VWER, SL/RL

Meetings attended from exotic RL locations: 1 (good); Windchimes bought: 1 (superfluous to requirements); SL Czechs met in RL: 1 (good)
In RL am in Prague to give talk (well in fact gave it earlier today), which is obviously not exotic for people who live in Prague, but it is for me. However the city has decided to make me feel at home by providing British weather ie sun and showers (or now and then, downpours).
Today at the conference met Zdenek (SL name) who attended some of the "Information Literacy in SL" events. He interviewed me for student radio after my talk which was v. exciting. Was able to take pic of him beside a laptop showing his avatar (cool): you can see it on my serious blog here http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2010/05/inforum-2010.html.
Am unusually well off for broadband, there is *free* broadband in the hotel, and free wifi at the conference venue. So took advantage of this by buying random SL item (new windchimes, like I need more windchimes), and attending Virtual Worlds Educators Round Table. Topic was teaching large groups. Olivia IMed me at the start to ask if I could take pics, and have already uploaded them to VWER pool http://www.flickr.com/groups/vwer/pool/ Most amusing is shown here. What did I do to annoy Profdan? 1st pic was of me contemplating windchimes and pretending they weren't a sad impulse purchase.

Screenr. Still cool.

No. of additional screencasts made: 1 (stop! stop!)
So, here is screencast about new home, as featured a couple of posts ago. Have decided sound bit too much like Queen showing plebs round Windsor Castle.

P.S. Have uploaded it to Flickr too. Sigh

Screenr. Cool

Screencasts made using Screenr: 2 (good)
Today noticed a Torley video about screencasts, watched it and by half way through had zipped out and started a screencast. Seems to be eastpeasy way of making machinima of SL. Yipee!
Now at present should be:
- Marking, or:
- Emailing RL people who proposed abstracts for a RL conference to tell them whether or not they are IN, or;
- Doing the ppt for the presentation am giving in RL in Prague next week, or;
- Getting some sleep.
However, of course am instead recording screencasts, twittering them and publishing to Youtube. And now am blogging it. Suppose next thing would be uploading them to Flickr, or perhaps emailing them all my friends, however will stick with Screenr, Twitter, Youtube and Blogger for new.
According to Torley can't get ambient noise from SL, which is a shame (and if Torley can't work out how to, sure I can't) however, is v. good for doing voice overs. Considering that spent whole nanoseconds working out what to say beforehand don't think did too badly. Well, in fact with one on Information/literacy exhibition did actually reject two partial takes. Also is what will now call deliberate mistake when say that will not show full quotation, and then do.
Can only record 5 minutes but that is actually a plus since after 5 mins most people get bored with videos IMHO.
Hmm, perhaps can turn this to good effect and create some sort of screencast as part of Prague talk.

More homemaking

Houses deleted: 1 (slow process); Houses rezzed: 1 (v. good); Houses disappearing: 1 (odd)
After the Infolit session on Thursday when Brielle did her excellent presentation, decided to have some r&r in SL after hard day in both worlds by finally setting up new home from "Y's" on my land. Had already decided to demolish the Ingrid Ingersoll Town House, which still like, but didn't really spend much time there and bedroom was frankly bit of a mess.
Took longer to demolish than had anticipated, since must at some point have UNLINKED everything and so had to delete prim by prim, v. tedious. Had originally intended to set up new house in roughly same place i.e. overlooking beach, but is SO laggy at ground level in the end made the new house a skybox.
Spent happy time filling it with some stuff from old house and some stuff had been saving up.
Key items for display were various objects with butterflies, and artwork. To start with put these in central courtyard, but in the end have created one room with butterflies/art and put bed in courtyard. Remaining room is kitchen/living/music room and has ended up rather cosy.

Will delight readers with some proper pics, but in meantime these ones show rather curious effect when last went in (to install a few cute items that had just bought in Kloka, namely teapot, box of tissues, tea set and comfy chair) and found that everything was there ---- except the actual house. Am sure house in fact IS there, since do not fall through space, and meet resistance if try to go through places-where-walls-were.
So did not panic, but took opportunity to take interesting pics of inside of house. Think I like it almost as much without walls, as with.

Creatures on Infolit iSchool: part 1

Creatures on Infolit iSchool: quite a few (good); Average age of creatures: 2 years (approx) (bad)
Instead of doing anything vaguely useful, have decided to create a record of creatures on Infolit iSchool. Was prompted by squirrel encounter last week, thinking how the creatures are all getting on a bit and perhaps some of them ought to be sent the way of the really STRANGE deformed rabbit that lived on the hill behind Hobbiton, and which I quietly put out of its misery last autumn. On the other hand, some of them are still cute. Or are they just cute to me? You decide
First up is Mitsy the cat. Mitsy is definitely showing her age, and you only have to search on Mitsy (on this blog) to see that she has a history, mostly a history of getting trapped under buildings and disintegrating in the sea. However - she is named after a RL cat who is no more. In fact she is about the only SL creature I own that HAS a name (apart from some one-prim goldfish that arrived with names). So, Mitsy is likely to stay, even though she is the size of a small pony and regularly roams away to her doom.


In these next two pictures you see an orange parrot: it roosts, it flies, it screeches. The screeching is actually quite lifelike, and when it swoops around (see small orange blur in top left of 2nd pic) it looks moderately convincing. However, when it roosts, you can see it is just made of prims. Fortunately it spends a lot more time swooping than roosting. I got this bird in some closing down sale, and I have similarly retro crows and seagulls in my inventory from the same source.

Am not sure whether the cat and the dog in the 2nd pic count as creatures, since they each have springs instead of legs. On the other hand, the cat one probably looks as much like a cat as does (for example) Mitsy. Anyway, these are functional creatures since you can sit on them and wobble around to your heart's content. Like the parrot, they are in the Sure Thing cafe on the sea shore.
The parrot seemed appropriate since the Sure Thing is named after a RL cafe of the same name in Queensland, Australia. The RL rainbow lorikeets, that make an apalling racket at dawn and dusk, just over from the RL Sure Thing, sound a bit like the orange parrot, only more so.

So can sit back in SL and feel nostalgic for Aussie sun and sand with right sound effects.

Am thinking I could make this into a kind of i-spy guide: find all the creatures on Infolit iSchool. Can just see the contemptuous smirk that this would elicit from students. Librarians might enjoy it, though. Which is not an insult to librarians BTW, rather the reverse, I would say. He who is tired of i-spy is tired of life. Or has more interesting things to do. One or the other.

Rez Day present

Alien space ships bought: 1 (amazing! awesome!)
Stumbled across my rez-day-present-to-me on recreational outing after the Infolit iSchool meeting today. Is Alien space craft which immediately fell in love with. Is enormous, and has inbuilt sounds and swirly coloured lights. You can also get bits of the floor to move, and it is all very organic. In fact I think it qualifies as Art.

Is also over 400 prims, and although intend to put it on my own land, need to clear out - well about 400 prims - to make room for it. So at the moment is rezzed above Infolit, which means might need to start removing trinkets from my office and cutting down on the number of bedding plants.

Because it's already so ornate, you don't really want to put too much in it. And, e.g., is not exactly the location for the shabby-chic stuff had been collecting recently. So have brought out some disquieting nursery-type items (oversized rabbit chairs, giant bluebirds etc), a few spooky items (though frankly is pretty spooky already) and the red plush afternoon tea ensemble (with a Goldberg Variation on the music stand) which has a view directly out into Space. It's made by Alex Bader BTW.

Am not sure am going to be doing any teaching here, but would making spiffing party venue (with dance ball over floor that retracts to dump you straight into the air, when you touch an Alien pod, hehe), or possibly could hold conference about angst and identity in it. Will be ready for it with depressing results currently coming in for the general election. Can just retreat to the mother ship and wave goodbye to my pension.
Anyway whilst the ship is anchored over Infolit, it is here http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/169/114/1999/

I missed my rez day

No. of rezdays in SL: 3 (good); No. of rezdays celebrated: 0.5 (sad)
Had been contemplating celebrating my rez day (3rd May) with some sort of party this year. However, turned out that was away from SL that day and realised today that had actually forgotten to celebrate it yesterday when got back in.

Was v. excited about first rez day and contemplated all sorts of celebrations. In the end bought new dress and managed to get Harumi inworld briefly to celebrate (which is the 0.5 celebration mentioned above). As can see from that 3 May 2008 blog post also went to Babylon 5 party. However, do not think actually told anyone in B5 that it WAS my rez day, so not sure that counts.

Note that did blog on 2nd rez day but, as for this year, was day when was expected to do various RL things, namely watching Kentucky Derby and 2000 Guineas (these are horse races) on TV. Another problem is that in RL and SL am sort of person who thinks that if DO organise party NO-ONE MIGHT TURN UP. In SL is partly because most friends are from work-type connections, which makes them no less friends, and certainly does not rule out virtual discos and drinking (far from it) but suppose means that am more likely to invite them to an indepth discussion of pedagogy for information literacy than simply hanging out and chilling. (In RL, BTW, friends are scattered round country, so organising anything would require more Effort than can muster)

Anyway, Now I Am Three, and am sure that some kind of philosophical reflection might be called on, however instead have simply given you a pic of me communing with the squirrel under the magic apple tree and some photos of me and Adra. I was doing a bit of wandering round checking things are ok, and realised hadn't spent any quality time with the squirrel for ages. It possibly now shows its age, but is still cute IMHO, bounding around, chirping and still generating its own nuts.

The 2 pics of Adra and me were taken to go with a paper we have written about teaching library and information science in SL. At first we tried her sitting down and me standing up (see middle pic), but it ended up looking like a still from some play about alienation ("A common room. Adra is seated. Sheila is standing. They both stare at the wall. There is the faint noise of typing. Sheila: "I'm still waiting for things to rez". Adra is silent.")

The last pic is the one we are going with, since at least we are looking at each other. And both look very stylish, I feel.

