Getting On part 1

After realizing that I couldn’t really do anything about my technical I decided just to make the best out of what I could do. I searched around the net to see if I am the only one with the problem and I found that there are a few people who have difficulties accessing Second Life with their Windows Vista. But sadly I couldn’t find an answer to my problem.
As I am someone who doesn’t give up easily I decided that I would try and see what I can do. Today after months of waiting on my order I received the ‘Second Life-The Official Guide’ book. I flicked through it to see what they are writing about and what they suggest. I was surprised of how much one can do, and how to do it. I do have to say this book is very helpful and makes a lot of things clear to someone like me who just has no idea what to do and where to go.
One thing I didn’t know and (my mistake) completely ignored are the amount of freebies you can get on any of the Help Islands. There are 10 in total as far as I know. On there you can go to certain places and receive free clothes, cars, newspapers, tips and loads of other helpful stuff.
It is amazing what one can miss if one is too eager to get things going and missing all the things already there. But to be honest I think I am not the only one making these mistakes. I just guess after being stuck on Orientation Island for such a long time, I just wanted to get on and experience Second Life, not knowing really what to expect and only knowing the theory.
I do recommend for anyone who wants to make their journey into Second Life easier to get that book. It is amazing how much help it is and how much easier it all makes.
Of course I did my research before I went onto SL but there is only so much you can read online, which I have to say some of the stuff is quiet helpful, but nothing compared as if you read the guide by the people who invented and created it.

Anyway, after going through the book I thought to myself, now I really want to get back to one of those islands and see if it true and what exactly one can get.
I prayed that today I would be able to teleport myself somewhere.
When I logged in it froze again for a while but after about 20 long minutes I managed to get onto it. I tried to teleport myself to the main Help Island again, and literally begged it to do it.
But again no such luck. So I decided to delete the Second Life Programme and download it again. Hoping that this would make it a little better.
I do have to say it was very frustrating and I was cursing myself for having choosen this particular project.
After I downloaded the programme again I started again to log in and try and teleport.
It still wouldn’t work. I was out of my depth here and I didn’t know what else to do, so I decided to try to teleport to random places I typed in.
And for some reason that worked. I could teleport myself to other islands, private ones, but not the main Help Island. So I tried and teleported myself to one of the other Help Islands, one which was called Help Island Public.
It took quiet some time to load but it worked, if I could have I would have jumped for joy, as there were a lot of other avatars there.
My Second Life still kept freezing and running really slow but at this point I just didn’t care. At least something was happening now.
So I followed the advice of the book and looked around, and only after a few minutes of walking around, walking into other Avatars, I found one of those Freebie stores, and of course went shopping.
I was over the moon, I clicked on anything I could see and saved everything in my Inventory. Now I have new clothes(not many but hey they are for free), new hairstyles, cars, wings of different shapes, and loads of other things.
The one thing I was most intrigued by was the dance moves I could download. After I clicked on everything and saved everything I wasted no time in trying out all the new stuff I got.
I changed my clothes, and made my avatar dance. Which I have to say made me laugh out loud, it was very funny, and I enjoyed it although most of it was in slow motion due to the programme but nevertheless at least I felt I was getting somewhere, maybe if this worked I was able to do more things and explore.
I will try and upload as many pictures of my adventures on SL onto this blog for you to look at the things I have done so far. I keep taking so many snapshots out of excitement and sometimes disbelieve.
I think this is a good thing that you can take pictures of yourself, the world and everything in it. Just like in real life, capture the moment, so you have something to remember it at a later date.
After I got all I could of this Island I managed to teleport myself to Help Island Stage.
I still for some reason can not get onto the main Help Island which is a shame but hey at least I am getting somewhere and I am not stuck on a random island anymore. J
On there I found a place where it teaches you to create stuff. If I remember right these things are called ‘Prims’.
Prims in the book are described as such:
“In Second Life’s 3D graphics, a primitive, or ‘prim’, is a basic three dimentional geometric object. The terms ‘prim’ refers to a single unit of the ‘matter’ that makes up all Second Life objects. Prims are the irreducible building blocks of Second Life- the inspittable atoms that make up the things of the world.”
It also states:
“In Second Life, a prim is one of several 3D shapes: a box, a cylinder, a prism, a sphere, a torus, a tube, or a ring. In addition to these, there are two specialty object types that are not made up of primitives: grass and trees…. “ p. 134

I started playing around with it for a while, creating several prims, and stuck them on top of one another, and changed their colours sizes and moved them around. I didn’t bother saving them as there are easily created. The only thing I was not able to try was the grass and the trees as you can only use them on your own land. Which is a bit annoying but I guess as in the real world everything has its purpose and rules.
After getting bored with creating loads of different prims and playing around with them I walked back to the main stage area, where loads of Avatars gathered.
I just stood on the side and listened(well read) the things people where talking about. I found it intriguing that I could read all their conversations and when I went into my chat history I could even read the things said before I got close enough to see what was talked about.
To be honest this concerned me a bit as there was literally no privacy and everyone could just stand there and *listen*. But as I was doing exactly that, to see if there were some problems discussed which I had, or if I was able to pick up some tips, it didn’t bother me too much at this point in time.
I guess if you do wanted to have a private conversation one could always find a spot somewhere where there wasn’t anyone.
I realized that I wasn’t the only one with problems with logging on, and freezing, loads of the Avatars there had the same problem. There was one girl who was sitting naked on the floor which I found pretty funny, bless her she tried to changer her appearance and tried to change clothes and the programme just kept freezing at her, and it didn’t save any of the clothes she wanted to put on, I could tell by the way she was chatting to one of the Helpers there, that she got pretty annoyed and angry.
The Avatar who was there to guide and help the newbies, couldn’t help much as to advise her to try certain things and if that didn’t help to just log off and on again.
I was relieved in the sense that I wasn’t the only one having difficulties, at least I wasn’t naked. J
Saying that 5 minutes later I was frozen again and got kicked out.
I didn’t mind as at least I got somewhere this time, and got to experience SL.
I just thought I take a brake and try and log on later.