Date Posted: 2nd Mar 2012 at 7:30 AM

On a whim I noticed there was a chat. Thus I went in, ignored the rules because i know I always have perfect behaviour and could not be considered fallible for any misconduct, and sat there.

And sat there.

And sat there.

Well it turns out I came in during a slow time, where one of the many few who wasn't isle was confusing coffee and arthritis cream. Although we agreed that coffee might be soothing on an arthritic knee, she said hers was not hot enough to relieve any of the soreness. Furthermore, arthritis cream is hardly pallet-able.

We also used the words gay and sexy. Then we talked about shaping people's faces with hammers. I feel sorry for her boyfriend whose face is malleable, or so she says. No names will be named. Hopefully aforementioned individual will never read this, or if she does, she takes my omission of key details in good stride. Really, I am to be taken with a grain of salt, a dash of pepper, and a cherry on top. Hey, don't scrunch up your face at me! Have you never heard of strawberry and peppercorn flambé? Well now you have. True, cherries aren't strawberries, but they are small, red, sweet and juicy, much like the little invisible bugbears that steal one half of a pair of socks. Although, the older ones taste more like cough syrup.

Truly, it was a good time. But then it was ruined by realizing EA has another patch.

So now I wandered back to the main page, tentatively wondering if there was an alert and it would be time to head for the bunkers.

Ahem. Note to self: 9:58 pm PST is NOT a good time for MTS #social. Also note, around... oh snap, I forgot the up time. Was it around 2:00 pm EST? I think it was.

Date Posted: 1st Mar 2012 at 6:53 AM

Because my nose is horny.

.....


ANYWAY moving on.

Actually, I'm not a rhinoceros. I'm an echidna. Echidna are monotremes; they, like the famous platypus, have mammory glands, and yet, lay eggs. Such fascinating creatures they are, and I identify with them. I'm spiky, dig myself holes REALLY fast, and have a naturally lower than average body temperature. I also lay eggs. Well, not really. I would if I were a Yoshi. Why do the male Yoshi lay eggs anyhow? I bet they have a cloaca. Do you know what a cloaca is? It's a single hole that serves as both excretory and reproductive tract, typically seen in birds and reptiles. I'm guessing amphibians have them too.

I do not eat termites, though. I've never even seen a live termite. Call me lucky, I guess. I would eat an ant if properly prepared.

Well I completely dodged the point here. I had meant to type about how irritated I am with The Sims 3 website, but I got carried away with alliteration and then felt a need to explain myself. Now look where I am. I'm not as angry at present, but I am sure the moment I log back on to the website, I shall resume being unimpressed with the facebook knock-off they are doing with their customer profiles.

UNIMPRESSED!

I'm not as stewed about it as some of the other people though. I am, however, aggravated that system messages don't work. That is why I spend much more time here. I like it here. It's kind of comfy and people are not twinkies and ding-dongs. That's a good thing, you know. I'd hate to resort to cannibalism and get the Kuru disease.

BOO PRION DISEASES! I don't need the Borg in my body assimilating all my proteins.

Another bonus is that admin stalk me here.

Date Posted: 26th Feb 2012 at 4:19 AM

Designation: Chimera
Common Name: Chime
Subject Identification Code: TCP1080003B
Gender: M
Height: 154 cm / 5'1"
Weight: 43.5 kg / 96 lbs
Hair: Light Brown (not noticeable due to being shaved)
Eyes: Brown
DoB: 10/23/1980
Place of Birth: Classified
=====================
Twin Chimerism Project

"...The objective is to successfully clone a living breathing duplicate of the fraternal twin that was absorbed during gestation. Taking the DNA, and if necessary, harvesting bone marrow, and then using embryonic stem cell methods... "

"Chime" is the third successful clone of the 'dead' or 'absorbed' twin from a patient with the Chimerism condition. After a breakthrough wherein detecting Chimerism before birth came about, pregnant women were scanned for this rare condition to be chosen as subjects. Embryonic stem cells and blood from the umbilical cord were both collected. Therapeutic cloning techniques, which are similar to the methods used to clone Dolly, had been improved significantly so as not to require as many human egg cells to be donated, thus making the research more open. Controversy had been set aside by keeping this research hidden from public knowledge, and ethical concerns within the researchers were combated with the argument that it was saving the life of someone's fraternal twin - in a sense, it's the next step taken from separating Siamese twins.

