Monday 19 April 2010

Something old, something new

SL designers returned: 1 (v. good); Cabinets filled: 1 (horribly easy)
Discovered last week that Effulgent Brown has a shop in SL again. Hurrah! My very first home in SL was a tea house, but once I ventured over 512 I invested in a series of Asian homes by Effulgent, all of which are atmospheric, cheap, and come with free packs of furniture. At the moment the ones which are out are the Wild Dragon (Sakura House on Infolit iSchool) and the Winter Lotus (one of the homes in the Educational Informatics village), though The Songbird is probably my favourite.
Although they don't involve sculpties and don't have the latest in texturing, think they still have a lovely feel to them.
Students must have agreed since Winter Lotus was one of the homes I had to install twice in the Educational Informatics village by popular demand (replacing the more "fashionable" shabby chic rooms that weren't dwellings of choice). Some of the furniture still works well, too, I think, and you can get a copiable home and a ton of Asian furnishings for a few hundred Linden.
Here I am in front of vendors at the House of Effulgent, Blarn Isle (170, 51, 27).
A new shop was Cheap Cheap which is indeed pretty cheap, and came away with cute cabinet, plate with caribou on it, a low table, a revolving iPod (not sure what to do with that yet) and a couple of other things I can't remember.
Have sort of given up on "if put something on Infolit, must take something off" policy at the moment, since my main teaching on Infolit is over, so am not expecting a legitimate large influx of prims. Therefore put cabinet in my office and loaded it up with some of the cute objects that were hanging round in my inventory. One of cutest is the wooden music box with a Japanesey lady who revolves whilst it plays a tune. Have had that unused in my Objects folder for well over a year. Also moved my Earthstones mug from my desk and one of the vases from the curio stand to the right of the cabinet.
Am planning on replacing one of the houses in my personal land, and this has given excuse to collect more stuff, including a kitchen unit from Bitter Vanilla. Attraction there was the tap (can have it on, off or dripping), washing up liqid that gives a bubbly sponge to wear, and fact that it DIDN'T have any larky animations in it. Am not prude, but I don't put up any nasty red ban lines round my propery and have ghastly vision of returning home one day to find complete strangers at it on my draining board (hm, so perhaps am prude after all).

Wednesday 14 April 2010

Pink, comments

Comments received: 1 (odd); Pink tops bought: several (ok); Of these, number worn: zero (bad)
Today is pink shirt anti-bullying day (see e.g. http://www.pinkshirtday.ca/) in various parts of the world including SL. I spent far too long trying to find a pink top that went with my current skirt and hair, only to end up with "something old" out of my inventory (of course). Here I am after my pointless shopping trip, in the "Animal Farm" type main square in Gaylord (some kind of porcine pogrom going on), having browsed my way through the Pig and Thimbles shops.
I also just received a blog comment from someone who evidently hadn't read my blog, since they were asking me to review an online shop of RL furniture. It's a comment on a really old post http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/2007/07/shopaholic.html#comments where I'm not even talking about furnishings. Even calling me a "home decor-modern design connoisseur" doesn't win me over. Most puzzlingly, they say at the end "Also, it'd be swell if you can place our suede wassily chair in a bag set in a bag on your blog."
Suggestions on how I put a RL chair in a bag on my blog are welcome, as if I work THAT out I can evidently get myself a real free suede chair.

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Home expo

Benches bought: 1 (good); Houses bought: 1 (good); Time spent watching objects rez: aeons (bad)
Have spent a little time at the Home & Garden Expo. Amongst purchases is a cute sofa from Greene Concept. Am seen in first pic sitting on one at the Expo (haven't actually unpacked my own yet).
Am still in new Eva skin, to give it a chance. Still think it is a bit too grey. With the Marguerite hair from Truth, that was wearing to start with, seemed to look much too SMUG all the time. However with this new hair from Simply Britnee possibly look too CUTE. And cuteness evidently leads to pole dancing (see previous post) which can only be a slippery slope.
Bought yet another house, well, it was only 500 Linden and has sash windows that open and close, a retractable ladder, and (the clincher) a teleport to the attic, disguised as a mouse hole. The vendor is Turnip. Will need to be for personal use, since navigating round it would be challenging for a noob, so can't really put it on the island.
Unfortunately must be said that spent less time looking at cute homes than I did watching oddly shaped lumps rez, trying to work out what they were going to be. The 2nd pic shows an example, and not the worst. Will it be a chair? A washbasin? A grandfather clock? An amusingly shaped vegetable? Who knows, and (after half an hour of slow-rez pain) does one care enough to wait and find out?

