Cats; Comments; Houses; Preparation

No of cats transferred to cat cafe: 3 (good); No. of comments on Futurelearn MOOC; not so many as last week (reassuring); Houses bought: 2 (good); Percentage of required preparation for future presentations/life/work successfully completed: not nearly enough (bad)

Whereas should be setting up useful posters for newbies, decluttering, preparing landmark givers, constructing items which simply yet effectively tell the story of information literacy (etc etc) in preparation for the possibly-not-hordes of people storming into Infolit iSchool because of the Play MOOC, am in fact in process of constructing the Infolit iSchool Cat cafe. This is inspired by a cat cafe in London, which recently visited and v. nice it was too although really rather competitive as all the people visiting the cafe wanted the cats to spontaneously love THEM, and if that didn't happen, to photograph the cats in cute poses.

In SL is a bit simpler as kittycats periodically tell me they love me in text chat and unless they are asleep then anyone can pet them as much as they want.

Have almost finished cafe in new L2 Studios home. Spent oodles of lindens to secure 2 very neat sets of tables and chairs in a gacha (also got 2 sofas, 4 odd tinny decorations and a musical bear surplus to requirements, but that's gachas for you). Sofa in pic doesn't match in colour, but was from latest round of collabor88 and cushions have little cats on so nice touch. Have absolutely loads of random food items in inventory and is mostly a matter of which ones to pull out.

2nd pic is of Tassie, felt that she was telling me NO I do NOT want to work in a cat cafe. However didn't get that vibe from Jennifer and Snowflake Morpho so there they are settling in (1st pic). Have now added Serena the Firestorm cat who technically belongs to Zoe, but of course Zoe is my puppet and does what she's told being 2nd Alternative Avatar.

Is terrifically tempting to use cafe as excuse to buy more kittycats. Visited sim which is basically devoted to stalls and shops vending kittycats i.e.it is one giant kittycat shop. Was very taken with a couple of them notably the black kittycat with odessey (mismatched) eyes (middle row on far left). Also almost got sucked into real-time cat auction, with about 15 people gathered round bidding on 10 assorted cats including an absolutely adorable teacup (tiny) cat (shown) below, but would have to bid at least 1000 Linden and let's face it already have several kitty boxes in inventory (offspring of Tassie, Marl etc.)

That black one is very cute, though. Very.

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?

Catching up

Islands prepared: 1 (good)

As mentioned in previous post, have been so busy in SL that have had no spare time to blog same.

In next few entries will try to cover key points, but probably more pics than words. At present am still mulling over session earlier in day when students had second session on island. Excitement! But more anon.

Have blogged discussion sessions on Eduserv Island on serious Information Literacy blog. Basically last 2 talks did not suffer fate of previous i.e. people did actually turn up. Also only crashed out once and was able to upload chat history successfully to Leeds Met's useful widget thingy. Here are some nice pics of island, in particular Marsha11, in tree house with Bubble Wand. Also see here the underwater doughnut seating and the cafeteria.

Am so please dwith tree house have demolished large white house on own land and replaced with said tree dwelling, which is fortunately Copy, so could have whole forest of them had I prims enough and time.

Also have added twee fairy bridge to tree house since when was visited by North Lamar found self scrambling in graceless fashion across tree house base. Have been looking for excuse ever since could not decide between twee oak bridge and twee fairy bridge to span river & finally opted for Twee Oak (with Cushion Pose). Have now managed to notch up over 6000 prims. Oh dear.

Creation, Stools, Fauna, Meetings

Friends met in SL: 2 x 1 (good); No. of artifacts created: lots (good); Linking skill learnt: 1 (good); Seagulls purchased: 2 (not sure); Hours spent (vainly) trying to import animated sit poses: 3 (bad)

Have been busy creating benches and stools in the office. Can now Rotate, Position, Stretch, Import Image, change Texture and change Colour.

Have also learnt how to Link and Unlink. In both cases involves pressing CTRL+3 then clicking on relevant objects, then selecting Link or Unlink from Tools menu.

Had much fun importing pictures of flowers and sky to make them Texture for stools . Also managed to make cone Hollow and positioned it to be a parasol. Bought windchime and changed Textures so that rather than fake bamboo now tones with rest of colour scheme.

Then (as happens) became heady with new skills and bought 2 seagulls and a rainbow. Have positioned rainbow over sign. Seagulls are perhaps step too far as now when sit in roof terrace hear quacking duck, windchime clinking and seagulls cawing in rather aggressive fashion.

When putting up benches in office spent ages trying to use pose balls to get animated sitting.
Mostly had no effect, but in other cases ended with strange postures which at first found puzzling and now realise are poses might not want to introduce into serious information literacy meeting (ahem). In the end left with default Sit which fortunately seems to come with Object.

Have had two meetings with Silversprite Helsinki who has been doing report on UK Higher Ed in SL for Eduserv. Will mention when this gets published as should be v. interesting. Top picture shows us chilling out on the roof. 2nd picture shows one of my many useless shopping trips in search of scripts for sitting poses that aren't rude. In third photo can see artfully placed rainbow.

Back to SL

Visits to SL: 1 (hurrah!); New members of Information Literacy Group: 2 (good); Invitations to join German techie Group: 1 (tempting) ; Updates to SL whilst away: 1 (bad); Creation rights in Eduserv: 0 (v. bad)

Still celebrating return to SL! Phil the Phoenix seems strangely phlegmatic re. absence. Go straight to Vassar, as recommended by IH. Experiment with flexible seating (see 1st pic) can alter benches at a touch to seat different number of students. If only RL seating could be moved so easily, sure have damaged back hauling round chairs and tables before seminars to get right setup.

Visit Vassar's virtual rooms. Can choose scene from display rather like postcard rack see pic 2. Pretty, but computer's poor graphics card (I assume) sometimes gives strange effect (see pic 3). However, take various artful pics.

Go to office on Eduserv island. Water feature and chairs still in place. Decide to buy message board so people can leave messages (e.g. "Good luck to the Centre for Information Literacy Research"or "Why have you got a water feature on your roof"?)

Search on "message board" finds only what appears to be German techie outfit. Wander round but ultimately fruitless. Realise have searched under "place" rather than "all". Searching all finds more options. Visit a few office supply shops but message boards elude me.

Get distracted by plants and buy one of those instead. Return to office with plant but, curses, dreaded blue box pops up and says cannot place plant as have no creation rights on land. Was sure had been given them by AF. Hmmm. Perhaps have already placed too many prims?

Attempt to sit to mull over problem and end up on top of wall. Am sure will never be able to do this deliberately so take several pics. Say temporary farewell to Phil and logoff.

Next day in RL email get invitation to join SL Group, namely "Testlab: Die Testlab-Gruppe der PC Professionell in Second Life informiert Sie uber neue Testberichte aus unserem Testlab am Perlenstrand (135, 38, 24) und bietet Ihnen eine Plattform, um neue Produkte zu diskutieren". Wish to demonstrate cool European cosmopolitan nature by belonging to German group, so Accept.