Corvans Creations... Musings on a Second Life » DC Designs

A new week, some new tasks and a new product line!

corvan — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 06:35:49 +0000

Another fairly quiet week, but in a good way. I seem to be getting my old self back at work (RL) and that has helped my mood tremendously. Miss has been a big help with that, encouraging me, smacking me when I’ve slipped up, cheering me on. I had missed a deadline at the office which didn’t have my manager terribly pleased, and Miss wasn’t pleased either. Effective immediately she’s having me include upcoming work deadlines in my weekly schedule. Her support and insistence I keep accountable has been a big part of me getting back to where I am. It will also be a big part in helping me stay here.

Meanwhile we had a plumbing emergency at home (again, RL). Our toilet blew up. Well not so much blew up as the tank cracked open causing a major leak. We haven’t called for a plumber yet though because the apartment really wasn’t fit to let the property managers in. My wife and I never have been the most neat and tidy people and honestly with all the other struggles I’ve had, keeping the place organized hasn’t been a priority. So it’s not that the place is dirty, so much as it’s very untidy. I spent a goodly portion of the weekend fixing that, and again, Miss was not terribly pleased with me that I’d let it get to this state. She’s going to make damn sure that I get it out of that state quickly, and that I don’t allow it to get back in…

On another front, I’m branching out a bit with a new product line for DC Designs: Tattoos. I’ve been playing with the Gimp lately, and at the request of a friend made some “Slave” tattoos. They came out so well that I made products out of them. There’s six different locations I made, so putting together all the combinations, that’s 63 different tattoo layers, 64 new products to create and put in the Hippo server, and 64 new products to set up on XStreet. My fingers are tired! I priced each individual at L$20, and the fatpack of all 63 for L$500. Honestly, I don’t expect anyone to buy the fatpack, though I am seriously considering changing the permissions so that they are nocopy/transfer so if you were to buy the fatpack you can share the ones you don’t want with friends. It’s generated a surprising amount of interest! I’ve sold three already, and the Midnight Mania locked for the first time in ages. I’ve also been commissioned to do a custom tattoo for someone, which completely floored me.

So.. if you have ideas for tattoos you’d like to see, send me a notecard! I can’t promise that I’ll be able to do it, I’m still learning the Gimp, and still getting used to the somewhat odd layout of the Avatar templates that SecondLife uses for skins, but if I use your idea, or if I make something inspired by your idea then you’ll get it free as a thank you gift!

Also, I’ve started a new tradition. Whenever I introduce a new product I will be sending a personal thank you, and a thank you gift: a box of all my products just for you. Fundamentally I make these things either for my own use, and then the hope that others will also find them useful; or for fun. My goal is not and never has been to make a pile of money doing this. Certainly it would be nice to reach a point where my sales income covers my SecondLife expenses, but I’m not terribly worried if I can’t achieve that. I want to make products that are fun, are useful, are delightful for the people who use them. I also want the experience of buying from me to be the same. I’ve received many compliments on my after-sales support and I really appreciate the feedback. It’s important to me that anyone who buys something from me is delighted with what they bought, and I’m happy to help out in any way I can if there’s something not quite right, or confusing, or what have you.

So, here’s my long-term pledge: I will always make time to help anyone who needs assistance with one of my products. I will always be thankful that you have chosen to spend your Lindens on something I created. I will always provide free updates for all of my products as long as I continue to update the product, no matter how old the version you have. Lastly, I am going to continue this new tradition: If you are the first purchaser of a new product I will send you a personal thank you and a gift of every product I have at that point. These will not be crippled versions, and they will be the most complete version that makes sense. So for example, my first purchaser of the Slave tattoo spent L$20 on one of the variations. The gift box I sent her had Chat Enhancer, Ultimate Titler and the fatpack of the tattoo included.

I’ll close with the product picture for the tattoo. This was created using my shiny new photo studio, my friend modeling, and some careful Gimp editing. I really like the way it turned out, and it proved to me that I’m starting to get reasonably comfortable with the Gimp!

