Roland Writes

I can’t say it was unexpected but it’s still pretty raw.

I didn’t place in the “Lady in Blue” contest. I didn’t really expect to, as I said in the post this morning. Being male in a female dominated field is just that way. There were several oddities about tonight’s event, not the least of which was that the organizer gave about a third of the scores in open chat. It was disappointing to have my score (a 9 out of 10) read aloud along with the (lower) third place finisher. I asked about it and was told that the judge changed her mind at the last minute, awarding an extra 2/10ths of a point for a verbal response — which, btw, aren’t actually in the judging criteria.

The problem was the judging. The judge this evening was one of the contestants who happened to pay a lot of money over the weekend. On many nights, she’d have been on the stage with us, so it had to have been difficult for her to be fair in judging and I have no idea how she interpreted the judging categories. It was obvious that her evaluations of the stage performances and ours were pretty radically different.

Still, she was in the hot seat, and none of us were. I don’t envy her. I suspect she earned a lot of animosity tonight.

The organizer offered to give us feedback after the show, and I took advantage of that. She was unable to offer anything other than to say she’d have put me on top if she’d been the judge, but that she had to abide by the judge’s decision. She explained that I was beaten by somebody with an apparently lower score because the judge actually amended the score based on the response to the question and that the score which had been announced was actually in error. She continued to emphasize the importance of creativity, but frankly, I think that’s very much not the case. The judging tonight notwithstanding, it appears that taking a theme and running with it is really not the best approach. That was exhibited in the Mardi Gras theme event the other day as well, when none of the really creative costumes were picked, and the winners were in the predictable, and not terribly original, outfits.

Ah well.

I got my two votes.

Not like that will matter either with another “pay your way to the top” event slated for Saturday.

I did have fun putting the costume together, though, and maybe that’s really the important thing.

One of the things that I find really irksome about being involved with Classic w/Style is the all too regular instances where males are just overlooked. Take, for example, the contest event for tonight:

Monday March 9
Event: Styling Lady in Blue Theme
Time: 6pm/slt

The problem is that I’d need to either dress in drag or change to a female avi in order to stay within the parameters of the stated theme. The only other way would be to come up with something referencing “Lady in Blue” without being “Lady in Blue.” Maybe dressing up as Wayne Newton and handing out red roses to the blue ladies. Other than I have no faith that anybody at the event would actually get the reference, I have no idea how to pull that off.

So, since I can’t stay in theme, I may as well have some fun with it and maybe poke Classic w/Style’s management to be a little more inclusive in their contest themes.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Blind Blueberry Zeppelin!

Most of the clothing came from the Little Rebel Going-Out-of-Business Sale. The jacket started life as beige but took a dark blue tint readily enough, but the Sky Blue Sweater and Threadbare Jeans are in their original colors. The hair is Rei from <Discord>. I bought it in the white/silver pack and turned it blue to match the coat. The only other thing I had to buy – and it was a splurge – was the Burgess & Sons Harmonica (blues Edition) for 199L – tinted blue, of course. Everything else I made — the skin, the blue eyes, the pork pie hat, the flower – even the blue earring.

One thing I didn’t like about the harmonica was that the controls were noisy and awkward. The animation that came was also very poor so I contacted my Secret Source and got a custom harmonica playing animation that was more in keeping with the blues theme.

I made a custom script to play the animation and the sound files on click so that when I’m front and center on stage, I can trigger the “performance” aspect of my routine. I think it came out pretty well.

Oh, and don’t forget the blue suede shoes!

These are actually the Skootcher’s in Gray that I applied a blue tint to.

We’ll see how the contest comes out tonight. I’m not a Lady in Blue, but – in the words of Blind Blueberry Zeppelin:

Thanks! You’ve been a great audience.

Stuff:

Jacket: Beige Sportcoat – Little Rebel
Sweater: Sky Ribbed Sweater – Little Rebel
Jeans: Thread Bare Jeans – Little Rebel
Shoes: Skootchers in Gray – HOC
Harmonica: Burgess & Son Harmonica (blues edition) – Burgess & Son, Musical Supplies

Shape: David Beckham – Body Doubles
Hair: Rei in White (tinted blue) – Discord

Hat, Flower, Skin, Eyes: Roland Zepp

Yesterday was “Boost Your Vote Day” at Classic w/Style and I made a costly mistake – or two. The idea is that you can buy your way up the ladder by paying the contest organizers large amounts of L$ during specific times of the day. The pertinent part of the notice is here:

WAKE UP AND GET YOUR COFFEE AND IT IS TIME TO BOOST YOUR VOTE. 50 VOTES PER 500 LINDENS , YOU MAY VOTE FOR YOURSELF AND VOTE UNLIMITED.

In reading that, one might reasonably think that for every 500L added to the picture, one would receive an extra 50 votes. As usual, the devil is in the details. The attached card held the fine print.

