Ephemeral Creations

For 2009, the Jewelry Fair takes place across two full regions, and features the creations of over 130 Second Life^® jewelers. The fair follows a “secret garden” theme in its hedge maze layout and design with the sims divided into spring, summer, autumn, and winter sections. Ephemeral Creations is displaying in booth #13 in the Spring section on the sim JewelryFair1.

If you haven’t been to the fair yet, don’t worry, there’s still time! The last day of the fair is September 27th.

Some highlights:

• over 130 jewelers’ creations
• dunk tank – dunk a jeweler (or a Linden!) for charity
• kissing booth – kiss a jeweler for charity
• one of a kind auctions – bid on original jewelry pieces never to be owned by anyone else on the grid
• jeweler resources area – how to make your own jewelry!
• demonstrations and classes on jewelry making (schedule handed out at the fair)

This year’s fair also benefits the charity Oxfam – you can read more about them at www.oxfam.org – and Ephemeral Creations will be donating a portion of all proceeds from sales made at the fair.

Stop by the 2009 Jewelry Fair and take a leisurely stroll through the hedge maze (no worries, it’s not actually a maze, you won’t get lost).

SLUrl to the Ephemeral Creations booth: http://slurl.com/secondlife/JewelryFair%201/12/104/29

When I started working on these tails back in the end of April – beginning of May I had no idea they would take over four months to complete, but they’re finally done. After all those months of scripting, testing, assembling prims, messing with flexi parameters, testing again, and creating textures, I’m really, really pleased to release Ephemeral Creations’ first two neko tails sets. And I can breathe again too!

Say hello to the first two tails in the “Moxy” line!

As a way of celebrating, I’m offering both sets at a very special price of 99L$ each set to my update group members through the end of this Sunday. Until I move them into the neko section, you will find them over by the group freebie spot on the far west wall of the store by the 7Seas fishing reservoir. You need to wear your group tag when you buy them.

What can they do?

Quite a lot, I think you’ll like them. You have to buy the straight and fluffy tails separately, but each set includes short, medium, and long tails. The custom scripting includes texture switching between 9 original fur textures, and 121 built-in color tinting choices. There are 17 motion settings, and 6 motion rate settings. You also get Full Bright switching, and a fun gravity (“floatiness”) control that lets you further personalize your tail’s movement and character with 6 settings.

I’m working on an online user’s manual for them here, but as of this writing, it’s not yet finished.

These ones are just plain, yummy fur, but I’ll be releasing tails with stuff strapped to them, and jewelry soon (which will feature metal and leather texture switching, and separate metal tinting), so keep in touch.

Stop on by Ephemeral Creations to get yours before the special update group pricing ends.

~ Meow!

Available from Ephemeral Creations are three new bangle singles sets in our Menagerie line. Single bangle accent packages are meant to work together with other  full bangles sets from our Menagerie selection.

Choose a single for one wrist, and cover your other arm in a tall stack of themed bangle bracelets.

Each singles sets includes the same single bangle in five different metals or metal accents (silver, gold, copper, steel, and black steel) fitted for both left and right use. All Menagerie sets are mod/copy/no transfer so you don’t have to worry about breaking them if you want to make modifications or just need to resize them – just remember to keep a backup copy.

Mix and match different left and right sets or singles for fashionable fun!

Demos are 0L$ in the Ephemeral Creations main store.

Peace,
Arkesh Baral

Something pretty and new from Ephemeral Creations – our “Victoria” jewelry series.  Sets of matching chokers, bracelets, earrings, and rings are sold separately, but each includes gold/silver, plain silver, and plain gold colors.

The elegant chokers are fitted to the female neck.

The bracelets are worn on the left wrist, but are copy/mod so you can easily fit a second set to the right if you like.

For your convenience, our Victoria rings include pre-sized versions in small and medium, and they are copy/mod so you can further customize the fit without fear.

Finally, the earrings include small and medium sizes in each metal.

