Torley Linden

Literally. For a limited and indefinite time, you can freely practice your terraforming on Here region, part of Torley island. Ever wanted to know firsthand what shaping land is like before buying a parcel? Here's your chance! Since this is open to the public, expect things to get chaotic if the region gets popular. But please be considerate of one another. Don't worry too much about cleaning up after yourself, since autoreturn time is 5 minutes. But that gives you some practice time to place objects. (Sidenote: if you have coalesced objects with Linden trees/plants which can only be rezzed on land you can terraform due to an old and weird rule, this is also a quick way to sort them out.) But, how do you terraform? Watch this video — note it refers to an old location which no longer exists as-is. You can right-click and Edit Terrain ANYWHERE on Here region.

The Second Life Viewer can be pretty resource-intensive, but there are ways to help it cooperate better with other things happening on your computer. You can easily increase or decrease the amount of CPU power the Viewer uses when it's in the background — for example, if you're surfing in an external web browser, or editing images in Photoshop. In other words, anytime the Viewer doesn't have focus. This video shows you exactly how: Select World menu > Show > Advanced Menu. (Veteran Residents will remember this used to be more obscure!) The Advanced menu appears next to the Help menu. Select Advanced > Show Debug Settings. Type in "BackgroundYieldTime". It autocompletes. The default is "40" milliseconds, a reasonable balance. To make the Viewer lighter in the background, increase BackgroundYieldTime to "200" and click on the desktop (or another app where you can still see the Viewer). You should see the Viewer update less frequently — animations will be choppier. For the inverse effect, decrease this to "1". The Viewer should still run smoothly when it's in the background. Why might you want to increase the power the Viewer uses in the background? If you're on a powerful computer with multiple cores, you can run multiple Viewers easier. If you're making machinima, you could film two Viewers simultaneously (since one would always be in the background) with less of a framerate drop. So depending on your specific needs, you can adjust this whenever you want. Experiment and see what works best for you! The Task Manager (Windows) or Activity Monitor (Mac) can show you CPU usage. Have Second Life performance tips? Share 'em in da commentz.

I hope you've been finding community.secondlife.com's search to be a great improvement over the previous system. In my own raw usage of digging stuff up, I've found the autocomplete (also called "auto-suggest") to be a lovely friction-reducer in finding answers fast. As you get more comfortable with search, here are handy things to know: The search box is on almost every page Ain't that convenient? Just about everywhere you go on community.secondlife.com, you'll see the familiar search box in the upper-right. One notable exception is directly under the Answers tab, because here, a simple search is contained within the "Ask a Question" widget to reduce confusion. But when viewing a particular Answers thread, your private messages, and more — there's the search box! You can make search results more useful Community participation — YES, YOU — helps good things float to the top. How? For example, if you ask a question in Answers and get a helpful answer, make sure to mark it with Accept as Solution. This highlights it so others who have the same question after you can see it easier. It should also rise up in search results. Also, if you're generally browsing Answers and see a helpful answer, click the Kudos button, available in certain places. It's an easy way to thank the answer-giver and help others focus on what's useful. Kudos are part of our ranking system, which makes it easier to see who extremely helpful Residents are. (If you're wondering: "I didn't notice that before!" you'd be right, because we didn't have Kudos when we initially launched community.secondlife.com. But it was added last week.) For more on where you can give Kudos — or revoking them if you made a mistake — see this Community Help page. Various Lindens, including myself, are also watching for threads that our Residents deem especially worthwhile. In rare cases when a thread is so broadly useful that IT MUST BE SEEN BY EVERYONE (OMG!), we can also float (sticky) a thread to the top of a forum, like this: For your own personal view (that doesn't affect anyone else), you can choose Topic Options > Float this Topic to the Top when viewing a thread, making it easier to find on future visits: Search for a specific Resident Are you looking for someone's profile? Here's how: In the search box's dropdown menu, select Users. Enter their name (or your closest guess) and wait for it to autocomplete, or click Search. Note: There's a weird bug. If you go back a page after viewing results and do another search, it may incorrectly show "0 matches". I've reported it. Bookmark power search if you use it often Starting your search with the simple mode should work fine for most, but if you regularly find yourself narrowing down options, you can bookmark the power search page. If you want to keep track of search results over time because there are keywords you're watching for — like a type of land you want to buy — then you can Subscribe to RSS Feed for this Search, too. If you're accustomed to Boolean operators and want even more options, click the Advanced Search... link to get super-granular. As we say here, the world's your prim oyster. What does that "Highlight" thing do in the Forums? When clicking Options in the upper-right of a forum post, this appears: I asked community guru Lexie Linden and she clued me in: turns out it's the same as it's similar to "Permalink", which puts a specific URL for that post in your browser's address bar, which can be useful within a huge thread. UPDATE: As Cerise Sorbet clarifies in the comments: "The highlight function should literally highlight posts in a different background color, but the graphical backgrounds used here have been covering up the effect." Oh boy, we need to fix that! Of course, the name is confusing — I was expecting the post to glow or something. So I've made a request to rename Highlight to Permalink like we already use elsewhere on the site, like at the bottom of a blog comment. Use Google to search all of secondlife.com What if you want to search not just community.secondlife.com, but all of secondlife.com? Or a specific subdomain? Google offers a popular workaround: Just go to Google.com and search for "site:secondlife.com keyword", like "site:secondlife.com avatar" or "site:secondlife.com avatar attachments". If you want to limit it to a subdomain, try something like "site:community.secondlife.com avatar attachments". If you find yourself doing this frequently, you could create a Google Custom Search to save time. As those 80s NES days used to say: NOW YOU'RE PLAYING WITH POWER! For more info on how to search community.secondlife.com, see Community Help - Searching. Got a compelling search tip you wanna share? Let's hear it!

