Freebie Bonanza at Koenji

Lludmila is an avid reader of the Virtual Vagabond blog and was a touch too busy to catch up on all the goodies she missed until today.  She went to the Koenji sim to pick up the quilt and doily from Olive because she had a place at her house for that doily, ee-by-goom, and just "happened" to wander a bit.  Very close is a shop called Factory of Cark Moon and it had some unusual freebies ...

Got the small wagon right away, but our inventory is so full,
we've decided to just take pictures of things for y'all's sake.

... and some lucky boards set at five minutes.  Lludmila attached her Lucky Letter Listener, parked her av in front of the whispering lucky boards and let her camera stroll off to look at other shops.

Not sure why the whole picture didn't transfer ... but you get the idea.

At the KMH hair shop there was a free skybox on the counter - and we all know how obsessed with buildings Lludmila is now.  Totally white on the outside, it's a two-level space inside with a 360 degree panorama!  And it's only 5 prims, for those with strained prim limits.  You know what I want to do some day?  Of course you don't, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.  I'm going to layer all my skyboxes way up and pretend I'm an investment banker with a golden parachute.

Just a little farther down is the December Glasses and Accessories shop, with these elegant pince-nez for free.

There were more freebies and lucky boards, but we can only deal with so much at a time.

Happy Hunting Overkill

Lludmila's gone right off fashion (sort of) and now only wants houses and furnishings, so when she was visiting Prism for the 60L Weekend Sale and saw the Happy Home Hunt sign, she thought she might try it.  The hunt costs one linden dollar, and this is just to buy the HUD at NightMaire, the first stop.  After that, the prizes are free.  The HUD gives you the hint and the landmark and you need to be wearing it to click on the pie.  

At first, ha ha, Lludmila thought she'd just go to shops she was familiar with ... but the next thing you know, she was hooked.  Below are just a few of the prizes from that hunt (and any other hunt also happening at those shops and the lucky boards and the Midnight Mania ... this should explain our huge inventory problem).

S-curve lounger from Prism.

Aqua side chair with nice anims from Senzafine.

Outdoor lounge set (2nd lounger not pictured) from JJ Lanes.

Hilarious bubble chair I have no use for but just love from  Fantastic Furniture.

Lludmila can't take more of this hunting ... chair by  Prism!

Country bench with, like, a gazillion anims from Pillows & Things.

Bean bag chairs and a lamp from Bag Lady Design. BLD is one
of my current favorite shops thanks to 60L Weekends and the fact that
she puts the hunt items out on the deck so you don't kill yourself looking.

Amusing clock with kitchen theme from PDN's Potpourri ... hunts and lucky chairs EV'rywhere!

Grandfather mantel clock just the right size for Lludmila (does this make it a
grandson clock?) from Closer to Heart.

Coffee mug and a platter of muffins that gives muffins ... for your next meeting
from SFW Industries.

Lucky Chair item from Pillows and Things (see above country bench).
The animations were so much fun that Lludmila was reluctant to give this up.
Note how it swamps her in the upper right picture.
Fortunately, it was mod (although it claimed it wasn't)
and we shrank it down to her size in the bottom picture!
Yay! We can keep it!

Not pictured: the houses. OMGosh!  One of them was simply huge and furnished even including a bathtub, a bar, and a bartender!   Please remember that some of these items were from sources other than the Happy Home Hunt.  I just imagine that if you are like me, you don't just do one hunt at a time.

Quite a Poser

So, I bought the AnimaretheHUD and tried to think of something to pose.  When I think of posing, I think of statues, and because the Infogroupies have an Olympic party coming up (no nudity ... for some reason ... could it have anything to do with me being snap-happy?) I naturally thought of Greek statues.  After two hours (two hours!) of grueling trial-and-error, I came up with this:

Kriscus Discus

The two hours includes trying to figure out how to upload it to the virtual world.  Later, I put it in a generic poseball and then decided it should also "give" a discus.  This required making a discus, which took a minute, maybe (create cylinder, shorten it excessively, make circumference smaller, add texture - voila!).  Then I had to find and cobble an existing "give inventory" script so that it would give an object (which was not its original purpose).  I'm pleased with the result - not so much how much the pose resembles the original, but that I actually achieved a poseball that gave an accessory.

