SLENTRE.COM

By Cheyenne Palisades

I have a small fashion business that is beginning to thrive. My designs have received favorable reviews in fashion magazines and I’m considering a move to a light prim sim.

I met a wonderful man three weeks ago in world and we are SL engaged. He has been pressuring me to make him a partner in the business. He wants me to put the new land in his name and give him the passwords to my SL account, networked servers, SL Exchange, OnRez , and to sign some papers his “lawyer” has drawn up—all this, and his contribution will be to make signs; which I can do myself. I have a long history of making bad decisions in regard to men. Should I give in to his demands?

I met my SL partner in 2006 and we spend every possible minute together. I love her more than life itself and I trust her implicitly. We know intimate details about each others’ first and second lives. Yet she doesn’t have my passwords, nor I hers, nor would either of us ask that of the other.

Three weeks? Three weeks? And he’s pressuring you for access to your in-world finances? No honorable man would do that. And of course, his “lawyer” is probably a busboy at Bob’s Big Boy in real life. Kindly but firmly tell him no. If he skulks off, it will be because his schemes have been foiled, and good riddance. If he shuts up about it and doesn’t bring it up again, he may be worth keeping.

I’ve been in world two weeks and am desperate to make money. I rented a 512 property and just set my first product for sale; an avatar light. My problem is my neighbor has a pile of freebies and one of his freebies is guess what? An avatar light. I’ve asked him to remove it, but he refuses, saying it was given to him and he’s just passing on the kindness. How can I convince him he’s raining on my financial parade?

If you’ve been in world two weeks and have a product for sale, good for you! If you’ve made a truly superior avie light, the world will beat a path to your doorstep. But if your product is but a simple prim with alpha texture, an attachment point, and is light enabled, I suggest you give it a bit more work so it offers sophisticated scripted features that will compensate for the time of day and make avatars look good in avi-uglifying Windlight. And don’t be mad at your neighbor. He’s just being charitable. It’s clear he didn’t put his light out to spite you, and he’s within his rights in keeping it out. In fact, it might say something about your own character that you asked him to remove it.

I want to design clothes, but I nearly had a heart attack when I learned the cost of Photoshop! More than $600 US! Should I channel my entrepreneurial spirit into another area? Making dances, Maybe?

Uh, I guess that last sentence means you’ve not priced Poser…

Fortunately, there’s an alternative to PhotoShop—and it’s free! The Gnu Image Manipulation Program, more commonly known by it’s unfortunate acronym, GIMP, can be downloaded for free and will run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix. It’s less well-documented than PS, but seems every bit as powerful. You can get GIMP at http://gimp.org.

As with Photoshop, the GIMP has a bit of a learning curve. I’m no whiz, but it took me only about a month to get comfortable with the program and learn to not only touch up my photos, but create my own textures and make animated GIFs. A book called Beginning GIMP by Akkana Peck was a big help. It and other GIMP-related books are available at www.amazon.com

GIMP seems to do pretty much anything Photoshop is capable of, and I’m sure it will be more than powerful enough to do the detailed texture work clothing designs demand. But don’t kid yourself—Photoshop is the standard. It has better documentation and support and there are about a kazillion books to teach you how to do just about anything imaginable with images.