The Unofficial Complete Fool’s guide to Second Life

The Unofficial Complete Fool’s guide to Second Life, written by Foolish Frost.

This is what I found, while surfing through a lot of blogs. It is an interesting guide for those who are just starting with Second Life.

Things have changed in the meanwhile, The login place doesn’t look the same anymore, yet, all the actions of the avatar stays the same, so, again, this might be a good guide for beginners and for older avatars who are suffering from Alzheimer.;)

I have to admit, now a days you get a really good education before you are allowed to enter the grid. You have to follow four directions, and each direction will explain to you how to walk, how to speak, how to dress, how to use the chat box with history, how to fly etc…

I remember, when I first came to Second Life, I crashed immediately, while flying too far away from the initial place (was to curious, I suppose). The second time I logged in, I could already enter the grid without having learned the basic stuff. So everything I know from Second Life, is based on a self learning process, as I am sure, a lot of us, are still learning too. Every day we find a new application, a new setting, and Linden still finds it necessary to add things, where we did not ask for…..;), instead of solving the bugs.

This guide is probably only a few months old, but seems already old fashioned, as things have changed in SL. Nevertheless I would recommend this guide to all new starters, who have already found their way to this blog.;)

At that time it appears, that it was possible to build anywhere you would like to, hereby disturbing the owner’s land with prims, he didn’t ask for, and limit his own ability of building.

You can download the guide from this side as a pdf-file, and print it out.

Have fun reading it! I did….;)

Good behaviour in SL

After several months being in SL, wandering around, I thought it would be interesting to publish some ideas for newbies, how they should behave in SL. In the first period they arrive in Second Life, they think there are no barriers, and they can ask and do whatever they please.

Some of these points might even be interesting for all other avatars as well, as it is never too late to get some education.;)

This was already posted before but I have adjusted it a bit, as some things did change over the time in SL.

• Don’t offer friendship to people you haven’t even talked to. Make an effort to get to know someone.

It is difficult to decline friendship when it is offered, but would it not be preferable that those people should present themselves before offering their friendship?

• Don’t ask strangers for a lot of real-life information on first meeting them. Conversely, don’t offer a lot of personal information yourself.

In RL we all have psychological defenses, which prevent us from behaving inappropriate. In SL though, those defenses are thrown away, at least in the beginning. People have the impression that they have direct access to other people’s minds and thoughts. Try not to demand real life details from people you have just met, and try very hard to avoid divulging a lot of personal information. This effect does wear off, to some extent.

• If an avatar chooses a male or female character for his or herself, it is polite to treat people as the sex they appear.

Sometimes we know that an avatar is from the opposite sex in rl, as they appear in SL. Please treat this avatar as the sex they have chosen. So a female avatar should be treated as a female, even if you know this avie is a male in RL..

• Don’t offer teleports without an exchange of IMs first.

There is nothing quite so annoying as getting a peremptory teleport offer without any sort of discussion taking place first. It is polite to contact the person by IM first, and then if the person is agreeable, to send a teleport, not before.

• Don’t appear at a friend’s side without warning, even if they allow you to map them.

This could also be annoying, a friend appearing at your side without warning, This will be easily prevent by withholding the ability to be mapped by friends. But even if you have a SLurl of someone’s home, try to warn him/her that you are coming and ask if that is ok. Imagine, you drop by just at the time your friend is adjusting their skin, or heck, even worse, they may just be involved in a delicate conversation or action.

• Try to be succinct when contacting someone you don’t know.

It can be quiet annoying when someone is contacting you, while you are in the middle of a complex texture job, struggling with your prims. I can imagine , for example when you have a shop, and customers want to ask you in which color they can have this or that. Instead of starting with “Hi”, following by “Can I ask you something”, and “Sorry to bother, but……” It would be better to try to contact the other person, to whom you would like to ask something, to phrase your question into one sentence, explaining what you are looking for. You will maybe not get an answer right away, but at least, you did not embarrass the other person, who you, in fact, don’t know at all. I am sure that you will get an answer, just be patient.

• This goes double if you are IMing a group.

Try to sum it all up in your first post when IMing to a group. This allows those who aren’t interested or can’t help to cancel out of discussion, and those who can or are interested to stay and chat. Starting the conversation with hi! when you know there will be 40 “hi!”s in reply is just mean. In fact it would be better not to start a conversation in a group. Just announcing an event is ok, not a whole discussing. And if you have the urge of starting a conversation in group, start it, and if you have the responses, continue in a conference, if necessary.

• Don’t explore someone else’s house unless invited.

