Digital archaeology; Kittycats are adorable

No. of unfinished blogposts: 67 (bad); no of kittycats 12: (v. good); no. of days before share SL insights with baffled, indulgent or indifferent colleagues: 5 (good/bad)

Had another go at retrieving unfinished blogpost drafts. Blogger says there are 67, earliest is from June 7 2007 (so just one month after rezzed) and the only text is
"In RL consider attending advertised event "Getting to grips with the Google generation: a hands on event" but fear that if lives up to title could be dismissed from post for Gross Moral Turpitude"
Golly wouldn't risk posting that now, though suppose I just have. More to the point, cannot imagine anyone would NAME an event like that now, unless they wanted a Twitter pile-on and a dismissal notice. 

Anyway, draft post decided to focus on was from 23 May 2017 and had headline "10 years; Kittycats are adorable". (actually, full disclosure, there was another phrase in the middle but have deleted it and now can't remember what it was). Full extent of draft post was:

 
[2017/05/04 13:13] Sheila Yoshikawa: yes you ARE adorable
[2017/05/04 13:13] Sheila Yoshikawa: oops sorry wrong window
[2017/05/04 13:13] Sheila Yoshikawa: lol
[2017/05/04 13:13] person1: lol
[2017/05/04 13:13] person2: awwww
[2017/05/04 13:13] Sheila Yoshikawa: and I was talking to a kittycat (hides face in shame)
[2017/05/04 13:13] person2: kittycats are adorable XD 

Any SL resident will immediately know what's going on here - you have various group windows open in chat, you have been lurking in some conversation in, say the Apple Fall group, about where to find a particular cute chair in their shop, then you notice how adorable one of your kittycats is, can't resist telling them, and there you go, wrong-window situation. Fortunately in this example (as is usually the case) other residents kind and forgiving, and am just grateful wasn't venting or sharing secret/embarrassing info. First pic is obligatory one of adorable kittycats, it was difficult to choose, they are all so cute, this is Beltane (asleep) and Rosebud in one of the cat cafes.

10 years part of draft blog post was celebrating 10 years since first rezzed on 3 May 2007. Can't remember doing much to commemorate it, so perhaps that why post never got posted. Looking back at chatlog, day appeared to start with

[2017/05/03 10:42]  Second Life: Unable to load gesture [KUE!] /pixie.

a lack am sure was able to bear this with equanimity, though may be a sweet gesture. Then appear to have attended talk from Kali about her research, can't tell for certain where, as evidently tped straight there, but later chat said "You have added "Ethnographia Island - Parcel 13" to your Landmarks folder", which may be a clue. Appears went entire 3 May in SL without rezday greeting, bit saddo, however next day was VWER and must have celebrated it then as announce at the start that am wearing original avatar to celebrate 10 years and topic was "Milestones, Epiphanies and Turning Points in virtual worlds". 

[pause of approx. 30 mins...] 

Have just tried to find whereabouts of May 2017 photos and failed dismally - have ones up to March 2017 and then from 2018 onwards: think 2017 was when got new computer? or something dire happened to computer? Anyway, SL stuff dotted around in various places. Finally resorted to Flickr and hurrah had uploaded pics from that VWER session so there they are (a) me as I rezzed in 2007 (gaaahhhh) and also (b) some of the others. 

In (b) the orange item on the table was some kind of Australian Uni mascot that I trailed round in 2007, for no particular reason, except suppose attached creatures were still a novelty for me at that point. 

Since the 2007-me is so ... 2007 ... have to finish with me looking much more me after hoovering up stuff at The Arcade yesterday. Even got some arty shadows in the pic, so, life moves on.

Hunts; Walls; I Am My Cat

No. of hunt items found: 3 (good); No. of hours spent searching for hunt items: 1.5 (bad); Number of gigantic boundary walls bought: 1 (good); No. of kittycats whose bodies I have occupied: 1 (so far) (not spooky AT ALL)

With October comes halloween hunts and one of fave SL designers, namely DRD, has a hunt in their shop. You get a HUD, you go around spotting Black Dahlia flower heads and get cool stuff when you find them. This sounds v. simple, but have trawled lower floor of DRD's store twice, camming into corners and waiting impatiently for all to rez etc etc, plus have gone round upstairs twice, and done quicker trawl of builds in their garden. However have only found 3 items out of about a dozen. Was at least glad to hear from DRD group chat that wasn't just me that found this challenging. Hunt object is small and also black, and as DRD do a lot of dark stuff and store is huge have evidently missed loads of dahlias lurking in corners and under carpets. Also they produce a lot of small fiddly objects that look v. like dahlias until they rez properly.

In 2nd pic you may be able to see object on floor that got overexcited about til saw was "film cans" not dahlia. Realise have got used to hunts where you (a) get a hint (b) have a large and flashy hunt object, so am probably lazy but frankly life is too short to spend more than 1.5 hrs looking for objects however cute.
Was, though, friendly experience, one avatar IMed me to ask if was on hunt and we exchanged cheerful remarks on lack of success in dahlia finding. Group chat also good natured except when spammer spammed chat with random request for 100 Linden which resulted in multiple insults and group bans for spammer. Would be careful about spamming DRD chat, probably contains people with arcane knowledge of spells and potions (AM JOKING know that people who like to recreate post-apocalyptic dungeons and spooky haunted asylums are quite likely frightfully well adjusted individuals who would no more think of cursing someone than of jumping the checkout queue in Tescos).
Anyway have ended up with (1) carpet (2) very cute tray of bedroom decor stuff (3) some sort of notice on a cute board PLUS there was a free thing just waiting to be nabbed on the 1st floor, vis several female corpses hung up on pegs, some of Bluebeard's wives according to the description. Obviously maker did not subscribe to the "it is all symbolic of mental abuse and Bluebeard's wives are now all enjoying fulfilled lives with more suitable partners, it's Bluebeard you should feel sorry for" line. It will be a useful item for my halloween decor this year.