Colt, astute question. One I've thought about before. Here's another problem: some builds DO move or the region is renamed. And hardcoding the text would look ugly (since it's not going to scale smoothly). But it'd be better than nothing. Next time this topic comes up for discussion, I'm going to ask about this and other possibilities — like a makeshift link to a Destination Guide category that DOES have names and links. That would fill a huge gap in answering mysteries. I've heard the original "login screen" question 100+ times now, so clearly there's interest!

Here's the word from the watermelon horse's mouth: first, Matty, thanks, I'm glad you like the pictures. I took them. However, this was months ago — that set hasn't been updated since around last summer, and most of the places are gone , or ones that are still around have changed a lot. An exception... visit http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Verdigris/125/108/79 and compare to this shot. As you may have seen, I continue to take pictures of many amazing Second Life locations, most of which are also in our Destination Guide. Inside Linden Lab, there've been previous discussions about including teleport links with each picture, or integrating it with the Destination Guide closer, so you can click and visit. Some of you may go, "Ah, like some 3rd-party viewers currently do, right?" That's the general idea. However, I have no details on when this may happen. At this point it's still an idea that I think is worth revisiting. So, keep watching.

I'm all for irrational treats. @Canoro, that movie's soundtrack had such a big impact on my life.

Terra, what version of IE are you using? Is this the newest Internet Explorer 9 Beta? Also, have you tested with other browsers — just to see the scope of the problem?

OMG SECOND LIFE CREEPYPASTA I <3 IT MOAR PLZ

I've made friends with people who were very different. Over time, as we shared interests, we became more similar. So we may not have started with much in common — and fascination to learn about "the other side" was part of our spark — but our divergent paths grew together. I think that's true of many strong, longterm relationships, including romantic ones.

I don't have a fave single place to listen to live music, but some places are gorgeous to visit, even when no one's playing. Like the stages on this region. My wife and I once saw a piano concert by Origin Rang that blew my mind, and I don't know whatever happened to him — but that dude could nail the Chopin. He was charmingly polite about such a virtuoso performance, too.

Also note there ARE special Covenants for specific Linden Land, such as that which Linden Homes are located on, and earlier themed communities — where Covenants can make a lot of sense, given a focused purpose or direction shared by those who live (or want to live) there.

Related, if you like Banksy, see the intro he crafted for The Simpsons, I think it's the most dark/dystopian one yet:

Here's more historical info on said green voting stations you may find enlightening.

Definitely read Philip K. Dick's Ubik. It's a popular sci-fi novel but I haven't seen it get enough love in Second Life circles. It doesn't deal with virtual worlds from a "jacking into the computer" perspective more prevalent in recent novels, but PKD's fave theme of "What is real?" pervasively and thrillingly runs through the book from beginning to end. It's a pretty brisk read and I was awed. You'll especially enjoy it if you get a kick out of the more surreal timeclash elements in SL. PKD is one of the most influential writers when it comes to "simulated realities" and "artificial life".

I love cohesively-themed, intensely-immersive builds — each with a unique vibe and personality. For anyone who doesn't already know our Destination Guide, a plethora of that quality lies within! And if you own a great build that's not in there, why not submit? One exceptional place of numerous that I've enjoyed has been the Baedal sci-fi mines. If you need to get your Martian-magma fix on, here's the place to BURN!!!! Also, I keep an ongoing photographic chronicles of my Second Life journeys. If you see a pic that interests you, click through to get the SLurl and teleport there!

