Carol BelleA website full of music and non-sequiturs – Home of Selene Audion

I want to start by telling everyone who was expecting me to sing yesterday how sorry I was that I couldn’t perform. I have written a letter to the venue owners and my supporters in Second Life explaining the situation.

Yesterday before I was supposed to go on stage at Club Halo, I developed a migraine. It came on suddenly and worsened quickly, as migraines are oft prone to do. I haven’t had one in a long while, and I have the means to take care of it. I don’t want to make excuses for myself or even to garner sympathy from the good people that care for me and enjoy my singing. This is a condition that I have had all my life, and is just a matter of fact for me.

In the recent year, my condition has improved greatly and the episodes became less frequent. This was definitely an infrequent event, as it’s the first to happen in a long time. They are controlled, but incurable. So this may be the only one to occur in the whole year to come, but it’s likely that they will still happen.

It’s short notice, but unfortunately that comes with the territory of the condition.

Again, I apologize if I disappointed anyone with my lack of presence at either of the shows I was supposed to have at Frank’s Jazz Place and Club Halo.

I’m glad to report that I’m feeling better today, recovering, and will be back to work on Tuesday for the first show time of the week.

Well, I had a very lovely wedding day. We were surrounded by everyone we knew and loved, and felt their love for us. It was amazingly beautiful. There was drumming, and my husband looked fabulous, and frankly so did I . . . and what’s that, you ask? You want to see pictures?

I would totally share pictures, because we took a ton of wedding pictures with our fantastic Digital SLR Canon . . . but someone stole the memory card out of the camera before it was returned to us. This means = no pictures. They’re gone. Some evil, nefarious thief plucked the CF card right out of it, and by the time we got the camera back the next day (yes, we left it there, but we knew everybody – we thought!) there were no pictures to look at.

As soon as I get pictures from everyone else who was there, I can share them.

Until then, I wish for the thief to be plagued with misfortune until the pictures are returned . . . yeah, like that’ll happen. :-(

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I just read this on the Second Life main blog:

Due to a severe content theft bug, we are executing an emergency deploy of Server 1.36.2.20208 today.  This will be a full-grid roll starting ASAP.

• 2010-02-18, ~9:00a: Full sim roll

I’ve been having teleporting issues all day yesterday and now today. They’ve been doing rolling restarts all across Second Life, it would seem, due to this “content theft bug” . . . Well, I hope they fix the problem soon, and I hope these rolling restarts end. I hate not being able to go anywhere. No shopping, no music… I’m stuck! Grr!

This may not mean much to some people, since the magazine in question is one found only in Second Life. But it’s still quasi-serious in that they advertise fashion designers in Second Life with virtual products sold for real money. The real money part is still kind of surreal to think about in context to virtual world. Heh… I’ve been splurging with my earnings lately too . . .

I love to buy new clothes. Yes, just about as functional as Barbie clothes, but it’s all in the name of fun. So I LOVE to dress up my avatar in cute new clothes that other people designed and created. I got interviewed for my fashion sense, I guess! Here I bring you the article from Second Life!

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I would like to make a slight correction, my name does not necessarily mean brightness. The name “Selene” is used in connection to Greek mythology and the Greek Pantheon of gods involving the moon goddess of the same name. So the goddess herself was bright, but the word “Selene” is synonymous with the moon itself as well as being the name of the ruler of its domain.

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So, I’m not really a graphic designer anymore, and when I was one, it was “back in the day”. A lot of things have changed (and improved) in photoshop, and so I find myself once more a little behind the learning curve… though I think I pay pretty good attention to tutorials. ^o^

This is my avatar in Second Life, dressed in a cute dress you can’t see, with her long brown hair style called “Sweet Dollarbie” Browns (I got them in all colors – ‘cause it was only 1 L$). But as you can see, I did a little enhancement on the hair. Whether I did it well or not depends on the person viewing it, I guess. I think I did a pretty fair job for someone who doesn’t does this but once every few months or so. ‘Cause I’m a singer – not a dedicated photoshopper like some really talented (and nice!) people out there.

