Torley Linden

I just did a blog post focusing on spring-cleaning your inventory, so you can focus on what matters.

I hadn't tried this before. There was a HUD that I used a long time ago, but it broke and only kept my eyes shut for a few seconds — not long enough for a decent nap! Thanks for sharing this fresh tip.

On rare occasion, I've seen some offbeat likeminds assemble WHOLE AVATARS of demo stuff — not just hair with floating boxes but skins imprinted with DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO. It's kinda punk! "Demo couture", shall we say?

Spring is in full swing, and that goes hand-in-hand with spring cleaning — which includes your Second Life inventory! Wait, what's that? You dread opening up those dusty folders with hundreds, even thousands of items that you've never used. I bet that rings a bell. Have no fear. While the psychological burden may initially seem like a mountain, taking small steps is the key. Cleaning your inventory isn't exciting compared to hanging out with friends in cool places, but each of these tips only takes minutes, and when combined, will help you feel sooo much better after decluttering! Plus, did you know a smaller inventory loads faster and uses less resources? It's not the same as going green in the physical world, but it helps. Let's get started with this video tutorial, then I've got written tips that expand on what I show, along with direct links to those sections of the video: Get Your Total Item Count For fun (or abject horror), start typing something — anything — in the Filter Inventory field. Your item count will rise above, until it's done loading. You can compare this to what it is when you're all done. Don't be hard on yourself, though: this count includes Library items which you can hide, since they're not actually yours. Make a "Temporary" Folder for Sorting Right-click the My Inventory folder and select New Folder. Name this folder "Temp", or if you want it to stand out, something loud like "~*~ TEMP ~*~". Drag items that you're not sure of into here, so you can sort them out. This prevents them from clogging up casual folder browsing. You can extend this concept more specifically. For example, create a "Temp" folder in each main folder like Objects. Sort the "Temp" Folder Here's a basic process that I've refined over time: Put on some mood music to get you in the zone. (I usually bliss out to ambient, but there was that one time I rocked out to in an aggro loop... yes, there's an emo Torley... sort of.) Teleport to a clean surface, like a white skybox or a public sandbox. I have a flat platform which is set to Full Bright (neutral lighting), and makes it easiest to see what I'm placing. Drag and drop objects from your "Temp" folder inworld, so they rez and you can see what they really are. This is useful if you have a lot of generically- or identically-named stuff (like lots of objects named "Object"). "No copy" objects are removed from your inventory after being rezzed, so take them back from inworld if you want to keep them. Otherwise, you can delete the inworld instance. Move objects you want to keep to another folder. You may have an existing sorting scheme. I have "Archive" folders for objects dated by month, because I often have memories attached to objects of how I got 'em. Depending on the land, you should either clean up after yourself or let auto-return take care of it. In the latter case, multiple objects returned to your inventory simultaneously appear in your Lost And Found folder as coalesced objects. Like the Trash, you can easily and permanently delete its contents by right-clicking it and selecting Empty Lost And Found. Continue Onto Other Item Types Objects are just one inventory item type; you surely have clothing, notecards, textures, and so on. For each item type, I like to go through them as a batch. These tricks make it easier: For animations, gestures, notecards, scripts, sounds, and textures (including those in your Photo Album): hold Shift key while clicking to select a range of items, or hold Ctrl while clicking various un-adjacent items in a list, then right-click and select Open to open all those items in a single window. This makes it easier to browse each item and decide if you really want to keep it. For clothes and other wearables, it can be a good idea to have a minimal, "neutral" avatar so you can easily see what's added upon wearing. While an ideal one isn't provided off the bat, I suggest making a nude/underwear outfit of your fave avatar. This also accurately reflects your bodily proportions, which matters because just like the physical world, wearables look awful at the wrong size. If you want to save a texture to your local hard drive but no longer need it in your inventory: double-click the texture and click the Save As button, which saves it as a TGA file which can be opened or converted by an image editor like FastStone Viewer. (This only works if the texture is fully-permissive, like in-Viewer pics you take that end up in the Photo Album.) Eliminate Useless Redundancy by Deleting Duplicates You don't need more than a single copy of an item in your inventory if it's copyable, so after you've checked goods out, select dupes and hit that Delete key. But