Rett Gentil

Rett's "feathers"
Rett Gentil Original Creations at Vent du Sud




I met Rett a few days after I first logged into SL, and we've been friends ever since. We both knew we wanted to make things, and we battled through anything from 'which boxes do you tick to sell this?' to renting a tiny store together (we called it 'Two classy broads") or the ups and downs of SL in general.


We've sworn never to have anything to do with men again - fortunately at different times. And both changed our minds.

We've both branched out a little, too, but we still chat, laugh and grumble virtually every day. Best of all, we've developed together, doing two completely different things.

So - naturally - she's part of Vent du Sud.

Thing is (and I know she won't kill me for saying so), a lot of her stuff just isn't me. She makes great gowns. Nobody has an eye for detail like Rett, and her clothes move beautifully. I'm just not the short, wide skirt or classical gown type. Or the bright colours type. But I know quality when I see it.

A couple of weeks ago, though, she casually dropped this into my inventory, saying 'try this, Ari'.

Wow.
It moves wonderfully. It looks superb worn. It will be dragged out of my inventory regularly, or at least when I get out of my jeans. I am going to nag her to make more of these sleeker, sober, elegant little numbers.


Another of Rett's strengths is her customer service. Seriously, that woman will drop anything, immediately, to help her clients. It's part of her.

She also loves to do custom versions of things. A name on a cowboy hat? Sure. A different colour, length, a special wedding dress? Rett disappears to her work platform and works on it, tweaks it, and then tweaks it some more until it's exactly what the person wants.

No, she's not the cheapest designer on SL (but by no means the most expensive). But you get what you pay for - quality. Class. And genuine good service. Some things are worth it, no?

So drop in to her store at Vent du sud, right opposite the teleport. If you see her, tell her I sent you (she has a great freebie out and is generous with her customers too - hint).

Scripting magic and aquariums and pedalos

Bliss, no? Well, better than the massive pile of RL ironing that is glaring at me.

So, what better way to explore a place than by a pedal boat, or pedalo? (Not sure of the best-known English word, but I love the things in RL too).

We have a rezzer beside the swimming area which gives you your very own boat, and you can play happily - using the arrow keys - for half an hour, and for the massive investment of 1L. It takes passengers too (or be big spenders, rezz two and have a race!)

I did actually get it through the stone arch, too. Eventually. My piloting skills are a bit like my photography skills (yes, I know, I have a headless aquarium below).

As I've said before, scripters weave magic. Scripts and me are worse - far worse - than SL photography and me. But having a scripter as a friend is a great, great thing.

For instance, I suggested to Geek (Back), who made the pedalo, that we needed a tip jar with a difference. A few minutes later, we had one.

So here's how it works. You pay into it (even 1L), and a nicely gift-wrapped parcel appears for you to take.

We're going to change the contents regularly, but right now it has a superb aquarium, complete with fish (well... yeah), working spotlights, etc. It's stunning. And also Geek's work.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to

Vent du Sud and check it out. Not your average dollarbie by far (but you're welcome to pay more...!)

This Sunday, go dance, swim (I've actually fixed it so you don't sink like a stone, go me!), pedal around, shop for clothes and decor, and have a romantic tête à tête in our lighthouse (put the world on 'night' - it looks amazing).

(Buy your own lighthouse too - never miss a quick plug, Ari).

And if you don't want to spend a single Linden, that's fine too. Lots of places to sit in the sun and chat, or have a peaceful slow on the Intan-enabled square.

If you catch any of us around - Ariadne Korda (me), Geek Back, Menthal Oh, Rett Gentil, and Alain Papp are your friendly creators - come and say hi. Tell us about anything special and different you'd like us to make for you (clothes, decor, scripts, buildings, things that move around, whatever).

Agade Lefavre (Geek's lovely ladyfriend), Gradite Questi and Yonder Schumann (our friends and residents) are often there too, and always happy to meet visitors and chat (English, French or both).

Oh dear I have bracket disease.

Grab the freebies and dollarbies while you're at it, but we tend to thrust gifts on unsuspecting visitors too. LOOK - whole paragraph without brackets.

And remember - for your scripting (OK and building and just about anything else), go to Geek. That has a rather good ring to it, huh? Check out his curtains / drapes, btw. They're superb. He does a rather nice line in designing hot air balloon tours too, complete with the balloon and commentaries included. For silly prices or just in return for setting up a vendor.

