rien ne va plus

The Monster Mesh

Posted on June 12, 2015 Updated on June 24, 2015

I have a lot of thoughts tumbling around in my head at the moment, with regards to mesh heads, mesh body parts, and the like. All pleasant thoughts, mind you — it’s more a matter of my own curiosity than anything. I owe many sincere thanks to the Mesh Body Addicts blog for their excellent “mesh bodies for newbies” guides, which have been very helpful for someone like myself who has barely mastered the art of alpha layering. Well, to be true, I owe them gratitude AND grumbles. I’m meant to be saving my precious pennies, girls. You’re not helping in that regard one bit! :)

Feeling a bit out of sorts and lost in my meandering, I poked around in Search to find a quiet beach to relax at for a while. Searching the word “beach” returns a significant number of results, so one trick if you’re looking for somewhere less populated is to sort by Traffic: High to Low and scroll way down the list until you find a place with a traffic number around or under 2000. You can certainly sort by Traffic: Low to High, but many of the places with 0 traffic will either be inaccessible or end up being parcels for rent. I also opted to filter out Adult regions, simply to narrow to results a bit.

As an aside: the way that traffic and region popularity is calculated in Second Life is quite fascinating (for a geek like me, at least!) There’s detailed information in the SL Knowledge Base, but to sum up, the number seen in Search listings and under the About Land tab is calculated by taking the total number of seconds spent on the parcel the previous day, dividing it by 60, and rounding it to the nearest whole minute. So that means that a location with a visitor volumetric of 2000 had a bit more than 30 cumulative minutes spent there by visitors the following day, which makes it a moderately low-traffic area by SL standards.

After I found a place that looked promising, I clicked “Show on Map” just to double-check that it was in fact a beachy area (sometimes people sneak popular keywords into their listings), as well as to determine how many other members were in the area. Regrettably I don’t recall where I ended up when I got this shot, but I was all by my lonesome — save a few spirited, jumping dolphins — so I was perfectly content. If I do happen to land there again, I’ll be sure to update with a SLURL!

Please click for full size.

Poses
Pose Maniacs / Marcia 4 & Melanie 1 | SL Marketplace

I’m experimenting with how to notate when items are group gifts or giveaways; please let me know if you have any suggestions! I always appreciate when it pops out at you in a credits listing when an item is free, on sale, or a promo. You know me and my love for wonderful deals. <3

Speaking of deals, nearly everything in this look is either free or L$1! I’ve treated myself by joining several paid groups that I had been lusting over (primarily hair brands, because HAIR!) No.Match has a one-time joining fee of L$50, and they graciously keep their past group gifts out for new members to pick up. The retro-inspired “No Milk” hair is fantastic; I love the cascading ponytail and soft, pastel-rainbow hue. I’m fairly certain that the Blah Blah Blah shorts came from a Midnight Mania slap, but they have so many wonderful promos (MM, Lucky Boards, group gifts, weekly sales) that I’m not actually 100% sure. As Jedi Master Yoda might say: organize better, I must!

All of my accessories are group gifts (so many thank yous to all the generous designers!), and my sweet cropped top comes from SMC, which has an amazing assortment of Lucky Boards to stalk. Oh! And my hella cute sneaks are 100% compatible with system feet, which is more and more difficult to find these days. And they’re free! Happy days.

I’m off to continue pondering, considering, reflecting and ruminating on tackling the mesh monster. For me, I think a full body is the most appealing prospect, primarily because I imagine it will just look so lush in photographs. What do you love or loathe about your meshy bits n’ bobs? Please share your thoughts in the comments!