If I could be anyone for a day......

I would be Sanura Snowpaw. I cannot express just how much this woman means to so many people. She had a dream....and she made that dream come true in the form of her store, *Dreams*.

Not only is she talented in her designs, she is beyond a doubt on of the most loyal friends I have met in my time in SL, compassionate, kind, caring, funny, adorable and sexy.

To walk a day in her shoes in SL would be an experience and then some. This post came about from someone starting on plurk the - "If you could log in as me for a day, what would you do". It got me thinking about the friends I had on my list and what I would do if I were them. That's when I came across a folder I have set aside of blog packages received. Can you believe the generosity of this lady. She hands out her latest designs to god knows how many bloggers she has in her little black book. Just gives them away. All that hard work and hours she puts in.

So I find myself staring a folder full of the latest goodies at *Dreams*. Sanura has branched out from her collars and Tee's into piercings. This pack of lip rings are just too cute, with a charm to suit most styles, occasions and likes.

Sanura was asking the other day questions surrounding "Less Than Three". Now when she does this it is usually in regards to a new design. So she had me stumped as to what that could have to do with a new design. So I eagerly awaited the new release. And I love them. And of course as with all her designs she releases them in a wide range of colours to suit all tastes.

To match your lip rings why not grab a belly piercing. I'm not belly piercing kind of girl normally. I find most of the belly piercings in SL just don't suit me, are too big, too small, could stun a blind man with their bling or are too dull. Sanura hasn't gone overboard but these stand out.

If you could walk a day in anyones shoes I suggest you try this lovely ladies. Of course make sure you aren't allergic to cat fur since she has paws not shoes.

I "Less Than Three" you Sanu honey. Thank you for being an awesome designer and a truly wonderful person.

Hair: Punk in Black by ((Junwave))

Skin: Acorn, Dark Elf Soot by Curio

Eyes: Basic Blue Deep by Eponym

Bra and Boxers: Valerian Dahlia picked up on the Boxers or Briefs Hunt

Poses: Model #205 by SEmotion Studio

Strut your Pose #1 by ~Sinsity~ (only available on Xstreet at the moment)

I Just Wanna Curl Up & Dye

Ever have one of those mornings where you want to curl up under your blanket and let the world pass you by? I've had a few of them lately.

After doing my post about the copybotted hair I was determined to go check out some of the shops that had been mentioned. One in particular was Curl Up & Dye. I went there for one purpose, and that was to buy myself the outlandish hairdo with the giant curlers.

Not only did I get my hairdo that I wanted but I had a look around the store, which by the way is like a little maze of corridors and stairs all leading to another room that you didn't see before, and ended up leaving with two outfits as well.

Considering I have been having "one of those mornings" almost every day lately, when I saw this outfit I just had to get it to accompany my new hair. The outfit itself does come with a hairstyle not quite as 'big' as the one shown.

The 'Angry Housewife' bathrobe and slippers comes with curling iron and hairdryer. And these little weapons are even scripted to draw (held in each hand as shown) or sheath (siting in the pockets of the robe as shown) and will even cause damage in the right sim.

My choice of hair was the 'Tangles' in cherry colour. You can have the brush hanging from the side tangle or not. Obviously the name gives it away, but this is the messy option of the curler looks at CU&D.

This is one woman you do not want to cross first thing in the morning before she has her coffee.

Now even though I was out shopping for hair I couldn't pass this outfit up. I have absolutely no idea where or even if I will ever wear it again. But I couldn't leave without taking it with me. The 'Confused, Man I Sorta Feel Like a Woman' comes with a male/female skin and the clothing - Dress/Suit top, Skirt, Pants and shoes. CU&D also have a hair for this outfit in the store call Boy-Girl but I opted to wear my own. You don't have to wear the skin it comes with, as shown it still works perfectly fine with my normal skin.

Curl Up & Dye have a large selection of hair styles to suit just about any outfit plus clothing and accessories. You can pick up the outfit and the hair to match all in the one store.