Must go take a picture of a headless balloon some time. Much more fun than ironing.

See you soon at Vent du Sud

PS: Next in line - Rett Gentil's original creations - classy clothes made by a great lady. I need to wrestle a few pictures out of her. Probably safer than taking my own.

Home from home

I'm just back from Africa (for work). This could have very little to do with the post... but rather it does. It was not a fun trip.

For a week I could log in rarely, and for about 5 minutes at a time - on a system that was far from reliable - but could see this:

I think it kept me from climbing the walls of the filthy, windowless office I was in for a week. I was homesick for my RL home and family, but SL has always been a point of reference when I'm away, which is (too) often. It was also the only 'constant' when I moved countries two years ago.

So, Vent du Sud is up and running (still tweaking, mind) and as I don't have to get on another plane for a blissful two months, I can't wait to work on it and share it (got the hint?).

So be warned. I intend to share weird thoughts about SL, liberally interspersed with photos (note: PHOTOS!) of our little patch of Provence and the great things some of my friends there have made.

Today, mind, and being totally selfish, here's a couple of my things.

The subscribo now has the blue lamp in it, so pop over and pick it up. I'll be putting stuff in monthly-ish, and requests are welcome. Oh - it glows (softly) at night. Transfer. If you want a copiable version, just ask!

The big brother hanging version is at the entrance to the store... and is mod / copy.

There are a few other freebies or almost-freebies in the store and on the market stand on the square, and Rett has a great outfit for free too.

So drop in - bring a bikini (or buy one from great clothes designer Rett Gentil, also on the square, same SLURL) and try out our swim system. Or dance (Intan system, worth the money as long as I don't look at my Linden balance too often). Or take the amazing pedal boat (forgot to take a photo of that, but I will )- it's really fun and an example of Geek's scripting genius. He (Geek Back) can probably script anything, so check out the signboard about getting hold of him to weave some magic for you.

Or just sit and watch the waves, from the lighthouse deck or the beach. Grab an ice cream from the cart. Relax. That's the idea.

If you catch me there, I tend to hand out freebies, as do the others: Geek, Menthal, Rett and Alain. So don't be shy - come and discover our 'home from home'.

The new Vent du Sud! Never ever have I had this much fun. So, photos before we get all the stuff in. It should be completely ready by this coming weekend but a few things are there aleady (slurl below).

The challenge: never enough prims. Getting a mix between 'pretty' and 'prims that will bring in income'. Have to say that the pretty is winning (look, I needed the rocks, the spray and the primmy trees just like I needed little corners for me - and others - to sit and relax). Oh, and to dance on the square in sunny, peaceful Provence.

The idea: if I make ends meet, great. If I don't, then fine. I did my sums (I didn't marry a finance guy in RL for nothing. Think 'budget'). I never want to get 'bigger' than this, spacewise (although another few thousand prims wouldn't go amiss).

The purpose: As I said before - somewhere to have fun and buy amazing decor or classy clothes if you feel like it. And apart from the rocks and spray and stuff, it'll be a case of 'if it's there, you can buy it' - with a quite a bit there for free or almost. More on that later but there's already a great 1L (3-prim) cuddle rug under the tree... go pick it up (slurl below).

Two insanely talented builder friends are around too, and there for your building and scripting projects. Seriously - two guys who take the same approach as me, as in 'we want to have fun' as opposed to making money.

And a great friend who makes classy clothes is moving in too. Again, a few things to check out already!

Also: the lighthouse (which you can buy, of course) will be available for romantic moments à deux (wink wink - need to put the tp in to the first floor still). There will be a dance system. And more places to chill and watch the sunset or the sea.

My old store, btw, will be open for another 4 weeks and has LOTS of items marked down to way below half price: see the sidebar.

And for a sneak peak of my bit of Provence (where I live in RL), bearing in mind we're just starting to put the merchandise in...

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Graces/128/198/22

Flouncing, mawkishness and a pretty bad photo

Back to mundanity after a highly utopian and self-indulgent post about ideal days on SL. Still into this idea of more blogging, however.

Scroll warning: I am going to be somewhat mawkish (good Scrabble word that, by the way) and talk about leaving, and why I'm... not.

Like a lot of people on SL, I've threatened to leave. I even did so, I'm ashamed to say, on my blog.