Not respecting your neighbour’s space in SL can be as serious as not respecting your RL neighbour’s space. People get angry and vengeful. Try to treat people always as you would wish to be treated, and that means only exploring the places you are invited to explore. If in doubt — ask!

The fact that it is possible to do this in SL without ever stepping foot over the threshold, by moving your camera around seems to be beside the point.

• Do try to learn about people by reading their profiles.

This one is a very handy tool. You can pick up all sorts of useful information from people’s profiles, from information about their likes and dislikes, to special places to explore. I have a friend who already has discovered several beautiful places just by the information of the profiles. Make a habit of clicking into the profiles of the people you meet, and getting to know them a bit.

All these issue’s seem to be normal to us, yet, not all of them are respected by some avatars. RL is not at all the same as SL.

I think if these “rules” should be respected by everyone in SL, and don’t worry, most of the avatars I do meet, are respectful, our second life would be so much more agreeable.

SLBlogmeet June 16th

Yesterday evening there was another blogger gathering at Veyron's. This was also the first time that I could attend the meeting. I was anxious to see all my fellow bloggers, most of them for the first time. So I did pull on my best suit and tp'd me to the place.
It started as a party, went to the bridge of the "Enterprise", cause as you know, the theme was Sci-Fi, and ended as a party at the Holodeck. The music was great, everything was in fact, but I did miss the agenda !?. It was well written on the SL Bloggers Wiki, every point we needed to talk about, but at the end, nothing was discussed, as far as I know at least. So there is still a lot to talk about.....when is the next blogger gathering?;)
I hope that, despise all the efforts that has been done, and I know it is not easy to set a date and time that will suit everyone, at the next blogmeet, there will be a lot more colleagues at the gathering.
Check out all pictures at my flickr stream, and on SL Boggers Wiki.

Problem poseballs solved !!

It seems that I have found the cause of my poseball problem, where I have been struggling with for months now.
It appears that when I leave my glasses off, I have no problems with any poseballs what so ever.
I need to investigate it more thoroughly, but I am convinced that this simple solution will help me get over my troubles and frustrations.
It might be interesting for those who are dealing with the same problems. Check the items you are wearing!
This means that, in the future, Looker will have probably no more glasses, but he can at least sit down, without falling through the chair.;))
Thanks Tiana and Dalien for your great help and support!

DarkChild

Yesterday, my good old friends of Doornroosje, Dante Kish and Inex Dix, opened their brand new furniture store at the Belgian Sim (yes, same as the Atomium, New Mardes Club …..)

The least I can say is, that it is worthwhile to pay the store a visit if you are in need of new modern designed furniture. Even when you don’t need them, it might be interested, because Dante made all these chairs, tables and other products with the greatest attention and skills.

I have to admit, if you have a house on Second Life, and you need to decorate it, and are still looking for a kitchen, bedroom etc., there is probably no better place.

As they just have opened the store, and still are busy with designing and building other articles, I would advice to visit the place, but keep in mind to visit it again at a later time also, as design furniture is rare to find in SL, and there will be coming new articles all the time. Some of these articles are even a copy of RL stuff.

I did not had the time to put the SLurl into this post, as this was not written behind my usual PC, where I had stored this address, so please forgive me, I will post it at a later time, but use in the meanwhile your SL GPS, type Belgium, België, Belgique into the Search bar, when it works, and use your skills to find the location at the sim.;)

Second Lifers enlisted in search for Maddie

As you all know, it has been six weeks now, that British toddler Madeleine disappeared in Portugal.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the search for the missing child has moved to Second Life.

“Investigators are in talks with Second Life to prominently display pictures of the missing four-year-old, said Jim Gamble of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP)

Missing posters of Madeleine have already been see around the virtual world since mid-May, but these are not officially sanctioned.”

For the moment the search is on going in Morocco, because of a tip from a Norwegian woman, Mari Olli, who said she had seen Madeleine in the south of the country.

As also the blog of Metaversed, I would also like to contribute to spread the word, and maybe, just maybe, helping the parents to find their daughter back.

What to do when you don't have Sci-Fi clothing?

The last few days were a little bit boring on Sl for me.(yes it can be boring too, especially when we are talking about shopping) ;)

As I will have no time this week, for having a nice outfit at the blogger gathering next Saturday, I had to look for clothes and stuff real soon. It became even a bit stressed, as we had again the usual lag situations in Second Life. At the time I logged in for the first time , back in January, there were about 25.000 avatars on line every evening. Now a days, you will find more than 40.000 on line. No wonder we have some lag issues at some sims, not to mention the “pose ball issue” that I have experienced so far.;)

The first day that I was looking for some Sci-Fi stuff, I ended at a Star Trek store. Outside there was a nice USS Enterprise, but beside from that I did not find anything that could help me.

