SL for Nowt

May 2012 bring you everything you hope for <3

It’s that time of year when, feeling much fatter and unable to look another turkey sandwich or chocolate truffle in the eye, we resolve to: get fit/lose weight/write that novel/call our mother more often.

At the end of each month the local council where I live IRL posts through each letterbox in the town a glossy little book. It’s a nice, A5 book full of local articles and advertising: the kind of useful thing each householder should hang onto in case the washing machine conks out or the heating breaks down and they need the number of a local plumber or gas fitter, etc.

For months and months I just threw these books on the top of the basket where my newspapers, magazines, and catalogues go. And then, clearing out that basket on the day before the recycling bin was collected, I thought: “Why on earth have I kept all these books from six months ago?”

At that moment I decided to have one place for those books: the little rack in my kitchen where I tend to keep my ‘information’ stuff (such as the wheelie bin collection dates). Now, every time a new book comes through the door I take the old book from the rack and chuck it in the recycling bin, replacing it with the new book. The January 2012 issue arrived today, and that’s what got me thinking about forming new habits.

I’ve just begun to form a new habit in SL, too, and I want to share that habit with my readers. To that end I’m publicly announcing it as my New Year Resolution:

In 2012 I resolve to: Deal with it NOW.

This means that, during my login session I will deal with everything that came to me while logged-in. I will:

• read notecards, trash the ones I don’t want (either if they don’t apply/I’m not interested, or after I’ve gone to pick up or buy whatever they’re advertising);
• unpack everything I buy/pick up/am sent;
• try on all clothing (and take pictures wherever possible, the better to build up a visual guide to what I own);
• rez everything else to see if I actually want to keep it;
• file everything in its relevant folder before I log off;
• delete anything extraneous (unpacker/hovertext/etc scripts, notecards, pose stands, extra landmarks).

That’s enough to be going along with, although if I think of anything else I’ll add it to the list. The main point is that I will deal with everything as it comes to me, rather than leaving it all to pile up.

Do you have any New Year SL Resolutions?

Hi peeps,

It was brought to my attention today that there are stores selling my freebie kits for non-free prices!

These kits were put together by me from some of the best of the old, full-permission items that I found from the huge freebie walls at the NCI locations (which, in turn, were supported by Linden Lab themselves when they were placed at every one of the old Welcome Island points where newbies first rezzed in-world). To that end, they should always be free, and you can still find all of the items in their original boxes on the freebie wall at any NCI location (although they won’t be weeded down to the best of them, like my kits were).

NOTE: The Ladies Starter Kit, while not containing any clothing/skins/etc created by me, does contain many notecards of my own writing, so I do consider those my own intellectual property, the same as all text and images on this blog (and my other blogs) are also my own IP.

I took down my Marketplace store and my little in-world stall some time ago because I wasn’t in-world enough to maintain them, but these items are still floating around out there, and you may run across them in a store selling other full-perm and Business in a Box items. The people who sell this kind of thing rarely think to put the items into a new box of their own creation. Either they’re unaware that it’s very easy to find out the name of any creator, or they just don’t realise that someone buying the items might contact the original creator instead of them (the most common scenario).

While, in this case, it appears to have been a genuine mistake and the person who contacted me about their purchase was refunded their full payment and the store owner was very apologetic (both to them and to me, bless her heart!) I do just want to make my readers aware that these boxes should always be free, and if you’re ever charged any money for them you need to contact the owner of the store where you bought them, because it’s out of my hands to do anything other than send them a notecard about the items. Feel free to link them to this post if you need to.

Here’s a quick composite image of what will probably be on the outside of the boxes:

Store owners, if you’ve bought these items in good faith from a full-perm or Business in a Box store, then you should educate yourselves about why it’s never a good idea to sell these free items. This post on my old blog explains it all: Newbie Notes – Don’t get ripped off! (Full Perm/Businesses in a Box)

No harm done in this case, since it was a genuine mistake on the store owner’s part, but there are less scrupulous people out there who will happily rip you off by selling freebie content. Just keep your eye on the price you’re expected to pay before you hit ‘ok’ on any purchases!