Angry House Wife

Hair: Tangles - Cherry by CU&D

Skin: Acorn Elf Soot by Curio

Outfit: Angry Housewife Robe by CU&D

Confused Man I Feel Sorta Like a Woman

Hair: Jimmy Whitewash Chalk by Bryce Designs (colours modified by myself)

Skin: Skin from Confused Outfit by CU&D

Acorn Elf Soot by Curio

Outfit: Confused Man I Feel Sorta Like a Woman by CU&D

Poses: Model Pack from SEmotion

Prim Skirt Pose from Couveture

An Apology

No more drama queen freak out from me. I would just like to formally apologise to Skills Hak for the way this turned out. It was not my intention to bring the system down as I have been saying from the beginning. Merely to get to the bottom of why I was branned wrongly.

After finally getting in to SL last night I was able to speak to Skills - who was very polite and understanding and we spoke at length about the situation which I am happy to say has been rectified.

I can resume my shopping without fear of being sent home again.

I have been banned!

This may very well be my last post here. Since I have bee labelled as a copybotter/griefer according to the new Gemini Cybernetic CDS that was released on Xstreet within the last couple of days.

Apparently all that work I did for my previous post - the rezzing of over 200 hairstyles, inspecting to check who the creators were listed as, checking their profiles for legit looks, taking photos of all the unknown ones, sorting the photos for blog post, writing the blog post, chasing up original creators to alert them that their hair was copied......RALLYING AGAINST COPYBOTTERS!!!! - was all for nothing.

I'll start at the beginning so grab a coffee cause this is going to be a long read if you are really interested in reading from top to bottom.

As some of you may know - yesterday I freaked out in plurk (link will not work if you are not on my friends list..sorry) about being banned from a sim (which I left un-named for that persons privacy at the time) due to this new Gemini Cybernetics CDS. This is a system that I myself was passing the link on to friends to show them. This is a great tool - IF it works properly and fairly.

After all that time I spent staring at the copied hair I fell in love with a couple of them. And since I had done a horrible post about all this copy botting nastiness I wanted to do a nice one and pay the credit to the original designers. So shopping time it was. Btw - Shop Seu....awesome freckled skin and the cutest hair do's suitable for kiddie avvies. Curl Up and Dye - OMG at those curlers and the fantasy hair....WOOHOO! These were two names I had not heard of until someone spotted their designs in the list of botted hair photos. After checking them out I was most happy with my new purchases.

Another store that I had heard of in the past but always forgot to get there and check it out myself was Deviant Kitties. Helyanwe was alerted to my blog through a friends plurk and I was sad to hear her say that she spotted over 20 of her designs in there. It made me feel sick for her. I can only imagine what she was feeling at seeing the blog. Time to go there and grab a few more hair do's...afterall....the 100 odd hair dos I have already is clearly not enough! >.<

Requesting TP, arriving at location.....black screen. Hmm this can't be good. Requesting TP...what???? I didn't hit TP. Hover mouse over 'cancel TP', click......wait a second, what's that. A blue box pops up as I click and all I managed to catch was 'being teleported home from Gemini CDS' - or words to that effect. I sat there staring at my screen thinking....noo that can't be right...WTF!

Now it was only THAT DAY that I had spoken to Hely in plurk about her designs being botted and said that when I logged on I would send her a notecard with the details. Which I did. So when I saw this I was most confused. I don't have Hely on my contact list in SL or in plurk. She was not online in SL - so I went to plurk to send her a PP (private plurk, basically like an IM in SL) hoping she might be around. I struck gold...she was online.

So there you have it....I was banned using the Gemini Cybernetics CDS at Deviant Kitties. Great huh. So now my name is spread across SL to ANYONE and EVERYONE that rezzes one of these systems and I am instantly banned on their sim/parcel too. I mean that's such a great and awesome tool to have and the knowledge that a botter will no longer be able to hack your designs or that of your friends.....but me....an anti botter??

Some of you may also know that I live with my SL sister, Ember Farina, in RL. As soon as this happened I was swearing at my computer and going "what the hell is going on". Naturally being in the same house she asked what was wrong. Upon telling her she instantly went into help mode, as she does, posting a question on the emerald users forum. Now as you can see, Ember did not name me, nor the sim I was at. But she did offer to give the details to an admin in IM. The creator of this Gemini Cybernetics CDS replied to her post there - using my name, naming a viewer and a sim that I was apparently at. Not only that....and I quote - "so your friend is either confusing Neillife with Emerald or lying straight into your face. Sorry if this is causing you grief but it is her own fault if she is using tools like that". Publicly accusing me of lying and using tools on a copybotting client. Defamation of character does not go down easily with me.

