Sculpties, Emails, Neighbours

Sculpty classes missed: 1 (bad); Discussion lists and SL groups spammed with notice about 4th June meeting: 10 (good: unless you got all 10 of them, I suppose); SLED post score: 28 (good, ish); Lucky chair dresses snagged by alt: 1 (yay!)
On Monday attended first Educators Coop chat for a while. Unfortunately had not been able to go to a making-sculpties class organised by Rx, which was shame as sounded v. good. Pic shows Rx and a cube he used with screenshots of how to do things. Also shows unflattering view of Bluewave typing, sorry about that, Bluewave.

Received notice about Educators Coop Retreat at end of month which sounds v.v. cool, so looking forward to that. Remember RL friend going on retreat where chocolate was forbidden and she had to sneak out to munch furtively on a kit-kat bar. Obvious advantage of virtual retreat is that can be indulging in all sorts of pleasures of flesh (within reason) whilst simultaneously taking part in retreat.

Have sent out oodles of emails and notices re the meeting tomorrow at noon SL time, in which (I hope) people will turn up with good ideas for developing the H1N1 (or, as I choose to call it in populist fashion, swine flu) information literacy build. At what point does this become spam? Hope someone will tell me if it does.

A SLEDer has analysed all the SLED posts for the last couple of years and posted a list of how many posts each person has sent. Rolig Loon came top, Graham also topped the 100 post mark, proving what a helpful person he is. I came in (as my RL alt) at 28 posts. Fear that most of those were announcements of meetings, as rarely contribute otherwise. On other hand, organising discussions is a contribution. They certainly aren't doing my career much good, anyway, so I hope someone is deriving benefit. (Hmm, must have had a glummer day than I thought)

On to more cheerful and even less impactful matters: have been zipping round moving the island from spring to summer, ripping out flowering cherries, bluebells and tulips, and putting in birch & aspen trees, garlic mustard and poppies, plus a couple of lavender bushes outside the Centre. As a finishing touch the sushi bar has been replaced by a retro barbecue (2nd pic): you can get wearable hamburgers, kebabs and - something else - is it sausages? I really mustn't go back in to SL just to find out.

Back on my own land, yet more new neighbours, these ones (last pic) with a rather more morbid tone than usual. Note the twin skeletons holding hands across their graves. However, was much cheered to get unsolicited IM from complete stranger just to say she'd wandered onto my land and liked it a lot.

P.S. Dimitrova finally got her free Pizzacato Poppies dress after a mere extra hour of waiting. It was almost worth it. But not quite.

Encountering, linking, swirling

Participation in pretend audiences: 1 (ok); Educator Coop visits to view people doing stuff I can't do myself: 1 (good); Encounter with useful ppt in SL: 1 (v. good); time spent floating amongst verse: lots (good)

Am pondering how I feel that in one way have done lots in last 24 hours, and in other ways not. Interesting how feel am not really doing proper work in SL even when engaged in work-related activities, which results in gloom, guilt etc though also in lots of pretty pics of me flitting around in SL.

Yesterday got back from RL journey in time for regular Monday Educators Coop chat. North showed part of his Library Technology Report articles transferred to a thincbook. V. cool, should put more of my stuff in thincbooks. Will put North's in our SL library.

Then Rx arrived and tp-ed us over to where he is using Studio Builder to make sculpties (see first pic). He had made a large boat consisting of just 2 prims, and he also showed how a teapot he'd done could be made tiny tiny.

Afterwards sent out some notices to the Educational Informatics students and was still inworld when call came to become a pretend audience for a machinima on a Babel Project event. Hung round in audience feeling like a prop and doing other stuff offline. Actual event at which machinima will be shown is happening in Lisbon and RL at 11 next Monday; unfortunately will be teaching then.

Today was supposed to be a presentation from some of Jackie's students, on Infolit, about their virtual ethnography, but alas SL had a power outtage and Infolit iSchool was one of the 4000 regions offline for an hour or so. Bother.

Anyway, hung round and finally visited the 15 second Poetry game and the poetry skybox recommended by Jackie. Was great fun and took some nice pics in the swirly peacock dress that happened to have on.

Finally, followed a call for people to see student presentations at a research exhibition at Texas Womens University. First exhibit turned out to be about librarians collaborating in SL which is v. useful since

a) am giving talk on this very issue in about 2 weeks time at a RL conference and

b) Pancha is holding a focus group on this next week!

So dropped a notecard to Valibrarian (the author) hopefully to get full slides, and dropped a word to Pancha as well. Is useful since is not only material for talk, but is also example of using SL to make professional connections, cool or what.

Pic shows me bumping into Oronoque at TWU (she is the one with more feathers)