Second Life "Life Hacks"

[MadameGloom Ravenwood]

The appearance that you see of yourself may not be the same to others - Windlight and settings playing a big part.

If you want to get to your platform but forgot to landmark it don't fly up like this idiot used to do, just click on the address bar at the top and change the last part of the SLURL to the height of your platform

If you want to match textures up on different sized prims don't use default, use planar and synchronize materials. This idiot used to take ages aligning the material and using offset to match everything up🫣

[Rolig Loon]

Time may seem to go faster in SL than you expect. This is true partly because time flies when you are having fun, as everyone knows. It's also because a "day" in SL is only 4 hours long. By default, each day has three hours of daylight and one hour of night.

You don't have to take that lying down, though. These days, few people are satisfied with the default. A landowner can make the sun shine as long as she wants or can plunge the land into perpetual darkness. To make matters more confusing, you don't have to accept that choice. You can control your own personal environment settings and live in a world of your own. You are a true Time Lord in SL.

[Love Zhaoying]

- If an avatar is too "complex" (too many triangles) for your current viewer settings, you may see it as a "jelly doll".

- This also applies to how others may see your avatar.

- For some avatars, seeing a "jelly doll" is preferable.

 

[Leora Greenwood]

54 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Second Life has different "Education" opportunities "in-world" such as: 

- The Welcome Hub

- Caledon University (Note: I may need spelling corrected on that)

- Ivory Tower of Prims

 

Also Builders Brewery for the building skills you will need, from basic to advanced. Also dressing rooms and sandbox areas.

Happy Hippo building school is still around, I believe.

If you use the Firestorm viewer, they offer many, many, many great classes.

New Citizens Inc. Is still here offering freebies, dressing rooms, maybe still some classes.

My old fave free dressing rooms at Bare Rose are still there but I do not know the LM right now.

[Nalates Urriah]

Keep a list of your friends on your computer. You will need to provide a list of friends if you ever have to reclaim your account or recover your password.

[Rolig Loon]

16 minutes ago, Leora Greenwood said:

My old fave free dressing rooms at Bare Rose are still there but I do not know the LM right now.

There are also cool dressing rooms at the Welcome HUB (and a lot of other things too, including mentors who can answer questions for you or point you to places to find them).

[Marigold Devin]

5 hours ago, Helen Zenovka said:

If I  get a TP request from someone I  either don't know or don't know well, I will first do a quick search to see what sort of  place it is. If it's a sex related sim, I'll ignore the request altogether. If it is a private residence I'll politely say no - well,  you wouldn't  go home with a man you had never seen before in RL, would you? Anything else and I'll probably keep the conversation going for a while and try and judge what sort of person I'm talking to. 

No I absolutely would not, but I'm in Second Life not real life, and look at me now, talking to yet another stranger - you! 

In turn I have got my revenge on those nasty men/boys who have attempted to take me to somewhere not quite to my taste, and I have sent them a teleport request to meet me, but have teleported directly the moment I have seen them arrive ... in a skybox full of bots. 

Or I've used a Kiss Me Dead HUD which has rendered their avatar temporarily dead on the ground for 30 seconds, and oh that has been such fun. 

The things I can do in Second Life that I can't and would never do in real life is very liberating.

[Marigold Devin]

6 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

 

In Second Life, you may see terrible things. 

- Things that make you question Right from Wrong.

- Things that make you question the nature of Reality.

- Things that make you question "Man's Humanity to Man".

Don't worry! None of it is real!

... but there is the option to click on "Help" at the top of the screen and "Report Abuse", then leave it up to the Linden gods to deal with it and get on with your SLife.

 

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

7 hours ago, Marigold Devin said:

Everyone's profile has an area on which to write private notes about them, which they cannot see, so if you have a random encounter with someone that you might want to talk to at a later date (or not), it's handy to jot a few notes as an aide memoire.

Here's an actual hack as opposed to my joke list earlier:

Following up on what Marigold pointed out; you can do this on your own profile as well. It's a handy little notepad to remember things.

 

[Leora Greenwood]

54 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

Or I've used a Kiss Me Dead HUD which has rendered their avatar temporarily dead on the ground for 30 seconds, and oh that has been such fun. 

LOLOL, I had NEVER heard of that before, too funny.  I found it on the MP as Kiss Me Deadly and put it on my favorites list.

[Marigold Devin]

2 minutes ago, Leora Greenwood said:

LOLOL, I had NEVER heard of that before, too funny.  I found it on the MP as Kiss Me Deadly and put it on my favorites list.

Well, you'd better get yourself logged in and go and practice on your friends - its on its way to you. 

[Orwar]

   You can /shout or /whisper to increase/decrease the reach of your typing in nearby chat. Normally, avatars within 20 metres can read what you send, but if you shout it's 100 metres, and if you whisper it's 10 metres. You can also (at least in Firestorm) hold control or shift when sending your message to local to change it to a shout or whisper.

   Shouting tends to be frowned upon, much like TYPING IN ALL CAPS. Many find it annoying, so it is best avoided (although it can have occasional uses).

   Gestures have very valid uses outside of turning you into a public nuisance.

   If you regret having de-rendered everyone around you via 'show friends only', you can force them to re-render by changing your active group.

   If you regret having de-rendered an object, you can restore it under World -> Asset Blacklist.

   If you can't seem to de-render anything or anyone, you're using the wrong viewer. 

   If a photo prop has such bad LOD models that it totally deforms at your intended camera distance, you can force it to be rendered in their high detail model temporarily via the object tab of the build menu.

