Exhibit

Exhibitions created and fine tuned: 1 (good); Flags acquired: 3 types (good); Quirky Swedish rabbits acquired: 1 (good); Swedish cushions acquired: 1 (mistake)

Have had fairly active week in SL. Most constructive part is probably making the exhibit for IFLA conference discussion. Had originally spent happy hour whilst still in Gothenburg, sifting through houses in inventory to find suitable venue, and settled on older Japanesey building, like one that used to house CILASS in dim and distant. Had got all posters from satellite conference set up, but fact was that it looked a bit messy.

Then had idea of taking pics of RL Gothenburg venue (the Palace) and using these to texture the walls and floor. Is not exactly work of art but think it has nice feel and is at least distinctive & could set it to copy if so desired as is all own work. Completed this box with all the posters, some RL pics, and a board with all the delegates’ names and the briefing for the exercise that produced the posters. Also could not resist a bit of set dressing with a table rather like the ones in the RL venue, a cup, a pencil holder and a pic of a RL poster on a table top.

To house powerpoints, chose same building as the Wilf Saunders Library, a simple wood floor and glass walled box. Discovered in process that creator of this (who also created the Victorian Steampunk sky platform and the thing I used originally as the Departmental office building), is no longer selling homes. Sad. Think they were ahead of their time, at the time (i.e. 2007) but suppose things have moved on.

After putting in selected ppts, and doing some notecards with abstracts and some links to other stuff, created walkway between two buildings with paving and boat, to evoke Gothenburg harbour At least that’s the idea.

Seemed to go down well with people on Thursday, though is scarcely rocket science. Since then have added noticeboard for people to add their own thoughts about Contextual Factors for Information Literacy (that is, if they can work out how on earth noticeboard works, and then manage to type in their thoughts in a mere 30 seconds, no mean feat). Also, by chance, acquired set of Swedish flags: one you wear and wave, one small one to put on table top (so put it on table top) and one full sized flag on pole which waves just like in the Torley Tutorial.

Additionally have small rabbit in Swedish colours, holding carrot and Swedish flag (not sure if carrot is symbolic of anything). These all were acquired because yesterday was setting up a tableau with a diagram of the Information Literate University to create some graphics for a ppt that am giving in RL in Uppsala in a couple of weeks time. Uppsala is also in Sweden, and, finding that lacked Swedish flag, visited the Swedish Institute sim, where hit jackpot. Appears to have been some kind of high-profile wedding celebration, and were boxes lying around containing said set of flags, and rabbit. Only expense was that almost by mistake bought fairly dull heart-shaped cushion in Swedish colour scheme, for 59 Linden. Oh well.


Anyway, after event on Thursday, but before whiteboard and flags, did a quick Screenr screencast for those unfortunates who cannot see the exhibit in SL. Only real regret is that had just changed outfit: Sugarcube had produced a dress for the first time in ages, which was a “50 Linden Friday” item (or is it “60Linden Friday” now?) Whatever, the dress is a shortish fluffy red thing with amusingly patterned leggings. Married this with stiletto boots from G. Field, a black shrug, black tights to bridge gap between pants and stockings (so am covered up, that isn’t the issue) and then some free hair that acquired in Curious Kitties. This was a few days ago when decided that time had finally come to invest in a couple of Curious Kitties hair HUDS, without which you cannot control colour of their most recent hair.
Free CK hair had big black hat, and actually think that hat balances skirt quite well, but, still, it is all a bit red and black and patterned, and might have been better advised to go conservative route for something which after all am publishing on Youtube. Witchy black hats was possibly not image aiming for. Of course, could junk the video and do another – but – frankly – is it worth the effort?
No.
Is possible people might like the hat.

Foolish

But I forgot and turned up on Tuesday.

Remodelled

Common rooms remodelled: 1 (good)
Have been spending some time demolishing common room and Nigl/Ishbel's office, and replacing them with new common room/office. Not quite finished yet, but almost there. Aim was to free up some space in the corner of Infolit, for the health information literacy stuff.

Probably should have told Ishbel and Nigl before axing their cute cottage. However they now have pleasant area in new common room, so hope they are not too offended.

