Hunts, Bananas

Hunts completed:one (good); No. of times same hunt completed: twice (bad; but v. quick the second time); No. of Kawaii objects collected: numerous (but some more kawaii than others)

The Albero Kawaii hunt just finished, Albero being a shopping district covering a couple of sims and kawaii being Japanese for Cute. Did it twice since first sent Dimitrova out to do the time consuming stuff untroubled by IMs, then Dimi compiled a handy set of landmarks which she dropped to me.
Am thinking of developing taxonomy of hunts, which could become a faceted classification scheme:
Facet 1: Process: do you have to do something with a HUD BEFORE you get anywhere near the objects, or do you wander about looking for the Hunt object directly? Is there a list of hints and landmarks on a well maintained Hunt website, or are you reliant on some selfless SL resident providing an online walkthru?
Facet 2: Material: are the objects clothing, interior design, plants; steampunk artefacts etc.?
Facet 3: Energy: is the hunt object v. easy to recognise and find, or is it tiny and hidden in obscure corners that you can only discover if you are prepared to spend hours camming under the flooboards and on the roof?
Facet 4: Space: Is the hunt in one shop? one sim? the whole grid? the inifinite metaverse?
Facet 5: Time: Firstly: How long is the hunt on for? Secondly: What's the fastest you can get round?
Facet 6: Matter: At the end of it, are you flitting from item to exquisite item going mwuah mwauh you godlike creators, or have you just got a pile of random junk from shops that couldn't get into any of the quality hunts?

The kawaii would have be classified as follows:
Facet 1: Process: HUD. You attach the HUD, and then you are given a visual clue to tell you where the first hunt object is. When you find the next object, you click it. This fills up a square on your HUD and gives you the next visual clue. Eventually, after you have crashed a zillion times camming and flying round and round the 2 sims, you have a completely filled-in HUD which says "you did it" in English and Japanese. You don't get much help in solving the HUD-oriented problems (would say it rates a "4" on a scale from "no brainer (1)" to "impossible (6)"), but you do get a full landmarked list of shops. And all the landmarks worked!
Facet 2: Materials: Mostly homes and gardens.
Facet 3: Energy: The visual-clue thing was quite tricky, because you have to try and work out where the picture was taken, and if all you can see is grey lag, this means you have zero chance of success. In fact in end rather enjoyed puzzling out clues from roof colour and types of building in background etc., despite zillion crashes. One you have a complete HUD it is easy-peasy, since you then just use the list of links to shops and collect the prize from the entrance of each shop.Facet 4: Space: Over 2 sims.
Facet 5: Time: Two weeks: rather frustrating if those are two really busy weeks.
Facet 6: Matter: Mwuah mwuah.

All I need now is a notation scheme and I could represent any hunt by a string of numbers separated by eccentric punctuation.

The information scientists amongst you will know that I have been ALMOST using the categories devised by the guru Ranganathan for the Colon faceted classification scheme. Alas, whilst I was devising the list I had thought I WAS using them, but I see now that "Process" should be "Personality" and "Material" shouldn't be in it at all. And to think I used to teach that stuff. Still, I can't be bothered to change it, so this is officially my revision of Ranganathan's work, for application to SL hunts.
Realise have left out cost element (most hunts are free, but increasingly there are 1 Linden or 10 Linden hunts), perhaps that is an aspect of energy, since you have to expend energy to earn the money to buy Linden.

After all this only remains to show you some of the booty.
Firstly you see me doing my "52 weeks of colour" shot for tomorrow (banana colour, if you hadn't guessed). Actually only the tv and panda are from the hunt, but the picture is in the kawaii spirit. That banana phone belongs to Nigl and has been on top of the library for years, it's a sort of landmark.
Secondly, Dimi with all the hunt items, everything you see is hunt, apart from her hair and a small grey wall in the background. Thirdly, a particularly kawaii collection of panda doll, boho couch, smiley cloud decal and smiley rocket. The sack with the rainclouds was actually the box the Cleo stuff came in, cute or what. In the last hunt that had some Cleo it was about a week before I realised that what I was displaying was the box rather than the actual gift.
Finally a rather arty shot of me and the Giant Dandelion pose. I already have dandelion fields (dandelion flowers and dandelion clocks) and dandelion seed particle emitters so I can set up a nice dandelion-rich scene for the summer.

Final thought. When I have in my inventory a panda cushion, a panda toaster, a panda hug-doll and a panda hot-chocolate flask, why has it taken this long for me to use the blog tag "panda"?

Moderated success

No. of sessions agreed to moderate: 4 (good); No. of sessions actually moderated: 3 (bad)

Wrote this post a week ago and then forgot to post. Is about Virtual Worlds conference which is History now, but am loathe to waste some writing. Also reading through realise it sounds as though conference was bit disasterous whereas (will hasten to add) was mostly fine and even good. Really it was.
Anyway.

Somewhat belatedly, am continuing tale of moderating at the Virtual Worlds conference. Was, as they say, one of Pride Before Fall. Had felt rather pleased with moderation at Friday's events, and rashly agreed to do 4 more sessions next day. However, failed on 3 counts, namely:
1) Did not manage to find out SL name of first speaker on day before;
2) Did not check that knew how to get to first venue;
3) Did not allow enough time on day to establish 1) and 2).
Thus found self at point when was supposed to be starting session lacking both speaker and venue. Did have tiny bit of excuse in that would have been v. helpful to have been given SL name of speaker rather than first life one (since various googlings turned up a blank), and also would have helped if landmark for venue had actually landed one IN said venue rather than considerable distance away.

However, was generally mortifying. Encountered one equally baffled punter at the teleport point, and said would contact him if found speaker/venue. Then TPed to anywhere in area that had green dots (since dots mean People). When eventually found my session, was already 10 past the hour (and person had offered to help was already in audience, so doubly embarrassing).

Apologised profusely to speaker afterwards (1st pic) and did manage to help 2 people in audience with sound and general info. Anyway, after this things could only look up, and connected with other 3 speakers in good time. Last of my sessions, on Open Wonderland, really moderated itself, since was team of people who were fielding questions in text chat.

In between had attended keynote of colleague Jackie, which thought was v. good. Afterwards went to last few sessions, including Zana talking about Conne River project (2nd pic) and Graham talking about Opensim (3rd pic). Also v. good. Pleased to see Kattan in audience. After that she visited cat and took picture 2 posts ago.

Had look round exhibition, well in fact was mostly amusing excursion round exhibition since discovered flying thing on Virtual Pioneers stand, and spent most of my time zooming round it in this, rather than contemplating pedagogic virtues of exhibits. Here is a celebratory animoto about VWBPE that I did.