RL....the US Shut down.

I spent the past two nights laying in bed wondering just how my life is going to turn out. I don't talk much about my real life because I just don't feel the need to. But, now I have to vent somewhere and this seems like a good outlet. I've been watching the news the past few days, which honestly isn't something I like to do. I like staying in my lil sheltered world of keeping the bad stuff out in the real world....well away. Now, it's pounding on my front door so I don't get this option. So let me start at the beginning. Those of you that do know me, my SL partner Marcus is my real life partner as well. He has poured blood, sweat and tears for this country. He has gone on at least 6 if not more deployments to Afghanistan. His stents at the bare bare minimum were 3-4 months. He is not active duty, he is in the Air National Guard. So, the way they do things in his shop is they take volunteers first, then assign later if no volunteers have stepped up. He has missed out on holidays, birthdays and watching our children grow up. When he re-lists he doesn't get the bonus, he doesn't get a lot of the benefits that an active duty person gets, yet still is expected to act as if he is one. He still has to go to war...he still has to do a lot of things. Ok, that's a whole other rant I don't want to get into so anyways back to the shut down. Yesterday he was told to go home, get your uniform on and come back, so he did. He was gone for a few hours then came home. He is not to report to work, there is no guard weekend. There is no health insurance, there is no PAY CHECK....we are a single family income. I don't work, I have MS and narcolepsy. I can't collect disability cause I can still walk, talk and function like a normal person. So, where does that leave us? I've tried hard since May to find a job, I have. I've had four interviews, all of which felt like pulling teeth just to hear anything back from. Literally pulling teeth. It was that painful. I guess I might be a touch old school, but you would think a phone call in a few days to say hi, we've chosen another candidate that was a bit more qualified than you. Would be a polite thing to do, but instead it's voice mail after voice mail calling to check then finally they call back. Again that's a whole other rant I definitely want to avoid. Back to the real reason of this blog. The media is stating that "the military will still get paid" WRONG! You need to specify what part of the military is still getting paid...Guard isn't getting paid...so to say that the "military" is still getting paid is a load of crock. They cancelled guard weekends, they sent home the civil service members telling them not to report to work until called into work. Now, on a single family income this is devastating news. So, not only is he not getting money for his job, but he's not gonna get paid for the "Weekend warrior" part either. I lose my medical benefits, so that means I can't get my medication for my MS, I can't get my medical for my narcolepsy. I have no health insurance. I could sign up for the ACA, but that doesn't start til January 1, 2014. So, again how does that help? This is just how it effects me, but what about the small businesses that depend on the income from those said workers? I figure there's about 80,000 workers in Alaska alone that were laid off with this shut down. Let's say hypothetically that they spend 10 dollars, 5 days a week for breakfast/lunch. (That is a low ball figure, considering Alaska is a bit more expensive than the rest of the states but we'll stick with this nice round number.) Now, I'm no economist, I'm just a simple house wife. $10.00 x 80,000 = $800,000 ...that's a day that businesses would lose. $800,000 x 5 = $40,000,000...that's a week that businesses would lose. So, again, how is this not gonna effect everyone? So what if you don't visit a national park or zoo. It's still going to effect you. We're lucky, we have the dividend to help cover some lost income. Thank god for that. But, not everyone will have that. Here's my thought to you congress and senate.... both parties, no one is immune. Both are largely at fault for this. We elected you into your seat to do a job. In the past 18 months you have not done your said job. Now, if that was a job anywhere else guess what you'd get fired. But, hey that's cool, your seat is secure right? You don't have to worry about how much money you have til next pay check. You don't have to worry if you get sick or are sick where you're going to get the money to go to the doctor. You don't have to worry about much of anything. You're set for life. There will come a time, where this isn't going to be the case. You will not have your seat anymore. And the way things are looking the American public will see to it you don't get much of anything you have anymore. You weren't elected to make the rules bend just for you. You weren't elected to line your pockets with oodles of money, awesome medical insurance and free travel. Nope, you were elected because you made it clear you wanted to HELP the public. SO PROVE ME WRONG...do your job, do what we elected you to do. This selfish me me me attitude needs to change. I have one thing left to say GROW UP AND ACT LIKE ADULTS!