And pan upwards

No. of useless gatcha items bought: 2 (good); No. of screens bought that turn out to look too much like hospital screens to be of any use: 1 (bad); No of pans upwards to sky in Screenr screencast: about 6 (good, but cliched)
Am currently in Sweden and today gave talk about SL which will blog about when Danish gentlemen who was doing podcast has casted the pod. In fact have also been v.active in SL, since the not-inexpensive wifi in hotel is also v. good so am getting full money's worth.
However, when came to blog to post about presentation, found various unfinished blog posts, and decided should finish some of them, especially as the pics which had already uploaded are sort of relevant to one of current activities.
In this post, had already made some notes on 6th August, namely:
"Went inworld for 50 Linden Friday house from Turnip's
Saw notecard about Clemetis Gatcha
Saw installation of ChouChou sound bank
Followed creator profile to Chouchou sim
Thought was worth a screenr
Uploaded it to youtube
meanwhile
ppt is relutely refusing to upload. whyowhy"

hmm, is almost a poem. A bad poem, obviously. Anyway, will proceed to unpack this.

"Went inworld for 50 Linden Friday house from Turnip's": well, that is pretty self explanatory - a house from Turnip's for only 50 Linden. Bit of a no-brainer. Imagine saw some notice about it on the feeds.
"Saw notecard about Clemetis Gatcha": This arrived inworld whilst was in Turnip's waiting for things to rez, I think. Clemetis do cute stuff, and hadn't come across a roulette wheel gatcha before. The first pic is me having paid my 30 Linden, waiting to see which of the bags I'm going to get.
"Saw installation of ChouChou sound bank": This is the second picture. When you touch the boxes you get different kinds of sound - bells, voices, piano etc. After had played with this a bit:
"Followed creator profile to Chouchou sim": which was next couple of hours gone, basically.

There is this location shown in 3rd pic, of dreamy beach with piano and strange ladder into the sky.Then there is a cathedral in the sky and finally a place where you can encounter all the music boxes that I found initially, and buy them.

"Thought was worth a screenr" this was initially because I bought (free) and wore the cinematic HUD on ChouChou, which makes the camera sort of drift round you. I thought what a cool machinima this would make, so dug out my Screenr skills. At once discovered that I couldn't use the HUD when activating screenr, but still ChouChou is v. cool place, so in the end (after junking a number of false starts) made Screenr video. Tha tis embedded at the end of this post. It is silent, idea being that you listen to ChouChou music while you play theScreenr.

"Uploaded it to youtube" naturally. But wasn't totally satisfied with it so didn't upload it to Flickr
"meanwhile
ppt is relutely refusing to upload. whyowhy"
This was the ppt that presented today in RL in Gothenburg. Had put in "placeholder" ppt so could get Slideshare URL for presentation even before had uploaded it. You are supposed to be able to replace one presentation with another version, but essentially could not get this to work after several tries, so inend uploaded it as new. Never did find out why replacing hadn't worked.

Lost and found

Hours spent trapped in SL: 20 (v. bad); Minutes elapsed between reporting problem and getting fix: 5 (v. good)
Last night was footling about on Infolit iSchool when crashed. Nothing new there, but when tried to log back in, got message "The system is logging you out right now. Your account will not be available until ..." and then it would always give a time that was always 5 mins later than the time I tried to log in. It was v. late so gave up in hope that might sort itself out, and couldn't try again until this evening since am currently in Gothenburg and today was being conference chair for an event about information literacy for which had been lead organiser.
However, when DID try had same problem. Then logged in as Dimitrova and found self hovering in place where had crashed (see pic, Dimi happened to be dressed a la greek goddess at the time). Odd, though was grateful it had happened on Infolit, where am less likely to get bumped around etc.
Anyway, phoned LL at some expense from Sweden and helpful person quickly identified that SL had been "trying to save attachments" after crashing, & failing to do so, obviously, so she just restarted the region and then could log in OK. All attachments in place as well, as far as could tell. One embarrassment was that when asked to spell Sheila Yoshikawa, got v. muddled. Realised that have typed it countless times, but have possibly never been asked verbally to spell it before. May be some message here about literacies, but not quite sure what.

Shopping

Houses hunted: 12(good); Chairs hunted: 23 (approx); Waffle irons hunted: 1 (it opens, it closes, but it doesn't give waffles)
Have spent ahem (coughs) hours doing the House and Garden hunt, 50 shops, with some good stuff. When finished, rezzed it all out on Infolit (which brough Infolit perilously close to its prim limit, but that's another story)
Mostly people on the hunt were polite but purposeful, with not much chat, but towards the end, when tp-ed to Napoliy again after initial fruitless search, was approached by small lady with offer of help. Not only did she show me where the hunt item was, but she gave me her blog address, where she listed hints for all locations: at http://stephanieleclerc.blogspot.com/2010/08/httpslurl.html. Was very useful for filling in gaps, but did most of it myself.

