A common problem

I'm actually not 100% sure how it started, I'm not actually 100% sure what it was that made me make the wisecrack. All I know is, at some point yesterday afternoon, while talking with Miss Anna, I joked about how I needed to take lessons in "being common" from her. She exclaimed mock shock at the joke, we laughed, the conversation moved on.

Until later in the evening when Mistress leashed me to a leash post in the house and told me that she was delivering a new outfit to me and that I must change into it and that, once I was done, we were going out for drinks in the Mansion.

I think, from now on, I'm going to be very careful what I say to her.

But that wasn't enough, it seems. Oh no. Apparently Mistress wanted to see how well the Z&A RLV dance poles worked...

By this point Mistress had also invited Miss Eve over for a drink and a chat -- as if things weren't embarrassing enough. It was then suggested that I should use my video recording setup to make a video. The problem is, while I have RLV-locked HUDs, I can't clean the HUDs and UI to take a video. I made this clear and was happy to see that Mistress said it was okay.

Until, that is, she pointed out she could make animated gifs, which I was told I had to post here too. :(

Apparently my protests didn't go down so well and I ended up wearing a Z&A umbrella gag too.

I think Mistress might have found my one real weakness. Wearing something so obviously not my usual black was... pretty horrific, if I'm honest. Lesson learnt.

VT rowdy rodeo

Last Friday The Velvet Thorn kicked off their next week of dances with a western theme. The call was for all things western-like, with a particular emphasis on chaps, it seems. That gave me cause to go shopping (the only chaps I owned came from the pre-mesh days) and, with just a little bit of encouragement from Anna, I ended up with a sort of goth/fetish cowboy look. Kinda. Sorta.

She, of course, wore a pretty dress and used it as a reason to buy more boots.

Of course, I did photograph more than the two of us, and you can find those photos over in an imgur album. I also managed to shoot some video too:

VT bright future dance

Last Friday afternoon was the start of VT's next week of dances and, despite having a fairly busy weekend in RL, I managed to make it for the last hour. Given that getting there was a bit rushed I took the easy option and went with a "it's not from Tron, honest" outfit from Graves:

Okay, not exactly bright, but it has bright parts. It's pretty bright for me. ;)

I also took a few other photos too, all of which can be seen on imgur. I also managed to squeeze in some videos:

VT 60s hippy trip

Yesterday VT kicked off a new week of dances with Miss Eve playing a 60s hippy-themed set. When it comes to inventory content for outfits I didn't have to dig too deep and, in the end, I went with something that I think worked, and which sort of channelled Jim Morrison and John Lennon.

Of course, I wasn't just taking photos of myself, I have an album of all sorts of photos from the dance. As usual I took a handful of videos too -- at least one of which was muted because it seems the free-loving generation don't like the Internet. ;)







Miss Eve also played a particular song that I really like so I had to have a rather self-indulgent moment with the tune and the video record. ;)

VT alien invasion dance

Yesterday afternoon saw the concluding dances of VT's weekly theme that started out the Friday before. The specific theme of the day was one of "alien invasion". Given that the set that Miss Eve had built was designed to have a Central Park feel to it the idea was to channel any and all of the times that New York has being on the receiving end of unwanted alien attention, with the idea being to dress as an invading alien, or someone defending.

So I decided to dress as an alien who has defended New York a couple or so times...

As usual, I took a bunch of photos which can be found in an album over on imgur. I also grabbed a handful of videos too:

VT eastern dance

During the last week (sadly I had to miss the opening dance with Miss Eve DJing) VT's dance area has had an eastern theme and, having finished my jobs for the day, I decided it was a good plan to head over there and catch Purple's Wednesday set.

I tried to dress as appropriately as possible, while enjoying my usual black, of course. ;)

You can find more photos from the event over on imgur, and here's a handful of videos I took too:

VT black and white dance

Yesterday afternoon VT made their last use of the past week's dance set with a "black and white" themed dance. The idea was simple enough: wear something black and/or white. This, it has to be said, wasn't so difficult for me. Well, actually, it was pretty damn difficult given that the vast majority of my wardrobe is black, along with some white.

