Hi peeps! Here’s another in my ‘Those little questions’ series, where I try to give answers to the questions in search terms that lead people to the SL for Nowt blog. There are no silly questions in SL. We all started out as complete newbies, and we all wondered the same things, so here I hope to help you out with some answers :)

You can find the questions on the old blog archived here, and a special Those Little Questions all about skyboxes here. Check out this post’s tag for more :)

Today’s set of questions is a general grab-bag. Behind the cut you’ll find out…

– In Second Life do I win on lucky chairs or lucky boards with my display name or my avatar name?
– How to say your avatar’s doing something in Second Life
– How can you tell if someone is chatting with someone else on Second Life?
– How to get back to the starting point in Second Life
– How can I stop people from camming into my house in Second Life?
– How to wear shoes in Second Life without a shaper
– How to tell if someone else has used your bed (!) in Second Life
– Can I use my Second Life premium account toward rental property?
– Do I have to send someone my real life picture when they ask in Second Life?
– What do I do when someone I bought something for in Second Life deletes their account?
– What happens when you ignore/block/mute someone in Second Life?
– How do I know if someone’s ignored/blocked/muted me in Second Life?

Hop behind the cut for some answers and tips!

– In Second Life do I win on lucky chairs or lucky boards with my display name or my avatar name?

You need to look for your avatar name (the one you signed up with and log in with), NOT your display name (which is the one you can change to whatever you want). Your avatar/login name is known as your Unique Username, and it’s this that lucky chairs and lucky boards will let you win on.

Incidentally, whenever you contact someone else in Second Life (especially if it’s a creator or someone you want advice or help from) always give them your avatar name, not your display name. It makes you easier to find in search (and make sure that you can be found in search – which is an option in preferences – otherwise the other person won’t be able to find you in order to reply if you initiated contact via notecard instead of IM).

– How to say your avatar’s doing something in Second Life

If you mean that you want to emote something in chat, so that it shows up like this – Joe Avatar shakes his head and laughs – then you need to preface the action with /me – like this:

/me shakes his head and laughs

To describe something happening to you, such as – Joe Avatar’s cloak billows in the wind – then preface the action with /me’s – like this:

/me’s cloak billows in the wind

– How can you tell if someone is chatting with someone else on Second Life?

Usually, you can’t. The only clue you might have is that their replies take longer and are more distracted or uninvolved. But this doesn’t mean they’re chatting with someone else. They might be distracted in real life: the phone might have rung, their kids might be creating a noise, their dinner might be burning! If you’re concerned, just ask them! Something like: “You seem a bit distracted. Is everything okay?”

– How to get back to the starting point in Second Life?

Sadly, this isn’t possible. Once you’ve left the place where you first arrive in Second Life, you can’t go back. There’s a new starting point for Second Life now (see the post I made before this one) and there’s no longer a tutorial that tells you how to do things in-world. If you’re concerned that you missed the tutorial and you’re struggling to understand some basic aspects of Second Life, then I strongly suggest that you visit the excellent tutorial college at Caledon Oxbridge. To do this, simply copy that link, log into Second Life, and paste the link into the chat bar. Click the Conversations button to bring up the chat history, where you’ll see the link. Click that link, then click Teleport in the window that pops up. You’ll land in Caledon Oxbridge, and can just follow the red arrows on the floor (use the arrow keys on your keyboard to walk!) through all of the tutorials.

If, however, you landed at the new beginning point, took one of the portals and want to go back and try another portal, then there’s something very similar in your viewer that you can use: the destination guide. You’ll see it on the login screen, so have a look through the items before you log in, and you should find some new places of interest. The full destination guide (with even more options for places to visit) is also available on the Second Life website, here.

– How can I stop people from camming into my house in Second Life?

Again, not possible. You can’t control someone else’s choice with their camera. What you can do, is stop them from seeing your avatar (and any other avatar) on your parcel. Note: this will ONLY work against avatars on another parcel – if they are on your parcel they will still see you – and if you don’t have certain land rights (for example, if you rent) then you may need to ask your landlord to enable this setting for you.

Look in About Land for your parcel, and you should find a checkbox for allowing avatars on other parcels to interact with and see avatars on the parcel you’re standing on. Make sure this checkbox is UNchecked – if it’s the kind that asks to allow people to see/interact with you. If it’s the kind of checkbox that asks to enable parcel privacy then obviously you need to have it checked. It depends on which viewer you’re using, as some of them word things differently (and I try to cover every option here!).

If you’re concerned about nosy neighbours (or if you’re being harrassed by a neighbour constantly getting on your land and peeping into your home) then – under the Access tab of About Land – you can set the land to only allow access to people whose names you choose, or members of the land’s group, etc. This will reinforce the parcel privacy settings by ensuring that only people you allow to can get onto the parcel in order to see and interact with others on the parcel (but do be aware it will also force your neighbours – bad and good – to see banlines).

