My Sim personality

That would be me if I were a sim, apparently! I don't think I'm that playful, though.

Screenshot grabbers

So after almost 10 days without my computer, I wanted to play the Singles (OK, I admit, I wanted to see more of my twisted OTP : Yann!Chloe). Unfortunately Raptr, the screenshot grabber, forced an update on me... and the new version is definitely not compatible with Sims 2. In fact, Sims 2 won't even start if Raptr is running.

After much complaining, I installed Bandicam. Seems to work flawlessly, and is actually a lot less intrusive than Raptr (with all its social stuff I don't care about).

Chloe approves

YAY!!!!!!!

Mycenaean pottery gone naughty

Gotta love that bugged world... My pottery turned "Adult" on the Marketplace. Must be all those tentacles.

I've changed the setting back to "General", but the marketplace is a bit like a game of whack-a-mole at the best of time, so I'm not sure if it'll stick!

Supposedly, the bug has now been fixed. O-kay. I'll check again in a few days.

Learning from my mistakes

I'm just going to copy a post I made in a forum thread about running a business in Second Life. Just some advice given to someone else, coming from a hobbyist who didn't have any business experience when she started. I know a lot more about business now - some because I ran a store, which ultimately failed (= stopped being enjoyable; profitable doesn't even come into it), some because of my RL job experience which is now a lot more business-focused than it used to be.

Anyway, the forum post, unedited.

Please for your own sake listen to the advice given here.

A lot of us in SL had to let things go. For me it was my clothing store. Whose fault was this? Mine.

I started with a reasonably niche style : latex. It was technically challenging and I liked the look of it. Trouble is, I wasn't 100% into the lifestyle that's linked to it. I started developing an interest for historical clothes and costumes. That's when I did my best work, IMHO.

That's also when I made my biggest mistake. I should have shut down the latex side at that point and focused on the niche I loved... But I was still proud of my latex line. I didn't want to let go. Instead I branched out even more, and made a handful of casual clothes, because I thought that was where the money was.

You know what? It didn't work. I didn't have the time to run three businesses, on top of my day job. So eventually, I got fed up and overwhelmed. It stopped being fun. I closed the store.

I'm back onto my feet now, with a new store and a niche that is more solid. It's taken me a while. It's been a painful process.

Think. What's your core business? What do you really want to do? Importantly, are these two things the same? Then, prune that tree. Make it healthier.

I hope someone will find this useful.