Virtually Good Read!

Virtually Dead by Peter May


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My heart is still hammering! Stayed up to 1 am to finish and then couldn't sleep. I like this book so much because I'm familiar with Second Life and I can relate to a lot of it on that level (by alternately going, "Oh, yeah - that's sooo SL!" and "You Can't Do That!" It's as exciting as seeing your home town featured in a book. It's like going to see "Ghostbusters" while living in Manhattan and watching some of the filming. My SL quibbles are all minor. There's not enough bad spelling in the chat dialogue (which I always think adds to the fun if not the realism - but I can see why you don't want to put out a book full of typos), if any. There was some lipservice paid to the abominable English perpetrated by otherwise very clever builders and scripters, but it just doesn't give the savor of the Real SL experience - "LOL" - that I find so delightful and that I, too, mine for humor.
So now I have to pull myself back and look at it as a "thriller" (because apparently women write mysteries but men write thrillers). It certainly has all the elements:
betrayal - check!
false identities - check!
switchbacks -check!
"dead herrings" [personal in-joke:] - ... umm, check!
transgenders - check!
and cybersex - wowza!
(okay, that last one wasn't typical thriller material). The protagonist definitely has his share of agony: emotional, personal, financial, and professional. (On top of it all, his co-workers have a sick, sick, sick sense of humor.)
May was also forced to use the rather hackneyed Villain Monologizes To Explain What Happened, but that's a tough one to get around. The chase scenes inside SL and Michael's struggles outside were exciting, the Villain's Master Plan was needlessly but delightfully convoluted, and the ending was sweet.
In short, it was good enough that I wish there was more of it, and, good thing my therapist doesn't make me walk through pools of blood!

View all my reviews >>

Digital Youth, Part II: Megan Deana

The second speaker in the morning was Megan Deana from Global Kids. Megan started out with a degree in computer science and then moseyed to education (presumably because she'd be making too much money in computer science) and got a job through LinkedIn that led her to the non-profit group, Global Kids, whose mission is to transform urban youth into successful students and global and community leaders by engaging them in socially dynamic, content-rich learning experiences. Ninety percent of their students graduate from high school. Digital media is just a part of this.
Megan works with the Online Leadership Program, a student-centered program, which leads the kids to things they need to know in order to be successful, collaborating with different kinds of people. They learn about global issues by building and playing socially conscious video games. They spend the 1/3 of the first semester discussing what topic they want to cover. They learn what goes into making a game by partnering with a game designer professional [Don't think our library can manage that].
One group created "Ayiti: The cost of life" where players help a Haitian family living in poverty make decisions in work, education, etc. to better their situation. [Far cry from the 1960s board game about living in a ghetto, eh? I remember going straight into prostitution on that game.]
Another program is the Virtual Video Project. They do a machinima video on a topic of they're interested in. They meet twice a week, lured in with subway tickets and snacks. They learn storyboarding, scriptwriting, character development, and set designing (digitally, of course, because this is machinima). Example is "A Child's War" - where they interviewed experts and put together a fictionalized account using Second Life. They learned presentation skills, pitching their ideas to Ashoka Youth Ventures.
Global Kids guides the kids, facilitating not teaching.
They learn how to create a "safe space" in which to interact, and decide their own rules on this, defining respect as no cursing, no put-downs, no weapons [well, duh!].
Use a technique called the human barometer, where spaces are set out (say, on different levels) for "for," "against," and "undecided." And they have to explain why they are moving from one level to another.
There is a Ning for educators interested at RezEd: the hub for learning and virtual worlds.

Digital Youth Conference Part I

BlueWings uses her voice chat to stream the audio from the Digital Youth summit into SL. I type notes madly trying to keep up.

If you don't want to bother with my notes, the podcast for this part of the summit is here.