However, Chime was more than just a successful experiment. They discovered in his blood an amazing resistance to further cell modification, mutation, and a robust immune system that would combat any virus introduced. His twin brother, who has the chimerism condition, was also discovered to have a heightened immunity and accelerated healing rate. Both children were observed and researched, until his brother, Edward Nye, died from a brain tumour that started in his pituitary gland. It was clear he did not have the same resilience to cell mutation that Chime had. However, as fate would have it, while Chime was having blood drawn, there was an explosion wherein a piece of shrapnel embedded itself right between his eyes, and went deep enough to pierce his pituitary gland. An emergency operation was conducted once he was brought to safety and his life was saved without further damage to the brain. However, without the gland to control hormone dispatch, Chime would never enter adolescence, and would be trapped in a twelve-year-old body until the day he died.

Thus, for almost two decades Chime continued to be experimented on, and never entered puberty. Seven years ago he was transferred to the underground testing facility, where he lived in even greater isolation than before. However, sometimes in passing, he would catch site of another test subject from the bunker next to him. Eventually, the other young man being clever, he devised a way to communicate with Chime. However, they never spoke face to face. The man next to him had a great desire to get out, and they'd run scenarios between each other to pass the time, but never acted on any of them, for they always found flaws in their plans. He never learned the man's name, or the man had forgotten it, but Chime did learn his serial code.

Several Viral vaccines were manufactured using blood from both him and his brother, before his brother's death. A breakthrough in treating prion disease has also been made due to the study and experimentation with his blood and DNA. However, the cure has not been perfected.

=================

Mutations: Not so much a mutation as an inability to have outside influences cause mutations. His DNA is unique and has an extra strand that forms the double helix, which somehow safeguards it from being altered by making it more stable. It also is quick to rectify any changes made from an outside source.

OTHER: Chime has a reduced sense of smell, reduced muscle mass, will store more fat (now that he's off his trim diet), and is easily fatigued.

Date Posted: 25th Feb 2012 at 7:46 PM

Already I am working on panda markings for puppies. I don't think I'll do panda horses. That would be just silly. However it is tempting because it would complete the 'set'. I haven't even played around with horses in CASP yet, so I'll just have to see what is there and if it is worth it. Oh dear. Just thinking of what the texture all flattened out must look like. I honestly do not wrap my mind around how these flat images wrap around the 3d models. It boggles me entirely.

Ehem. Back on topic.

I've already got most of the kinks worked out for the panda dogs. It's going a lot smoother this time. However, I am debating whether or not to break up the markings into more parts. Maybe make each eye patch individual. Maybe make the hind quarters separate. Maybe a lot of things. However, I am confident that within three days or less I shall submit my second creation. How exciting, in a good old tingly way.

Now it's just a matter of a few more tweaks and *groan* screenshots. Hoepfully I have learned from the last --

What was that sound? It sounded sort of like...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH*(&%#$*(%&*#&$(*#

Date Posted: 22nd Feb 2012 at 7:21 PM

I have made the grand leap from passive MTS lurker to a creator. I've got the cute little 1 Upload achievement graphic to prove my status, and that cute little palette under my name.

Is this the beginning of something grand? The birth of a new star?

Probably not.

However, I do have plans to make mostly pet based uploads. So maybe I'll start to be known as the crazy cat person whose gender is not yet disclosed.

Although I think it's pretty obvious what I am. I still like to exist in a shroud of mystery. DUN DUN DUN!

Actually, most of the time I just live in a shroud of misery.

Erhem.