So what’s new?

corvan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:28:13 +0000

Miss mentioned today that it’s now been seven and a half months since she claimed me as hers. My how time flies. It really doesn’t feel that long, and yet if you include the time she was watching over me while I was deka’s, it’s been over a year…

We had some nice hanging out time in SL today, and I finally got to surprise her. A while back she had me get this amazing cat avatar. It’s perfectly proportioned, which means that compared to human forms it’s truly teeny tiny. When I found it, I also discovered a tiger body in the same size and got it as well to surprise Miss the next time she had me get into tiger form. Today I finally got to spring the surprise on her and it was definitely worth it! The teeny tiger is totally adorable

On the scripting front, I’m making excellent progress on the Inventory Manager product. I’m building a whole new framework for this one that will use the Django backend I recently installed which will allow me to put a whole lot more smarts on the database end, and will allow me to build web interfaces easily. It’s shaping up really well and once the framework is a little more solid, I’m going to begin the grand transition for Chat Enhancer and Ultimate Titler. I’m going to be releasing a new combo product as well, Chat Enhancer and Ultimate Titler in one object. Anyone that’s in the database for the current products will get the combo as a free gift.

A fairly quiet week

corvan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:24:39 +0000

Not a lot to talk about tonight. I’ve been quite busy with work, it’s a good thing. I’ve been pretty busy making plans and designing the inventory manager. I’ve been spending more time with Miss playing backgammon, or Monopoly, or what have you online. We haven’t really spent any time in SL together and it’s been okay. She’s still very much my Miss, and I’m very much her pony. It’s been 4 months since she put her permanent collar on me, and yes, the blush is off the rose a little, but we’re finding a routine that’s working for us.

There are definitely areas where I’m not feeling it as much as I was, particularly in the realm of bondage, but we’ve talked about that in the past, and I continue to have her permission to run my alt as a bondage toy, which I have been. I’m finding that running her is going a long way to fulfilling that need. I am beginning to feel a bit of a lack in my social life, I’m not spending nearly the time I used to at Forum, partly because I’m busy with my alt, partly because I’m busy with my development projects, partly because… well, it was getting tiresome and the pull hasn’t been very strong lately. Miss and I are working on this one though, and I know things will be moving before too long.

Meanwhile I’m really feeling good about where the inventory manager project is going. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it feels like I’m laying a very sound foundation as I proceed. I can’t wait to get it done so I can start using it

Another week over, a new week beginning

corvan — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:59:31 +0000

I’m sitting here (late, but it’s been that kind of week), late because I needed to help my wife take a bath. It’s going to be a bit of a late night, not badly, but somewhat. As for my sleep cycles, it’s okay because the last few days I’ve been sleeping a lot as I get over a brief bout of the flu.

In some ways it was a very good week and in others not so great. Miss and I had some really good conversations, and played a lot of Can’t Stop and Backgammon. She’s been kicking my ass at Can’t Stop and I’ve been returning the favor at Backgammon. Thing is though, we’re getting a bit more formal in our conversations. We both noticed, well I think Miss noticed more than I did or at least brought it up sooner, that I’d been increasingly casual when we’ve been conversing. That’s changing effective immediately, and I’m noticing it’s helping. That formality is a constant reminder of who I am and who Miss is.

Meanwhile, despite my bout of the flu, I’m feeling more energized about work and about SL projects. In fact, I’m actively working on an update to Chat Enhancer now as well as a new product, Inventory Manager. Inventory Manager is my most ambitious project to date and if it works, could be very, very good, especially as things slowly transition from SecondLife to other grids.

A minor panic this evening

corvan — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:14:51 +0000

Talk about being derailed. My blog was offline for a while this evening due to a database error. Fortunately I was able to repair the database and everything appears to be operating normally again. It made for a bit of a panic though as I was sweating through several scenarios, first that my blog would be gone, poof… second that my nice reliable hosting was suddenly less reliable meaning that all my customers for DC Designs products would be yelling at me in the morning. Finally and most importantly that I’d be unable to post as directed by Miss Tara and that was something I really didn’t want to not do.

Miss was able to come into SL for a while this evening to whomp me at Can’t Stop again it was nice to be able to spend that time with her. I’m still struggling with the transition from being hers primarily in SL to being hers primarily outside of SL, but I think progress is being made.

New Development and Support portal for DC Designs

corvan — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:24:43 +0000

I’m getting back into development mode again, and one of the things I really wanted to do before I got rolling was to move my support portal to here. As of yesterday, my new portal is live here.

Please have a look around and let me know if you have any suggestions or requests. I’m actively working on the site and on updates and new products so keep watch!

One significant change from the old portal, is you need to register in order to file a ticket. Please use your SecondLife name for the registration so I can contact you if need be. Using an email address is entirely optional but if you do provide one, I can provide support via email.

Celebrating some milestones today

corvan — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:55:38 +0000

This is going to be a bit of a mish-mash of a post, three milestones I’m celebrating today that are largely unrelated to each other.