Barre 101

Shown with .:Azzy Design:. Solar Flare Barre Skin

 

              It’s been far too long since I’ve last blogged. I’ll be honest, I haven’t had a lot to blog about, and I haven’t been feeling to particularly good. But, I have been hosting Barre HUD classes and I can see that there are a lot of dancers feeling a bit overwhelmed when they first look at the HUD. I mean, who wouldn’t? There’s lots of buttons, and not knowing which one does what is kind of daunting if you ask me.  I’m going to try and not get too techy with you all. I’m going to break it down into two maybe three blogs as well so I don’t overwhelm you with too much information at one time cause, lets face it, if you learn too much too fast you’re probably not going to remember even half of what I said. That will lead to nothing but frustration and anger…. and neither are a good place to be.

            So, you’ve got your shiny new HUD out on the ground and you’re wondering just where to start…let me tell you, there is no difference from this HUD to the next loading it. I will say however, there is a simpler way to load your animations to it than dragging them over one at a time.  In your box of goodies with the Barre HUD folder, there will be an object called !RR 1.1 Transfer Script Boxed. You’ll want to open that and remember where it is, store it somewhere in your inventory that you can find it easily. You can either have all your animations inside an object or even an old HUD will work just as well. Drop the send animations script into that object or said HUD with the animations in it, then drop the receive script into your empty new HUD. You’ll have a pop up menu that will appear on the lower right hand of your screen. Click either Copy Dances or Copy Quiet D. Either one will work. Copy dances will list all your dances as they transfer over while the quiet will not. You and only you can see the dance list in local chat so you don’t have to worry about spamming anyone. Once it’s done, click clean up and it will remove both scripts from the HUD and the object.  As a special note: If you’re going from a Huddles to a Barre, do not copy your note cards over since the format is a bit different and they will not work properly in the Barre. (I’ll cover the note cards in my next blog).

            YAY! So now you have animations in your HUD! Go ahead and pick it up and put that pretty shiny new HUD on. There will be a pop up that asks if it’s positioned correctly on your screen, which you can click yes, and still adjust it to your liking after the fact. Also, there is a pop-out panel that now exists that wasn’t there on the Barre 3.02. To move that menu up, close or down, click on the double arrow button on the very top left corner. Click it once will move it inside the HUD, click it again and it will appear down at the bottom (like the image above). 

            So many buttons…yes, I know, but you don’t have to know what each one does just yet, I’ll cover the important ones, to get you started.  The Me button should be highlighted most if not all times. That’s you…if its not highlighted you will not dance. The double bar button next to it is pause; the square is stop or stop all. This will be used to release any dancers from your HUD that you’ve invited. You can also stop yourself, which will “turn off” the ME button. You’ll have to re-click the ME button to “invite” yourself back onto your HUD. The left, right and the % bar above it will allow you to flip through your pages quickly. Using the left and right will flip forward or backwards one page at a time. While the % bar will allow you to flip to a particular dance quickly. All the animations are listed in alphabetical order.  The double people button is your invite button. This will allow you to individually invite avatars to your HUD or you can click invite all if you happen to be dancing a whole crowd.  Do note however, that this will not assign them to a group. Everyone will be in the same group with a standard invite. I’ll cover that too in the next blog promise. The double arrow button is your re-sync button. This will allow you to re-sync yourself or other dancers so you are all dancing in time** (camming and other factors will affect how in sync you are. So, if you’re dancing a group, keep this in mind.)

