Beginner queries

Someone's probably going to biff me over the head for this, but leaving any appliance on longer than necessary is very environmentally unfriendly, and hardly justifiable in these days of diminishing natural resources and global warming.

By the by, it intrigues me to speculate what will eventually happen, when all that oil and coal is gone, whether we can generate sufficient power by other means to sustain a world so intrinsically dependent on information technologies - we should be exercising some ingenuity here...

Quote from Surrealist Seesaw:
Someone's probably going to biff me over the head for this, but leaving any appliance on longer than necessary is very environmentally unfriendly, and hardly justifiable in these days of diminishing natural resources and global warming.

Don't take this the wrong way, SS, but if that's to be the underlying principle I have to question the fundamental of sl itself - when is sl really necessary for the majority of ppl on line? Define longer than necessary. Camping/generating notional amounts of cash are surely as relevant an activity as anything else - if it helps networking/social intercourse at other more user active times in the sim.

Also, if I could master the trick of having the quote in a sub- panel like other posters I'd be grateful

re my original query, it's still a bummer - followed everyone's suggestions. When I got up the note on screen indicated that I'd accumulated $99 butI couldn't reactivated my atavar - clicking 'stand up' did nothing, other buttons equally inactive, and had to resort to relog, only to find the amount was not credited.

To quote someone click the "quote" button at the bottom right of the post you want to quote. Then you'll see what the "QUOTE" AND "/QUOTE" tags look like.

With the "Crystal HUD" I assume you mean the "Free Radar HUD By Crystal Gadgets" message?

If so that means one of two things.

1) You have just worn that tool. The first time it's worn it gives a one off confirmation of the name and version.

2) Someone else has just worn the tool. Either they just put it on, or they just logged into SL. In those cases it will confirm the tool name/version in open chat which can be heard by others that happen to be within 20 meters of the avatar wearing it. This is a common practice done probably by the majority of HUD creators.

It's a mild form of advertising. But wont be heard by others nearby for the remainder of the time the wearer is logged in to SL. It'll be heard only by the wearer at all other times.

Generally speaking some tool creators spam larger areas in this scenario, or do it every time you visit a new sim, or everytime the wearer interacts with the tool and so on, which can be annoying.

Note that muting the tool will also mute the avatar who owns that tool. So this can later lead to awkward situations where you try to talk to them (not realising they're on mute) but you can't hear their reply.

That sounds to me like you have lost the connection to the server. If you have the minimap up, was it red?

It can happen that you lose your connection to the server, but SL keeps running on your pc, so it looks like you're still there. You can't move (except maybe for turning in place), stand up, chat, IM or do anything, and as far as SL is concerned you've logged out. The minimap tends to turn red when this happens, but not always in my experience.