before you do, be aware: Items with the same name aren't necessarily the same. For example, if you work on an object inworld and take it back into your inventory, it keeps the same name. This is confusing if you also keep older versions of it. You can click the little gear icon at the bottom and choose Sort by Most Recent. Also, learn from many great content creators: append a version/revision number to the item name. I sometimes type the date in the name as a self-reminder. Landmarks are one of the most notorious types of dupes. Here's why: many, many stores give a landmark in each product box. While this is initially useful to find your way back if you want to buy more, as shown in the video, the WORLD MAP dropdown shows landmarks from every folder in your inventory — and isn't smart enough to hide dupes. If you don't use that dropdown, this doesn't matter to you, but otherwise, you can filter (search) your inventory for those dupes by name, then delete them. Furthermore, I don't keep many landmarks: since any landmark can be converted to a standard web link known as a SLurl, I save SLurls on the web instead, like in my Flickr exploration albums which have the advantage of loading quicker and giving me higher-resolution visuals. Delete original boxes — MAYBE. There are two schools of thought: some Residents prefer to keep original boxes of copyable items because they're a backup if things go awry, while other Resis feel secure not having them around, after expanding the contents into a folder. My recommendation? It really does depend on the specific items. Boxes for non-copyable objects can probably be tossed away because they're just empty shells — unless you like the box design itself. Also, a growing number of merchants offer automated delivery if you lose something, so take that into consideration. Ye Olde Art of Cube-Stuffing If you've spent any amount of time with veteran Residents, you may have caught wind of "cube-stuffing" lore. Cube-stuffing is exactly what it sounds like: archiving a bunch of items in a cube and lowering your inventory item count. This works because object contents aren't tallied up in the total. You can cube-stuff items you want to backup and preserve items you seldom use, yet don't want to throw away. Right-click and select Build on a parcel of land you have build permissions on. The build tools open. Click the parcel to rez a cube. In the build tools window, click the Content tab. Drag inventory items you want to archive into the Contents folder pane. (Advanced usage: You can drag items directly onto the cube itself, but there's a subtle exception: Dragging a texture onto a prim applies it to a prim's face, unless you hold the Ctrl key while doing so.) Once you've stuffed the cube, click the General tab to give it a meaningful name and date so you remember what's inside later. Limitations: While there's not a strict upper limit for how much you stuff in a cube, note that loading the item list can be extremely slow once you get into the hundreds of items. Also, there are no sub-folders: dragging nested folders breaks their hierarchy, so cube-stuffing isn't that useful for original outfits. Unfortunately, you can't search the contents of an object as you can with your inventory. Some Residents keep stuffed cubes out on land where it won't be autoreturned, so they have backups in case of inventory loss — since the cube isn't in your inventory, it won't be affected. However, it will be affected by land changes, so be sure if you're going to do this, rez the cube somewhere stable. This information is provided so you're aware of the possibilities. I don't really cube-stuff anymore and have grown more forgiving of letting my inventory count (it's at 13,362 right now) grow over the years, with the tradeoff that I'm more aggressive about deleting clutter. In first life, there was an insightful Lifehacker post on this titled "Rethink Your Stuff: What to Splurge On, What to Toss". While we avatars don't need beds and our shoes aren't going to wear out, sentimental stories attached to an object still matter to many of us! Remember to Empty the Trash! It's garbage day! After all the above, right-click your Trash "folder" and select Empty Trash. Then check your total item count and congratulate yourself — your future self will say thank-you too, when they find something you couldn't. Explore Resident-Created Inventory Organizers While the above has mainly focused on trimming your existing inventory, this is closely related to ongoing organization. Searching the Second Life Marketplace yields dozens of "inventory organizer" matches that are designed to overcome system limitations, and further automate the above steps. For example, texture organizers can make it easier to browse through visual previews instead of muddling around in folders. In case you're wondering, I don't currently use a specialized inventory organizer, but am discovering many cool tools as I rebuild Torley island. Further Learnin' You can see general inventory management tips in our Knowledge Base — note some of that info is stale and I haven't gotten to updating the videos. Have an inventory-cleaning tip that leaves you feeling like sunshine? Let us know in the comments!

