Reel Expression

Sorry for the mess today. I’ve been working on getting a slide show of my newest releases on the sidebar and been knee deep in code. Sadly the only way I can preview it is to actually update the blog with it.

I searched all over trying to find a type of slide show that worked. The one I was working on prior to finding the current version, was embedding the flickr slide show itself. In case you are wondering, you can find the code here. I really liked that one because then I could just point it to a specific set in flickr and it’ll update automatically. The only problem was that it didn’t resize the text, repeat or show the titles. Luckily, I found a little gem called pictobrowser that pulls all the images off a the specific flickr set and you can set the background.

It doesn’t automatically run through all the images, which wasn’t what I was looking for in the first place. However there are bonuses to that because it takes less time to load and the person looking at them defines how fast they go. I found that you can click on the large image itself for the easiest way of scrolling through them.

Along with the side bar of recent releases, I also set up a full products page which has a lager version set up by categories of: Pose Sets, Couples Poses, AOs and Furniture. And because I am anal retentive, the pictures run from newest -> oldest.

Plus I removed the general photos page. Partially because it is redundant but mostly because I don’t understand CSS (or at least the way the templates use it) enough to get it to work with the blog. I mostly got the plugin to insert the ad images from flickr easier, and that does work very well. But the way the templates and stylesheet works for the photo album isn’t even remotely close to anything I’ve ever seen. The instructions left out a number of key steps some I found and others I can’t.

The only problem is is that the pictures in the posts don’t link to anything anymore. The old ones that is. New ones will go to flickr. I have 123 posts, most of them with some sort of picture and I don’t know when I’ll be able to fix that. So sorry!

Usually when editing the blog template, I check to see how it looks on my 19” monitor and 15” laptop. However, I don’t have them here with me now. If you see anything unusual going on, please let me know.

Cheers
Luth

Jet lag sucks. It is one of the most disorientating things you could possibly do to your body. If you’ve never experienced it before, count yourself lucky. I really don’t think our bodies are meant to move that fast and when you arrive, your entire consciousness takes at least a week longer to arrive. After a particularly horrible set of flights, it takes even longer. William Gibson said it best in his book Pattern Recognition, that it feels like your soul is still trying to catch up.

Five hours’ New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.

It is that flat and spectral non-hour, awash in limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully, flashing inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above, and none really an option now.

She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

I walk around in a haze. My appetite is lost and yet I want to eat. I’ve been sleeping 12 hours a night and yet still almost needing to pass out by 6pm. I force myself each day to stay awake until my usual sleeping time, but my body usually wins around 11:30pm. I’m just now starting to get some mental capacity back.

From door to door, it usually takes about 18 hours to get here. But with my past horrible experiences with different airlines and their lack of any sort of padding in the seats, I went a different route with Delta. Big bloody mistake. Ok.. yes the seats were more comfortable so my bottom didn’t start the extreme pain until 6 hours into the 9h 30m flight. You’d think since I sit on the captain’s chair for 12+ hours a day that I could handle the flight. It must be something to do with the cabin pressure and the extreme height exerting more gravity on your ass. Possibly added that the contours of the chairs just aren’t meant to actually be comfortable.

For the past 4 years, I’ve flown on many different airlines but each one has had the personal video screens on the back of the seat. What that means is that they can have various movies to choose from, including the “kid safe” crap so the real films aren’t edited out. However, Delta is still years behind with the large screens hanging down. Crap “kid safe” films.

All that would have been livable had things turned out differently in Atlanta. When I purchased my tickets, I was to fly Heathrow -> Atlanta -> 2h30m layover -> Omaha. About a month ago, expedia sent an email saying that my flights had been drastically changed and that I had to call them. What is drastic to one, is not drastic to others. They had moved my 1pm Heathrow flight back by 5min which knocked me out of being able to take that, since you have to have a certain amount of time to get through customs. I spent 2h on the phone with them while they tried to get me to fly London -> Ohio -> Denver -> Omaha. That’s not what I paid for. Then they tried to get me to change airlines and add $500. Finally they found a flight that left London at 11am and I had a 2h longer delay. Fine. Book that. Wish they would have told me it was out of Gatwick instead of Heathrow. Could have missed my flight had I not checked on Delta’s website.