            The next three buttons are probably the most used buttons on your HUD. The list button (bottom left hand side looks like a list) will list off ALL animations you have in your HUD. You won’t have to make a note card with each animation you own, instead you can click this button and it will allow you to see exactly what you have in your HUD. The next two buttons I’m going to cover a bit out of order. They will be more in the order that you would use them than the order they are on the HUD. The load button (disk button) is where you can load multiple note cards on your HUD for quick dancing. The Barre comes standard with four empty slots, you can add more with the toolbox but again that’s something I will get to later. Click on the load button, and then it will ask you to pick a slot, chose one. The HUD will flip to a new page with all your note cards you have in the HUD. Click on the one you want, then it will tell you that it’s loading the note card.  So, now you want to access that lovely new note card you loaded, click on the Oreo button in the middle. The Oreo button will show you all the loaded note cards you have in your HUD. Now, when I say loaded, I mean the ones that you’ve physically put into the empty slots. 

                          Load>pick slot > pick note card  > click Oreo

            I think I’ve covered quiet a bit of stuff, more than enough to at least get you started on your way to using your Barre. Your homework….load your HUD with animations, and play with the buttons lol…and remember HAVE FUN!

           Questions or anything at all please please don’t be afraid to hit me up I’m more than happy to help you. We do offer classes on Sundays and Wed at Noon. Though, I would be willing to do some one on one session or even some later ones for a group.  

XOXOXOX

Azzy

To clear cache or not to clear cache that is the question

I’ve been told hundreds if not thousands of times “Aza, clear your cache it will fix everything”. I hate clearing my cache. I honestly do, it takes forever to load, my bandwidth screams at me not to mention that it costs me precious data use, which I get charged per month based on what I use. So, anything to cut down on that I’m happy to do! I recently attended a Firestorm class and this subject in particular caught my attention because I’ve heard this more than I can count, especially dancing every week.

Clearing your cache can do more harm to a sim than good. It adds extra lag, which is what you were trying to avoid doing. It draws the sim resources to retexture and build your cache that you just dumped thus causing high bandwidth use and just a big domino effect. Just think if 10 people did this every week an hour before the show, or even just to do it. They all do it at the same time and log back in at the same time; the sim would flat out hate life having to repeatedly send out the information to each of the 10 avatars that dumped their cache.  So I’m gonna give you the list of Do’s and Don’t that Ed provided at his class. I’m not even gonna take any credit for the information because it can easily be found on their wiki site.

THE DON’T

-won’t help for teleport issues

-upload issues

-movement or communications

-most lag issues

-crashes

-most kind of bake fails

THE DO’s

-texture related – aka crash due to texture failing to load.

If you do have a texture “memory leak” crash,  you can dump just your texture cache and it should fix the issue. To get to your texture cache go to avatar>preferences>network & cache …there you will see Cache location, click the open button and the folder will open in a new window. Once there you want to look for a folder that says texturecache.  You can delete everything in there and it will re-cache them all when you log back in. BUT only do this in extreme cases. Don’t dump your cache just a s a routine habit. It’s better to run on a full or fuller cache than an empty one.  For more information on how this all plays out please check out Firestorm’s wiki page at http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com

Knowledge is power….and power is knowledge so the more informed we are the better off our experience will be on SL.

Well I’m blogged out right now lol…I felt I HAD to pass this on…I hope Ed doesn’t mind too much cause THIS was an important issue that needed to be brought up for us all cause it’s important for our sims integrity and ours as well.

MUCH LOVE!

AZZY XOXOXOXOXOX

ahhh Inventory how I loathe thee....

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Oh inventory…how I hate you some days.  No matter how hard I try to keep it sorted it’s like it grows a mind of its own and begins to just exploding everywhere. Trying to keep it organized is a chore. One we all should keep up with. Think of it this way, your inventory is like your house would you let it go for months and months? No, probably not. Then again there are plenty of people out there that haven’t sorted their inventory ever, finding stuff some days is like a huge shopping spree, only you haven’t spent a penny –THIS- time…. instead you’re finding boxes of stuff you bought months ago and never opened!

            I’m not going to even begin to lecture on why you bought it if you weren’t opening it that moment, I’ve had days like that myself. Later on it’s like oh my, I guess I forgot about you…and look how cute it is! We’ve all done it, I see you shaking your head at me saying I have not! I’ll give you a peek into my inventory kinda, at least so you can see how particular I am about sorting it. I have main folders, then sub folders and even more sub folders inside. Some things I have sorted by colors some I don’t. It just depends on what I wanted for a system.