Going through the search bar, was not a real help either, as most of the time it did not work.

Next stop was another store, where, according the information, you would be able to find some clothing and weapons. I do not remember the name of the place, but I did not find anything useful.
From there I moved on to a store, where I suddenly “overheard” two avatars in their conversation, talking about another one; they mentioned a name, that was quiet familiar to me, so I went towards them and simply asked if they were talking about a friend of mine, who I did not see for some time now, because of the different time zone we are living in. She lives in New Zealand.

Can you imagine what a coincidence it is, to meet people inworld at a certain location in Second Life, who knows a friend of yours, among 40.000 others?

They were indeed good friends of that person, so we had a little chat, and there went the time that I was suppose to spend on finding Science Fiction stuff.

Okay, so I had to find the stuff another day….I thought.

But as usual, as soon as we were on the grid, all the notes came in, that we had to read, and delete, or accept. And then the IM’s from friends, the tp’s, and of course the daily SL problems. (beware of tomorrow’s release!)

Fortunately I stopped that day in the Belgium sim, where I met Pieter again. He was so kind to help me on the issue. And while trying things out, we had in fact a lot of fun.

So finally, I found something to wear, but have to admit, the next time, I take a girlfriend with me shopping, they buy a lot easier.

The next days, will be very quiet on this blog, as I am abroad for a couple of days, and will not have enough time to post pictures or stories.

But after Saturday, you can be sure of it, you will find a full report with pictures on the blogger gathering.

To be or not to be.....A cry for help

Poseballs in Second Life seem to be a problem for me. I have been trying to get some help from the Linden Lab, but until now, with no response or news. I have also looked into the knowledge base, but these are all general problems, not specific ones as mine.

I have also tried to log in with another avatar, and at first, this avatar had no problems, but yesterday, when I tried him again, he had the same problems.
Maybe some of the readers of this blog could help me out, as the Linden’s are not interested in the basic accounts, as I understood from following emails:

My email to Linden:
“Dear sir,
It had been some time now that I have problems with all the poseballs. It seems that my avatar only wants to sit, but does not do the animation as it is suppose to do.
Can you help me? I have cleared my cache several times already, but the problem stays the same. It happens with almost every poseball.
Please advice what I could do to solve this.”

The answer received by Linden Lab:
“Thank you for contacting Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life. Our support system has
changed and we have discontinued the use of this email address. To find information on
your issue and to contact support, please visit http://secondlife.com/support .
Please note, information sent to this email address will not be read or responded to.”

After checking out this link, giving by Linden, I stopped at this message:
“Basic Accounts: If you are a Basic account holder, you have access to our in-depth Knowledge Base and Solution Finder. You do not have access to our Inworld or Outworld support teams. However, we're constantly improving our Knowledge Base and Solution Finder to assist Residents who are Basic account holders with resolving your issues independently. There are also a few Special Questions** for which we DO provide Basic account holders with ticket access.”

It is understandable that they only will help the premium accounts, but as I don’t know how to solve this problem, I will never be interested to pay someone or give payment information, not knowing if the problem gets solved or not. To my point of view, it would be interesting for them too, if they could help the basic accounts. Just to show, that they have a great support.
But I assume they don’t have. ;(

Reminder: Downtime, Wednesday June 13th

As a reminder, Second Life will be unavailable this Wednesday, June 13, 2007 from 6am until 12pm PDT, for 1.17.01 release.

Finally, it seems that a new update will take place on wednesday. Still without voice, which was in the Beta version, but will not be in this new release.(fortunately) Normally this release was suppose to take place last week, but due to some problems, which we all can confirm, it was delayed.

We now hope that this release 1.17.01 will fix a lot of bugs, and that we, at least for some time, be released of all these pretty cumbersome bugs.

The ArenA Soccer Stadium Amsterdam

It was a quiet evening on SL. The friendlist was not working again, so, I stood there, no one to call, no one to visit. It could not be true. I tried already to IM some friends, which succeeded , when suddenly the first of my friends came online, Pieter.
Immediately I contacted him by saying and asking if he was having the same problems.

Enough now about the non working items of the Lindens.
Pieter, he is a journalist for the secondlifecrew.be, told me, that he wanted to do an article about the soccer field of Ajax Amsterdam. I thought it was not a bad idea, to come over to take the pictures, that he could use for his article. And so we did, the results of the pictures are to be seen in my flickr stream, the article will soon appear on www.secondlifecrew.be. (article in Dutch: Mannen en voetbal...) But upon request, I could translate it and put it here on my blog. Let's hear your wishes.