Ok.. so I get to Atlanta, jet lagged, tired and cranky and the insane airport doesn’t seem to actually have an exit. I leave customs, give my check-in bag to the airline again, follow the exit and I’m bloody well in the terminal again. How the hell does one find a place to smoke when there is no exit? I thought I was in hell. Actually if there was a hell, the Atlanta airport would be it. It’s these never ending corridors that look exactly the same and no exits. Finally asked someone about how to leave the bloody place and found out that you could smoke in a glass box in each concourse. Fucking hell.

I smoke a couple of rollies, find my gate, smoke again, and have dinner. The place was so packed that I had to share a table with someone else while I attempted to force myself to eat. About 20min before I’m supposed to board, I go to the gate to see they had changed it to another concourse. Run over there, find a seat and wait. And wait. And wait.

Plane was supposed to take off at 7:45pm EDT. Delays. Plane isn’t there. 9:45pm we finally board.

10:30pm - we are still sitting on the runway, the air conditioning is broken. Do you know how hot and muggy Atlanta is in July? I’m telling you… the place actually is hell. Pilot comes on the intercom and says that the plane is having issues… one of the hydrollics is out and we are going back to the gate. Right when we are about to deplane, a lightning storm starts and they can’t work on it until it passes. I shit you not.

11:45pm - storm has passed and plane is fixed (hopefully) and we board again. Air conditioning is still broken however. I pass out.

12:45am - after sitting on the runway for an hour waiting in line to take off, we finally do.

1:45am CDT (2h later) - land in Omaha.

I finally got to my parents house at 3am CDT/9am BST 26 hours after I had left.

It’s almost a week later and I’m still in pretty much of a haze. All I’ve really been doing is watching movies and swimming. I had planned to get the first set out last Friday or Saturday but I’ve been far too out of it. Since I’m feeling more myself, I’ll be working on getting that out later today or tomorrow at the latest.

Cheers
Luth

So the past few months I’ve been animating like a crazy woman. I wake up, watch a couple of eps of TV with breakfast and tea, work, eat dinner (at the desk), more work, watch a film or more TV eps and then go to sleep. Sometimes I’ll take a break to do things for the holiday coming up on Monday. Like converting films to my iPod Touch, getting all the files and programs ready, looking for my passport and US mobile, or whatever random thing I think about. But mostly, I’ve been glued to the Captian’s Chair (hubbies nickname for my huge plush leather desk chair).

You saw part of it during the opening and the rest will be released while I’m away. What I really wanted was enough items to put out stuff consistantly where all I had to do was make the ads. I don’t mind laptops, but animating on them is probably the worst thing possible.

By the time I leave, I will have (hopefully):
3 AOs - Casual Female, Casual Male, and Party Dress.
4 Pose Sets - Posh, Fashion Series 5, Shoes (you know.. show off the shoes in an interesting way) and Material Girls - for showing off the jewlery.
4-6 Couple’s Poses. 4 have been made, the problem is that I’m waiting to hear back from Trinny about standing in for Alle while I make them. If not, I think I can come up with something else to make for the rest of the weekend.

But do look out this weekend as I’ll be releasing something new before I leave :P

Cheers
Luth

People tell me that I don’t blog enough. Most of the time it’s because I don’t have anything about SL to actually talk about. How many posts can I write - “Today I made poses?” I’m a bit slow on the news front and there are just better blogs out there. I’m not into leaving my sim, so I can’t really do yet another fashion review site.

Alle and I are working on the SL machinima review site, but that’s one of the projects I’ll be finishing while I’m away for the next couple of months.

Pre SL, Reel Geek used to be my blog for film reviews. I had stopped blogging and couldn’t think of a better name, so I nicked the blog of the SL stuff and deleted all the old posts. But there are still a lot of times when I really feel like writing my thoughts on something I’ve seen that I really enjoyed or hated.

I dunno how much I’ll post with it, but who knows…

Cheers
Luth

Dig it Kats n Kittens - Luth will be on holiday in the States from July 21st - Sept 13th. It’s why I’ve been rather quiet lately as I scramble around to make sure I have products to release while I’m away!

Business Related Stuff:
I will be bringing all the things I need in order to work while I’m gone. At least in the evenings. I will also be dealing with customer service issues, except for the weekends when I’ll mostly be too busy running around seeing people.

