More of the same

Screenr captures taken: 1 (good); Screenr captures failing: 1 (bad); Registrations with Mendeley: 1 (good, I think)
Today had 2 meetings, namely the first Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Meeting, in which committed self to various things that will doubtless regret later, and meeting with Pancha to discuss article about SL journal club. Invited her over to the new skating rink and were able to skate, drink and talk about qualitative research all at the same time. During this discovered:
1) That hot chocolate dispenser only dispenses hot chocolate to me, somewhat pointless. Rectified anomoly by putting in Gluwein keg and tray of functioning hot choclate from What Next.
2) That is service called Mendeley that does academic stuff. At any rate have registered for it, and it appears it will aid our research work mightily, if I can work out what it's for.
3) That sometimes Screenr doesn't work. Recorded 5 mins of Pancha and me going round and round rink, and when last looked it was processing the vid merrily, but certainly doesn't work now and also can't download anything. Will give it til tomorrow in case Screenr Fairy was merely sleeping.
As substitute have created v. short Animoto video with some still pics that took of me and Pancha. Here it is. (NB 1st pic, above, shows me talking to a reindeer with a coal tit on its nose, in Noyo. The picture of the VWBPE meeting was just really too dull to post.)

Winter

Penguins installed on ice rink: 2 (good); Hot chocolate cabins installed on ice rink: 1 (piping hot); Snowmen installed on icerink: 3 (a nuclear family); Skating poseballs installed on icerink: 7 (v. good); No. of skating poseballs for which you do not have to turn off your AO : zero (bad); Enjoyment gained from skating round and round a virtual ice rink: considerable (sad, or what)

Motivation for blogging only seems to occur when not concerned with Professional Life. So not surprising that suddenly felt urge to blog about new Winter Wonderland have created in bay area of Infolit iSchool. In fact good part of Infolit is now Winter Wonderland, since changed seasons approx. a week ago when felt need to cheer self up after hard work. Autumn colour is gone to be replaced by snow emitters, trees with frost on, snowball givers, ice portals etc. etc. To begin with just changed terrain in mountains but today basically covered whole island with snow. This mirrors RL which has been covered in snow for some days.
Created Screenr/Animoto vid showing self cavorting on and around ice. Used one of the Animoto Seasonal Themes, which has upside that scenery in it looks a bit like the SL scenery I am filming, but that is also a sort of a downside too. Anyway, here it is.

Colours

Colours: 52 (challenging)
As usual when doing oodles in SL have had no time to blog same. However can be noted that do appear to have enough time for fashion blog posts here, here and here. These are part of the 52 Weeks of Colour bloggers challenge, started by Luna Jubilee. Each week she announces a new colour and then bloggers fall over themselves to dress up in it, blog and post the pics to Flickr. Or some people signal coolness by declaring how dreadful one would look if one DID dress entirely in said colour, and blog something which is meant to amusingly hint at the colour, in an artful way. However, as can be seen on right, own approach is simply to drape self in variations in colour, in hopes that at least one of the colours is the right one.
Main challenge seems to me in finding 52 different real colours, but even by 3rd week emerges that unreal colours will also feature i.e. this week was goldenrod week. Now, goldenrod is a real plant and is sort of mustardly colour, fading to grungy kind of brown (at least stuff you get in bargain bouquets at Tesco's is). However, colour as set by Luna is sort of pleasant pale honey. Anyway, main benefit is that may discourage spending on new clothes in SL, since have set self a sub-challenge, which is to try and only use existing inventory. Not very difficult, actually, so far grey, blue and goldenrod have been a case of Spoilt For Choice. As you can see, even managed to find golden nail polish.
This is all rather in the line of fiddling whilst Rome burns, as good SL sims are renounced, LL introduces bizarre and unsettling things like display names (so, "sheila.yoshikawa" is now just my username??? but it's my NAME!), and various aspects of the UK public sector teeter on brinks.
But one has to get ones priorities right. And colour-matched nails surely must come pretty high up on anyone's priority list.

R&R

Relaxing horseback rides taken: 1 (v. good)
Have felt somewhat stressed out not to mention suffering from what appears to be yet another RL cold, so today decided to insert a little rest and relaxation by exercising a newish purchase, namely Golden Streak the palomino horse.
Had tried out an AKK horse demo before, and been v. impressed, but they are not cheap. However, when Pancha showed me the build she had created for the Vet School at her uni, was reminded about them.
First Dimitrova tried out a demo, and then I took plunge, fulfilling girlhood fantasy of owning a palomino (fantasy actually involved 2 palominos, one of which won Derby, and one the Grand National. At least had realised even as youngster that needed different type of horse for 2 events, but hadn't appreciated that racehorses have to be thoroughbreds and you don't get palomino thoroughbreds)
Anyway, after that quick bit of horse lore, cut to me investing the Lindens in a fine palomino animal with integral bridle and saddle.
Its ears twitch!
It snorts!
It goes clippety clop!
It trots!
It gallops!
It jumps!
It flies!
You can dimount and lead it!
You can get it to pose (rear, paw earth, bow etc.)!
Really do find it strangely soothing to trot through forest or gallop along beach. Is this odd? Anyhow, seem to be reasonable number of other odd folks around, if it is. Here are some arty pictures of same. In first one Golden Streak looks disdainfully at a cow on Drowsy whilst turning his back on a momento mori, and in the 2nd we visit a gypsy encampment on Zigana.

