I have new feet

New feet obtained: 1 (ok, 2, but they come in one attachment) (v. good)

Onward march of SLINK feet increasingly inexorable, i.e. % of new shoes which are not for SLINK feet low. SLINK feet, for those uninterested in fashion/dwelling under SL rock, are pretty mesh replacements for ordinary avatar feet. Said avatar feet are condemned by fashionistas for a) having malformed toes and b) having ugly cankles (those bulgy ankles you get when you shrink your feet to get into the size zero shoes).

So a couple of months ago took the plunge with approx 600 lindens and purchased said feet.

In fact main deterrent has been fact that would find it difficult to match pale skin colour. However Glam Affair just brought out SLINK Appliers for their palest colour, Frost, which means that once have SLINK feet attached, just need to wear Appliers and hey presto, feet and ankles same colour as legs.

Should be mentioned in passing that there are also SLINK hands (also de rigeur for fashionistas, but still not so convinced by them, your hands get stuck in one position, I think) and this week a SLINK body, but - baby steps, baby steps.

Since then have not taken SLINK feet off, except when doing lightning quick change into outfit for emergency reasons (can't now remember what). Feet are so pale! so smooth! So easily decorated with umpteen shades of nail polish! Have mostly invested in sandals since what is point of cute new feet if they are stuck in boots? Thus am now possesor of jeweled sandals (Zaara), explorer sandals (Ingenue), sandals made of recycled tyres (by someone or other) etc. etc. Main problem is shoes which disappear iif viewed from distance, so have to spend some time demo-ing shoes and then camming outside shop door to see if can still see them. No point in spending 200 Linden on pair of sandals which noone can see. On other hand, if shoes do disappear, then at least you can still see these lovely, exquisite feet.

Colours

Colours: 52 (challenging)
As usual when doing oodles in SL have had no time to blog same. However can be noted that do appear to have enough time for fashion blog posts here, here and here. These are part of the 52 Weeks of Colour bloggers challenge, started by Luna Jubilee. Each week she announces a new colour and then bloggers fall over themselves to dress up in it, blog and post the pics to Flickr. Or some people signal coolness by declaring how dreadful one would look if one DID dress entirely in said colour, and blog something which is meant to amusingly hint at the colour, in an artful way. However, as can be seen on right, own approach is simply to drape self in variations in colour, in hopes that at least one of the colours is the right one.
Main challenge seems to me in finding 52 different real colours, but even by 3rd week emerges that unreal colours will also feature i.e. this week was goldenrod week. Now, goldenrod is a real plant and is sort of mustardly colour, fading to grungy kind of brown (at least stuff you get in bargain bouquets at Tesco's is). However, colour as set by Luna is sort of pleasant pale honey. Anyway, main benefit is that may discourage spending on new clothes in SL, since have set self a sub-challenge, which is to try and only use existing inventory. Not very difficult, actually, so far grey, blue and goldenrod have been a case of Spoilt For Choice. As you can see, even managed to find golden nail polish.
This is all rather in the line of fiddling whilst Rome burns, as good SL sims are renounced, LL introduces bizarre and unsettling things like display names (so, "sheila.yoshikawa" is now just my username??? but it's my NAME!), and various aspects of the UK public sector teeter on brinks.
But one has to get ones priorities right. And colour-matched nails surely must come pretty high up on anyone's priority list.

Exhibit

Exhibitions created and fine tuned: 1 (good); Flags acquired: 3 types (good); Quirky Swedish rabbits acquired: 1 (good); Swedish cushions acquired: 1 (mistake)

Have had fairly active week in SL. Most constructive part is probably making the exhibit for IFLA conference discussion. Had originally spent happy hour whilst still in Gothenburg, sifting through houses in inventory to find suitable venue, and settled on older Japanesey building, like one that used to house CILASS in dim and distant. Had got all posters from satellite conference set up, but fact was that it looked a bit messy.

Then had idea of taking pics of RL Gothenburg venue (the Palace) and using these to texture the walls and floor. Is not exactly work of art but think it has nice feel and is at least distinctive & could set it to copy if so desired as is all own work. Completed this box with all the posters, some RL pics, and a board with all the delegates’ names and the briefing for the exercise that produced the posters. Also could not resist a bit of set dressing with a table rather like the ones in the RL venue, a cup, a pencil holder and a pic of a RL poster on a table top.