            As you can see, I almost everything is sorted and put away, I have a few odd ball things out that need to be put in their place but for the most part everything is put in its place.  I saw you eyeing my inventory count. I hate it even being over 22K, which at the moment it is. Not much but, its enough to drive me crazy trying to cut it down. So, I thought I’d do a re-blog about how to I sort my inventory. You’re welcome to try a few tips and tricks I give you, heck that’s why I’m doing this. I spent a good three hours this morning having a come to Azzy meeting with myself about how dumb I’ve been for pack ratting a bunch of stuff I’ve never even worn. Not ONCE. So, I started boxing stuff up…gave myself a list of rules to follow which I will post below.

                        AZZY’S INVENTORY RULES

Rule 1. – BOX UP PAST PURCHASES IF YOU’VE OPENED THEM  ALREADY

Rule 2. – IF YOU’VE NEVER WORN IT…CHANCES ARE YOU NEVER      WILL…BOX IT, DELETE IT OR PASS IT TO AN ALT.

Rule 3. – IF YOU HAVEN’T WORN SOMETHING IN THE PAST 5 MONTHS GET RID OF IT AKA BOX IT UP OR GIVE IT TO AN ALT.

RULE 4.  LOOK IN YOUR INVENTORY BEFORE GOING SHOPPING

RULE 5. SORT YOUR STUFF AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH

            Not too many rules, I tend to break them especially that last one. I’ve been slacking badly as of late but things have been a bit crazy, still no excuses. You must be willing to set aside some time once in awhile to keep your inventory clean, just like your house, if you keep up with it then it won’t look so daunting or intimidating.

            So now to get to the task at hand, which is sorting the monster called inventory. So first things first, create your folders, the main folders for everything. Once you’ve gotten things broken down to what you wanted, the fun task begins. Don’t worry about sub folders right now; we just want to get everything in its new home. BUT, before you even begin that, go through the folders and delete any nonsense you don’t need. Scripts, poses, land marks, and note cards all add up quickly. Besides that, if you went to the store chances are if you like it, you’ve got them already land marked.

            Now, once the folders are all pretty and clean from the crude you don’t need to hang on to you can sort them into the folders you just created.

I suggest turning on some music, a movie, just something to keep you slightly entertained cause it does get boring to do.

I think I’ve had enough of your time this blog, I’ll continue on the next one with tips and such to get that inventory count down, cause trust me having a low count helps out, and having back ups of things you can is always a bonus.

Love you all!!

Azzy XOXOXOXOX

The Dread of Not Knowing...

                  Builder’s block is the worst, it’s worse than writer’s in my honest opinion. Typically, with writer’s block it’s a matter of thinking of the right word, or even coming up with the next chapter. With builder’s block, you have no CLUE where to find inspiration. If you see me just sitting around the sim listening to music trying to find that one oh my god moment then you know I’m at that point myself. It’s rare I build a set without a song in mind already or have a vague idea of what song I want to do. It happens to everyone, so don’t panic! That by far is the worst thing you can do. So, I’m going offer a way to get past that moment of frustration.

            Do listen to music, stuff you listen to on a daily basis, see if something clicks, if not youtube is your best friend. Type in your favorite band and see the recommended list to the right and see if there’s something else out there that might help make it click. Do, however note, if your troupe keeps a list of used songs, make sure that song isn’t already done. If it is, again DON’T PANIC…keep looking. Music is meant to be an inspiration. And sometimes even going to the good ole classics (and no I don’t mean classical rock…I mean actual classical music) will help relax your mind enough to think. You don’t have to dance to it, but use it as a relaxation tool. Trust me it helps.

            If that doesn’t help you too much, next step I usually take is watching movies, take ideas down, but remember you don’t want to replicate the movie, just take some ideas from it. Movies and music videos are great places to get ideas for sets, but just slapping the whole scene down on a set and calling it good doesn’t work. It’s a theft of the original person’s concept and just pure laziness. We don’t want to go down that road…ever.

