Makara Yorimasa

Chant's Cabin: first pictures

2008-04-08T12:27:00.000+01:00

Here are some snaps of Chant's cabin (aka Newall Lodge, soon to be sold as the Adirondack Lodge). It's pretty primmy as each log is a real log, and all of them have had their textural alignment tweaked in order to avoid that repetition thing you get when people pile up copies of prims.

It's a Wrap

2008-04-07T10:10:00.001+01:00

Chant has asked me to prep and finish my builds for packing and selling, so I thought this would be a good time to make a list of them. In chronological order, then...

New England-style small gazebo
Small commercial building
Spanish-style ranch house (from the Scotty's Castle build)
New England L-shaped cottage
Farnsworth-style house (two versions, with and without internal block)
Barcelona Pavillion
(a one-off building project which will remain nameless for the moment but which I'd like to be able to sell)
Small square gazebo (it's probably not even worth selling this, it's so simple)
Adirondack-style Lodge

I've also made a few accessories which I guess I could sell - small pieces of furniture, furnishings, etc. I'm not really sure how to go about this...

And then, of course, there is the question of my inventory. There's loads of stuff in that which should either be used or given away.

Lastly, I am starting to get a bit more confident about making stuff for myself. I think the crunch came when I found I had paid 450 linden for what is basically a 6 prim wooden cube from Corn just because it matched some other furniture. I got it home and it looked... wrong somehow. Sometimes, I get so into shopping I lose my (tentative) grip on reality.

Cheered myself up by getting some angel wings from Illusions, and an awesome skin, of which more later.

My Home v2

2008-04-05T19:49:00.000+01:00

I'm finally getting round to doing up my own house. I've gone back to the first house I ever had - the Neo by Fade Languish at Cult Living. I've never found a better one for my needs, so thanks, Fade :) One day I might build my own from scratch but until then this is perfect. The only thing it's missing is a bathroom, so I added a small shower room. It's still a work in progress though...

New Look Blog

2008-04-05T09:58:00.001+01:00

The grid is down so here I am, sorting stuff out and twiddling my thumbs. A lot has been going on, particularly on the building front, and I now have the start of a portfolio, amazingly enough. A lot has been going on for CNDG too, of which more in another post. An I have a new PC - a brand spanking new 24" iMac. Actually, that's something I could be doing - installing the 4GB memory I bought for it. Back in a sec...

Bummer - no screwdriver that fits the panel. And town is full of Olympians today, so going to the Apple shop on Regent's Street is out of the question. And the bloody grid is still down... *groan*

Second Life Voyeurism

2008-03-22T10:06:00.000Z

A strange woman appeared next to me today as I was putting windows in Gabe's house. After being slow to acknowledge my presence (she was obviously checking mine and Gabe's profiles), and despite numerous friendly hellos, she finally said hi, and claimed to have appeared in Gabe's kitchen because she had logged off from there a few weeks back, after having had sex with him ("Gabe, yeah, I remember him lol"). I said I doubted that, as he's gay, and after a pause she said she was just messing with me. She then said her favourite pastime was tracking down people being unfaithful to their SL partners, catching them having sex, and giving them grief for it.

I wanted to tell her she was a sad cow and should sod off, but of course, I held back, being a polite bloke. If she had been a total noob, I could have understood it, but she wasn't. I can only assume she had "issues" of some kind in RL and was acting them out here.

In order to get her out of the house, and possibly shame her into giving up her nasty little hobby, I invited her for coffee at the CNDG Plaza. She never turned up for the coffee, so I lost the chance to probe more deeply into her twisted little world. Ah well!

New Building: the "Aoyama"

2007-10-29T09:25:00.000Z

Simon has been away for a few days so I've been working on a building project. I've made a moderately faithful reproduction of German architect Mies van der Rohe's iconic "Barcelona Pavillion", which he completed in 1929. I extended the smaller block at the end of the building to make a sleeping chamber which has a nice view of the back of the building; otherwise, the layout is unchanged from the original.

The finished building, which I've named the "Aoyama", after a district of Tokyo, can either be used as an exhibition space, a shop or a residence, and any member of the Chant Newall Development Group can have a copy for free, although I will be putting it up for sale eventually, under the Yorimasa Network FOC.