Spartan Kris

Okay, this one needs work ... this picture was taken while I was still making the pose.  I might be able to do something with the hand in upload, but the main thing was that the shield arm did not behave.  Maybe he just got tired of holding it up.  Fortunately, I ran the test on it before uploading and canceled that upload.
This is what it's supposed to look like:

Zeus sculpture

Sorry about the willie.  It's art, people!
There are limits to what I can do with this HUD, but some of that might go away as I get the hang of it.  Here is another pose that pushes the flexion to its limits, but still gives you the basic idea:

Not-at-all-feeling-well Kris

Dying Gaul statue

Women were not allowed to attend the Olympics because 1) ancient Greeks were a$$holes and 2) the men were naked.  There was, though, one Spartan woman who trained chariot race horses and although she was not able to watch, her team did win.  Hurrah for Spartans!
Too bad for Greek women, but there were a couple of goddesses who got to do whatever they wanted.  Artemis went hunting.  Kathy should have put on the shorter outfit, but I was too lazy.

Huntress Kathy

Kathy's hand was formed in the upload, but her head seems to be uncooperative.  Maybe I made the priority too low on the pose.  The quiver is just from her inventory.
Also, I don't have a leaping deer to add.  I tried a tiger, but my tiger is a pet that follows and it insists on staying on the right-hand side.  That would have been cool, though.
The original:

Artemis statue

All in all, the Animare HUD is pretty easy to use if even I can slash-and-burn my way through the process.  The link above takes you to the website where you can see how it works.  The FAQ is hilariously short (but helpful).  I guess no one asks questions.  This was purchased from the marketplace and the reviews of the product were encouraging.  If you'd like to try creating poses, it's a 299L outlay and 300L-worth of fun (if that's what you'd call "fun").

Just What I Needed

No one's looking?

Need to take out your frustrations?  Glitterati has the perfect "vehicle" for your therapy!  It consists of a sports car, eleven poses ... and a baseball bat.  And while you're there, check out the football field size collection of poses.

What is it with the darn chickens?

Who could ask for anything more?

The Comfty Chair

Cal contemplates the winning photo.

Cal is a real trouper. So far he has been on three grueling photo shoots with Lludmila for contest purposes.  This involves, 1) dressing in something other than brown, and 2) being forced onto silly poseballs or standing around for ages waiting for us to find the just the right silly poseball.  I suppose he wouldn't put up with it at all if his RL person had to be present.  We've made the first cut on one, got an also-ran consolation prize on another, and won the [kusshon] contest!  To thank him for his work, we cut him in on the prizes: a guitar stool that comes with a guitar and strumming animation (as well as other animations - because Cal's RL persona is a guitar person)!

The guitar stool makes it all worth while.

Lludmila got to pick out some things for herself, notably the comfy chair (without the pointy cushions or the shouting that makes it worse) with the sewing, knitting, and tea drinking animations she always coveted but was too cheap to actually buy.

Lludmila loses count. "Goshdarnitalltoheck!"

To celebrate the new line of mesh Pearl Eyes (not pictured - I wasn't organized enough) at the companion store, Poetic Colors, [kusshon] has put out a freebie pair of color-change glasses.  So it just gets better and better!

Lludmila loves these so much, she may never take them off.

This Much Fun ...

Ooo, pretty!

... Should be illegal.  We were just celebrating the US Independence Day and our friend searched her inventory for some sparklers but instead attached fireworks.  This led to a fabulous display of particle emission and ended in a conflagration that continued even after she logged off.

Who hasn't been in this position?  You only mean to take off one attachment or replace one and all your clothes and attachments vanish.  You make the mistake of opening a folder a stranger has given you that had an innocuous title and suddenly the whole sim is particle-bombed.  You can't hear anything going on and solicit all sorts of advice, emptying cache, logging off and on, toggling - only to discover that your headphones aren't plugged in.

When things like that happen to us, it can be somewhat embarrassing, but the delight it brings to spectators and the stories we create in our little minds make it all worthwhile.  Learning to laugh at ourselves isn't the easiest skill to acquire, but at least from the other side of the monitor your reactions are masked and a strategically typed, "LOL, aren't I the doofus?" makes you look well-adjusted and easy-going.   In other words, it Builds Character.

There, that's another good reason to spend time in the virtual universe.

But perhaps not as much time as I spend.