Those Little Questions

Here’s another post in my Those Little Questions series. All of these questions come from the search terms that lead people to this blog, and you can find all previous questions posts by using the tag at the end of the post or in the sidebar.

Can you leave a note at someones house in Second Life?

Unless they have some form of mailbox or dropbox (which only business owners tend to make use of) then no. What you can do if you want to get in touch with the owner of a house, is to right-click on it and select Edit. Look under the General tab and you’ll see buttons for Creator and Owner. Click the Owner button and you’ll be sent to the profile of the person who owns the house. BE WARNED: This may not be the person who is living on the land! Often, rented land will come complete with an empty home (which will be ‘owned’ by the landlord), so I suggest you also use your camera to look inside and go into edit mode on a piece of placed furniture and check the owner of that, to make sure you’re not going to contact a landlord. Then, either send them an IM or write out a notecard and drag it onto their profile. Do please read their profile quickly first, as some people prefer to be contacted one way instead of another.

Are group chats logged in Second Life?

Yes. If you’re a member of a group in Second Life, and your client is configured to save conversations then all group chats that pop up on your screen will be saved with the rest of your logs. Everyone else in the group with those same settings will also have the chats saved.

How to change shape fast in sl

Have more than one shape in your inventory. Then, when you need to change your shape quickly, wear the new shape. It will immediately replace the old one.

How do you defeat red ban lines on sl?

If you’re not meant to be on that land, then you shouldn’t even be trying! However, general bans (eg: no public access or limited to group members only) tend to only go up to 50m, so flying above that height will get you past them if you simply want to fly over the land. You won’t be able to drop down onto the land once you’re over the ‘wall’ of banlines, though. It’s not a wall; it’s a box, and if you try to drop down then you’ll just end up bouncing on the top of that ‘box’. If, however, you are on a named banlist (ie: the land owner has banned you by name) then you’ll have to fly above 768m to get over the banlines.

What is a foot shaper?

A foot shaper is something you must wear with your shoes. It will squeeze your avatar’s feet into a peculiar shape so that their pixels won’t poke out through your shoes. In recent years, shoemakers in Second Life have used invisiprims (prims scripted to obliterate avatar ‘flesh’) to stop this from happening as well (although you still need to wear the foot shaper they provide). A big disadvantage of invisiprims comes when you’re standing on anything with an alpha (transparent or partially-transparent) layer, such as a fringed rug or Second Life’s natural water: the shape of the invisiprim will also obliterate the texture beneath it. A newer advance is the avatar Alpha Layer, which is kind of like a sock that does the same thing without that alpha glitch. It’s currently only effective while using the official Second Life Viewer 2. Other third party viewers are implementing it, but at the time of writing this there are still a few glitches in third party versions.

SL difference between skin and shape

A shape is a set of slider settings that will change the overall shape of your avatar, from the size of their feet to the tilt of their nose. You can access this by right-clicking on yourself and selecting Edit Appearance (note: if you are currently wearing a No Modify shape then you won’t be able to change it). A skin is the layer that goes over the top of your shape, kind of like a tattoo that contains all of your features.

Newbie Notes: How to archive things in a box

You’ll often see me, in my inventory management posts, exhorting you to “shove ’em in a prim”, to “archive them” or to “box them up”, but it’s only in the past couple of days that I realised the newbies among us probably haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about!

With that in mind, this post is all about putting things in boxes, and what options you have with those boxes. Behind the cut you’ll find out all about:

– Where to make your boxes
– How to make your boxes
– How to make lots of boxes quickly (for those big archiving jobs!)
– How to make the boxes easier to open at a later date
– How to fill the boxes (and what the optimum amount of contents is)
– What will and won’t go into those boxes
– Permissions

Because Linden Lab are in the middle of trialling a new viewer (Viewer2, or for the purposes of this post, V2) I’m trying to guide you using screenshots of both viewers, as the experience is vastly different between older and newer viewers. Please be aware that V2 is still being worked on so these screenshots may not be accurate in the future. The basic premise remains the same, though.

Hop behind the cut!

New default avatars!

