Catznip Viewer Arrives

The Catznip Viewer is a new addition on the third party viewer (TPV) list. It offers Restrained Love in a viewer modeled closely on the Linden viewer. For new residents of Second Life and those of us who have become accustomed to the Linden Viewer over the more than 2 years of its existence, this is good news.

It offers an alternative to the Firestorm Viewer and Marine's venerable Restrained Love Viewer, along with others who have offered RLV for varying periods of time.

I've been using Catznip for about 4 months now, yes it was available before being placed on the TPV list and it works great. It became one of the recommended viewers for girls joining the Toy Slaves Brothel (RLV required) approximately 8 weeks ago and has functioned very well.

There is more to the viewer than just RLV, here's what the developers Kitty Barnett & Trinity Dejavu say about their viewer. 

"Catznip aims to refine and reinvent your window into Second Life. Our focus is stability, usability, privacy and plenty of new original home grown features.

As a project, Catznip is not and will never be a bucket list of features cherry picked from the other projects, nor a laundry list of pre-release Linden code. It’s about taking a fresh look at things and attempting to do them better.We are very open to feature ideas or requests, but please present them in the form of a use case and not simply “Add X from Viewer Y” !"

If you have followed the development of RLVa, you'll recognize Kitty as a developer of the Restrained Love used in many of the Third Party Viewers.

To read more about Catznip or to download this excellent viewer visit their website 

Catznip Viewer

Here's a short video about installing it. It's easy, no files to transfer over, just download, install and jump into Second Life. It comes with RLVa turned off. All of the viewers excepting Marine's (where it's always on) arrive with Restrained Love turned off. 

To activate it in the viewer go to Preferences (Ctrl+P), when the Preferences window opens choose the side tab labelled Catznip and place a checkmark in the box for RestrainedLove API suppoert (requires restart). The viewer will need to indeed be restarted for RLVa to take effect, so log out and then back in and you'll be in RLVa.

Watch the video in YouTube to take advantage of fullscreen and HD

Hope to see you soon in Second Life

Marine Kelley's Restrained Love Viewer

I recently did a post on setting up RLV in Firestorm. Now, for Marine Kelley's original version.

One of the most respected viewers in Second Life is Marine Kelley's RLV. Once used almost exclusively by the D/s community, residents have found lots of ways to use it.
Want to know more about RLV? See my post here...
What is Restrained Love?

Marine's follows the Linden viewer platform. This version includes the very latest user interface changes.
I've included the links to the pages used below the video.
Go ahead, don't be shy, give it a try.
Click the video and watch in full screen and 720p HD for the best experience

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory
http://www.erestraint.com/realrestraint/
See you soon in Second Life!

Protect Yourself in Second Life

If you're in business in Second Life, especially, my kind of business, it's always wise to protect yourself by saving your Chat and IM logs to your computer.
I've posted a video showing how to do it in Firestorm, Restrained Love, the Linden Viewer and Phoenix.
Be careful how you use the logs, they're for your protection and enjoyment. Sharing them with others without their permission is viewed by some as a violation of the Terms of Service.
Why get into the whole debate, be safe rather than sorry...keep them private.
Click on the video and view it full screen and in HD (720p)

See you in Second Life

Restrained Love in Firestorm

I've created a new video about RLV, Restrained Love, for Firestorm.
If you are used to using the Linden viewer 2 / 3 platform, the Phoenix team and their V3 Default setting for the viewer makes Firestorm an attractive option. 
If you are unsure what Restrained Love means, see my blog post here
What is Restrained Love (RLV)?


Watch the video for information on where to find Firestorm and then how to activate RLV.
For the best results, open the video and watch in in full screen and HD

Make Firestorm Look & Feel Like Linden Labs' Viewer 2

Just my feeling that some of our residents who learned on Viewer 2 might like the magic decoder ring to help them find regular menus and the Sidebar.
Firestorm is an excellent full featured viewer. The viewer has been set with defaults that in a few cases, not many actually, look like the old viewer 1 UI that some of you won't be familiar with. I hope the video helps.
It is in HD, for best viewing click on it and watch in full screen and set to HD



The link to the Phoenix site is...
Firestorm Beta Download


The video is captioned, but, I've included the script here...
The Firestorm viewer is a feature packed user interface based on the Linden viewer 2.  It was developed by the Phoenix team, one of the most robust third party viewer providers.  Because the viewer is intended to make the transition from the old style phoenix viewer, it contains some elements that you may not be familiar with if you currently use Linden's viewer 2.

The settings that I'll demonstrate here are only recommendations. You will no doubt customize the viewer in the future. 

If you haven't already downloaded the viewer, go to http://www.phoenixviewer.com/ and choose the Firestorm Beta viewer for the platform you use.  Once you install it, we will make some changes.

On the bottom bar there are a number of icons that we can remove.  The viewer comes without a sidebar as the default.  Later, we'll learn how to choose a sidebar version.  What you take out of the bottom bar is up to you, I've removed a few things that are either repeated in the sidebar or on the top bar or seldom used.