Ups and downs

Chatlogs recovered: all (probably) (v. good); Hours spent setting up new exhibits in shop: 2 (good); No. of hours before new exhibits returned to lost and found inventory: 6 (approx) (bad)
Good news is that Kisa responded to email re: missing chatlogs and is setting them up so can be accessed. Is relief, since will not have to ferret about to find chatlogs. However, think will still also upload them to a server here at Sheffield for security. Plus am rethinking poster strategy: think will put chatlogs into notecards and then have poster that GIVES ALL with chatlog notecard and any other notecards from each discussion. Also means that stuff will be given in informatively titled folder.

However, much work lies ahead before this achieved i.e. have to create 30+ new posters, make 30+ notecards with chatlogs, and transfer other notecards etc. event by event to each new new poster. Still, had meant to reorganise them, and hopefully can make display easier to navigate.
In meantime spent time yesterday making new pictures to put in shop on Juicy and then fitting out shop to fit with theme (which is "photoshopped spring"). Sat back and admired (see 1st pic., I'm in the chair towards the back of the shop). Then went home.

However this morning found all stuff returned to Lost and Found, and not for usual reason (i.e. failing to activate correct group, in this case "I love Juicy") but because landlady was remodelling sim. Sigh. Plus point is that as compensation got 2 weeks rent free.

When went back this evening did indeed manage to get all of the setup from inventory in one lump (you have to select BUILD first, and then pull things out the inventory, to be able to manipulate a set of unlinked objects). Fortunately shop is exactly same size as old one, and you can see that 2nd pic in new location looks pretty much like the first.

Made a few adjustments, including adding a bench with cute poses at the front. And also have view of sea and palm trees (see 3rd pic).

Less enticingly, also opposite is a shop selling disco floors. Do not have anything against disco floors as such, they can just make things laggy. However, did find a pole for pole dancing behind the shop, and could not resist trying it (n.b. with all clothes kept ON, see last pic.)

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Report from the LILAC conference

At 12 noon Second Life time (8pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/yghsjlh for times in other parts of the world) on Thursday 8th April, in Second Life, there will be a one hour report/discussion on the LILAC conference. This year the LILAC conference (the UK's information literacy conference) took place 29-31 March 2010
(http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/). Pancha Enzyme (Edinburgh University) and Ishbel Hartmann (St Andrews University), who both presented at LILAC this year, will give you a report from some favourite items from the conference. There will be a couple of short presentations in voice, with the discussion and some report in text chat. The location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/125/240/22/

I have added some lilac to the discussion platform, and retinted the bench and barbie, to get in the mood.

Monday 5 April 2010

More reasons for not trusting to other people's websites

Chatlogs lost: thirty-something (v.v. bad) Chatlogs recovered so far: 21 (good); Wallace and Gromit games played in RL: 1 (good)
Was alerted by comment on this blog (thank you!) that the links to the chatlogs were no longer working. These are the records of discussions etc. on Infolit iSchool. Chatlogs were uploaded using an app from someone at the Leeds Met university, which gave a more pleasing layout. However, appears that domain name (sleeds.org) is no longer in use, since all links now just show meaningless advertising.
This is v. v. depressing since had LOTS of chatlogs archived that way, starting in 2007, and although think have them all in text files, said files will be spread over 3 computers and possibly a couple of data sticks, and am not sure that the file names will be that meaningful either.
Will obviously contact Leeds to find out whether files are in fact safe somewhere on a Leeds server, but in meantime tried some search engine searching, to see whether could find cached versions. Google caches are too up-to-date, but managed to find 21 of the chatlogs via cached files on Bing.com
Am hopeful of getting most if not all the chatlogs together, though the work does not end there, since will have to upload them somewhere else, change all the links on the wiki (if nowhere else) plus change the posters in the CILR on Infolit iSchool, which means making new posters for all of them (groan, see above me contemplating them all gloomily).
Have taken mind off all this in RL by playing amusing Wallace and Gromit computer game (from Telltale, currently £12 for 4 games, v. good value)

The blog of Sheila Yoshikawa on her adventures in Second Life. This may be very thrilling. Or possibly not.