Mobile Meme-ing

It seems that this week OnLive decided to make Firestorm the only viewer for their mobile SL Go apps. Yay for that! Since they added Firestorm for the desktop app I’d been trying out SL Go for my aging iMac, and it works great, (even though the 720p resolution is frustrating on a higher res monitor) but I haven’t paid as much attention to the mobile apps because the only option was the official LL viewer. Now that it defaults to Firestorm I had to try it again. When I found myself sitting around waiting for my mother to finish up an appointment this afternoon it seemed like a perfect time to give it a test drive.

SL Go on a Nexus 4

If I look frustrated, it’s because I can’t figure out how to leave my house.

The only trouble with my experiment is I was trying this on a phone, and SL on a 4.7 inch screen is pretty darn tiny. It rendered fast, it looked great, and I wasn’t getting any blurring, but trying to select anything in the UI is not easy. Pinch and zoom, attempt to select, click the wrong thing anyway, zoom back out, try again… It was a challenge. I couldn’t get my landmarks to scroll so I thought I’d type a sim name in search and go exploring that way, but it didn’t feel like recognizing my on screen keyboard. With no handy landmarks I was trapped in my house, but hey, my house was rendering fabulously, so that’s something, I guess. 😀  I did try later on the iPad with a bluetooth keyboard and everything worked really well and looked nice, so yay for Firestorm on SL Go! If I ever have some need to log into SL late at night when I don’t have the laptop handy I can always grab the ipad and I’ll be all set.

Meanwhile, sitting around this afternoon also gave me time to take a look at the Monday Meme.  Strawberry Singh has a quick and easy one this week, and I couldn’t resist. Her instructions:

Copy and paste the following statements in your post and complete them writing down the first thing that pops into your head. Don’t forget to link your post in the comments (here).

I am… pretty awesome 😀
I want… to find the motivation to exercise regularly
I have… so much to be grateful for.
I wish… the concerts I want to see weren’t always so far away.
I hate… being laid off 🙁
I fear… the future
I search… for things often, because I misplace stuff a lot.
I wonder… if I’ve ever made a difference for someone
I regret… abandoning my diet just when I was almost at my goal
I never… thought I’d be a widow in my 40s.
I always… light a candle for my husband every night, just because it feels right to do so.
I usually… procrastinate
I dance… infrequently.
I sing… all the time (when I’m alone)
I often… log into SL, switch to Chrome to surf while everything loads, then forget I’m still in SL.
I sometimes… spend hours just trying outfits on my avvie and moving stuff around in my house.
I cry… a lot.
I need… to network and find a terrific new job
I should… go to bed earlier.
I love… blasting my car stereo at top volume \(^_^)/

I’ll add one

I will… get through this RL rough patch and move on to even better things!

Thanks Berry, hope you’re having a fantastic spring break!

Now and Then

This week’s Strawberry Singh challenge is the First and Recent Challenge. We’re to post our first blog pic, and a recent blog pic, so we can see the changes we’ve gone through.  Rather than grab an early blog pic, which would only be a couple years old, I went further back and pulled a shot from March  2007 , when I was just a month old. I snapped my now image earlier this evening.

I think I am still wearing one of the early newbie skins here, or possibly something from a freebie pack. The clothes were all from Little Rebel, and the hair was Gurl6. At the time I thought I looked awesome, although I seemed to be having some hair sizing issues here and it’s growing out of the sides of my face. There is just a bit of a difference between then and now!

When I was looking back through pics it was interesting to watch my fashion choices. In the early days I wore a lot of contemporary casual things, but I also went for a lot of costumey clothes, faerie wings, frilly ballerina skirts, or fantasy wear. At some point, probably with the rise of mesh, I stopped dressing in quirky outfits and started dressing very much like my RL self would if I were at my goal weight and had the cash to go on a shopping spree. I suspect it was because early mesh clothes seemed to be more real life fashion based and I wanted to try out the newest thing. I certainly love my avatar wardrobe, but I do miss my offbeat clothes sometimes.