Feel free to download the above graphic if you want to… Especially if you’re one of my delightful Stars. :-)

I’ve figured it out. Second Life can sort of be attributed to a massive, complex, creative game of pretend – with some distinctly non-pretend qualities (i.e. Linden Dollars exchanged for real money made in-world, you’re actually dealing with real people and – most times – real feelings too). I think it’s fantastic. It also almost seems to me that the popularity of Second Life is picking up a little. I mean, the world is so freakin’ diverse! How can one not get lost within it?

Second Life is a place that I’m still discovering, but what I’m finding is mostly all positive. It’s basically free, and that’s actually important. No, you don’t need Linden dollars, you don’t need to buy a subscription or membership (though a premium membership is available – I may do that for the free home… ^o^ ), you don’t even need to buy the program first before installing it on your computer. It is available to everyone without very much discrimination. The only thing I’ve read about that’s discriminatory (debatable) is that blind people have trouble navigating . . . which I’ve also read someone tried to alleviate by improving the speech interface for them. So even there, it’s super accessible.

You can make up your own rules, your own games, which is something I used to do voraciously as a child. I would always build castles with couch cushions and pretend it’s my house, or make up new games to play with friends, with rules and points. You can DO that in Second Life! Build a castle, make it your house, and there’s scripts for everything . . . including combat games or role-playing games. There’s dress codes in some regions. I remember stumbling upon a fantasy themed sim and they were informing me repeatedly to please wear the appropriate medieval garb as part of the dress code. And they’re pretty serious . . . not like they’ll skin your cat if you don’t, but they’ll kick you out of that place and may even do a permanent ban so you can’t go back.

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So here I am, sitting in front of my laptop in the main room of my home, and I’m desperately trying to wade through this massive and monstrous thing the Internet has turned into in the past five years. I didn’t know I was I was so behind! OMG – like all this social media stuff, all these places where you can have a profile, and register, and participate in networks and groups and discussions, upload photos, share videos, yourself, your blog, your cat, your dog . . .

How did it all get so complicated!? But . . . it’s immensely cool too! At least, it is if you’re not suffering from clinical paranoia. Then I would think the Interwebs are the enemy and likely also the spawn of Satan (ah, don’t you love fictional characters?).

I’m reading quick guides on how to make Twitter really work for you, or how to improve traffic to my blog, and I’m wondering to myself if I really need these things? Yes. Yes, I do. I’m realizing now the potential of the most popular and basic of services (like Twitter – though I heard on the news it peaked in users recently, which isn’t actually a good thing?).  Though how to improve traffic to my blog doesn’t make too much sense to me. The only people I want finding my blog are people interested in the singing thing I do. So increasing traffic by writing about really super interesting things pertaining to my field is not really what I’m aiming for.

Though I was considering sharing more than just my daily activities and show time announcements. What thoughts do I have that would be of interest to anyone? Apparently, it doesn’t matter! So out of all the stuff I like to do (which is actually numerous and varied), I’ll make an interesting blog. I’m a jack of all trades (as if that’s not an overused statement) and I will share them! ‘Cause I can, and I want to, and I’m quickly finding there’s almost no rules here.

So I’ll make a short list of the things I’m interested in and may eventually talk about:

• Singing
• Music
• Movies
• Photoshop
• Art
• Drawing
• Anime
• Video Games
• Internet Surfing
• Second Life (and other virtual worlds)
• MMOs
• Lolita Fashion
• Arts & Crafts
• My Cat
• Videos (and editing)
• Sound editing (recording too)
• Traveling
• Science Fiction
• UFOs
• Gnosticism
• Spirituality
• Mysteries of Life
• Edgar Cayce
• Metaphysics
• Mysticism

I could go on, but I think you all get the point… And really, I’m sure I missed a few key interests, but as you can see I have so many that it’s kind of hard to keep track of. But the point is I may talk about anything so be prepared for some strange ways of thinkin’.

To Members: I may be sending you a newletter notice thing. Don’t panic that I sent you something via email (you DID sign up for the site). I will try not to abuse the email sending feature I have ‘cause I hate spam as much as the next person. But you have the option of turning off notifications in your profile. I’ll explain that in the Newsletter. I shouldn’t really call it that, since it’s not. It’s more email notification.

Love,

Carol // Selene