To house powerpoints, chose same building as the Wilf Saunders Library, a simple wood floor and glass walled box. Discovered in process that creator of this (who also created the Victorian Steampunk sky platform and the thing I used originally as the Departmental office building), is no longer selling homes. Sad. Think they were ahead of their time, at the time (i.e. 2007) but suppose things have moved on.

After putting in selected ppts, and doing some notecards with abstracts and some links to other stuff, created walkway between two buildings with paving and boat, to evoke Gothenburg harbour At least that’s the idea.

Seemed to go down well with people on Thursday, though is scarcely rocket science. Since then have added noticeboard for people to add their own thoughts about Contextual Factors for Information Literacy (that is, if they can work out how on earth noticeboard works, and then manage to type in their thoughts in a mere 30 seconds, no mean feat). Also, by chance, acquired set of Swedish flags: one you wear and wave, one small one to put on table top (so put it on table top) and one full sized flag on pole which waves just like in the Torley Tutorial.

Additionally have small rabbit in Swedish colours, holding carrot and Swedish flag (not sure if carrot is symbolic of anything). These all were acquired because yesterday was setting up a tableau with a diagram of the Information Literate University to create some graphics for a ppt that am giving in RL in Uppsala in a couple of weeks time. Uppsala is also in Sweden, and, finding that lacked Swedish flag, visited the Swedish Institute sim, where hit jackpot. Appears to have been some kind of high-profile wedding celebration, and were boxes lying around containing said set of flags, and rabbit. Only expense was that almost by mistake bought fairly dull heart-shaped cushion in Swedish colour scheme, for 59 Linden. Oh well.


Anyway, after event on Thursday, but before whiteboard and flags, did a quick Screenr screencast for those unfortunates who cannot see the exhibit in SL. Only real regret is that had just changed outfit: Sugarcube had produced a dress for the first time in ages, which was a “50 Linden Friday” item (or is it “60Linden Friday” now?) Whatever, the dress is a shortish fluffy red thing with amusingly patterned leggings. Married this with stiletto boots from G. Field, a black shrug, black tights to bridge gap between pants and stockings (so am covered up, that isn’t the issue) and then some free hair that acquired in Curious Kitties. This was a few days ago when decided that time had finally come to invest in a couple of Curious Kitties hair HUDS, without which you cannot control colour of their most recent hair.
Free CK hair had big black hat, and actually think that hat balances skirt quite well, but, still, it is all a bit red and black and patterned, and might have been better advised to go conservative route for something which after all am publishing on Youtube. Witchy black hats was possibly not image aiming for. Of course, could junk the video and do another – but – frankly – is it worth the effort?
No.
Is possible people might like the hat.

A wasted evening or a pleasant evening?

Hours spent in SL last night: [mumbles shiftily] (bad? or good?)
Spent rather a lot of time in SL last night. Have been ruminating on whether this is Good Thing or Bad Thing. Peer pressure pushes one to latter view, but had reasonable amount of fun, so surely must be Good ...
Have been toying with idea of doing autoethnographic study and was thinking (whilst walking to work this morning in RL in pouring rain) about how might put together chatlog and pics and other people's pics to make a rich narrative of what went on. Was thinking could present this in SL, in fact ideal might be if you could be sent on the SAME JOURNEY (which implies some kind of HUD). However, believe that starting point (Relay For Life sims) are gone already. Therefore installations somewhere else in SL with giant posters and perhaps sound might do it, or COULD use one of the tour vehicles with one's commentary going on in text chat as you were flown round.
You may be thinking "surely autoethnography is some sort of cheat research" (unless you yourself are an authoethnographer, obviously). However, you can get published or even a PhD by doing it. This simple fact can be proved by googling "autoethnography aims" (as did but a short while ago).

