I’ve recently been exploring the art world of second life as a way of broadening my horizons as I also improved and expanded my ever-increasing wardrobe. I just recently visited the Gruntled Gallery by Alexx Fenstalker (aka Thomas Griffith) and wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I steped into his surreal reality. I happened to come across his work through the Showcase SL search and it states, “Apartment 5B is an art installation by Artist Alexx Fenstalker. The installation is meant to be a comtemplation of how mental disorder and family dysfunction affects the lives of those it touches. All aspects of the installation are handmade, including all of the texturse which were painted in gouache.”

I also decided to dress up for the ocassion and gallery viewing with a beautiful dress from | Aleida | that I came across while browsing through the online marketplace for some inspiration. They’re having a closing sale apparently so I’d advise to get your last minute buys while you still can. When I stepped into the so called “apartment 5B” which resembled a small house rather than an actual apartment I was initally confused until I turned on the music and just soaked up the images that my brain attempted to process. I found myself near tears within 10 minutes of visiting and whether it was the inspirational piano pieces by Michael Bartels warbling over the speakers or the desolate and painful images scattered around the room is unclear. But to have something affect me as no art has ever affected me has really brought a new perspective to me and my view on art. If you have the time or the inclination I’d suggest taking a peek at this art. They also have it on sale for a bargain considering what I think it’s work but definitely something that will inspire the senses.

Hair: Amrita – Sedna Blackolive
Belt: *Baiastice – Dita Corset Belt Red
Make Up: BOOM - Love my eyes Liner & Mascara
Skin: Al Vulo! Skin – Ninni – cocoa shine
Dress: | Aleida | - China Doll – noir/rouge
Shoes: P10 – Amara Heel SnakeSkin VIP Gift

Wow. As I write this I feel a little like sleeping beauty or Rip Van Winkle. It’s been so long since I’ve been back to second life and I’ve finally found my bearings again. Due to do some RL complications I had to take a sabbatical so could not do any postings but now that things are a bit calmer I plan to get back into the blogging game. I really agonized over what I wanted to do with my first post upon returning to the website and it took me a few days before I finally found the idea. I was reading through some RL fashion magazines as I’m wont to do during my downtime at work and came across a lot of ideas about color. It was the prevailing theme in the magazines I ran across and it really resonated with me deep inside.

Color is such a wonderful and creative thing and yet a lot of us fear it when interjecting it into our own wardrobe whether it be second life or our first lives. I found that I was guilty of this as well. I love color, especially when I am decorating my houses and dealing with interior design projects although I tend to stay with more earthy tones with pops of color. But in my wardrobe I can sometimes be more conservative with color, afraid that I’ll make a mistep with one risky move and instead of being something revolutionary I create something that is disastrous. It has happened time and time again as I’ve seen with many others and I didn’t want to fall prey to that same beast but I’ve decided to be a bit more daring with color and not fear it as much. I wanted to showcase a few outfits that I found that really display the beauty that color is. You’ll find the others in future posts as I finish processing them but I wanted to start off bold.

A tip for those that may be more afraid of playing with color than others would be to start off small. Play with your accessories and their colors first. Learn to add pops of color here and there to create dynamic looks that work for all sorts of occasions. Once you get more confident try playing around with a piece of clothing at a time- a bright shirt with subdued bottoms or vise-versa. Color is all about experiment and I sometimes laugh when I hear how some people think that females must have some special gene to know how colors go together. We know what looks right and what may look wrong but it’s also a matter of personal taste with a touch of societal and fashion trends that determine the way our style can go. It’s something that everyone has to experiment with constantly to make it work so do so. If you’re really a color-phobe then check out full outfits that showcase color in a stylish way that appeals to your senses as I did here. Blue and yellow isn’t something I would’ve originally thought to put together in such a bold way but it worked with this outfit so I had to get it. Buying full outfits in this instance is a way to immerse yourself, dipping a toe in the pool, before you decide to take the plunge.