You’ll find the new Victoria series in the Ephemeral Creations main store just due east of the landing point.

Get your Independence Day Jangle Bangles FREE in the Ephemeral Creations main store only, after the holidays it will be packed away until next year. They’re in the room with all the other bangles.

Peace,
Arkesh Baral

Ephemeral Creations’ short, half-length neko whiskers are out! They are available in matches for all of our regular neko whiskers, but they’re just cute little shortie whiskers. (Ok, for the guys, don’t think of them as cute, just think scrappy, or lion-like). Check them out in the neko section with the other whiskers.

First the short versions of our Series 1 natural neko whiskers:

And the short versions of our Series 2 natural neko whiskers:

Also, for a very limited time, you can grab one of these new shortie whisker sets as a FREE  group gift (same place as always on the far west wall of the store by the 7 Seas fishing hole). Grab it before you think of buying one because it’s one of the colors we sell too.

Meow!

Recently someone at Linden Lab made a little oopsie – ok, it was a BIG oopsie. As a result of this error, thousands of SexGen products (probably more like tens of thousands) were broken. It only affected scripted SexGen objects  that were rezzed at the time, and then only ones purchased since February 2007 (I say ‘only’… did I mention tens of thousands of affected products? Yeah, I thought I did).

Needless to say, Stroker Serpentine and his manager, Andrea Faulkner, have been left with a customer service nightmare. Stroker has asked for help getting the word out about this problem, and what his customers need to do to get their broken products fixed. Lending a hand was the right thing to do – as a fellow content creator, I’d certainly wish for community help with something of this magnitude – so I’m quoting two important forum posts from both Stroker and Andrea below.

First, Stroker Serpentine’s post (which I originally found here if you want to read the discussion):

I am cross-posting this from other forums because I am lazy. I would appreciate any and all help (and/or feedback) in getting the word out. We have made notices to all our Support/Afilliate/Reseller Groups inworld. As well as multiple conference IM’s. Many have asked how this could have happened so here is the explaination. (Warning tl;dr)

Several weeks ago, I was called at home around midnight by my manager Andrea Faulkner. She had “that tone” in her voice that immediately let me know something was wrong. She asked if I was aware of any major grid malfunction or if I had *** off LL somehow. She told me to get my *** into SL so she could show me.

When I logged in I was bombarded by IM’s of “My SexGen doesn’t work” or “Menu not loading”. Andrea additionally cut/pasted similar IMs she was getting in email. I immediately knew what happened after this fiasco last year:

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2008/06/17/responding-to-questions-about-the-dmca-process;jsessionid=A6BC61235E9524E09CC4A0D5D6E7A4D1

We had been blacklisted.

I rang up concierge and they were nice enough to expedite a ticket through to the DevTeam. The next morning Data Linden showed up and we isolated the specific script that had indeed been blacklisted.

He reversed the blacklist, but the damage had been done to anything rezzed in world.

It was a script we use to store the rotations and offsets in virtual memory. Of ALL the scripts it had to be THAT one. I was *** and wanted answers. I left a voicemail for Cyn Linden and Marty Linden (their attorney) and heard nothing back all day. I at least thought Marty would return my call as he knows Frank (my attorney) and would at least have contacted him. Nadda.

Finally, I emailed Philip. I have emailed him once in all these years. He responded within a couple of hours, and I voiced my discontent about the whole situation and he assured me that someone would be in contact. He apologized and seemed genuinely concerned.

The next day I get an email from Garry Linden whom said he had been apprised of the situation and wanted to help. He apologized profusely and we had a phone convo to discuss how best to stem the tide of IM’s we were receiving. Since this affected every item we had used the SexGen anim system in it apparently broke about 50 UUID’s and ten’s of thousands of items that were rezzed inworld at the time. There was no easy fix. We decided to just “deal with it” and provide personalized service instead of making some impersonal “Repair Kit” available on XStreet as Garry suggested.