Our Editorial Team (who curates the Destination Guide) is seeing some mighty fine places here. Alas, I've noticed threads where a place is named without a SLurl — that's a direct link to a Second Life inworld location. You want people to come visit, right? So make it easy and include a SLurl! SLurls are integrated into Viewer 2.x. Here's a quick video that shows you exactly how to use this: Learn more about SLurls in our Knowledge Base. For bonus points, you can include pictures of a pretty place in your post. Since Second Life is visual, a picture can determine whether someone's curious enough to click through. When making a post, click the Insert/edit image button on the toolbar (it looks like a little tree), then select an image to upload. Voila! Your post has gone from decent to delightful in minutes.

Ha, Storm, that compilation is close to winning tha intarwebz... or at least community.secondlife.com I showed it to some other Lindens on the Community Platform Team, lulz all around.

There's a BIG LIST of sandboxes in http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Building-tips/ta-p/700041

When logged in, https://marketplace.secondlife.com/orders shows your order history, including proof that you paid — and if items haven't been delivered yet, you should see a status message under those specific items.

Some history: yes, we can trace IPs. But as pointed out, yes, the spammers have been spoofing and rotating through IPs. We went to the source and asked the company (IX Web Hosting) that hosts the spammers' site to shut it down, since they also spam/scam at a variety of other places. Sadly, IX was unhelpful and unwilling to investigate further without having us jump through a head-scratching amount of legal hoops — despite stating in their own terms of service that they don't allow such behavior, and the mass of evidence we showed. ARGH frustrating I know, right? Our moderators are here 7 days a week. I don't know what hours of coverage, though. If you have further questions about this, you can ask at the Community Tools User Group. Transcripts are saved for future reference.

@Rhonda G'morn! I find I'm greatly unproductive when moved outside of my familiar environs. Even using another computer which isn't setup with my shortcuts and timesavers, and most people seem to be relatively lax about organizing their desktop. On a somewhat related note, I cracked up seeing business cat here. That feline boss reminds me of my own cuddly-wuddly, Mr. Sushi aka ONYX GUMDROP. He's a gangsta rappa cat.

Suella Ember wrote: Torley Linden wrote: I once tried an experiment where I used a deliberately boring ("conventional robot") voice in some videos. Let me see if I can find... oh yeah, . That wasn't even the most monotone/sedate one... you should've heard the feedback on those. Actually, I noticed a while ago that you seemed more 'conventional' in one of your videos - I think it might have been the one you did when Display Names was first introduced. I remember wondering if you had done that because it's quite a detailed, important and hotly debate issue. Whatever the reason was, I also remember thinking you sounded so unlike you and I wanted to shake you and say "Oi! Why didn't you say 'friendly greetings' and be all jovial!" :smileyvery-happy: Sharp ears, Suella! *shakes self* Yes, that was most likely it — sometimes when I'm given video projects at Linden Lab, I'm requested to try different tone/phrasing. Sometimes the message is more formal, and calls for subtlety. Sometimes I read from a script instead of ad-libbing. Besides, I'd mangle legalese if left to my own devices. Suffice to say, I like the opportunity of learning different styles (just as I enjoy being different avatars/personalities) but across everything, "Torley classic" has had the best broad feedback and I have gratefully flooded inboxes asking for "MORE!" to show for it. (Sorry, I'll stop derailing this thread now so Aerrin can get on with enjoying her Second Life!)

I hearted The Goonies which inspired you, I also played the heck out of the NES game. That 80s adventure vibe will live with me forever! On a related note for you, Loki, I really enjoyed visiting The John King Experience — being dropped down those levels into a storm was quite the immersive storytelling! And how the big illustrations would fade in and out as the story's being told. I actually found out about it when browsing the Destination Guide. Which, to everyone reading this, if you want a cool place you've made/own considered for inclusion, submit it!

It's up to 500 now. (Sorry to all you DBZ fans who thought it should be "OVER 9000!") More details @ http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Avatar/UPDATE-Lexie-Linden-told-me-image-uploads-have-been-bump/qaq-p/738685/comment-id/1023#M1023

UPDATE: Lexie Linden told me image uploads have been bumped up to 500 per profile, and it's on her list for this limit to be stated in Community Help. In the meantime, the search function here when typing "upload limit" seems to be working as intended. With good reason, I've been seeing how awesomely some of you have been using image uploads! Quite a thrill to see who's been putting it to good use — especially these fun photo threads. Derek, I know you also asked Brett Linden, so I hope this clarifies thangs for ya!