It must be some very masochistic instinct to try to update things regularly which by all means – if your version works just fine – you should avoid til its unavoidable. So after upgrading Phoenix I was having all kind of trouble. None concerning its functionality but with visual matters which for an SL photographer is horrible. For some reason in Phoenix Viewer the natural SL water looked like crap. It looked like some huge greenish alpha layering that went wrong. Very similar to the look you have when u enable banlines but worse. Also my facelights would not work. I could put them on but it did not have any effect on my screen. I am sure I nearly blinded some people around me as I tried to increase the light to see anything. No effect.

I was very dissapointed and had to switch to Emergence. With Emergence now the water problem is no longer existant… but my facelights won’t work either. Nice.

Why do I not use the official Second Life Viewer 2? Because there seems to be a very mutual dislike on both sides. I really hate what they have done to the client and only use it in absolute emergencies. And I swear – it hates me… cause unless I stand about and do nothing but chat … it will let me crash almost instantly. So the only times I uses Viewer2 is when I cannot detach attachment for some reason and when I cannot de-ruth in any other client. (I was walking around SL being ruthed almost 36h. Logging in and out, trying to rebake and whatnot.) Only when I used Viewer 2 I was able to rebuild my avatar.

However, besides all the fun lag we find everywhere the generel performance of SL and its viewers is somewhat suboptimal if not painful. Yet…. we try and we try and we try.

Hey Girls, thank you so much for bearing with me. Moving in real life is so much more complicated than in Second Life. *lol* It took longer than expected and was a lot more exhausting than wished, but… I made it. Yay! It’s finally done.

Anyway, guess how surprised I was when I got back online and found out that I was one of the winners of the Nyte’N'Day Poster Store Contest.  Pretty cool I tell you. The next winner of 1000 Linden Dollars could be you!

Nyte’N'Day is a Second Life Fashion label run by Nyte Caligari. Over the years I have gathered several outfits at Nyte’N'Day and last time I went there I got this sexy blacky called “Dyadic”. It’s absolutely lovely.

As I was looking around the store I noticed the great posters hanging around and saw a board saying Store Poster Contest. To summerize it short:

Take a picture of you wearing a Nyte’N'Day outfit, join the contest group on flickr and upload the picture into the group. Nyte picks the winners herself and each winner gets 1000 Linden prize money! Woohoo! 

So don’t hesitate. If I can do it, so do you! Go visit Nyte’N'Day inworld and pick up the notecard with the rulings or visit the Nyte’N'Day Blog and read it there: Poster Contest Rules.

Good luck to ya all!

In order to attract people many shops will put up these devices to give out stuff for free. A Lucky Chair will contain one or serveral items and gives out one item at a time. It will show you a letter, e.g. “A” and an amount of time. If your name starts with that letter you get the Lucky Chair item/prize by just sitting on it in time. If noone matching sits on it during that time, the letter will change after the time runs up.

(By the way there are also chairs out there that will give you the contained item after having sat long enough on them. Which can be anywhere form 5 mins to 3h… or even more. So you’re actually “earning” the item. The text surrounding the chair will give you the time needed and also counts it down for you while you sit on it.)

With the Midnight Mania Boards it works a little differently.
These boards are set up at stores to actually gather up a certain amount of people. The owner of the board defines how many people must hit the board and sign up in order for the prize to be delivered to the participants at midnight. Hence the name: Midnight Mania. So the trick is to sign up to many boards and just wait to the next day to see what actually made it to your inventory. (If you want something really badly, you should have your friends hit the board as well so the number of people necessary can be reached more likely.)

Something differnt are the Mob Vend boards. These are set up with a specific item and the regular purchase price goes down the more people stand in reach at the same time. You bascially decide when to buy at what price. The more people you gather around you, the less it will cost.

So why do shop owners use these devices? Because they want you to come and see their shop and eventually buy something else while your there. But even if you just teleport in and out again and not buy anything your of use. The more people teleport to a shop the higher the ranking of the shop will go up in the “Search” location menu on Second Life. Lots of traffic indicates that the shop is “important” and therefore more vital to whatever you where searching for.
Therefore the owner benefits from you coming to the shop no matter what.

How do you find Lucky Chairs and Midnight Mania boards?Well, I was told that there tools out there that track them down and you just TP then, do your thing and are off to the next. I prefer using Groups. Open the “Search” option, select “Groups” and search. “Midnight Mania Hunters“, “Give it away” or “Lucky Chair Stalkers” are just a few you can search for.

Beware of two things though…
Signing up to those Groups will make you dizzy after a while, cause your constantly getting group messages… secondly you will stuff your inventory with loads of stuff and last…. not everything that you win will be of good quality. Some put in stuff you would not want even as a freebie. Just because its free, does not mean it has to be bad.
So always check the stuff you win and delete it if you don’t like it! Keep your inventory sorted! *lol*