Helpful Tools Meme

I’m late posting this today, mainly because I’ve had an utterly crap work day that included scalding my hand pretty badly. So I’m in pain and my typing isn’t as quick as usual. Also, I got distracted playing a new legacy family in Sims 3. It wasn’t my mouse hand that I scalded, so clicking away at Sims was easier than anything else. It’s also why you get no new image today; I really didn’t feel like logging in and faffing around to take pictures.

Today, Berry asked about the useful tools and HUDs that we use to make our Second Life easier. She already blogged two of mine (the MystiTool, and the AnyPose Expression HUD), and I don’t really use that many other HUDs, but here’s a list of the few that I do rely on, plus a few other brilliant tools that I use a heck of a lot inworld.

1. Hug & Kiss HUD

I’ve had this for years (it’s not available on Marketplace, or inworld I think) but it’s always on my screen. My day begins and ends with a hug and kiss with Daros, so this is the most important HUD that I wear. The one I use mainly stays on the kiss setting; sometimes if Daros is sick or feeling sad I’ll set it to a long, close hug, and just for fun sometimes I set it so that he runs at me and leaps into my arms. On very rare occasions, when we’re both feeling giggly, I’ll set it to the funniest animation it holds: him running at me and knocking me flat ;-)

2. Firestorm AO

This built-in AO is genius. There are loads of tutorials on the Firestorm YouTube channel (start here). I’ve recently purchased a new AO, so I need to load those animations into it, along with the notecard. It’s so simple, and using it reduces my script count by quite a bit, since many of the AOs you can buy these days come with so many bells and whistles that it’s almost ridiculous.

3. Firestorm Command Line

Another Firestorm thing that I absolutely love and use every single day, is the command line. For those of you that don’t use FS, you can type certain commands into chat and they do things. The ones I use most are:

gth [number] – immediately teleports you to the height stated in the number (eg: gth 800 would send you to 800m)
rezplat – rezzes a platform (you can specify the default size in the options) beneath you

Both of the above are perfect for using in sandboxes to move up from the crowds and chuck a quick platform down.

dd [number] – sets your draw distance to the stated number (eg: dd 128 sets it to 128m)
flr – immediately teleports you to ground level

4. KinEx Texture & Sculpt Organiser

Seriously, I would not be without this organiser for anything. You don’t even need to be a content creator to make use of this. Got tons of snapshots? Chuck ’em in one of these and view them at your leisure! Read the listing for the full description of what it can do, but my favourite features are:

– wear as a HUD (it resizes)
– expandable (you only need to rez one and keep expanding it)
– produces neat packs of each category if you want them
– fast-rez sculpted prims in your name
– put the transfer script in a (modifiable) box of purchased textures and instantly put them into any category

 5. MystiTool (Marketplace or pick up the latest paid and free versions inworld here)

I know Berry already blogged this, but here’s why I use it. I actually use both the full Mysti and the freebie. Since Firestorm now has a built-in Pose Stand HUD I don’t use the rezzable pose stand from Mysti any more, so its main use for me these days is as a radar and it also notifies me when someone is typing or away (there’s a series of initials behind everyone’s name on the radar: A for Away, T for typing, etc). It also records bumps, pushes and hits in local chat as they happen.

Its other main use for me is as a landmarks HUD. I do use the viewer’s favourites buttons, but I have all of those set to our multiple home and store and build platform etc locations, for quick access, so the Mysti contains all my most-frequently-visited store LMs.

If I need to de-script, but still want a radar, then I use either the freebie Mysti (much lower script count) or the free radar HUD from Crystal Gadgets (SLurl), which has some other useful free items.

6. AnyPose Expression HUD

Simple and, again, free (I do love a good freebie!). Everyone who takes photos of their avatar should own this. It lets you direct your gaze in any direction and also contains a hand-poser for those that don’t use mesh hands (if you find your fingers splaying out all the time, just hit ‘relaxed’ on this HUD = problem solved). Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll hit one of the eye directions right at the moment when your avatar blinks, and then you get a frozen closed-eyes pose. Take advantage of that, because when you actually want a closed-eye pose, no matter how many times you click the HUD, you won’t get one!

Bonus edit (the next day, after I’d logged in and saw it – lol!)

7. LagMeter

This thing is most useful when it sends me an IM to tell me that the region it’s in has restarted. I think most of us have a default private region (usually a store) that we leg it to when we get the region restart notice. (Mine’s the Sn@tch store.) With this free one-prim meter rezzed anywhere on your home parcel, you’ll get an object IM in local chat to tell you when the region has restarted, so you know when to bother trying to teleport home. Its other main use (apart from keeping track of FPS, etc) is that you can set a ‘low prim count alert’ limit, and it’ll IM you when prims are getting low on your land. I’ve got mine set up in the skybox where I put together all my fashion looks and take the studio shots (which is where the screenshots below were taken).

And that’s your lot. *holds out his poor, painful hand* Sorry; I would write more, but I’ve got a boo-boo and it hurts :p

Oh! One other little Firestorm thing I love? The ability to have the song playing in the music stream announced in nearby chat (for you only). Before I used Firestorm, I’d often find myself scrabbling for my phone to hit the TrackID button and hope the app could identify what was playing on the parcel’s media stream (it often couldn’t). Now, I have it set so Firestorm simply tells me. Perfect for noting down to add to a Spotify playlist or purchase later on ;-)

And that really is it. I’m now going to take some more painkillers and crawl into bed. I’ll try and update with a screenshot tomorrow.

Update: Here are my screenshots (finally, when everyone who’s going to read this post has already read it – heh!)

This is my default view, with all HUDs open. When I’m just moving around, I keep the AnyPose and Hug/Kiss HUDs minimised, so they don’t look as intrusive as they do here:

And this is my default view when doing fashion shoots:

And yeah, that’s pretty skint for me. I usually put USD100 on my account per month, so that’s what I have left after almost a month of solid spending. Not bad! Can’t wait for the next 100 to go on. I suspect it might be today ;-)