Here it all is rezzed out, thought at this stage there was one item (a flower in a sack) that was actually the delivery bag and I thought it was the gift til I saw the full stuff on the feeds. Anyhow, here is all the goods rezzed out. This Belle Belle swing is very cute, but, as with all her stuff, a bit primmy.

Now all that remains is to work out what to do with it (inventory beckons, I fear).

Griefed

Boxes revolving in water at edge of sim: 1 (v. bad); Boxes replicating from first box: zillions (v.v. bad)
Had first taste of griefing on new land. Was pottering round in Heidi home (positioning a new sheep ornament and modding a straw hat to make it look like Heidi's hat, quite successfully I think) when heard noise and went out to see green screens zooming up.
Turned out there was a box bobbing away in the water, held just outside the boundary of my land. Have land set to no object entry, no build, no scripts, so think that stopped it coming on. However could not move or return it since was in Linden-owned water.
Wondered whether this might be connected to earlier incident, when came across Fedex van crashed into the river bank around the same point and returned it to its owner. Perhaps it had just dropped its Parcel of Doom, perhaps owner though Fedex van looked nice where it was and did the griefing out of spite.
Anyway, realised that despite oodles of sessions on How To Deal with Griefing offered at various conferences, had not really paid much attention, since have experienced v.v. little of it up til now.

Tried to at least put owner of offending object in ban list, but curiously the person picker could not find the name in search. Then started desultry search of SL website for place to report griefing to Lindens. Then as was v.v. late in my time zone, decided that perhaps if just logged off and went to bed, someone else would deal with it.

And this morning logged in and voila the thing was gone. So apathy was best policy in this case.

Can you have too many butterflies?

No. of butterfly objects in room: 11 (good)
Yesterday added another 3 butterflies to my butterfly/art room, namely the 3 hanging in front of the window at the back (they revolve! they are in 3 colours! they are copy! they were only 60 Linden!). This adds to butterfly chairs, butterfly table lamp, butterfly ceiling lights, butterfly table, butterfly ashtray and butterfly emitter. Butterfly emitter is responsible for good number of butterflies visible in picture, and is cunningly placed under table.
Question is: at what point does butterfly overload set in? I suppose at the point that I try to rez one and am told "cannot rez Another Supercute Butterfly in Noyo, because the parcel is too full".
Which means, pretty soon.

Home and abroad

Utopias visited: 4 (good); Artwork discovered near my land: 1 (good); Amount of land still held in Harms Way: none (good, but not exactly profitable)
Recently discovered four sims which are Art, namely the four Utopia sims which have been created by Bryn Oh. Dimitrova visited Utopia 4, and then a couple of days ago I did a Utopia hop of the other 3. Spent most time on Utopia 3 where there is a spooky statue (see pic) and a very creepy building.
When I got there, realised that it had been blogged by a couple of people on the fashion feeds: one of the features is a tree that turns slowly into a column of shopping trollies. Anyway, there is lots to see and do. Can buy the spooky statue (huge) for 15000 Linden, and is a bit tempting. Coincidentally then discovered that have another artwork by Bryn Oh on my doorstep: next door but one, so to speak. Was created for Helen Keller day last year and seems to be on Linden-donated land. Bit embarrassing that didn't notice it before, in fact.Anyway, adds further to general desirabilty of location.
Location is too desirable if anything; old land was just too laggy and busy to enjoy being on it, but now is very pleasant calmly to do tai chi overlooking the river and cherry blossom, or clamber around the mountain top tweaking the odd pine tree, or sit indoors contemplating view.
Also has distinct zones so am plannng to have some areas stable aand others which can play around with. Was reflecting on fact that thing am most pleased with is the "What Information/Literacy means to me" exhibit, and should really experiment doing more installations with words and visuals.
Have finally said goodbye to all old land in Harm's Way. Following useful conversation with neighbour on old land (who turns out to be friendly and nice, bit late to discover that) parcelled up land small and lowered price. She also said if land set to 0.5 Linden per metre would be picked up by bot and sell instantly. By tier date had only sold two plots, so set all the rest to low price and indeed they all immediately converted to Linden, not that many Linden, but still will keep me in shoes and artworks for a few weeks. Unless I buy the statue, that is.