In the end though I decided to go with my current favourite suit.

There's an album of photos I took at the dance over on imgur and, as usual, I took a few videos too:

VT floral dance

Starting yesterday the dance venue for The Velvet Thorn is a garden party (built, as always, by Miss Eve). Given I had the evening free and given that Miss Eve was DJing the first dance it seemed like it'd be fun to join in. The theme was "floral", the idea being to wear something floral.

Thing is, I don't really do floral -- there's nothing in my inventory that really comes close. I did entertain the idea of cosplaying Wash from Firefly but even his loud shirts aren't exactly floral. Besides, that didn't seem to be in the spirit of the "dress code".

And then it hit me: a suit I'd purchased recently has a handkerchief in the pocket that is texture change -- floral being one of the designs. Thing is, as is normal with my purchases, the suit was black and there's something about a black suit that doesn't say "garden party". So, one purchase of an extra colour later...

Sadly I don't really have any shoes that go well with this suit. The shoes I do have poke out the back of the trouser leg a bit, which is fine when it's black shoes with black trousers. That's when I decided that this might actually make sense barefoot. So I did that and I think it worked. While I have no photos of me at the dance barefoot you can see how it looked in this post-party comedown time photo back in the Z&A workshop:

As always, while at the dance, I took a whole load of photos which can be found in an imgur album. I also continued my experiments with making little videos (you might need to click through one or more because of restrictions due to the music playing at the dance):

VT Wonderful Women dance

Yesterday afternoon Miss Eve was filling in a DJing slot over at VT and, given I'd got my jobs for the day done and I'd not had a chance to enjoy the current week's dance build there I decided to pop over.

As normally happens, I also took an album of photos. I also toyed some more with grabbing some video too:

VT beach dance

Yesterday afternoon VT kicked off their new week's dance theme with a beach dance. That's something I could do. I have beachwear. So beachwear was worn and dancing was done.

(yes, that is a Z&A Lifeguard Chair in the background)

As usual, I took a whole bunch of photos, all of which can be found over on imgur. Also, like with the Weird & Wonderful dance, I did some more experimenting with recording video too. This time I kept the audio in all of them. The main issues I ran into this time was the occasional client-side lag spike (which I'm assuming is when the recorder buffers to disk -- I really must look into some way around that) and also a very odd circular artefact around one avatar that only appeared while I was recording; the moment I stopped recording they rendered just fine again.

Anyway, those issues aside, here's the videos I took (note that these might not be available in some countries, and you might have to click through to view them in most, due to the music).

VT weird and wonderful dance

Yesterday afternoon, after sorting this week's Z&A release, I made it to the final dance taking place in the set Miss Eve first put out last Friday. The theme was "Weird and Wonderful" so I decided to use the "weird" part to grab and wear an avatar I've wanted to get for a while:

As always, I took a bunch of photos while I was there.

Also, while at the dance, I had a play with an idea I'd first mentioned to Miss Eve last Friday. Talking about the Alice set I'd said that, really, photos didn't do it justice and wouldn't it be great if there was a way of having a video snapshot of a dance? Because of that I took this opportunity to experiment with that idea. I first took a video that also included the music stream. You can see this over on YouTube. You'll notice I didn't embed it here, the reason is that it includes copyrighted music in the background and, to my surprise and delight, YouTube picked that up, worked out what it was and who the publisher was, checked the rules about using it and set the video up to enforce that (not being allowed to embed on other sites being one such rule).

I then tried a second test, this time with the music stream turned off:


In both cases I'm pretty pleased with how the videos turned out. I can see that the camera movements are going to need more careful planning, and I think I need to practice on trying to get very smooth movements (I'm using flycam mode, moving the camera with a SpaceNavigator). The whole business of YouTube handling the copyright/music problem (even to the extent of offering to remove the soundtrack if it's problematic!) makes things easier and gives less to worry about though.

If I can, in the future, I think I'm going to try and grab a little video snapshot of dances -- it adds a nice extra dimension.