Lapointe and Bastchild have a store in their Evocative sim, entitled Evocative Free Designs, and it’s filled with nothing but freebies. Good quality freebies, at that. Guys, you’ll find stuff here for you, as well as the girls. There’s everything from clothing to jewellery, and even two free skins (one male, one female) donated by Eloh Eliot. I couldn’t even begin to screencap everything in the store, so hop behind the cut for just a selection.
Another day, another virtual world *g*
Today, I’ve been messing around in Openlife, which is a new virtual world very much akin to the one we all know so well, and which uses the open source OpenSim code. I re-created Mar’s presence over there, right down to the same surname (which, given that you can create any name on Openlife (which I’m going to abbreviate to OL for now) might be a bit surprising, but I’d like to keep her the same, no matter where she goes.
OK, so what’s it like? Well… it’s different. Still very much in alpha phase, a lot of things don’t yet work. For example, you can forget about any prim attachments, because they won’t attach! (I can hear you all running away, screaming from here, y’know…). So no pretty prim hair and no poufy prim skirts. (Hey, at least the system skirts don’t vanish on OL…) Edit 1: Updates are apparently on the way for this, as well as for many other things. OL is a very fluid beast at the moment: constantly evolving! Edit 2: Attachments now work - yay! OMG, I can have hair! *g*
So yep. You’re down to that horrible ‘grown’ hair, and making your own clothes. There’s no money (well, there is: you start out with 10,000 of their currency, but you can’t spend it. Even texture uploads (which say they cost 5) cost you nothing. There are no stores, no freebies, nothing like that. Edit 3: Money now seems to be working. A few texture uploads started taking money from my 10,000.
You know what, though? I find that rather refreshing. Today I broke out Chip Midnight’s clothing templates that I downloaded ages ago, and actually used them to make a t-shirt and pair of long socks for Mar. I then downloaded Eloh Eliot’s full ‘Another Skin’ .psd files and fiddled around with them for ages until I had a set I could upload, to get Mar looking nice. (According to the comments on Eloh’s post there, the skins are part of the OL library, but I wanted to get to know my way around them anyway.) I logged Mar into Second Life, grabbed all the measurements from her full-perm shape, then transferred them to a new shape in OL. And yes, I even fussed with that horrible grown hair and managed to get it looking halfway decent.
Sometimes, being in Second Life, we get a bit lazy. Freebies everywhere, and no effort needed by ourselves to look great. This is new, and it’s fun. I feel a bit like a kid in a sandbox, playing with new toys. It’s rather fun, being a newbie all over again.
Hop behind the cut to see Mar’s OL avatar
I’ve just been to Bewitched Hair, buying the contents of 12 trees (no laughing about getting a purseful of leaves at the back there!) for their Earth Day hunt (which, due to SL problems, was only just announced). As with all hunts at places as popular as Bewitched Hair, the sim was very busy. I got there within minutes of the group notice going out, and already there were 29 people in the sim, which is pushing the limits of how many it can contain.
Normally, wearing all my clothes, hair, AO, and other bits and bobs, walking or flying around a place as busy as that would be like trying to wade through molasses, but of great help in busy situations is the FREE low-lag avatar, from Shapes By Zada.
No, it doesn’t look pretty, but it does the job. It doesn’t cut lag completely (hell, there’s always enough poufy hair, poufy dresses, bling, AOs galore and other bumph at major stores to mean lag will NEVER completely go away when you use this avatar) but it really does help. (And guys, there’s a male shape in there, too!)
I’ve created a new group tag in Del Mar Updates, for when Mar’s wearing this avatar. It says simply: Low Lag Avatar! And in her picks there’s a section about it with a TP to Shapes By Zada. That pick reads thus:
Spotted me wandering around looking rather strange? If you see me looking completely black from head to toe, and sporting a ‘low-lag avatar!’ title, then that’s what I’m wearing: the low-lag shopping avatar, from Shapes By Zada. This avie is free (check out the TP on this pick) and is ultra low-lag. Useful for busy areas, treasure hunts, and other high-lag situations!
Get the low-lag avatar from the freebie wall at Shapes By Zada.
Thanks to Cherlindrea of the FabFree blog for this: Mewf Demina, designer for Free Speerit, is leaving Second Life, and has placed all of her hair at the store out for free. Take the TP to Free Speerit (in case it drops you elsewhere, Free Speerit is the black and pink store in the area) and head inside to the left. All the hair is on the North wall, and every pack (even the fatpacks) is free. Ignore the prices on the adverts: it’s definitely free.
I’ve no idea how long it will be there, so head over as soon as you can. The store was quite busy when I was just there.
Hop behind the cut, where Mar models one colour from each style.
I’ve been sent an IM containing what looks like a scam hoping to pull in newbies with the promise of stupid amounts of free L$. The IM (which seems to have been sent to a LOT of people at random) reads thus:
[0:35] Gilchrist Kwassmann: Want some free lindens? we got a new system for you to make fast lindens upto $L5000/day, just go to ******************** <- check it out
I have, of course, excised the web address from the IM.