What I loved most about this outfit wasn’t just the colors although they are eye-catching but the design and cut of it itself. I called it my hobo chic and while it’s not something I would classify as an everyday part of my wardrobe the individual pieces themselves could work with any other number of things I have in my inventory which is something I really look for in full outfits- whether they can be deconstructed later to be put into creative use with pre-existing pieces.

Outfit: *{ SeVered GarDeN }* Mina * Blue
Shoes: AZOURY – Les Bottines Lilium
Hair: TRUTH – Joanna Reds
Skin: [Al Vulo!] – Ninni – Cocoa

Oh my god! It’s wonderful to have my internet back again for how ever long I can keep it. Well I had this little number in my closet for quite a while from the Emery sale but never got a chance to blog on it. I have to admit that my favorite piece of the entire outfit is the DeLa trench coat. I knew the minute I saw it when I was browsing Xstreet that I had to use it in styling an outfit. The texturing is so well done that it looks soft, supple and luxurious. I’ve always been a fan of highwaisted pants- jeans or slacks or otherwise. Something about the fit always slims everything down and shows off the stomach to it’s best advantage even if you have 0 body fat. [laughs] I was so lucky to find this skin in the Fashion Freaks Hunt and am really glad that I decided to give it a look since the name alone didn’t appeal to me. It just goes to show you how you shouldn’t ever judge a book by it’s cover or a Hunt by it’s name. I have some more articles coming up featuring a few interesting pieces from the FF Hunt and Fall Seasons Hunt, which has a lot of talented Japanese designers!

Skin: *Just Me* – Kelly SK (fashion freaks hunt)
Shirt: Emery – Top So F* Special #02
Pants: Emery – Denim Highwaisted Misery
Coat: DeLa – Trench Coat “Anne” Navy
Necklace: [MANDALA] – Kagetora Pale White (previous rockin friday gift)
Heels: KoKo – High Platform Mushroom
Hair: Truth – Joanna (burgandy)

Well second life is up to it’s old tricks of implementing new “improvements” to our sl experiences. What’s it this time? Have they decided to just dump all the adult triple X griders off the map into some alternate grid or universe like they do with youngsters on the teen grid? Nope! They’ve chosen to introduce to wonderful and creative world of Display Names. Can you just hear the sarcasm dripping like honey? I’m personally on the fence about this new “improvement” until i see how it would affect our lives so I’m cautious. Now if you’re scratching your head and wondering what the heck I’m talking about then you need to get better informed and I’m happy to help you out in that department. You can also view the video created by Torley Linden that goes on to explain how the Display Name feature can be used.

The Display Name feature basically allows you to change your name to anything that you wish up to 31 characters for whatever reason that you choose- whether it be to change or hyphenate your name after marriage, role playing, business purposes, or just on a whim. The only draw back- maybe they’re doing this to cut back on information overload- is that you can only change it once a week as I understand it. Now older residents are probably trying to pick their jaw off the floor and also wonder how that will work overall for the new and old. Well let me do a bit of explaining. The new residents will go about the registration and choose a username (which for older residents is the name that you signed on with (first name.last name)) and then when they log in they can create their display names. You won’t need your unique last name for your username so it’s entirely optional. Your display name will be shown in chat, IMs, build menus, overhead tag above your username, in the profile, during transactions, in Friends lists, and the CHOOSE RESIDENT window (also used when reporting abuse).