A wasted evening or a pleasant evening?

Hours spent in SL last night: [mumbles shiftily] (bad? or good?)
Spent rather a lot of time in SL last night. Have been ruminating on whether this is Good Thing or Bad Thing. Peer pressure pushes one to latter view, but had reasonable amount of fun, so surely must be Good ...
Have been toying with idea of doing autoethnographic study and was thinking (whilst walking to work this morning in RL in pouring rain) about how might put together chatlog and pics and other people's pics to make a rich narrative of what went on. Was thinking could present this in SL, in fact ideal might be if you could be sent on the SAME JOURNEY (which implies some kind of HUD). However, believe that starting point (Relay For Life sims) are gone already. Therefore installations somewhere else in SL with giant posters and perhaps sound might do it, or COULD use one of the tour vehicles with one's commentary going on in text chat as you were flown round.
You may be thinking "surely autoethnography is some sort of cheat research" (unless you yourself are an authoethnographer, obviously). However, you can get published or even a PhD by doing it. This simple fact can be proved by googling "autoethnography aims" (as did but a short while ago).

The basics of autoethnography involve writing about yourself, but have to be illuminating some kind of reserarch problem, obviously, and also have to convince people that you are a sufficiently interesting case that you will give insights to others. Was thinking that perhaps if started by analysing a bit of data then might start refining questons. However, also realise that have just had annual Staff Review session with Head of Dept without word autoethnography passing lips, so perhaps thsi is one of those projects that will talk about for years and then lose interest in.
Anyway last night:
1) Visited Relay for Life sims, flying round the builds in a rather touristic fashion, pausing to try out any particularly cool animation e.g. shovelling coal or playing the church organ. There is big road, with donation points all along it.
2) Followed up on some items, found, notably, a v. pretty blue tree (which was Relay For Life charity item) and some goats. Bought tree but not goats. Sim with goats mostly sells wearable horses and hought horse demo which the tried out on Noyo after planting new tree.
3) Stalked visitor on my land who was outside one of my oriental houses, wearing sort of ronin outfit, in order to take pics.
4) This is point when might have gone home, but Brielle IMed me to ask if liked Scottish piping and next thing was doing a sword dance whilst the live pipes skirled away impressively. Stopped for a dram, then did some more dancing.
5) Looked at iheartsl fashion feed and saw an embedded video of this week's Fabulous Fashion which featured interview with creator of Swansong and Atomic Bambi. Watched it.
6) Remembered had Swansong dress in inventory that had never actually worn. Changed into it and saw it was good. Decided to base a look around it.
7) Tried on shoes, tights, wraps, necklaces, hair etc etc for some considerable time. Decided needed different shoes, went to G. Field where bought shoes AND tights. Also bought hair butterflies from Atomic Bambi.
8) Photographed self in rose garden in G. Field
9) Photoshopped and uploaded to Flickr, and then blogged outfit here.
10) Visited a sim. What? Why? Who knows, it was v. late by then, but think was in pursuit of some cute item. Anyway, ended up in Evans Cafe and at that point crashed out.

So, ever do analysis of the v. interesting night of 21st July, will be in good position to do so..

I discover I have many albums

No. of pics on Flickr: 2059 (good); No of pics on Picasa: 925. Plus 1000 more (surprising)
Am somewhat dim, but have only just woken up to fact that, since have Blogger blog and upload pics to Blogger blog, therefore as night follows day, have Picasa album containing pics from Blogger blog.
In early days of Blogger it was not owned by Google, and therefore pics went one knows not where into some vast bloggy picture server. Have feeling that when Blogger was bought by Google, for a while Google did not own Picasa (may be wrong about this and do not care enough to check). Anyway, have gone years now uploading pics to Blogger and it was only yesterday, when happened to click on question mark icon on the Upload panel, that was led through to info about Picasa and thence quickly to own Picasa albums.
In fact to multiple albums and also, since blog with multiple identities, multiple albums on multiple accounts. So I find that there are the aforementioned 925 pictures on MY Picasa: 2 albums of Adventuresofyoshikawa (not sure why there are two, looks like there might be a max size), plus 5 pics I uploaded on the Low Prim Living with Style blog (mostly by mistake) and 3 blogger profile pics. Additionally my Sheila Webber account had 1000+ pics that have been uploaded to the Information Literacy Weblog. Dimitrova also has a Picasa space, because of the stuff she uploads to Low Prim Living.

