We, the SLN staff, are creatures of habit. While Areola and Pookes have long since embraced a mesh enabled viewer, Harry and I have been stuck on Phoenix. My decision to stick with Phoenix is probably less important from your, the reader’s, perspective. But Harry has long been a Phoenix viewer, and has stuck with it. However, Phoenix’s decision to discontinue development has forced our hand. As usual, although there has been little apparent activity on the blog since Christmas Eve, we’ve been working away in the background, and for Harry and I that has been on the most basic level, simply playing the game with new viewers, Firestorm for both of us.

As we’ve popped on line, Harry has been an apparently permanent fixture, playing with and apparently liking Firestorm, as it offers a wider range of light for him to take photographs with. I’m still feeling a little like a noob, finding controls no longer being where I expect them to be, menus hiding in different spots. However, I’ve taken time to experiment while modelling for Harry, who has been photographing the staff as an exercise in experimenting with his new viewer.

I expect that 2013 will see a whole new visual perspective applied to the blog, as well as, on occasion, mesh playing a role in how we demonstrate items such as naturist accessories. Areola has already long since grasped mesh, and you can look through back posts to see her wearing a bath robe as just that, as a mesh naturist accessory.

I think I need to buy one of those G&N robes now that I’m all meshed up!

Expect at least some mesh items to be reviewed in 2013!

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Another change, one we’ve already trailed, is the Moonella Group, which will provide inworld notices and occasional gifts. More to follow on this. We’re also going to be much more pro-active in getting news from the various sims, so that we can trail all the naturist news from SL throughout 2013.

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And finally, a further change will that we’re going to embrace real life naturist photos more readily. Hitherto these have only been ‘faceless’ photos which Harry has tried to replicate in the context of SL and SLN. While we aren’t going to become a naturist photos site, I’ve agreed that Harry should have greater freedom to utilise RL photos to better illustrate a world of virtual naturism in SL. This doesn’t necessarily mean naked bodies either, but could just as readily mean location photographs. I shall let Harry explain all in due course.

So, finally, those photos of SL in a different light.

Have a Happy New Year, wherever you are, and we’ll see you in 2013!

Ella.

(Ella adds: (2nd January 2013) ‘I’ve been wrestling with Firestorm for a few days, and I don’t like it. It appears, from the Phoenix website, many others don’t like it either. While Phoenix remains live, I’m stating my intention to return and stick with it, regardless of its ‘degradation over time’, in the hope a decent Phoenix alternative arrives at some point. I know that this means that mesh, for me, is not a possibility, but I really don’t care at this point. I’m finding Firestorm very, very user unfriendly.)

I think once Christmas is over many of us begin to think of next year’s summer holidays. I know I do.

I saw this pic on the internet, and it kind of captures the yin and yang of some parts of naturist Europe -warm seas and bare skin backdropped by snowy mountain tops.

I decided I’d try some sort of replication of it in SL. These little excursions are never perfect, but I do like the challenge of making some sort of SL equivalent.

I’ve flown over the Pyrenees (often) in summer and marvelled at the contours hewn out by the ice age, and also flown over them in winter, when they’ve been reduced to almost nothing other than a one-dimensional white moonscape with the odd craggy rock for detail. And I can still marvel that I, too, will have a similar experience to the girl in the photo, from snowy mountain tops to nude bathing in a matter of hours. If you look hard enough, you can have a similar experience in SL!

Harry

We should begin the new year with a little idea I’ve had cooking up for some time. I couldn’t quite believe the synchronicity of this when I researched it! 🙂

Firstly, please read the following…

In the United Kingdom, the first nudist club was established in Wickford, Essex in 1924. According to Michael Farrar, writing for British Naturism the club adopted the name “Moonella Group” from the name of the owner of the ground, Moonella, and called its site The Camp. Moonella, who was still living in 1965 but whose identity remains to be discovered, had inherited a house with land in 1923 and made it available to certain members of the New Gymnosophy Society. This society had been founded a few years before by H.C. Booth, M.H. Sorensen and Rex Wellbye under the name of the English Gymnosophical Society. It met for discussions at the Minerva Cafe at 144 High Holborn in London, the headquarters of the Women’s Freedom League. Those who were permitted to join the Moonella Group were carefully selected, and the club was run by an “aristocracy” of the original members, all of whom had “club names” to preserve their anonymity. The club closed in 1926 because of building on adjacent land. (from Wikipedia)

Could you make this stuff up?

I take a keen interest in naturist history and its origins, and I do know that the ‘anonymity’ of the early pioneers of UK naturism was carefully protected, with members adopting quasi-classical names for their membership of clubs. It would have been possible for you, ‘Diomedes’ to be sitting alongside ‘Mr and Mrs Polydius’, for example. You would never have learned that they were Mr and Mrs John Smith to your Jim Brown.

It’s with great delight that I discovered the above fact about the UK’s naturist origins, for obvious naming reasons. And, well, the group’s ‘insignia’/logo seems obvious…Ella mooning! 🙂 (Bare bottomed, anyway). I do like the starry night sky above me!

You can search for, and join, the Moonella Group free in world, and I’ve also added a page to the blog to record Moonella activities.

Let me tell you what I intend Moonella to be.

Moonella will function as a group, through which I shall be sending out Group Notices (and the occasional, naturist related ‘freebie’) to inform you -instantaneously- of any naturist activities forthcoming in SL. It is not, at this stage anyway, intended to be any sort of ‘landed’ club, that is, we won’t be taking on a sim and running it as a naturist location in SL. There are already several excellent naturist locations in SL, with new ones appearing and old ones disappearing, all the time. I’m not in competition with them. I belong to several, and will continue to enjoy their facilities and report from all without favour. The SLN is intended to be an outlet and a voice for SL’s naturist community, and please remember that it’s also your paper, and if you’ve anything to say about any naturist activities within SL (or even in the real world)  you are more than welcome to comment and contribute. The only likelihood of me taking on any sort of ‘landed’ capacity and running a naturist sim of my own is if all of the others suddenly decided to pack it all in. That’s unlikely. I think it’s evident there’s a thriving naturist community within SL, even if many people are only virtual naturists. By the promotion of the lifestyle as wholesome and healthy within SL, I always hope that participants may just decided to embrace the lifestyle in the real world.

One other development for 2013 will be that we’re adding another page, ‘Naturists in the News’, and the expectation here is that we’ll report real life naturist events, happenings and so on and reflect them within SL. We’ve already done that to some degree over the past year, but we’ll kind of formalise that with that page. I’ll also be looking, after a full year of publication, at which pages work and which don’t. The ‘Mr and Miss SL Naturist’ page doesn’t really work for me, so I intend to discontinue that, regardless that a previous attempt to discontinue met with some opposition 🙂 I won’t take the page down, but may shift the contents into an ‘archive’ or ‘mothballed’ section.

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful New year.

Ella