The basics of autoethnography involve writing about yourself, but have to be illuminating some kind of reserarch problem, obviously, and also have to convince people that you are a sufficiently interesting case that you will give insights to others. Was thinking that perhaps if started by analysing a bit of data then might start refining questons. However, also realise that have just had annual Staff Review session with Head of Dept without word autoethnography passing lips, so perhaps thsi is one of those projects that will talk about for years and then lose interest in.
Anyway last night:
1) Visited Relay for Life sims, flying round the builds in a rather touristic fashion, pausing to try out any particularly cool animation e.g. shovelling coal or playing the church organ. There is big road, with donation points all along it.
2) Followed up on some items, found, notably, a v. pretty blue tree (which was Relay For Life charity item) and some goats. Bought tree but not goats. Sim with goats mostly sells wearable horses and hought horse demo which the tried out on Noyo after planting new tree.
3) Stalked visitor on my land who was outside one of my oriental houses, wearing sort of ronin outfit, in order to take pics.
4) This is point when might have gone home, but Brielle IMed me to ask if liked Scottish piping and next thing was doing a sword dance whilst the live pipes skirled away impressively. Stopped for a dram, then did some more dancing.
5) Looked at iheartsl fashion feed and saw an embedded video of this week's Fabulous Fashion which featured interview with creator of Swansong and Atomic Bambi. Watched it.
6) Remembered had Swansong dress in inventory that had never actually worn. Changed into it and saw it was good. Decided to base a look around it.
7) Tried on shoes, tights, wraps, necklaces, hair etc etc for some considerable time. Decided needed different shoes, went to G. Field where bought shoes AND tights. Also bought hair butterflies from Atomic Bambi.
8) Photographed self in rose garden in G. Field
9) Photoshopped and uploaded to Flickr, and then blogged outfit here.
10) Visited a sim. What? Why? Who knows, it was v. late by then, but think was in pursuit of some cute item. Anyway, ended up in Evans Cafe and at that point crashed out.

So, ever do analysis of the v. interesting night of 21st July, will be in good position to do so..

Picture perfect

Animoto slideshows created: 3 (bad)
This Animoto thing seems to be addictive, though doubtless by tomorrow will have forgotten about it altogether as move on to next shiny new distraction.

If you have time to waste, you too can create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Shop 2.0

Shops created: 1 (good); Products created: 11 (good); Price of most expensive product: $219.99 (that's real US dollars) (bizarre)

At RL conference proposed setting up RL web shop to sell items branded with international information literacy logo. Action now is to do this with colleague from US. To test out ease of setting up shop on Cafepress, decided that Sheila Yoshikawa store would be fun way of testing ... and indeed setting up shop only took 10 mins. However, inevitably wanted to fill Sheila Yoshikawa shop with Sheila Yoshikawa merchandise. End result is that 2 hrs later appear to have created new venture filled with unsellable products, which is taking on life of own. Have dreadful urges (so far resisted) to spend days photoshopping images to go on Modern Wall Clock etc. Also couldn't resist chosing some products that no person in right mind would want to purchase.

Shop can be found at http://www.cafepress.com/sheilayoshikawa. Most embarrassing will of course be if anyone buys anything. This is one of the pics I use on the merchandise. Cute or what.

I am a media object

Videos released: 1 (good); Podcasts cast: 1 (um, good)
Dousa IMed me to say that the film of the panel on Linden Lab's proposal to separate off adult content had been released. Here is me on TV, yay, with the lovely Dousa and her friends:
http://blip.tv/file/1884608/

Click To Play

Interesting how, in this sort of thing, always seems at the time that you are saying quite a lot, and seems afterwards like you aren't saying much at all. I'm speaking quantitatively there, though of course it could go for quality too.

Coincidently, I am also available in audio form, and in my RL persona, since Silversprite does a weekly podcast interview with someone about their activity in SL, and this week it's me.
http://virtualworldwatch.net/2009/03/16/sheila-webber/
Yay again. Though "yay" tempered with "um" since "um" seems to be my most used word in this podcast, closely followed by "er". However, I wouldn't want to put you off listening to it, all good stuff.

Hello avatar

New services signed up for: 1 (pointless)

Do not use Facebook much any more as seems much too 2-dimensional, however was in it today when eye was caught by ad for service called Avatars United. As ever, was happy to follow path of serendipity and a mere 10 minutes later (ok, 20) was fully signed up & documented member of this social network for pixellated entities. Cool or what.

Had uploaded pic of self looking cute, added a few smart-alec comments in biog, connected to RSS stream from Flickr and this blog, and suddenly have full and vibrant profile. Completed endeveour by identifying Friend (HVX, who had seen only today) and asking service to Unite us.

And here is my profile page. Hey ho. It is at http://www.avatarsunited.com/en/avatars/second-life/worldwide/the-world/sheila-yoshikawa. Have put that here as bound to forget it as soon as next glittering social networking bauble comes along.