Today I attended the Second Life (I know, I know) herniation of the Digital Youth summit at ImaginOn in Charlotte. The keynote speaker was Anastasia Goodstein. Goodstein is the author of Totally Wired: what teens and tweens are really doing online http://www.totallywiredbook.com/. Her blog, YPulse http://www.ypulse.com/, is a leading media, technology and youth development information source, and School Library Journal recently published Goodstein's article What Would Madison Avenue Do? Marketing to Teens. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6555544.html

[Cribbed from Deborah Hotchkiss's promotional e-mail]

We had some technical hiccups to begin with, but then got the stream of Anastasia's speech fairly clearly. I took notes like mad, but I wasn't always able to keep up. Anastasia gave a presentation on Teens in the morning and one tailored more about Tweens in the afternoon. Also speaking in the morning was Megan Deana of Global Kids, a non-profit group working with urban youth and digital media.

Megan Deana of Global Kids

Anastasia began by describing SL to the attendees, who, if they were familiar with SL, would be listening to the conference in the comfort of their own homes wearing sweatpants and petting their kitties. Ahem. She was describing the Teen SL as a teaching tool. She went on to talk about social sites (such as MySpace and Facebook). Teens are too savvy to talk with creepy over 50s that could be either librarians [got me nailed there] or predators. They don't want to hang around authority figures of any sort. They want to interact with other teens, preferably ones they already know. But their lives are not constructed to hang out with friends, like our were. Teens lead highly structured lives where they have more lessons scheduled outside of school or sports activities. The places where they used to hang out, such as the malls, are becoming more restrictive. The bad behavior of a few teens has eliminated a real world space for them to meet. One of the few ways left to hang out with their peers is through social sites or mobile devices. And these are becoming increasingly popular.

Picture youself as a teen and recall the music you listened to. [I know I listened to the radio while doing my homework. There are certain songs that can whip me back to particular times of my life faster than an SL teleport ... when it's working.] Music is something very important to teens and young people. Choosing favorite songs and artists helps give them identity. MySpace started as a place for 20-somethings in the arts to display their wares. Teens are always interested in what the 20s are doing (the way that Tweens are interested in what the Teens have), and they were lured in by their favorite musicians. Then the Teens co-opted it for their own use, making contact with each other and displaying their individuality (personalizing their profiles).

Most teens (about 55%) use social sites like this. They are starting to migrate from MySpace to Facebook because of the rampant spamming and commercialism in the former (partially from being snapped up by Fox and forced to generate real revenue). Facebook started as a place for Harvard students to connect. Then they grudgingly opened it up to other Ivy League schools. It was meant for college students, but their teen siblings saw them using it and wanted in. Besides, authority-types (such as the police and parents) had cottoned on to the party bulletins that were sent out on MySpace. Many parties were being busted. Now even us common folk can join to make contact with old and new friends. Facebook tends to attract the more upwardly mobile, "college type" people while the Other Folk tend to stick to MySpace. Facebook was meant for people who already knew each other [although recently I've been receiving messages acquainting me with people I might know, based on the friends lists of people I do know whom I can add to my list of friends. That is still pending on their approval, though.] Despite the influx of teens, the over 40s are the largest growing segment of the population on these sites. Most teens have profiles on at least 2 sites.

Other social sites that are growing quickly: myyearbook.com, Beebo, skonex (??) tagged.com.

Teens are also all over the virtual worlds. Teen SL is one, but it's not the most popular and tends to be more for the nerdy types who enjoy scripting, etc. They are predominantly male and mostly have parents in the SL maingrid. Other, more popular worlds: gaia online, zwinktopia, hammahotel [don't quote me on this stuff - I didn't have a powerpoint in front of me], virtualhills (and MTV virtual world that eventually moved to gaia because that's where the teens were). The virtual worlds are the new chatrooms. MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft are too much crowded with content to be places to chat. You're busy helping your team achieve some goal to talk about the latest music. [And this is why Linden Labs and IBM have been working on allowing avatars to cross platforms, so that you can slay dragons in WoW and then cross into SL, which is rubbish for gaming apparently, to a bar and boast to your buddies, possibly bring the head of the victim with you.] 24% of children/teens will use virtual worlds monthly, making them not nearly as popular as the social sites.

Identity: It's all about who am I and how am I different from my wretched parents. And they have no taste, most of them, at this age. Their profiles are littered (or perhaps glittered) with these expressions of individuality. The way we had individualized our lockers [those of us who bothered - can't say I did], they find crazy fonts and widgets for their profiles and special ringtones and wallpaper for their mobile phones.

