Corvans Creations... Musings on a Second Life » Chrissy

Not a lot to say, but need to say something

corvan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:11:00 +0000

RL has been seriously kicking my ass lately and it’s been keeping me out of SL a fair bit the last few days. It’s often a struggle between stresses in RL driving me to SL, and being in SL more than i should which raises the amount of the stresses in RL…

Oh, Chrissy says I should say something about her monopolising my time and only wanting to talk about herself. So I have. Oh, and how she’s always mooching money. Her words. She always pays it back though, and quickly.

I did manage to get online this evening for a decent while. It was a deliberate choice to de-stress even though it means I wasn’t able to get done everything I wanted to this weekend. I wasn’t going to anyway, but SL wasn’t actually a large contributor to that. Didn’t really do a whole lot in SL this evening either. Hung around FFF for a while, then the Forum.

I also released version 1.51 of my Chat Enhancer (it’s what I’m calling the RLV_Talker now). It’s really quite slick now. Fast, easily extensible… The framework I’ve built should let me create new capabilities easily, as well as re-use for new products. So far I’ve sold exactly one of the Chat Enhancers (Hi Re!) so it’s definitely a commercial success . When RLV 1.20 comes out though I’ll be able to eliminate a significant shortcoming. There’s going to be a feature that will allow my scripts to be notified when restrictions have changed. This will mean no more polling when nothing is happening, _and_ near instant response time when a relevant restriction has been added.

The next product is going to be an evil titler. Not just any evil titler though, this one is going to have a couple of very significant features. First, for anyone running RLV 1.19 or newer there will be an option to hide their title form them. Second, there will be a discrete mode where only people wearing my titler will see the “Change so-and-so’s title” spam. Finally, I’ll create a companion product that will broadcast a beacon to disable the titlers. This will be aimed primarily at places that are having talks so that the talk isn’t interrupted by “Change so-and-so’s title” spam during the talk.

Having the settings stored offworld is proving to be a great feature. When I delivered the update, my beta tester (Hi again Chrissy!) simply attached the new one and everything was set just like it was before. Sweet.

That leads me to some more ideas: A remote control so that you can change your sub’s name/title from anywhere in SL. Logging of name change activity is another. With the namelist a Dom(me) can provide a list of names the sub can use, but there’s no real way to enforce which is used at any particular time or to even know which was in use. With clever use of the offworld database that can be addressed.

Finally, the offworld database gave me an idea for how to do a product I’ve wanted for a long time. A real outfit manager for the #RLV folder. Here’s the use-case: You’ve got several outfits you like to put together from pieces in different folders. The easy solution is to have everything in a different folder for each outfit combination. The problem comes in when you’ve got nocopy items that are shared by two or more outfits. Solution? Well, there doesn’t appear to be one in SL yet. The biggest problem I see is user-interface. SL’s menu system really isn’t suited for this kind of thing. Not easily anyway. So what I’m thinking is to create a web-based system that will work with an inworld HUD. All the HUD needs to do is send a complete picture of the #RLV structure to the offworld database, and to have a list of defined outfits. Everything else can be handled by the offworld web-system. Might need to get handy at web-system development now…

The week that was

corvan — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:57:00 +0000

It’s been a rough week, mostly in RL. The details aren’t important here except to say how glad I am for some of the friends I have in SL, particularly Tara, Re and Chrissy. They have been godsends to me, keeping me grounded, keeping me sane.

Miss deka is still MIA unfortunately. It was her birthday a couple of days ago and I sent her a quick “Happy Birthday, Miss!” via Yahoo, but I’ve not actually seen her since Monday. I hope everything is okay.

Tara took some really nice pictures of my today in both Pony and Dollie forms. She sent me the montages she made and I’m going to be using them from now on as my profile pictures when I’m in those forms. She really did a nice job with them:

We’re going to get some of my tiger form tomorrow and then she’s going to make a montage of all three forms. Fun!

A puppy comes to life…

corvan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:03:00 +0000

Oddly enough, a fairly mundane day today, which is an odd thing to say considering I spent most of it locked into pony tack…

Miss deka’s Master decided he wanted her to work on her MD pony boots today so naturally, I did too. We spent a fair chunk of the morning pacing around the circle at the Forum, falling on our asses, pacing, falling…

I also got to meet Miss’s first ever sub, from IMVU. She seems hell bent on collaring him again in SL, though he’s not likely to be around too much. He’s in the military and will be deploying to Iraq soon. I hope he’ll be okay.