Something old, something new

SL designers returned: 1 (v. good); Cabinets filled: 1 (horribly easy)
Discovered last week that Effulgent Brown has a shop in SL again. Hurrah! My very first home in SL was a tea house, but once I ventured over 512 I invested in a series of Asian homes by Effulgent, all of which are atmospheric, cheap, and come with free packs of furniture. At the moment the ones which are out are the Wild Dragon (Sakura House on Infolit iSchool) and the Winter Lotus (one of the homes in the Educational Informatics village), though The Songbird is probably my favourite.
Although they don't involve sculpties and don't have the latest in texturing, think they still have a lovely feel to them.
Students must have agreed since Winter Lotus was one of the homes I had to install twice in the Educational Informatics village by popular demand (replacing the more "fashionable" shabby chic rooms that weren't dwellings of choice). Some of the furniture still works well, too, I think, and you can get a copiable home and a ton of Asian furnishings for a few hundred Linden.
Here I am in front of vendors at the House of Effulgent, Blarn Isle (170, 51, 27).
A new shop was Cheap Cheap which is indeed pretty cheap, and came away with cute cabinet, plate with caribou on it, a low table, a revolving iPod (not sure what to do with that yet) and a couple of other things I can't remember.
Have sort of given up on "if put something on Infolit, must take something off" policy at the moment, since my main teaching on Infolit is over, so am not expecting a legitimate large influx of prims. Therefore put cabinet in my office and loaded it up with some of the cute objects that were hanging round in my inventory. One of cutest is the wooden music box with a Japanesey lady who revolves whilst it plays a tune. Have had that unused in my Objects folder for well over a year. Also moved my Earthstones mug from my desk and one of the vases from the curio stand to the right of the cabinet.
Am planning on replacing one of the houses in my personal land, and this has given excuse to collect more stuff, including a kitchen unit from Bitter Vanilla. Attraction there was the tap (can have it on, off or dripping), washing up liqid that gives a bubbly sponge to wear, and fact that it DIDN'T have any larky animations in it. Am not prude, but I don't put up any nasty red ban lines round my propery and have ghastly vision of returning home one day to find complete strangers at it on my draining board (hm, so perhaps am prude after all).

Pink, comments

Comments received: 1 (odd); Pink tops bought: several (ok); Of these, number worn: zero (bad)

Today is pink shirt anti-bullying day (see e.g. http://www.pinkshirtday.ca/) in various parts of the world including SL. I spent far too long trying to find a pink top that went with my current skirt and hair, only to end up with "something old" out of my inventory (of course). Here I am after my pointless shopping trip, in the "Animal Farm" type main square in Gaylord (some kind of porcine pogrom going on), having browsed my way through the Pig and Thimbles shops.

I also just received a blog comment from someone who evidently hadn't read my blog, since they were asking me to review an online shop of RL furniture. It's a comment on a really old post http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/2007/07/shopaholic.html#comments where I'm not even talking about furnishings. Even calling me a "home decor-modern design connoisseur" doesn't win me over. Most puzzlingly, they say at the end "Also, it'd be swell if you can place our suede wassily chair in a bag set in a bag on your blog."

Suggestions on how I put a RL chair in a bag on my blog are welcome, as if I work THAT out I can evidently get myself a real free suede chair.

Home expo

Benches bought: 1 (good); Houses bought: 1 (good); Time spent watching objects rez: aeons (bad)

Have spent a little time at the Home & Garden Expo. Amongst purchases is a cute sofa from Greene Concept. Am seen in first pic sitting on one at the Expo (haven't actually unpacked my own yet).
Am still in new Eva skin, to give it a chance. Still think it is a bit too grey. With the Marguerite hair from Truth, that was wearing to start with, seemed to look much too SMUG all the time. However with this new hair from Simply Britnee possibly look too CUTE. And cuteness evidently leads to pole dancing (see previous post) which can only be a slippery slope.

Bought yet another house, well, it was only 500 Linden and has sash windows that open and close, a retractable ladder, and (the clincher) a teleport to the attic, disguised as a mouse hole. The vendor is Turnip. Will need to be for personal use, since navigating round it would be challenging for a noob, so can't really put it on the island.

Unfortunately must be said that spent less time looking at cute homes than I did watching oddly shaped lumps rez, trying to work out what they were going to be. The 2nd pic shows an example, and not the worst. Will it be a chair? A washbasin? A grandfather clock? An amusingly shaped vegetable? Who knows, and (after half an hour of slow-rez pain) does one care enough to wait and find out?

Ups and downs

Chatlogs recovered: all (probably) (v. good); Hours spent setting up new exhibits in shop: 2 (good); No. of hours before new exhibits returned to lost and found inventory: 6 (approx) (bad)
Good news is that Kisa responded to email re: missing chatlogs and is setting them up so can be accessed. Is relief, since will not have to ferret about to find chatlogs. However, think will still also upload them to a server here at Sheffield for security. Plus am rethinking poster strategy: think will put chatlogs into notecards and then have poster that GIVES ALL with chatlog notecard and any other notecards from each discussion. Also means that stuff will be given in informatively titled folder.

However, much work lies ahead before this achieved i.e. have to create 30+ new posters, make 30+ notecards with chatlogs, and transfer other notecards etc. event by event to each new new poster. Still, had meant to reorganise them, and hopefully can make display easier to navigate.
In meantime spent time yesterday making new pictures to put in shop on Juicy and then fitting out shop to fit with theme (which is "photoshopped spring"). Sat back and admired (see 1st pic., I'm in the chair towards the back of the shop). Then went home.