I am really satisfied with the way it has turned out. The textures by LFox look great; my main problem was finding a suitable statue (I used the one that came with my Japanese builder's set by Miko for these pictures). I also had a little trouble finding a suitable double-sliding door script, but RJ Kikuchiyo and Aprikat helped me out :-) Thanks, guys! The tree and fallen leaves are by Heart, who are always my first choice for horticultural supplies.

Things I learned how to do on this build: make drapes (the ones I am sitting in front of in the second picture); make lights; fit sliding doors.

I have to say, I am very pleased with this build. I think it has an elegant, modern Eurasian look, and would look equally fantastic in an urban, coastal or rural setting. *beams with pride*

Asian Skins

2007-10-25T10:06:00.000+01:00

In between farting around with various builds, I have been wasting time looking for a new skin, or at least a more Asian-looking one. Anyone who has ever gone looking for an Asian skin for a man on SL will know what a tough job it is: there are loads for women and hardly any for men.

The one I have now is a generic medium tan Caucasian; I wanted something with a yellower tint, preferably with eyebrows more like my own, and not too muscly. After a couple of hours of trying on demos (and accidentally buying the full version of one - aieee!) these were the best Asian skins I found (all skins are worn over my existing shape):

This is "Hiro" from Adam n Eve, and I really like it. The eyes are particularly good and the eyebrows are similar to my own, although they look a bit surprised. The colour of the lips is good too. The pubes are visibly crisp and curly, unlike the shaded patch I have on my existing skin ("Eric", from Cryogen), but the nipples are a bit flat and the muscles are a bit slapdash and don't sit well on my shape. Hiro was going to be my new skin until I found the one I ended up with (see end).

This is Takami from Issigonis. The creator (who is wearing this skin in his profile pic, and looks pretty hot) specializes in Asian skins, but as usual, that means Asian skins for women, not men. This had a very negative reaction from Gabe ("You look like you've just come out of a concentration camp!"), and I know what he means, however, the eyes were very good, despite the overshading of the mouth and arse, and the slightly too real musculature.

This is "Bryan" from Cryogen. It cost 1800L$, and is fairly close to my original skin ("Eric" by the same maker), but it has a better finish and looks great close up. It's a tan Caucasian skin again, though. I bought a paler version too, which is closer to my real skin tone (I'm only part Japanese in RL), and a darker one for a summer tan.

If Cryogen could come up with a paler, yellower version of this, with better eyebrows and Asian eyes, I would buy it but for now, this is pretty much perfect.

New fave clothes shop...

2007-10-13T21:17:00.000+01:00

It's called Redgrave, and you can find it at http://slurl.com/secondlife/SANDS%20Island%201/172/98/24

Mother Pussbucket

2007-10-07T09:03:00.000+01:00

Endless pop-up messages saying there's some sort of automatic rule being created by Norton, inability to tp in SL without crashing, loss of signal from wireless modem and crashing and I can't connect to Yahoo again, although I managed it yesterday. And I can't post this fucking post either!!!! What the fuck! *tears out hair*

In my den, in my underpants

2007-10-04T14:25:00.000+01:00

Me and Simon are building a home together on Safe Harbor, using a prefab from Dharma, which we are modding. In the meantime, I have suspended a den-cum-office-cum-temporary bedroom 300m above the new house.

The skybox is a New York loft; I removed the New York skyline and inserted a London view instead. Simon wants to use his furniture in the new place, which is fine with me, of course, but I have a soft spot for this sofa etc. so I will keep it up here.

One of the problems I had with the wraparound panorama is that the image was reversed by the interior wall of the curve on the right hand side, if that makes sense. In the end, I simply uploaded another version of the same panel, which I had reversed in Photoshop using the mirror command, and that worked quite well.

... and new skins!

2007-09-21T16:59:00.000+01:00

New hair and new neko parts...

2007-09-21T12:37:00.000+01:00

The quality of this is a bit dodgy as I am using my less than fancy work pc while I wait for broadband to be installed in my new flat, but here I am "modelling" my new haircut (from GL) and more mobile neko ears (Hybrid Kitty). I think they look pretty cool.

I haven't gone clothes shopping for ages, so it was fun blowing a few hundred Linden on personal adornment rather than buying textures and sofas. I have so much stuff in my inventory, I have no idea how to organize it all. I usually wear the same thing for a week at a time anyway (just like RL, heh heh).

What does the New York Times know? NOTHING!