Later on, Miss carried out her threat to put me into puppy form. I’m now a blue puppy, and it’s quite a bit of fun. I’m free to scamper about (and oh my, but puppies are hyper!), get into trouble, generally just be goofy. I’m still not sure if it’s going to appeal the same as pony and latex doll have, but it’s certainly a fun diversion. Tomorrow Miss wants to see me running the agility course at FFF. I managed a few runs before I needed to log for the night. It’s tougher than it looks. Chrissy managed a time of 124, the best I could managed was 154. That’s still quite an improvement over my first time of 186 but still lots of room for improvement.

I wish all Mondays were this nice, with only one small dark cloud

corvan — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:37:00 +0000

When I got up this morning, Miss ordered me to stay at the prison until she called me. It wasn’t long before she brought me to her and proceeded to dress me up as a silver latex doll. I was a bit surprised, I’d expected either pony or, that we’d be heading off to get puppy gear like she threatened… Instead, most of the morning and early afternoon had us both as latex dollies on the chain gang. Her Master had her leash, she had mine, and off to do some shopping we went. We ended up at this enormous (12 sims) Japanese mall with an amazing variety of just, well, stuff. Clothing, skins, toys, strange avatars. You name it and it’s probably there somewhere. The place was enormous.

We did find these very funky Hermit Crab avatars. They’re about the size of a large dog. We each got one, and later in the day we scuttled around the Forum for a bit before heading over to a place called the Gor Hub. Sir and Miss knew this place and some of the people there. We had a ball. Some of the people played along, some just gawked. The only downside was the lag. The sim was badly lagging, not the client-side lag I’ve been suffering from for the last couple of weeks, but server-side. Mostly because of the number of people there (over 50 in a relatively small space) but also the open and airy construction.

When we were done with that, Miss had me change back into my pink pony and I spent most of the evening at FFF practicing the steeple. It’s a little disheartening how out of practice I am, but I’ll get back into the groove soon I’m sure. Just before she sent me off to bed, Miss instructed me to go get the Puppy gear I’d scouted the other day. It seems my introduction to Puppy play will begin tomorrow…

The middle of the day included a chat at the Forum about religion and BDSM, and in particular the conflicts if any between them. I’ve left it for last because it is the piece that causes me pause. Two people showed themselves to be quite intolerant of others’ religions and it surprised me greatly who one of them was. I’m not going to name names here, I’ll be having my own conversations with them. What struck me the most was how much both of them adhere to the Forum’s creed of tolerance and yet could be so intolerant when it came to religion. It really shook me up a bit, particularly from one of them because it caused a couple of people to leave and really hurt the feelings of a close friend of mine. I sent Miss a note I plan to send to this latter one, expressing my dismay at her comments. I’ll send it with Miss’s permission. I haven’t figured out what to say to the other, she didn’t surprise me as much, I knew those were her views, but I didn’t realise how willing she was to lash out at anyone’s faith.

For the record, I’m agnostic and both of the people I speak of are Athiest. I capitalise it because in my opinion, Atheism is as much faith based as any other religion. Myself? I don’t know if the great Flying Spaghetti Monster exists or not. I see no evidence that any Supreme Being exists, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. My friendship with both these people took a serious hit today…

The day just kept getting better…

corvan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:57:00 +0000

It’s now the next morning and I’m still kind of floating from the day I had yesterday.

I need to keep checking back to my chat log to make sure I’ve got the ordering correct, but who really cares about what came before what?

The best part started off after just royally sucking at the weekly Forum trivia game. My team got destroyed. There’s really no other way to put it. It was pathetic. I think we lost by 20 points. It was great fun though.

Following the match, I headed back to FFF as Miss was online still and I was hoping to spend some more “getting to know you” time with her. A minor confusion on my part later and I’m following Marianne to the dressage field with four other ponies! At the time, I thought Miss Enigma had asked Marianne to bring me down, oops. My mistake turned into one of the most enjoyable training exercises I’ve had so far. Marianne had a peak of seven ponies all around the dressage field and she turned it into an impromptu precision walking exercise with all of us walking the outside of the field. From time to time she’d call out for different ponies to enter the field and either walk the circle or the figure-eight. Keeping from running each other over was a real challenge, as was fighting the occasional bursts of lag we were inducing. As we were heading over, Marianne said something about ponies being “weapons of sim destruction”

A few of the ponies dropped out or crashed out, which eventually whittled our numbers down to three. At this point Marianne turned it into a dressage training for the ponies and for Enigma who joined the half dozen or so observers while we were all walking. Dressage is one of those things that can really show off how wel a pony and his trainer are in sync with each other. It’s all about style and grace and precision. I did pretty reasonably, though the backwards line still gives me trouble, I can never quite tell when I’ve reached the end of the line before I pass it.

Once dressage practice broke up, Enigma took me on a tour of some steeple courses she knows off-sim, and I did a credible job I think.