So this may be starting to seem a rather tedious blog post, but really did find it disconcerting to discover this large pool of my own content just sitting there out in the cloud without me realising. Was a bit as though had been placing photos with meaningful captions around my room to make artistic displays and suddenly discover that copies of all the photos were also simultaneously being chucked into a crate in the Departmental Office. As far as can see there is not a backwards link from pic to blog post (which is not surprising, as basically you are just linking from the post to the pic), but the CONTEXT or caption for the posts are therefore lost. Am not now going to waste yet more of my life creating 2000 captions. However, think is the decontextualisation of pics that find a bit odd.
Have not hesistated to make albums public (default being that Blogger albums default to private, which is something; at least they were, so to speak, in the Departmental Office and not in a grab bag in front of WH Smith). However, now that know they are there, might as well chuck them out to the interweb like my other stuff.
So if you want to see just the Yoshikawa pictures: go to .. umm .. I think go to http://picasaweb.google.com/101342941470414817695 May add link to Webber stuff as well, but would have to log out of this first, so will do it later. There is overlap with Flickr set, but not 100%.
Anyway THESE pics are of an exhibition of art created by David Hockney on his iPhone, and then of me doing Tai Chi at home, having liked the Tai Chi balls outside the exhibition gallery. Peace. Harmony. And so forth.

Sakura

Sakura bonsai bought: 1 (v. good); potted sakura hauled from inventory: 1 (good); sakura petal emitters removed from shop: none (bad)
Today went windsurfing in Bora Bora (for this photoshoot) and ended up browsing round the tikis. Discovered quite a bit of new stuff, including a whole gardening area that was new to me.
Included v. cute display of bonsai (see second picture), and could not resist cherry tree bonsai, which took home and positioned in entrance hall of the chinese house that is tucked on the hillside at Noyo.
From the start in 2007, have named my home land "Sakura" (Japanese for cherry blossom/ tree). So my first plot was called Sakura (as you can see here) and so was the land I have just given up and am still trying to sell ;-(( and now this new land in Noyo has been renamed. Have also kept in part of the original name, Urtahra (see here, Noyo was originally part of the Kahruvel Forest). I always have actual Sakura on my land, and you can see some of them outside in the first picture, a big pink tree near the entrance and some white blossom further off. I am lying on the rocky ground outside, listening to Ishbel's windchime and enjoying the view.
Also did a little bit of tinkering in the room next to the entrance hall, where have put some of my pictures (ex shop), a small sakura in a bamboo pot, an information literacy calendar, and a teleporter to infolit locations.
Have been meaning to put in more information literacy stuff, but so far that and Woolley the Sheep are it. Am wondering about putting Woolley (who contains definitions of information literacy and bleats) with the Heidi House sheep, but he might get an inferiority complex as they are infinitely better made. Well not infinitely, but a good deal.

Have also changed exhibition in my shop. Theme is now Glasgow Botanic Gardens, which visited last week in RL. Am v. fond of it: when lived in Glasgow, Botanics were only 10 minutes walk away. Background photos on walls and floor are of Kibble Palace (which houses national tree fern collection) and there are some photoshopped pictures of the carniverous plant displays plus some pics from a park in Prague. A stone dragon creature creaks and turns head to face you: have been meaning to find somewhere to use him for a while.
Display also includes falling sakura petals. This was not intention. Petals were part of previous display and spent at least 20 minutes trying to find out where the **** the petal emitter was. Tried CTRL ATL T to see invisible prims, cammed all over the shop from various angles and so forth, but thing is nowhere to be found. Anyway, falling petals not wholly inappropriate to this exhibition so in the end gave up.

Manifestations

Publication-related things: 3 (good)

1) Response to the 9th Virtual World Watch snapshot on use of virtual worlds in UK tertiary education: Silversprite decided to put it in full on his blog http://virtualworldwatch.net/2010/07/01/sheila-webber-responds-to-snapshot-9/

2) Paper by me and Adra Letov (or Sheila Webber and Diane Nahl, as we are known outside SL), which am going to present at the World Library and Information Conference in August in Sweden, and which is full text on the IFLA website: Sustaining learning for LIS through use of a virtual world at http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/123-webber-en.pdf

3) Was asked permission for reproduction of pic from Flickr, to go in a forthcoming book on digital literacies.

