New home; an artist's life

 No. of homes: at least 3, plus whole island (bad); 50 prim challenges taken: 1 (good)

Was prompted by post by Chic Aeon to do challenge to furnish home with just 50 LI (or prims, in old money). Chic had started with furnishing cute home in new fantasy sim Seaclaid, and seemed that was v. cheap to rent there, so did not hesitate to TP in, view available homes and snap up flat above Irish pub. Only 100 Linden per week and of course am in dire need of home since only have:

• Cottage in Rosehaven
• Half a sim in Noyo
• Whole island (Infolit iSchool)
  

and that is without Dimitrova's parcel in wherever it is, and houseboat in Bellisaria, which obvs don't count as she is alt.

Anyway Seaclaid is v. cute and flat has great position with views of harbour and town square. Was going to furnish it in 60s peace/love/hippy style, but then was dropped notecard by sim owner that reminded me sim was high fantasy. Suppose it shows that one person's high fantasy is someone else's normal, since it hadn't struck me the sim looked PARTICULARLY fantasy, at least not more than any SL sim. For me was bit like various places I've been in physical world, so suppose is result of me seeing quaint and weird RL stuff as same old same old. In fact pub which I live over struck me as being archetypal pseudo Irish pub circa mid 20th century, as seen in most capitals of Europe, but anyway is nice space and have furnished it as Artist's hangout.

Can see am going to have great time churning out Views of Seaclaid and selling to gullible tourists. Found EXACTLY THE RIGHT TABLE to sit at while staring out the window and  thinking of things to do instead of getting down to writing. Is lucky chance that managed to drag it out of inventory since it was called My vintage art studio / Gacha {1} and think I found it when was actually looking for more things to put in artists loft. 

This is me looking moodily out of window wondering if poor light (dusk + insufficient prims to have more than one candle) lets me off doing any more on that literature review have been working on for over a year. I think the answer must be yes.

Draxtor Despres is offering friendship; blog apps regress; pumpkin time

Friendship offers: several (good); Friendship offers from Draxtor Dupres: 1 (like, totes amazeballs); pumpkins pulled from inventory: infinite (bad); Blog app "upgrades": 2 (apalling)

Appears to be time for 6-monthly blog post, so here it is. Was startled this morning by friendship offer from Draxtor Dupres, who is a notable slebrity. Think this is because of attending the Digital... digital ... digital something sessions inconveniently scheduled at 10am SL time on Thursdays and convened by Tom Bukowski. Are inconvenient since 12 noon is of course VWER time, and need to have physical food break too. However, digital thingy sessions give oppportunity to utter self-obsessed statements about SL, universe and everything, so go when can (though searching through chat, first utterance at one of these events appears to have been @Eliza think I agree with that so also indulge in sycophantic yea-saying). 

In first pic I'm in digital thingy event looking v. cool with the shaggy hair and poncho vibe and there's Draxtor (in mustard coloured trousers), you can tell already that we're going to be great chums.

One change that has happened since last blogged is enforced changes to Blogger editing layout. This was advertised as " an improved web experience for Blogger" and perhaps is for some, but can only think of ways in which it has got worse e.g. 

- in HTML blogging mode, no longer puts in breaks if you do them in that mode, it all just scrunches up.
- takes two clicks to create new post when click on the "New post" in top bar
- Resizing pics after you inserted them is more fiddly 

But could be worse, what Wordpress have done to their editing interface is unfathomable. Have decided that without me realising Wordpress have stopped being somewhere that ordinary mortals/avatars can blog and turned into - ? possibly a suit of website apps. Only know that couldn't understand most of their "help" blog posts for last couple of months. 

Meanwhile things jog along in roughly same groove in SL. Am having to be at VWER every week and still getting more people coming along than pre-COVID. Am preparing for Global Media and Information Literacy week in SL (suppose should have blogging about that instead, oh well). Because of this am neglecting Halloween though managed to get a couple of Halloween-compliant costumes (see pic 2). Have resisted buying pumpkins so far because have so so many.

Or is this wrong. Broke off to see what had in Inventory when searched on "Pumpkin". 

This is just part of the result (above) and that's without the giant pumpkin trees that swallow you, the multipart Sway's pumpkin carving set, numerous small pumpkins that got lost in the grass, pumpkin lanterns and pumpkin-related food. 

