Now it gets serious

Ever since the allowance payment system -- the thing where I have to pick an item from Miss Vila's copy of the Z&A Punishment Picker -- has been in place Mistress has being complaining that most of the list inside the book reads like a fun wishlist of mine. She's not wrong, to a point. When I made the first Punishment Picker I created a sample punishment list for it, the idea being that people should/will edit it to write their own. The sample list I came up with was heavily influenced by the things I enjoyed at the time, the things that fascinated me at the time, the things that involved the toys and restraints in my inventory at the time.

And the times and counts I set as the samples were also on the, erm, let's say "safe" side.

Today Miss Vila set out to start the process of fixing that. Armed with a list of the contents of my #RLV folder (plus a few other folders in my inventory) she set to work rewriting the list.

A couple of items were simply removed, a couple of others got a change of tone (there was one in there where I got to make a choice when she felt it should have been her choice -- that got rewritten in her favour), many that she did like got a change of min and max times (and we're not just talking a little number change; in many cases minutes were changed to say hours, and what were hours were changed to say days) and a good few new ones were added too.

Eventually she was happy with the new list. I'd say it's about twice as long as it was before, it is without a doubt harsher than it was before, and while it still keeps some things I obviously enjoy (even if they are an impediment to my normal in-world business), there's a good few more items in there that I'll really dread turning up.

She also added two wildcard items too. One each for us. Hers is:

Wildcard! The Punishment of your Domme's choice.

I was permitted this:

Subby wildcard! A punishment of your choice and pick another ${2,3,punishment,punishments}.

Once finished she then checked how my allowance was doing. I needed a top-up for walk and TPs so that obviously meant I had to pick two punishments from the new list. The first was to be locked in the Sunshine Technology yoke, denied any touch at all, for 2 hours. The second was to be locked in my bane suit for 4 hours. Given that I wouldn't be in-world so much this weekend, and that I'd be dealing with rentals for Raven Park on Sunday, it was decided I'd do the yoke first and save the period of banishment for Monday.

So, as of now, I'm stuck in the house, unable to get out (unless I use my TP allowance and TP out), for 2 hours of in-world time. Meanwhile I get to think about how Monday is going to go, locked in the Bane helmet for four hours. Well, I say four hours, if she locks it with the normal protocols that could increase as any mistakes add time.

I have this funny feeling that, from today onwards, I'm going to have a lot more time where I'm stuck in some sort of bondage.

*gulp*

Rollerbane

Earlier today Miss Vila and I finally fought our way into Colabor88. It took a while but we finally made it. Demos were grabbed, purchases were purchased, (some) avis were "OMG did you see that?!?" at, etc. Oh, yeah, and neither of us managed to actually get all the board textures to rez after about 45 minutes. So pretty normal really.

While wandering around we saw one avi wearing a pair of really fascinating boots. One sneaky inspect later and I had a creator profile. So, after we'd finished up, we TPd over to their shop. Cute place and lots of variations on the boots available. Best of all was the price: L$100. I did wonder if they might fit me but after seeing the price it was too good to not grab a pair and have a go.

After I'd packed Mistress off to bed I had a quick try on and they were, as I'd imagined, far too small. Thankfully though they contain a resize menu that seems really well thought out (and, I think, which uses the new resize functions) and which let me size them almost perfectly in no time. All I had to do was tweak the position a little to get a really good fit and I was all done.

Combined with a latex catsuit I have from Graves, plus the Z&A Isolation Helmet with the trim set to glow a little, it comes out looking pretty neat, I think:

All I need now is a skating AO and Miss Vila will have her very own Tron-esque rollerbane!

New feet!

After yesterday's disappointing revisit of some rigged mesh feet Miss Vila suggested that, perhaps, it would be a good idea to look for alternatives. To be honest I'd not really considered that -- not because I'm incapable of searching for things, but because I'd sort of got used to the idea that there was only really one brand worth looking at these days.

So, a little earlier, I did a quick search on the marketplace and found the "ISPACHI Mesh [Natural Men's Feet]". They looked pretty good, appeared to be ranked higher than the feet I'd tried yesterday, and had a pretty good set of reviews too. So I grabbed the demo.

Unlike yesterday's demo these seemed to fit almost perfectly. The feet themselves were at almost the same level as my "old" feet, no shoe base was needed and the size looked about right. The only criticism I'd have is that there was a very slight tilt to the side, but that was only obvious to me when I was camming in close. From a normal distance they looked almost spot on.

So, one quick revisit to the MP later...