2007-09-20T12:11:00.000+01:00

Maybe I'm not hanging around with the right people, but when I read articles about SL like this one in the New York Times, I get really pissed off. Some of us like building because we LIKE BUILDING not because we're keeping up with the Joneses. Real Estate might be abundant in the USA, but here in London, I can't even afford to buy a studio flat. It's no mystery that in SL I live in a huge modern swanky pad, and in my free time, spend literally hours buying or building homes, putting them up, landscaping them, modding them and filling them with cool stuff, but does that make me a craven consumerist? No it bloody well doesn't. What on earth is wrong with wanting to look hot, live in a lovely environment and have tons of funky clothes? It doesn't mean I can't also read books, hold a conversation about deep stuff, care about world issues and do whetever else people do to prove they are educated and worldly wise.

And Homeless Hermes shoots himself in the foot rather by railing against the consumerist tendencies of some residents one moment, and then saying he makes all his money buying and selling real estate the next.

And another thing: sex and love. It's as real as the person you're making it with, and lots of people enjoy it on SL. You can't have much of a sex life if you have a wiggy avatar which looks like "a fruit salad encased in gelatin" - this isn't American Pie. Naturally, people want to be beautiful - I personally think my av is pretty hot - and for some people, having a sexy av takes away the fear of being rejected for their less-than-perfect RL looks, and allows them to express themselves sexually in an uninhibited way. It's a GOOD thing to be uninhibited, you morons! You can't deny physical attraction - it's an integral part of sex. Political correctness might not like the concept of physical beauty being valued but it's a natural human urge.

Anyway, in SL, where people can be as beautiful as they like, I find that how good the person is as a virtual lover is much more important than what they look like, a fact which seems to have passed by the writer of this article.

Regarding looking businesslike, our beloved leader, Chant Newell, has a basic skin and a friendly old man av - bald with a little grey beard - and I've never seen him wear anything other than a green shirt and a pair of jeans. Looks count for less than this article implies - it's your interpersonal skills and your business acumen that swings the deal. What this dork fails to realize that when anyone can look as impressive as they like, in SL more than in RL it's the fact that you can walk the walk and talk the talk that gets you taken seriously as a resident, not your big fuck-off glass office floating sky palace. If anything, SL is teaching people that appearances ARE DECEPTIVE, and that's a good lesson for the Real World as well as the Virtual one.

End of rant...

Proposal for a new residential sim

2007-08-08T13:16:00.001+01:00

At a meeting of the CNDG last week, I was caught short (ahem!) and when Chant asked people for ideas about a new sim, I completely forgot about an idea I had back in April, which I actually did quite a lot of work on. I am going to put it forward this at the next meeting of the CNDG as a serious proposal to see if they like the look of it, and so that we all know what I'm talking about, I'll put the details in this blog and pass on the link. Here we go then.

The sim has a working title of "Arboreal James Bond" which will give you an idea of the direction I'm heading in. I was inspired by this fantastic modern treehouse, which will need to be built from scratch by someone comfortable with sweeping curves, and also by some of the buildings which are already available on SL, e.g. Parker McTeague's stuff (see http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=19182), and my current fave, Dharma Prefabs and Interiors (http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=38692), Fade Languish's builds and furniture at Cult Living, and those available at Maximum Minimum (http://maximumminimum.blogspot.com/) would also be appropriate.

These luxury homes will be a mixture of these treehouses, prefab extremely modern houses perched on struts on the sides of mountains, and beach houses; if possible, a few smaller modernistic homes should also be made available for the less wealthy resident. In order to maintain the look of the sim, I think I will have to request that all owners and occupants speak to me first before erecting anything of their own.

The sim will boast two communal areas, to encourage visitors and community life: the Beach Club and the Volcano Cave.

The Beach Club

... will be located in the bay on a wide sandy beach. A partially-open geodesic dome, there will be a music/club/dance area on the sand outside and a chill-out zone inside with piped music. I like to play chess with Simon, so a decent working chessboard would be nice :) Outside on the beach, there should be sunbeds, towels, swimming and surfing animations, a beach shower, and any suitable games we can lay our hands on.We should also allow a couple of vendors to sell beachwear and similar here. It's always nice to go shopping. There should also be a beach restaurant where we can take our mates out for a meal - for free, of course.

The Volcano Cave

In the centre of the island is a volcano, covered with trees on the outside, except for the crater, which smokes, rumbles, and sends up a lava flare occasionally. The cave at the centre of the volcano can be accessed via some tunnels in the cliff wall behind the communal beach. You reach the cave by following the torch-lit tunnels, passing walls of glowing orange, smoking, free-flowing lava, and crossing a ricketty rope bridge over a lava river.