Oh my gosh, what a surprise awaited me when I checked the Library folder of my Inventory. Under ‘clothing’ and then ‘initial outfits’ are twelve new default avatars created by Adam n Eve. I tried on all the female options, and girls you need to look at them! If nothing else, the shoes and hair deserve places in your main folders, and some of the outfits are fabby, too! Guys, there are outfits for you, too, but you need to check those out yourselves; I didn’t have time to get around to them today.

Here’s a sample outfit: the Female Rocker. It comes with everything you see here, including two colours of t-shirt.

Hop behind the cut for the others.

Those little questions

Every day I glance at the search engine terms that bring people to this blog, and sometimes I see questions that, when put together, would make an interesting blogpost: a kind of random Q&A. So that’s exactly what I did.

Here is the first set of questions from the past week (my stats cut the final parts of most questions off, but they’re usually fairly obvious). Every time I get enough new questions I’ll make another post like this one.

How to check if friend has removed you from their friends list?
Simple: their name will no longer show up on your friends list.

Where are skin files located in Second Life?
In the Body Parts folder of your inventory. However, if you have bought a skin (even if it’s a freebie) it may appear in its own folder underneath all the main folders in your inventory (and the folder could have any name). It’s a good habit, at the beginning of your Second Life, to organise your inventory as you go along, so moving that skin folder into your Body Parts folder would make sense ;)

How do I sit on a chair to win in Second Life?
This is called a Lucky Chair. Lucky Chairs (there are also Lucky Boards) have a prize (or prizes) loaded into them, and they display a letter of the alphabet (sometimes a number, or a question mark). The chair/board will display this random letter/number/question mark for a set length of time and then (assuming nobody wins) will change to a new one. Most chairs and boards will show how many minutes remain before the letter changes. You win if your first name begins with the same letter that’s on the chair/board. If the chair/board is displaying a question mark then it’s a ‘wildcard’ round and anyone can sit/click and win. Right-click on the chair and select ‘sit’, or left-click on the board, and you will win the prize. The chair/board will then change to a new letter. More info on lucky chairs, lucky boards, and also on Midnight Mania can be found here.

How do I retire my avatar in Second Life?
Log into secondlife.com using your avatar name and password, and go to your Account page (click the arrow to the right of ‘Account’ in the left-hand sidebar to expand it). From there, click Cancel Account.

Are all money trees for newbies only?
In the main, yes. I’ve not seen or heard of any that pay out to older accounts.

How to tell if a ‘female’ avatar is really a man?
I’m afraid you can’t. Voice-changing software is readily-availably and extremely convincing. In addition, many people portray a different gender in SL than their RL gender, and for many reasons. Insisting that someone ‘voices’ with you is no guarantee that what you hear is genuinely them, and insisting on webcam (which, since SL currently has no webcam facility, would need to be via an external application) may cause offence.

How to buy a money tree in Second Life?
Go to the Wolfhaven Money Tree Headquarters in Silla: secondlife://Silla/176/37/74

De-noob for nothing

Female? Just joined SL? Need to de-noob as fast as you can? Follow this guide (and do it fast; one of these offers won’t be around for long). Get this look, entirely for nothing:

Hop behind the cut :)

PSA: Group Invites

It’s happened to us all (or, if you’re brand new to Second Life, it will happen to you soon enough). We land in a new region or store, and from the top-right of our viewer, down slides the ubiquitous ‘blue flag’ of a group invite. Just like this one:

Blahblah Avatarname has invited you to join a group…

Well, let’s just say it’s a store you’ve seen featured on a blog. You loved the style of the clothes in the store, and you know the store owner gives out regular freebies. You want to know when those freebies will be available, so joining the store’s group seems to be the best way, since that’s how most store owners let their customers know about new things (and freebies) they’ve made.

So there’s the group invite. “Yay!” you think. “I don’t have to hunt around for a group join thingy to click!” Your cursor hovers over the ‘join’ button, you’re about to tap the mouse, when suddenly Mar looms up behind you and hollers in your ear:

WHOA THERE, COWBOY/GIRL!

Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute. Hold up with the click-happy finger!

