Brick wall

Brusque IMs received from new neighbour: 2 (bad); Huge brick warehouses erected next door: 1 (v.v. bad); Elven bands as neighbours: 1 (good, I hope)

Came into work yesterday to 2 emails redirected from SL from new neighbour. Both demanded that I move trees from neighbour's house & 2nd message all in CAPITALS indicating some strong feeling I presume. In due course go inworld and discover that said neighbour has purchased land next to seaside house and covered entire plot with windowless brick barn (see pic). Am not sure this qualifies as "house", however shift trees so leaves no longer encroach through walls, though frankly such is bleakness of barn that would think would be grateful for sign of life.
As can see in 2nd pic now have total brick wall view from some windows of house, though obviously is neighbour's inalienable right to do what dreadful things he likes with own land.
Fortunately rest of land on that side has been bought by Elven band, who (as one might hope) seem inclined to grass, trees and Elven dwellings. Hope will maintain pleasant relations with them since fear that Brick neighbour is unlikely to be someone that want to invite round for afternoon tea.

Evaluating, education, SL

Chatlogs posted: 1 (good); Notecards published to web: 1 (good); Valentine's cake consumed in SL: 2 slices (good); Calories gained: 0 (v.v. good)
Have finally posted the chatlog of the meeting held on 14 Feb 2008, on Evaluating educational interventions in Second Life, particularly education for information literacy , at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=234. Also since had made rather lengthy notecard decided to post this as document to the web as well: at http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/evaluating-notecard.pdf
Notecard includes links to material from the Eduserv meeting that attended a while back (and never got round to blogging), since part of notecard summarises some of the points from that.


1st pic shows 14 Feb meeting - can see heart shaped Valentine cake in the middle although not everyone stayed to taste it. 2nd pic shows meeting at Eduserv, alluded to a while back, on Measuring impact of SL in education. Advantage of waiting a few weeks before blogging is that someone else will have already done it for you, in this case Art Fossett with v. coherent account at http://artfossett.blogspot.com/2008/01/
thinking-about-learning-impact-of.html. Also he uses same chatlog function as me and the chat from the Eduserv meeting is linked from his post.

Voice, Interviews, Meetings

Interviews given: 1 (v. good)

Realise that heading of last post. i.e "Consumption, farewell" sounded as though was bidding farewell to consumption. Given content of last post this might have been somewhat baffling. Title meant to convey that was bidding Hello to consumption and Farewell to my first ever land parcel. Oh well.

Most notable event recently, apart from discussion on island that will blog separately, was being interviewed for Metaverse TV by Dousa Dragonash. V. exciting. She and MTV CEO/camerman visited Infolit iSchool and we chatted in the offices, Sakura House and the shoreside cafe, the Sure Thing (named after a RL Australian cafe).

Not sure when interview will come out, but obviously will post it here when it does. Because of interview have finally succumbed to Voice. Now have natty headphone set in RL and am Voice Enabled. Seemed rather strange after all the Chat. MTV had just been floated on SL exchange so general excitement around. Is now large TV on beach so visitors can watch me. Anyway am looking forward to final result.

Earlier this week attended panel in which people from RL media organisations e.g Reuters were talking about RL media in SL. Was v. popular and audience never fully emerged from grey lumpiness that indicates great lag (see 2nd pic). One message was that reporters still weren't making much money in SL. However some media companies saw it as brand building. So content of panel quite interesting but visit to Black Library in Hyperborea for usual Monday night discussion about education was more enjoyable, as fewer people there and when felt in need of distraction can poke virtual black labrador or collect freebie rat that was on offer to celebrate new Chinese Year of the Rat.

3rd pic shows me discovering giant banana on roof of library. Enough said.

Consumption, farewell

Plants bought: 38 (v.good); Statues of Bastet bought: 1 (high prim); Blouses bought: 1 (good); Pairs of shorts: bought: 2 (good, but rather piontless); Pairs of tights bought: 1 (good); Bracelets bought: 1 (good, though not quite as good as hoped); Pairs of pink ballet shoes bought: 1 (good); Pairs of silver silk jeans bought: 1 (good); Strange capsule lamps bought: 1 (OK); Amount of land sold: 2048 (v.v. good); Amount of land bought: 1024 (good)

After approx. 36 hours after submission of ticket, random Linden replies to say that credit card details have been obliterated in order to clear fault and must now input them again to resume normal purchasing behaviour. Thus am able to plunge into SL and make up for lost time by buying items listed above and here I am with/wearing a selection of them.
Cannot remember if mentioned that had put up 2 parcels of land for sale and sold one. Person who bought has already sold up again to one Sarah Nerd, who according to her profile buys any land which is set to sell to her at a certain rate, for resale. Decide this is worth trying since 2nd parcel shows no sign of shifting and bingo! she indeed buys land within few hours. Land immediately put back on market at higher price, but land is out of my account which is main thing.