Eventually you find yourself in a huge dark space, with dark congealed lava flow shapes mounting up the walls. In the centre of the cave is a pool of smoking hot, bubbling lava, like a traditional fountain-cum-pool water feature: it illuminates the cave and acts as a focal point. Spread around the cave are quiet areas for lying and relaxing, massage (non-sexual!). A natural hot spring pool with seating poses steams away in one corner. Strange plants - jagged and spikey - push up from the sandy floor. Mad mosses grow up the walls. Lizards scurry around.

More details when I have time to post them. I already have a proper layout of the whole island. Watch this space...

Return of the Mak Redux

2007-07-25T10:35:00.000+01:00

RL intervened in June and July. What a shitty couple of months. My fellow prawns have been having a few problems too. For a while, I thought Safe Harbor had been cursed by some sort of powerful mage.

Three things I must rectify immediately now I have returned:

Catching up with Linx, who has been wonderfully patient with me
Catching up with Aprikat!
Finishing my various projects

I started work on number 3 this morning: I finished the treehouse. It has a vaguely neko theme, with a few cat toys and snuggles, and a cat loo, but it can be used by anyone. It's just an ambient place to hang out. However this still leaves the following projects to finish: Little Nara, the Blossom Tree Island, the floating palaces (might get rid of them altogether), the beach on the spa island, and the gazebo in my back yard.

I also have to sort my inventory, which has nearly 10,000 items in it. Aieee!

Pulling it all together

2007-06-08T10:20:00.000+01:00

It's time for a radical rethink about the Arabian-style palace and gardens. As I see it, there are three fundamental problems with this area:

It's incompatible with the Cape Cod theme!
It's positioned right over the pond in the middle of the sim, so the same music plays at the duck pond on the ground as well as up in the palace. The ullulating exotic stylings of Iranian Radio don't sit well with quacking ducks, Adirondack chairs and lemonade.
It's not exotic ENOUGH. I toned down the Arabian-ness of the gardens in order to try to segue between the pond, the gardens and the palace, but as a result, the gardens ended up looking like an homage to Barbara Cartland. The Japanese style bathhouse island was easier to match to the Cape Cod theme, perhaps because both are simple, low-rise, wood- and stone-based architectures originating in warm temperate climates.

Having had a think about this, I am going to make the following proposals to my fellow prawns:

I think we still have three island spaces left (I hope...), and I could move the garden to ground level on one of these islands, make the garden smaller and more authentic, and spice it up a lot, and then float the palace about 500 metres above it, with a teleport to the palace from a hidden place on the ground.
I could try making an underground secret cave somewhere else on the island and move all the naughty stuff down into it, and store the palace again.
I could just scrap it and bung it all into an inventory store box!

Guest House

2007-06-06T11:46:00.001+01:00

I have rezzed a guest house on the Temple of the Groaning Wood for Es and his kitten, who are in dire need of somewhere to fool around and chill out. The land is still up for sale, of course, so it's only a temporary arrangment; I've changed the name to "Yorimasa Network".

Antisocial Behaviour Redux

2007-05-21T10:21:00.000+01:00

Well, I posted Dazzle's comment, as you will see if you scroll down. A few corrections:

a) When I posted my original rant, I'd heard more than one side of the story: I'd had a conversation with Masa about the whole affair, I'd seen copy and pasted chunks of his and Dazzle's argument, and I'd had an hour-long argument with Dazzle. I'd based my opinion of Dazzle's behaviour on all three/four.
b) Market price: well, we can agree to disagree here. I paid 14,000L$ for my own plot in Sept 2006. Three plots surrounding Masa and Dazzle's land are currently on the market for 25,000L$. And the plot Masa wanted to buy cost 16,000 L$, which is why he was selling at that price. I do think it's strange that a buyer should expect a seller to drop his price to whatever suits the buyer.
c) The noob is the guy on the other side of Masa's land! Read it again! And I most certainly am not making fun of noobs - I am very noob friendly.
d) The word uppity was my own; if it had been a direct quote, I would have used quotation marks as I did when I quoted Dazzle as saying Masa's use of his own land was "boring". BTW, he didn't mention his good gay friend in our original 1 hour chat, when I accused him of homophobia, which would have been an excellent place to drop it into the conversation we were having about how gays were "taking over" Seattle. Lastly, I find it hard to believe Dazzle would need Masa's full name from me (I don't remember him asking for it) given that he had spent the previous week IM-ing him constantly, and had also met him face to face several times.

