New home; an artist's life

 No. of homes: at least 3, plus whole island (bad); 50 prim challenges taken: 1 (good)

Was prompted by post by Chic Aeon to do challenge to furnish home with just 50 LI (or prims, in old money). Chic had started with furnishing cute home in new fantasy sim Seaclaid, and seemed that was v. cheap to rent there, so did not hesitate to TP in, view available homes and snap up flat above Irish pub. Only 100 Linden per week and of course am in dire need of home since only have:

• Cottage in Rosehaven
• Half a sim in Noyo
• Whole island (Infolit iSchool)
  

and that is without Dimitrova's parcel in wherever it is, and houseboat in Bellisaria, which obvs don't count as she is alt.

Anyway Seaclaid is v. cute and flat has great position with views of harbour and town square. Was going to furnish it in 60s peace/love/hippy style, but then was dropped notecard by sim owner that reminded me sim was high fantasy. Suppose it shows that one person's high fantasy is someone else's normal, since it hadn't struck me the sim looked PARTICULARLY fantasy, at least not more than any SL sim. For me was bit like various places I've been in physical world, so suppose is result of me seeing quaint and weird RL stuff as same old same old. In fact pub which I live over struck me as being archetypal pseudo Irish pub circa mid 20th century, as seen in most capitals of Europe, but anyway is nice space and have furnished it as Artist's hangout.

Can see am going to have great time churning out Views of Seaclaid and selling to gullible tourists. Found EXACTLY THE RIGHT TABLE to sit at while staring out the window and  thinking of things to do instead of getting down to writing. Is lucky chance that managed to drag it out of inventory since it was called My vintage art studio / Gacha {1} and think I found it when was actually looking for more things to put in artists loft. 

This is me looking moodily out of window wondering if poor light (dusk + insufficient prims to have more than one candle) lets me off doing any more on that literature review have been working on for over a year. I think the answer must be yes.

Not writing; Christmas; Transmediation

No. blog posts written in digital writing month: 1 (bad); No of stories written in digital writing month: 0.5 (could be worse); No. of items on shopping list: 35 approx. (bad)
Have failed singularly to increase amount of Yoshikawa blogging during digital writing month, as month has flashed past oozing with teaching, family emergencies, storms, meetings and cute SL items that SIMPLY HAVE TO BE BOUGHT.
In fact had decided that thing wanted to do more of was not digital writing but uninterrupted sustained writing (USW), as in getting into flow of writing for a couple of hours so imagination can take wing and so forth. In fact managed about 1.5 hours of USW on train between London and Sheffield, so partial achievement. Have also peered through window at digital writing activities, so to speak. Would have been fun to join in, but v. time consuming. One digital writing challenge was doing something transmedia, and was pondering extent to which SL is transmedian in itself. Could argue that is just one environment, on other hand have sound, pictures and movement and can zip about between different locations and import things in and out of SL. Is probably substance for whole, dull, peer reviewed article in debating this.

Anyway, did find time for some Christmas shopping as deluge of cute Xmas cheer kicked in as soon as the pumpkins and scary Halloween skeletons had been collected up into inventory. Thought that might be able to limit Xmas expenditure by going through all the events and making up a shopping list in advance, so am not tempted to buy anything extra. However not sure that this will work, e.g. for Lost and Found event my initial advance list ran

Lost and Found
Kalopsia - sewing table, crackers box or present pile 90 Linden each
 plaaka - kitchen cupboard? Linden 300

Kalopsia and plaaka are familiar puveyors of cute things, and although cabinet was on expensive side, all the items on cabinet shelves are v. cool e.g. artisan japanese ceramic bowls and tea whisk.
When tp-ed to Lost and Found was still impressed by cabinet. Decided that already had enough piles of presents, but the crackers were nice and the sewing table reminded me of the old treadle sewing machine that we had when was young (though it has to be said that nostalgia has already led me to buy 2 different SL reproductions of this treadle sewing machine, however don't have table without machine, so obvious gap in inventory).1st pic shows me stoutly resisting urge to also buy decorated Xmas chair, watering can with artful bauble tree in it etc.
However was drawn inexorably to the display of boots by Deadwool. They are v. realistic all wrinkled leather and laces. Suffice it to say that they cost 450 Linden and am now wearing them with my new Go! dress and Atomic woollen legwarmers. All very boho.

