Those Little Questions…

Those Little Questions…

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.

Hop behind the cut for the questions and answers!

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Happy Rezday to Mar!

Happy Rezday to Mar!

It’s Mar’s third rezday! She first rezzed in Second Life on 26th January 2008, and this was her very first post over at the old SL for Nowt blog. I’ve been having a rather nostalgic wander through her old blogposts this afternoon, and thought it would be fun to try on her very first outfit, which she blogged here at the end of her first day in-world. For some reason, I forgot the necklace in the old outfit, but I then decided to bring that outfit bang up-to-date with some help from Tuli, Calico Ingmann, Ha!, HoC, and Love Soul.

Hop behind the cut!

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Hints & Tips: Those darned scripts!

Hints & Tips: Those darned scripts!

Before I begin this post I need to add a caveat: I am by no means an expert on scripting in Second Life. This post comprises mainly a few things I have learned over the course of my three years in SL. If you are knowledgable in this area and spot any glaring errors then please do drop a comment. Yelling at me and calling me a ‘script nazi’ (among other things) will achieve nothing, whereas constructive help (preferably with links that will help both me and my readers to understand the issue better) is always welcome :)

Have you ever had trouble teleporting? I don’t mean the usual ‘teleports are down’ issues; I mean sudden and random inability to get anywhere at all, which inexplicably goes away after a thumb-twiddling session at home where you change your look in some way or another. Or are your teleports slow and your subsequent movement around SL bogged down (well, even more so than usual)?

The culprit is most likely some scripted item you’re wearing. More pointedly, it’s probably a script-resize item you’re wearing. The first thing to try when your TPs are failing is to remove/replace any high-prim script-resize item that you may be wearing. On the whole, these tend to be: hair, jewellery, and footwear. Unless SL itself is experiencing problems, you’ll find this usually fixes most no-TP and slow TP issues.

Hop behind the cut to find out why this is the case, to find out why this could potentially be very important to you very soon, and to find out what you can do to mitigate the effect that it has on you.

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Sn@tch up a newbie bargain!

Sn@tch up a newbie bargain!

Calling all girl!newbies of 30 days and under!

Ivey at Sn@tch has updated her New Player Complete Avatar Kit, and it’s available free to anyone whose avatar is 30 days (or less) old. Just head to the Bargain Pit at Sn@tch (if you find yourself in an open space landing area, just follow the red arrow on your screen down into the Bargain Pit) and peer through the murk to find the kit. Click the sign and, if your avatar is 30 days (or under) in age, then you’ll receive the kit.

From Ivey’s notecard about the kit:

I finally got together the FREE Noobie Avatar for 2011…this is the Third one I’ve done and I think the cutest. It can only be picked up by an avatar 30 days or under and It comes with so much stuff it would take me forever to list everything so just check out the pic for details. I also included a big bag with lots of things a new avatar might need like a blank AO, a cache cleaner, an animation stopper, Radar, A Tip Jar, 4 pose stand, Appearance Editing Hud, Height Detector and much more. And of course a note with all the things a noob needs to know about starting out in SL on the right foot. I hope your alts and new friends enjoy it. Send people over to grab it if they need some things to start out with. If anyone over 30 days wants to buy it, just contact me.

It’s a fabby start to any female avatar’s Second Life. Hop behind the cut for a clearer pic:

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Sad news

Sad news

The Gnubie Store has closed its doors.

This is sad news for both new and old alike in Second Life. The Gnubie Store was one of the best freebie stores to send newbie avatars to in-world, and I loved browsing through what was on offer there, even after three years in-world.

It’s a bad day when such an SL institution has to end, no matter what the reasons.

Thanks to Jai Nomad and Ingrid Ingersoll, who created and ran the store for so long. And thanks to all of the designers and creators, both past and present, who so generously stocked it with items for old and new avatars alike to enjoy.

An elegant start to 2011

An elegant start to 2011

Ladies, I hope your wallets still have some loose change in them after Christmas and the New Year sales, because there are two gorgeous group gifties out there and one fabulous new release (which, at L$175 I’ll admit, is beyond the L$75 remit for SL for Nowt, but what the heck: it’s shoes, damn it, and those are always worth it, right? *g*)

Plunder that purse for the L$50 join fee for the Kunglers Fashion Design group and check group notices for this elegant little Black Mini Dress with sculpted skirt and shoulders. Once you’ve done that, rummage through the (free-to-join) group notices in the Baby Monkey Junkies group for this perfectly-matching Black Sequin Mini Clutch. And finally, head over to HoC and splurge just a little on these Noir Stilettoes with excellent skin-matching and colour-change HUD (with extra colours available on the HUD if you’re a member of the HoC group). If you have change to spare from this little spree, then the perfect jewellery accompaniment is the Suffragette set (includes other items not shown here) from Ticky Tacky (currently without a mainstore but with satellite locations in several places, including here).

Mar’s skin is Tanya (a past group gift from Tuli), her hair is Seth in AlmostGoth (a past hunt gift from LeLutka) and poses are from Glitterati.

Hop behind the cut for a closer look at the shoes!

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Spam spam spam spam

Spam spam spam spam

The Askimet stats for the old SL for Nowt blog have proved to be interesting reading. WordPress no longer provides Askimet for its free hosted blogs, and I’ll bet I could tell you exactly when they withdrew it. Take a look at this:

Going way back, the blog received between 100 and 250 spam comments per month. But look at the rise that begins in September of 2010: a third again. And in October over half again. It stays steady during November, and then in December? WHAM.

I would hate to be a free WordPress user right now, as my blog (with its Askimet protection, which WordPress have thankfully not taken away from its blog community veterans) is receiving tens of spam comments per day (over 300, as you can see, in the first ten days of January this year). Askimet is catching all of these (it did miss one today, but sent it into my moderation queue because the commenter was new to the blog. The linked email address of the commenter was trying to sell insurance, even though his [ slightly nonsensical ] comment was bland and passable).

Trying to wade your way through that mass of spam comments without Askimet? *shudder*

The Absolute Basics: Beginners – Signing Up

The Absolute Basics: Beginners – Signing Up

This is the first in a series of Second Life Absolute Basics-type posts. We’re going to begin at the very beginning, with determining whether you can run Second Life in the first place, and then we’ll move swiftly on to the sign-up process. This series is aimed at the curious, as well as the newbie. So whether you’ve clicked something about Second Life and just seen this crazy map thing that you can’t get into, or whether you want to know exactly what to expect the second you log in, this post series is for you.

Words that you’ll need to know (such as terms for things in-world, jargon and slang, etc) will be written in bold.

Hop behind the cut!

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It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last

It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last

Once again, Second Life lag has cost me money. I bought several items from the new Dressing Room collection, and as usual at the beginning of a collection showcase the lag was terrible. However, I managed to make the purchases I wanted, and teleported home.

The main item set I wanted to try on was the R.icielli New Year pack, so Mar put on the pants and one of the tops, then the jacket. Well, she put on the system layers, anyway, and those showed up just fine. But the prims? Every single one gave up an ‘attempt to rez an object failed’ error. So she did what most of us would do: she relogged…

…only to log back in and find herself completely naked, and with that R.icielli fatpack folder no longer in her inventory. But the money had still left her account.

*sigh* I’m not going to bother contacting R.icielli’s owner about this, because to be honest it isn’t worth it. It’s a lag issue, and I’m sure as hell not going to ask for a refund, even if it was L$70. The items in the pack are worth far more than that anyway, so Mar just headed back to TDR and purchased them again. This time, they stayed where they should be: in her inventory, and everything rezzed just fine.

Screencaps behind the cut.

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