            Still stuck? Don’t worry; I’ve had plenty of days like this. That’s the point I turn to my partner or my friends and ask for ideas. Trust me, your friends have plenty of inspiration to offer. Asking for an idea doesn’t make you bad people so don’t be afraid. You might get overloaded with ideas so make sure to limit yourself with youtube links and ideas. DO take notes write down the ideas on a note card or something so you can look back at it later on when you get stuck again.

            It’s very rare if nothing clicks, after this point, sim surf, image surf or just step away for a while tends to help. Staring at a blank stage for hours is overwhelming and frustrating at the same time. Get out, walk, go to the store, heck play a game just something to clear your head for awhile then when you feel ready to try again you can go back to your stage building area and hopefully have an idea of what you want to do. Building should be fun, and honestly it’s not when you don’t know what to build. It will feel like a chore at that point, so before you get to that frustration level try some of these techniques to see if maybe it helps. I’ve done it plenty of times and it’s amazing the ideas that start to flow, just don’t overwhelm yourself …*giggles*

That’s all for now, I’ll chat at you again soon…

XOXO

Azzy

Light at the End of the Tunnel

           Something evil has been eating at me for days. And by days, I mean DAYS, it’s hard not to dwell on and wonder why so much negative is happening around when there was suppose to be good coming out of this. Some of you might know right off hand what I’m talking about others are going “dear Azzy what pray tell are you speaking of?” LOL…ok maybe not said quiet like that. It made me do a lot of thinking as to why people want to post their negative thoughts behind the “grey one” title instead of their own handle. And I know you’re still asking ok what are you talking about.

            The Cutie Awards, there were a lot of positive things I personally saw that came out of putting this together. Though I don’t know why but people are focusing their negative thoughts without giving any care about anything other than number one…aka themselves. Are they bitter cause they didn’t win? It’s possible, I suppose.  There are pro’s and con’s to everything we do and all the choices we make in life even in a digital life we can be held accountable for our actions by our peers. I think this is why there’s the negative posting behind the “grey one”. Comments I’ve read the past few weeks have been snarky, full of spite, and makes you want to say,  “and who the hell pissed in your corn flakes this morning?”

            So, I’m going to treat the negative comments much like those of a troll and just move along and post the GOOD that has come out of these awards. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel and by the grace of all that is good we shall reach it!

THE GOOD

1.     Brought the dance community together for one event. – Normally we’re all in our own little world, doing our own thing. By adding this event into the mix it brought out crowds to shows they’d never even knew existed. Granted most of the dance groups do advertise that they are hosting a show via the group. I witnessed this first hand at Guerilla Burlesque. We had many people that I know are new or had never seen the show before show up.

2.      We got to see the avatars behind their prospective group and some even a voice behind them. Again, this brought the dance community together for one event. We may have made new friends or ran into old ones either way, it was great seeing a diverse dancing crowd all in one room. It wasn’t just ballet or burlesque but ALL different kinds of dance.

3.     The community as a whole became a lot more active and voiced their concerns or opinions, while this is also a con in a way since Negative Nancy decided to rear her ugly head at the same time, this is more of a in between good and bad…pro and con…you get the picture though.

4.     Those that were nominated for an award felt their peers recognized their work.  Even if they didn’t win, their hard work had caught the eye of someone and it’s appreciated. We don’t dance for ourselves only. I mean if that was the case, then I don’t see how this would be successful at all. Those, that were not, then they know what they need to do to get recognized. This should of given everyone a drive, something to shoot for.

5.     This set the bar for next year, on improving, pushing and even giving everyone else something to strive for. If an actor/actress didn’t win the golden globe and had a complete melt down and/or diva fit because he/she didn’t win then those awards would be null and void.

            While that’s not all the good that came out of the awards, those are the important ones I felt were worth pointing out.  I won’t even touch the negative points, because they’ve been hounded to the point of just stupidity in my book and if you really REALLY want to know what they are, all you have to do is go to the Dancing Queen’s blog and read all the negative comments.  They are the reason I’m writing this blog, because I couldn’t sit back and let others just get the bad crap out there without shedding some light on the great, good things that came out of this award.