Other comments:
Yes, only 2 communications, but totalling about one and a half hours. The "security fences": I didn't feel threatened by them - I said they had cut off access to anyone who didn't teleport in, they had spoiled Masa's view and they'd made his land less attractive to potential buyers. I would love to say my penis statues had the ability to hurt people, but alas, they are just inert statues. And Godzilla never made an appearance in the end as I had run out of prims!

Since then, Dazzle has written an apology to Masahiro, which I hereby reproduce in full. Of course, I'm certain that this apology owes more to the fact that he wants me to drop the land to its original price of 16,000L$ again than to any genuine regret about his bullying tactics and un-SL-like attitudes, but I will take him at face value, because believe it or not, I am a nice guy. If he buys, that's up to him. If he doesn't, I have a tenant who only ever uses teleport to access his skypod ready to move onto the land.

"masa,
I have heard my converstation with you did not make you feel good.
I would like to apologize for my comments, that you found offensive.
i have posted a blog with maka and if you need more clarifcation feel free to im me.
I did/do not mean any bad will or any such thing to yourself.
daz"

One more thing: I will not allow any more comments from Dazzle on my blog (it is my blog, after all!). I think I've wasted enough space on this subject now. There are far more interesting things to think about, like Gabe's almost completed house!

Wooden Sidings: why it doesn't pay to buck the trend

2007-05-14T15:01:00.000+01:00

Ever wondered all houses built with wooden sidings have the planks laid horizontally? Never mind the RL fact that horizontal slats keep the rain out (thanks, Gabe!), in SL it's because it's much easier to line up textures with horizontal lines than textures with vertical lines. I'm currently remaking all of Gabe's walls, having been driven to distraction by the problem of aligning vertical stripes. Why oh why oh why didn't I just use horizontal lines from the start? Moron!

In other news, I bought a copy of Prim Docker for aligning my prims. I haven't had time to RTFM yet - I think I need to do that before I do anything else.

I will be selling copies of this house when it's done, on RJ's advice. Of course, this means having to master one of those rezzing gadgets...

I will say one thing though - his bathroom looks f-ing excellent. Just like a RL seaside home bathroom (except for the SexGen shower, ahem...)!

Aesthetics of SL

2007-05-10T10:28:00.000+01:00

I meant to finish some work around Safe Harbor, but one way or another, I ended up spending a lot of the bank holiday weekend chatting to people. One of them was the lovely Linuxess, a member of Thinc, who was looking for a new skin. We went to Snowflake Skins, which have the most kawaii designs in SL, IMHO, and I'm delighted to say that she bought a very pretty anime-style pale skin with huge eyes and petal pink lips (you can see it on her blog which is listed on my links). She had been looking for a realistic skin, but I think I persuaded her that it is nice to be a little more cartoony sometimes, which brings me on to the subject of this post.

Aesthetics are a personal thing, of course, so what I'm going to give here is my personal opinion. SL is basically a cartoon environment at the moment - it's not sophisticated enough yet to handle "Final Fantasy" levels of detail - so when I'm designing, shopping or building in SL, I try to bear this fact in mind. For this reason, I avoid ultra-photorealistic textures at all times, prefering a more painterly effect. I don't mind how wiggy or off-the-wall buildings and clothes are - or how safe and boring they are - but I do think a photographic texture looks out of place in an animated cartoon world.

Particularly jarring are plants, but I also find textures representing bookcases, or cupboards full of food, etc. quite unpleasant to look at. I have been installing a kitchen in Gabe's refurbished house this morning, and have had a lot of trouble finding attractive fittings (I don't want him to have a kitchen that looks as if I've slapped a polaroid of a cooker over the top of a square block).

Of course the first thing I should do is to enrol on a building course and learn how to make my own textures. I'll look into this tonight.

Moth Balls on IM

2007-05-08T13:03:00.000+01:00

gabe semyorka: mak - did you ever smell moth balls?
Makara Yorimasa: Yes, baby, why?
gabe semyorka: how did you pry their little legs apart?

I record this terrible joke for posterity...