Using the HUD to get a colour match was stupidly easy. While I imagine that I'll tweak them a little more at some point I managed to get a good match in about 5 minutes (and I didn't even need to faff about with RGB values). If I take off the alpha you can see how close the feet are to the level of my "proper" feet:

Compared to the demo of the other product yesterday, where there was a significant height difference, this is almost an exact match. While the size isn't perfect (the feet come with a huge array of size options, these seemed to be the closest match) it looks good enough to me eye and, really, I think the feet look far more attractive than my "proper" avi feet:

The final test is, of course, that they meet with Miss Vila's approval. I've updated all my "naked" outfits with the new feet so I can show her the next chance we get.

While I don't doubt she might have a tweak suggestion or two I think she'll rather like them.

Given the price, how good a fit they are and how easy it was to get a reasonable skin match really fast I think they're a great purchase.

Goodbye to The Forum

Regions come and go. Even in my relatively short time time as a very active SL user I've seen this happen, and have been directly affected by this happening, more than once. My first RLV-oriented playground of choice (and home) no longer exists on the Lab's grid, and even Raven Park is the result of a previous region ceasing to be what it was.

But, even though I'm used to the idea, I'm still a little saddened to see that the Forum is closing in the next day or so, along with the stables. While I never spent a significant amount of time over there it did play a small but important part in me learning about an aspect of BDSM that I'd never encountered before, that I was apprehensive about, that Miss Vila guided me into and which I really got into and still really enjoy (even if I rarely get the opportunity to enjoy it): pony play.

When Miss Vila first introduced me to this we did some training over there so I'll always associate the build with learning something that was very alien to me. And when I spent a bit of time as Miss Vila's pony again last year we headed right back over there for a couple of sessions of wandering around and enjoying the view. Sadly I don't seem to have any good photos from the first time over there, but here's three shots of us last year, enjoying the build:

I hope the reason for the closure isn't too unfortunate, and that those who called it home can find somewhere else that suits their needs. While I was a very infrequent visitor there I do feel that the grid will be missing one more great build.

I really want to like mesh feet, but...

I keep doing this. I really like the idea of mesh feet. Miss Vila has them (and hands too) and they seem to work really well for her. For me though.... either I'm just missing something or they just don't work for me (and, really, they should be dead easy to get going for me because I wear ankle cuffs pretty much 24/7 -- no seam issues!)

Here's my problem: they seem to sit too low (or my shape's too odd, perhaps?). Take this image of some demo rigged mesh feet. I'm stood on a semi-transparent prim and I've made a point of not wearing the alpha:

Notice how much lower the mesh foot is than my "normal" foot? Now, okay, sure, they come with a shoe base to wear, so I wear that:

And still the problem persists. Okay, fine, perhaps I need to give things a nudge, so I fly and then drop down. While there's a small change, it's still not much:

The whole point of me buying these would be so that my feet look good when I'm barefoot (which I am around 25% of the time). But based on what I'm seeing with the demo the main reason for buying them -- toes that actually look like toes -- will be buried in the landscape, or the floor, etc.

The only obvious solution I can work out is that I should edit the shoe base and increase the platform size. That seems to do the trick (as you can see here, with the alpha worn):

...but now my ankle looks a bit freakishly long and I'm a good bit taller than I'd normally be.

I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something here.

A very quiet hour

The weekend just gone has been a really busy weekend. The project that started with a bunch of cubes back in very late October last year finally turned into a release and then, that evening, there was the Raven Park dance. Yesterday was also spent working on a bunch of catch-up admin stuff that needed doing and had sort of got put on hold as I ploughed through the business of making and updating Marketplace and CasperVend listings.

And then there was the trip around malls and places to ensure that all the vendor boards had updated just fine given how many changes I'd made. Which also meant that I used up rather a lot of TPs. In fact I got down to my very last one. If I'd used that I'd have had to use the emergency TP button to get to my home location, which would have dropped me in my cell.

Thankfully I just got to see Miss Vila briefly and she topped up TPs, after I'd used the Punishment Picker to select a payment, of course. This time it was to spent an hour locked in an Isolation Helmet. Given that a brand new Isolation Helmet was one of this weekend's releases I was told we'd use that.

And, so, I get to spent the next hour of in-world time in a very dark and spooky environment:

That's looking out over the region, at the front of our house, during daytime. Looking back at myself, with the house behind me, also gives a great feel for just how dark the environment is:

On top of that the default restrictions are pretty harsh. Even Mistress commented on how harsh I'd made them. I can't edit, get at my inventory, see names, see hover text, talk, etc... While I can read incoming IMs (including group chat) I can't respond.

This is going to be a very quiet hour. At least it's only an hour. Not that Miss Vila shares that view. While she was impressed with how harsh the default restrictions were she was just a touch annoyed that the random time chosen by the Punishment Picker was just 1 hour.

Which, of course, is why she kept it on the defaults. (Between you and me I'm surprised she didn't deny incoming IMs too)

After the dance

Just a photo of Miss Vila and me after the Raven Park Beatles-themed dance last night: