Barstools and Hogwarts Skirts

So I'd wanted to name that place-with-freebies correctly: it's "Aly's Freebie Shop and Rental Office", in Atlit. (That's the one with the walls of many types of freebies, and 'outdoors' in the medieval courtyard, all the pretty fountains and gazobos and the sex beds.)

(And also parenthetically, having been to the two places in one night, the one above and the Free Fandom Project Store with all the Doctor Who stuff, including Dalek avatars, who could refrain from picturing two Daleks on a sex bed? Not I!)

But anyway.

As I was preparing to log into Second Life last night, I saw, in the list of alerts/notices that always appears in the lower left side of the screen, something about instructional videos. Curious if these instructions would include the 'storage prim' knowledge that I'd found so hard to locate, I delayed entering SL (not easy to bring myself to do!) to check it out.

Here's the URL: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials/Quicktips

These 'Quicktips' are advertised as being 2 minutes or less, and so may tempt even the most eager-to-get-in-world person into a short detour. My 'storage prim' question doesn't seem to be addressed in the list, but many other compelling topics are.

One I watched was "the 1-Prim Barstool Trick". And then, on going in-world, I made one and promptly copied it and started using the 4 barstools as storage prims. Yippee!!

Another thing I wanted to do, lastnight, was to make another outfit for myself that would be black, gray, and sky blue. Perhaps you will think it pretentious that my inspiration for this color scheme was a bar graph in a recent issue of The Economist, but such is the case. I find, in general, that the graphic artists employed by The Economist are quite plugged in to the latest color trends.

So I started looking through my Inventory and found a nice short-sleeved black velvet shirt that came with knee-high textured boots. These I right-clicked on, and chose 'wear'. The buckle-laden pants that also went with the outfit weren't to my taste, so I browsed on through the wealth of Inventoried freebies. The Hogwarts Uniform pieces I'd acquired at the Free Fandom Project Store included a skirt, which I tried and liked. Since it was apparently classified as an attachment 'round the waist, rather than as a skirt, I was able to add a sky blue satin underskirt (through the Appearance window, accessible by right-clicking my avatar) beneath the separate fronds of the Hogwarts skirt. A few modifications to jewelry I'd made in my first days in SL, and I was fairly happy with the outfit.

(If any newbies are reading: when you want to save the total look you have on, including not only clothing but modifications to your avatar's skin, head, body, etc., click the Make Outfit button when you're in Appearance mode. Be sure to check all the open boxes--skin, hair, etc.--except "rename clothing to folder name". Type in a name to help you remember the look [including, perhaps, the date and short description of the outfit.] Then click 'save'.)

So, fingers crossed that the system won't be terribly overloaded on this, the weekend, I will now try to get back in-world.

On the Internet, Hooray!!!1!!!!1!!!

I'd sent the URL for this blog to a couple of people and asked them to go to it, which I think is a requirement of getting any blog on the Internet. Glad it worked!

Of course, if there hadn't been anyone kind enough to go to the URL, and this blog had remained accessible only to me, then I suppose I could have been more extreme in expressing opinions about frustrations in Second Life. But heck, it's a shame to waste the resources of a blog site for a mere private diary.

Now that it's possible that strangers might see this (though in the tide of thousands of SL-related blogs, that's no sure thing), I guess I should amend the official description to be a little more explicit about what I'll be talking about. Though with a title like "Second Scrutiny", I suppose there's little danger that the blog will waste the time of those in search of descriptions of sex beds and breast-shading...

I do want to post about things that I couldn't find on the Internet, myself. Most immediately, that includes information about using storage prims--I searched and searched and didn't find what I needed until I finally got into the official Forums. And apparently not every user of Second Life does get access to the Forums, since such access requires that you give a credit card number to Linden Labs. (And actually I didn't find a real answer to the prims question even on the Forum---I just found some related information that I was able to use.)

So, to anyone searching:

• storage prims
• storage box
• storing Inventory items
• problems with storing

...and relying on the "Second Life Official Guide" (which does has some very valuable information, don't get me wrong), here's some help.

The Official Guide says (after other important tips, such as that you must be on land that allows building): "Click and drag the folder/items from your Inventory and onto the storage prim.; ...release the mouse button to drop the transferred item into the prim."

Which, as I've mentioned in an earlier post, works just fine for Landmarks, Notecards, and anything else that is NOT marked with an icon that looks like a little cube. If you follow those instructions with the Little Cube Icon items, they will NOT go into the prim---they will simply rez on top of the prim.

Not finding information on this anywhere, I tried all options on the "When Left-Clicked" drop-down list (at the bottom of the General tab of the Edit window for the storage prim). But as it turns out, what I needed to do was to go to the Contents tab of the Edit window (for the storage prim--get to it by right-clicking that prim), and drag the box-icon items directly on to that window from my Inventory.

This works, which can be confirmed by closing the Edit window and then right-clicking the storage prim and clicking Open. The box-icon items are there in the list, along with those non-box-icon items which CAN be put in the storage prim using the Official Guide method (of dragging them right onto the prim itself).

Wheew!!

So, since gaining this knowledge, and therefore going out to acquire boatloads of freebies, I've been kept pretty busy putting things I don't think I'll use right away into storage prims. It does seem as though SL is more laggy when I have around 5,000 items in inventory, than when I had around 2,000. Or that could be my imagination. But I think I'd like to aim for around 2,000, just in case.

I'd acquired those freebies in just two places, the night I found out how to make the storage prim take even the box-icon items.

The first one was the Free Fandom Project store in Lippert. Most of the free stuff seemed to be Doctor Who-related. I'm not the most knowledgeable fan of the show--I've seen all the Tom-Baker-era episodes, but by no means all of the others--but who can resist acquiring a free Tardis? The store also has plenty of Buffy stuff, including Buffy and Willow avatars; I think there was some Justice League stuff and items from other sci-fi/comics/fantasy franchises, too.

('Feeling Rich', as the sign said, I ended up leaving a small tip.)

The second place was in (I think--I will have to confirm this when I go back in-world) Atlit. This is a place that primarily rents skyboxes and other real-estate, but there's a nice on-the-grass-in-the-medieval-courtyard shop outside, with plenty of sex beds and nice fountains and gazebos and other home decor (mostly) items. "Aleshanee's Design" is in my notes. But in the room that you teleport into, are two walls of freebies to click on---clothes, prim hair, 'gadgets', business-related items such as auto-vendors, textures, gestures, skins, boats, buildings---lots of stuff! I'm excited about 'unpacking' it all! Though I will probably have to go to a public sandbox to rez the buildings---my little plot of land doesn't support enough prims.

Last night I took the time to make a new folder for Shoes and transfer whatever shoes I could find in all the dozens of free boxes and folders---after looking through several thousand items I'd ended up with only a dozen or so pairs.

Shoes, I suspect, will be one of those things for which I will have to lay out cash. As readers may have noticed, fashion is by no means my number one priority. But everything I hear about SL includes the information that people DO expect other avatars to live up to at least a certain level of appearance. And shoes are something that you can't easily make out of the Appearance window. Shoes that aren't fuzzy at the line where skin meets shoe require multiple prims, and good textures. So in general, people aren't as likely to put shoes into freebie boxes/folders, the way they are shirts and pants (which are relatively easier to make).

Like most people who get interested in Second Life, I've put in some time tinkering with my avatar's appearance. Even though my main goal is to get good at building, notto be a fashion icon, I still want to 'look respectable' and non-newbie-ish.

So I will just have to grin and bear the expenditure of a dollar or two, US, to get myself some nice shoes!

AARGGHH!!! No Internet Access! +HOORAY!!

As mentioned, I've had a busy work schedule this week. Still, I had carved out a few minutes this morning to write about last night's Second Life session.

But....NO INTERNET ACCESS!!!

It would be a topic for a different blog, as to whether Internet service providers are increasingly likely to boot their paying customers off the network, and/or not permit them to log onto the network, so as to save on the costs of providing sufficient access to service.....their paying customers.

Obviously, if you can get people to pay for something that you aren't investing enough to actually provide, that's a good short-term business plan. All that revenue coming in, and not all that expenditure going out!

Which sort of brings me to Second Life, and the copious documentation of the position "they take your money but they don't provide the service."

So far, though I have had some minor problems that I think they could address at little or no cost, I haven't encountered the difficulties that many attribute to LL's alleged money-grubbing ways. Which is not a brown-nosing tribute to LL, but more of an acknowledgement that I haven't been around enough to really know the merits and demerits of the argument.

But that will change with time.

In the meantime: 1) HUZZAH, I finally got on the official Forums!!!! and 2) DOUBLEHUZZAH, I found therein a hint that allowed me to move those box-icon-ed items in my Inventory into storage prims! (So naturally I went forth and acquired more freebies!)

(more anon, if I can still get onto the Internet.....)

Network Red Button on the Lag Meter!!!

So I didn't get much done in the short session I had today. (Long workday today and for the next couple of days.)

I did get green leather cuffs made for the green leather workgloves I want to wear for a while (torus, shrunk and hollowed and Textured and tinted). And I got the redwood pontoon boat done...but it wasn't moving as it did back when it was the Library Kart 1.0. Which could be something to do with the Network Lag, or could be that when I changed the shape of the root prim---the one that has the Kart script in it---I did something that altered the script, so that the boat won't function.

I'll check that tomorrow.

I did come to the educated guess that since the 'water' I'll be able to make is actually plywood with a water texture and movement script added, it would make more sense to work with a wheeled-vehicle script than with a boat script.

Or at least I think that the 'actual water' in Linden-created seas (and in the inlets and lakes that terraforming creates) has different properties for vehicles than does the plywood-with-water-texture-and-movement-scripts. That would be logical.

But to find out for certain, and to get an answer to my storage prim problem (I STILL can't drag an Inventory item that has the box icon into a rezzed prim....aaarrggghh!!!)----I think I need to find an in-world class in which I can ask questions. Because the books aren't specific enough, and I haven't been able to successfully search answers on ye olde Internet.

So: tomorrow is another day.

Frustrations and fun

I can see that learning to work with scripts is going to take a lot of time. I found one free Boat script, at the LSL Wiki site--and when I copied it into Word, so I could refer to it and make notes, it was 27 pages. Of course some of the code was for making the sails fill with air and the tiller move and so on--refinements that I'm not looking for, yet. But I'm not experienced enough to be able to abstract what I need to simply make a rezzed tub float across my pond.

I tried copy-pasting a script from the boat I got in a box of free vehicles, but that didn't work because I couldn't get my avatar to sit in the little wooden tub I'd made from a half-sphere---she kept sitting on the underside of it, embedded in the ground in sitting position. Very much like the characters in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

So I need to learn how to apply the "when left-clicked" "Sit on Object" option in such a way that an avatar will sit where I want it to sit.

A more frustrating problem was that I couldn't make a storage prim that would accept 'objects'. I could get it to accept anything that didn't have the little box icon---notecards went in just fine, as did items of clothing marked with clothing-icons, scripts, and landmarks. (I know they went in okay because I was able to see them in the list that opened up when I right-clicked on my storage prim and then clicked Open.)

I know that it IS possible to put items with the box icon into storage prims (which, I notice in my reading, are often called "Boxes"). I've received gift boxes which, when opened, clearly show such items in their Open list.

It's probably something very simple that I've overlooked, though I was systematic in trying a lot of things to make them go in. I tried all the not-clearly-wrong choices in the the When Left-Clicked box on the General tab, one at a time; I made sure I had plenty of prims available on my land; I tried dragging one of the box-icon-marked items into a storage prim first, so that I could rule out 'this box has been established as not being for this type of item' as being the problem.

Well, my books are no help on this---all they warn about is that entire folders can't be dragged into a storage prim. I need to look for an on-line tutorial that's specifically about storage prims, and/or find a forum in which I can ask my question about the box-icon-marked items.

It's important because my Newbie Clock is running down, and I want to acquire as much free stuff as I can. Of course, not all free stuff is reserved for Newbies, but some of it is. And who knows what I might find useful, later on when I'd have to pay for that particular item?

So I want to learn how to do this.

One related problem that intrigues me: I might have looked for an answer to this storage prim thing first at the official "forums.secondlife.com" site. But I still haven't found a way to access it. Apparently a lot of people have this problem, because the SL site has a whole list of things to try, for those who can't get access. I've tried logging on through Firefox (I normally use IE); no good. I certainly have been logged into SL, so that's not it. I wonder what the problem is? Maybe the forums aren't just a message board site on the Internet; maybe they have to be accessible from Inworld, too? And that's why it's so complicated?

Well, perhaps I'll find the answer in whatever forum I CAN log into. Guess I'll go looking, now. Gotta solve that storage prim problem!

A New Pond and the Question of Self-Sufficiency

When I logged on last night I intended to be good and get that darn Inventory organized (how easy it is to put off these less glamorous tasks!) But I ended up creating a pond. Or, to be fair, I should say that I ended up following directions in one of the SL books I've bought (about which, more later).

The directions were good and I feel fairly happy with the result, though I want to make refinements and additions. But the experience gave me my first chance to work with scripts--in one case, just dragging one of the existing Library scripts onto the pond, and in the other hand, actually typing up a script. I didn't create it--I copied it from one of the books--but I was proud of myself for doing that successfully, since the script was carried over to two columns and it would have been easy to make a mistake.

At least this gets me over the hump of being intimidated by scripts. The more I work with them, the easier it will become (and for a non-programmer, this is progress).

So I wanted a fish in my pond. I searched for Free Fish and went to a nice shop in Nordloop that offers a free fishing pole and a pond in which you can acquire fish of the trout and bass variety. Of course I want to put koi in the pond, but I thought I'd at least play with these.

Now I need to find a script to make them swim. (If possible---it may be that since they aren't made of flexible prims, they can't swim...we shall see.) Swimming is essential, as having an inanimate trout sitting on top of the pond will NOT make the impression I'd prefer to make. (!)

But in the course of my searches, I did see some beautiful shops selling swimming fish (tropicals, koi, octopi, and so on). And I do have some Lindens because I didn't buy as much land as I originally intended to buy.

So I may go back to one of them and buy a swimming koi...but something other than mere cheapness impels me to try to find a script for my still fish, first.

Some people come to Second Life to create an amazingly detailed recreation of real life, or at least of the real life they'd like to have. And I can understand and appreciate that.

But there's another category of people: those who are less interested in making an impressive doll house and more intrigued with making things themselves. It may turn out that I'm more of a doll house person than I think (I've seen some really gorgeous environments, and I admire those who put them together). For the moment, however, I'm a do-it-yourselfer. We'll see how that works out.....

A Group Invitation, and the Seductions of Free Stuff

When I logged on last night, a blue Invite card was in the upper right corner: Join This Group! It was a person's name, and what appeared to be a business. I thought for a moment: what if this is one of my neighbors? I don't want to give offense....maybe I should click on all the land around here and see if the name on the Invite comes up...

But I didn't. I decided that if the person actually did turn out to be a neighbor, I'd just apologize for declining the Group membership. The odds of that being the case seemed fairly small, though. I'd read somewhere that merchants can do mass mailings, so this was probably something like that. (Maybe people do mass mailings to all Premium members, or maybe just to all who own land on a particular continent....? I suppose I'll find out eventually.)

So I proceeded to work on my To Do list. And really didn't get much further than trying to organize my Inventory.

The thing is, I've acquired so much free stuff---from Help Island Public (I never did see the original Help Island), from the Shelter at Isabel, and from a few other places---that I've never even seen most of it. So I made subfolders for clothes and for accessories that I won't carry around. I'll put them in a storage prim. But I wanted to at least look at them, first.

I got only as far as some of the pants, really. There was my avatar, pants-less, standing in full view of anyone---though as I was the only person on the sim at the time, the exhibitionism didn't seem to be all that outrageous. One pair of pants after another went on, then off.

Looking at them, I could see a fairly wide variety in workmanship. No doubt people give away items they didn't put a lot of work into, and some were clearly first attempts at pants creation. Others had nice detailing, attached belts, appliqués, studs, and other signs that care had been taken.