Picture (not the one that is going in the book, BTW) shows me taking some welcome morning coffee, from my new expresso maker. However, am thinking of asking for money back, since (as can be seen) coffee is quite plainly NOT expresso, but (at best) machiatto, and appears to be alarmly thick, given how far am tipping cup without anything dribbling out.

Cute

No. of poses in deer: 13 (unlucky for some?)
After last post decided should actually show cute hair from Exile (have already forgotten name of hair and can't be bothered to log back in and find out. Think it began with a K. Karen? Kerry? Something like that).
Since deer on mountain automatically = cuteness, decided to choose one of the dozen poses available when you sit on deer. Was intending to use Hug Deer pose, but turned out that this meant that ends of hair were poking out of deer's nose which ruined effect rather. Am not 100% sure about this pose, though. Is it cute, or is it just a bit weird?

For second attempt at cuteness posed in new cherry blossom hillside path that leads up from watermelon shop to shrine-y building that just put in, halfway up mountain. Surely can't go wrong with cherry blossom. Think this is probably more straighforwardly charming, but slightly vacuous.

Vacuous or whacky, which is cuter? You decide.

Trying it on

Hair bought: 2 (good)
Today visited Kin, which is shop where bought first proper hair, Kin's Ryuzaki. Rereading that 2007 post, note that at time thought hair might be "too cute". However, compared with some of the stuff have been wearing recently is relatively low on the too-cute scale. Realise that worry about being too-cute has been with me from start, but think that gradually cuteness threshold has risen.

Kin has now gone in for sculpted hair, which as always can be a bit alarming whilst it is rezzing (see first pic.).

However got. v. excited when realised that some of the demo hair at Kin is actually in MY COLOUR i.e. blue, which is something of a first. Normally demo hairs are in some random "normal" colour, and require some hope and imagination to visualise what will look like in blue.

Therefore could not resist buying a new Kin hair (see 2nd pic), which is actually a bit like Ryuzaki, but sculpted, so does not wave around in breeze so much.

Scoured walls to see whether Ryuzaki is still on sale, which it is, and was cheered by that. For months was really the only hair I wore and ended up buying it twice, since the first time around did not know about how you should COPY your hair before stretching it around (for a back up), so first Ryuzaki had to be abandoned in the end as it got somewhat malformed, with strange giant strands. Happy days.

Second hair, BTW, is a newish one from Exile (which does some nice blues). Is another "turning into me" kind of hair, since is long and straight, with a windblown effect. Evidently have learnt little from past experience since couldn't be bothered to copy it and instead started editing and stretching it straight away to try and get rid of bald patches. It still looks cute. Think the new Kin hair is more SL-me, though.

More stuff

Beach huts bought: 1 (patriotic); Weeping willows bought: 1 (pretty but superfluous); Fawn with 13 poses bought: 1 (v. good); Set of scuplted stone and garden stuff bought: 1 (good); Hot springs installed: 1 (v.v. good since was already in inventory)
Despite fact that already have 34,000 items, new land has stimulated consumption lobes, even more so since have actually sold one chunk of land (which is now on sale again at higher price, but would say likelihood of resale is correspondingly smaller). Thus have linden burning holes in virtual pocket.
Have created willowy waterside area, with variety of willows (i.e. willows made by 3 different designers) and decided that needed beach hut to complete this area. By happy chance, one of the offerings for Spruce Up Your Space this weekend was an English beach hut, complete with Union Jack details (actually to be ENGLISH should really just be St George's flag, as currently being torn off a zillion car aerials following the mollocking of England by the Germans in the world cup) (and what's with the blue union jack? perhaps it indeed symbolises the spirit of the nation following defeat).
Anyway, spent happy hour setting hut up and furnishing it with some items from the Bloggers Hut that was a previous SUYS buy, plus a couple of sculpty shells and one of my own pictures (duck on boat in canal, appropriate I thought). Also put in Antique Typewriter that bought ages ago, which tells people whether Sheila Yoshikawa is online and allows them to send me IMs. Obviously am hoping that these will be IMs complimenting me on exquisite taste and hopefully not complaints about blocking sea views or polluting riverside with excessive willow leaves.