Read that group invite again. Sure, you’ve seen them a hundred times before, but actually read it. I’ll wait…

…

…

Uh-huh. Did you spot that first time around? The 1000L$ join fee? Chances are that you probably did this time around, because you’re reading a blog post. But when you’re in-world and you’re buying stuff and grabbing freebies, clicking on that blue window repeatedly starts to lead you into SL’s version of Motorway Blindness. Click… click… click, and before you know it you’ve paid 250L$ for something you thought was a freebie, or you’ve accepted a TP offer to a packed-out party when you’re naked and trying on demo skins (it’ll happen one day; trust me!)

The moral of this post is to remind all of you reading this one thing: pay attention to those blue flags. Don’t just glance at them, especially when you’ve just logged in-world and you’re clicking away all the inventory offers, Midnight Mania gifts and all the other stuff we get bombarded with when we first rez in SL for the day.

Reminder

Free-to-join group invite:

Pay-to-join group invite:

The XStreet SL Newbie

Think you have to hop around tons of stores in-world in order to look good?

Think again.

Head over to Xstreet SL. It’s Second Life’s official out-world shopping area. Log into it using your avatar name and password (the same ones you use when you log into SL itself) and click the ‘Marketplace’ button. There’s a LOT of free stuff available. Yes, some of it’s crappy, a lot of it is demos (a tip is to use boolean search operators to weed those out, so if you want free skins type in +skin -demo -demos) but there are some gems out there.

I thought I’d try to equip a female avatar with all the basics, for nothing at all. Did I manage to do it? Hop behind the cut and see ;)

Blue, blue, Peppermint Blue

Saving the best for last today. Many of you have heard of Peppermint Blue, the great ‘Assistance Set’ place that offers limited time complete avatar kits for free. Well, they’ve re-opened after a remodel, and they have set out more than 130 kits on two floors of their new store.

You’ll land here, so take one of those blue teleporters to the store:

Many of these are complete avatar kits, for both males and females. You’ll get shapes, skins, eyes, shoes, hair, clothing, and all for free!

Guys, there’s a big section of great stuff for you, too:

Here’s Mar in just one of the many full avatar kits available there. Many of them come with multiple skin options and avatar sizes/shapes, as well as multiple eye options, and other useful gadgets like height meters. They really are excellent full starter kits for newbies (and anyone else!)

Newbie Notes: Nervous newbie? Be a Tiny!

Maybe you’ve just decided to check out this Second Life thing, but you’re wary of all the bad stuff you’ve heard about it. You know: the tabloid stories about sex, real life divorces, paedophiles, sex and more sex. But nonetheless, you’ve seen some pictures of Second Life, it looks pretty cool (apart from all that nasty stuff you heard about) and you want to check it out. But you’re kind of nervous about all that nasty stuff.

Or maybe you’re a bit of a loner, you’re not into socialising. You just want to explore without having people randomly saying ‘Hi! Where are you from? What’s your real name and what do you do?” to you.

Or maybe… maybe you just want to be different.

What’s the solution? (Apart from not believing all the tabloid rumours, most of which were only written to sell more newspapers…)

Be a Tiny :)

What’s a Tiny? Well, a Tiny is a very small avatar, and usually pretty cute, too. Tinies don’t get hit on, nobody will proposition them for sex, Bloodlines vampires are very unlikely to offer to bite them (the animation for an adult vampire isn’t going to work on an itty bitty tiny), and best of all? They feel safe. And in a world where you might not feel completely at ease, safety – even if it’s only a sensation of safety – is important.

So hop behind the cut, and I’ll show you where you can find some free Tiny avatars.

Walkabout: Newbie Areas – Ambling Around Ambat Infohub

This is the second in my alphabetical Walkabout series, where I take a look around a Welcome Area or Infohub (where newbies might find themselves first rezzing on Mainland). Today I explored the next official landmark I had, and that was Ambat Infohub, created by Osprey Therian.

Ambat is a small, but very pretty little infohub that has an NCI (New Citizens Inc) Infonode attached to it. So, while it’s small, it’s packed with useful stuff for newbies.

Hop behind the cut for some screencaps showing what I found at the infohub and the surrounding regions.