Reel Life Stuff:
Why so long? A number of different reasons actually…

Have you heard about London summers? *grumble* The only difference between the summer and winter here is that the sun is a bit brighter if it does peak out of the clouds and you don’t have to bring out your scarf. Ok.. it’s a bit warmer then that, but not by much. Last week we actually had to put the 2nd blanket back on the bed because of the cold! It’s July! You shouldn’t be freezing at night in July! That’s just not right at all. Then you have the constant rain or the just about to rain. That’s why it feels so cold! The lows are in the 10’s C - thats in the 50’s in Fahrenheit. Now I do love the rain, but not this almost constant overcast. Drives me nuts all winter long then it has to be so dreary in the summer too.

Next up is that a long holiday doesn’t feel so rushed when you have a zillion people to see and jet lag to get over. Granted I may go out of my mind 1/2 way through in the extremly hot, humid and very boring Nebraska. However, my parents have a pool. There really isn’t anything like a lazy summer day on a raft with a good book in your hand. Then there is the added bonus of my mother constantly making sure I have a cold beer waiting for me in the shade. It’s like heaven, if there was such a place.

And then there is my neices and nephew. Every time we go, it seems that I see them once for a rushed couple of days usually as I’m still getting over the jet lag. Not this time! I will see them at least twice! They will be driving down to see us for a weekend. Kids + swimming = fun! Plus hubbie and I bought them a wii for a combined b-day and x-mas pressents that we’ll be giving them then. And of course Labor Day (I actually had to delete the “u” in there) will be in Iowa with my entire family. And the best part of that weekend will be Adventure Land. Hubbie’s never actually been to anything like it or on a rollercoaster. Plus the kids love it. Fun huh?

Ok.. in all actuality, the only real reason why I’ll be there for so long is because of logistics. A really close friend of 10+ years is getting hitched in early Aug. They aren’t actually having the entire best man/ maid of honour thing, but as the psudeo maid of honour I’ll be throwing the bachelorette party the first weekend of Aug. Yay for a bar crawl in the city that I turned 21! I so can’t wait for the kamakazis at Cliff’s. It’s this dive in the back of a cigar shop which is decorated like new years from the 1970’s. Plus we’ll have to have fish bowls at the bar I can’t remember, but I know where it is :P And of course many Lemon Drop Shots - which is what we drank when she took me out for my 21st.

Typically I hate going to weddings, but this might be a fun one. It’s a cinema themed wedding where we get to dress up in costume and I’ll be going as Annie Hall. Should be entertaining. If not, there will be booze.

So when I bought my plane tickets, I had counted wrong and am actually getting there a week early. At least I’ll be mostly off the jet lag and the booze won’t hit me so hard!

Then you have SLCC in Sept. I don’t actually have to go, but it’s a damn fun drunken time and a business expense. I’m excited to hang out with Trinity and Nala. Hopefully Lordfly will be able to go so we can make fun of everyone else and talk like pirates again. Plus I have to buy Keiki a pint as payment for writing a script for me. Last year she had pulled me over as I was bringing a beer back to Trinny and I didn’t have time to talk.

This year will be a lot less frantic I hope. Just the fact that I won’t be speaking again will make it oh so much better! That was a nightmare and let everyone know who I was so they’d scare me by coming up and talking to me. It was a bit on the creepy side, especially the drunker I got. I love that people love my work and it is very nice to hear, but I have no clue what to say afterwards. Thanks? I try? Um.. I don’t know.

I’m a bit of a recluse who hates large groups and despises small talk. And by the end of the night, I’m usually close to punching anyone who asks what the tat on my right arm means. I know its interesting and its pretty obvious everyone thinks its a cleaver way to start talking to someone, but it does get annoying quite fast. In fact it’s probably the worst conversational piece. I really only have a couple of options with it… either say it’s personal (which it is), that it’s a poem written in san scrit (true), explain the rather depressing reasoning behind it, and/or say that if I wanted everyone to read it I would have written it in English instead of a dead language. Each version stops a conversation cold.

However, if you see a chick with short red hair, black rimmed glasses, labret piercing and a film strip tat around the left forearm, I’m not opposed to people buying me beer - I prefer Beck’s or Carlsberg.