Eye was also caught by SariSari upcycled Christmas tree, a snip at 299 Linden. Well, in fact not PARTICULARLY a snip, but v. well made.Was more charming than in advert and could immediately see it being an amusing conversation piece in my new Fallingwater House art gallery. In fact had thought it came with a nubbly cotton rug (see 2nd pic) which proved not to be the case, but  am not too disappointed.

Can see from this account that future does not look promising for list approach, since started out intending to spend max of 480 Linden and spent nearly that on unplanned boots. Oh well.

3rd pic shows me with the acquired consumer items. Am wearing boots but also have displayed one on top of cabinet.

So, this is the kind of thing I was doing instead of digital writing.

I must say, it seems pretty transmedia to me.

Digital; graveyard; tagged

Digital writing done: 1 (digital and, like, writing); Urns clicked: approx 40 (good); Graveyards toured: 1 (atmospheric)

So, came across some publicity for Digital Writing month and thought that should contribute, as any excuse to do pics and write stuff is welcome. Am pondering in what way this will differ from all writing that normally do, which is mostly clickety-clack on some keyboard and screen as have almost forgotten how to use pen and form legible words. Would probably have found this out if had read blog about Digital Writing Month rather than just thinking, hey, cool idea and bookmarking it.

Through this blog, discovered pic that had been Thinglinked (or was it other way round, discovered DWM through Thinglinked pic? oh well) and so below is first ThingLink. Not sure whether this is any more digital than usual writing, but gave excuse to do more pics of kittycats which is always welcome.



Meanwhile have been doing halloweeny stuff as halloween in SL is THE time of year, since ghosts, suppurating wounds, zombies, graves that drag you in, carniverous trees, haunted mansions etc. etc. etc. are all SO easy to do. Had to abjure SL for some weeks as was a) swamped with work and b) away some of the time with no SL-enabled device, so have had a bit of an orgy of SL-ism the past few days.

Did the WHOLE of the tag! gacha tour, in which you click the tag gacha HUD and get whirled to the next destination. Each destination is of course a shop, what else, with a gacha but also an urn which you click to mark that you've been at the store, plus it gives you a freebie trick or treat. Since wanted to get round it haven't yet opened most of the trick/treats nor indeed most of the items snagged from the gachas. The starting and finishing points to the gacha hunt were v.v.cool including a mortuary and graveyard, so have shown a couple of pics.

First one shows the Bonus Room which was a mortuary (it was unlocked once you'd been round all the shops). You can play "spot the witch" (i.e. me, was pretending to be the forensic expert inspecting the corpse in NCIS or Body of Proof, though if their mortuaries were in this state think that environmental health would have been called in by now).

Second pic is arty photoshopped view of the Redemption Graveyard that you could go to at the end. Called Redemption because you redeemed any Mystery Bonus Tickets and also think there is pun there about being redeemed, but not sure that spending oodles of lindens on virtual halloween items is actually path to redemption. Was interesting to see little arrangements of pictures and flowers that each creator had put by their tombstone, sure there is ample fodder there for psychologists, should any such be SL gacha addicts. In the meantime, enjoyed wandering round graves feeling pleasantly melancholic.

(Is this enough digital writing for now? (Think it might be. (Ed.) Next episode: installing haunted piano in the twisted greenhouse: or by the time get round to doing the post may be: removing haunted piano and twisted greenhouse, together with zillions of candles, pumpkins, gravestones and ghosts)

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.