(Commentary)

We have since been dealing with thousands of broken items built over 2-1/2 years. The IM’s don’t stop. I can’t tell you how hard it is to log in most days. I believe in my heart that our customers are the best on the grid. They have been understanding and supportive through all this mess. Plus, I have learned from experience that you live and die in SL based upon your reputation.

I suffered through all the comments over the years of “This is what you can expect from trying to build a business on pixels and spacebucks”. There’s a lot of truth in that I suppose, however, coming from a content business prior to SL, I also know it’s an honorable profession with many opportunities. Virtual property is a tangible commodity IMO.

What has really *** me off through this whole thing is that apparently ONE Linden had the authority to cause this damage. The script was blacklisted AFTER Linden Lab would have been closed. I am not particularly a “Conspiracy Theorist”, but this smacks of abuse and incompetence.

(End Commentary)

I would appreciate any help in getting out the word that we can fix this. It’s going to take time and patience on both ends. We’re still dealing with 100’s of IM’s at a time. Pixeleen (Alphaville Herald) did us a service by posting this story and the notecard:

http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2009/05/strokerz-second-life-sextoys-broken-repairs-underway.html

You can also get more info here (SLUniverse), if you are interested:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/30099-ll-breaks-sexgen.html#post700813

Initially, I felt it was best to keep this quiet and just deal with the consequences individually. I was concerned for the damage it would do to our reputation. Now, I just want to get it over with.

If you would like to link to this post (XStreet) please let people know that we’re willing and able to make this right. We’re giving free upgrades and gifts to try and salvage our customer base. For the most part everyone has been understanding, but sometimes we lose an IM or return.

The best way to get your item repaired and take advantage of the free repair/gift is to send an IM to Andrea Faulkner detailing the names of the item(s). If you do not get a response from Andrea within a day..please IM me.

Sorry so long, but I feel it is important to keep residents informed of just how fragile and susceptible your business is to adverse actions by LL.

Thanks.

And Andrea’s post later in the same discussion, which importantly points out that you should neither send your broken items back, nor send her notecards because they will get lost. Simply contact her via Im in world for a simple fix-it package:

I’m sorry, but given that this debacle effected every SexGen item sold since February 2007 that was rezzed in world at the time, there are literally thousands of people who have been effected.

Often, these people don;t even realize that they were effected until they try to move their SexGen to a new location, or they touch it and the menu operates, but no balls ever appear.

I simply do not have the time or resources to have each person hand me their SexGen, or worse, try sending it to me when I’m offline, and repair it myself and send it back. I have a simple kit with instructions that I can send to you if you message me, and you yourself can fix your item in about 60 seconds.

See, I get all IMs, my e-mail catches them, but notecards and items offered DO get capped and FOREVER lost… so do NOT send me notecards or objects.

Just IM me, and I swear to you on the lives of the Jonas Brothers (die, die, die) that I WILL get back to you in a matter of hours with a sure fire cure. And yes, you will still get a free gift for the headache. And YES… if the fix I send you fails to work, I will most definately and assuredly fix your toy in person or give you a replacement. Not to worry, we stand behind all our products FOREVER. You are NEVER screwed if you buy from Strokerz Toyz.

*hugglez*

Andrea Faulkner
Manager and Lead Tech
Strokerz Toyz
Eros LLC

Best of luck to you, Stroker and crew.

The Make Him Over Hunt starts today, and Ephemeral Creations is store number 26 in the chain. This hunt focuses specifically on the guys with gifts made for men, and unisex items.

Our gifts include a silver cross necklace fitted to the unique shape of the male neck in Second Life^®, and a nice, simple unisex pair of stud earrings in silver with jet cabochon stones.

Look for the prim golden male symbol hidden in the store; it’s not far from the landing point.

Happy hunting, guys!

It’s the last day of Ephemeral Creations’ Easter Egg hunt. Come join in before it’s over! One of our eggs contains an exclusive gold and silver egg pendant, which was designed just for this hunt (shown below).

See our original article for full details.

The eggs will remain out until past midnight.

Happy Easter!