Perrie, thanks for pointing that out and with pictures (GREAT) — I soundly agree. Not to mention that the "old way" also loaded faster than waiting for each web page to refresh. I don't surf picks much anymore due to this. You're not alone in observing this awkwardness, and I'll be sure to bring this issue up (again) the next opportunity I have! I note there are various websites that can smoothly pop up info (or lightbox it) without loading a new page. Even Google has a feature like that when mousing over search results.

Fmeh Tagore wrote: My big complaint about this is that every time it updates, it writes over the exisiting floater_im_container.xml file, so I have to go in and edit it by hand to have tabs on the left every time. Tabs on the bottom are practically unusable once you have more than 5 people in tabs--it's bad enough they don't give a "tabs on left" option to begin with, but to have to go in and change it every time they force an update sucks. Fmeh, while I don't know precisely why these latest updates have been mandatory (in the past, Linden Lab has enforced them to plug security holes), I'm in a similar situation: I have XML hacks to various Viewer files myself, such as modifying the postcards one to auto-insert email addresses for me. So I go a little AGRHRHRHHH every time my tweaks are replaced. Including that time I made the files read-only but that didn't work as expected. There are a number of ways to approach this quicker: you create a custom installer with a tool like http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page that you'd run after you installed the Viewer. If that's too elaborate, you could keep a folder handy with shortcuts to the sub-folders within "SecondLife", and safe copies of the files you need to replace each time. Then, copy-and-paste them (or Ctrl-drag to copy, and replace). It's manual but saves time digging into those hierarchies, as I've felt after doing this since Viewer 1.2x. Sidenote: I'm also a fan of vertical tabs, I advocated for them to be an easy option in SL during the days I chatted a lot inworld — I don't do so much anymore due to work, but wish more web browsers supported verti-tabs off the bat. Here's an old article I wrote in another life.

Yeah, the current path is an odd, confusing roundabout and would benefit us to be integrated better — especially for all of you who are used to uploading textures to your Second Life inventory to use them. I've seen suggestions before to save textures to disk as .PNG (in addition to .TGA), which is a web-friendly format. I agree with this. So relearning may be puzzling, but as Winter Ventura points out, makes more sense when you consider broad compatibility. Approach it from a fresh perspective and hopefully you'll get used to it? Let us know in the future. In the meantime, what I suggest going forward: if you're uploading textures from your hard drive to SL, keep the local versions close at hand so you can upload them to your web profile, Marketplace, Flickr stream, and other web places you use. There are many times I've seen one image re-purposed across multiple sites.

leliel, are these fairly common cards too? Can you name 'em? There's a huge variety of GPUs (and model variations) but we do keep stats on what Residents are actually using. Also, clarification: that gpu_table.txt is from the old days, don't refer to that. We update the table on the web now, so if you're using the newest official Viewer and your card isn't recognized at startup, that's a sign. Aha, I found the source: "Our GPU/feature table is now stored on the web, so as new hardware comes out or drivers change, we can modify the features without requiring a new viewer" http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Beta_Viewer/2.1.0

I keep hearing good things about the 460 GTX being a great bang-for-the-buck... SC = SuperClocked? Should be even better It reminds me of when I started Second Life on a 4200 Ti. I haven't used a 460 GTX firsthand but I have the 480 GTX. You should be able to set yours to Ultra in most conditions and have a good time, unless a place is especially dense and you can temporarily lower draw distance — remember to click Hardware button in the graphics settings and turn on Antialiasing to smooth out jaggies, I recommend 4x or better! Also, it is normal for newer hardware to not be recognized for awhile until our engineers get it added to our "graphics card table" which the Viewer references for defaults. The 460 has been out for awhile though, so I'll ask what's up, granted that you're running the newest Viewer 2.5... because much older versions DO NOT use the web table.

