Hunts; Walls; I Am My Cat

No. of hunt items found: 3 (good); No. of hours spent searching for hunt items: 1.5 (bad); Number of gigantic boundary walls bought: 1 (good); No. of kittycats whose bodies I have occupied: 1 (so far) (not spooky AT ALL)

With October comes halloween hunts and one of fave SL designers, namely DRD, has a hunt in their shop. You get a HUD, you go around spotting Black Dahlia flower heads and get cool stuff when you find them. This sounds v. simple, but have trawled lower floor of DRD's store twice, camming into corners and waiting impatiently for all to rez etc etc, plus have gone round upstairs twice, and done quicker trawl of builds in their garden. However have only found 3 items out of about a dozen. Was at least glad to hear from DRD group chat that wasn't just me that found this challenging. Hunt object is small and also black, and as DRD do a lot of dark stuff and store is huge have evidently missed loads of dahlias lurking in corners and under carpets. Also they produce a lot of small fiddly objects that look v. like dahlias until they rez properly.

In 2nd pic you may be able to see object on floor that got overexcited about til saw was "film cans" not dahlia. Realise have got used to hunts where you (a) get a hint (b) have a large and flashy hunt object, so am probably lazy but frankly life is too short to spend more than 1.5 hrs looking for objects however cute.
Was, though, friendly experience, one avatar IMed me to ask if was on hunt and we exchanged cheerful remarks on lack of success in dahlia finding. Group chat also good natured except when spammer spammed chat with random request for 100 Linden which resulted in multiple insults and group bans for spammer. Would be careful about spamming DRD chat, probably contains people with arcane knowledge of spells and potions (AM JOKING know that people who like to recreate post-apocalyptic dungeons and spooky haunted asylums are quite likely frightfully well adjusted individuals who would no more think of cursing someone than of jumping the checkout queue in Tescos).
Anyway have ended up with (1) carpet (2) very cute tray of bedroom decor stuff (3) some sort of notice on a cute board PLUS there was a free thing just waiting to be nabbed on the 1st floor, vis several female corpses hung up on pegs, some of Bluebeard's wives according to the description. Obviously maker did not subscribe to the "it is all symbolic of mental abuse and Bluebeard's wives are now all enjoying fulfilled lives with more suitable partners, it's Bluebeard you should feel sorry for" line. It will be a useful item for my halloween decor this year.

Thinking of Halloween made me think of dungeons and caves, so wandered over to the Felix Alter sim as he does v. good v. reasonably priced cave and mountain decor. Did look at caves (see pic), but got distracted by what is v. good idea and wonder why noone else has done it. He has created high thin and attractive cliff walls (with walkable paths) for people to put round sims when they want privacy from neighbours. One of perils of mainland is suddenly having some huge hideous barrier penning you into your plot, because your neighbour doesn't want to see your beautifully landscaped gardens but would rather see some giant, implausible and out of focus picture of a tropical beach.
There are several options which mix and match, all priced at 250 Linden, and bought one and immediately put it to good use. Trouble with previous similar things is that they have tended to be (a) not thin enough (b) not that much more attractive than the hideous beach picture. Will post some actual pics of walls at some point but cannot pause to do that as OMG final thing is MOST EXCITING.

Namely, KittyCats have a new update and YOU CAN BECOME YOUR KITTYCAT. OMG.

In fact practically never desert my human form but took all of 10 secs to decide that I wanted to inhabit the bodies of my KittyCats. Took copy of body shape, made sure outfit was saved and then you just click on your chosen KittyCat, select something off the interaction menu, get a folder which includes a "KittyCat Transponder" you wear the folder and voila!

In fact it wasn't Voila! at first as simply became invisible. Wandered about a bit invisibly and then thought would try logging off and on and THEN trying the wear transponder thing again and this time it worked. I went through the spooky change thing (see pic, I am migrating, Jennifer is sitting all unconcerned to my right), Jennifer disappeared and then I WAS JENNIFER. I walked and ran and sat and flew. When you fly a skateboard appears underneath you. I may moderate VWER as a kitty on Thursday so went and practiced sitting at the VWER table (see last pic) and OMG I am so cute.

Was a slight worrying moment when I transponded back and initially the "Jennifer kittycat" in my inventory simply would not rez. However all was well when I logged out/ in and she now seems to be sleeping and pottering about quite happily again, all on her own.

Am deciding which Kittycat I will comandeer next. Probably Marl.

Is this a bit creepy? I don't care if it is a bit creepy. Thank you KittyCats creators for providing me with awesome features I never even knew I wanted.

