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:

Social SL

Conference discos attended: 1 (good); New houses visited: 1 (v.good); Cash gifts receive: 1 (surprising)

Before attending Blogher 07 disco visited IH's brand new home in SL. Very cosy and CH and another friend were there already. Saw CH's wings and halo up close which are stunning.

Had spent some time in Divivity dithering over what housewarming gift to buy. In end brought cream cake there and also ikebana like one donated to CILIP. Drinks were circulated and was usual drinking-animation japes with coffee and beer apparently going all over new sofas or up wall.

Particularly cool was picture frame hung in IH's living room which cycled through some of IH's v.v. good RL photos. Also got quite excited when accidently sent camera outside walls and realised could see in through windows. Took photo looking in, but is possibly a touch voyueristic, suppose there is peeping Tom connotation. Thus have restricted self to publishing overhead view of living room.

On to Hyperstring Night Club for Blogher disco where at first thought was in wrong place as no people there. Huge disco floor with pulsating colour, several people mentioned possibility of epileptic fits during evening. When touched disco ball given choice of dance animation. Disadvantage of dancing in SL is that get no exercise whatsoever (not even moving keys) since animation does it all for you. Also cannot exercise creativity in dancing for same reason. However felt had made good choice of skirt as it swooshed around nicely.

Eventually others turned up and managed to make small contribution to conversation on clothes. Also dropped in on alternative venue for conference disco but either it was laggy or it had reached the Adult stage since everyone looked a bit naked apart from their boots. Anyway, decided to stick with Hyperstring. Computer crashed several times as combination of sound and graphics too much for it.

Was unexpectedly given $500 Linden by Gidge Uriza, to "have fun" with. V. kind. Was somewhat startled but a pleasant end to day and immediately after disco spent it on new red outfit. Last photo shows me arriving in the shop, still animated from the disco (you have to click World - Stop All Animations).

In terms of networking Blogher has been something of failure, except just to say that "I was there" can be conversation opener afterwards. Would definitely have been useful to be there on 1st day as this included one of those icebreaker sessions which in RL find somewhat excrutiating but esp. in SL might be useful. Also could have done more of the "Hi, I'm Sheila Yoshikawa from Europe I've blogged since 2003" kind of thing, but as in RL, not very good at plunging in and a lot of people seemed to know each other. As have remarked before, interesting that social awkwardnesses of RL carries over to some extent. Or perhaps it's just me.