Sweet tweak. *squees and gives kudos* I had forgotten about this. Backstory, because I'm glad you brought it up: YES, long ago, I discussed with Zen Linden about the possibility of adding a swatch to change the sky texture, much as you can do it with the water texture (normal map). I changed the clouds to all sorts of ridiculous things like smiley faces (I can't believe I have a pic of that), too. Sigh. Sure would make it a lot more user-friendly and flexible per-setting. Since that hasn't happened yet, the next best thing must be your overhaul that goes beyond Perlin noise, Vincent!

I post my movies on the Official Second Life/Linden Lab Channel... mostly video tutorials, but I've also done Destination Guide videos with Brett Linden like this, we have a lot of fun putting them together:

Dana Hickman wrote: One can also use the GlovePIE input emulator (which is free) to simply bind one of those mouse thumb buttons that SL doesn't make use of to your recording softwares start/stop key. :smileywink: Ahh! I haven't heard of that before, so thanks for making me aware. Earlier, I found Microsoft's own driver software able enough to map my Intellimouse Explorer 3.0's thumb buttons to various shortcuts — it sounds like GlovePIE is wayyyy versatile, though.

Some people have asked what my own configuration is. After all, if I pick it, it must be awesome, right? More like... through much tinkering and experimentation over the years, I've gained a lot of experience figuring out how to get a powerful system at a reasonable price. I'm thrifty like that! So, without further ado, HERE'S EXACTLY WHAT'S IN TORLEY'S MAIN WINDOWS RIG... that was assembled by Digital Storm Online. (I also have a Mac but I don't really use it for machinima, since Second Life runs a lot slower.) Usual disclaimer applies that this is not a universal Linden Lab recommendation, it's merely what I have chosen for my own multimedia-centric needs both working and playing inworld.

Hehehe thanx Irene for the translation! Just about every time I visit, someone(s) is terraforming. I just ran into a couple who asked me if it was cool to bring friends over so they could teach them terraforming — of course! Also, if you've found terrraforming at Here region helpful, please give kudos to my original post. I'm showing other Lindens why it's important to understand this skill hands-on, and getting an indication of who's actually benefited from it is the best, real proof.

I just had a Kai Krause FLASHBACK MOMENT to 1995! OMG. I remember flipping through Macworld Magazine and marveling at this latest one-of-a-kind UI. Terms like "software toys" were bandied about then... EVERY photographer should enable antialiasing at the source to smooth those jaggies! Instructions and a picture that shows a comparison are here. Now, there are some plugins that can try to achieve it after the fact, like Power Retouche's, but the effect isn't as integrated or seamless.

Dana, shining, hypnotic @_@ example of creativity right there! May I ask what and how you create animated GIFs? And good call on the minimalist option, once I get followup on my earlier report about the badges bug, I'll ask if we can do this.

OMGORGEOUS examples in here! I've been building out Torley island... I find myself inspired by a mixture of minimalist mechanics + asymmetrical organicity. I was SO into it the other day while rezzing prims to the TRON: Legacy soundtrack. Come on over! http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Torley Marianne, it's been awhile since I used Picnik — I found it so fun and nicely integrated, although since they've been acquired by Google, I hope that doesn't take them away from Yahoo-owned Flickr.

Marianne, I like your Pris-esque mascara stripe!

I'd like to see more SL-specific features when it comes to badges and other "social" things, too. Better presets make it easier for Residents to get started because it motivates them with beautiful possibilities... instead of being put off by gosh-awfulness. I've already requested being able to overwrite/replace the limited choices of badge overlays, I don't like how mine has these weird blue-gray diagonal bars. On a related note, wish we had an easier "insert SLurl" as part of the current insert link feature, or as a new toolbar button.

@Rhonda Thank you and I'm sorry! I've corrected that link. @Keli That's actually the Linden Lab logo, as shown in the upper-left here. @Suspiria No word on video yet, but just as the Internet has generally grown more multimedia-laden and high-definition as bandwidth around the world has increased, we can expect a general trend of "richer" experiences. @Qwalyphi As mentioned in my post, what's coming in the future — personalized recommendations — will be new.

Luc, have you already reported a bug about this? I can remind the right Lindens if they don't already have it on their radar.