When I should have been marking

Where did it go?

Stuff done: lots (good/bad/indifferent)
In terms of blogging have to award self mark of C double minus. Is more than whole month since last blogged. As have noted before, when v.v. busy in SL, then blogging tends to slump. So as a quick catchup:
No. of new student sky homes created: 1 (good)
No. of new autumnal trees bought: 10? 12? (who knows)
No. of halloween houses created: 1 (good)
No. of sessions done with first year students in SL: 4 (good? only they can tell)
No. of 3D versions created of information behaviour models developed through empirical research using a grounded theory approach: 1 (v. good)
No. of times Opinionator repurposed for specific exercise: 2 (good)
No. of Infolit iSchool events: 3 (good)
No. of fashion blog postings: 4 (good)
No. of houseboats bought: 2 (floating)
No. of tops bought: who's counting? (not me)
No. of unwarranted and surprise price hikes by Linden Lab: 1 (v.v.v. bad)
& so forth & so on.
Last item is one which has cast pall of gloom over proceedings since announced a few weeks ago that educator's discount was being removed, thus doubling price of island. Consternation, anger etc. followed. was then announcement that people could buy up to 2 years in advance at old price (which am trying to do) but still is bit gloomy in long term. Apart from anything else seems like Community of educators, librarians etc. will get fragmented.
Reacted by attending meetings and buying a lot of clothes.
Also pumpkins. Creation of halloween stuffage seems to have escalated to insane proportions, can scarcely go inworld without being bombarded with message cards about cute new pumpkin lights/seats/decals. Was tempted today by 50% off on cauldrons from What Next, but in the end got free Wizard cosi from NRD and 1 Linden staff from Tekeli-li and then wasted, ahem, ahem, spent hour or so flouncing round Immersiva taking pics.
Choose first one as looked vaguely apocolyptic e.g. SL disintegrating because of ill advised customer relationship management on part of LL staffers.

Czech, lesson

Sessions in viewer 2: 2 (bad); Training sessions attended in Czech: 1 (foreign yet familiar)
Today was giving talk about SL in Prague. Created short video as well as presentation, so will link those at the end. During talk had to to stop every few sentences to let interpreter translate into Czech, which worked surprisingly well as interpreter was v. good. She also later whispered English translation of Czech talks into my ear.
However, by time of SL workshop (given in afternoon by Zdenek, who have mentioned before in this blog) she had gone. This was not v. important as I was merely set decoration, with Zdenek doing hard work inducting Czech newbies into SL in Czech.
Was one element in which I was newbie also since have not yet Bitten the Viewer 2 Bullet but have been skulking along in comfortable old Viewer 1. This has not mattered since haven't done any how-to-use-SL sessions over summer. Now new academic year is upon me, though, will have to come up to speed v. rapidly, since think should use it with first years. To be more precise, will have to start teaching using Viewer 2 in 9 days time.
As can see from screenshot above, Viewer 2 was what was installed in lab, so took opportunity to find out where things were (in which partially suceeded). In fact was not very first time had experienced V2: went into it by mistake on someone else's machine last week, then took fright (Where had new IMs gone! Where was the map! Why was inventory taking 10 minutes to load! Why is the chat box so small! etc etc). This time had been in a good 5 mins before realised that clothes was wearing were not clothes was wearing when logged out yesterday, but clothes had been wearing when last used Viewer 2. Remembered others discussing this glitch, and know this means must plump wholeheartedly for this viewer 2 thing.
Anyway, ppt, Using Second Life as a learning environment, is here on Slideshare: and this is the video, made with Screenr and then Animoto. Have also put it on Youtube, but it isn't (for reasons am too lazy to fathom) as high res on Youtube, so this is the Animoto version.

403 Forbidden: The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it

Unintelligible messages received from Twitter: 1 (bad); Nostalgia factor: 5 (nostalgic)

Just tried to log into my sheilayoshikawa Twitter account and received the above message. Was not logging in for any serious purpose, so am instead assailed by sudden nostalgia for days when there were REAL error messages, ones which gave you no clue whatsover about what was wrong. Still do get those sometimes, but tend to be associated with V. Serious Meltdowns involving blue screen of death and stange series of numbers rushing over screen, which is not a situation where you can have a good old nostalgic wallow.
Sometimes they would be a bit like the one above, implying that it wasn't just some strange random error, it was a personal piece of malice directed at YOU. "The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it": that's an error message with attitude.
The most famous web error message was the "File 404 not found" one, which you got if the page you wanted no longer existed and the webmaster hadn't been bothered to do a redirect or explanation. You still get it now and then but there was a time when you would be more or less guaranteed to get it once a day, and there were some wonderful spoof websites and collections of amusing/dreadful 404 pages.
After half hearted googling have managed to retrieve a page which I think is one of the more amusing spoofs - except it is in what Google Translate thinks is Estonian http://puhkused.com/ Is that right?
[several hours later] Have managed to find ye olde Geek Haiku - ah, this was my favourite:

A File That Big?

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

Discussion 31 August 12 noon

On Tuesday August 31 there will be a discussion in the virtual world, Second Life: Contribute your ideas for future events on Infolit iSchool
When: Tuesday August 31st, 12 noon SLT (see http://tinyurl.com/323l83u for start time in other countries)
Where: Infolit iSchool http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/127/236/22/
We already have lined up for Oct/Nov 2010: talks from Alexandria Knight (Esther Grassian outside Second Life) & Adra Letov (Diane Nahl outside SL) and Sheila Yoshikawa (i.e. me) plus a reading group! But we want more! Come with more ideas of visits, discussions, events to do with information literacy, digital literacies and learning.

Exhibit

Exhibitions created and fine tuned: 1 (good); Flags acquired: 3 types (good); Quirky Swedish rabbits acquired: 1 (good); Swedish cushions acquired: 1 (mistake)

Have had fairly active week in SL. Most constructive part is probably making the exhibit for IFLA conference discussion. Had originally spent happy hour whilst still in Gothenburg, sifting through houses in inventory to find suitable venue, and settled on older Japanesey building, like one that used to house CILASS in dim and distant. Had got all posters from satellite conference set up, but fact was that it looked a bit messy.

Then had idea of taking pics of RL Gothenburg venue (the Palace) and using these to texture the walls and floor. Is not exactly work of art but think it has nice feel and is at least distinctive & could set it to copy if so desired as is all own work. Completed this box with all the posters, some RL pics, and a board with all the delegates’ names and the briefing for the exercise that produced the posters. Also could not resist a bit of set dressing with a table rather like the ones in the RL venue, a cup, a pencil holder and a pic of a RL poster on a table top.

To house powerpoints, chose same building as the Wilf Saunders Library, a simple wood floor and glass walled box. Discovered in process that creator of this (who also created the Victorian Steampunk sky platform and the thing I used originally as the Departmental office building), is no longer selling homes. Sad. Think they were ahead of their time, at the time (i.e. 2007) but suppose things have moved on.

After putting in selected ppts, and doing some notecards with abstracts and some links to other stuff, created walkway between two buildings with paving and boat, to evoke Gothenburg harbour At least that’s the idea.

Seemed to go down well with people on Thursday, though is scarcely rocket science. Since then have added noticeboard for people to add their own thoughts about Contextual Factors for Information Literacy (that is, if they can work out how on earth noticeboard works, and then manage to type in their thoughts in a mere 30 seconds, no mean feat). Also, by chance, acquired set of Swedish flags: one you wear and wave, one small one to put on table top (so put it on table top) and one full sized flag on pole which waves just like in the Torley Tutorial.

Additionally have small rabbit in Swedish colours, holding carrot and Swedish flag (not sure if carrot is symbolic of anything). These all were acquired because yesterday was setting up a tableau with a diagram of the Information Literate University to create some graphics for a ppt that am giving in RL in Uppsala in a couple of weeks time. Uppsala is also in Sweden, and, finding that lacked Swedish flag, visited the Swedish Institute sim, where hit jackpot. Appears to have been some kind of high-profile wedding celebration, and were boxes lying around containing said set of flags, and rabbit. Only expense was that almost by mistake bought fairly dull heart-shaped cushion in Swedish colour scheme, for 59 Linden. Oh well.


Anyway, after event on Thursday, but before whiteboard and flags, did a quick Screenr screencast for those unfortunates who cannot see the exhibit in SL. Only real regret is that had just changed outfit: Sugarcube had produced a dress for the first time in ages, which was a “50 Linden Friday” item (or is it “60Linden Friday” now?) Whatever, the dress is a shortish fluffy red thing with amusingly patterned leggings. Married this with stiletto boots from G. Field, a black shrug, black tights to bridge gap between pants and stockings (so am covered up, that isn’t the issue) and then some free hair that acquired in Curious Kitties. This was a few days ago when decided that time had finally come to invest in a couple of Curious Kitties hair HUDS, without which you cannot control colour of their most recent hair.
Free CK hair had big black hat, and actually think that hat balances skirt quite well, but, still, it is all a bit red and black and patterned, and might have been better advised to go conservative route for something which after all am publishing on Youtube. Witchy black hats was possibly not image aiming for. Of course, could junk the video and do another – but – frankly – is it worth the effort?
No.
Is possible people might like the hat.