Now whilst this was going on on Embers computer I myself had been pointed in the direction of a blog. A blog written, which I now know, by an apparent friend of the creator of the Gemini Cybernetics CDS. Now I say apparent as I have no idea who either of these people are. I don't know them from a bar of soap and I can only go by the words of one person. And that one person, Fine - mentioned they knew the creator and backed them 100%. Alas I only knew this information after I posted a comment on their blog. Seems a waste of time publishing a negative comment on a blog if the person who owns the blog is friends with the creator. Hindsight is a marvelous thing folks. In any case I was confused as to why I was banned and ejected while using the Emerald viewer. I stated this in my post and left it at that. A little while later I went back to the blog to see if anyone had replied and looky here.

Again...lets go and spread my name, not just my first name...but my full name this time. Oh and lets tell people I was using a copy bot viewer and that I was at a well known sim. FAIL! Defamation of character a second time on a seperate forum. Oh and false information. I was not using neillife and nor was I at Magika.

At this point in time I was furious. I had been flitting between blogs, forums, plurk Xstreet and SL reading up on this system trying to find some answers. And in the meantime writing a notecard to the creator as they were showing as offline in SL asking for an appeal as this was entirely false and tarnishing my name unfairly.

I tried to put it all behind me and just sit for a few hours for the rest of the evening with my SL daughter and hope that in the morning I would have a response from the creator in regards to my appeal. Or that it was all a bad dream or something. We decided to go look at some clothes together so my daughter TP'd to Babydoll's. If you haven't heard of it and you have a daughter in SL. I highly recommend it. Very high quality clothing there. And affordable too.

TP from daughter - Join me in Starlight Starbright.....click.....requesting teleport...arriving at location. Bounce...was that a building...why am I upside down....requesting teleport...little blue box "You are no longer allowed at this location. You are being teleported to your home location". O.o *laughs* and IM's daughter thinking she may have been facing someones parcel that was home security orbed so when I landed I got sent home. TP again....arriving at location....why are there ban lines 3 inches from my face. WTF....I am now parcelled off and stuck in a small box surrounded by banlines. Interesting. IM the owner and wait for a response. We both chatted for a bit and it turns out that she too has a Gemini Cybernetics CDS rezzed. She was more than happy to remove me from the ban list after I had explained all the ongoings of the night. I gave her the links to all the forums and blogs and plurk that had been talking about it. One thing that stood out though.. She had no idea why my name had a timer count down beside it. In the about land options my name was added to the ban list and it had a timer down of some 8000 odd seconds remaining. She removed my name from the list...ban lines disappeared and my daughter and I went shopping.

What confuses me though is why the pop up box was like a home security orb message than the one I had received at Deviant Kitties telling me it was the Gemini Cybernetics CDS. In any case I was bummed. My SL life is now tarnished and it is going to be a matter of hit and miss as to the shops I can now visit. All the big name stores will no doubt be getting this new system to safe guard themselves and I don't blame them. But those are the stores I shop at. They will no longer be getting my business. Which totally sucks. I know I am jut one out of how many thousands of people....but still...I blog about my findings...I tell my friends about great new outfits I buy...I can no longer pass on those good news vibes.

Time to go to bed I've had a horror of a night and I still have not heard from the creator of the system. Even though they have made a couple of comments on the blogs in this said time frame....my issue is in SL...I sent them a notecard and I wait for a response to my problem.

Good morning world....ahhhh....*stretches*....last night was just a bad nightmare right.....a voice from the door way "Morning sleepyhead. Skills replied to the blog"....ugh.....*roll back over and bury head under pillow*

Ok but good news maybe....the creator has apparently replied to the blog...maybe with some good news. Hopefully they have also accepted my notecard and replied to that too. All important morning rituals done...time to turn on the box and see what damage has been fixed.

Now this time the creator...on two of the previous mentioned forums has changed their wording slightly and also lied. On the 'Fine, thanks you' blog (as mentioned a few paragraphs up) the creator now says that they checked again and low and behold I was detected weeks ago at magika. Right...so the "my system can't produce a false negative" theory is in fact.....false? Considering this person was telling everyone the night before that I was banned at Magika last night. Hmmm....*scratches chin in thought* Now here is the interesting thing....According to the creators comments I was at Magika on the 30th of January. I went through my transaction history....because believe me if I am in Magika then I am sure as hell spending money there. The last time I was at Magika was the 20th of January purchasing hair for my blog post on a Bloggers Challenge.

