Relay for Life Design Contest

This year, there is a design contest for the 2008-American-Cancer-Society-Relay-For-Life-in-SL donation kiosk and ANYONE can enter (well, except the judges and the ACS RFL tech crew).

To enter, visit ACS Island or the PaperModels in Second Life store at Pinastri and touch the registration cube; you'll immediately be registered for the contest and receive the instruction note card.

Why Enter the Contest? Fame and Fortune, of course! The winner will receive a prize award of $5,000L and a $50 credit to the PaperModelsOnline.com / Paper Models in Second Life store. The really cool part is that the winning design will be developed into a real life 3D model that can be downloaded in real life by Paper Models in Second Life!

This is the first ever build event anywhere in the metaverse which the winning design will become a real life 3D model using the Paper Models, Inc. patented process! The winner could be you!

Participants will be contacted by the contest coordinators, David Jacobs or Estaban Graves and the official textures and logos provided - we're using the new MediaMaster Syndication tool so there is no group to join!

Come get involved and help us with the most awesome, donation-inspiring design ever and get memorialized as the first ever 3D download-able ACS RFL design in metaverse history!

Folks the above is a press release. I am not one of the organizers of the RFL and I can't answer any questions about this. I'll try and update later when I find out who to contact about this if you have questions.

Only 59 days to the Relay for Life Clothing Fair!

The countdown is on for this year's Relay for Life Clothing Fair....

Hard to imagine that it's just 59 days until the BIGGEST CLOTHING EVENT of the year. The Relay Raiders have been working hard dotting their i's and crossing their t's to ensure you a versatile offering of SL's finest.

Have you heard ... Dark Eden , Moonshine Clothing, DeFleur Fashions, Passionate Neko Dreams, Solange, Annalise, IEVL, Immortelle, Milady Fashion, Barerose, Casa del Shai & Digit Darkes (just to name a few) have all signed on to join us ?

Really, how can we top 84 of SL premier designers sitting down to the drawing board to create the best of the best for this year's event? Fold in live music, multiple fashion shows, treasure hunts and let simmer for 59... soon to be 58 days! We'll serve up an "Awesome" stew.

Save your Linden's, watch for events.. and listen around the grid. You don't want to miss this one!

See you there!
The Relay Raiders

Oh... did I forget to mention St. Patrick's day. I guess I did. Until next time guys, ;)!

SLNewspaper.com, Second Style, The M2, Fashion Angels and Homme Magazine are sponsoring this year's event!

The above was a press release but let me add that I will also be DJing part of the Clothing Fair -- I don't know just when yet. The Relay for Life Clothing Fair blog is located here and I have a permanent link on the nav bar on the left.

p.s. Hey folks I am not one of the organizers -- just a participant through the auspices of being a part of Dark Eden and also a DJ. If you have questions about the Relay for Life, please contact Nevar Lobo in world. Thanks!

Curses

I would like to take this opportunity, whilst I am lagging so much that it takes five minutes to move one step or for one outfit to rez, to curse every person who does not strip themselves of scripted items and attachments of any sort while shopping at the ETD and Last Call sales.

Could you be any friggin ruder? I mean really. Is there anyone out there that doesn't know to do this? If there is, the innocent/uninformed are excused from this curse. May the rest of you who are willfully ignoring pleas from everyone who wants a less lagging shopping experience be afflicted with debilitating lag for the rest of your days. May your attachments be missing, may your resses be slow, and may you be cursed with missing image till the end of your days.

That is all.

Relay for Life

Oh yes folks it is that time again and I have a press release for you that should have gone out earlier this week but is only going out now. As you may or may not know, every year the Relay for Life (RFL) comes to Second Life. The RFL is the American Cancer Society's premier annual fundraising event and Second Life residents have raised oogobs of money for them for the last two years and we hope to raise mega-oogobs this year. (Do I get points for using oogobs not once, not twice, but three times in a post?) I digress -- on with the Press Release!

