More about Tuesday

Crawl through pipes bought: 1 (good); Novelty trees bought: pack of 5 (good); Novelty gravestone poses bought: 1 (v. good); Research seminars attended: 1 (good); Hours sleep lost: 2 or 3 or ... (bad)

Was flicking through pics and realised that did lots of other stuff on Tuesday that hadn't blogged. Notable was the regular Tuesday SL researchers seminar - planning researcher Olf Ort was talking about the elements in planning drawings etc. that might link to SL (elements of fantasy or imagination - I think) and how use of 3D renderings of potential planning sites leads logically to SL as the more immersive way of finding out people's reactions to planned environments.

Hmmmm, probably didn't capture any of the essentials there. Word "Affordances" was certainly used (as in "affordances of SL"), a v. useful word that I bandy about a lot now that I know what it means. Anyway, this session has has made a connection with the talk I heard from an artist who was saying how using social networking sites etc was actually enabling artists to extend practices that were very old (use of artists' notebooks with found ideas and new sketches etc.) through use of technology.

Similarly one can see how SL might be more useful (immediately) when it can build on and improve/extend existing practice, but (my not v. original thought) the immediately obvious application might not be the one one(s) that eventually proved to be most valuable. Think it could be that way with libraries/ librarianship.

On another note, stumbled across artist/designer's shop where purchased a number of items: namely a pipe with associated animation that makes you crawl through it (pictured), some unusual non-natural trees, a mat that you kneel on and when you stand up a flowerpot drops on your head, and a 2-person gravestone animation. Latter is v. cute and will feature it when find someone to be the other person in the animation.

Was pretty exhaused in RL and SL by the end of Tuesday what with education meeting, research seminar and all that having flowerpots landing on my head. Dropped into bed, lit the incense and didn't even have strength to turn out the light.

Launch, addenda

Balloons removed after launch: 12 (sad); Emails about launch from colleagues: 1 (good)

This brief post to catch up with more pics from launch. First one from flickr collection of Pete Johnston, reproduced with kind permission, as they say. All his pics (linked from last post) are good, but this is nice in showing view of whole office with people in and celebration balloons.

IH has also put up some pics, including one which displays her dress nicely and a good one of me.
Finally here are two photos taken half an hour before launch. At that point was having last minute panic about which necklace to wear and making sure that cat in place and all food and drink in order. Photos show, however, that not all guests alive with anticipation.

In first pic see guest so excited that has slumped asleep over coffee in corner (at least cat Mitsy has stayed awake).

In 2nd pic see another guest so relaxed has climbed onto coffee maker and zizzed off. Had slight hysterics when this happened, indeed colleague phoned up at this point in RL and found was almost unable to speak, fortunately colleague knows of SL obsession and was tolerant.