Let me tell you all about my experiences. First off, before I nosed around in the creator forum, I had never posted on the forums before, nor had I even touched modding tools such as TSRW or S3PE etc. So what do I do? Briefly glance over some tutorials, post a question about pet modding, and plunge right into making custom content without much prep. No wading for this little monotreme. Suddenly I had a bunch of new programs to learn, including GIMP which I still vastly dislike the interface of. If I had a DDS plug-in for my trusty Corel or Paint Tool Sai (oh wait... I don't have Paint tool sai - I just wish I did) I'd stick with them. As it is, either I work with GIMP or do the lengthy process of loading a DDS in GIMP, saving it as a .psd, then opening it in Corel which can read photoshop files, editing it, saving it again as a .psd, then opening it in GIMP and saving it as a .dds. I actually did that once, but not only was it a needlessly long and tedious process, but some things got lost in translation. I had anticipated that might happen, but being stubborn as I am, I tried it anyhow. It is amazing the effort I put into being lazy.

So I do a lot of tinkering. I started with eye-liner for cats. Since I don't use Milkshape (3D programs scare me in a wet-pants sort of way) and TSRW does not, as of yet, have a way of previewing pets, every time that I tweaked my patterns I had to load up The Sims 3 and check it out. Now, my computer runs The Sims 3 fine once it's loaded, but the loading process takes forever, and sometimes it never makes it. It freezes at the last leg of progress and I have to close it through the task manager and boot it up again. Once i'm in I'm golden. Except when I visit China. For some reason my computer has this dislike for China. That is why I made panda cats to be spiteful. TAKE THAT, YOU RACIST COMPUTER!

Erh... now then, where were we? We? Hmmm..... I wonder who we is.

So it was a tedious process just to get the marking how I liked it. It was more tedious once I moved onto the Panda markings. Well what do you know, the edges of the texture meet right on the front of the chest/neck area, so getting them to match up can be somewhat of a pain. If you look at my panda body markings, you'll notice just this little dip right in the center of the neck/chest area. That is where the seam is. Also, working with anything on the face is a hazard because of the ways you can sculpt the face and make the markings look ridiculous. Then again, the same happens with human Sim's faces and eye make-up (both liner and shadow). Anyhow, getting things to go where I wanted them to on the MESH was a slow process, and I now have a greater appreciation for the hard work anyone making any custom content does.

Well, if getting the markings to look good wasn't bad enough, I sat there trying to get it so they showed up in the correct regional categories. See, I don't work smart like CMarNYC (whose help has been invaluable) and so I'd flick a switch or variable or whatever you call it in S3PE, save the package, and load up the game and check all of the regions to see if it showed up. It was clever Cmar who found out that some regions needed two variables activated for certain body parts. And our good NYC friend just kept loading up the default pet files and checking their settings. I wish I'd thought of that. I could have gotten everything done sooner.

Not that timing is really an issue. After all, it worked out for me that I submitted my panda marks right before the Pets guidelines came out. If I'd done it sooner I'd probably be groping in the dark and apologizing to a lot of ladies. Well not really, because the great and wonderful moderators would have told me what to do. That's what they are there for: to make me clash cymbals like a little wind-up monkey! I would just like to say that I vastly dislike taking screenshots of pets. It's a pain to line it up so you are on level with them, rather than just getting an overhead shot. Of course, I could make them jump up on something, but then they are sitting, and that's not their most flattering pose. At least, it made my panda markings look silly. Tab because my favourite key during that arduous process. I came to accept that chances were when I saw a 1 beside that little envelope in the corner that I'd be taking more screenshots. It took a lot of back-and forth before I got them just right, which is why I am indebted to the moderators for their patience and clear instructions.

After all, it's the quality control of this website along with being free that I do so enjoy.

Well, yesterday was finally the day where I got to see an approval message, and there was a sense of satisfaction and relief. And already I had some feedback, which actually astonished me. I'm used to uploading things to websites and being ignored for the most part.

Like this journal.

Well for those of you TL;DR (which I interpret as too lazy; didn't read, not too long; didn't read) folks, pretty much I rambled about how much effort went into making something so basic, how I adore CMarNYC and the patience of the moderators. I also went on and on about how much I stink at taking screenshots. Actually, I didn't harp on it too long. It was difficult though. Pets are not photogenic. At least, unlike in real life, we have a pause button. Also there's some sarcasm and tongue in cheek comments embedded in my entry. Wow, even my TL;DR is lengthy. I guess I just cannot help myself. After all, Tachyglossus means rapid tongue.


And that's all I have to say about that.

And now for something completely different (and a bit creepy)