However this morning found all stuff returned to Lost and Found, and not for usual reason (i.e. failing to activate correct group, in this case "I love Juicy") but because landlady was remodelling sim. Sigh. Plus point is that as compensation got 2 weeks rent free.

When went back this evening did indeed manage to get all of the setup from inventory in one lump (you have to select BUILD first, and then pull things out the inventory, to be able to manipulate a set of unlinked objects). Fortunately shop is exactly same size as old one, and you can see that 2nd pic in new location looks pretty much like the first.

Made a few adjustments, including adding a bench with cute poses at the front. And also have view of sea and palm trees (see 3rd pic).

Less enticingly, also opposite is a shop selling disco floors. Do not have anything against disco floors as such, they can just make things laggy. However, did find a pole for pole dancing behind the shop, and could not resist trying it (n.b. with all clothes kept ON, see last pic.)

Report from the LILAC conference

At 12 noon Second Life time (8pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/yghsjlh for times in other parts of the world) on Thursday 8th April, in Second Life, there will be a one hour report/discussion on the LILAC conference. This year the LILAC conference (the UK's information literacy conference) took place 29-31 March 2010
(http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/). Pancha Enzyme (Edinburgh University) and Ishbel Hartmann (St Andrews University), who both presented at LILAC this year, will give you a report from some favourite items from the conference. There will be a couple of short presentations in voice, with the discussion and some report in text chat. The location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/125/240/22/

I have added some lilac to the discussion platform, and retinted the bench and barbie, to get in the mood.

More reasons for not trusting to other people's websites

Chatlogs lost: thirty-something (v.v. bad) Chatlogs recovered so far: 21 (good); Wallace and Gromit games played in RL: 1 (good)
Was alerted by comment on this blog (thank you!) that the links to the chatlogs were no longer working. These are the records of discussions etc. on Infolit iSchool. Chatlogs were uploaded using an app from someone at the Leeds Met university, which gave a more pleasing layout. However, appears that domain name (sleeds.org) is no longer in use, since all links now just show meaningless advertising.
This is v. v. depressing since had LOTS of chatlogs archived that way, starting in 2007, and although think have them all in text files, said files will be spread over 3 computers and possibly a couple of data sticks, and am not sure that the file names will be that meaningful either.
Will obviously contact Leeds to find out whether files are in fact safe somewhere on a Leeds server, but in meantime tried some search engine searching, to see whether could find cached versions. Google caches are too up-to-date, but managed to find 21 of the chatlogs via cached files on Bing.com
Am hopeful of getting most if not all the chatlogs together, though the work does not end there, since will have to upload them somewhere else, change all the links on the wiki (if nowhere else) plus change the posters in the CILR on Infolit iSchool, which means making new posters for all of them (groan, see above me contemplating them all gloomily).
Have taken mind off all this in RL by playing amusing Wallace and Gromit computer game (from Telltale, currently £12 for 4 games, v. good value)

A quiet evening in

Rubber ducks bought: 4 (good); Ducks floated: 3 (good)
In RL have had long train journeys, so felt in need of some relaxation, and what could be more relaxing than soaking in a warm tub with 3 assorted rubber ducks? They are from the gatcha at Theosophy, 25 Linden a go, and I ended up with 2 Ninja ducks (that's a Ninja duck poised on the rim of the bath tub), so Dimitrova has got spare one of those.

Am thinking of moving, because my mainland area has got hugely laggy from a place that SELLS nightclub gear, so it has enormous warehouse filled with glitter balls and the like going all the time. Still am fond of my bathroom though, which created in line with RL fantasy for huge bathroom with flowers, candles, view of sea, etc etc actually fear this is pretty standard girly bathroom fantasy.

Of course key difference from RL is that do not have to remove clothes or indeed hat. At least ducks seem indifferent to non-standard bath wear.

Procastinating whilst summoning energy to write posts about ESRC, VWBPE and Inf6011

PhDs examined in RL: 1 (good); PhD students taking successful viva this week: 1 (v. good); PhD topics consulted about: 1 (good); Articles written: 0 (bad)
Last week was Phd-y sort of one in RL in that first part of week was spent in whirlwind trip to Thessaloniki to examine PhD, then one of my own PhD students also came through viva successfully, and someone else chatted to me in SL about possible PhD topic. Somehow is all reminder that ought to be doing more research myself, and is not that lack material for same, nor indeed is there lack of pressure since my Department is already having Awaydays to prepare for the next research assessment exercise, so that we can retain current status in field ("Number One for 24 Years" as it says on our website).

So, probably ought to be doing less of this kind of writing and more introduction-methods-results-discussion-conclusions kind of stuff. Realised recently that one unfortunate fact is that, whilst rather enjoy rereading own blog entries, find that after having gone through n drafts of an academic article, and then reworked it to fit in with nitwit comments from referees, can scarcely bear to revisit it once published. This contrasts with some colleagues who get buzz from seeing own names at top of scholarly article. Wonder whether there is some kind of attraction therapy so will suddenly get amazing thrill from seeing own name on journal title page.