Antisocial Behaviour

2007-05-08T10:40:00.000+01:00

Masahiro called me over to the new home he is sharing with Johnny Sumbula, his partner, yesterday: he had just escaped from a conversation with Dazzle Gastel, his neighbour, who owns every plot of land surrounding Masa's except for one plot, which boasts an ugly building erected by a newbie who hasn't been onworld for months. Masa had put his plot up for sale at 16000$L which is slightly above the market price - only slightly, mind you: it is comparable to the price I paid for my 512sqm plot 6 months ago - and the neighbour was trying to negotiate a lower price, hoping to buy Masa's land and join all his plots together. Masa showed me the conversation he had had with the guy, which he saved, so what I say next comes from first hand evidence.

Having failed to beat Masa down in the first volley, Gastel proceeded to insult: a) the Japanese (for not having the business sense of other Asian people), b) gays (for being uppity) and c) Masa's "boring" house (which he built himself and is a nice, clean modern style). He also commented on how ugly the plot was due to all his own No Entry signs, and how Masa had no hope of selling it to anyone else because of these signs and its inaccessibility. Needless to say, Masa was highly annoyed by the guy's attitude and refused to sell to him for less than 16,000$L.

Being a straight man in RL, I was pissed off at this. Masahiro is a very, very nice guy and one of my closest friends, and after the fiasco with Kevin on Friday morning, I was feeling a little oversensitive to this sort of thing. I bought Masa's land from him, renamed it Temple of the Groaning Wood - the home of the Japanese Penis Festival, and am now in the process of building a temple dedicated to cock on it. I envisage cock fountains squirting frothy white cum, cocks rampant over the temple building, and a lake of semen.

On the advice of RJ, designer and builder extraordinaire, I am also installing so many particle effects and sounds that it causes a huge amount of lag for the unpleasant Mr Gastel. RJ is another straight man who hates hate; he was happy to spend an hour with me on the land this morning creating huge one-prim spinning blocks with so many effects built in that when Aprikat visited, the lag caused her to crash immediately. In addition, Aprikat has promised me a free-roaming Godzilla which spews 600-particle flames, bumping up the lag still further (I can't wait!).

Lastly, I will leave the land up for sale at twice the price Masahiro asked for it. I don't need the money, so it's no skin off my nose. If the guy wants it, he can just go in there and buy it. If he doesn't, well, the temple can stay there indefinitely as far as I'm concerned.

PS: Of course, if he writes a full apology to Masahiro, he can have it at the original asking price of 16,000$L. I'm a reasonable guy.

We Love You, Kevin Dumont!

2007-05-06T11:24:00.000+01:00

Kevin likes sex. He likes sex a lot. Even in my most rampant days I had trouble keeping up with him. He can keep going for hours, and take on any number of partners without breaking a sweat. He describes himself as "trysexual" on his profile, with the tagline "You wheel it in, I will consider it". I've been with him, and so has nearly everyone I know.

He's also very generous and will often hand out sympathy shags to desperate men and women, and first time shags to newbies. One such noob approached Kevin on Friday, saying he was about to go into the Marines and wanted to try gay sex - and of course, Kevin agreed to show him the ropes. Having shot his load, the jerk proceeded to call Kevin a filthy fag and tell him he would burn in hell for being an unChristian pervert.

Needless to say, Kevin was pretty upset by this, and called me over for a chat and a cuddle. I did my best to cheer him up, inwardly seething. I don't know how gay men put up with this in the real world. I have experienced racial abuse in RL (try being the only Asian-looking guy at your school), but it was never so direct or so aggressive. I was ashamed to be straight. So for the record, can I say that we're not all like that, Kev, and you keep on doing what you love best - shag your heart out, baby. We love you, Kevin Dumont!

Gabe's Extension

2007-04-30T12:30:00.000+01:00

Lovely Gabe wants a bathroom in his house, so I have offered to build an extension. When I realized I couldn't get hold of the textures used by the original builder, and that in order to build the extension, I would have to kick Gabe out of his house while I ripped out walls and moved stuff around, I bought a copy of his house, rezzed it on some spare land, and set about cannibalizing it to make the extension. It's a very sweet country-style cottage, with nice layout, but it's a bit pokey, and because it was designed to be low-prim, the creator (Sandy Clymer) had to sacrifice prettiness for prims.

Happily, Gabe agreed to let me tweak the textures and clean up the design a bit during the rebuild. I put in a simple white wooden staircase (replacing the one-prim ramp), added an extra wing at the back of the house for the upstairs bathroom and a downstairs family den, and changed the roof tiles to a dark slate pattern which is classic New England, but which ties in his house to the colour scheme of my modern house, giving Safe Harbor a little more unity.

