Glossary

Here are short definitions of several terms peculiar to Caledon and Second Life. Many of these terms don't really require a page of their own, but some will.

Avatar - (sometimes shortened to AV or avie) noun 1) A visual representation of a user on The Grid. While the default AV is that of a hominid anthropoid, the potential forms are unlimited. 2) An individual user.

Automaton - an older word for 'robot', derived from toys made in the form of mechanical figures.

Bling - noun Particle effect intended to simulate the glint and shine of jewelry. Used in excess, it can create client lag, avatar blindness and general infuriation. Those who use bling excessively and to the detriment of others are affectionately referred to as "blingtards" or "Blingons"

Chat - noun This is your "outside voice" in SL, or how you speak to other residents in groups. Remember that anyone in range can hear you, so make sure you do not get "Wrong Window Syndrome", especially if you are being particularly snide in IM with someone about another person that is in chat range. See also: IM.

Clank - noun Robots (usually anthropoidic), or self-aware mechanical humanoids, although most do not seem fond of the term as applied to them. Iason Hassanov is technically a clank, for example. (Term taken from Girl Genius)

Client - noun The software that runs on your home computer, which allows you to connect to and view Second Life or other virtual worlds. Sometimes called "Viewer".

Crash - verb The act of an unexpected and forced log out. Also occasionally used to refer to a sim being offline ("crashing a sim").

Construct - noun (accent on the first syllable, as opposed to the verb usage). A constructed, self-aware entity as opposed to one who was born from a human body or test tube. Can be used as a catch-all term for both organic 'Frankenstein'-type beings and for mechanical persons, such as dolls and androids. Baron Klaus Wulfenbach is an organic construct.

Cybering - verb Go ask your mentor.

Duchess sandwich - noun The sandwich is a dance for three people dancing *VERY* close together in a line; the name comes from it being prominently practiced by pairs of Duchesses with a third party in between.

Estate - noun Privately owned and managed sim, or a group of such sims. See mainland.

Estate manager - noun A person designated by the owner of an estate (q.v.) to exercise most of the powers that the owner has for estate operation.

(the) Grid - noun The complete collection of sims, public and private, that make up the geography of Second Life.

Group chat - noun A common misnomer; so-called group chat is actually a form of multi-user IM (which see). See also: WWS.

IM - noun An abbreviation of Instant Message, a mechanism for real time text-based communication through an intranet or the Internet. verb The act of engaging in this form of real-time communication. IMing, being private, is something you may need to do to reach a distant avatar, or in a concert or large group it is polite to IM your companions rather than distract the other patrons.

IM storm - noun The situation of being overwhelmed by personal Instant Messages. Often heard from Guvnah Shang, but also likely to happen to anyone else who runs a business or has many chatty friends.

In-world (also inworld) - adjective 1) Logged in to Second Life I will be in-world later this evening. 2) existing within the construct of Second Life the concert will be inworld, four o'clock.

Lag - noun A slowdown of Second Life, caused by server load, network congestion, excessively large textures or bad vapours.

Mainland - noun Sims owned by Linden Lab instead of outside owners. See estate.

Mature - adj Not necessarily an X-rated sim, simply one rated for all activities. But a mature rating does NOT mean that clothing-optional/orgy/goats-on-fire is usual; for instance, almost all of Caledon is rated Mature but the covenant limits a number of behaviours. Always check covenants and customs for an area before you strip to the skin or do anything that could get you arrested in First Life.

Metaverse - noun Originally used in the cyberpunk novel "Snowcrash" it describes a 3D virtual world such as Second Life.