I hope that Goggles settles in

Here is Goggles in my repositioned home. Am a bit worried. If he tries to walk back to Harms Way, most he can hope for is a return to my Lost and Found. Not sure he realises he is only made of prims.

Moving

Land set to sale: all in Harm's Way (Moving. But not as moving as had anticipated, actually)
It's my tier date soon, so I decided I really must clear out my land in Harm's Way and at least try to sell it. Know that mainland plots are v. hard to sell at the moment, so set it at about 2000 Linden per 512 and will hope for best. In fact should have split it up into smaller plots, rather than one lump, perhaps will do that tomorrow. If it comes to it, will abandon it, since in the end that might be cheaper than continuing to pay huge tier.

Had only intended to move my new skybox home + its contents(which proved quite easy to do, except there is always SOMETHING you leave behind, can see in first pic that it was a shadow and a rug in this case, also a couple of the potted plants and a saucer). Then started taking & deleting at ground level and decided in the end was better to get whole thing over at once.
Have had some kind of plot on Harm's Way since summer 2007, and had this particular part of it since November 2007, so may be a shock to the remaining neighbour who has been there as long as me. Managed to go all that time without exchanging a word, I think.
It is a pleasant place, with a sloping grassy hillside ending in beach and water, which is obviously why I liked it. However have just not been spending enough time there, since the views are not nearly as pleasant as when first moved in, and have mentioned lag issues.
Thought would feel quite moved by all this deletion (even more final than RL moving, since in RL one does not actually root out garden and demolish house once have removed furniture, normally). But think must have mentally said goodbye already, or something.

As final act, sat under spreading cherry tree and listened to windchime. This was a present from Ishbel when I got my first home and it has become a sort of ritual to move that last.
It is installed in my new land, so it definitely is home now.

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?

No pollen in SL

Hay fever suffering in RL: great (v. bad); Hay fever suffering in SL: zero (good)
In RL am v. miserable with streaming eyes, sneezing etc etc since hay fever season is in full swing. Over many years have tried various pills, sprays drops etc. but these have zero effect (apart from adverse effect on purse) so main therapy is staying indoors with doors and windows closed, a rather stuffy remedy which is not favourite with nearest and dearest. Am allergic to common grass pollen, therefore, since said grass is, understandably, common, am international hay fever sufferer, and if were very rich masochist would be possible to be suffering from hay fever all year round by following the pollen season around the globe e.g. was unpleasantly surprised when visited Melbourne in November (their early summer) a few years ago to find that Australian pollen was as irritating as British pollen.
Anyway, here I am in SL, enjoying the virtual grass with no side effects whatsoever, hah, take that, hay fever.

Children's and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces

On 19th June in Second Life, is the second half of the final meeting in a seminar series funded by the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC): Children's and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces. The first half of the conference takes place in Sheffield, UK, and the conference continues with a free event in Second Life. The aim of this seminar series is to consider the digital literacy practices which take place in virtual online spaces and to explore potentialities for literacy educators. In this final conference, speakers will consider the nature of literacy in virtual worlds and Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)

The start time is 6am Second Life time (2pm UK time, for start times in other countries see http://tinyurl.com/39vvq6q ). The location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/169/173/22 The Second Life schedule is as follows.
- 6am (SL time) Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in SL), University of Sheffield, host in SL - introduction
- 6.10-6.50am Peggy Sheehy (Maggie Marat in SL), I'm not good at Math but my avatar is
- 7am – 7.40am Rebecca Black, University of California (Irvine)
- 7.50 – 8.20am Constance Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Virtual worlds at the nexus of a constellation of literacy practice.
- 8.30am SL time Wrap up from Julia Gillen, Lancaster University

Information on the whole day's event is at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/digital-literacies/events/conference.htm and on the complete seminar series at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/digital-literacies/index.htm

In transit

Linden spent on new land: Too many (bad); Plots bought overlooking Cowell and Forest of Kahruvel: 1 (v.v. exciting)
Have had itchy feet for ages, since although like many things about current personal land-holding, it has become laggier and laggier, which is why last addition was (as noted in previous post) put right up in sky above it. However, since favourite occupation is landscaping, seems a bit pointless to have land that is no fun landscaping, because of lag. Also views have become less and less attractive with fewer green areas and more high walls and nightclubby stuff.
Recently noticed land on Mare that was for sale, but ridiculously priced. However, last week was in land-hopping mood, so zoomed out Map a bit and started to teleport, starting at Mare, from yellow (for sale) area to yellow area until suddenly found self in very pleasant steep hillside area, with river on 2 sides. Then realised with excitement that was right next to seaside village of Cowell.

