There’s been a lot going on, and if you’ve been watching the ER website (or the inworld mailing list for that matter), you know that I’ve been plenty busy. Holiday freebies came in a flood, and now that the holiday tide is ebbing, I’m looking forward to the coming year.
There’s a new look for Eclectic-randomness.com.. still not 100% sure it’s going to stick, there’s some minor issues that need fixing, but I like the look and feel, even if some of the functionality isn’t quite what I’m used to.
As ER enters it’s 4th year, I’ll be looking back at some of the projects I’ve done over the years, looking at ways to perhaps improve on old concepts, and building on new technologies, and new ideas to keep things fresh and vibrant. Don’t worry, the “Classic Eclectic Randomness” style won’t be going anywhere, but new advances in scripting and sculpting, and new standard building practices have opened new opportunities to improve on some of the older designs. But with those changes will also come new items, and new approaches to old problems, all with the style and durability you’ve come to expect from ER.
Sure, it sounds a bit corporate.. the truth is, I’ve seen ways of doing things, that make me realise I could stand to improve some of the older items.. and I have some plans already for new things to make. Some of those new things will be natural additions, some will be significant innovations.
I can’t tell you what’s coming.. god I really wish I could. I just hope that some of the crazy ideas in my head work, cause if they do, the results will be great stuff indeed. Regardless however.. there’s new stuff coming.. and if 2009 was any indication, 2010 is going to be great.
Stay Tuned!
In a recent blog post, Linden Lab (owners and operators of both Second Life, and the web-based marketplace, XStreetSL) announced that within 30-90 days, a new fee structure would be introduced. Clothing this price-hike in the flag of “We’re doing this to make shopping easier”, the following changes were announced.
- Minimum Sales Commissions.
Each time you sell an item on XStreetSL, you are assessed a sales commission fee. Generally speaking, this fee is 5% of the purchase price. Linden lab has added a “minimum amount” per transaction. So now it’s 5% or 3L$, whichever is greater. This means that the “break even point” on that commission minimum is now 60L$. (5% of 60L$ = 3L$). This minimum fee per transaction INCLUDES items priced less than 3L. charge 3L, you make nothing. Charge 2L$, you actually OWE them money.. and charge 1L$ and you owe them 2 more. Commissions are not assessed on free items.
. - Monthly Listing Fees. (NEW!)
Previously, the only cost of listing and selling an item on XStreetSL was the crushing amounts of time it took to set up an attractive listing, and the sales commission. Now Linden Lab has added a recurring monthly fee, JUST to keep your item visible. 10L$ a month per item priced 1L$ or more. For a store like mine, with over 50 items, that quickly turns into 500L$ a month. While many people like to dismiss this as complaining about trivial amounts of money, that 500L$ translates to roughly $1.85 a month, or $22.20 a year, on top of the $72 annual membership fee, and $60 in annual land ownership fees that I already pay to the company.
. - Monthly FREEBIE Listing Fees. (NEW!)
Free items are apparrently the worst thing in the world.. if you listen to Linden Lab.. because LL has added a new monthly fee just to cover freebies listed on XStreetSL. In fact, it seems that just ONE freebie is as bad as 10 for-pay items.. because Linden Lab has decided to charge you 99L$ a month per freebie you list on XStreetSL. I have two freebies. A “demo” of a pair of boots I sell, so people can get a feel for the sizing before buying.. and a very popular box of “Megaprims” (a building aid… basically “free lumber to build houses with”). Those two freebies would cost me an additional 198L$ a month.. that’s $0.73 a month, or another $8.76 to add to that pile of money I send to Linden Lab every year.
Well, this has met, of course, with some pretty emotional responses.. and I am not immune either. When I read about this new policy, I deactivated all my XStreet Listings, including those megaprims (which served 3 dozen people a day). I don’t do a lot of business through XStreetSL. Sure, I make money there, but it’s piddling small change compared to the real core of my sales that come through my inworld shops and affiliate network.
Do I make enough to “afford” these fees? Yes.. I do. I make more than enough that these fees really wouldn’t create a major issue, in terms of my bottom line. But I am not at all happy about these fees, this “double dipping” of charging us for listing, AND charging us again for a sale. I especially don’t like how it punishes people for giving back to the community, making freebies into some sort of advertising “swag”.. because now the only people who will pay to list freebies, will be the people who can “make” 99L a month from the chance to advertise their brand.
For now, my items are deactivated.. and I’m looking into alternative marketplaces. None will have the reach and presence that XStreetSL enjoys.. being owned by LL, they get advantages that other sites never will*. The ones I’m looking at are:
I’m sure there are others, but so far these are the only ones I have heard of. I will post here to my blog, my reviews of each site as I go along.
As some of you may know.. I had deeply embraced XStreet into my business. I had created “loadURL” buttons below the vendor of every single item in my shop, that when clicked inworld, would take you to the XStreetS listing of that item. This was my preferred method for solving my store’s “buy as gift” problem. In exchange, many ER customers became new XStreet users. Whatever service I end up liking most, will likely benefit in a similar fashion.But for the meantime, I have no “buy as gift” solution.