Janelle Darkstone wrote: One of my favorite tricks is using the zoom controls: View > Zoom In, Zoom Default, Zoom Out (or ctrl 0,9,8 respectively) when taking pose stand and greenscreen shots to drop into a background scene later. It flattens out the subject nicely and makes for a more balanced figure and silhouette. YES!!! This is one of my alltime faves — some Residents don't realize that these zoom controls work differently than the "regular" camera zoom. It used to be possible to Zoom Out to bizarre, wide-angle degrees where the world would appear warped. That was removed because it wasn't broadly useful, but insofar as artistry, I sure did enjoy it. Zoom In a lot is kinda like sniper or binocular vision. One of my fave things to share in recent days is: if you're a frequent SL shutterbug (or machinimatographer) and get annoyed using your hands to both position/control the camera and start/stop recording, then offload some of the work onto your feet and get a USB pedal! It's soooo much easier to simply stomp, not unlike some of those vintage cameras that had pedals for flash. I have more details here, along with mention of the SpaceNavigator which is a great timesaver for gliding into a specific angle.

Friendly greetings! You may have noticed that when editing your profile (Me menu > My Profile) there's a new Interests tab. (It's in today's Message of the Day too.) More info is forthcoming from Linden Lab, but upwards of 40,000 Residents have already used it with 7,000+ unique interest tags. I wanted to share some details so you understand what's going on. How is this Interests thing meant to work? The general idea is simple: Interests is going to help you find people, places, and things of interest. For now, fill it out at your leisure so you're ready for the future. Adding interests is simple, too: Enter interests and click Add after each one. You can use multiple words. If you start typing and wait awhile, the interest autocompletes with existing matches. (I should note there are some colorfully-stylized ones. ;) ) Refreshing the list shows them in alphabetical order. To remove an interest, hover over it and click the X. All of this may already feel comfortable if you've used other keyword/tagging systems. If you're been in Second Life for awhile, you may recall the old profiles which also had an Interests tab, but wasn't connected to other people — this will be. If you haven't filled out interests yet, your profile gives you a little completion reminder, as with every other major profile area. For example, see my Torley Linden profile. Can I see all Residents with a common interest by clicking on a keyword? Not currently, but that's been suggested and that was my natural instinct when profile-browsing, too. Forthcoming details will be announced as they're ready; there's no date yet (I knew you'd ask). Related, the extent to which we'll recognize similar words and stemming has yet to be decided. In other words, stuff a real human could easily look at and go "Those are basically the same thing!" Some of you may know how other sites like Flickr recognize plurals and verb variations. Are only interests going to be used to find other matches? The tentative plan is to use your entire profile, although the Interests tab helps supply specifics. Remember these are still the VERY EARLY DAYS™ so a lot to come isn't in place yet. Filling in your interests right now helps Linden Lab improve the matching engine. Is this voluntary? YES, like every other aspect of your profile, sharing info is opt-in. In the future for those who explicitly want to be excluded from the "recommendation engine" on the whole, we'll definitely give you a way out. Right now, you can control your web profile Privacy Settings if you want to hide your profile on the web and/or limit it to friends. We won't sell your interests to nasty-**bleep** spammers because we care about your privacy. This is covered in our existing Privacy Policy. How many interests can I have? Up to 20. (As of 2011-03-28.) Can I edit my profile when I'm not inworld? Yup, since it's called a "web profile" that's exactly what you can do: go to https://my.secondlife.com/settings/profile#interests and login. I have an awesome idea! Where do I share my feedback? OMG we'd love to know. You can discuss in this thread — please keep it on-topic :) — or contact Wolf Linden (wolf at lindenlab dot com), who's working on this project and who I've learned some of the above details from.

@Cerise THANK YOU for that correction and clarification, I've updated the post and am going to forward that info to our community platform gurus.

@Keli I can totally relate! Thank you re: my fashion, I was over at Zaara and couldn't resist. @mally Thanx! @Steve "-multiple" isn't necessarily "at the end" — and the BEST THING is there's an EASIER way. Do this: Select Me menu > Preferences. Click the Advanced tab. Check Allow Multiple Viewers. Click OK in the PREFERENCES window. You may need to restart the Viewer to start multiple Viewers, but aside from that, you're all set!