Keep your inventory under control (Part 1)

This article was published in Fusion Magazine, March 2014. Click for the magazine!

Greetings everybody! Without further ado, let's start our sorting inventory task.

The first thing to do is to decide how to arrange our items, and create a folder structure in our inventory that reflects this. We'll study how to do this for the Clothing folder. When the concepts are clear, we will consider some suggestions on how to sort our objects (furniture, etc), notecards, landmarks, attachments, etc. Then of course, you will adapt it to your own way of organizing.

This is very important: The arrangement has to make sense to our way of searching for items.

When you are after a certain outfit look... Do you search for a dress style? Do you expect that dress filed under a store folder? How about the accessories?

Those questions are relevant because they'll tell you if your folder structure should categorize clothes first by item type, or if you should make store names the top category... or even, if you would need of a mixed structure, only to mention a couple of possibilities.

So, if you feel that searching items for style is more intuitive to your way of looking for things, go ahead and, within your Clothing folder, create several subfolders named, for example, Dress (Long), Dress (Short), Dress (Gown), Tops (Summer), Tops (Winter), Skirts (Long), Skirts (Short), Pants (Short), Pants (Capri), Pants (Formal), etc.

If you feel that searching items for store name is more intuitive to your thinking, then, within the Clothing folder, create several subfolders named Store A, Store B, Store C, etc.

You don't know how to create folders? Worry not, it's very easy.

Begin by right clicking over the Clothing folder. This shows a menu with several choices, click on New Folder.

This immediately creates a new folder named New Folder. The cursor is placed so you can type a different name. Type, for example, Dress (Long) and then hit Enter.

If you now right click over this new Dress (Long) folder, you can create subfolders within. Go ahead, create the structure you've decided under Clothing. Don't worry if you haven't figured all the possible categories yet! Over time, you will realize which new folders you may need, and you can create them right at that moment.

Once we've created our folder structure, it's time to begin moving items from our current folders, to the ones we've created. Something that will help greatly in this task is having two inventory windows open at the same time, so we click one or more items and drag them from one location, to the other (definitive) folder.

You didn't know we can have more than one inventory window open at the same time? We can, and it is very useful.

In the official viewer, look for the gear icon below your inventory list. Click it to open it, and you'll find the option within the menu that shows: New Inventory Window.

Click that option, and ready! A secondary inventory window appears, which is very useful for moving items to the desired folders. (In other viewers, we may find this option under an Inventory menu, New Window.)

This would be all that we need for our first step organizing our inventory: think how it is natural to you, categorizing your items, then create a folder structure to represent it, and then move all the folders and boxes within the corresponding place in the folder structure that you've designed.

More, in the next issue.

Enjoy your SL.

Insanity (Art exhibit)

Insanity is an inspiring art exhibit. It presents a suggestive scenario, open to interpretation and to creating your own stories. I'm so saturated of the mainstream "cutesy", that the visit has been healing, in some levels. Don't get me wrong: I like cute, even on the silly side. But there's just so much I can take of it. So I went to visit this place, I made up a dark and depressing tale, and I ended up happy as a kid in a candy store with budget enough as to develop cavities.

Now, of course, it's time of putting all the pictures together, reviewing the text in case I want to add/correct something, and be happy again. Happiness is sure a good thing. You all should try it, if you haven't already :-)

Insanity

"So you want to learn how it is the descent to darkness? You've come to ask to the most appropriate one. But I have to warn you of something: Should you decide to follow that path, beware that the deeper you are in the darkness, the lonelier you'll find out you've ever been."

"It may start as a slight disappointment. You suddenly realize that you cannot trust as you wanted, and slowly it turns into a way to resentment."

"Resentment twists the way you perceive the world. Your emotions are intensified. A small gesture, regardless of intention, is deformed into a threatening situation that will attack you, will attack you... And why nobody else can see it?"

"Laments about the world being against you, sure are strange creatures. They are attracted to other laments, but even though they share the same space and tend to be quite of a crowd, none of them is actually listening but to the constant whining of their own minds, minds that, at this stage, have crossed the first door that puts them further from a rational view of the world."

"It will happen. You will eventually bite and push away the few ones that still try to help you at that point. Sooner or later you will scream why nobody gives a damn for your feelings. The slam in the door as they leave you behind is the sound that your mind will do when it finally abandons all sanity."

"Look at yourself. Now. Tied to your altered emotions, the only that's left after all you've destroyed. Was it worth the loss? Still, you have a last chance. Will you cover your eyes too with your current ties, or will you use the keys that were always within you? It is your last chance to decide, and there's not much time left. If you don't use the keys, your mind alone will close your eyes to reality, forever. There's no way back."

"How do I know all this, you ask? It's a good question. But, see, I am just a storyteller. How else could I know?"

Cover book challenge: The neverending scripting

Normally I don't participate in these, but this time I had a couple of minutes free (plus, the idea came straight to my mind), so what the heck, this is my cover book for Strawberry Singh's meme, Second Life Book cover meme. It doesn't take knowing too much of me, to figure out why everything in this cover :-)

Credits

Original book: The neverending story
Fonts used: Bistream Vera Serif Bold (Title), Delphine (Author)

Skin: Lulu (Jamaica) - Glam Affair
Shape: My own
Hair: Gaia - Truth
Slink Hands (Relaxed) - Siddean Munro
Slink Medium Feet - Siddean Munro
Frill Bikini Top (Coral) - G Field
Yoga Pants (Black) - Rebel Hope
R prop with equation and pose, DREAMING set - My own (Black Tulip)

Delusion (Revisited) - Twisted Spring is here!

Twisted Hunt is here again. This edition's theme is Magick. My gift is a magick symbol, according to Wikipedia's picture, where the avatar summons an entity while a particle effects displays.

This year I haven't had the time to develop a complete story, as I did a year ago, but still, I hope the gift is representative enough of the places where my mind seems to like wandering. I am perfectly aware that fantasy is not reality. I can enjoy fantasy as fantasy, knowing that reality is a very different animal (in ways that you can never foresee.)

To make up for it, I'm now publishing the story accompanying last year's gift. I have a soft spot for this piece, and I will be remaking it in mesh, with new textures, making of it an interactive part of the sim. Anyway, following, there's the story as hunters received it in a HUD, to follow what was happening in the actual build:

Click here for the story, published in The Night Corner

Twisted Hunt is here!