Foolish

But I forgot and turned up on Tuesday.

Remodelled

Common rooms remodelled: 1 (good)
Have been spending some time demolishing common room and Nigl/Ishbel's office, and replacing them with new common room/office. Not quite finished yet, but almost there. Aim was to free up some space in the corner of Infolit, for the health information literacy stuff.

Probably should have told Ishbel and Nigl before axing their cute cottage. However they now have pleasant area in new common room, so hope they are not too offended.

And pan upwards

No. of useless gatcha items bought: 2 (good); No. of screens bought that turn out to look too much like hospital screens to be of any use: 1 (bad); No of pans upwards to sky in Screenr screencast: about 6 (good, but cliched)
Am currently in Sweden and today gave talk about SL which will blog about when Danish gentlemen who was doing podcast has casted the pod. In fact have also been v.active in SL, since the not-inexpensive wifi in hotel is also v. good so am getting full money's worth.
However, when came to blog to post about presentation, found various unfinished blog posts, and decided should finish some of them, especially as the pics which had already uploaded are sort of relevant to one of current activities.
In this post, had already made some notes on 6th August, namely:
"Went inworld for 50 Linden Friday house from Turnip's
Saw notecard about Clemetis Gatcha
Saw installation of ChouChou sound bank
Followed creator profile to Chouchou sim
Thought was worth a screenr
Uploaded it to youtube
meanwhile
ppt is relutely refusing to upload. whyowhy"

hmm, is almost a poem. A bad poem, obviously. Anyway, will proceed to unpack this.

"Went inworld for 50 Linden Friday house from Turnip's": well, that is pretty self explanatory - a house from Turnip's for only 50 Linden. Bit of a no-brainer. Imagine saw some notice about it on the feeds.
"Saw notecard about Clemetis Gatcha": This arrived inworld whilst was in Turnip's waiting for things to rez, I think. Clemetis do cute stuff, and hadn't come across a roulette wheel gatcha before. The first pic is me having paid my 30 Linden, waiting to see which of the bags I'm going to get.
"Saw installation of ChouChou sound bank": This is the second picture. When you touch the boxes you get different kinds of sound - bells, voices, piano etc. After had played with this a bit:
"Followed creator profile to Chouchou sim": which was next couple of hours gone, basically.

There is this location shown in 3rd pic, of dreamy beach with piano and strange ladder into the sky.Then there is a cathedral in the sky and finally a place where you can encounter all the music boxes that I found initially, and buy them.

"Thought was worth a screenr" this was initially because I bought (free) and wore the cinematic HUD on ChouChou, which makes the camera sort of drift round you. I thought what a cool machinima this would make, so dug out my Screenr skills. At once discovered that I couldn't use the HUD when activating screenr, but still ChouChou is v. cool place, so in the end (after junking a number of false starts) made Screenr video. Tha tis embedded at the end of this post. It is silent, idea being that you listen to ChouChou music while you play theScreenr.

"Uploaded it to youtube" naturally. But wasn't totally satisfied with it so didn't upload it to Flickr
"meanwhile
ppt is relutely refusing to upload. whyowhy"
This was the ppt that presented today in RL in Gothenburg. Had put in "placeholder" ppt so could get Slideshare URL for presentation even before had uploaded it. You are supposed to be able to replace one presentation with another version, but essentially could not get this to work after several tries, so inend uploaded it as new. Never did find out why replacing hadn't worked.

Lost and found

Hours spent trapped in SL: 20 (v. bad); Minutes elapsed between reporting problem and getting fix: 5 (v. good)
Last night was footling about on Infolit iSchool when crashed. Nothing new there, but when tried to log back in, got message "The system is logging you out right now. Your account will not be available until ..." and then it would always give a time that was always 5 mins later than the time I tried to log in. It was v. late so gave up in hope that might sort itself out, and couldn't try again until this evening since am currently in Gothenburg and today was being conference chair for an event about information literacy for which had been lead organiser.
However, when DID try had same problem. Then logged in as Dimitrova and found self hovering in place where had crashed (see pic, Dimi happened to be dressed a la greek goddess at the time). Odd, though was grateful it had happened on Infolit, where am less likely to get bumped around etc.
Anyway, phoned LL at some expense from Sweden and helpful person quickly identified that SL had been "trying to save attachments" after crashing, & failing to do so, obviously, so she just restarted the region and then could log in OK. All attachments in place as well, as far as could tell. One embarrassment was that when asked to spell Sheila Yoshikawa, got v. muddled. Realised that have typed it countless times, but have possibly never been asked verbally to spell it before. May be some message here about literacies, but not quite sure what.

Shopping

Houses hunted: 12(good); Chairs hunted: 23 (approx); Waffle irons hunted: 1 (it opens, it closes, but it doesn't give waffles)
Have spent ahem (coughs) hours doing the House and Garden hunt, 50 shops, with some good stuff. When finished, rezzed it all out on Infolit (which brough Infolit perilously close to its prim limit, but that's another story)
Mostly people on the hunt were polite but purposeful, with not much chat, but towards the end, when tp-ed to Napoliy again after initial fruitless search, was approached by small lady with offer of help. Not only did she show me where the hunt item was, but she gave me her blog address, where she listed hints for all locations: at http://stephanieleclerc.blogspot.com/2010/08/httpslurl.html. Was very useful for filling in gaps, but did most of it myself.

Here it all is rezzed out, thought at this stage there was one item (a flower in a sack) that was actually the delivery bag and I thought it was the gift til I saw the full stuff on the feeds. Anyhow, here is all the goods rezzed out. This Belle Belle swing is very cute, but, as with all her stuff, a bit primmy.

Now all that remains is to work out what to do with it (inventory beckons, I fear).

Griefed

Boxes revolving in water at edge of sim: 1 (v. bad); Boxes replicating from first box: zillions (v.v. bad)
Had first taste of griefing on new land. Was pottering round in Heidi home (positioning a new sheep ornament and modding a straw hat to make it look like Heidi's hat, quite successfully I think) when heard noise and went out to see green screens zooming up.
Turned out there was a box bobbing away in the water, held just outside the boundary of my land. Have land set to no object entry, no build, no scripts, so think that stopped it coming on. However could not move or return it since was in Linden-owned water.
Wondered whether this might be connected to earlier incident, when came across Fedex van crashed into the river bank around the same point and returned it to its owner. Perhaps it had just dropped its Parcel of Doom, perhaps owner though Fedex van looked nice where it was and did the griefing out of spite.
Anyway, realised that despite oodles of sessions on How To Deal with Griefing offered at various conferences, had not really paid much attention, since have experienced v.v. little of it up til now.

Tried to at least put owner of offending object in ban list, but curiously the person picker could not find the name in search. Then started desultry search of SL website for place to report griefing to Lindens. Then as was v.v. late in my time zone, decided that perhaps if just logged off and went to bed, someone else would deal with it.

And this morning logged in and voila the thing was gone. So apathy was best policy in this case.

Can you have too many butterflies?

No. of butterfly objects in room: 11 (good)
Yesterday added another 3 butterflies to my butterfly/art room, namely the 3 hanging in front of the window at the back (they revolve! they are in 3 colours! they are copy! they were only 60 Linden!). This adds to butterfly chairs, butterfly table lamp, butterfly ceiling lights, butterfly table, butterfly ashtray and butterfly emitter. Butterfly emitter is responsible for good number of butterflies visible in picture, and is cunningly placed under table.
Question is: at what point does butterfly overload set in? I suppose at the point that I try to rez one and am told "cannot rez Another Supercute Butterfly in Noyo, because the parcel is too full".
Which means, pretty soon.

Home and abroad

Utopias visited: 4 (good); Artwork discovered near my land: 1 (good); Amount of land still held in Harms Way: none (good, but not exactly profitable)
Recently discovered four sims which are Art, namely the four Utopia sims which have been created by Bryn Oh. Dimitrova visited Utopia 4, and then a couple of days ago I did a Utopia hop of the other 3. Spent most time on Utopia 3 where there is a spooky statue (see pic) and a very creepy building.
When I got there, realised that it had been blogged by a couple of people on the fashion feeds: one of the features is a tree that turns slowly into a column of shopping trollies. Anyway, there is lots to see and do. Can buy the spooky statue (huge) for 15000 Linden, and is a bit tempting. Coincidentally then discovered that have another artwork by Bryn Oh on my doorstep: next door but one, so to speak. Was created for Helen Keller day last year and seems to be on Linden-donated land. Bit embarrassing that didn't notice it before, in fact.Anyway, adds further to general desirabilty of location.
Location is too desirable if anything; old land was just too laggy and busy to enjoy being on it, but now is very pleasant calmly to do tai chi overlooking the river and cherry blossom, or clamber around the mountain top tweaking the odd pine tree, or sit indoors contemplating view.
Also has distinct zones so am plannng to have some areas stable aand others which can play around with. Was reflecting on fact that thing am most pleased with is the "What Information/Literacy means to me" exhibit, and should really experiment doing more installations with words and visuals.
Have finally said goodbye to all old land in Harm's Way. Following useful conversation with neighbour on old land (who turns out to be friendly and nice, bit late to discover that) parcelled up land small and lowered price. She also said if land set to 0.5 Linden per metre would be picked up by bot and sell instantly. By tier date had only sold two plots, so set all the rest to low price and indeed they all immediately converted to Linden, not that many Linden, but still will keep me in shoes and artworks for a few weeks. Unless I buy the statue, that is.

