Male Angel of Destruction

I feel like I've been working on this outfit forever. I released the female version at the beginning of November, so it's taken me literally weeks to get this together. I was very blocked with this one - I hate to revisit old work and since I'd already done the female half, this felt very much like revision.

But it's done finally.

Available at my store in Eunpyung
and also
SL Boutique

SL Exchange

Tattered Wings in Black & White

New wings - available in world at Material Squirrel
Available in Black & White (off white a bit) in large and small sizes and also with xcite! features.

On SL Boutique
On SL Exchange

Steps Taken

Well, I've done what I can (which isn't much) to avoid the copybot.

1) Put up the a !quit script yesterday that did not spam people constantly. Took this down at midnight after I learned that most versions of the copybot now ignore this command. And most of my neighbors finally seemed to have changed and removed their scripts as well, so my store is no longer being spammed with other people's copybot protectors.

2) Turned build off on my land. Frankly, I hate this step. It feels like turning off right click on websites - fairly useless for stealing images and punishes people on your website. This is only a temporary measure for me right now. I will be turning build back on.

3) I plan to spend time in my shop, instead of my skybox. Except for modeling, where I need to use my skybox. This is probably something I should more of anyway, to get an idea of customer issues and concerns. (People can always IM me to talk me about business stuff, but not everyone does.)

4) A large anti-copybot sign warning anyone who uses it or attempts to use it that they will be banned from my store.

I also took the opportunity to take my store down time to put up new pose stands where you can buy the wings directly from the pose stand. This was a customer request given to Ziggy (my scripter & husband) who thought it was a great idea. I've wanted this for a long time but didn't think it was possible. So now it is done.

I hope to release some new wings soon. It has been FAR too long since I've put out new stuff.

Public Enemy #1 - Copybot

I am not even sure where to begin to communicate my thoughts on this matter. My real life has been hectic lately and throw this into the pile and yesterday I just could not deal with SL and resulting issues. So I did nothing. Inlcuding not releasing new items.

Today I am faced with the choice to close store and join the ranks of shops that have closed, even tho I am not in 100% agreement with this decision. If I do not, I look like I am clueless or careless. If I do, I then risk losing income, customers, a creative outlet, and more. And this is not to say that I disrespect the people who have closed, they have done so out of their own convictions and that's fine.

Currently, I am thinking of closing my store to my group members only and cleaning up my shop. I need to decide if I am going to temporarily remove pose stands. And I plan to put up a sign regarding the ban of anyone caught using the copybot in my store.

I have seen similiar signs concerning banning members of the group who created the bot, but I do not agree with this. On the face of this, they may seem like an irresponsible group of hackers - Linden sanctioned hackers at that. But after talking with my husband Ziggy, I've come to better understand what they do. Frankly, finding the holes in SecondLife is a good thing. Cause if this group that has Linden members doesn't, someone else will. And they certainly won't alert LL to the problems until much more damage has been done. The group has found several serious holes in the code which LL fixed.

Which brings me back to Linden Labs. Frankly, they should have taken these steps prior to this. They knew they had issues with the texture ripper over the summer, yet they utterly refused to do anything about it. Now they seem to be stepping up to the plate, but their slow awareness is frustrating. The possible fix that Robin Linden brought up to bake the textures to objects WILL really help with the texture theft issue - but does not address the copybot problem at all.

The copybot may copy the texture onto the object, but it can't save that item as a skin or shirt. Each texture isn't copied over and over again, unlike objects. When you buy a shirt, you don't get the shirt texture, rather your inventory gets a pointer the UUID (identifier#) of the shirt texture. It's only the server once.

What the copybot CAN do is completely copy objects like shoes and hair AND their textures. And wings. It can copy the textures, because the object has that tag to the UUID texture.

It cannot copy scripts or (at last word) flexi parameters. But flexi parameters are sent to the client side, so with some tweaking, they could be copied.

And the current copybot "protector" does nothing more than spam people. And even if you decide that your customers need to put up with the spam, it's a temporary fix at best and it wouldn't take much to change the scripts in the copybot to get around that.

So. . . back to square 1.

And also . . .

It appears that when I upgraded to the new version of blogger, it reposted a bunch of my posts on several feeds. I had no control over that, but I do apologize for spamming you all with old posts.

Red Head Love

I just had to blog this outfit before I had to change to do some modeling for my adboxes. Frankly, I don't usually go the red head route. I don't know why - maybe cause it feels like an exclusive club - red heads tend to be passionate about their hair and coloring.

Or maybe I just never had a good red head skin? Munchflower Zaius dropped a bunch of redhead skins on me the other day to try out and wowser, they are cool. They are SO well done and so cute - how can you resist freckles??

Here's a closeup:

Isn't that so sweet?

Credits:
Skin: Munchflower Zaius (Nomine) - new line of redhead skins
Hair : Kin Keiko
Shoes: Shiny Things
Top: Nomine & Silent Sparrow
Skirt: A work in progress by yours truly. I probably shouldn't be featuring stuff I'm still working on it, but I love the skirt with this. Yes. I need to make the top and few extras for it, maybe today, maybe tomorrow.

Angel of Destruction - Fear Her!

Maybe she's just mad about Xmas commercials on the TV before Halloween. Or maybe it's one of those days. But this angel is NOT nice.

You get 2 version of the outfit and wings. One pre-destruction (without the blood/gore) and one post (full of gore). And of course the skirts are flexi. And the wings do everything our wings do ( Flapping, Unfurl, Hover Flap & More with HUD).

And I'm working on a male outfit for this as well. Don't worry, I'm not going the male toga route (scary!).

If you were in my update group - this was the Halloween treat you received. Everyone else has to buy it. So . . . if you want to join my group, just go to groups and search for Material Squirrel and join. If you need more detailed instructions, go to my store and there is a adbox to click on and get a notecard with precise instructions. I will be giving my update group more free wings for holidays and just in general.

And also, I did it - bought an island. I expect it to be at least a few weeks until I get it - possibly longer. But soon, I'll be pulling out the pixel mixed drinks and living the island life.