Though realise that have dearth of green pumpkins, pale blue pumpkins and pumpkins in shape of animals other than cats. So permission to purchase more pumpkins granted!

I find an old half finished post about Twitter vs SL, and finish it

Blog posts completed after mere 5 year delay: 1 (good)
Had decided to post here for first time in mumble-mumble months, when noticed had 66 draft posts. As had thought, most of them consisted of few enigmatic words or a couple of random pics., but this seemed almost complete, so have decided to post it. Unfortunately forgot to note down when actually drafted it*: think was 2015, though that seems a bit late for 1st Tweet chat. Anyway here it is:

------------roll back time to 2015-------------
For first time participated in Twitter-only discussion this week. Could not help but compare with SL equivalent so decided to be Reflective Practitioner and blog about it. Was then question of which of my x zillion blogs I should burden with these pearls of wisdom. Thought people would be least likely to read it if I put it here, and hey haven’t blogged here recently**, so here we go.

Discussion was about info literacy, so is pretty easy to compare with some Infolit iSchool discussions. Must start by saying that am not that keen on Twitter. Have blogged about that HERE. Blog I blogged THAT on is more Serious Blog (though with risibly low page hits, but whatever) so omitted to mention key drawback which is that on Twitter no one can see whether you have a kitten on your head. Or your shoulder. Or new spiffy cowboy boots with pink ribbons. In fact you could be a dragon or a dancing cabbage and people still wouldn’t know. Whereas in SL it is all out there for people to see and make merry banter about.

Tried to reign in refs to SL in above blog post, because we all know that people think that people who like SL are, like, weird**, but was thinking how on SL do have fun. In fact in week before wrote Twitter-is-no-fun post had amusing post-meeting banter in SL with Kali and Pancha which started with fact that Pancha was wearing steampunk librarian outfit (lower half replaced by gears). Led to reminicences about when Kali rezzed with no top on and I took pics and then had to promise not to post them to Flickr. Lord how we chortled. You had to be there.

Anyway: Similarities between a discussion on infolit on Twitter and in SL:
1. Can be at your desk/ in bed/ in the pub i.e. anywhere where you have a device and an internet connection:
2. During discussion can nip out to make coffee, take a phone call, have a comfort break etc. etc.
3. You get an automatic transcript
4. Discussion overlaps and is disjointed
5. Technical problems
6. People use [inserted May 2020 use what??? language? a computer? I suppose people will have been using SOMETHING, let's leave it at that]
7. You find out some interesting stuff and talk to new people
Differences
1. On Twitter you get to talk to people who use Twitter, on SL to people who use SL.
2. Beginning and end of session are not so clear on Twitter, though of course could have been Twitter session I was in.
3.
------------roll forward to 2020---------

At this point typing had ceased. Presume was through lack of time, but perhaps was so overwhelmed with differences that had to go and lie down.

Anyway, can add some more differences, so, to continue
3. In SL shared digital space is more distinctive, and more likely to be brought into conversation
4. Also in SL can move location
5. Can use Twitter on all sorts of devices, and even when your device and signal are rubbish. Not so with SL
6. In SL can be present and not saying anything, but people still know you are there.
7. In SL people more likely to apologise for arriving late, or for dropping in late and then disappearing. In Twitter get more people divebombing in and out (or perhaps they've been there all the time not saying anything, one can't tell, see (6)
8. On SL saying goodbye and thanking people takes 3 times as long as on Twitter. This is an estimate. If anyone wants to give me money to test this hypothesis, yes please.
9. More likely to get an idea of what was said on Twitter afterwards, as will be able to search on hashtag even if no-one has archived chat. In SL depends on someone sharing chatlog
10. Are more likely to get pics of the SL discussion posted than Twitter discussion, in that - why would you even take a pic of a Twitter discussion?
11. In SL more likely to comment on people's appearance and people more likely to change appearance during session.
12. SL is more fun. It just is.

Hmm, not sure that is unbiased assessment, but this is a reflection, not some nonsensical attempt at objective evaluation. Have illustrated this with pics of some of my devices in SL plus me in a kimono with a small donkey companion, because, why not

*As soon as had looked at it Blogger helpfully updated date to today's. 
** No change there, then