I understand the pull to leave. I understand people leaving. I understand people saying they're leaving so they can goodbye to friends. And yes I even understand that it's probably a very good thing to leave for some people, at some points in time, either permanently or for a while.

It's a bit like television in the old days ,no? People insisting that the 'off' button should be used more because it was BAD. They didn't succeed, mostly, eh?

I rarely watch it because... I prefer SL . I don't want to get rid of it, though. Mind, if you had French television, you would probably be on SL (even) more too, although we have fewer commercials (and fewer channnels). Mind, the dubbing in Stargate, as an example, is unspeakably bad. And the woman who 'does' Meryl Street sounds like a constipated duck.

Ooops, digressing.

So, back to leaving.

I get highly irritated with some people who threaten to leave places - SL, forums, groups - but only when they do it with a FLOUNCE because something's irritated them and they clearly want to do the 'poor little me' thing and get sympathy. And they're usually back pretty damned fast.

(And yes, I probably wanted sympathy but I'd like to think it was also because I was overtired (thanks, RL work) and feeling a bit lost - it wasn't even as interesting as a Big Argument or a Love Affair Gone Wrong).

I don't get irritated at all when people need to leave for their own personal reasons and I appreciate them telling me (and the world, if they want). And I'm happy to say I've kept in touch with a few who did wipe SL off their computers.

I just hate the flouncing-to-get-sympathy, you know? Mind, when you're brought up by parents who felt that flouncing was even worse than wearing those awful things called jeans or slurping your soup in the list of terrible social sins no young lady should commit, it sort of figures.

I suppose a good flounce can be fairly cathartic, but do it in front of your cat, or write it and then leave it as a draft until you've slept on it.

(Should I leave this as a draft? Probably).

And no, I'm not targeting anybody here. I've seen a whole lot of non-flouncy 'I'm leaving' or 'I'm cutting down' posts that have brought tears of sympathy and understanding to my eyes recently - even if 'weeping in public' wasn't approved of in my family either. Mind, my cats were sympathetic. They're great public.

To them, I'd say do what you have to do. I understand. And personally, selfishly maybe, I'd add 'please leave the door open'.

To those who try and put the entire blame on others for quitting, I'm less sympathetic (you're so MEAN, you have RUINED MY LIFE). Personally, one person who made my SL a misery tempted me to disappear a couple of times in the past, but the good friends I have were more than worth staying for (this is the mawkish bit here, and coming up).

When things go wrong, blame is never really 100% on one side (although in that particular case I'm not prepared to accept more than 20% and I consider that to be generous, so there).

So, I'm grateful - hugely so - to people who've said to me, when I've whined that I should leave: 'do what you have to', and even more so because they were around to prop me up when I didn't... but went around whining even more.


OK, enough of the mawkish.

Ah.

Rumour has it this blog is on a homes and gardens feed, from which I could justifiably be kicked off, and I wouldn't blame them as I did say I was (mainly) on topic. Really, I won't mind.

But... look.



It's free in my subscribo. The table anyway. It does actually have four legs but at least the entire table is on the photograph.

Ari's ideal day

OK, blame she of the fish tank for this (and if you haven't read the woman's blog, go now, immediately, without stopping to peruse feeds, XStreet or other such SL-related things: http://www.emeraldwynn2.blogspot.com/


And yes, I know I intended this blog to be about my stuff (as in an AMAZING MARKETING TOOL) but I appear to be crap about keeping up with that. And no, I don't know how to make cuts. So feel free to scroll. I just felt this need to do one of the blogging challenges.

It's called work avoidance.


Ari's ideal SL day
(why can't you do underline in Blogger? Underlining is a Good Thing)


It starts with the fashion feed over coffee. Since the fashion feed is getting longer, a girl has to check regularly. Or drink a lot of coffee. And as it's an ideal day (italics are handy too), actually LOG IN (so are capitals) while browsing rather than jotting down addresses on a bit of paper or more recently on a Special File that I keep losing in the jungle that is my PC.


Then, I shall buy clothes and shoes and hair, with the zillions of Lindens that have flowed in from my massive customer base all desperate to buy my amazing products. The colours will be those I want, and things will be modifiable. No frustrations like finding the perfect hairstyle but realising it's no-modify and no dark red in sight (and my current favourite is called... Stan. What sort of a name is that? But at least I remember it - Tekuteku and cute but... brown).

