Cats, Hair, Bots

Emails received from virtual cats: 10 (good); Visibility of mesh: erratic (bad); Tail positions: unfortunate (v. bad)
Was overwhelmed with emails from Stone and Tassie on Monday demanding food and attention. Such an improvement on RL cats which can only meowl and look pained, not only have SL cats mastered email skills, also can tell me preceisely how hungry they are e.g. "40%".
Fortunately got to them before they were 100% hungry as at that point they retire to their themometers and blankets and linden must be paid to get them back to good health. Here I am showing Tassie I care, using cute "hold" pose. Is only one thing wrong with this pose, as can be seen if look closely at pic. Prompts thoughts such as "is that a kittycat you are holding or are you just glad to see me?" Would probably be good idea if kittycat tail vanished in this animation, or at least coiled discretely out of sight.

Am wearing new hair from Truth, but expenditure has been curbed somewhat as am being v. cautious about buying mesh clothes. Was incident of being filmed by Pancha when wearing nice mesh sweater and hair and looking like I had no torso but a bald head, and also when bumped into Kali and friends and it emerged that they were using non-mesh viewers.  Can't imagine why anyone who doesn't know what mesh is would read this blog, but anyway, mesh is new way of making stuff, using computer aided design; like sculpties, but it's not sculpties, it's mesh. Plus side of mesh is that it can curve to follow your avatar movements, minus is that you can't resize it if it's this flexible "rigged mesh".

Thus to fit different sized avis you get several sizes of (e.g.) the dress, which is all very well, but they are "standard size", which means you end up a standard size rather than your actual shape. This generally means buxom, with a small waist and biggish hips but a flat bottom. Do not want to be that shape. Combo of ill-fitting clothes and social embarrassment of having vital bits missing = avoidance of mesh.

Am also myself finding that when come across new mesh objects they are invisible first time round e.g. try on a mesh skirt and it looks like it isn't there. Relog and magically I can see it. Increasing numbers of people at meetings are thus suffering from bits-missing syndrome e.g. in VWER today there was chap who was mostly just head and extremities, and last week there was a woman was was mostly hair (see pic): very nice hair too, went off after the meeting to find the shop.

Next pic also shows mesh issue (see chap on far right, look no body) in after-VWER visit to a bot-shop where was being shown the Quasimodo Merlin bot (the one with steampunk wings: actually realise now that you can't really see him in this pic, he is hidden by my Big Hair, that thought bubble is coming out of his head). Quasimodo was eccentric bot who disliked people he had only just been introduced to (he actually said "I dislike x", x being Suzanne who was just trying to make polite conversation with him). Therefore ended up being something of a bait-the-bot session, though in a polite educators sort of way. Quasi has been programmed to write vogon poetry and his poem for me on the subject of "Jubilee" was as follows (copyright to him, obviously)
"among shops futuristic jubilee
Label interpreted jubilee!
You extended parkey.
Out of the water, budgeted bugbee.
All taste fielded plumlee.
Good and plenty, allocated lordy.
Sheilas suit entertains parkey"

Could spend hours deconstructing this. The first lines seem to be corruscating commentary on the extent to which the Queen's Diamond Jubilee has been turned in a commercial event. "Parkey" is of course reference to popular but ageing UK TV personality Michael Parkinson, a former chat show host. "You extended parkey" must be compliment to the dedicatee (me) implying that my witty repartee would stretch Parkey's powers, and indeed provide him and his audience with entertainment ("Sheilas suit entertains"). This appears to be in contrast with some dull minor royal who has been foisted onto Parkey as a guest ("allocated lordy") with an affected plummy accent ("fielded plumlee"). Not sure about the fourth line. Perhaps there has been flooding, but fortunately there is sufficient Parkinson Show budget to mop it up so we are "out of the water".

Great stuff.

And to finish with, here I am balancing on a table.

Remembrance

Trenches visited: 1 (sobering); Remembrance day areas created: 1 (tasteful, hopefully)
Am in midst of Infolit Week in SL prep, but took time out to locate remembrance day poppy wreath, poppy rezzer and Heart garden centre poppy plants (Big and Small) in inventory. Remembrance Day is (for non-Brits) on the 11th day of the 11th month, but the big commemoration (Cenotaph, Queen, wreath-laying etc.) is on the Sunday nearest to the 11th. Oxford Uni have just opened a Western Front Trenches & war poems archive sim (in case people needed reminding that war not good thing), and from that I got a full permissions poppy, so you can get one on Infolit, also there is a tablet that gives a landmark to the Western Front. The Infolit area, with poppies and tablet, (pictured here) is at
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/107/180/21/

Encountering, linking, swirling

Participation in pretend audiences: 1 (ok); Educator Coop visits to view people doing stuff I can't do myself: 1 (good); Encounter with useful ppt in SL: 1 (v. good); time spent floating amongst verse: lots (good)

Am pondering how I feel that in one way have done lots in last 24 hours, and in other ways not. Interesting how feel am not really doing proper work in SL even when engaged in work-related activities, which results in gloom, guilt etc though also in lots of pretty pics of me flitting around in SL.

Yesterday got back from RL journey in time for regular Monday Educators Coop chat. North showed part of his Library Technology Report articles transferred to a thincbook. V. cool, should put more of my stuff in thincbooks. Will put North's in our SL library.

Then Rx arrived and tp-ed us over to where he is using Studio Builder to make sculpties (see first pic). He had made a large boat consisting of just 2 prims, and he also showed how a teapot he'd done could be made tiny tiny.

Afterwards sent out some notices to the Educational Informatics students and was still inworld when call came to become a pretend audience for a machinima on a Babel Project event. Hung round in audience feeling like a prop and doing other stuff offline. Actual event at which machinima will be shown is happening in Lisbon and RL at 11 next Monday; unfortunately will be teaching then.

Today was supposed to be a presentation from some of Jackie's students, on Infolit, about their virtual ethnography, but alas SL had a power outtage and Infolit iSchool was one of the 4000 regions offline for an hour or so. Bother.

Anyway, hung round and finally visited the 15 second Poetry game and the poetry skybox recommended by Jackie. Was great fun and took some nice pics in the swirly peacock dress that happened to have on.

Finally, followed a call for people to see student presentations at a research exhibition at Texas Womens University. First exhibit turned out to be about librarians collaborating in SL which is v. useful since

a) am giving talk on this very issue in about 2 weeks time at a RL conference and

b) Pancha is holding a focus group on this next week!

So dropped a notecard to Valibrarian (the author) hopefully to get full slides, and dropped a word to Pancha as well. Is useful since is not only material for talk, but is also example of using SL to make professional connections, cool or what.

Pic shows me bumping into Oronoque at TWU (she is the one with more feathers)