Day 12

Today Mistress and I got together to go over a couple of things. The first was to go over some outfit options for an event this weekend (not finished -- this'll likely carry on until Friday, you know how it is) and the second was to test a build I'm working on that'll end up going into the Raven Park Abbey.

Oh, and there was the small matter of the new DE release that I just had to treat her to!

And then, eventually, it was time for me to be unlocked from my chastity belt and to be permitted clothing for the first time in 12 days.

It actually feels rather odd to be in the position of being able to choose to wear clothing if I wish to. I think this might be the longest I've gone in this state so having the "freedom" to choose what to wear again feels... wrong. Even Mistress sounded a little disappointed. Obviously, if she'd decided not to unlock me that'd have been that but, really, I guess restrictions only really have an impact when they're not a constant and forever.

Of course, the Lab appeared to think it was wrong that I get dressed too; a little while after saying goodnight to Mistress I logged back in to find that my clothing wasn't downloading and that I was a cloud. The irony here is that I'd logged out completely naked, having decided that I wouldn't get dressed until later on. The reason was, of course, unscheduled inventory maintenance.

The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

Eventually I did manage to relog such that I had control over my outfits again...

...so I'm all good for the product photoshoot later today. Assuming that the grid doesn't decide to throw another funny.

Day 11

Today was day 11 of being allowed to wear nothing but a chastity belt. One more sleep and I'll be allowed to wear clothing again, which means I'll also be able to model for some product photos, which means I have a window in which I can get the photos done and the vendor boards made and everything ready to go into the shop before the inevitable need to top up another allowance...

I wonder how far into the week I'll make it before I'm inconvenienced for Miss Vila's pleasure and amusement again? I wonder if I'll look at my clothed self and miss the past week or so's enforced lack of clothing?

I know what Mistress' answer to that would be. ;)

A couple of hours in the dark...

Today Mistress and I did even more work on the area of the region around Z's house. What started as a case of "let's swap the sun deck for something a little nicer" has turned into a fairly large, and really fun, job.

That's almost a week of photos of Miss Vila in
the same outfit. This might get me in
trouble. She does have an extensive
wardrobe, honest. ;)

Today we went shopping for a swim system, so people can have a swim in the bay (somehow we found one that actually optionally uses RLV too -- never expected that!), as well as a new set of off-sim rocks to finish off the corner behind Z's house.

It's really starting to come together. There's a couple more things we want to do and it should all be done (at which point I'll probably write it all up properly on the Z&A blog).

Of course, all this bouncing around the grid, looking at things and testing things, meant that I ended up needing a top-up for my TP and walk allowances. Which in turn ended up with me being gagged and locked in the contact lenses, with the highest darkness level, for 2 hours.

Mistress chose the candle gag so I'd have some light. Isn't she sweet? ;)

Editor font size in Firestorm 4.6.1

Yesterday, after I'd got all the business of a new product release out of the way, I decided to upgrade my copy of Firestorm. I'd being sticking with 4.4.2 because of a rather nasty bug in 4.5.1 that broke quite a few RLV toys and gadgets, including a couple I use a lot. Having tested 4.6.1 on a different machine to be sure that this issue had been fixed I knew it was mostly safe to make the switch (I could always go back if I hit a show-stopper).

The upgrade went pretty smoothly (all the better for Firestorm's rather awesome settings backup and restore system) and, for the most part, there were no horrible surprises. One obvious difference I did see is that water seems more blue and more milky now, at least on the default windlight -- that's something I want to look into more as it looks a little odd. Other obvious differences pretty much came down to things being done differently in the new version (the texture tab in the build floater being very different, for obvious reasons).

However, one thing really stood out because it was such a stark difference and because it's something I use a lot: the font in the script editor seemed so much smaller and so less readable. The editor's dialog has no setting for this, and neither does the general preferences. Kind of annoying.

A quick visit to Google later turned up this FS JIRA with a comment posted yesterday with a possible solution. Sure enough, a quick dabble in the fonts.xml file and an edit of the value for this:

later and I had a bigger script editor font. I still haven't found a size I'm delighted with, and the need to relog every time I want to try a new one is a bit of a pain, but I'm thankful that there is a way to change this. I'm sure I'll settle on a good size at some point soon.

It'd be great if this could be made a setting in the editor preferences.

Still processing

Just over a week ago I uploaded a snapshot to my.secondlife.com. It's not something I normally do, most of the time I forget that that's actually an option. Besides, if I'm sharing an image I'm more likely to do it on here, on imgur or on plurk.

But, I did it, 'cos I'd not done it for a while and decided to give it a try again. Ever since then I've had this at the top of my profile:

For over a week now. The snapshot is being processed. Even though it was processed and has long gone. Sure, there's a "X" to the right hand side that, if I hover over it, says it'll dismiss the notification. Doesn't do a thing though.

I've got the horrible feeling it'll be there for the rest of my second life.

Or I could try and upload another snapshot and see if that clears it. That'd be sensible...

Stalled logins

For the past week or so I seem to be having an occasional problem with logging into Second Life. What happens is I'll hit the login button and I'm left staring at something like this (in Firestorm, in this case):

And that's it. It just sits there, never failing, never progressing. At least, it never has for as long as I've left it. If I then hit the "Quit" button and log in again almost every single time it'll log me right in without a hitch. A couple of times I've had it do this twice in a row, and it doesn't seem to be just a Firestorm problem as I've had it happen with METAbolt once too.

Caught out by unbroken time

I guess this is kind of ironic given this post from the other day: last night I got caught out by the fact that the grid is now an hour adrift from me.

One of Miss Vila's uses of my Submission HUD is to impose a bedtime. While most nights I get to see her before I go to bed (timezones being what they are) sometimes RL commitments mean that isn't possible. Her way of ensuring that I don't stay up stupidly late tinkering with stuff in the workshop is to use the curfew facility. It's simple enough: if I'm not logged off before 2am local time (or, at the very least, logged in and inside my cell) I get force-teleported to my cell (which is set to auto-close with a random timer).

In SL time 2am here is 6pm on the grid. Except, that is, for the next three weeks starting Sunday gone. Because the grid is now an hour forward, and because the UK doesn't skip forward until the end of the month, 6pm is now 1am.

Before my bedtime last night Mistress and I got together to do some more work on the landscaping we've being doing. While I was slowed down a little in my help, I was able to. Everything was going fine and I was testing a toy I had out while Mistress tweaked a tree or two when.... *bam* I was in my cell. There was a moment of confusion while I tried to figure out what the hell was happing (and sniggering coming from the other end of the Skype call) and then it dawned on me: Mistress hadn't changed the curfew time in my SubHUD to reflect the difference mentioned above (or, if you like, I'd forgotten to respectfully request her to do so).

To make matters worse, under normal circumstances, even if curfew had kicked in I'd be safe because Miss Vila uses the "safe when your Domme is nearby" facility (the idea being, if you're with your dominant, you're likely out past your curfew with their permission). However, because of the spreader bar slowing me down (and the small matter of me having just finished testing the placement of the toy), I'd not managed to stay close enough to her.

Which, of course, meant Mistress gleefully kept pointing out I only had myself to blame.

So, this is me this morning...

Thankfully Mistress was kind enough to bump the curfew time forward an hour so it won't be an issue again. I will, however, have to remind her to pull it back an hour again in just under three weeks. The consequences of getting away with a 3am curfew because I've failed to remind her about it are something I don't care to experience...