While some kids just use sites for socializing, others make them altars to their interests. They make mash-ups, and Anastasia used as an example the craze last year for making your own video for SoulJa Boy [video on this link explains it all]. If you go to YouTube, you'll find hundreds of versions where kids do the dance themselves or they set Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob video to the song. Crank that! [Apparently the new In Thing is to make a parody of Katie Perry's "I Kissed a Girl."]

Validation, Fame, and Fortune: Today's teens feel differently about privacy that we did and do now. Anastasia blames, I mean, traces this back to reality tv shows. They are used to seeing real people using the camera as a confessional. They share their most personal thoughts and feelings in blogs and on video. Using Paris Hilton and her sex tape as a paradigm, they feel such exposure only makes someone more famous, more notable, and they don't see it as the end of the world. Anastasia opines that if employers start eliminating hires based on their Facebook pages, they would soon run out of viable candidates. The emphasis today is on celebrity (Top Model, etc.) and not so much on how you achieve it. They seek instant validation, which the technology can provide. How many views on YouTube this past hour? [Erm, or who's looking at my blog through lijit.com.] She gave examples of teen entrepreneurs becoming famous behind the scenes, so it's not all just for notoriety.

Education and School: Nickelodeon proposed taking the internet away from kids for a week and asked what they missed most. They claimed they were unable to do their homework. [A likely story!] When the computers go down in offices, the Babyboomers say, "Go get a pencil and do some brainstorming," and the GenYer's say, "We can't do anything - let's go to Starbuck's." Teens are great at getting information, they just don't have the patience to sift through the first five hits. They're great finders, but not memorizers [Now they keep their memories outside of their skulls?]. They depend too much on Wikipedia without thinking about any editing going on there. Corporations can edit Wikipedia to suit themselves. This can be tracked on Wikiscanner. Teens don't realize they can be manipulated.

Anastasia considers the blocking of social sites at schools (and some public libraries) to be a travesty. This means that there is no way for teachers to show them how they can be used better, safer. Teens are on their own, like in Lord of the Flies.

Teens are media multi-taskers; they'll have everything going at once. Homework, four browser windows open, music playing, IM popping in and out. The tv networks are terrified. They still read what's left of the teen magazines. They want shorter, bite-sized entertainment, like the webisodes. Prom Queen was a story in segments less than one minute long. They are the most-marketed to generation. They totally "get" brands. They brand themselves.

Things to do:
1. Survey your teens. [We are told over and over and over to ask people what they want, but do we do it? No. We decide what they should have and then get all frustrated that they aren't grateful and don't show up in droves. Again and again this happens. We know this, we've been told this by experts, and we never never never ever do it!]
2. Teach them reputation management
3. Teach them to recognize ID product placement, when something is not a straight-forward ad, but is sneaked into content.
4. The trailblazers need to evangelize - reach out beyond your trailblazing peers.
5. Support efforts to unblock social media in schools (and public libraries where it occurs)

Questions:
We weren't able to hear the questions asked (next time let's instruct the speakers to repeat them because I'm sure even all the people on location were able to hear the questions). There was a question about inappropriate relationships with the teens. Anastasia suggests you be available to teens, but not friends. Have your own friends and professional contacts, not teen friends.
Webblogged [couldn't find] has lists of books on using social networks and tech for education, also extensive blogrolls for online reference.
Kids want more and better cellphones because they want the internet available on their cellsphones. [OMG]

Pants On Fire

Live video feed in Second Life from the BlogHer '08 Conference in San Francisco. By the second day, the feed from the conference was much better and the closing session was only interrupted once. They promise to do even better next year

"But you promised, you say. You swore you were moving all this icky Second Life crap to another blog and we wouldn't have to see it anymore!"

Calm down, calm down - this isn't about SL (well, it is; but in for a penny, in for a pound). This is a report on the conference I attended which just happened to have herniated into SL. It was the BlogHer '08 conference for women bloggers. I have a blog (okay, I lie again, I've got about five ... or so ... I've lost track), I'm a woman (or perhaps I just play one in SL), SL attendance was FREE (and we know how I love that word) and I thought "what the hey!"

Panelists for the Blogging SL session and some of the attendees (note wheelchair accessibility).

In the beginning, we had some technical problems. The feed from the live conference ("live"? what's that?) in San Francisco kept cutting in and out. After the intro and keynote came the break-out sessions and there were some specially devised for SL. Over the course of two days I attended the Blogging and Second Life, Second Life and Security, and Using Second Life for Good (not Evil) sessions. Just like any other session in Real Life (tm) there is a panel that discusses their experiences and then the attendees were allowed to make comments and ask questions. In most cases, the panel operated in voice chat (except when their transmission was icky and then they did text chat). To keep things reasonably organized, the attendees used text chat. In one of the sessions, someone transcribed the voice chat for the technologically impaired. I wish someone had done that at one of the Info Island conferences when I didn't have voice chat when I was unable to hear anything. I was working directing people to the correct sessions and had hoped to be able to attend sessions, but that was verklapft. Now my system can handle voice chat. Whee!

While Lludmila is all dressed up and professional-looking, her typist is in sweatpants, unwashed hair, and probably picking her nose.

While at the conference, I mini-blogged the experience on Twitter, annoying all the people who follow my tweets, no doubt. I noticed Lexi did this all the time and it annoyed me until I saw how useful it was. Yes, I could take notes and I could probably share them, but I was able to share bites immediately with my "posse" and get comments back from some of them, one who had already tried an internet tool I mentioned in a tweet.

This is a wonderful tool that our State Library should employ so that more librarians can attend conferences and workshops. There is no driving time or distance involved, a much smaller carbon footprint, no parking, no overnight stays, no per diem. Of course it is always better to be there live, but this not only saves time and money, it's just dead cool.

I will add more info on the conference on my SL blog so that those who are interested (ha!) can read it there and the rest of y'all are off the hook.

Update

Please note that I'm sending all further blogs about Second Life to another blogspace. You can find that one under my profile here. Y'all didn't give a (tinker's) dam anyway.
Also, Bob has added a new video. You can click on it at the left where I have a quasi-permanent link to his channel or you can click on the title to this. It's awesome.

Slideshare

Yes, I've signed up for something else! This time it's Slideshare, because there are many people on Second Life (yes, yes, I know you're tired of hearing about that) who use this. As you may recall, I have been using Zoho to create slideshows (PowerPoint type presentations) and embed them into this blog (and perhaps elsewhere).
Such as this latest one from Zoho:


In Slideshare, you have to create your slides elsewhere. Fortunately, I have PowerPoint available on this computer because the Zoho slideshow file format is not supported. Oh, dear! I'll have to start over. Perhaps with something easy:

| View | Upload your own

Okay, that wasn't so bad, other than having to deal with PowerPoint, which was not as easy as Zoho nor as much fun and creative as Scrapblog. I was hoping it would be as familiar as Publisher, but I found it confusing. I should probably complain about PowerPoint in some other blog, but it was the main thing that slowed me down. I had to download each picture from Flickr to this computer. Zoho will take the url directly and has an actual link to Flickr (but I have almost 4,000 pictures up and they don't currently have a way to get at the sets, like Scrapblog does). Not even Slideshare's uploading and conversion (rather like YouTube in that respect) was that lengthy. Odd that. Slideshare can be uploaded directly to Blogger (as well as MySpace, Facebook, and LiveJournal, to name a few) on the sidebar, but we all know my sidebar here is full.
Good gracious! The slideshow has been looked at twice and I just got it up! I wonder if they're counting my previews while I'm blogging this ... Gottinhimmeldonnerwetter!* The count is up to 7!!! Just while I've been typing this bit! Well, that's why I put it up there: to be seen! This is so exciting! Hee. Ah, and the counter differentiates between views and views of embedded slideshow. Nice.
This could be useful (and fun) if you have any slideshows you want to share with the world at large. Also, you're supposed to be able to add sound to the slideshow. Don't have sound on this computer, so I'll give that test a miss for the moment.

* a little German swearing by the weather

At Last ...

It's more than a month in the making ... but here is the Science in Second Life slideshow:
(Cross your fingers)

zoho comes through!

Here is the slideshow I tried to embed before, but now I have no trouble with at all!