One of the most effective ideas the Lindens ever had was to keep the creator's name on all items that go out into free circulation in Second Life. That way, a person's efforts can always be rewarded with recognition and appreciation, which could translate into actual cash income (if the grateful recipient of the item decides to seek out more by the same creator).

So Second Life provides not only the fun of making stuff---pretty amazing stuff, in some cases---but the knowledge that it might actually pay off in a tangible way.

And this is part of what I'm finding seductive. The free stuff is fun to acquire; getting something for nothing seems to be inherently attractive to us humans. But beyond the somewhat mindless pleasure of acquisitiveness is the recognition that the stuff acquired has a traceable history. And the implication of that is: anything I make will, throughout its existence, remain to my credit (or discredit if it happens to be shoddy, of course).

And that is an amazing spur to creation.

I don't know that I'll get good enough at using the building tools to become capable of making things that other people will enjoy. I hope so. Though I do recognize how much there is to learn.

However it works out: I am having fun with the attempt!

To-do list, and Shirley Temple

So there my cabin sits, on my land. It's the cabin that comes in everyone's Library; a few days after I registered, I'd gone to a sandbox (picked at random from those that Search brought up) and looked at stuff in the Library. I turned the cabin teal and shortened its pilings so that it sits on flat ground pretty well.

Last night I took it from my Inventory (where it went after I messed with it, and clicked on it and chose 'Take'), and put it on the ground. Then I clicked on it and messed with Edit functions to move it where I wanted it. I clicked 'physical' on the Edit menu, which may have been a mistake...When I rezzed two Library chairs and tried to drag them into the cabin and position them---I'd made them Physical, too---the chairs and my poor avatar bounced around the cabin as if a poltergeist had gotten loose in there!

I finally ended up going to my Inventory and clicking on the landmark I'd made for my land (back before I bought it). So I escaped the experience of banging off the walls and ceilings and bouncing chairs....though now I kind of think I should do it again, but be in Mouselook. Hey, this could be a whole new favorite activity in Second Life!

Okay, so I need to figure out all that. That's on the to-do list. As is locating a free-or-cheap house that's lower-prim, and has an equally small footprint (my two plots together are 32m x 32 m, but I want a lot of free space for rezzing things and trying landscaping and so on). This house is 80 prims, and that's too much of the 234-prim 'budget' I have for this land.

I also need to organize my inventory. That's something no one needs land for---you just create a second window (from File) and make new subfolders in the second window, and drag stuff from the first window to the new subfolders.

I've done a LOT of reading about Second Life, and one thing that almost everyone says is, try to keep your Inventory down to small numbers. It's very easy to accumulate a lot of free stuff, and it can slow down your SL experience if you drag it around with you all the time. So even though getting organized didn't call for the purchase of land, getting some of my 'stuff' out of my Inventory did.

Well, that's not entirely true--another alternative would have been to create an alt account ($10 one-time charge) and transfer stuff into the alt's Inventory. Still a third choice would have been to rent storage space.

But since I wanted land for other purposes, I decided to go ahead and get it; one thing that I'll use it for is to create storage prims and put stuff in them. If I make simple ones, they count only the one prim against my land's budget of 234 prims. So making this useful item is also on my immediate to-do list.

A final item that I'll try to learn to do tonight is to make a Calling Card.

In my reading, I'd come across an account of how one of the Lindens deals with the many, many, many residents who offer them Friendship when they meet inworld. Since the Lindens are about as high-status as it's possible to be in SL, they would shortly have tens of thousands of Friends, if they were to accept every Offer....so, this article said, this Linden was in the habit of handing the person making the offer a calling card. This way the person didn't feel dissed, even though the offer of Friendship hadn't been accepted.

Anyone who's stood somewhere organizing their Inventory (say), or Searching, or looking at the World Map, will have had the experience of someone walking up, saying "Hi", and---upon getting a "Hi" back---instantly Offering Friendship.

Now, I'm not saying that I will never accept (or offer) Friendship. But I much prefer not to accept people who haven't even talked with me, other than the 'hi'.

