Monday 30 August 2010

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.

Sunday 22 August 2010

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.

Friday 20 August 2010

Foolish

But I forgot and turned up on Tuesday.

Saturday 14 August 2010

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.

Friday 13 August 2010

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.

Monday 9 August 2010

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.

Friday 6 August 2010

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).

Wednesday 4 August 2010

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.

Sunday 1 August 2010

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.

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