– How to wear shoes in Second Life without a shaper?

Tricky, but doable! A shaper is included with your shoes not just to compress your feet into shape (which was something that had to be done when the only way to make feet invisible was by using invisiprims) but also to set the position of your feet relative to your shoes. For example: you’ll probably be able to wear flat-soled sneakers without their shaper, but your avatar’s feet will look peculiar if you try to wear heels without their shaper, because your avatar’s heel won’t be raised up to the height required by the shoe heel.

– How to tell if someone else has used your bed (!) in Second Life

Yikes, that’s icky! First of all, check the bed to see if its menu has an access option. If it does, make sure it’s set to ‘owner only’ or – if you don’t mind people in your land group using it (for land owners this usually includes the people they want to be able to use the bed, such as their partner!) then set it to ‘group access’.

If there is no access option then you can try one of several things. The first two options will cost money, the third – while more detailed – is free:

– Get a security orb

– Get a different bed: one with an access menu!

– Rez a flat, invisible prim (we’ll call it the trigger prim) that covers the bed and use the 3 Green Eggs Autoscript site to generate a script to go in that prim that will rez an object when an avatar touches it. Put the script and some kind of object (a bright-coloured cube, for example) inside your trigger prim. Since anyone wanting to use the bed will need to click it first to generate the poseballs, the bright-coloured cube will be rezzed (and they won’t be able to delete it!), and that will tell you someone has been mucking around with your bed. To find out who it is, simply use one of the free Visitor Counter scripts that will email you a daily list of people it detects. Place that in an invisible prim above the bed, set its range to about 5m (make sure that, after you’ve put your email address in the script, you make the script No Modify, so other people can’t read the script and see your email address). If you log on to find the brightly-coloured prim rezzed, check your email for the list of visitors the previous day, and you’ll find your culprit! Or, rather, culprits, because one person using a bed on their own is… well, someone you should probably feel a bit sorry for, huh?

Addendum: Um, it goes without saying that whenever you want to use the bed, you just move the trigger prim out of the way, right? ;) Also, since these instructions are pretty complicated to follow in text form, I might log on later today and put together a little visual tutorial, complete with scripts for you to follow.

– Can I use my Second Life premium account toward rental property?

Ask your landlord! Most landlords in Second Life are grateful for tier donations, and will usually offer you a discount on your rental in return for your tier donation. If you’re not sure how to donate tier to your rental group, then your landlord should be able to help you with that :)

– Do I have to send someone my real life picture when they ask in Second Life?

Oh hell NO. You most certainly do not have to give anyone your real life picture if you don’t want to. If they ask, and you feel uncomfortable, tell them no. If they persist, then walk away. Mute them if necessary. You don’t have to do anything in Second Life if you don’t want to. ALWAYS be wary of giving anyone in-world any kind of personal information, especially info you could be identified with. NEVER give anyone a real life pic of you that might be on the internet already (such as your Facebook profile pic) because there are image lookup sites that can find every copy of an image online in seconds, and you could be easily traceable. If you want to exchange email addresses with another avatar, use a free service like Gmail or Hotmail to create an email address for your avatar (such as joe.avatar@emailprovider.com) and give them that address.

Remember: scammers exist in Second Life just as they do in Real Life. Use your common sense. If you wouldn’t tell it to a stranger in the street, don’t tell it to someone online.

– What do I do when someone I bought something for in Second Life deletes their account?

I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do, except wave bye-bye to that stuff you bought. Linden Lab will not help you to get it back, either, so there’s no point submitting a support ticket. Sorry :(

– What happens when you ignore/block/mute someone in Second Life?

When you ignore (called ‘block’ in some viewers, and ‘mute’ in others) another avatar in Second Life, then you won’t see anything they type. You won’t receive Instant Messages or inventory offers from them. Some viewers also render a blocked avatar as a grey pixellated blob (which I should imagine can be quite satisfying in certain cases!) Do, though, be aware of several things:

– Sending an instant message to a blocked avatar will reverse the block. Your viewer will assume that, since you contacted the blocked avatar, you no longer want the block in place.

– If you block a store owner and subsequently try to purchase something from them, you will not receive it. One thing you should always check if a store does not deliver your item, is your block/mute list, just to make sure you haven’t blocked the owner (either deliberately or accidentally, because accidents do happen!)

– How do I know if someone’s ignored/blocked/muted me in Second Life?

They won’t reply to you, either in open chat or to your instant messages. That might not mean you’ve been blocked, obviously; they could simply be ignoring whatever you’re saying (or even pretending they’ve blocked you, but secretly be watching you get increasingly irate or what-have-you; people can get sneaky sometimes!)

The only way you can tell for certain is to send them something. It will be declined instantaneously; in a faster time than anyone could see the offer and hit the ‘decline’ button. (And, even then, I think this may also occur when the avatar is in Busy mode, so it’s still not a definite way to tell.)