184: Dinner at the Terrace

Getting a Christmas present for my husband Alex Thaub -- or indeed many people in Second Life -- can be difficult. Fashions move very quickly and generally speaking, if you see something while you're out and about, it's easy and inexpensive to buy. So for someone special, what you generally need to do is provide an experience and not merely an object.
  We've always liked The Terrace Lounge and Grille 

Restaurant, run by our friend Jorden Andrew. Well, part of it is sentimental, since this is where I popped the question way back when. But the larger part of it is that Jorden and his crew behind the scenes have figured out how to give people an experience that is like real life, but takes advantage of everything that is unique about SL.
  Our dinner the other night took place at the "Winter Cottage in the Woods". The basis of this is the dining experience, which takes place in a beautiful little

outdoor pavilion; as always, perfect service by Jorden himself, of a four course meal that I would have been happy to order in real life. (I'm a bit of a foodie, and all I can say is, so is whoever creates these menus.) And after the meal, we spent time exploring the interesting environment that The Terrace folks have created for your amusement. There's a sleigh ride, a skating rink, a bath house, and a beautifully decorated little cottage with ... let's just say with the animations that romantic adults might

expect to find.
  Of course the Winter Cottage is not the only environment they have to offer; there are five or six different dining experiences and a couple of very unusual offerings that include a dude ranch weekend (!) and a place to take the kids on their rez-days. We recommend it highly and you should check out what they have to offer! Use the link above to see their web pages, where you'll get a very good idea of the complete range of experiences; use this 

SLURL to get to the entry point; or contact Jorden Andrew in-world.

183: Testing Alchemy

 Alex Thaub and I have had our troubles over the years with Firestorm -- my friends may have noticed that I tend to crash, crash, crash, when there's a lot of avs crammed into a small space, and Alex suffers from lag all out of proportion to the excellence of his computer equipment and connection. So he talked me into trying a new viewer along with him; Alchemy. You can download it here, if you're curious.

  Of course there are always 

things to tweak and fix and jigger when you install a new viewer; it's taking a while. Most of the problems are just finding ways to make things like the way we knew them, rather than it being impossible.  So far, we're both quite excited at how things are holding up. I decided to take a few pictures and see what, if anything, the differences are. There's a few problems with background items not rezzing up ... we're still tweaking the controls.  In the meantime -- hope you like my antlers! ;-)

182: Merry Christmas from Rusty Redfield and Alex Thaub

181: Behind the scenes of our Christmas card

Alex Thaub and I had some fun last night doing our annual Christmas card at Calas Galadhon. If you're not familiar with it, it's a beautiful photo location that's maintained altruistically for the benefit of photographers, it seems, or just as a place to stroll around and admire the scenery. It's part of the Second Life Destination Guide right now as a place to take winter photographs, so one thing led to another...

  I'll be posting our Christmas card as my next post, but I thought it might amuse you to see what goes through my viewfinder to get there. As you may know, I don't use any kind of Photoshop or image enhancement, rarely use anything except natural lighting, and honestly prefer to not pose people, but just let their AOs provide me with a national motion. Here, of course, we usually posed; if you're doing a two-man Christmas card, you both need to be facing the camera. But behind the

scenes there were a couple of good shots and a couple of silly ones and everything in between. Some of them are marred because I wasn't getting a proper reading of the texture on Alex's new winter coat; c'est la vie.
  We had fun taking the pictures, hope you enjoy looking at them!

180: Facebook shutdown

I arrived home last night to learn that my Facebook account had been shut down ... because I'm not a real person, apparently.  I cannot reactivate it, so that's it; game over.  Right now if anyone is looking for my photographs, this is where they will be, and I'll be thinking about what else to do.  It's unlikely to involve Facebook, though.
I'd love to put a photograph of how I feel about Facebook at this point but I think a photo of a large steaming pile would violate Blogger's TOS, and I haven't got many outlets left ;-) If anyone has comments or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

179: Friday night Groove Therapy with DJ Lledge

I did say I wasn't going to do party reports, didn't I? Well, I had a good time last night listening to some deep house music courtesy of DJ Lledge and host Novs Morlim. I'll make up for breaking my promise by not adding anyone's name... I forgot to write anything down, since I had my headphones on and was chair-dancing to the music.
  My weekend doesn't really start until I hear Lledge's playlist on Friday; if you like

house, this is a great place to hear it. Friendly host, friendly naked guys too. What's not to like?