- for each 500 lindens vote you will put to your picture you will get 50 votes (needs to be full L$500 per vote to get the full credit, meaning if you vote for L$499 you will not get the whole 50 votes credit) [Emphasis mine]

Unfortunately I didn’t read the card until I had already put 20 votes worth at 25L onto my card, figuring to get 500L, the 20 votes for adding the money, and the “boost bonus.” That 30 vote mistake cost me two places in the overall standings.

My first mistake might have been in entering this contest to begin with. I’m not sure what I’m getting out of this. Call me cheap, but there’s a reality at play here – especially for guys. What we seem to be working toward is a chance to be in the final pageant. The final pageant takes the top 10 contestants and puts them on stage in front of judges. I’m guessing, and this is just a hunch, the the probability of a male winning this pageant is something less than one in ten. More like one in a million. Sure the big money for this pageant is 100,000L and second prize is 50,000L but this is looking more and more like a losing bet.

For reference, there is another pageant that will finish this month. The amounts of money that are on the cards in that event are staggering. The first place person has 113,000L (10,000 votes), the second place has 117,000L (7700 votes) and the third place has 159,000L (5500 votes). Even the tenth place has 38,000L (1700 votes). Almost all the midrange field has at least 20k showing on the card. Some have considerably more. There’s one guy in that field and he’s spent almost 39,000L for his chance to win. If you’re keeping track, that means there’s over 600,000L just on the top 10 cards in that pageant with one more “vote boost” opportunity next week before their final. Given that the organizers will only pay out 200K in prizes, it seems obvious why they run the operation.

What is less clear is why we are playing along.

What is clear, at least to me, is that this voting process — and even the thrice-weekly contests — are a waste of time and money, in terms of advancing to the top ten. My mistake with the boost aside, it seems obvious that the correct strategy is ignore it all, save my lindens, and then spend them in big chunks during these vote boost events. Even at that, I have no protection against somebody joining the competition at the last minute, buying their way into the top ten with a single large vote, and bumping me out.

At the moment I’ve got about 5k lindens invested in this. At $20US, that’s not a lot of money but looking ahead at the probable pay off (2k lindens) for being male in the final pageant, I’m already in the hole. I need to figure out how much I’m willing to lose in real terms and I’m not sure that I’m willing to lose $200US, which is what the current indications are.

I asked one of the big spenders why they’re willing to go into the red for the chance to win when the top prize money is less than the amount it’s costing to get to the finals. Her response was, “Because it’s fun.”

Maybe once I get beyond the sting of my own stupidity for not reading the fine print in this contest, I’ll think it’s fun again. The experience of participating in the styling contests is, un-deniably, fun. It’s frustrating to see the same three or four people win all the time, particularly since I can’t see why they’re winning.

Maybe that’s my problem. I can’t see what they’re doing that the others are not and if I could, then maybe this would make more sense.

Last night’s event was another one that I found incomprehensible. The theme was Mardi Gras and the idea was to dress as some Mardi Gras character. I confess, that my outfit was not terribly ritzy and I really only wanted my 2 votes for being a participant. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t place. It just wasn’t one of those themes that inspires.

My costume was a Brazilian street dancer’s winged and feathered outfit. It had a tall headdress and too much bling. I used my Redgrave skin and Beckham shape along with the Discord “Odin” hair. To dress it up, I snagged a batch of freebie Mardi Gras beads and went to a sandbox to duplicate the single strand into several and link them all into a single necklace.

Visually, it was pretty horrible, but it looked like Mardi Gras to me.

I knew that the costume itself wasn’t going to win any prizes, so I dressed it up with some very Mardi Gras poses from a Secret Source. They were all street dancer poses — arms out, face up, and fit nicely with the costume.

I didn’t win. Didn’t even place. But I got my two votes.

What would I do differently?

- Try to find a “mummer’s strut” or other suitably lively walk. My standard model stroll looked odd when coupled with the street dancer poses.

- Abandoned the bling. I could have made my own headdress and wings without the bling problem.

- Made a “coin thrower” so I could have emitted the traditional golden coins and added a throwing gesture so I could have “thrown” them to the crowd.

- Go with a less creative costume. My outfit may have violated the judge’s norms on what constituted “Mardi Gras.” All the winners in this contest wore very predictable costumes. (There’s a picture of the winners at the Classic w/Style blog so you can see what I mean.) None of the more “Carnivale” style costumes placed, even though they represented about 30% of the field and most were much better than mine.

At any rate. I got my two votes.

Stuff:

Costume: Brazilian Carnival – Indios : Ilhas Brazil

It’s taken me awhile to figure out how this process works. The standings that get posted are confusing and even finding the scoring explanation, it took a while for me to understand how this vote with lindens system works. The answer turns out to be relatively straightforward. The standings are not based on the raw amounts of lindens or votes, but rather on the relative ranking those amounts give you. The two rankings — the linden rank and the voting rank — are then averaged.