I'm confused....if I am a copy botter...why am I buying hair? Why have I spent around $3000L at Magika on skin and hair? I am an honest person. I buy what I want. I out people who copy. Not only that on the 30th of January, when I was supposedly at Magika, I was elsewhere being wooed by a gentleman. And then proceeded to go traipse around SL with him and my SL sister and ended up at a quaint little dancing spot. The transactions for that day in my Transaction History show no mention of me being near Magika at all. And that is because I wasn't. It was also the day after I had bought my new sim...and was deep in rebuilding/terraforming it. As also shown in pictures on my blog.

The creator has also made mention on the Xstreet item discussion thread .....again I quote...." still have to hear back from someone though, who hasn't tried to contact me". I guess this person does not want to read the notecard with all the proof that I am innocent and chooses to lie about it instead and hope that I will be like all the other REAL copy botters and fade away into the distance and they won't have to admit that ok maybe there is a hiccup somewhere.

I am not out to prove this system does not work. I am all for it. I want to stop the botting going on in SL. But what I do want is my name, that has now been tarnished across the Emerald Forum and this Fine persons blog, removed from this accusation that is put against me. I want to be able to continue to SHOP at the places that I love to shop at. As I have done for the previous 3 or so years I have been in SL. (yes my avvie is not that old but I still have my original account. And no it was not closed I am not running from being caught out before or what ever people may want to think for me changing accounts. People do it all the time. I went through a bad breakup with my partner on SL who I was also with in RL so I changed because of that....ok).

I am innocent here. The proof is all in this blog post. Transaction histories, accounts of where I was, what viewer I use. The defamation of character is uncalled for. The pointing fingers and accusing me before actually finding out the facts is uncalled for.

I guess there was always going to be a bug somewhere and something would go wrong sooner or later. It's a computer program...all computer programs are susceptible to a virus, bug, downfall SOMETHING sooner or later. I guess I pulled the short straw in pointing out said hiccup. Lucky it was early on so that this can be rectified and the system can continue to work effectively in the future.

As for now???? I feel a victim of grief and wrongful accusation.

Do you know where your hair is?

I'm going to start my blog off a little backwards today and pay a big thankyou to those that deserve the credit for this blog post.

Firstly to Sanura Snowpaw, owner and designer of *Dreams*, for her awesome 'Boys are stupid' tees. She goes to so much effort in creating her clothes and has on occassion asked my opinion on her designs (which to me is a huge compliment that she would value what I have to say) her designs are original, fun and fantastic.

Secondly to Chase Zelin, owner and designer of ~Sinsity~ poses. A fantastic guy, sweet, charming and would bend over backwards to help out his friends. His poses are unique and high quality. He knows how to bend your avatar without the kinks and awful twists in the joints that some poses can tend to put you in.

Both of these people are genuine designers that love what they do and put so much passion and effort in to their work and it really shows.

Now on to the real reason for this blogpost. I will start off by saying that no hair or skin in this blog post gets any credit what-so-ever. I have not adjusted prims to sit, I have not taken care in deleting backgrounds to make it look aesthetically pleasing, I have been messy and just thrown this together. But with good cause.

The pictures you see below are ALL copybotted hair and skin! There are some truly fabulous designers name in this mix that have had their hair snatched out from under neath their noses and given away for free and with full permissions.

Just sit back for a minute and take a look at the work that has been done here. The hours and hours of time it has taken someone to piece these hairs together, texture them get them just right......and someone comes along and just copies it without a care in the world and throws it around like it is yesterdays news.

I have sent notices to the designers who hair I recognised. Or whose brand name was still attached. The hair shown here I have no idea who the original designer/creator is.

If you recognise any of these styles please contact me so that I may pass on the information to the designer/creator.

It makes me sick to think that I was given a box of hair that contained around 200 hair styles...all full perm and none of them the original designers/creators.

In amongst the hair styles was this one skin. It is called lilly but I have no idea whose it is. and again it is full perm.

This copybot bullshit needs to stop. Please help me in finding the owners of these hairstyles so that we can all put in AR's on the inconsiderate asses.

A big thank you to all those creators out there. The original designers of SL that put so much hard work and effort in to their designs.