One last thing, before I close.
Will you ever re-activate your XStreetSL Listings?
That is a very complicated question. The answer is, “it is probably inevitable.” Eventually, due to market pressure, I will be forced to re-activate some of my listings on XStreetSL. But I will probably only re-activate the “big seller” items, resulting in (sadly) less selection for XStreet customers. I will probably also be forced to raise the price of the Megaprims from FREE to 3L$. THAT really hurts me greatly, because I beleive that they are a natural resource and should be available to all.. but I am not going to pay more than 10L a month to share them.
For now, my listings are offline. But eventually the reality will set in that I have bills to pay too. In the meantime, presenting ER products on other services and exploring other options seems to be the best use of my time.
* – important note. Linden Lab engages in what could be called anti-competitive practices. Any mentions of, or links to, resident-created alternative marketplaces are deleted from forum posts by an admin. Yes, they actually go in and edit other people’s posts JUST to remove any mention of sites like slapt.me, apez.biz, meta-life.net, etc… making it impossible for Second Life users to discuss the web-based marketplaces they prefer to use. These services aren’t outlawed, but for some reason, mentioning them is.
I’ve been creating content in Second Life for well over three years now. I’ve built things out of prims, I’ve made my own shapes, I’ve sculpted, I’ve scripted I’ve even made my own hair and shoes. I’ve animated a bit (and I just don’t have the knack for really good stuff there).. but I’ve textured and built, and done just about every kind of content creation there was in Second Life.. except one.
Making Clothes.
Making clothes in Second Life, is a thankless job. The market is saturated with lots of “simple garbage” and there are some very skilled creators who, because the market is saturated, can’t charge what their work is worth. In many cases, it’s a true labor of love, and people seem to create clothes in SL with little thought towards making a profit.
Today, I am a clothes maker, and I can tell you.. it is tedious and agravating. Aside from all the usual complaints, about how uneven the mesh is, how hard it is to even get seams to look “good enough”.. I have to tell you something I didn’t really expect.
Making the same outfit in 12 colours.. that’s not “just” 12 or 24 uploads.
I just finished uploading 201 files. that’s TWO HUNDRED AND ONE.
I started with the idea of making 12 simple catsuits. Black, Red, Blue, Pink, etc.. There are things, you just don’t know, going into clothing creation, like the fact that the pants and underpants layers don’t stop in the same places. Or the fact that the undershirt layer continues further down the arm than the shirt layer. That you can’t just use the same “torso” texture for shirt, undershirt, and gloves.. when I was done, like I said, I had 201 textures to upload.
Tomorrow begins the project of making a clothing item, and modding it 11 times, then making the next clothing item,lather, rinse, and repeat.. until the undershirts, pants, stockings, and gloves, and everything else has it’s proper textures, proper filenames, proper fit, and proper permissions…
I’ve already spent a week just finalizing the photoshop files, saving off the 201 tga files, testing them on the beta grid, finding my errors, re-doing them, etc etc.. Clothes makers in SL are under appreciated.. and very often, a good deal more work goes into something than may first be apparent. Tomorrow will be another tedious, repetitive day.. and then I can experience the joy of making 36 or so vendors.
As I approach the finishing line on this project, I look forward not so much to being done, as to no longer being working on it any more.
Too tired to move, so here’s the list of links. This first batch was done a couple of days ago:
- ER SingleTail Hair ‘Latex’
- ER SingleTail Hair ‘Strand’
- ER SingleTail Hair ‘Waves’
- ER TwinTails Hair ‘Latex’
- ER TwinTails Hair ‘Strand’
- ER TwinTails Hair ‘Waves’
This second batch was done tonight:
- ER F-Type Robot Avatar
- ER M-Type Robot Avatar
- ER Robot Hair KEL-E
- ER Robot Hair MIS-T
- ER Robot Hair PEG-E
- ER Robot Hair SN-D
- ER Robot Hair STA-C
- ER Robot Hair SU-Z
- ER Robot Hair AD-M
- ER Robot Hair AL-X
- ER Robot Hair JAX-N
- ER Robot Hair LE-O
- ER Robot Jetpack J1
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.
It’s been an uphill voyage, but now I can announce that just about all of ER’s pre-existing XStreetSL listings are back online!
Today’s efforts resurrected:
Well the recovery from the endless summer is underway, and the good news is, I’m back to work! Here’s what’s gone on so far.
This last weekend:
- Recovery of the ER Website/Blog following the hacking incident
- Selection and configuration of a replacement wordpress theme
- Reinstatement of the SLX and SLURL site functions
Monday:
- Reactivation of a number of XStreetSL listings, including:
- ER Fetish Doll Hood
- ER Military Hangar
- ER Isolation Pod
- ER Latex Implants
- ER Action Jetpack
- ER Backyard BBQ Grill
- ER Latex SoundFX
- ER Change Machine
See the current collection of all our XStreet-listed items, here: http://slx.eclectic-randomness.com
It seems that the ER blog caught a bit of a hack over the last couple of days. Props to the guys who managed it for their tech saavy.. but an appeal.
Pleez dun do it agin, k?