There is a grid-wide easter egg hunt going on right now and we decided to meet up a little later and go hunting together. This marked the first time in about 10 days that I’d been out of tack for any appreciable time. It felt really strange! I didn’t hear my hooves as I walked, my hands were sticking out all over the place, it just felt unnatural at first. Once we got to the hunting I didn’t notice so much, but it sure felt good to be back in tack later on.

We got maybe half a dozen of the eggs, some were fiendishly difficult to find, and overall had fun. The shops that the hunt takes you through are a wide variety of places. I’m pretty sure that Miss bought something at one of the shops so it’s also turning out to be a nice way to get to know her tastes without badgering her.

Later on we met up with Aeris who was practicing on a race course. Miss Engima and I took turns being pulled around the course by Aeris. I just realised that that was the first time ever I’d been pulled by a pony rather than the other way around! It was a lot of fun, but I think Aeris was getting frustrated as her times kept increasing. There’s some turns that are really hard to negotiate at full speed and she was fighting lag as well which didn’t help.

Miss asked if I’d like to give it a try, which of course I was itching to do, and I took her and Aeris out for a few laps. I didn’t mean to show up Aeris, I really didn’t, but my times were quite a bit better than hers. Miss was really proud of how I did which made me glow a bit. At every stage, with the sole exception of getting better at emoting as a pony, everything just seems to be coming naturally. I’ve not felt anything quite like it before, it’s almost like… I don’t know, almost like it was meant to be.

It’s funny too, I’m such a bondage slut, and yet I’m not really terribly restrained in pony gear. Sure, I have my bit in almost non-stop (I’m only taking it out now when I visit the Forum), and there’s plenty of options for restraints, a number of ponies use the same arm binder I have, and one of my hoof sets includes options for hobbling. Yet I’m finding that I’m getting that same sense of restrained freedom being in tack that I had a few times when Wednesdai had me all trussed up for extended periods. I’m almost tempted to ask Miss to let me take it to the next level up, moving to a strict training regime like Chrissy is about to begin.

Strict training is when a pony is locked into their gear 24/7. They don’t leave their stall unless accompanied by a trainer and they don’t leave the sim. It sounds like an amazingly immersive experience but I go back and forth about whether I’d gain anything significant over how life is now. I’m in tack 24/7 except on Miss’s instructions. I rarely leave the sim, since joining FFF I don’t think I’ve gone anywhere else except to the Forum and to a few pony shops (still looking for the ultimate set of gear…). So what’s the real difference between that and Strict Training? I guess it’s mostly the choice thing. I can choose to wait in my stall for a trainer to be free, or in the paddock, or I can pop over to the Forum. Miss can (and may some day, who knows) instruct me to remain at the Farm, she can tie my reins to a post in my stall guaranteeing that I can’t go wandering. These last two options remove choices from me which of course is a big piece of the whole BDSM dynamic.

I guess when it comes down to it, I’m happy enough knowing that if She feels it necessary to restrict me she will. Until then, I’m just not going to worry about it.

A very busy morning on the farm…

corvan — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:41:00 +0000

Well I’m sitting here a little in shock, and it’s a very good thing.

I got up stupidly early this morning (4:00 am, don’t ask me why, I don’t know) and when I logged in, my friend Chrissy was struggling to get a nice photo done for her stall door at FFF. I was more than happy to help out, she was trying to look in a particular direction while she took the picture and that’s darn near impossible. I was able to get a half dozen shots with her posed the way she wanted, the last one, on a bit of a lark, had her looking the opposite direction and it turned out wonderfully!

I’m really happy with this one, and the best part is so is Chrissy.

After that, Enigma Khandr came by. She’s one of the trainee trainers at FFF, and also a friend of mine’s RL partner. We went for a really nice walk with her teaching me proper following technique. She caught me out a couple of times but I managed to not quite run her down. We had a long chat after the walk, and, well, let’s just put it this way: I am no longer an unowned pony…

I’m a little surprised at myself, and really proud that I made so good an impression on Miss Enigma. We’ve agreed to try it for a couple of weeks, just like I did with Wednesdai, and knowing me that time frame will be out the window in about a week . She seems very nice, and with just the right amount of silliness… This could get very interesting very quickly. The biggest indicator for me so far was that after she took ownership of my bridle and collar, I got the same jolt when she locked my collar that I used to get with Wednesdai.

I think I did a good job impressing her on the steeple course too. My first attempt had two faults and a score of about 1140. I was determined though, and my second attempt was a perfect 1200 in 56 seconds. My previous 1200 doesn’t count because I ran it. This time I walked the whole way and my need to please Miss Enigma drove me to a perfect run. How cool is that?