SCLA 2007

The link is to the program ... which took me four clicks to reach from the SCLA homepage. Heads up, guys! When I was looking for information, I had to really hunt for it. Four clicks is the minimum for someone who knows exactly what they're looking for because they already found it once. I can't tell you how long it took me to find the program when I first hunted for it. If you have a big annual event coming up, there should be a direct and obvious link on your homepage.
The same thing applies to us, I guess.
Ahem.
Next time remind me to drive myself - or to check to see when people think they are arriving and leaving.

South Carolina in Second Life

[Sigh. There she goes about Second Life again!]. I had been asked by Catherine and Kevin to be on the panel, for questions at the end (so being there at the very beginning wasn't necessary). Then when Catherine batted the ball to me, I choked and had to pass. Hmm, mixed metaphor there. I don't think every library needs a presence in SL, but when the question was asked, "Why at all?" I thought it was self-answering. "Is there any reason for being in SL other than because people are there?" You could ask the same question about any branch library or bookmobile stop. Why scatter yourself all over? Make the public come to you. Haven't they got legs? Doesn't everyone have a car? If they have a computer with internet at home, surely they also have a car and you have a website. Why add this new interface?
Why do telephone reference? Damned technology, messing up our lives!
Why provide materials for the handicapped (they're useless anyway), non-English speakers (they should learn the language!), children (most can't read), or any specialized group?
Why stay downtown when you could move out to the suburbs, have a lovely library without the pesky homeless people walking in and spoiling the ambiance?
We go where there are people! It's our job!
Kevin showed that you could have a storefront in SL for the total cost of Zero United States Dollars ($0.00). Lemme see, how much is that in Linden Dollars ... dum-de-dum, carry the four ... uhhhhhh, Zero Again (0.00L)! And he has a conference room with a video uplink. Of course, he doesn't have any puppet shows going on ...
It was also brought up that you get a certain amount of anonymity in SL you don't get when you bring Home Remedies for the Clap up to the giggling women at the circ desk. There's a medical library on SL with live staff to direct you to better websites, and if they giggle, you'll never hear it. An avatar's face remains pleasantly frozen.
And I didn't remember to point out that I wouldn't have had to travel over two hours to get there if the sessions were simultaneously on SL. I could have slept to a normal time, sat in front of my computer in my jammies with a mug of tea, and not missed a thing. Well, unless there was a technical glitch. And then I might have connected late and ... oh, hmmmmmm.
I was able to give Kevin a real hug when it was over. Bless him, he has the energy and conviction of a Pentecostal preacher.

Serving SC Latino youth

I took a page and a half of notes on this and got an 8 page handout. Jamie Naidoo started by reading one of my favorite stories, Just a Minute! by Yuyi Morales. He went over the statistics on official and undocumented latinos in SC. We don't need to do any research, we can see them every day. Latino culture is based on four core values: familia, pertenecia, educacion, and compromiso. Note that the family one is first.
Intergenerational programming is best. They will come as a family.
Find someone in the latino community to assist in planning.
Survey the community before doing anything.
Naidoo is concerned about stereotyping, inaccuracies, and omissions. Bi-lingual books can have bad translations or the Spanish may be represented in a way that diminishes it (placement, font style or color that makes it difficult to read). We should be on the look-out for these things in choosing books.
The hand-out was loaded with resources, printed and web, that will take ages to sort through to glean info useful to our particular situation.
Tidbits:
When doing a bi-lingual storytime and you have the book in English and the book in Spanish - should you read the whole book in one language and then in another? At Lexington they are able to double-team for bi-lingual storytime, so one person reads one page in one language and the other person follows up with the same page in the other language. That's handy! [So, if you just have one person? Use the Spanish book and translate page by page. It may have to be a very simple one such as Oso pardo, oso pardo, or you might just have to memorize it.]
Idea for a program: make a dia de los muertos altar! (There's one in SL, as a matter of fact!). Do holiday programming, on Saturdays (hush my mouth!), once a month.