Mimmoths - tiny verminous mammoths. They damage equipment by pushing things with their tusks. Some have managed to squeeze through interdimensional portals into Caledon, particularly Kittiwickshire, although the environment seems to keep them from multiplying as rapidly as in their native realm. (Term taken from Girl Genius)

Notecard - noun Another way to communicate in world. If Chat is face-to-face conversation, and IM is a telephone call, then the notecard is the old-fashioned letter of SL. You will be notified when your notecard is taken into inventory, so automatic delivery confirmation is a plus. Also, spell-checking is available. Finally, busy people sometimes lose IMs when off-world due to a system cap, but notecards are not limited.

Openspace sim - noun The current term for a void sim, which see.

PG - adj As a type of sim, the opposite of Mature. Loosely based on one rating in the US movie ratings system. Certain activities, especially public sexuality, are limited in PG sims. Despite the ambiguities of the term, failure to observe a PG rating has been held to violate Community Standards and Terms of Service for the use of Second Life. At this writing Victoria City is the only PG sim in Caledon.

Prim - noun Short for primitive. A building block from which all objects in Second Life, regardless of size and shape, is built.

Red mapping - verb Term used to describe a partial crash, where the AV remains connected to the grid but is unable to move or hear general or group chat. So called because the "land" in the minimap turns red.

Residents - noun Collective term for users of Second Life.

Rez - verb to bring an object onto the grid from your inventory, or to create a new object in the grid. noun the resolution of the grid around you, as in "waiting for". Short for "resolution", never mind the change of consonant. See Tron for the historical origin of the abbreviation as a colloquial term.

Rezday (also Resday) - noun. The day upon which an avatar first resolved ("rezzed") in Second Life; one's Second Birthday. Celebrating a friend's anniversary of their appearance in Second Life is yet another excuse to hold a party, and much higher on the "Special Day" roster than say, "It's Thursday" but slightly lower than Weddings or National Anniversaries.

Robot - noun Coined by Czech playwright Karel Capek (from the Czech word for "worker") his 1921 play "Rossum's Universal Robots".

Ruthed - p.p.-adjective Historically, the state of having your default shape and hair mysteriously replaced with that of the SL default model, a female form named Ruth. This was the result of system error, and was often corrected simply by logging out for a time and then returning. Sometimes entering Edit Appearance and closing the edit session without saving would restore from a ruthy state. In more recent clients, Ruth has been replaced by a cloud of particles, sometimes called "Ruth 2.0".

Server - noun The computer(s) owned and operated by Linden Lab that run the software and databases that create Second Life. See sim.

Sim - noun Short for simulator. A virtual representation of an area of land 256 meters squared. See server.

SLT - noun Second Life Time; equivalent to the prevailing time (Pacific Standard or Daylight) at San Francisco, California, where Linden Lab is headquartered. This is the time shown in the standard Second Life viewer.

SLURL - noun Second Life Universal (or Uniform) Resource Locator - HTTP address used to specify a Second Life location address in documents outside the grid, such as in an online journal or web page. You can build one by going to the world map, and clicking "Copy SLURL to Clipboard" then pasting it into your document.

Spark - noun Quoting from the source: 'Whatever it is that makes Mad Scientists what they are. A poorly understood concept that identifies and incorporates a batch of personality traits shared by those who have it. Also referred to as the Gift, the Touch, the Curse, the Madness, the Doom, &c. Also referred to as his or her Spark, in this case a personal quality. Also used as another term for a Mad Scientist--you would say that someone is a Spark if they have the Spark.' -- from the Girl Genius glossary and used by permission.

Steward - a former office of privilege in Caledon. Now dissolved. See Estate Manager

Void sim - noun A sim with the standard area but only 1/4 of the standard prim allotment (3,750 vs 15,000). Originally these were sold only in groups of four, but now can be purchased singly, although the buyer must still own one or more standard sims. Void sims are often used to provide open sea or land for recreation, buffers between sims, or space for large group events.

WWS - acronym for Wrong Window Syndrome - if you are chatting with several different people in IM and Group Chat, it is very easy to put the response to one person to another's IM. This is usually not a serious problem, unless you are being horrible about someone in a conversation or even worse, you were cybering.