   Rollercoasters and other such rides are a lot more fun in 'mouse look' (i.e. first person view).

   Wearing face-lights in SL is akin to running around public places with a selfie-stick in real life; it makes you appear a right tosser.

   If you want to make sure to get all the results, it is sometimes useful to both use the proper spelling and the 'Murrican bastardisation, as the search engine doesn't know that by searching for 'Grey' you also wish to see results where people have instead written 'Gray'. On the marketplace, you can use the Boolean 'OR' to include both (i.e. "Maitreya AND Armour OR Armor AND Bikini"). 

[Leora Greenwood]

58 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

Well, you'd better get yourself logged in and go and practice on your friends - its on its way to you. 

OMG, how sweet are you?  Thank you so much; now I will be hunting some innocent victim to succumb to my evil wiles.........  🤗

[Marigold Devin]

Just now, Leora Greenwood said:

OMG, how sweet are you?  Thank you so much; now I will be hunting some innocent victim to succumb to my evil wiles.........  🤗

Go see if Sandor's up for it  Works on girls as well as boys (obviously) and if I was logged in I would let you practice on me. Tee hee. 

[BillFletcher]

14 hours ago, kisket said:

If you want a ride just ask.

 

That would be a wild ride.

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

I think most long time SLers know this one but it's a clear hack for a newer user: Make sure as few things as possible are attached to any one attachment spot. By default SL tries to attach any newly made thing to 'right hand' and a lot of people don't change that when they release things. If an item is rigged or bento you can attach it anywhere - so move it to somewhere 'free'. I don't know if it matters for HUDs - but I do that with them also 'just to be sure'.

Another related trick: anything attached to 'avatar center' will not move with your animations. It will follow you around, but stay in it's own position. You can use that to put a scene prop around you, lighting, protest signs, pets, or whatever is needed for some moment.

EDIT: This just occurred to me even though I do a version of it: attaching to avatar center is a great way to "rez a ruler" on land you can't build on if you're thinking of buying it. But... idea I just realized: attach my choice of houses to avatar center and walk around the plot to see if I like how that house will look on it.

 

Lastly - if you need the functions of a HUD but not any of it's buttons - while editing it you can drag it outside the box that indicates your screen. Later you can edit it by right clicking it in inventory, and drag it back if you need it. That can be handy to recover some screen space.

Edited September 30, 2023 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Leora Greenwood]

1 hour ago, Marigold Devin said:

Go see if Sandor's up for it  Works on girls as well as boys (obviously) and if I was logged in I would let you practice on me. Tee hee. 

Yes, I could not find an innocent victim so Sandor will have to do:

One thing:  can I make him stay unconscious longer???  /me examines the script.....

[Marigold Devin]

33 minutes ago, Leora Greenwood said:

Yes, I could not find an innocent victim so Sandor will have to do:

One thing:  can I make him stay unconscious longer???  /me examines the script.....

I wish I could record my real life self laughing, because I am. This has made my day. (Sorry Sandor - and thank you to both for playing the game.)

Edited to add: How was it for you, Sandor?  

Edited September 30, 2023 by Marigold Devin

[Love Zhaoying]

Second Life has a Community Forum!

- If you interact with someone on the Second Life Community Forum, your interaction is a pretty good predictor of how interactions with that person will be "in-world" in Second Life.

[Freckles Fairelander]

Always add to outfit, never wear.

[Marigold Devin]

15 minutes ago, Aime Ravenhurst said:

Always add to outfit, never wear.

Very sound advice. Just yesterday, this 16 year old oldbie selected "wear" for a fork and my top was removed exposing my hollow interior!  

[Persephone Emerald]

13 hours ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

If you're sending a notecard to someone you don't trust, you may want to set it to No Modify, otherwise they could change the contents and pass it off as you saying those things. 

If you set a Notecard or Script as No Modify, the other person won't be able to read it. If they (or you) can read it, they (or you) can copy and paste the contents to a new Script or Notecard, then modify it however they (or you) wish.

- If I'm wrong about this, please correct me. I might me misremembering some details.

[Arwyn Quandry]

2 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

If you set a Notecard or Script as No Modify, the other person won't be able to read it. If they (or you) can read it, they (or you) can copy and paste the contents to a new Script or Notecard, then modify it however they (or you) wish.

- If I'm wrong about this, please correct me. I might me misremembering some details.

No Modify scripts aren't readable, but No Modify notecards very much are. Here's an example of a NM notecard I found in my inventory.

Scrips, meanwhile, look like this.

[Persephone Emerald]

3 hours ago, Aime Ravenhurst said:

Always add to outfit, never wear.

Add when you want to Add to what you're wearing. Wear when you want to replace something you're wearing.

Note: if you don't know where something will attach to your avatar, you won't know what it will replace. Most creators of hair set their hair to attach to your head, but anything else is likely to attach to your right hand, even though it looks like it's attached to where it should be attached.

Note: You can change the attachment point you want things to attach to so they won't automatically attach to your right hand. For instance, you might want your shoes to attach to either your left or right foot. Then when you Wear a new pair, the old pair will come off.

[Eddy Vortex]

1) If a female avatar insists that they're female in RL, chances are they're a GIRL (Guy In Real Life), and always remember Rule 30.

2) If someone claims to be a Linden, you can verify from the "Linden Lab employee" badge on their profile. Display names are useless; do not go by them.

Example:

Or if you're using Firestorm, the badge looks like an Account box: