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Category: Mar’s Musings

Help a much-loved kitty get well, and get a lovely skin and/or fun tattoo while you’re at it

Help a much-loved kitty get well, and get a lovely skin and/or fun tattoo while you’re at it

Hi peeps :)

I don’t normally blog about this kind of thing, but this story touched my heart. I’ve had beloved pets fall terribly ill in the past, and I’ve struggled to meet veterinary bills for their treatment, and I’m sure that some of you have experienced that, too. Pets aren’t ‘just’ cats/dogs/birds etc; they become much-loved members of our families.

Voshie Paine of La Petite Morte is now going through the same thing with her cat, Alli, and she’s placed out a special version of her Wixson skin priced at L$100, and a fun kitty face tattoo priced at just L$10, to try and raise some money to help cover Alli’s vet bills. You can find the items here.

If you can’t afford the skin (or even the tattoo) there’s a tip jar beside them (the little bluebird). Even a couple of L$ will help (you remember Grandma telling you to look after the pennies and the pounds/dollars will take care of themselves, right?).

I’ll paste Voshie’s touching notecard after the cut. Voshie, I hope this blog brings poor Alli’s plight to a slightly wider audience, and helps you both out. Love, Mar <3

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Mar’s Mutterings: A brief lesson in land

Mar’s Mutterings: A brief lesson in land

Apologies for the preponderance of ‘mutterings’ posts of late. Hopefully, this will be the last annoyance I have to put up with for a while. *sigh*

A brief lesson in land

1. Just because a parcel has ‘anyone can build’ switched on, that doesn’t mean you SHOULD build on it. If it’s not marked as a sandbox, check with the owner first.

2. If a parcel is set for sale, you have to BUY IT before you can build on it.

3. If you have not RENTED or BOUGHT a parcel, and it’s NOT A SANDBOX, then DON’T BUILD ON IT.

This post brought to you by an irate Mar, who just found two avatars – fashion bloggers, both – with an entire bloody STORE and several pose studios rezzed high up above her land. And no, I didn’t set the land so anyone can build. I own two parcels that are divided by a teeny, thin strip of abandoned land (which I don’t quite have enough tier to cover, hence I can’t buy it). Both parcels, upon purchase, were set to: Build and Object Entry = Group Only, and Run Scripts = Anyone and Group (because some AOs don’t work if scripts aren’t enabled on land). I have a two-minute return time set on the main plot, since that’s where I have my store and I like to let people unpack things, and sort their inventory on the chairs up there.

Here’s the map of Endicott:

See the tiny thin yellow strip of land on the right? That’s actually a 512m abandoned parcel that’s about 2m wide. I own the plot beneath it and I also own the plot above it, where you can see two green dots (those two avatars, on their platform). I’ve highlighted my land in pink.

SOMEHOW (God alone knows how) both of my parcels’s permissions changed, and I don’t know when this happened. They became: Build, Object Entry, Run Scripts = Anyone.

The only other people in my land group are my own alts, and Mar is the only one who has full land permissions; the others are only in the group so they can Set Home and build/unpack boxes. Something screwy has happened here, maybe during a server upgrade or something, because I know that’s not what I set the parcels to.

Regardless, in short:

There is no such thing as ‘free land’ in Second Life. Every plot of land is paid for by someone. Yes, sometimes they allow others to build on their land, but usually that land is clearly described as a Sandbox or something similar. Both of my plots are described thus:

Mar’s place: Home of the Del Mar Store. Homes, useful stuff, freebies, photo studio, newbie help :)
https://www.sl4nowt.com/

So tell me, how is that an invitation to build your stuff wherever you please? These weren’t exactly newbies, either: one was 1245 days old (over three years) and the other was 704 days old (almost two years).

They seemed to assume that, since the tiny strip of land was for sale, they could build there. And around it. On a 30m platform.

Without actually BUYING the land.

And, when I started returning stuff, they were yelling, “NOOOO!” at me.

Sorry, ladies. I’m not paying £40 per month for you to have 200 or so prims rezzed out. This may be a harsh lesson in land ownership, but it’s one that some people clearly need to learn.