Go about clearing rest of parcel that was my original first land. In fact next part to go includes first 512 sq m. I ever bought. Certain nostalgia as delete or take wisteria trees, tea house, carp, steaming green tea etc. etc. Set this bit to sale prior to clearing rest and go offline.
Within an hour this has been snapped up by some eager buyer who also immediately sets it to Sell, but in this case only at 900 Lindens more than was bought for. Can it be worth it, considering tier costs? Anyway, the pic shows me examining the for sale sign with some bafflement.
Bouyed up by this sales frenzy and the sight of all those Lindens in my purse I revise plan of keeping some of old land, empty, to boost prim count in new home (which is on same sim). Decide instead to sell it all, and buy small plot that has just come up for sale next to new home, for same purpose. Of course as soon as have bought cannot resist putting in plants, trees, a small brown bird and a purple butterly. But will try to keep it at that.

Last pic just shows Farradane House by moonlight.Soon I will turn the island to spring, so am enjoying snow whilst it lasts.

I want

Hours without Linden: 48 (v. bad); Items on shopping list for when access to Linden restored: 8 and counting (v.v.bad)
Due to SL glitch am currently unable to buy more Linden. Keep seeing merry messages on Linden Labs' blog saying "Service restored" but these are lies, since whether try in or out of world still get same gloomy message that transaction has not gone through. Blog acknowledged that "UK Lindens" were having problems but concentration seems to be on sorting out concurrent PayPal problem. Humph.
In meantime am making list of things to buy when SL restored. Top of this are spring flowers from Heart Garden Centre. Have been visiting frequently since was evident that space was being cleared to advertise New Lines and now, hurrah, can splurge on (1) daffodils, (2) snowdrops, (3) tulips, (4) orchids and (5) another flower I forget the name of.
Have not been totally deprived since fortunately today received my weekly L$300 from LL for being a premium customer , so hot footed it to Heart and snapped up 2 snowdrop plants and one daffodil clump.
In RL these would scarcely fill a flowerbed, however as can see in pics, in SL daffodils are apparently 5 feet high, so 3 plants plus a couple of freebie bluebells was just enough (see 2nd pic).
Am also hoping to purchase (6) some implausible pink denim shorts that hope will go with new cream and rose shrug and pink tulle skirt, (7) Egyptian statue of Bast to adorn new Morrocan home; (8) Stone hinge bracelet from Fae Designs.
Of course is possible that should be taking opportunity to quell consumerist urges but that does not seem much fun.

Dance, dance, dance

Dances attended: 2: (1 = v.good and 1 = ok)
Lots of catching up to do, so will start with some social events. North invited me over to the Educators Coop disco. Will apparently be regular event. Was already wearing pink satin evening gown so teleported straight over. Added Undine hair for swooshy effect (am on far right of pic above, North is on far left).
DJ was v. cool (see 2nd pic) and also played v. good music, including oldies reminding one of Youth. By the end we were dancing in synchronised manner so felt v. cool too. Left as dawn chorus was tweeting, actually almost so in RL as event started v. late in UK terms.
2nd dance was launch party for a "British Invasion" exhibition on Infotainment, featuring Beatles etc.: pics, informative notecards, videos, sort of re-creations of rooms of period (although not as I remember from the time, ahem). Some others were in 60s mode, but I went for 70s hippy look.
Was pleasant, but did not really know anyone, so, as in RL, was less enjoyable event. Also omitted to say "Hi" to everyone as arrived and did not comment on awesomeness of exhibit, so is probably own fault that no-one said Bye when left. Or perhaps they thought I was wearing too many prims? Resolve to make more social effort at next dance. And wear fewer prims.

Valentine's hunt at La Reina!