The old viewer one interface used a pie menu and that menu comes as the default in Firestorm.  The pie menu does not exist in viewer 2, we'll learn how to change it.

Go to the Avatar (Me) menu item on the top bar, click and from the dropdown menu choose Preferences.  Now let's begin...

Under the general tab will set the away timeout to "never" and turn off UI Hints.

On the next tab "Chat" we'll turn off the typing animation and set chat to begin when we press letter keys. Turn on Group Chat pop ups if you follow any groups.

In Sound & Media, I turn off sounds, strictly a personal preference, not a recommendation.

In Network and Cache you can increase your bandwidth, if you have a strong connection. this is where you can modify the location of your chat logs, if you wish.

I like to use the arrow keys for movement, they're set in the Move & View tab.

In the Privacy tab you can set the viewer to save your chat and IM. Showing favourite LMs at login can be useful if you have favourite locations set up in landmarks.

I sometimes use the Developer and Advanced menus, they are set under the Advanced tab

Next we'll get rid of that pesky pie menu under the UI Extras and at the same time have the script dialogs stay where we're used to them by turning off the option to see them in the upper right

Now to get the Sidebar back...open the Skins tab and choose a skin with Side Tabs

Only if you use RLV, you'll see an option under the Firestorm tab to "Allow remote scripted viewer controls(RLVa)" make sure it is checked. The same option is also available under the Advanced menu, both do the same thing.

Many of the changes we've made require a viewer restart, so click Apply then OK and log out. When you log back in the changes will be in effect.

Kittin Ninetails: RLV 2.7.2 for Mac and Linux

Restrained Love Viewer

I hope that somewhere in one of my posts, I've turned you on to using Restrained Love or RLV for short.

Marine Kelley's collaborator for the Mac and Linux versions is Kittin Ninetails. The link is to her blog where Kittin has posted an update to the Mac & linux RLV versions here:

Kittin Ninetails: RLV 2.7.2 for Mac and Linux

It's amazing the work that goes into these updates. Since the advent of the Linden Labs viewer 2.0 about a year ago there have been updates on updates. Personally, I find the v.2 viewer easy to work with and much more intuitive than the prior versions. It just takes some getting used to.

But, I'm off topic, what I wanted to point out was, how hard the third party viewer people work just to keep up.

Thank you to all of them.

I hope you will visit Kittin's blog, even if you are an Evil Empire user, she has much to offer beyond the Mac and Linux stuff, her opinions, her help and even her store.

Try RLV, I think you'll like it.

What is Restrained Love (RLV)?

The Restrained Love Viewer (RLV) is a different way of experiencing Second Life. For those interested in exploring dominance and submission it provides opportunities to make those Second Life experiences more real and the control and power exchange deeper and more involving.

The Restrained Love Viewer is an alternative to the standard Second Life Viewer. It was created by Marine Kelley. She, along with others have created a wide range of restraints that use the capabilities the viewer provides to make a true restraint experience in Second Life. Most collars and many of the restraints you find in the BDSM or D/s environments in Second Life use RLV to make them inescapable to a submissive or slave using the Restrained Love Viewer. By using RLV the bottom gives away their control to the Dominant. The Dominant does not need to be in the Restrained Love Viewer, the submissive uses it.

The slaves at Toys Brothel are in RLV with an active relay always ready to serve.

Among the experiences you can have with the Restrained Love Viewer that are not possible with standard Second Life include:

❤  Limits to communication - Blocked chat, IM's or notecards, hidden names and locations

❤ Forced stripping and wearing of clothes and attachments

❤   Inescapable cages and other bondage devices

❤   Forced tp anywhere your dom may want to send you

❤   Loss of privacy due to monitoring of your Second Life experience and communication

❤   Sensory deprivation limiting vision, sound, and touch

❤   Limits to your mobility in Second Life

You might invest in any of a number of control devices for your submissive, however, there are free relays available on Marketplace

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/ 

Search for RLV relay and you will find some free items, if you are a resident of Second Life you'll see more by signing in and if you are adult verified in Second Life even more.

As noted most collars already operate in RLV. You only need to know the collar commands.

I've included the following link as it provides an easy reference for the Amethyst Collar (available at Sensations) a very popular collar brand in Second life and illustrates the type of things you can do with RLV and just the collar. The Amethyst collar is by no means the only collar available. The author of the pdf Duchesse Klip Klaar asks for a donation of 19L$ (about 7 or 8 cents) paid in world.

http://www.myway.de/klipklaar/Amethyst_Collar_Commands_V1.5.1.pdf

The same information is available in a note card for free when you buy the collar(without the nice cataloging of commands or the pretty pictures). 

There are many brands of collars available, some are even free. Instructions and commands for collars are usually contained in note cards included with the collar.

Why would anyone want to have these experiences in Second Life? It's because control and power exchange lies at the heart of the dominance and submission experience. The Restrained Life Viewer makes it all more possible and real in the world of Second Life.