A wasted evening or a pleasant evening?

Hours spent in SL last night: [mumbles shiftily] (bad? or good?)
Spent rather a lot of time in SL last night. Have been ruminating on whether this is Good Thing or Bad Thing. Peer pressure pushes one to latter view, but had reasonable amount of fun, so surely must be Good ...
Have been toying with idea of doing autoethnographic study and was thinking (whilst walking to work this morning in RL in pouring rain) about how might put together chatlog and pics and other people's pics to make a rich narrative of what went on. Was thinking could present this in SL, in fact ideal might be if you could be sent on the SAME JOURNEY (which implies some kind of HUD). However, believe that starting point (Relay For Life sims) are gone already. Therefore installations somewhere else in SL with giant posters and perhaps sound might do it, or COULD use one of the tour vehicles with one's commentary going on in text chat as you were flown round.
You may be thinking "surely autoethnography is some sort of cheat research" (unless you yourself are an authoethnographer, obviously). However, you can get published or even a PhD by doing it. This simple fact can be proved by googling "autoethnography aims" (as did but a short while ago).

The basics of autoethnography involve writing about yourself, but have to be illuminating some kind of reserarch problem, obviously, and also have to convince people that you are a sufficiently interesting case that you will give insights to others. Was thinking that perhaps if started by analysing a bit of data then might start refining questons. However, also realise that have just had annual Staff Review session with Head of Dept without word autoethnography passing lips, so perhaps thsi is one of those projects that will talk about for years and then lose interest in.
Anyway last night:
1) Visited Relay for Life sims, flying round the builds in a rather touristic fashion, pausing to try out any particularly cool animation e.g. shovelling coal or playing the church organ. There is big road, with donation points all along it.
2) Followed up on some items, found, notably, a v. pretty blue tree (which was Relay For Life charity item) and some goats. Bought tree but not goats. Sim with goats mostly sells wearable horses and hought horse demo which the tried out on Noyo after planting new tree.
3) Stalked visitor on my land who was outside one of my oriental houses, wearing sort of ronin outfit, in order to take pics.
4) This is point when might have gone home, but Brielle IMed me to ask if liked Scottish piping and next thing was doing a sword dance whilst the live pipes skirled away impressively. Stopped for a dram, then did some more dancing.
5) Looked at iheartsl fashion feed and saw an embedded video of this week's Fabulous Fashion which featured interview with creator of Swansong and Atomic Bambi. Watched it.
6) Remembered had Swansong dress in inventory that had never actually worn. Changed into it and saw it was good. Decided to base a look around it.
7) Tried on shoes, tights, wraps, necklaces, hair etc etc for some considerable time. Decided needed different shoes, went to G. Field where bought shoes AND tights. Also bought hair butterflies from Atomic Bambi.
8) Photographed self in rose garden in G. Field
9) Photoshopped and uploaded to Flickr, and then blogged outfit here.
10) Visited a sim. What? Why? Who knows, it was v. late by then, but think was in pursuit of some cute item. Anyway, ended up in Evans Cafe and at that point crashed out.

So, ever do analysis of the v. interesting night of 21st July, will be in good position to do so..

I discover I have many albums

No. of pics on Flickr: 2059 (good); No of pics on Picasa: 925. Plus 1000 more (surprising)
Am somewhat dim, but have only just woken up to fact that, since have Blogger blog and upload pics to Blogger blog, therefore as night follows day, have Picasa album containing pics from Blogger blog.
In early days of Blogger it was not owned by Google, and therefore pics went one knows not where into some vast bloggy picture server. Have feeling that when Blogger was bought by Google, for a while Google did not own Picasa (may be wrong about this and do not care enough to check). Anyway, have gone years now uploading pics to Blogger and it was only yesterday, when happened to click on question mark icon on the Upload panel, that was led through to info about Picasa and thence quickly to own Picasa albums.
In fact to multiple albums and also, since blog with multiple identities, multiple albums on multiple accounts. So I find that there are the aforementioned 925 pictures on MY Picasa: 2 albums of Adventuresofyoshikawa (not sure why there are two, looks like there might be a max size), plus 5 pics I uploaded on the Low Prim Living with Style blog (mostly by mistake) and 3 blogger profile pics. Additionally my Sheila Webber account had 1000+ pics that have been uploaded to the Information Literacy Weblog. Dimitrova also has a Picasa space, because of the stuff she uploads to Low Prim Living.