Early on in my second life I wasn’t blogging, though I did start posting pics to Flickr later in the year. Then, as now, I took a lot of selfies, and then, as now, I never post most of them.  I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at composing images, I don’t tend to take so many clueless tourist shots where I’m standing idly in front of some build. I still flirt with the idea of doing fashion pics because half my time is spent just trying on outfits and admiring myself, but I haven’t quite reached that point yet. And I’m not really sure my avatars have that much fashion sense anyway, like me they just wear what they want. 😀

Berry also asked if we’d like to join in the DearMe initiative and write a note to our teenage self. As a teen I was fortunate enough to have a family who were always supportive and told me I could do anything I set my mind to. But like many girls who carried a little extra weight around, I was teased at school and terribly self conscious so I was always afraid to do anything that would make me stand out and be noticed, because I was afraid I’d look silly and be laughed at. So what would I tell myself?

Dear Me:

You are absolutely beautiful, talented, and creative. Don’t listen to anyone when they tease you, and don’t let them shake your confidence in yourself. High school may feel rough but hang in there, when you get to college it is all going to change and you’ll meet people who are just as weird and goofy and amazing as you are. And when you worry that you’ll never have a boyfriend – just be patient because you really will met your soul mate one day. Don’t be afraid to stand out, don’t be afraid to take chances and follow your dreams. Life is going to work out beautifully for you. ♥

Love,
Your future self.

I felt too cute and had to take a full shot. I splurged on the Maitreya Lara body and I really like how I can plump it up a wee bit more, especially when I’m in fitted mesh. I may even have to start wearing more skirts and dresses when it gets a little warmer. Yes, it is a quirk I have… if it is cold outside in RL I cannot bring myself to dress my av in summery clothes because hey, if I’m cold then my avatar is cold too.

The rare attempt at image credits 😀

Blueberry Shoulder Jacket & tank top
Maitreya Zipper-Skinny Jeans * #4 updated for Lara Mesh Body
Baiastice_London Sneakers-Print-PinkLace at the Arcade
Glasses: K_gs Sploit 1.03
Hair: Dura-Boys&Girls*48(Coffee)
Skin: League Erin Pale (no brow)
[mock]Smoothie LipColor [Burnt Peach]
IKON Horizon Eyes – Dark Gray-Green
Eyebrow/ face details tattoo layer my own

Transformations

Strawberry Singh’s mission for us this week: the Avatar Transformation Challenge:

Meme instructions: Transform your avatar completely so that even your friends wouldn’t recognize you. Don’t forget to share the link to your image in the comments (here) and add your pictures to the Blog Memes flickr group.

The rules said we had to stick to our usual gender and species. That made it a little tricker, but the rules didn’t say we had to stay the same age, so I thought I’d revisit my childhood. 😀

I’ve never tried to create a kid avatar and wasn’t sure what to wear. I don’t really have an interest in being an SL kid so I didn’t want to buy new clothes I’d only wear once, and most of the stuff I had in inventory didn’t work too well. I had a nice pair of gym shoes that fit, but otherwise mesh was totally out and the system shirts had too much boob shading. Unfortunately this left my youthful self stuck with library clothes, but that’s okay, I was just going to get them all dirty on the playground anyway.

I thought while I was reliving my childhood I should find a good place to visit, and the first that popped into my head was Livingtree, so off I went to goof around. It was fun to have the whole playground to myself!

I didn’t change my face sliders dramatically, just enough to try to look a little more kid-like. Still, I suspect if I had run across any friends they wouldn’t have known who I am unless they read my name tag. If I showed up as a tiny, or some other little non-human critter it wouldn’t have been unusual at all, nor would being any form of elf or faerie, but a kid av would be unexpected.  I’m not sure how good a job I did making a kid version of myself, but it was fun to give it a try. 😀