Hunts, Bananas

Hunts completed:one (good); No. of times same hunt completed: twice (bad; but v. quick the second time); No. of Kawaii objects collected: numerous (but some more kawaii than others)

The Albero Kawaii hunt just finished, Albero being a shopping district covering a couple of sims and kawaii being Japanese for Cute. Did it twice since first sent Dimitrova out to do the time consuming stuff untroubled by IMs, then Dimi compiled a handy set of landmarks which she dropped to me.
Am thinking of developing taxonomy of hunts, which could become a faceted classification scheme:
Facet 1: Process: do you have to do something with a HUD BEFORE you get anywhere near the objects, or do you wander about looking for the Hunt object directly? Is there a list of hints and landmarks on a well maintained Hunt website, or are you reliant on some selfless SL resident providing an online walkthru?
Facet 2: Material: are the objects clothing, interior design, plants; steampunk artefacts etc.?
Facet 3: Energy: is the hunt object v. easy to recognise and find, or is it tiny and hidden in obscure corners that you can only discover if you are prepared to spend hours camming under the flooboards and on the roof?
Facet 4: Space: Is the hunt in one shop? one sim? the whole grid? the inifinite metaverse?
Facet 5: Time: Firstly: How long is the hunt on for? Secondly: What's the fastest you can get round?
Facet 6: Matter: At the end of it, are you flitting from item to exquisite item going mwuah mwauh you godlike creators, or have you just got a pile of random junk from shops that couldn't get into any of the quality hunts?

The kawaii would have be classified as follows:
Facet 1: Process: HUD. You attach the HUD, and then you are given a visual clue to tell you where the first hunt object is. When you find the next object, you click it. This fills up a square on your HUD and gives you the next visual clue. Eventually, after you have crashed a zillion times camming and flying round and round the 2 sims, you have a completely filled-in HUD which says "you did it" in English and Japanese. You don't get much help in solving the HUD-oriented problems (would say it rates a "4" on a scale from "no brainer (1)" to "impossible (6)"), but you do get a full landmarked list of shops. And all the landmarks worked!
Facet 2: Materials: Mostly homes and gardens.
Facet 3: Energy: The visual-clue thing was quite tricky, because you have to try and work out where the picture was taken, and if all you can see is grey lag, this means you have zero chance of success. In fact in end rather enjoyed puzzling out clues from roof colour and types of building in background etc., despite zillion crashes. One you have a complete HUD it is easy-peasy, since you then just use the list of links to shops and collect the prize from the entrance of each shop.Facet 4: Space: Over 2 sims.
Facet 5: Time: Two weeks: rather frustrating if those are two really busy weeks.
Facet 6: Matter: Mwuah mwuah.

All I need now is a notation scheme and I could represent any hunt by a string of numbers separated by eccentric punctuation.

The information scientists amongst you will know that I have been ALMOST using the categories devised by the guru Ranganathan for the Colon faceted classification scheme. Alas, whilst I was devising the list I had thought I WAS using them, but I see now that "Process" should be "Personality" and "Material" shouldn't be in it at all. And to think I used to teach that stuff. Still, I can't be bothered to change it, so this is officially my revision of Ranganathan's work, for application to SL hunts.
Realise have left out cost element (most hunts are free, but increasingly there are 1 Linden or 10 Linden hunts), perhaps that is an aspect of energy, since you have to expend energy to earn the money to buy Linden.

After all this only remains to show you some of the booty.
Firstly you see me doing my "52 weeks of colour" shot for tomorrow (banana colour, if you hadn't guessed). Actually only the tv and panda are from the hunt, but the picture is in the kawaii spirit. That banana phone belongs to Nigl and has been on top of the library for years, it's a sort of landmark.
Secondly, Dimi with all the hunt items, everything you see is hunt, apart from her hair and a small grey wall in the background. Thirdly, a particularly kawaii collection of panda doll, boho couch, smiley cloud decal and smiley rocket. The sack with the rainclouds was actually the box the Cleo stuff came in, cute or what. In the last hunt that had some Cleo it was about a week before I realised that what I was displaying was the box rather than the actual gift.
Finally a rather arty shot of me and the Giant Dandelion pose. I already have dandelion fields (dandelion flowers and dandelion clocks) and dandelion seed particle emitters so I can set up a nice dandelion-rich scene for the summer.

Final thought. When I have in my inventory a panda cushion, a panda toaster, a panda hug-doll and a panda hot-chocolate flask, why has it taken this long for me to use the blog tag "panda"?