            I challenge those “grey ones” this…step back and take a big look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself why you got into dancing. If the words ever echo out of your head “I do it for the awards…for myself” then maybe you’ve got the wrong idea of what a dancer really is. A real dancer does it for the art, expression, passion, love… so many reasons. Read my last blog and you’ll know why I do.

That moment...

          You've had a long day at work, your feet ache...not to mention  your eyes are tired of staring at the computer screen for hours on end. You've decided to go out tonight, enjoy some free time, after all it is the weekend. Clubbing is fun the first few times you go after that it's the same thing. Giggly DJ's, some that like to talk over the songs, especially the ones you love. So, mentally you've crossed that off your list of things to do tonight. Then a friend mentions going to a show. The idea teases at you for a moment, as  you imagine the screen with the same ole hmmm huh movies. Then your friend ends up nudging you and saying no, not a movie, but a live show. Your ears perk even more at the sound of this, now your friend has your full attention. A dance show you say, from there your friend grabs you by the hand and drags you with them on the "limo" that was sent to pick them up....

                  Reaching the theater you're looking around, everyone is dressed top notch, from gowns to tuxes, which of course makes you look down at yourself to make sure you won't stand out too much. Deciding you look decent enough you are promptly greeted with a "welcome" by the hostess. Looking up at her you know this will be something different than the usual drone show. She has that sparkle of excitement in her eyes and the stunning smile to go with it. Nodding in return at the hostess and giving her a shy smile you sit down and wait for the show to start. As you listen to the chatter around, you can see the playful banter from the regulars towards one another and can't help but to giggle at some of the remarks yourself. You can see the flutter of the curtain as the dancer behind is trying to make any last minute adjustments to their sets, you start to feel the excitement of the theater build as the time draws close to starting...

                  Just at that moment the DJ cues up the intro, and a stunning strawberry blonde stands in front of the stage, taking the mic as the music plays she announces, "Welcome to Guerilla Burlesque"... as she speaks your head tilts and you listen intently to what she is saying. Glancing at the gold urns on either side of her a moment then back on her as she finishes her opening speech. You watch her as she moves away from the mic and back to her seat and the intro song ends. You see the curtain start to raise as the next song starts and you're instantly mesmerized....

                 This is how I felt the first time I tp'ed to Idle Rogue. I was shy, quiet though I didn't have a friend to tp me to the show, I imagined this is how it would of felt. I was drawn into each and every act that night and felt the rush of the crowd around me. I decided that, I wanted to do the same thing. I knew I could figure out how to do things in SL, after all my first Guerilla Burlesque show I attended was only two days new to Second Life. I didn't own a dance, let alone know how to build. But that draw of the dance was strong. Hanging around for a few weeks Diawa decided that she was going to get to know this quiet stranger that refused to "touch my butt" at her simple demand. She was gracious enough to show me some of the ins and outs of dancing and we worked hard together to put together an hour long Halloween show.  I'll be honest, we worked ourselves to the point of exhaustion...how we did the show is beyond me. But, in her eyes that was the biggest train wreck of her dancing career. For me, it was the doorway to prove we could do better and I pushed myself after that show to prove it.

                Now, I'm that dancer sweating behind the curtain, palms sweaty, heart racing and praying that everything goes as perfect as planned. So far, I've been lucky and only had one act that didn't go as planned. And, it's OK it didn't. I wasn't upset, I knew from Diawa, that this was going to happen at some point. She made sure that I learned the hard lesson long before the rewards...dancing is more than just the song and costume choice...not to mention the set. It's an outlet and expression for that person's interpretation of the song they chose. Sometimes the meaning is hidden and if you look close enough and listen to the words of the song, the concept will light up brighter than the sun....this is why I dance...complete and utter expression...and with that I'll leave you to your thoughts and hope to see you at the next show...

Azzy