Digital designing

Venues retextured for event: 1 (good); No. of items of clothing created: 7 (or 9 if you count all the bits of shoe separately) (good); Neon cherry blossom balloon dispensers deployed: 1 (good); Notecards created: 1 (good); Magic bottle created: 1 (good, if accidental); Quantity of floor mysteriously disappearing: half (bad)

In fact did all the above yesterday: today was digital literacies seminar that advertised a few days ago, where was being Chair and organising venue. Am now in brief post-event Euphoria, and chief desire is to zoom round SL acquiring new clothes and getting new Home to rights (in fact am going to have to do Emergency Marking even if it IS a Saturday night, v. depressing)
May or may not write more about the event on this blog: can legitimately put something on Serious Blog about content. Therefore on this one will mainly concentrate on fripperies i.e. clothes and decoration.
Had already retextured the venue used for ESRC conference in March, picking up colours from cute poster. Decided to push out boat with seminar memorabilia, starting with a skirt using semi-transparent textures of the poster, then to get a bit more creative did t-shirt (the well-worn template from Robin somethingorother) and Jeans (a template on some LL site), using the bluebird from the poster to create patches. Reused bolero template (bought for last event) putting said cute bluebird on the chest knot. Also found some sculpty full perm shoes on xstreetsl (I hope legit, they didn't look good enough quality to be ripoffs) and made blue shoes and stockings to match.
In fact for first time decided that could bear wearing my customised clothing for the event, though with some Shiny Things flats rather than my shoes. The Infolit Week in SL necklace and earrings rounded out the look, and also a small bluebird on my shoulder.
Before this had tinkered around with other sculpties, to make some kind of artifact to put in the pack. Ended up by stretching bottle sculpty, putting a sort of label on it with the seminar banner and "sit on me" and when you sit on it it disappears and you are sitting in a meditation pose in mid air.
This was not altogether deliberate. I WAS intending to put the pose in the bottle, and I was able to change some of the parameters, but I didn't know it was going to disappear when you sat on it (think the script must be assuming it is a pose ball, that you would want to disappear). Didn't work out how to rotate the sitter round 90 degrees either, but in the end thought it was quirky enough to pass muster. You could have a circle of them as seating, then when you all sat you would be suspended in air. Cool or what (don't answer that one)
Other disappearing thing that will mention was the floor. The venue floor is taken from the "Cercle" build that used as HQ from Infolit week in SL, rather a nice stone round. When standing about chatting afterwards noticed that half of this had vanished. Also could no longer see a variety of other things e.g. posters, Farradane Centre, half of Hobbiton. Had had a couple of people in the event who dashed around fruitlessly for most of the afternoon (and continued to do so as we stood and talked) so worried that had been griefed. Going back in later, it seems that the buildings are ok, and the posters are back, but the floor isn't. Did I delete it by mistake?

No pollen in SL

Hay fever suffering in RL: great (v. bad); Hay fever suffering in SL: zero (good)
In RL am v. miserable with streaming eyes, sneezing etc etc since hay fever season is in full swing. Over many years have tried various pills, sprays drops etc. but these have zero effect (apart from adverse effect on purse) so main therapy is staying indoors with doors and windows closed, a rather stuffy remedy which is not favourite with nearest and dearest. Am allergic to common grass pollen, therefore, since said grass is, understandably, common, am international hay fever sufferer, and if were very rich masochist would be possible to be suffering from hay fever all year round by following the pollen season around the globe e.g. was unpleasantly surprised when visited Melbourne in November (their early summer) a few years ago to find that Australian pollen was as irritating as British pollen.
Anyway, here I am in SL, enjoying the virtual grass with no side effects whatsoever, hah, take that, hay fever.

