Strawberry, distraction, reality

Strawberry catgirl beds bought: 1 (good); FB nonsenses: 1 (bad)
Have procrastinated into blog to note that have bought a strawberry cat-girl bed (includes cute poses for one or two people) on Fifty Linden Friday offer and installed it in the ancient Insect and Fruit Houses on Infolit iSchool. Can see specifically that have put it in strawberry house, and indeed remembering this house (which has hovered over Infolit for 8 years) was chief excuse for clicking "pay" on the cat-girl bed vendor. Bed is large enough for real sized avatars, not just cats. It is the thing with green ears inside the strawberry house (just to make things crystal clear, since you may not have seen a strawberry catgirl bed before now).

Was diverted when entered this blog, though, as follow Bryn Oh's blog and noticed this post: http://brynoh.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/the-facebook-death-of-bryn-oh-day-one.html For those of you who have lived their lives snuggled in their skybox watching virtual soaps and do not venture out, this is the internationally reknowned artist Bryn Oh, who does extraordinary magical art installations in SL and I imagine also magical etc. in the physical world (e.g. exhibition in Berlin at the moment) but haven't experienced those first hand.

Bryn Oh has been asked by Facebook to prove that this is her "real name" and since she can't produce the normal certification, her FB account is likely to get closed. As one commenter on her FB page says "Bryn Oh is more real than some actual real life people I know!" Bryn Oh has won awards! been given grants to create art in SL! has a reputation and connections and people who take selfies by her artworks and buy them to put in their homes! (and that includes me, I don't know Bryn Oh but have admired her work for years)

In what way is that not real? Seems bizarre but not unexpected that a company that makes its living through the virtual (ie FB) is out of tune with what it means to live a life across virtual and physical worlds.

Here is pic of Bryn Oh work that came across randomly on someone's land a couple of years ago. It cause me to pause and think about things and feel refreshed. Definitely real.

Visits

Visit to other uni sims: 1 (good); Tours given of Infolit iSchool: 1 (good); Embarrassing moments in fairy queen cosi: 2 (bad)

Offered tour to MA student doing dissertation on educational use of SL. Took about an hour, but useful to have to explain what rationale is for different areas etc. Ended with balloon tour, which went well except found that pretty new dress exposed embarrassing glimpse of thigh when balloon in full flight and skirt blowing out of side of balloon basket (as is wont of prim skirts). Fortunately unlike RL can change into more modest garb at once.

When landed back in front of library found that 2 random academics from other countries were looking round island (here they are in the CILASS/ Educational Studies building) so popped over to say Hi.

Am also trying to look more at other islands rather than just touring the clothes shops in time off. Therefore tp-ed in to University of Liverpool which is being set up currently. Are already some interesting leftover exhibits from molecular structure conference and some other things e.g. model of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Encountered Graham, who had been at the LTEA2008 conference and he happened to have up and running a web-on-a-prim tool that I'd been thinking of buying (see pictures) - cool and seemed to work.

He was with a few colleagues, and I felt a little overdressed in tiara and ball gown. Is it that dress code in SL is getting more conservative, or just that am doing larger proportion of professional things? Hmmm.

P.S. Have had paper accepted for the Relive conference in November. Yay!