In meantime (to get back to serious matters) bought new Eva skin from Tuli. Tuli’s Elizabeth has been my main skin for ages now, being only one with the right level of paleness and (lack of) makeup. Will persist with Eva for a while, since makeup is OK, and skin detail is satisfying, but the Eva Tone 1 (which am wearing in 1st pic) is really a little bit TOO pale, whilst next colour up is a bit too rosy. Since hair is blue, have to keep to neutral skin tone, otherwise am v. restricted as to clothing colours. Anyway, Tuli’s remodelled sim is cute (as shown) with floating islands in sky and volcano on ground. Sim is called Journey. Think that this has no connection with T. Blair’s autobiography of same name, but is doubtless dollop of fantasy in both.

Searching, shopping, sightseeing: literacies in virtual lives

Event title: Searching, shopping, sightseeing: literacies in virtual lives
Thursday 18 March, UK time 8pm, Second Life Time: 1:00pm (see http://tinyurl.com/y8ghoer for times elsewhere)
This is an official event in the ESRC Festival of Social Science (ESRC is the UK's funding council for social science research) - the only Festival event being held in SL!
Venue: Infolit iSchool in Second Life, the virtual world: the venue is pictured below
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/149/171/21/

Researchers in information and digital literacies (Sheila Webber (i.e. me) and Dr Julia Davies (DrJoolz Smythe in SL) will talk about their research, with the emphasis on drawing out advice on more virtually literate approaches to everyday SL. The session will be chaired by Professor Jackie Marsh, Head of Department in The School of Education, Sheffield University, UK (Jackie Darkstone in SL).
Sheila Webber is Director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research, a Senior Lecturer in Sheffield University's iSchool, and an international speaker on information literacy. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

Dr Julia Davies is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Sheffield University, and co-Director of the Centre for the Study of New Literacies. Her research focuses on online digital practices and social learning. Her numerous article and chapter publications include Pay and Display: The Digital Literacies of Online Shoppers in Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices, edited by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel (2008)
ESRC Festival of Social Science: see http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/esrcinfocentre/fss/default.aspx for information on the festival and http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/
PO/releases/2010/march/secondlife.aspx for the ESRC press release on this event

Landscapes

Animotos created: 2 (good); Subscription paid to Animoto: 1 (bad); Hi-res conversion payments to Animoto: 1 (bad)
Have succumbed to Animoto's cunning marketing strategy, paid up exorbitaant $30 (that's real US dollars, not Linden) to be able to make longer Animoto slideshows, plus $5 to make one into a high resolution MP4. Sure, could do all the things you can do with Animoto for free, with a bit of extra effort, but then, life is short and credit card payment is easy.
Have made 2 Animotos so far about the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, one with slides of the exhibition (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWcYV-FliQk) and one with pictures of the sims that were specially created. Spent rather too much time playing with lighting and water effects, whilst taking pics, and then a bit of time photoshopping. Think I got a bit too carried away with the Mirror Water effect at the end, but on the whole am pleased with this landscapes Animoto, which is a tribute to the team that did the landscaping and building:

Exhibiting

Exhibits catalogued: over 40 (good); Calendars created: 1 (good);Times crashed: 2 (good, considering)
A quick post after extraordinarily long day in SL. Am at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference (http://www.vwbpe.org/), where am one of the people looking after poster area. Spent most of day creating catalogue of exhibits, taking landmarks and putting them into a notecard. Followed up this activity by taking some pics and creating a calendar using the IntelliCalendar, for promotional purposes.

Intend to distribute these 2 items in almost-spamlike way (but not quite spamlike, obviously) tomorrow, to try and boost visitors. These are the February and (I think) March pics from the calendar. As can see, February is actually my build, but, hey, I paid the 100 Linden for the IntelliCalendar blank and spent an hour making it.

Building

Flamingos bought: 2 (good); Exhibits mounted: 1 (in progress)

Am working on exhibit Inquiry based learning (IBL) in Second Life for the Virtual Worlds best Practice in Education conference. As usual this is taking aeons longer than anticipated, but is interesting exercise.
Am trying to make 3D visualisation of conceptual fromework for IBL developed by colleague Phil Levy (RL name) from research study done at Sheffield.

Attraction to Animoto ap has lasted more than usual 24 hours, so provide below a glimpse of some of the stages it has gone through so far.
Realise that in haste to throw Animoto vid together have got 2 of the pics out of order [added later: no I haven't, I got confused by perspective change], but the last one is in the right place. This last one was taken after had decided that whole thing needed to be turned 90 degrees, as most people likely to be approaching it from that direction.

First pic, above, shows back of exhibit, where have positioned a slideshow and (installed after this was taken) a screen streaming a youtube vid about IBL. Second picture shows Educational Informatics village, and more specifically pair of pink flamingos that have put there. Have included this since when I looked at this picture, reminded me that I had bought them, and so have positioned one of the flamingos (with shadow removed to bring it down to 3 prims) on my exhibit ("If you want a laugh, bring on a flamingo") If you concentrate really hard you can see it (a flash of flamingoid pink) in bottom right hand corner of last Animoto slide. Whole exhibit has to come in at 100 prims max, which is challenge. Have 35 left at the moment.