Thinking of Halloween made me think of dungeons and caves, so wandered over to the Felix Alter sim as he does v. good v. reasonably priced cave and mountain decor. Did look at caves (see pic), but got distracted by what is v. good idea and wonder why noone else has done it. He has created high thin and attractive cliff walls (with walkable paths) for people to put round sims when they want privacy from neighbours. One of perils of mainland is suddenly having some huge hideous barrier penning you into your plot, because your neighbour doesn't want to see your beautifully landscaped gardens but would rather see some giant, implausible and out of focus picture of a tropical beach.
There are several options which mix and match, all priced at 250 Linden, and bought one and immediately put it to good use. Trouble with previous similar things is that they have tended to be (a) not thin enough (b) not that much more attractive than the hideous beach picture. Will post some actual pics of walls at some point but cannot pause to do that as OMG final thing is MOST EXCITING.

Namely, KittyCats have a new update and YOU CAN BECOME YOUR KITTYCAT. OMG.

In fact practically never desert my human form but took all of 10 secs to decide that I wanted to inhabit the bodies of my KittyCats. Took copy of body shape, made sure outfit was saved and then you just click on your chosen KittyCat, select something off the interaction menu, get a folder which includes a "KittyCat Transponder" you wear the folder and voila!

In fact it wasn't Voila! at first as simply became invisible. Wandered about a bit invisibly and then thought would try logging off and on and THEN trying the wear transponder thing again and this time it worked. I went through the spooky change thing (see pic, I am migrating, Jennifer is sitting all unconcerned to my right), Jennifer disappeared and then I WAS JENNIFER. I walked and ran and sat and flew. When you fly a skateboard appears underneath you. I may moderate VWER as a kitty on Thursday so went and practiced sitting at the VWER table (see last pic) and OMG I am so cute.

Was a slight worrying moment when I transponded back and initially the "Jennifer kittycat" in my inventory simply would not rez. However all was well when I logged out/ in and she now seems to be sleeping and pottering about quite happily again, all on her own.

Am deciding which Kittycat I will comandeer next. Probably Marl.

Is this a bit creepy? I don't care if it is a bit creepy. Thank you KittyCats creators for providing me with awesome features I never even knew I wanted.

Fragmentation; Devastating critique

Disquisitions on scholarly publishing: 1 (dull); Pictures of kittycats: 2 (cute).

Think is time to inject some Seriousness into blog again, so today's meditation is on changes in scholarly publishing. However, scholarly publishing not v. visually appealing, so will also include some pics of kittycats being cute as only kittycats can be.
Am venturing further into readings on autoethnography, and a week or two ago refound useful article called Analytical Ethnography (in folder helpfully labelled "articles"). Having read it and found it good, used, um, scarcely any information literacy skills at all to search on "analytic autoethongraphy" on Google Scholar and discovered article by another pair of autoethnographers in same journal issue as first article. This 2nd article was esentially doing a hatchet job of 1st article, but written in semi fictionalised narrative form i.e. was writing devasting critique in form of autoethnography.
This would have been neat ruse, were it not that 2nd article was:
a) in humourless, stilted prose and
b) framed with some exploitative stuff about watching live footage from a natural disaster and saying how dreadful it made the authors feel.
As side note, have been having serious concerns about whether autoethnography only counts as autoethnography if badly written. Hope not as in that case would immediately be disqualified from doing autoethnography because of sparkling style, ahem.
Anyway, 2nd article caused emotional reaction, as imagine authors wanted, but possibly not the emotions they might have hope to evoke when they put finger to keyboard. In fact can never remember being so incensed by article, and notes in margins had some rude words and lots of exclamation marks.

At this point decided to see whether were any other autoethnographic articles in same issue of journal: and lo, not only were there more articles, but one of then was by author of article A, responding to Article B's response to Article A.
This was all v. jolly and gave reading matter for weeks to come, but was useful evidence of way in which carefully crafted assemblage of interlocking articles (as in fact articles X, Y and Z were also responding to article A) is reduced to whatever you chance to hit on when you google.

Now with many journal issues this is not real problem, as issue basically consists of whatever stuff happens to have turned up at roughly the same time. However, journals do have themed issues and books also have chapters, and in now increasing chance that you stumble across one disconnected part of whole, possibly never realising that there was a whole it was part of.
This is not exactly new observation, but this particular instance made me think how in particular it becomes more difficult to see the links and tensions between different ideas, from people in the same field, particularly if you can't find the connections through citation searching. Finding connections and contradictions for yourself is enjoyable. However, don't always have time to browse at will, and also is particularly difficult if trying to get to grip with a new field.

Response to this has been to buy an actual book on autoethnography, rather than looking at snippets of books on google books, not that the latter is something I would normally do, obviously, absolutely not.

Meanwhile, the kittycats sleep.