So this may be starting to seem a rather tedious blog post, but really did find it disconcerting to discover this large pool of my own content just sitting there out in the cloud without me realising. Was a bit as though had been placing photos with meaningful captions around my room to make artistic displays and suddenly discover that copies of all the photos were also simultaneously being chucked into a crate in the Departmental Office. As far as can see there is not a backwards link from pic to blog post (which is not surprising, as basically you are just linking from the post to the pic), but the CONTEXT or caption for the posts are therefore lost. Am not now going to waste yet more of my life creating 2000 captions. However, think is the decontextualisation of pics that find a bit odd.
Have not hesistated to make albums public (default being that Blogger albums default to private, which is something; at least they were, so to speak, in the Departmental Office and not in a grab bag in front of WH Smith). However, now that know they are there, might as well chuck them out to the interweb like my other stuff.
So if you want to see just the Yoshikawa pictures: go to .. umm .. I think go to http://picasaweb.google.com/101342941470414817695 May add link to Webber stuff as well, but would have to log out of this first, so will do it later. There is overlap with Flickr set, but not 100%.
Anyway THESE pics are of an exhibition of art created by David Hockney on his iPhone, and then of me doing Tai Chi at home, having liked the Tai Chi balls outside the exhibition gallery. Peace. Harmony. And so forth.

Sakura

Sakura bonsai bought: 1 (v. good); potted sakura hauled from inventory: 1 (good); sakura petal emitters removed from shop: none (bad)
Today went windsurfing in Bora Bora (for this photoshoot) and ended up browsing round the tikis. Discovered quite a bit of new stuff, including a whole gardening area that was new to me.
Included v. cute display of bonsai (see second picture), and could not resist cherry tree bonsai, which took home and positioned in entrance hall of the chinese house that is tucked on the hillside at Noyo.
From the start in 2007, have named my home land "Sakura" (Japanese for cherry blossom/ tree). So my first plot was called Sakura (as you can see here) and so was the land I have just given up and am still trying to sell ;-(( and now this new land in Noyo has been renamed. Have also kept in part of the original name, Urtahra (see here, Noyo was originally part of the Kahruvel Forest). I always have actual Sakura on my land, and you can see some of them outside in the first picture, a big pink tree near the entrance and some white blossom further off. I am lying on the rocky ground outside, listening to Ishbel's windchime and enjoying the view.
Also did a little bit of tinkering in the room next to the entrance hall, where have put some of my pictures (ex shop), a small sakura in a bamboo pot, an information literacy calendar, and a teleporter to infolit locations.
Have been meaning to put in more information literacy stuff, but so far that and Woolley the Sheep are it. Am wondering about putting Woolley (who contains definitions of information literacy and bleats) with the Heidi House sheep, but he might get an inferiority complex as they are infinitely better made. Well not infinitely, but a good deal.

Have also changed exhibition in my shop. Theme is now Glasgow Botanic Gardens, which visited last week in RL. Am v. fond of it: when lived in Glasgow, Botanics were only 10 minutes walk away. Background photos on walls and floor are of Kibble Palace (which houses national tree fern collection) and there are some photoshopped pictures of the carniverous plant displays plus some pics from a park in Prague. A stone dragon creature creaks and turns head to face you: have been meaning to find somewhere to use him for a while.
Display also includes falling sakura petals. This was not intention. Petals were part of previous display and spent at least 20 minutes trying to find out where the **** the petal emitter was. Tried CTRL ATL T to see invisible prims, cammed all over the shop from various angles and so forth, but thing is nowhere to be found. Anyway, falling petals not wholly inappropriate to this exhibition so in the end gave up.

Manifestations

Publication-related things: 3 (good)

1) Response to the 9th Virtual World Watch snapshot on use of virtual worlds in UK tertiary education: Silversprite decided to put it in full on his blog http://virtualworldwatch.net/2010/07/01/sheila-webber-responds-to-snapshot-9/

2) Paper by me and Adra Letov (or Sheila Webber and Diane Nahl, as we are known outside SL), which am going to present at the World Library and Information Conference in August in Sweden, and which is full text on the IFLA website: Sustaining learning for LIS through use of a virtual world at http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/123-webber-en.pdf

3) Was asked permission for reproduction of pic from Flickr, to go in a forthcoming book on digital literacies.

Picture (not the one that is going in the book, BTW) shows me taking some welcome morning coffee, from my new expresso maker. However, am thinking of asking for money back, since (as can be seen) coffee is quite plainly NOT expresso, but (at best) machiatto, and appears to be alarmly thick, given how far am tipping cup without anything dribbling out.

Cute

No. of poses in deer: 13 (unlucky for some?)
After last post decided should actually show cute hair from Exile (have already forgotten name of hair and can't be bothered to log back in and find out. Think it began with a K. Karen? Kerry? Something like that).
Since deer on mountain automatically = cuteness, decided to choose one of the dozen poses available when you sit on deer. Was intending to use Hug Deer pose, but turned out that this meant that ends of hair were poking out of deer's nose which ruined effect rather. Am not 100% sure about this pose, though. Is it cute, or is it just a bit weird?

For second attempt at cuteness posed in new cherry blossom hillside path that leads up from watermelon shop to shrine-y building that just put in, halfway up mountain. Surely can't go wrong with cherry blossom. Think this is probably more straighforwardly charming, but slightly vacuous.