You too can can create your own cheap and hasty video slideshow at animoto.com.

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.

30 seconds of something or other

Minutes spent tinkering with Animoto when should have been writing report: 35 (bad)
Distracted tonight by Animoto, a free way of creating slideshows with music. Animoto is pretty blatant in aiming to extract dosh, since end up with inadequately short video in low resolution, being reminded at each point that could make it longer, whizzier and legible if only willing to fling dollars in direction of Animoto's owners. Have resisted so far. Here is initial effort, which is still sort of cool. At least it seems like that at 3am.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

I am millennial (official)

Score in millennial quiz: 73 (unsurprising); Houses claimed in Edu Informatics village: 20 (good)
Came across quiz on Pew Internet website, which gives you score that allegedly identifies whether you are Generation X, Baby Boomer or Millennial. Now in RL must be confessed that am middle one of these, but final score was only 1 point off the exact point for Millennials.
Makes sense, really, and explains why am likely to alienate friends through thoughtless blog posts, forget appointments and, after starting out very academic search for literature on information literacy, end up looking at site about the tree octopus. And latch onto spurious excuses for bad behaviour.

Had actually legitimately been quite busy in SL, finishing up arranging interviews for one set of students, and introducing a second set, namely our Educational Informatics students. Have again created an Edu Informatics village in the sky (1st pic shows me trailing hand in water feature in front of the 2 beach huts). Since people last year seemed to enjoy claiming houses and putting up their nameplates, made it more of a feature this year, and also did some on-the-spot deletion of unfavoured houses, and copying of popular ones, so the final village has more beach huts, japanesey houses and tree houses than originally.
Also visited Teesslife with some students, also Tour of the Testis, and Tim (co-working on a session) led a tour of the Canadian Border post at Loyalist College. Hope to post some of these pics, but feel should ask students first.

Apart from advent of Linden Homes (as claimed by Dimitrova, see previous post), big news has of course been advent of SL Viewer 2 in beta. Felt that, having only just introduced Edu Informatics students to old viewer, might be confusing to suggest they use the new one. As increasing number of problems reported, seems sensible decision. Is also a bit of an issue for the session that am holding on 18th March (which realise have not blogged about yet all), viz, event that has been accepted into official programme of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences and even awarded grant of c. 50,000 Linden (at least, think that's how it translates), which aim to spend pricinpally on hiring someone to do a machinima. There is going to be an official press release and everything.

On a more trivial level, have a nice new washing machine.

New home for Dimitrova

New homes: 1 (excessive)

Was tempted into SL action by the announcement today of the "free homes" available for premium residents. This is an attempt to get more people staying in SL and starting to pay tier. You don't have to pay for the land, the ready-made houses don't count towards your prim allowance (a definite bonus if you only have the minimum area), there is landscaping, and paths between the houses, and you are guaranteed not to have a nightclub start up next door.
It's an interesting move towards a "housing estate" approach to mainland, away from a North American free-for-all: though of course some people have been offering these kinds of environments on a rental basis for ages.



I went premium with Dimitrova, my main alt, when I cut down my personal land, but found that I was going over into to the next tier if I kept the amount I wanted to. It was cheaper to have Dimi go premie, so I could sell her the land for 1 Linden, and make her a buffer between me and nightclub land. However, I then found it was more interesting still to move her around to explore living in a couple of other different places. Now she has taken up the Lindens offer, abandoned her old tiny plot (land prices, already dire, will go even lower, so pointless to try selling) and opted for a dwelling in what appears to be The Shire, except they can't call it that for copyright reasons, I presume.

The pictures show her 3 roomed house from 2 angles, plus one of the rooms. You'll see it has integral mushrooms. The houses are not really state-of-the-art design, but I imagine that is so the commercial house designers feel they still have some sort of competitive advantage.

I think that there will still be issues for newbies, since the rooms, being small, are difficult to position things in (the only "furniture" in it to start with was the fire, the other stuff belongs to Dimitrova). There was also a curious glitch that meant that any rugs I tried to rez were disappearing into the floor, and couldn't be spotted with any amount of camming round. However, there is more of a feel of safety and possibilities for meeting up with neighbours.

There were a good number of green dots on the map when she was there: though if everyone's an alt like me, community building will take a bit of time...

Like, awesome, man

Parties attended: 1 (good); No. of bottles of vodka consumed: 1 (virtual, curiously non-alcoholic); Nights danced away: 1 (good)(but will regret it in the morning)

Tonight attended UK educators' party in which Usual Suspects met pleasantly together on Bluesky's island. Initial impressions were mixed as appeared we were going to spend party sitting round mystitool table, which is not my idea of rollicking abandon. However soon emerged that actual party was at beach bar complete with barstools, louche poses, glitter dance ball and soulful palm trees.

Had dressed up for occasion in what turned out as a sort of Helena Bonham Carter ensemble, lace and freaky hair, and felt that party had enjoyably retro 70s feel, but that is probably because the 70s was when was at uni, and just getting nostalgic flashback.