Don't ask for SLURLS, I'm not logged in. Use Search. I'm not a fashion blogger (yes, you may add 'thank God') at this point.


Next: I would suddenly learn to be a respectable SL photographer. Meet me, and Stan. And yes I know everything is wrong... with this photograph. However, it is the only one I have of my New Land before I started strewing stuff all over it. More on that, no doubt, in future.

(and why does Blogger shove the photos at the beginning of a post and you have to drag them down and then they get stuck in the middle of a paragraph? I am clearly blogger-challenged, so in an ideal world that would improve too).


So, with my amazing new photography skillz I would then be able to promote my utterly amazing stuff and gain even more zillions of Lindens to spend on clothes, shoes, textures and gizmos.

No, mustn't talk about textures. It makes me drool.


Back to photography.


Sadly, most of my efforts look like this. Nice fountain, shame about the picture.

Anyway, on to the best bit of SL for me. Well, one of them. Building.


My alignments would be perfect, I wouldn't lose prims (I don't DO figures, so typing coordinates into boxes occasionally leads to shooting megaprims into the ionosphere), and I would remember which version of which texture organiser I had put that wood texture with shaded bits in. But hey, at least I have texture organisers. Wonderful things. Can't remember the name but it's something like Contrex, which is a French mineral water.


Oh, and RL man wouldn't sudenly remember he needed feeding when I was just in the middle of trying to calculate texture repeats on my fingers.

So, building completed and item immediately greeted by breathless admiration from my well-loved subscribo group (waves to all 29 of them in the remote chance one of them finds this blog), I would move on to EXPLORING.


And not get lost, if accompanied. My flying skills suck. My sense of direction sucks more. Many a would-be companion has got totally irritated with my IMs saying 'where are you' and having to tp me over and over, so I tend to explore alone.


I don't explore enough, but in an ideal day I would fine explore-worthy places and remember to take landmarks, in a file of landmarks that is currently worse than the chaos in RL offspring's apartment. Which means... well, you get the point.


To round off this perfect day? Well, a romantic evening, of course. Wearing the perfect clothes, and being able to actually use my speakers (I have an SL-hostile RL man who requires my physical presence while he watches television - but it's the price I pay to avoid Marital Strife with big fat capital letters).


Pretty setting where at least half of the people and sculpties are not grey / clouds or big blobs (respectively, although I am tolerant of big-blob avatars, honestly). Dances that synchronise without bouncing me onto beloved partner's head (SL man is extraordinarily patient, but he does find this disconcerting).


All finished off with... well... better not go into that. But, as his cat and other odds and ends are seriously threatening my miserably low prim allowance, my little mainland plot would have magically turned into a rambling rustic-type sim full of flowers and birdsong and massive trees with shade. You know, the ones with about 60 prims a throw.


And I would not detach my hair by mistake when aiming to detach... other things. Nor forget I made a wall phantom when building and falling out of my place, down a cliff, at a most inopportune moment.


Having said all this, though, my SL is fun anyway. Mostly. Maybe not the phantom walls but the PEOPLE. I have met some amazing ones.

In fact, I have just had an idea. As in writing about... people I know and love on SL. I may even try to photograph them. After warning them how this could turn out.


Oh dear. Blame Emerald for everything, OK? But read the blog. Really.

(And yes, no doubt I shall attempt to promote my little-known but amazingly classy stuff and amazing new land too. So I can go buy more clothes and hair and bribe the maker of Stan to make it in dark red).

OK, I have the deep blue blues. Long story. You don't need to know.

Second Life is damned HARD in so many ways (well you do know that, right?).

So I need to kick-start or go. And if I go, I won't flounce, promise.

However, in a rather pathetic attempt to kick-start, if anybody has the strength / urge / energy to go look at my stuff (decor, from gazebos to lighthouse and from couches to sunflowers and parasols and fountains and fireplaces), feel free to go look.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Napoleons%20Empire/91/209/27

I will refund 50% to 75% of ANYTHING (promise, cross my heart) if you mention - by IM (I get them on mail) or notecard - that you came via the blog. Including the lighthouse, the gazebo or even a stone jar with lavender or some pretty pottery. Really. 50% on anything, 75% if you spend more than 250L.