What an annoyance, really.. pulling the whole site down, and rebuilding it. I’ve lost my modded wordpress template, and to be honest, I’m seriously reconsidering whether to bother using wordpress into the future. It’s a nice piece of software.. but. I dunno how the hack happened, whether it was a *nix level attack, or the webserver itself, or some sort of exploit of how I enabled comments or something, or maybe just something that was out of date. So I’ll be being a bit more strict with that for the time-being.
Anyways, the alternative is going back to raw html writing.. which is sooooooooooo boring.
Just another rock on the path. I’m really not complaining all that much. I just lost some data I actually liked, so it’s a little annoying. Another setback.
/me sighs.
Edit (9/27): turns out, the whole webserver was compromised, so I sincerely doubt that my little wordpress install alone was the culprit. Still, it’s been uphill work to find a theme I can stand. But I think I can live with this one for the time being.
I tend to mark transitions in my life with Userpics. I move, I change my icon, I do a major project, I change it again. Very often, the userpic will capture the feeling of the moment, or a piece of the project. And when I recently completed a RL move, and had also redone my avatar in Second Life, I figured that was a good time for a new icon.
I’m a graphic artist by trade.. Illustration, Commercial Art, and from time to time Web Design.. Drawing and creating is what I have always done. Anyways, my latest userpic had sort of a “Comic-Book effect”.. and it was all basically done in photoshop, starting with a screenshot from SecondLife. A lot of people have asked me how I did it, so I figured I should put together a little presentation.
Before
After
Comic Book Effect Tutorial
I don’t know how I feel. Or even what I SHOULD feel.
In the next hour, I will be picking up the U-Haul, for my move. Since it’ll be my first time on wheels in nearly 3 years, I’ll no doubt trip over to Fred Meyer (across the street from U-Haul) and might even pick up a spot of lunch. When I get back, Patrick will help me load boxes into the truck.
Probably by 5-6pm, we’ll be finished, more or less. We won’t pack everything.. some things I don’t feel safe leaving in a u-haul overnight. Computer stuff, mostly, and some clothes.
Tomorrow, bright an early, it’ll be a quick load up. Breaking down the remains of my computer (it’s been bare-bones for days).. gathering up wires, etc.. and then, without much ado, I’ll hop in the truck, and head on down the highway.
I’m supposed to be sad about this. I’m leaving a relationship, of a sort. Well it used to be a relationship. Now it’s just a piece of chain, and those kinds of cobwebs you only ever see haunted mansions, in the movies. What’s left is a sort of friendship.. sort of family connection.. and leaving that, even just that, should be sad.
But I’m not sad.
It’s easy to say that my other housemates are crazy.. they’re not. They have their moments to be sure, but the simple fact is that I don’t really like them very much. There’s been a good deal of animosity and “not talking to” going on for most of the time I’ve lived here. There’s been a significant amount of untruth floating around as well.. stories from both sides of the divide, not to say lies, but outlandish tales that test one’s ability to beleive. Somewhere between Camp A, and Camp B.. is the truth, and I can’t see it.
I’m tired of the animosity game, tired of the yelling drama, tired of their kids running away from home, tired of 9pm sounds of screaming and door kicking.. tired of running into someone in the kitchen and saying “hey there, how’s it going?” and the only response I ever get is “meh”.
I will be glad not to live here anymore. Even factoring in the dislike I have for leaving that relationship.. the time has come, and as Mr. Wu (in Disney’s “The Love Bug”) so eloquently said:
“When you come to last page.. close the book.”
Long story short.. I’m moving.
After just completing an unexpected move of my shop to the Adult Continent, and in the midst of redoing all my XStreet listings (removing unacceptable keywords, white text, updating landmarks, removing trademarked terms, etc)…
in the middle of all that, Not to mention ripping up the Ventura Mystery House (aka the Latex Fetish Doll Complex) for a 14th time and starting over..
I am now moving out of my home for the last year and a half.
The good news, is that I’m moving in with a friend, someone I’ve lived with before.. the rental agreement is good for my needs.. and her house is well located.
The bad news.. I have 9 days to pull it off.
U-Haul (the truck rental place) wants 156$ to rent a truck from them, if I do it by August 27th. After that, their rates more than double for the “Back to school” rush.. and let’s face it, I’d be moving to a University town. The rates drop again on the 29th of September.. once school has started.
So, my options are, hurry and rush and try to get moved in the next two weeks, or take it slow and sit around for a whole month, living on borrowed time with people I really don’t like too much.
Meanwhile, my housemates (the good ones).. will be gone in a couple of weeks.. leaving me here all alone.. other people in the house, but no one I can talk to. No one to cook with, no one to bum a ride from, no one to talk to or vent to, no cats to pet.
Given the choice.. and let’s face it, it’s not much of a choice either way… I’m going for the “hurry and move” option. The rental truck is reserved for the last cheap day.. and I’ll work my butt off to try and make deadline. I figure, if it doesn’t work out, I can cancel the reservation, and reschedule.
But for the next couple of weeks.. I’ll probably be working more, and being around SL and forums a lot less.