There's a Valentine's hunt on the sim where my shop is, La Reina, from now til the 17th February. Lots of lovely pink hearts are hidden, with lots of goodies hidden inside them. My shop, Pictures do furnish a room (see below), sells mostly pictures (as you might expect) but I also make a few "matching" t-shirts. The Valentine freebie from me is indeed a tee, as pictured here, all pink for Valentine's day. The photo of a rose (as featured on the back of the tee) is the regular freebie instore. My pink hair is "Rainy Day" from Armidi, in Candy.

Valentine hunt at La Reina (155, 185, 24) (just turn round once you are inworld to see my shop!)

Hobbiton, Meeting, Beer

Discussions held: 1 (good); Wardrobe overlap encountered: 1 (good); Beers offered: 1 (good)
Led a discussion session on 7 Feb reporting back from the Information strategies for researchers conference (held in Dublin on 31 Jan) and discussing issues to do with researchers' information literacy. The transcript of the talk is online at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=222 and notecard with info is in the Centre for Information Literacy Research on the Infolit iSchool. Am also blogging most of notecard over 3 posts at http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/ Seemed interesting discussion: anyway, you can read it for yoursef.

Had emailed lis-infoliteracy discussion list and seemed to have picked up most of participants through that. Used Hobbiton House for discussion for first time - Bobbin seats have disadvantage that some poses are slightly odd, plus with most of them you can't see whether someone's about to chat (i.e. computer typing animation is supressed). Saw that one person was wandering round island at same time and assumed she was trying to find meeting, but in fact was sighteseer. Encountered her later - she turned out to be from a Canadian college and later she brought a friend back and offered me some beer, which was companionable.

In meantime had visited Flower's new office again and found that I was wearing a cardigan she had and she was wearing a dress I had. Whilst twittering thus, male avatar who had been attempting serious conversation about pets had quietly melted away....

Talk, CILIP

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Presentations posted to Slideshare: 1 (good)
Above you should find embedded my presentation given on 29 January 2008 at the annual general meeting of the CILIP Commercial Legal and Scientific Information Group, in London. I firstly present some basic information about Second Life. I go on to talk about my own experience as educator, researcher, shopkeeper, procrastinator etc etc. I talk about the value of SL in business and professional life, and indicate opportunities for library and information professionals. This is the meeting where people were merry and asked nice questions.

I'll also mention that the CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Office has vanished, along with the Wales1 sim it was in. My gift of an ikebana was returned to my Lost and Found, so I zipped over and found a primless landscape - rather soothing. Anyway this prim-free zone was only there for a few days, then phut! gone. I emailed someone at CILIP HQ and they said they don't think they'll have a new office in the near future as they need to concentrate on core member services. Hmmm......

Goggles, office, hair, skirts

Cats bought: 1 (good); Hair bought: 2 (bad); Offices visited: 1 (good); Valentine freebies collected: 4 (good); Land sold: 1024 sq m (v. good); Skirts lost from inventory: 3 (bad)

Had big inventory problems last week. At one point all objects in Object folder (i.e. lots) disappeared, as did all landmarks not already in folders and several skirts including favourite scripted skirt from Nyte 'n Day. Tried not to panic and fortunately all objects and landmarks reappeared (though not skirts). Have learnt nothing as all good intentions to sort unsorted Objects properly into folders evaporated immediately I had the Objects back.

When not hunting valentine day freebies have been purchasing more hair. In fact only intended to buy one set of hair, but found afterwards that had inadvertantly bought proper version of one type of hair (in green) when thought was buying demo for 1 Linden. Did not notice Lindens leaking away as have managed to sell part of my land and so am flush with Lindens.

This is not a healthy state since am swiftly running through them. Have been toying with idea of buying another cat, and so visited Zooby's where was intrigued by Held Cats and bought one in black. Is strange sculpty creature with googling eyes, so have decided to call him Goggles.

Googles looks quite cute when am standing still as cat appears to animate me into stroking movements. However when move about or sit in chair with its own animation poor Goggles simply flops about on the end of my arm or disappears into some portion of my anatomy as I stretch and fidget. So in fact is also an amusing talking point, which can't be bad. The triptych show various perspectives on Goggles, including Goggles doing fearless freefall without parachute with me (on a visit to an island which houses new office of Flower, a Friend who comes to some of my discussion sessions, see middle pic). The last pic is a "spot the Goggles" item.