Newbies, if you get this IM, or any other like it, don’t fall for it. If it seems too good to be true (and this is too good to be true) then there’s a high chance it’s a scam.
(Yes, I searched for the avatar’s name, too. It doesn’t exist.)
RL went ‘boom’ for a bit, hence the lack of updates. I will be making another post soon, I promise. 
OK, that was a terrible headline, and I do apologise for it *g*
Decollage, in Caribe sim, has put seven t-shirts in a pink vendor down to L$1 in the store, and they’re cute as all hell. Mar bought a few of them, then took a gander around the rest of the little store.
I’m planning on doing a sim freebie walkaround in Caribe very soon, as it’s one of my favourite sims to visit. Meanwhile though, since I’ve not posted in a couple of days, hop behind the cut for a selection of Decollage goodies.
A little tip for those that go on treasure hunts: sort thy inventory!
I just opened up my main Map window, to try and find a place to teleport to, and I boggled as I realised I had about 25 LMs, all going to the same place. A quick scroll showed several instances of this, and I realised that - after half a dozen treasure hunts of late - it was about time I cleared my inventory of extraneous and duplicate landmarks and notecards. You know the kind of thing: the same LM and info notecard that is put into every single prize in a gridwide treasure hunt.
Then I got stuck into the other LMs and notecards (again duplicates) that I had received when grabbing multiple boxes of freebies from vendors.
One and a half hours later and my inventory is 939 items lighter. Let that be a reminder to you (and to me!) to sort that inventory more often.
939! Sheesh!
Edit: Okay, I broke the 1K barrier because I’ve also just deleted all of the hovering text scripts in my inventory. If I want a hovering text script, I can write one myself. They’re really easy, especially if you follow Torley’s video tutorial: Fun with floating text.
Total unwanted items now deleted = 1109.
I haven’t done one of these random screenshots posts for quite a while, so on rummaging through the folders on my PC, I thought I’d crop and upload a few for your enjoyment. Behind the cut you’ll find a selection of oddities, pretties, stuff that I thought was interesting or weird, or just downright fun.
Just a quick blogpost about the Red Stick International Animation hunt, which is going on grid-wide right now. The hunt runs until April 20th and you have to find lots of red sticks all over the Second Life grid. Some of them are easy to find, some are devilishly hard. Some are large-sized and some have been sized down. As with St Patrick’s Day hunt prizes often being green, so the Red Stick prizes are often (but not always!) red.
Head to Granymyr for your starting point. Wait for the area to rez, then head down to the stage in the main Red Stick area. Click the kiosk there (the one with the red stick man beside it) for a notecard containing LMs to all the locations.
A few pointers: some of these sticks are extremely well-hidden. You will never have noticed how much RED there is in many stores until now *g* Red signs and red colours ON signs is a good place to check out for sticks, by the way… You’ll be making good use of your camera controls for this hunt!
A few of the store owners have been crafty and hidden one or two of their red sticks on the hunt signs themselves in their stores, so make sure you check those, too. Some of the sticks are lying out in full view, others are partially-buried.
Sometimes the notecard LM will be for a store, but it’s the mall surrounding the store (usually owned by that store) that holds the sticks. Several of us spent a fruitless hour or so searching one store yesterday, only to find out that the sticks weren’t in that store; instead they were in the mall around it (which was owned by the store’s owner).
Team up with other hunters. You’ll probably find yourself bumping into other people searching for the sticks, and the old adage holds true about many hands making light work. More pairs of eyes means faster findings!
Alas, a few of the sticks don’t work. This isn’t Second Life glitchiness, either. I’ve right-click-edited those sticks and they’re not set to either buy for L$0 or touch-grab. They just don’t work! The two I’ve found so far are: one in Tuli, and one in Hairspray.
Lastly, have fun!
So what is SL for Nowt all about? (Hey, that rhymed…)
Initially, I wanted to see if it was possible to create an entirely new avatar in the Second Life world, without putting in any money of my own. I planned to do this by picking money from money trees only. No camping (sitting on chairs/mopping floors/doing other activities that make an area look busy, in return for small amounts of cash), and definitely no begging! I set myself the goal of a minimum 50L$ per day from the money trees, and met this target on most days. I even exceeded it a lot on a few days. Along the way, I spotted (and screencaptured) many odd things, met some interesting people, got annoyed at the rudeness of ’some people’ and generally had a fun time.
The blog has now taken a different path, since my original goals have now been met. Now, SL for Nowt is all about finding freebies and cheapies, and living a virtual existence in the Second Life world on the cheap.
SL for Nowt is an entirely unofficial blogsite, and is not endorsed by Linden Research, Inc. Second Life, SL, Linden Lab, LL, SLurl, Linden dollars, and L$ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended.
Contact: sl.for.nowt@googlemail.com