I don't mean to sound judgmental about people who do this. Odds are, these are people who have accepted the MySpace/Facebook philosophy: quantity is EVERYTHING!!! My guess is that those who go around Offering Friendship to people they haven't really conversed with are operating on this 'gotta get a huge number of Friends' belief. And that's fine. I just don't happen to want to participate in that.

But at the same time, I hate declining someone. It just feels.....rude. I HAVE declined everyone who's asked, because I just haven't been making the attempt to interact with people yet (that will come). I've been saying things like 'thanks, but I'm still trying to get my bearings in Second Life, and I'm not really getting into the Friends experience yet'.

So, day before yesterday, the day that I went Premium (but couldn't yet buy Lindens and thus couldn't yet buy land, per LL policy), I was standing in a secluded corner of a sim I like, Searching properties. I'd been doing this for two or three days, as a prelude to making the decision on whether or not to go Premium.

Anyway, around the corners of the Map, I saw some...shoes and typing. The shoes of an avatar, and the typing of someone doing Local Chat to me. So I got into chat and said 'hi' to the person's 'hello'. (The avatar was female, so I'll refer to this person as 'she', though....who knows?)

As soon as I responded with that Hi, I got the blue box in the upper right corner of the screen: ________is Offering Friendship. I got that sinking feeling, because I knew it was likely I'd want to decline. But of course I stopped Searching and talked with the person.

Now, this person was perfectly courteous. I do not want to seem to be criticizing her. But it was clear to me from both her avatar's appearance, and her conversation, that we wouldn't really enjoy each other's company. I tried to mention things I thought would discourage her---that I had enjoyed touring one of the Sistine Chapels in SL, that I loved high-culture stuff in general, that I enjoy discussing books----in short, that I am a nerd.

But she still persisted, so I finally said 'gotta go, now, have a happy day'. And maybe 10 minutes after I'd teleported away, I finally clicked that "Decline".

NOTE TO LINDENS: I wish the Offer Friendship box had a Close option, that we could use instead of Decline, which seems so cold.......

Anyway.

Thinking about this later, I wondered if possibly there had been more to this than the MySpace/Facebook-rack-up-the-Friends factor. The avatar had been sort of short-adult height, but the hair, the dress, the shoes, had been VERY reminiscent of child star Shirley Temple. Had this been a person who was in search of.....people who'd be attracted to that? Not necessarily in a sexually transgressive sense; I gather there are a certain number of people in Second Life who role-play being parents or children. Had this person been looking for that?

Well, I may never know. Certainly there are more things in heaven and Second Life than are dreamt of in my philosophy....

Today I Bought My First Piece of Land, and I WON'T BE ABLE TO SLEEP!

....okay, it was only land made of pixels. At least the way it looked to me. To a more knowledgeable person, it would be land made of...code, I guess.

But to me, it's a thing of beauty. And it's real in a way that surprises me.

Like many people, I'd heard of Second Life some months before going to the website and making the decision to load the software. People were making REAL MONEY in this virtual environment! And I'm not saying that's not an interesting concept (most of us could always use a little more cash).

But what actually got me to sign on was a machinima clip on The Daily Show, showing avatars congregating for a debate on the Democratic Presidential candidates. Since I'd been spending a lot of my free time following the campaign, the weird amalgam of politics and imaginative creation simply--got to me.

So---many adventures later---here I am, A Land Owner.

Will I run afoul of the person with the Ban Lines to the west, or to the person with the Instant Eject (though the info card that pops up says "15 seconds"....HAH!!) to the east?

Will the speculator who bought the land I'd wanted (but couldn't buy for a full day after becoming a Premium Member because Linden Labs doesn't allow you to buy ANY Lindens the same day you buy an Annual Membership), and raised the price substantially because I was foolish enough to land on that parcel too many times, and who left a LAND MINE (?!???!?!?) on the property, return to.....do something that will bug me?

Will I be able to sleep tonight, considering the level of excitement I feel about this whole thing (I GET TO LANDSCAPE MY LAND AND PUT UP MY DREAM HOUSE AND PUT SOME OF MY INVENTORY STUFF IN STORAGE AND SO, THEN, GO GATHER MORE FREE STUFF yippee yippee yippee...)???

No. I can almost promise you that I will not.