Mar’s Mutterings: The “A&P Midnight Mania & LC” group

Mar’s Mutterings: The “A&P Midnight Mania & LC” group

Yes, I’ve actually labelled it Mar’s Mutterings this time.

Have you been spammed by invites to this group? I have. So have ALL my alts. So have several of my friends and all their alts.

kafareliaona has invited you to join a group in Second Life.
KaReO (kafareliaona) has invited you to join a group.
There is no cost to join this group.
Group:
* A&P Midnight Mania & LC *: ADVERTISE + PROMOTION 56.789+ ppl. ADVERTISING Group. Get Rules&Rights 2 Advertise, from Registr. Unit Menu here: [ SLurl redacted ]
! and select “RulesInfo” button !
ADVERTISING INCREASE YOUR SALES!
4 Advertising & Publicity of: Shops, Businesses, Creations, Clubs, Events; or Promotions of: MMs & Lucky Chairs or similar prize givers systems.
+300 FREEBIES 4 GROUP ONLY: [ SLurl redacted ]

More behind the cut.

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Mar’s Musings: When marketing tactics backfire

Mar’s Musings: When marketing tactics backfire

Technically, this post should be headed “Mar’s mutterings” because I’m not a happy bunny. Granted, I may be taking this way too seriously, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand in SL it’s merchants who add me to lists and groups without my knowledge, with the purpose of spamming me with IMs. If there’s another thing that I think is a dubious practise at best, it’s bribing people for Marketplace reviews with the promise of freebies. That said, onto the post.

I was slightly peeved to find myself being sent an Object IM yesterday by someone from whom I purchased a couple of cheap items on Marketplace a few weeks ago. Since I was offline, the message went to my email address, and – oddly – it ended up in my Spam filters there. On clicking it (normally I don’t click into spam, but this was clearly an in-world message) I saw the following message at the top from Gmail:

Why is this message in Spam? It’s similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.

I clicked ‘find out more’ and lo and behold, one of the reasons that what would normally pass for any old Object IM from Second Life (we all get tons of them, from Midnight Mania messages to group notices etc) might end up in Spam was the following:

Behavior of other Gmail users, such as many people reporting spam from a particular sender.

This doesn’t surprise me, as – on teleporting to the location of the object when I logged in today, I was immediately sent another Object IM. Followed, one minute later, by another. These IMs came, first, from a welcome mat (although I didn’t touch it; I’m always flying when I teleport, and the mat was on the floor) and, secondly, from a Marketplace Magic Box that had been renamed to include the owner’s Marketplace URL. I was also sent two notecards: a welcome one, and one containing information about the subject of the Object IM.

Hop behind the cut to see why I get so bloody annoyed about this stuff.

Merchants, take note: these tactics make me NEVER want to buy from you again.

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The Del Mar store is back!

The Del Mar store is back!

If you’ve been reading SL for Nowt for a while, you’ll know that I gave up my little stall in Baileya some time ago because I wasn’t in-world often enough to keep it running. Well, it’s back, and with added features!

Del Mar can now be found in the sky in Endicott sim, and it comprises two sections. The front is the store itself, with a few useful and fun items that I’ve made, plus a load of freebies. The back section features something new: a photo studio area.

Hop behind the cut for more pics and info!

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What newbies to Second Life now see

What newbies to Second Life now see

UPDATE: Since this post is attracting an inordinate number of spam comments (all of which are being caught by my spam filter, but it’s still a pain to keep emptying it) I’m disabling comments on it.

Hi peeps!

Normally a post like this would go onto my Ponderings blog, but since it’s related to the newbie experience I’m putting it here.

Every now and then I create a new alt, to see what the ‘Welcome to Second Life’ experience is like. There was a time when it was pretty stable and didn’t change. You first rezzed at an Orientation Island with a tutorial HUD on your screen that directed you to do things, told you how to walk, to drive vehicles, to chat to other people, to buy things, to change your looks; basically how to do the important stuff you’d want to do in a virtual world.

The welcome experience has gone through several iterations since then, but they always included tutorials on the important stuff. Until now.

This is where Mar’s new alt rezzed:

Now, put yourself in the shoes of a complete newbie (remember how confused you were when you first rezzed?) and hop behind the cut…

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