First of all, I’ve released version 1.04 of Ultimate Titler and put it back up for sale. I’m confident now that it’s working correctly, though I’m not so arrogant to say there’s no bugs. Thanks to both of the early adopters! Time to start looking forward for both Ultimate Titler and Chat Enhancer to new features and capabilities, as well as finally to get started on the Coin-Operated Doll System! Please, let me know any problems by going to the bug reporting page!

Next, the blog is going to cross a milestone today (or maybe tomorrow): 1000 hits! Sure, hardly the busiest blog on the internet, but I’m still amazing to reach this plateau.

Finally, my darling wife and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary in RL yesterday. It’s been one heck of a year between coping with the impact of her stroke, to our 15 year old daughter running away. We’re looking forward to the next year as things settle, she’s doing wonderfully well.

Setting up a development site for tracking

corvan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:02:48 +0000

I’ve just added a link to my new development site for DC Designs. This site is where I’ll be maintaining latest documentation as well as tracking development tasks and bug tracking.

If you find a bug in one of our products, please go to the site and use the ticketing system to create a bug report. This will allow me to track the bug properly as well as making sure that nothing slips through the cracks.

Pay no attention to the current contents of the landing page, that’s default boilerplate. I’ll be replacing that soon.

Released 1.60 this afternoon!

corvan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:47:20 +0000

And releasing 1.61 in the morning… There ‘s a bug with the owner permissions. So guess what I’m doing as soon as I get up in the morning? Related posts:Updates released today Version 1.00 of Ultimate Titler is released! So what’s new? Related posts:

Building, planning, dreaming

corvan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:18:52 +0000

Miss deka and I are preparing for a major change at home. We’re getting rid of the castle because frankly, it’s just too damned big. We’ve have a comfortable amount of stuff in it, and it feels empty. A good friend of Miss deka’s is building a house for us. I’ll be doing the scripts for the kennels and stables he’s including (fully locking and RLV enabled of course) and we’re making longer range plans as Miss gets ready to start some serious clothing design (again, all RLV enabled with scripting by your’s truly).

In the process of figuring all of this out, we’ve decided to set up a store area on a platform away from where the house will be. It’s going to simplify how we’re using the land and in time, Miss wants us to square off the parcel we’re on. At the moment it’s sort of shaped like the letter ‘b’. In order to get that land we’re going to need to add some tier to the group. I’m currently providing the tier for what we have, and Miss deka is going to be adding some soon. There’s a couple of parcel for sale connected to us and hopefully we can get one of those and then see about buying the rest of what will end up being the resulting rectangle. It’s going to take some time, but time we have plenty of.

A friend of ours mentioned to Miss deka recently that I was worried I was losing her. She checked in with me about that today and I assured her that nothing could be further from the truth. I need to check in with our friend and let him know that. I think he may be thinking of the time when I was, seriously worried that I was losing Miss, hell I thought that I had lost her. That’s all water long under the bridge and as I’ve mentioned (okay, gushed) recently, I’m here for the long haul.

I mainly bring that up because of a comment Miss made when we were talking about what to call our combined shop. She said “Well i think we arent separating for a long long time” and my heart skipped a beat or two. My reply was “Not if I have anything to say about it”. I know that we’re firmly committed to each other, I know that I’m her’s for as long as I can imagine, it just feels so good to be reminded that she feels the same way. Oh, the name she came up with? “DC Designs”. I love it.

So I’ve moved my shop and now I’m doing something that I never thought I would do. I’m selling my little 512 parcel. The little piece of mainland that was always my refuge, the one place I knew that I could call home no matter what. I don’t need it anymore. My refuge is with my Miss. My home is where she is. That parcel was a nice fallback when things didn’t work out between Enigma and I. It was home for a while after Wednesdai released me. I don’t need a fallback anymore, Miss deka is my fallback.

I’ll close with the warm and fuzzy feeling I got this evening as Miss deka curled up for sleep, idling in SL locked in, just as I am. She’s about 10 feet away from me right now, curled up in the cage Wednesdai got me when she first collared me. I’ve written at length about how much that cage means to me, it is the truest home I have in SL. I told Miss how sweet it was to see her sleeping there, how it makes me smile. In a way, it is her claiming ever part of me, she owns every part of my being, including my true home. When she told me she was “stealing” the cage for tonight I melted. Contrast that to how I would have felt if Enigma had done so. I’d have feel put out at the least. Not so with Miss deka. I’m having difficulty finding the words to describe how it touches me. A picture will have to suffice.