Vacuous or whacky, which is cuter? You decide.

Trying it on

Hair bought: 2 (good)
Today visited Kin, which is shop where bought first proper hair, Kin's Ryuzaki. Rereading that 2007 post, note that at time thought hair might be "too cute". However, compared with some of the stuff have been wearing recently is relatively low on the too-cute scale. Realise that worry about being too-cute has been with me from start, but think that gradually cuteness threshold has risen.

Kin has now gone in for sculpted hair, which as always can be a bit alarming whilst it is rezzing (see first pic.).

However got. v. excited when realised that some of the demo hair at Kin is actually in MY COLOUR i.e. blue, which is something of a first. Normally demo hairs are in some random "normal" colour, and require some hope and imagination to visualise what will look like in blue.

Therefore could not resist buying a new Kin hair (see 2nd pic), which is actually a bit like Ryuzaki, but sculpted, so does not wave around in breeze so much.

Scoured walls to see whether Ryuzaki is still on sale, which it is, and was cheered by that. For months was really the only hair I wore and ended up buying it twice, since the first time around did not know about how you should COPY your hair before stretching it around (for a back up), so first Ryuzaki had to be abandoned in the end as it got somewhat malformed, with strange giant strands. Happy days.

Second hair, BTW, is a newish one from Exile (which does some nice blues). Is another "turning into me" kind of hair, since is long and straight, with a windblown effect. Evidently have learnt little from past experience since couldn't be bothered to copy it and instead started editing and stretching it straight away to try and get rid of bald patches. It still looks cute. Think the new Kin hair is more SL-me, though.

More stuff

Beach huts bought: 1 (patriotic); Weeping willows bought: 1 (pretty but superfluous); Fawn with 13 poses bought: 1 (v. good); Set of scuplted stone and garden stuff bought: 1 (good); Hot springs installed: 1 (v.v. good since was already in inventory)
Despite fact that already have 34,000 items, new land has stimulated consumption lobes, even more so since have actually sold one chunk of land (which is now on sale again at higher price, but would say likelihood of resale is correspondingly smaller). Thus have linden burning holes in virtual pocket.
Have created willowy waterside area, with variety of willows (i.e. willows made by 3 different designers) and decided that needed beach hut to complete this area. By happy chance, one of the offerings for Spruce Up Your Space this weekend was an English beach hut, complete with Union Jack details (actually to be ENGLISH should really just be St George's flag, as currently being torn off a zillion car aerials following the mollocking of England by the Germans in the world cup) (and what's with the blue union jack? perhaps it indeed symbolises the spirit of the nation following defeat).
Anyway, spent happy hour setting hut up and furnishing it with some items from the Bloggers Hut that was a previous SUYS buy, plus a couple of sculpty shells and one of my own pictures (duck on boat in canal, appropriate I thought). Also put in Antique Typewriter that bought ages ago, which tells people whether Sheila Yoshikawa is online and allows them to send me IMs. Obviously am hoping that these will be IMs complimenting me on exquisite taste and hopefully not complaints about blocking sea views or polluting riverside with excessive willow leaves.

I hope that Goggles settles in

Here is Goggles in my repositioned home. Am a bit worried. If he tries to walk back to Harms Way, most he can hope for is a return to my Lost and Found. Not sure he realises he is only made of prims.

Moving

Land set to sale: all in Harm's Way (Moving. But not as moving as had anticipated, actually)
It's my tier date soon, so I decided I really must clear out my land in Harm's Way and at least try to sell it. Know that mainland plots are v. hard to sell at the moment, so set it at about 2000 Linden per 512 and will hope for best. In fact should have split it up into smaller plots, rather than one lump, perhaps will do that tomorrow. If it comes to it, will abandon it, since in the end that might be cheaper than continuing to pay huge tier.

Had only intended to move my new skybox home + its contents(which proved quite easy to do, except there is always SOMETHING you leave behind, can see in first pic that it was a shadow and a rug in this case, also a couple of the potted plants and a saucer). Then started taking & deleting at ground level and decided in the end was better to get whole thing over at once.
Have had some kind of plot on Harm's Way since summer 2007, and had this particular part of it since November 2007, so may be a shock to the remaining neighbour who has been there as long as me. Managed to go all that time without exchanging a word, I think.
It is a pleasant place, with a sloping grassy hillside ending in beach and water, which is obviously why I liked it. However have just not been spending enough time there, since the views are not nearly as pleasant as when first moved in, and have mentioned lag issues.
Thought would feel quite moved by all this deletion (even more final than RL moving, since in RL one does not actually root out garden and demolish house once have removed furniture, normally). But think must have mentally said goodbye already, or something.

As final act, sat under spreading cherry tree and listened to windchime. This was a present from Ishbel when I got my first home and it has become a sort of ritual to move that last.
It is installed in my new land, so it definitely is home now.