Procastinating whilst summoning energy to write posts about ESRC, VWBPE and Inf6011

PhDs examined in RL: 1 (good); PhD students taking successful viva this week: 1 (v. good); PhD topics consulted about: 1 (good); Articles written: 0 (bad)
Last week was Phd-y sort of one in RL in that first part of week was spent in whirlwind trip to Thessaloniki to examine PhD, then one of my own PhD students also came through viva successfully, and someone else chatted to me in SL about possible PhD topic. Somehow is all reminder that ought to be doing more research myself, and is not that lack material for same, nor indeed is there lack of pressure since my Department is already having Awaydays to prepare for the next research assessment exercise, so that we can retain current status in field ("Number One for 24 Years" as it says on our website).

So, probably ought to be doing less of this kind of writing and more introduction-methods-results-discussion-conclusions kind of stuff. Realised recently that one unfortunate fact is that, whilst rather enjoy rereading own blog entries, find that after having gone through n drafts of an academic article, and then reworked it to fit in with nitwit comments from referees, can scarcely bear to revisit it once published. This contrasts with some colleagues who get buzz from seeing own names at top of scholarly article. Wonder whether there is some kind of attraction therapy so will suddenly get amazing thrill from seeing own name on journal title page.

In meantime (to get back to serious matters) bought new Eva skin from Tuli. Tuli’s Elizabeth has been my main skin for ages now, being only one with the right level of paleness and (lack of) makeup. Will persist with Eva for a while, since makeup is OK, and skin detail is satisfying, but the Eva Tone 1 (which am wearing in 1st pic) is really a little bit TOO pale, whilst next colour up is a bit too rosy. Since hair is blue, have to keep to neutral skin tone, otherwise am v. restricted as to clothing colours. Anyway, Tuli’s remodelled sim is cute (as shown) with floating islands in sky and volcano on ground. Sim is called Journey. Think that this has no connection with T. Blair’s autobiography of same name, but is doubtless dollop of fantasy in both.

Bloher08, Belated

Days since last posted: 7 (bad)

Will belatedly try to wrap up on Blogher08 conference. Am looking back on notes and again as in RL often not obvious how to make sense of them, ahem. OK - was a session on day 1 about links between SL and blogging. Panellists included Patty Streeter, Gidge Uriza and Cybergrrl Oh. One speaker said that "we are the revolution" - that future is one giant mashup and so mixing SL and blogs is very much being in that happening place (I paraphrase). Patty Streeter "social networking on steroids"
In terms of being a woman blogger things mentioned were: blogging more about emotions etc and also that in terms of fashion blogging there is more to blog about compared with what is available to chaps ;-)
One of the questioners saw a conflict between the visual side of SL and writing - doing less writing because of SL. I'd observe that am not doing less writing, but AM spending more time doing informal writing and less doing formal writing which in my job is Not a Good Thing in career terms.
Other phrases I jotted down about SL and blogging were "whimsical", "self-actualisation", "extend your creative horizons", "problem of SL stalkers", "it stimulates all my creative juices".In fact part of Blogher08 that enjoyed most, have to confess, was the motor racing that indulged in, on 2nd afternoon, kindly arranged for us by Patty Streeter.
Got dropped firstly small stock car and then larger one, and operated in using arrow keys. Was pretty much rubbish at it, but great fun, and had satisfaction of coming not-last i.e. 5th of 6th, in race. Has to be said that person who was 6th had only been in SL one week, but still, honour was preserved. Picture show car after spectacular crash flying through the air before landing OUTSIDE the racing stadium - fortunately I didn't land on anyone and could step out of the car unscathed.
After this excitement there was an open mic session where people read out favourite blog posts. Unfortunately not many people turned up for this. Other speakers had entries about important experiences from their lives, or one person read out a blog post where she'd remembered a SL person (The Sojourner) who'd died in RL.
Felt a bit awkward. Just don't write blog posts like that. In that context a wry Yoshikawa-type entry would have sounded shallow. Am I a shallow blogger? Is it cultural difference? Would people think I was really a chap because I couldn't come up with something emotional enough??
In the end, due to paucity of people (i.e. three of us at that point and the other 2 had already spoken), was suggested that people could just talk about their experience (didn't have to be a blog post) so rambled on somewhat incoherently about joy of being in SL. At least people liked my dress, which was the Rez-day Digit Darkes item.