Some may be wondering why in the world the Lindens decided to go with this so called “improvement” now and some may already have their own thoughts on this particular subject. Their official reason was that “selecting a Second Life name is one of the biggest hurdles in the new Resident registration process” and is the most common reason that they abandon the entire registration. Long time residents are saying that this is Linden’s way of applying “correction tape” to the demand and request of being able to change your second life names. Maybe it’s a bit of both in the overall scheme of things- who knows? This nifty new feature will be implemented after careful and extensive testing on the test grid Aditi before it’s released and officially introduced to the Beta Grid for the 2.0 Beta Viewer. What does this mean for those that are running an older version of the official second life viewer or even the third party viewers? To put it simply nothing really changes and you won’t even see the display names so you may not even have to worry about it. Third party viewers are subject to change when the creators and scripters of that viewer decides to put that feature in so it has no bearing on the official 2.0 viewer and it’s changes. Also when logging into second life on the 2.0 viewer you can still use your second life name (user name) with the period or space. An expample would be if your name is Laura Lilibrook then you would enter Laura.Lilibrook or Laura Lilibrook to log in.

For business owners this could potentially be something great to use or something even more confusing depending on the way that you think and function. In the edit tab or the build menu when you click on your creations it will show both your display name and your username, which wouldn’t be visible if you used all 31 characters for your display name.

Now I personally have a few issues with this and I’m sure it’s probably been on the minds of a few others as well. Here’s what I’m thinking…

They say that it will be easier to find friends and recognize them with display names but I have to question them on this one. If you’re allowed to change it once per week after the launch- although while it’s still in beta you can change it multiple times- then what if they choose something entirely different from their user name- a username that you have identified with this person for all your time of knowing them? And what if they change it every single week to something different? How does that make it easier to find them or recognize them if you’re looking in your friends list? Sure you could scroll or hover your mouse over their name or check profiles to see their usernames but doesn’t it make it more troublesome, not less? I like being able to find my friends on my list at a simple glance with a hit of my tab button. Maybe you should think about this LL because I’m not sure where you got the idea it would be easier. Also what does this do for businesses or careers? If a model changes their name every week how do we identify her/him- with their username or their display names?

What if I find someone walking around with my exact name as their display name? They can chat with others, use that name for business purposes perhaps and even impersonate someone me or someone else! While it’s true that you can quickly find out of they are legitimately the person their display name claims them to be by checking their profile or inspecting them to find their usernames who wants to go through all this trouble and have to wonder all the time whether they are the real deal or not? This also makes me wonder about whether we will continue to keep and retain the unique identities that we have created and cultivated in second life.

Now there are some cool things that come with the name change that I can’t deny or overlook so I won’t even try.

You’ve probably seen so many people strutting their stuff with those huge titlers and sometimes it just made you go blind looking at them or confused you with all the text that blended in with the background or their bodies. Titlers are used for many purposes whether it’s just to be goofy and announce a preference, a nickname, or for business and advertising purposes. The display name feature eliminates titlers in a way and cuts down on some lag I suppose. So if you owned a business you could change your display name to Kookie Crumble of Kookie-Land Designs for example. Which is a nifty feature to have on hand although I wouldn’t say it was so dire in need that the display name feature should be created just for this.

Let’s say that when you first registered you thought it would be really cool to have a goofy and weird name but as you grew in second life you realized that it wasn’t so great to have a name with 20 characters or all numbers but you couldn’t change it. With the display name feature that is taken care of because while your username may remain all numbers you can quickly change it to whatever your heart desires.

What if you get married and want to take on the last name of your new beaux of the week like you would do in real life- for some people? The display name feature takes care of this as well and you’re quickly back in business with a new last name to reflect your new relationship and connections.

Linden Labs is working on putting in any feature that would make the display name feature convienient for the residents of second life to retain their current identities and to lose them if they so choose by not displaying them. While I’m not jumping for joy at this new feature and still have a few doubts on it I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how it will effect my overall quality of SLife. I personally use Emerald Viewer and unless they decide to change with the times like the 2.0 viewer I doubt that anything will be changing for me since I won’t even see the display names. But it’s something to keep in mind the next time you log in.

Want to have your voice heard then maybe you should vote on this new impending improvement launch. You can add your voice Here.

I’ve also included the video tutorial and introduction to the Display Name feature created by Torley Linden. Enjoy and let us know what you think or feel about this!