Here’s an example with three hypothetical players and their raw amounts:

When I restate this in rankings, where the highest value gets number 1, etc …

These rankings get averaged together and the results are ordered from smallest to largest. In the case of a tie, the number of votes is used as a tie-breaker.

If Angie wants to move up in the rankings, she needs to add more money, more votes, or both. But how much of each? The goal is to change the rank orders in order to get a higher average. With 300L and six votes, she’s third and second in ranking. In order to move up to first in votes she needs to add seven votes. If the minimum vote is 25L and she votes seven times, that adds 175L to her total as well.

Now look what that does to the rankings! Adding the votes gives Angie a first place rank in voting, but didn’t change her rank in money. When she traded vote rank with Charlie, that gave all three of them an average rank of 2. The final order is determined by the “most votes” rule, leapfrogging Angie into first place overall even though she has the least money in play.

Now Belle has a problem because she already has the most money in play, but has the fewest votes. She can’t improve her rank by adding cash. She has to do it by adding votes. If she adds nine votes at the minimum level, that will give her 925L and 12 votes. Her money ranking won’t change but her vote rank will go up by one.

This demonstrates a hidden fact in the scoring. Belle and Charlie are tied with 12 votes each and they both get a ranking of two. I confess, this is speculation on my part, but the evidence seems to support it.

Armed with this information, I’m able to compete in the contest by knowing whether I need to add money, votes, or both. Strategically, the correct response seems to be “Only place minimum votes” in order to maximize standings. In our hypothetical contest, the person who places a single 100L vote will have a lower standing than the person who places four 25L votes. After that, it’s just a matter of keeping track of who has how many of each.

Last night’s contest was “Styling Career Theme”

WHEN I GROW I WANT TO BE A DOCTOR BUT INSTEAD I BECAME A MODEL. SO Y’ALL THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO SHOW WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE- BY STYLING YOURSELF AND BE CREATIVE WITH IT.

After being away from SL for most of the weekend, I wanted to participate in this contest and try to make up some lost ground. I needed to pick a career that nobody else would pick and also one I could do relatively cheaply. Call me a miser, but when the top prize is 500L, it doesn’t leave a lot of leeway for creating a look. In the end I picked “Stock Broker” as my target. The challenge became one of answering the question, “What does a stockbroker look like?”

I chose this conservative gray tweed suit from Sartoria as my foundation and built out from there with Uncleweb Hibiki Hair (coffee), the Beckham shape, my Emil 3 Pale Tan Redgrave skin, and a pair of HOC Apparel Formal Dress Shoes. The visual cues are the briefcase, the Wall Street Journal, a bluetooth earbud representing my cell phone, and the glasses.

The clothes, glasses, and avatar parts I had in my inventory already which left the briefcase, newspaper, and earbud. The briefcase was easy to make but difficult to use well. The newspaper was trivial since I’d made a copy of Variety for the Actor Contest. One of my friends built me the earbud complete with flashing blue light.

The problem with the briefcase — or any artifact you carry — is making it look natural. Many of SL’s animations are intended for empty hands. Luckily I had a walk (Outrider Male Walk3) from Outrider Animations that involves a straight arm/closed fist look. I let me move naturally with the briefcase in my hand. I coupled that with a default stand from Long Awkward Pose that left me posing with the arm extended so the briefcase fell naturally along my left thigh. After that it was a matter of loading a sequence of poses that kept the briefcase out of my body. With my limited selection, that wasn’t trivial, but I found several that I was able to put together in different ways.

The result: Third Place

Jillian Convair took first with her High Powered Lawyer, and Lovena Allen took second with her Famous Chef.

What Would I Do Differently?

Looking this outfit over with a critical eye, I think I’d have picked different shoes.

There’s nothing really wrong with these HOC dress shoes. At 20L they’re one of the best pair of inexpensive dress shoes going. But while they’re very well done, they aren’t really in the same class as a Jeepers Creepers shoe. In hindsight, I might have been better off wearing my Shanghai in red and black. They have a nice shape and richly designed, but I ruled them out as being too flashy for the conservative stock broker look I was going for. With my prize money, maybe I’ll go to JCS and get a pair of Sebastians in black for later use.

Shape: David Beckham – Body Doubles.
Skin: Emil 3 Pale Tan – Redgrave
Hair: Hibiki (Coffee) – UncleWeb
Eyes: Gleaming – Forest Green – E’s for Eyes

Suit: spezzato tweed_grey – Spezzato
Shoes: Formal dress shoes – HOC Apparel
Glasses: primOptic Crowe glasses 1.17 – primOptic

Special Pose: Long Awkward Pose – Caught