I needed! Altya’s is running something called a Fortune Quest. It is a hunt, but very different than your usual hunt. Honour posted all the details in her blog. Go check out Car Wash, Altya’s and Taboo – from the silly to the sublime!!!

Here Be Dragons

I LOVE SL. Okay, you KNEW that already. I’ve not been exactly reticent in expressing my feelings. But today – SL charmed me all over again. I was as thrilled as any newbie. There is so much creativity, so much fun, so much that WORKS.

It was a glorious day in RL. Warm, spring temperatures. The first crocus was up in my garden. Green shoots were coming up everywhere. I dug in the dirt and smelled that wonderful moist earth smell. Heaven. Alas, it’s still too early to be working in the garden and tax day is coming due. Ick. So I was hanging out on a pier at Shengri La Joy, me and the seagull, but I was actually doing RL paperwork. I was enjoying the sounds of the waves and the wind and the seagulls as I shuffled papers and balanced budgets. I heard that familiar IM ping! and checked back. It was Shenlei, telling me to cam over near the Gateway. She told me that there was a dragon and I was missing quite an experience.

A dragon? How can you resist when you hear that there is a dragon close by? So I requested a TP and headed over. Oh my. It was indeed a dragon. A BEAUTIFUL dragon. Accompanied by a Fair Maiden. 🙂 A very very young Fair Maiden – only rezzed the day before. I clicked on the dragon to inspect it and to my great surprise – it was an avatar!!! Not an object – but an avatar! So I greeted them both. FM was very new and did not have much to say. She was still trying to get her bearings and figure out how things “worked”.

The dragon was quite personable and pleasant. He was having fun surf diving in the waters of Shengri La (which are among the most beautiful that I have seen in SL). We chatted about our likes and dislikes. The dragon got up and moved about for us, demo’ing the capabilities. It was a truly magnificent avatar. I was so excited and pleased. It was discovering SL all over again for the first time. Very few friends were on that had kids. Of course my “child” is off touring overseas. I wanted to share this with SOMEONE!!!! So frustrating. I couldn’t get anyone else to come and marvel. (I just erased all the taunting derogatory remarks I wrote about people who don’t come to be enthusiastic about the things that excite me!! 🙂 I figured that maybe I was over-reacting a tad. But oh wow – what a gorgeous wonderful avatar.)

The dragon went through its paces for us. It swam. It flew. It dove down from the sky into the waters. It walked about. It was simply fantastic. Then – metamorphosis!! No longer a dragon – but a crow. 🙂 I LOVE SL. I LOVE the fantastical possibilities. Here Be Dragons. And every other wonder you can conceive.

Shapes and Changes

Alright. I did it. I explored alternative life styles in SL. 🙂 Hah! Get your minds out of the gutter!!! I’m talking about avatar appearance. After my discussion with Ryg (see “What would YOU do?”), I tp’d back to NCI to my friends who thought I looked just fine. LOL. But I decided that perhaps their opinions were a bit skewed. That evening, more of us were non-human than human. Everyone was rotating through their various forms and appearances. It really was quite a show! U and I were the only ones without a non-human av. I do have at least 2 other avatar shapes I picked up for free, but I’ve never used them. Oh, not quite true. I took the eyes from one. 🙂 Used the hair from another to go shopping one day. But you get the point. So when L offered me a new shape I figured now was the time! So I took myself to the dressing room and transformed myself into a Mini Black House Cat. 🙂

It was cute. I’m not sure why Tinies need to have special chairs for sitting. Note the carrot that L supplied as well. Certainly the orange set off my black fur and blue eyes quite nicely. But when all is said and done, eh. I still have no desire to be an animal. Perhaps I am simply boring or uncreative. Wearing wings on occasion is amusing. I’m still thinking about getting ears and a tail. But being a cat really didn’t do much for me. Maybe this is like true love – I’ll “know” when the right shape comes along. In the meantime I will simply admire and enjoy everyone else’s creative shapes. Such as this 3-headed dog that leaves fire-y footprints. You really do meet the most interesting people at NCI.

A RL friend asked me about buying hair and skins. It does sound peculiar if you’ve never done it. 🙂 So here you go. The first photo shows the display (the ad) for the hair style and the various colors. If you click on the gray Demo box, you buy a demo for L$1. You can try it on to see how you like it. Notice that there is a big box floating above your head. 🙂 So you can’t wear the demo unless you also want to wear the box. If you decide you want the hair style, you click on the color you want. At that point you are charged the full amount (assuming you click pay). And that’s it – the hair is in your inventory and when you want to have your hair look like that, you wear it. And when you want a different look, you wear different hair. Or skin. Or shape. It’s really that simple. So what do you think? I rather like this ‘do. Now which color……