Now, had discovered Cowell very early on: it is part of the Phyneas Jack Memorial Trust land and had thought at time would love to live there (except noone lives there, my guess is that (being quite elderly in SL terms) the actual village is quite primmy, so wouldn't be room to have extra stuff from tenants). Anyway, have visited it every now and then, and still find it charming.
From website (linked above) discovered that area for sale was previously part of the estate but was now being sold off. Price was not dirt cheap, but really very reasonable for something with such a good prospect. Area for sale was the same size as current land ... so dithered for whole hour, but really it was foregone conclusion that before long would be hearing mega tinkle tinkle of Linden as claimed the land. Should really have waited to sell/abandon current land, pass tier date and THEN buy, but having a short dual period means can shift treasured material bit by bit.

In fact the first area that worked on had (another) new house, namely the Heidi house, which is quite plainly modelled on the one in the Miyazaki Heidi anime series. Am about halfway through this series, and actually the view from the cute circular window in the upstairs loft (where Heidi has her straw bed) is v. similar in SL and in the anime (you can see the hut on that Japanese site).
Should really be goats (rather than sheep), but had to delete goat shed to fit nicely on mountain top, also had no goats in inventory but did have some v. cute sheep, one of which have named Heidi, and one of which have named Hercule after Heidi's grandfather's dog (in the French language dub of the anime, am watching it in French since there is no available English dub).

2nd area for development was right at the other end of my new estate, where installed the Frida home from Mudshake, complete with all the stuff had put in it on previous land. Shown here is the view over an inland pond, with the Frida home to the right(barely seen) and Cowell village and Abotts Aerodrome in view over the water.

The day is done

Events organised: 4 (good); Events taking place: 4 (good); No. of lines types into ISTE IM rather than local chat: 12 (approx) (bad)

Had long day in SL, since today was the information literacy mini-festival. List of things done includes:

- Presentation slides converted into jpegs, renamed, uploaded to SL and copied into presenter: 26 (actually uploaded them twice, so is 2x26, since first time forgot to make thge jpgs full perms and this was quicker than changing 26 permissions by hand)
- Customised teleporters created (with links to 4 venues and 1 tour site): 1
- Boards with notecard containing programme: 1
- Customised teleporters and notecard boards placed: 6 of each, at actual venues, and 2 key landing points
- Notecards created for own presentations: 2
- Posters created with weblinks: 2
- No. of notices and IMs sent out advertising events: lots

- Time spent deciding on conference outfit: suprisingly little, which is perhaps why ended up with something of a Scottish Widows look.

Anyway all was ready by 7am SL time which is when own presentation on "Information Literacy for 21st century Life" started. Had also had nice conversation with someone who was at the INFORUM conference but who hadn't talked to in RL. Audience included people from good number of countries including Italy, Poland, USA, UK and Czech Republic.

Low point was start. Whereas in RL when giving presentation have some moments to gather thoughts and ready self for speech, in this case was worrying til last moment about whether everyone had found the venue, could get notecard etc. etc. Anyway, introduced self and mini-conference in text chat, but had been rattling on for some time when had gentle IM which alerted me to fact that had been typing away into the ISTE group chat, rather than local chat. Mortification. ISTE has about 5000 members so that is a lot of potential spam, although at least at that time of day there are fewer people inworld.

Anyway, things could only brighten up after that. Was basically giving this presentation, minus a few slides to make sure it was within time, and it seemed to go ok. Afterwards some people continued on to Sakura House where talked about some other sessions at the 2 RL conferences had been at.

Pi Illios' health literacy sessions (in Spanish at 9am and in English at noon) were successes: I joined in the English language one only, since my Spanish is confined to words like "Hola" "Gracias" and "Merluza a la plancha" (grilled hake), though I also know the Spanish for information literacy.

Relaxed at end of day by sitting in my 60s home, buying some parasols (from a gatcha, so cheap) and posing in one of AM Radio's installations. Finally did some tidying up on Infolit and changed the advertising board for the next multi-event, on 19 June. So soon will be hey ho for another round of advertising and goody bags. Have already collected something that gives you a wearable balloon in the shape of a cherry blossom, sure that will go down a treat with delegates.