Bar dispensed bottles of Jack Daniels (always a fave, never tire of that drunken collapse animation you get after 3 sips), beer (my first tipple of the evening) and vodka (bottle or glass, obviously went for the whole bottle). Not that drank vodka in RL, in 70s or now, if going to knock back RL alcohol, it should at least have a proper taste (pref. of fine wine or malt whisky).

Kattan and Plymouth led way in disco dancing, at some point people started doing fairy dances (where you leap up and twirl round), and the chat seemed v. amusing at the time. Added later During banter, someone made joking remark, which remark I alluded to in earlier version of this post, as if it had not been a joke. If had allowed brain to intervene between self and keyboard would have realised that could not possibly be true. Consequence was offending someone that certainly would not want to offend, and having a general lord-I'm-useless freaking-out moment. Many lessons to be learned here, including 1) think before blogging, especially about friends; 2) don't blog at 1am when v. tired and therefore not firing on all mental cylinders. Just sort of thing I might tell to my students. Oh dear.

Buttering parsnips

Educators meetings hosted: one (good); Educators meetings attended: 2 (good); Tools demo-ed: 2 (v. good); Parsnips chopped: one (tasty, I hope); Simultaneous identities logged in: 3 (challenging, but only in retrospect)

Today was host to UK Educators "Second Tuesday" meeting, this being (unsurprisingly) meeting of UK educators that happens on 2nd Tuesday of each month. Had dithered about where to host it, but then opted for Farradane Centre, since felt had not shown off glories of winter wood to enough people, plus it has enough space to do SL tool demos.
Therefore prepared space by:
1) Installing hot chocolate cabin;
2) Removing Floral Bench;
3) Putting more chairs, cushions and cardboard boxes round edge of platform;
4) Cleaning aquarium and feeding fish - nothing more offputting than arriving at a meeting and seeing a tank full of floaters.

As witching hour approached had usual tension as to whether anyone would turn up, but in end was respectable number, including Csteph, who I had "shouted" at in Avatars United about the meeting. So, a use for AU, if only one so far.

Serious bits of meeting were about ideas for the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education conference, and Graham doing useful demos of 2 tools. Unexpected theme of meeting was vegetables, since emerged early on that Silversprite was balancing his Mac on his microwave whilst chopping vegetables for a stew (as pictured here: http://www.twitpic.com/129tuo - the titular parsnip is at the bottom of the picture).

Was much banter which seemed v.v. witty and amusing at the time, and in fact STILL seems at least v. witty and amusing when read the chatlog, however it could be one of those "you had to be there" type of things so will not reproduce it here. At any rate, banter extended to demonstration of wiki tool and Graham's Story Machine, since the nodes in the wiki became parsnips (or to be more precise, pasrnips, lord how we laughed at that typo), onion, butternut squash etc. etc. Discovered that Anyone could alter nodes by clicking on them, so wiki morphed into strange pulsating object, which Graham has kindly left behind so can show it to students this Friday as example. Will have to decide exactly WHAT it is example OF.

VWBPE conversation is in fact mostly being carried out in Google Wave, which deserves a whole post to itself, should I ever get round to it.

2nd meeting was Virtual Worlds Educators Roundtable in which was merely passive audience member whilst - to be v. frank - was processing pics from UK educators meeting. However, meeting was in Voice, so could listen on headphones whilst resizing, adjusting Brightness, uploading to Flickr and adding pictures to Groups and Sets. Did check back to look at local chat, but main questions had to be channeled via Google Moderator, which works quite effciently, but not sure about it as a combo with SL yet. You can add questions, and/or vote on other people's questions so most popular ones come to the top.

I happened to be logged into Blogger as Dimitrova at the time (finishing off a fashion post), so logged into Moderator as her too, and tried to vote on some questions, with mixed success (wasn't always sure why vote hadn't registered).

Until just wrote that down, hadn't really thought about how was logged into 3 different things simultaneously, well actually 4 since was also logged into the university portal, and all with different userids and with 3 different identities.

However, is all me, in the end.

I am 1013 days old

Profiles rediscovered on Avatars United: 1 (forgotten); HUDs activated: 1 (good); SL blip messages sent: 1 (pointless); No. of AU friends so far: 7 (ok); Of those, no. who are actually known to me: 1 (bad)
Linden Lab have bought Avatars United, so AU has suddenly become EITHER v. cool OR v. cool-to-mock. Was slighlty suprised to find was already on it, since had thought that social networking site that I had joined in October 2008 was Avatars REunited. Such a memory glitch will be unsurprising in one who had blogged the same thing in 2 successive posts (i.e. the VWER meeting on Jan 12 - though interesting to note that said different things about it in each post. Interesting to me, anyway).

Had also unsurprisingly forgotten password, but once had requested new one, logged in, and since then have been accepting Friendship of all who care to offer it. So far this mostly consists of people who want to sell me things, but nice things (e.g. poses) rather than sort of stuff advertised by blog-spammers. Amusingly, saw one of my "new friends" complaining about how people SHE didn't know kept asking to Unite with her; rather sculptie-calling-texture-laggy, I would say.