Children's and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces

On 19th June in Second Life, is the second half of the final meeting in a seminar series funded by the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC): Children's and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces. The first half of the conference takes place in Sheffield, UK, and the conference continues with a free event in Second Life. The aim of this seminar series is to consider the digital literacy practices which take place in virtual online spaces and to explore potentialities for literacy educators. In this final conference, speakers will consider the nature of literacy in virtual worlds and Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)

The start time is 6am Second Life time (2pm UK time, for start times in other countries see http://tinyurl.com/39vvq6q ). The location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/169/173/22 The Second Life schedule is as follows.
- 6am (SL time) Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in SL), University of Sheffield, host in SL - introduction
- 6.10-6.50am Peggy Sheehy (Maggie Marat in SL), I'm not good at Math but my avatar is
- 7am – 7.40am Rebecca Black, University of California (Irvine)
- 7.50 – 8.20am Constance Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Virtual worlds at the nexus of a constellation of literacy practice.
- 8.30am SL time Wrap up from Julia Gillen, Lancaster University

Information on the whole day's event is at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/digital-literacies/events/conference.htm and on the complete seminar series at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/digital-literacies/index.htm

In transit

Linden spent on new land: Too many (bad); Plots bought overlooking Cowell and Forest of Kahruvel: 1 (v.v. exciting)
Have had itchy feet for ages, since although like many things about current personal land-holding, it has become laggier and laggier, which is why last addition was (as noted in previous post) put right up in sky above it. However, since favourite occupation is landscaping, seems a bit pointless to have land that is no fun landscaping, because of lag. Also views have become less and less attractive with fewer green areas and more high walls and nightclubby stuff.
Recently noticed land on Mare that was for sale, but ridiculously priced. However, last week was in land-hopping mood, so zoomed out Map a bit and started to teleport, starting at Mare, from yellow (for sale) area to yellow area until suddenly found self in very pleasant steep hillside area, with river on 2 sides. Then realised with excitement that was right next to seaside village of Cowell.

Now, had discovered Cowell very early on: it is part of the Phyneas Jack Memorial Trust land and had thought at time would love to live there (except noone lives there, my guess is that (being quite elderly in SL terms) the actual village is quite primmy, so wouldn't be room to have extra stuff from tenants). Anyway, have visited it every now and then, and still find it charming.
From website (linked above) discovered that area for sale was previously part of the estate but was now being sold off. Price was not dirt cheap, but really very reasonable for something with such a good prospect. Area for sale was the same size as current land ... so dithered for whole hour, but really it was foregone conclusion that before long would be hearing mega tinkle tinkle of Linden as claimed the land. Should really have waited to sell/abandon current land, pass tier date and THEN buy, but having a short dual period means can shift treasured material bit by bit.

In fact the first area that worked on had (another) new house, namely the Heidi house, which is quite plainly modelled on the one in the Miyazaki Heidi anime series. Am about halfway through this series, and actually the view from the cute circular window in the upstairs loft (where Heidi has her straw bed) is v. similar in SL and in the anime (you can see the hut on that Japanese site).
Should really be goats (rather than sheep), but had to delete goat shed to fit nicely on mountain top, also had no goats in inventory but did have some v. cute sheep, one of which have named Heidi, and one of which have named Hercule after Heidi's grandfather's dog (in the French language dub of the anime, am watching it in French since there is no available English dub).

2nd area for development was right at the other end of my new estate, where installed the Frida home from Mudshake, complete with all the stuff had put in it on previous land. Shown here is the view over an inland pond, with the Frida home to the right(barely seen) and Cowell village and Abotts Aerodrome in view over the water.

The day is done

Events organised: 4 (good); Events taking place: 4 (good); No. of lines types into ISTE IM rather than local chat: 12 (approx) (bad)

Had long day in SL, since today was the information literacy mini-festival. List of things done includes:

- Presentation slides converted into jpegs, renamed, uploaded to SL and copied into presenter: 26 (actually uploaded them twice, so is 2x26, since first time forgot to make thge jpgs full perms and this was quicker than changing 26 permissions by hand)
- Customised teleporters created (with links to 4 venues and 1 tour site): 1
- Boards with notecard containing programme: 1
- Customised teleporters and notecard boards placed: 6 of each, at actual venues, and 2 key landing points
- Notecards created for own presentations: 2
- Posters created with weblinks: 2
- No. of notices and IMs sent out advertising events: lots

- Time spent deciding on conference outfit: suprisingly little, which is perhaps why ended up with something of a Scottish Widows look.

Anyway all was ready by 7am SL time which is when own presentation on "Information Literacy for 21st century Life" started. Had also had nice conversation with someone who was at the INFORUM conference but who hadn't talked to in RL. Audience included people from good number of countries including Italy, Poland, USA, UK and Czech Republic.