I ripped out the old fireplace, which was just a one-prim illustration, and installed a new one, complete with crackling, smoking flames, glowing logs and a chimney with smoke coming out of it. I'm also tarting up the interior walls, giving him smart Cape Cod-style whitewashed oak woodwork and wainscoting, and plaster walls in pale sky blue, pale lavender and a rich cornflower blue. "Real" windows with shutters will be installed, and curtains will be hung on the inside. Other plans (apart from the bathroom and den): a new kitchen with a working fridge and washing machine, a proper dining room, a new front door and a working doorbell, and a small back yard leading off from the den, where Gabe can hang his washing on the line and store logs for his log fire.

Pond Life

2007-04-24T10:13:00.000+01:00

Blew a couple of thousand Lindens on some wildlife for the pond: a croaking frog and a swimming mallard with ducklings by Kaikou Splash at Splash Aquatics, and two fishing game chairs-with-rods from the same place - great fun. Tried it out and landed a 22lb roach. Go me! The brilliant thing is, the fish you "catch" is a proper swimming fish which you can put in your inventory and make copies of, so I copied a dozen or so roach, and dotted them around in the reeds, where they're now circling slowly, looking pretty realistic. Cool! I think I'll make an angling trophy to award to the person who catches the biggest fish. We can display it in the boathouse...

I also scored some Adirondack chairs and some sound loops from Sid Fisher. The chairs are mod, so they can be retextured to suit the style of the pond. They don't have sitting anims, but that's fine, because I would prefer to use animated cushions from Pillow Talk, of which I have many copiable versions in my inventory. I'll give them home-style quilted covers this evening. Still to make/acquire: a beer cooler (for those long fishing trips), the footstool for the Adirondack bench (I ran out of money), and some suitable lamps. I should also put in a few more activity anims, like sitting, reading and maybe skinny dipping...

Comments

2007-04-24T06:20:00.001+01:00

Just realized I never activated the Comments function, so no-one could leave comments. *smacks self on head* Okay, Comments are on now, for anyone...

Masahiro's New T-Shirt (Lag)

2007-04-23T12:35:00.000+01:00

Simon told me over breakfast this morning that Masahiro Piranha, a good friend of ours, has a new T-shirt. It's a joke one, and reads something like, "A man walks into a bar... and keeps on walking. He was in Second Life. Sort out the lag!"

I want one!

My First Building: New England-style Gazebo

2007-04-23T10:23:00.000+01:00

Well, I finally finished my first building, a New England-style gazebo in stained oak planking. It has nearly 300 prims, due largely to the fact that I couldn't find a decent crisp railing texture: I should probably put "making textures" on the top of my To Do list. I enlarged the pond behind it a little, and planted it up, without Gabe's permission (sorry Gabe!), and I will probably have to do a little pruning and landscaping before I'm happy with the whole area, but as for the gazebo itself, I'm quite pleased with it.

It needs some seating - I thought a circular bench might be fun, with some reading and snuggling poses. Alternatively, I guess an Adirondack chair or two. I'll need a similar style bench for seating near the pond, too. I'm currently using an Asian-style lantern, but I'll try and come up with something more appropriate.

Other ideas for the pond area: a bluebell patch, a reading area hidden in the bushes, my catnip bush for those neko moments, some fireflies, butterflies, a bench for sitting and admiring the view, some meadow and pond sounds, a fishing area, fish (!), and perhaps some wildlife such as frogs or toads.

I have already put down Craig Altman's Lovescene sequence in a secluded glade. I really like Lovescene - it's a simple sequence of 8 animations, moving from foreplay to missionary position sex. It's vanilla, but really nicely done, and very sweet. My only quibbles with it are the speed at which it moves from the first to the last pose, and the fact that you have to get off the balls for the essential post-coital cuddle (not always essential, I guess, but it is in this particular style of lovemaking).

In other news, I went a bit mental yesterday and bought a girl's Thai dancing outfit. The pants, belt and floaty cape-thing make me look like a rather expensive rent boy (or Lady boy, if you prefer). I love 'em! Definitely the gayest outfit I own, with the possible exception of my Christmas angel costume.