Shopping

Houses hunted: 12(good); Chairs hunted: 23 (approx); Waffle irons hunted: 1 (it opens, it closes, but it doesn't give waffles)
Have spent ahem (coughs) hours doing the House and Garden hunt, 50 shops, with some good stuff. When finished, rezzed it all out on Infolit (which brough Infolit perilously close to its prim limit, but that's another story)
Mostly people on the hunt were polite but purposeful, with not much chat, but towards the end, when tp-ed to Napoliy again after initial fruitless search, was approached by small lady with offer of help. Not only did she show me where the hunt item was, but she gave me her blog address, where she listed hints for all locations: at http://stephanieleclerc.blogspot.com/2010/08/httpslurl.html. Was very useful for filling in gaps, but did most of it myself.

Here it all is rezzed out, thought at this stage there was one item (a flower in a sack) that was actually the delivery bag and I thought it was the gift til I saw the full stuff on the feeds. Anyhow, here is all the goods rezzed out. This Belle Belle swing is very cute, but, as with all her stuff, a bit primmy.

Now all that remains is to work out what to do with it (inventory beckons, I fear).

Watermelon Rocket story

No. of Slice of Summer watermelons collected: 113 (either v. good or v. bad); No. NOT collected: 3 (frustrating)
One of the reasons why have not been blogging so much is that have been chasing after watermelons on the Slice of Summer hunt, as mentioned in earlier post. Managed to get all but 3. Got stuck at Swim and after camming and flying round for what seemed like hours gave up and started again at a point a few melons on. Later on had broad enough hint that could have got it, but frankly not really interested in Swim prize so didn't bother, as had manged to snag the melon in the next location already so didn't need landmark.
Was stuck for ages at Little Britain, a VERY depressing place to get stuck and was rather mortified when realised that main problem was that hadn't realised there was a 2nd building, which is where melon was. Most annoying stuckness was at Sugar, which is pleasant place to linger, but didn't manage to crack puzzle by end of hunt and so that this prize, plus one after, form the 2nd and 3rd omissions.
Favourite prize was a watermelon rocket and this post is dedicated to showing its many glories. You get in, set the height at which you want the space station to rez ... and the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Watermelon addiction

No of watermelons gathered: 36 (bad); Melon shops hunted: one (good)
Potential addiction to fishing currently obliterated by mindless watermelon "Slice of Summer" hunt. Idea is you find watermelon in shop A which contains gift plus landmark to shop B (etc etc up to 100 and something).

So that SL Friends do not realise this (other than readers of this blog, obviously) have sent Dimitrova to do main hunting and here she is collapsed on a sofa (one of the gifts) surrounded by latest batch of boxes. Kept thinking "will just go to one more shop" and there one is, X hours later with a pile of stuff of mixed interest.
Are far too many short skirts, however is also good stuff, in particular v. cute birdcage necklace and earrings from Ginza Kohime and COMPLETE watermelon shop, with male and female watermelon-eating animations and pile of watermelons that tumble to ground when clicked.


With Dimitrova having done groundwork, went and just plucked good stuff. Whilst at K's Shop (source of watermelon ensemble) camped for 10 mins to get rustic bench with nap animation (see 2nd pic), and also snagged a free table and chair set and a sort of digging animation (with fork) from two of the lucky boards.

3rd pic shows watermelon shop temporarily installed next to Ishbel & Nigl's office, by the common room and underneath the 7 Pillars of information literacy bird flu exhibit. In front of shop is a bath/watermelon cooler that was a camping item (15 mins) from OBF (am bathing in it) last year. Was going to say that always knew it would come in useful, but "useful" might be questionable word here.

However, could be just the thing when people have been seriously examining information literacy exhibits and want to be refreshed by a slice of melon, and then, since watermelon is pretty sticky, an even more refreshing bathe.

Valentine's hunt at La Reina!

There's a Valentine's hunt on the sim where my shop is, La Reina, from now til the 17th February. Lots of lovely pink hearts are hidden, with lots of goodies hidden inside them. My shop, Pictures do furnish a room (see below), sells mostly pictures (as you might expect) but I also make a few "matching" t-shirts. The Valentine freebie from me is indeed a tee, as pictured here, all pink for Valentine's day. The photo of a rose (as featured on the back of the tee) is the regular freebie instore. My pink hair is "Rainy Day" from Armidi, in Candy.

Valentine hunt at La Reina (155, 185, 24) (just turn round once you are inworld to see my shop!)