Low point was start. Whereas in RL when giving presentation have some moments to gather thoughts and ready self for speech, in this case was worrying til last moment about whether everyone had found the venue, could get notecard etc. etc. Anyway, introduced self and mini-conference in text chat, but had been rattling on for some time when had gentle IM which alerted me to fact that had been typing away into the ISTE group chat, rather than local chat. Mortification. ISTE has about 5000 members so that is a lot of potential spam, although at least at that time of day there are fewer people inworld.

Anyway, things could only brighten up after that. Was basically giving this presentation, minus a few slides to make sure it was within time, and it seemed to go ok. Afterwards some people continued on to Sakura House where talked about some other sessions at the 2 RL conferences had been at.

Pi Illios' health literacy sessions (in Spanish at 9am and in English at noon) were successes: I joined in the English language one only, since my Spanish is confined to words like "Hola" "Gracias" and "Merluza a la plancha" (grilled hake), though I also know the Spanish for information literacy.

Relaxed at end of day by sitting in my 60s home, buying some parasols (from a gatcha, so cheap) and posing in one of AM Radio's installations. Finally did some tidying up on Infolit and changed the advertising board for the next multi-event, on 19 June. So soon will be hey ho for another round of advertising and goody bags. Have already collected something that gives you a wearable balloon in the shape of a cherry blossom, sure that will go down a treat with delegates.

Information & health literacy events

When: Thursday June 3rd, Where; Infolit iSchool (& tour to Tseshkovsky); in Second Life, the virtual world
- 7 am Second Life time, presentation Information Literacy for 21st Century Life
- 8 am SL time reports and discussion on recent conferences; plus at
- 9am SLT (en Espanol) and 12 noon SLT (in English): repeat event: Pi Illios (Universidad Puerto Rico) Literacia en Salud en Second Life (en Espanol, 9am) / Health Literacy in Second Life (in English, noon)

* 7am SL time (see http://tinyurl.com/38755tv for time in other countries): presentation from Sheila Yoshikawa (Sheila Webber in RL, University of Sheffield) on Information Literacy for 21st Century Life (as presented at the Oeiras a Ler conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in May, with some amendment).
Venue: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/147/170/21
In this presentation Sheila will elaborate a definition of information literacy and give examples of what information, and information literacy, mean in a number of contexts (e.g. in computer gaming, in a workplace, for "tweens") and sum up key messages about IL in the 21st Century.

* 8 am SL time (see http://tinyurl.com/2vlrgup for times in other countries): Report back from recent conferences (Oeiras a Ler, Informa 2010, and any others participants have been to recently!) Venue: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/43/203/22/

* 9am SL time (see http://tinyurl.com/3aznlgt for times in other countries) Literacia en Salud en Second Life ( en Espanol: Pi Illios, University of Puerto Rico)
Venue: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/190/215/749/
La Biblioteca Conrado F. Asenjo en el Recinto de Ciencias Médicas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico lleva a cabo un proyecto de Literacia y alfabetización en salud dirigido a hispnos que residen en Second Life .
La literatura profesional señala que el 31,5% de los pacientes de habla inglesa y el 61,7% de habla española presentan una inadecuada o marginal alfabetización funcional en salud.
La plataforma virtual Second Life tiene una población considerable de hispanosparlantes (alrededor de un 11.8 %) que residen en en este mundo virtual por infinidad de razones. Nuestro objetivo es enseñar y orientar al residente hispano en SL a encontrar información de salud confiable, actualizada y adecuada a sus necesidades; see https://sites.google.com/a/upr.edu/tusaludbuscadistingueaprende/?AuthEventSource=SSO

* 12 noon SL time (see http://tinyurl.com/369bq3u for times in other countries) "Health Literacy in Second Life" (talk and tour; in English: Pi Illios, University of Puerto Rico)
Venue: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/129/242/22/
The Conrado F. Asenjo health library of the University of Puerto Rico has created a prototype for health literacy to help Hispanic residents in Second Life. This is responding to the factthat surveys have shown that people have poor health literacy (31.5% of English speakers and 61.7 Spanish speakers). They have used the platform of Second Life to create a prototype informative build. Pi Illios with introduce their work, and then take people on a tour of the build on Tseshkovsky; see this page

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.