Safe Harbor Community Meeting

2007-04-20T05:33:00.000+01:00

On 19 April, we had a short community meeting at Safe Harbor, during which I listed all my unfinished projects, feeling like a bit of a dilettante, and then we discussed having a beach party for our friends on the spa island. In order to do this, I will have to make a beach, which means mastering waves... aieeee!

For the record, my unfinished projects are:

* My own bathroom (missing a tiny section of the tiled floor)
* Gabe and Micah's bathroom extension
* The private Arabian sky palace (needs some texturing of the building and the furnishings, and relocation to 700 feet)
* The Arabian-style floating pleasure gardens (just needs some gates, some soft furnishings, lighting, and a little exotic planting)

Genesis of my av

2007-04-19T16:38:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd write a little bit about my av before I launch into all the building stuff. I started off with the generic noob body, the Harajuku version, and free hair from Calla, which as you will see, I kept for quite a long time. Within a couple of weeks, I equipped myself with a working cock (I bought the Xcite pack with cock, ass and nipples), which kept me going for a while. The first time I tried out my cock, I spent about 20 minutes wanking. It was brilliant! My clothes were all freebies, and I spent most of my time hanging around the one friend I had made who soon dumped me because I kept hanging around with her (to be fair, I was practically stalking her, although we weren't shagging; I was just chronically new and clueless).

After a month or so, I bought a skin (Eric, from Cryogen, which I still use), and started to hang out at Whitesands, a mixed beach, and two gay beaches, Boots Beach and Hot 'n' Hung, getting as much action as I could. The novelty of having virtual sex with men soon wore off, and I slowly realized I actually preferred it to having SL sex with women, partly because I felt that I wasn't being unfaithful to my RL girlfriend if I was sleeping with men rather than women (crap, really!), but partly because I enjoyed the freedom of doing whatever (and whoever) I liked.

Around this time I started wearing neko ears and a tail, although I am definitely not submissive by nature (which is what neko guys are supposed to be, from what I can make out). I still hadn't been fucked: even the roughest manliest men I went with wanted me to do them, rather than the other way around, despite my ultra-boyish appearance. If anyone can explain this to me, please get in touch...

So here's my first long term manifestation: me as I appeared at Boots Beach during late 2006. My neck's a bit long and I look too young here, but it's pretty good... I wanted to look Eurasian and younger than I am, since that's what I look like in RL, but to be a cuter version of my RL self. I like to think of my av as Morpheus' "residual self-image" (The Matrix).

I met Simon Lufbery and Gabe Semyorka at around this time. I had an instant rapport with Simon, who was an aficionado of the hardcore end of the SL gay sex scene, because he sings the sort of choral music in RL that I love, and because he's an educated, funny, sexy, charming, interesting man. I started to spend more and more time with him just because I liked his company so much, and eventually, I asked him to be my partner and be exclusive to me. Happily, he agreed. I became closer to Gabe, possibly the sweetest person I have ever met in my life, when his relationship with his partner broke down and he was having trouble with his SL landlord. I really felt sorry for the poor guy, and was happy to spend hours listening to his problems just because he was so damned nice. More about Simon and Gabe in another post...

So here's me in early 2007, with different hair, standing on the roof of my low-grade copy of a Fade Languish house in Henmaris (I still own this plot of First Land, and I intend to put a shop on it eventually). Since then, I've changed my hair again (see my profile pic) and added some more Xcite attachments (ears, lips, shoulders, animated neko ears and tail), but I still have the same skin and the same build.

BTW, people often ask me about my eyes - they're just the basic noob Harajuku eyes set to a massive 85 points, manga-style. I have tried other eyes, but none of them have pupils large enough to cope with my "big-eyed" look, so I've stuck with these.

As for my clothes, I am a regular shopper at The Block (esp. Form), The Laundry, Gritty Kitty, and any place selling wiggy Asian-style clothes. I sometimes buy womens' clothes and adapt them, and I have a number of costumes for fun: an angel, with scripted wings, a black desert arab outfit with cape and headgear, a Persian prince outfit in white, and various period outfits for visiting sims like Caledon. I'm not this clothes-obsessed in RL, BTW - SL has released my inner fop ;-)

Hello!

2007-04-17T11:45:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I have created a blog for my SL activities, and this is it. My name is Makara Yorimasa, and I have been a paid-up resident of Second Life since September 2006. I am extremely fortunate to live on a sim where the owner has given me free rein to create whatever I like in the public spaces. Expect pictures, questions, ponderings, and the occasional gripe.