Following THIS there was a dance at Callie Cline's beach resort. She herself attended, looking v. splendid in her Black Swan creation.
Day 2 of Blogher08 in SL and the Education panel was, oddly perhaps, focusing on the use of SL in education and training, rather than on blogging. In fact my only criticism of the conference (which was v. well organised and had a lot of interesting stuff) was that it could have had more about blogging and less about SL.
The panel was Dannette CiscoSystems, Fleep Tuque (educational technologist at a US university), In Kenzo (working with non profits with events, SL creations etc), Lila iReport (with CNN iReports), and chaired by padlurowncanoe Dibou, so people from a range of backgrounds. CNN iReports is CNN's citizen journalist initiative, so one thing they do is train people about "telling their story". As a sidenote, am glad that am unlikely to be forced to become Sheila SheffieldUniversity or Sheila InformationStudies by my institution. Some points from discussion
- Still need to "handhold" with all kinds of admins, producers, various people who hold the pursestrings and who don't see benefits of SL
- Opportunity for journalism students to participate in iReports - Lila iReports said they would be interested ;-)
- Nursing programme at the University of Wisconsin was mentioned as one moving to a SL approach - one issue was of people wanting to take credit bearing modules or programmes (personally think this will always need to be handled by institution itself, although a central directory would be useful)
- Backchat was highlighted as feature of SL conferences - indeed this is interesting and changes the dynamics. You can have "backchat" at RL conferences in that now people may be liveblogging, twittering etc, but a speaker might have to follow multiple streams to follow it and react, whereas in SL it's far more part of the experience (asnd possibly discvoncerting for those not used to SL?)
- CiscoSystems said that SL "comes down to content" - people also wanting to "express their personal brand" eg. not having overriding anmations. But does do powerpointy stuff. Using SL "brings a level of intimacy to it" and they can use globally dispersed people, even though they are basically, from what she said, wtrill doing rather powerpointy stuff. This was contrasted with the less intimate channel of a webinar.
- Educators were criticised by one speaker for not doing enough non-transmissive stuff - but I thought perhaps she hadn't been around enough, because there is certainly much creative education out there. I haven't ever used ppt with my students and we haven't used aything that looks like a RL classroom - North's work as reported a couple of posts ago is another example.The last SL session was on using SL for good. I learnt a lot from this about some of the projects going on in SL and there is a "liveblog" about it from Amy Sample Ward (when you get to the post you have to click on the liveblogging link). The panellists were (in RL) Susan Tenby, Connie Reece, Jennifer Cole and Aleja Ospina and Amy says that there is a transcript on the Gimpgirl website http://www.gimpgirl.com/login/index.php
The final thing I dipped into (by that time it was very late - early hours of the morning for me) was a relay of the final session at the RL Blogher. There is a good liveblog from a RL delegate here. I didn't know who the bloggers were (their blogs or them) but
Apart from the extra knowledge I picked up from sessions such as the last SL panel the main thoughts I took away were
1. Blogging could make a good discussion in the Infolit iSchool series
2. What kind of blogger am I? I got a feeling that blogs didn't seem "female" enough for me to feel altogether at home in the RL Blogher conference - it looked rather intimidating. There are all those bloggers out there that I'm not much aware of at all , like mommybloggers and food bloggers and knitting bloggers. My information literacy blog is a professional blog and I'm aware of the blogging community relevant to that. I SL-fashion blog a little (see here the pic of one outfit I blogged from the conference)and read the SL-fashion blogs so I am very aware of what happens there, though I wouldn't say I was part of that community, really - I don't really know any of the other fashion bloggers in SL (Gidge, a SL Blogher08 panellist, also posts at iheartsl blog, like me, and we didn't even say Hi to each other). Not sure what kind of blog this is... not an education blog as such, though I blog about educational things ... hmmm
3. (To finish on a practical note) Also as usual picked up some tops about running a SL conference.