Have discovered that actually feel embarrassed by lack of friends, presumably because of contrast with vast list of friends in SL itself. Disturbing; thought was above that kind of thing. Had short feverish burst of making Unite requests, but have calmed down now. Think it was when realised that in desperation for friends had agreed to unite with Emerald Viewer i.e. am now chums with a piece of software, namely an alt. SL browser.

Was alerted by a blog post to "SL blip", free on Xstreet, which is an inworld HUD that somehow links up with an app in AU. It tells you your age in days, which is where title of this post came from. You can send messages from SL to your AU profile, which automatically have your location attached. In the instruction sheet they suggest you send blips such as " I'm at this cool music event, come check it out!" This inanity probably tips AU firmly into "cool to mock it" category.

NB: picture is nothing to do with Avatars United, it's the cute new Educational Informatics Village I created for this year's class.

P.S. Balloona became a blog Follower again, with same pic. of her Assets, but presumably with different userid. Perhaps she really is a fan. Or perhaps she googles occurrances of her name. Shouldn't have said it was cute in last post, asking for trouble really.

Followed

Followers blocked: 1 (bad)
Have resigned self to clearing out my 2 Ning sites of unwelcome members who sign up and then proceed to spam Ning with posts about chemical substances and write-your-homework services (latter is rather ironic, considering both sites are about information literacy). Am also used to rejecting posts from all sorts of people spamming my blogs.

However today was a first in blocking an unwelcome Blog Follower, namely one Balloona, who attracted my attention since her profile pic consisted of a naked torso, presumably hers. On investigation did indeed prove that her profile had links to sites such as "My dirty habit" and "Balloona stellt sich vor" (Balloona introduces herself).

Hmm, having denied Don Tapscott the oxygen of publicity, am now giving rather too much of it to Balloona. Her name is quite cute, though. Do hope I was not doing her an injustice, would be shame if I was banning a serious fan of my deathless prose.

Photo is of the Wilting Heart Shrine, a freebie in a hunt, from the Julia Collection. The heart pumps and makes a beating sound, and there is a cool pose (illustrated) and a doomy sort of poem. Have placed it in winter woods area, and to counterbalance this have also installed a romantic table and chair set from Belle Belle, in the shade of a valentine tree (top right). So, take your pick, depending on your mood.

Moving in circles: it's time

Educators meetings attended: lots (good, if circular); No. of these meetings starting at 10pm or later: all (bad)

Have not organised any meetings since Christmas, but have tried to get back into swing of things by attending the Virtual Worlds Educators Roundtable meeting more regularly, and also organising committee meetings for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education.

Unfortunately former start at 10.30 pm on Tuesdays and latter start at 10pm on Weds and Thurs, so means that am getting late night habit again. Broadband reception on mobile stick has also been v. variable, so means that if want to be sure that can actually attend meeting have to go into office (rather than stay at home, attempt connection, login and rez v.v. slowly, catch a few minutes, crash, then stare at little light on mobile stick til it turns requisite blue colour again, indicating some minimal connection, so whole cycle can start over again).

First pic is from VWER meeting on 12th Jan. Unfortunately am now totally unable to remember what topic was, am sure it was riveting at the time. [Added later: I just checked. It was "The Future of SL and VW through the Eyes of M. Linden." I think my contribution consisted of suggesting making it easier to add metadata to Objects. You can't get much more riveting than metadata, can you.][Added still later: realise that had already blogged this in previous entry. But am too lazy to take it out of this one]

2nd pic is from the VWER this week (2nd Feb). This was a talk about ethical and legal isues in SL. This was also revieting, obviously, but am afraid that chief memory is that one of the speakers was wearing a demo skin. Could tell this as it had DEMO written on it in various strategic places. Was distracted into wondering whether this was a mistake (you may remember I spent some time wandering round with demo eyes without realising), or some sort of anti-consumerist statement. Anyway, you can find all the VWER transcripts here: http://vwer.podbean.com/
3rd pic is me at a VWBPE organising committee meeting. This looks v. similar to other pics, except there are less of us. The VWBPE organising committee is chaired by Zana, who is a wizard person, being hardworking, well organised and pleasant. Actual conference is 12-13 March. This pic was taken at around the point when felt compelled to volunteer to do more work, viz being one of the leaders for the poster stream. Unfortunately this has set me up for yet another post-10pm meeting tomorrow, Saturday i.e. starting at 11pm. Hey ho.

On another note, have just seen irritating new essay by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in which they propose doing various things that quite a lot of teachers have been doing for years, as if these were new ideas and they were lone radical voices. They include v. large number of dubious generalisations about collaboration, as if was always Good Thing That Students Love (evidently THEY haven't done much teaching). Not that am AGAINST collaboration, far from it, hasten to add, but is not solution to all world's problems, by any means. Essay is called Innovating the 21st-Century University: It's Time! Lord knows in UK can't get away without constantly Innovating, or at least producing Annual Reflections and Strategic Plans and so forth that say that you are. Perhaps is different in USA?

Was going to link to essay, but then thought, they have publicity enough, why give them another link. If you are v. keen, just copy the title in Google, and up it will pop.