Announcing the Relay for Life, Clothing Fair 2008
The much anticipated Relay for Life, Clothing Fair will be opening it’s doors March 17, and run thru March 23, 2008. Jam packed with live music, treasure hunts… and fashion shows this year’s fair features 80 of SL’s premier designers! Kicking off this years Relay for Life Fundraiser will be a multi-sim St. Patrick’s Day celebration and running 24/7 until the doors close on the 23rd.

Did I say Multi-Sim? I did, didn’t I. With names like Dark Eden, BeWitched, Armidi, Callie Cline, Rebel Hope, Nicky Ree, Awesome Designs, Aitui, Sherona DeGroot, Rfrye, Nocturnal Threads, Barefoot Designs, RPD, DE Designs, Night & Day, Mischief, Goth1c0..., way too many to list… what choice did we have! This year’s concept, spearheaded by Pips Fetid and Nevar Lobo spans five sims to ensure a low lag, positive shopping experience.

So mark your calanders, check events, and save your Lindens. Come stroll the seasons and help us “Celebrate, Remember, Fight Back”. We can make a difference! Until there's a cure, there's Relay for Life.

Also there is a Clothing Fair blog. I know Nevar emailed Tao last night to add it to the feed but as we don't know when that will happen, here is the direct link to it and I will also be putting it over on the left hand navigation pane.

I will be posting news about the Relay for Life as I get it and there will be a lot of great things to come. So stay tuned!

Then and now

How much has SL changed from when you started?

Here's how much it has changed for me. When I started, Canimal used to be the place you went for vinyl, fishnets, funky clothing and tattoos.

Today I'm cruising FashionPlanet and I see this:

I went to Canimal which is another fine maternity store and was pleased to discover the new selection of conservative, classy dresses. They are perfect for executive meetings, and for any job interview. I highly recommend them to any mother to be.

I showed that to a few friends and their reaction was similar to mine. Canimal? Interview and maternity clothing? We are thinking maybe its a spoof because the pics surrounding the quote aren't conservative by any stretch of the imagination.


But if it isn't a spoof -- How things change.

How many is enough? A time for a new system.

So right now there's a huge outcry for more groups -- as there should be. In a social game like Second Life, and without a viable events calendar, the crux of any social gathering must be the ability to easily group. So the outcry is understandable. But really I have to ask, how many is enough? Beyond that, how many is actually manageable?

When I started SL, we were limited to 10 groups and when it was expanded to the current 25 I thought I'd never use all the slots and for a while I actually had open group space. It was awesome for all of about 2 months. It quickly filled as I had the ability to join this favorite shop's group and this other favorite shop's group and before long I still had favorites I wanted to join but was out of groups. As I started getting involved in things like the SLCC and the Relay for Life, those favorite shops groups gave way to the work I was doing.

Of course that leaves me out of the things being given away to the group only. And these are shops, generally, where I drop a fairly sizeable wad of cash on a semi-regular basis. Like Queenie, I feel a bit guilty joining and then leaving but I've spoken to a couple of designers who say they completely understand and they have the same problem too.

Which got me thinking -- if I joined every group I wanted, how many groups would I be in? The list came to well over 100. So then I imagined this completely out of control group list -- akin to my friends list -- a thing crucial to my Second Life experience that I have the ability to fill as large as I wanted but with no way to organize or manipulate it. ugh.

Folks we don't need just need more groups -- they can raise it to 50 and it won't be enough and in 2 years you'll be back here filing JIRAs to get it to 100. And 2 years after that new folks will come along and wonder why its limited to that low number. And I dare you to belong to 100 groups and be able to control the traffic chatter and not crash on login when after a mere 24 hours of not logging in you have something like 50 notices. Its not viable.

What we need is a new group system. We need ways to organize groups like we can organize our inventories. We need ways to control notices and chatter. We need to be able to link it to our email so we can read AND DELETE off line. And we need to be able to join unlimited amounts of groups.

Until the entire group system is revamped or thrown away in favor of something better -- you can cry for more groups all you want but it won't be the solution you are looking for.