Lunch

I hadn't meant to stay for lunch. I didn't see an afternoon session I was interested in, but everyone else was staying for lunch. I wasn't even hungry until the vendors kept talking about lunch. Is everyone going to the lunch? Was the lunch extra? What are they having? We might go somewhere. After listening to all of that, I regretted my decision to not have the lunch (although there is really nothing worse than convention food - and I saw that the dessert was already sliced and drying out on the tables). I decided to eat at the hotel, and I ran into Annette from Abbeville at the bar. Ahem ... I mean, we ran into each other at the hotel restaurant. We ate and had a nice chat and she talked about some YA programming she had done that sounded like a lot of fun (instead of having everyone make the duct-tape wallet, she had instructions for that, another duct-tape craft, and then threw out the rolls of tape and let 'em have at it!). We agree at how much you can plan for a craft and then see that the kids will take it to another degree. I told her about the people pens we made one year with round-stick Bics and embroidery floss. One teenager just couldn't deal with it and one 9 year old boy made what he said was Britney Spears, complete with long blonde hair and exposed midriff. I made a Sammy Sosa. I should send her that page from American Girl where I found that craft.
It makes me think I should turn the wiki into a craft info center where we can share ideas and photos of crafts.

21st Century Literacy

This was far more interesting than I thought it would be. It was the closest session to my field, and I didn't expect much. Deborah Yoho (not about to forget that name) works for the Organization Formerly Known As Literacy Council. They merged with some group and now call themselves "Turning Pages." Things like this only inspire a rant with me about how names of companies these days just don't make sense. I am suspicious when companies change names (often to shake off bad publicity). Gone are the days when someone's name meant that a genuine person or family took pride in their business. But I'll save that rant for another blog.
Part of the problem with learning to read in schools today is the "tension" between the three methods: phonics, whole language, and sight word. When dealing with kids with learning difficulties and especially with adults, you have to find the best method to use with them. That will require some one-on-one teaching which is expensive.
In SC we are still dealing with the legacy of the denigration of education. Education was not compulsary for all SC children until the early 1960s. I ran into a more in-depth view of education in SC, particularly in the upstate, in Kathy Cann's history of Spartanburg Methodist College, Common Ties. SMC started up as a school to teach textile workers, some who had had no education or school experience prior to attending.
You didn't need any school to work in the textile mills and children were often brought to the mills to watch their parents work until they were old enough to be doffers or take on some other paid job. This was in the 20th century.
We babyboomers are the last generation to reach a greater education level than the one before us. I see in my notes that I don't say we are better educated. Or smarter. There's this synergy between a lost generation (education-wise), immigration, and shrinking resources that is creating "The Perfect Storm." [I'm so glad she brought that up because I hadn't heard of that movie/book and it was part of the answer to a question on "Says You!" last night. That made me look soooo smart!]
Literacy needs: volunteers, space (we'll have more space in the new library), and resources such as books and magazines for new readers. It would also be nice to have a private audio-visual space. Math books. (This is so hard for librarians. If we could do math, we'd be in industry making the big bucks.)
An important lesson she learned is that It's About Story. She had to relinquish her animosity toward the furry animals in stories when she discovered that the adults could relate to them because they were in stories. Go figure!
It is about stories. It is the stories that engage children and adults. A story makes it worth puzzling out to the end of the word, the end of the sentence, and all the way to the end of the piece. Did it turn out the way you expected? Was it satisfying? Was it worth the effort? It made me want to tutor ... although the idea that it took Yoho four years to get her group up to a second grade reading level is pretty daunting.

Direct Blogging from Flickr

Well, let's face it, all I do is mess around on SecondLife, take screenshots, upload them to Flickr, and then write about them in my blog. So why mess around? There's a direct blog-link from Yahoo's Flickr to various blogs, even to a Google minion like Blogger. I'll see how that works.

ISTE Social

ISTE-SL members sit around the campfire while Lludmila sets fire to her pants with a flaming marshmallow

I don't recall, but I think the cat was supposed to put the fire out. I've already tried using cats to put out fires at my house and I know from experience that it does not work. I think, though, it was kindly meant. The social was a chance to show off pets (and flaming confections) and for some to discuss the NECC conference. Boring. cnyreject (that's a name and no it isn't capitalized) provided some fireworks for us. We all turned our sun to night so they'd show up better.

Most of the people at ISTE know each other already and it's hard to get to know them. Some are friendlier than others, but the surefire way to get someone there to talk to is to find someone new who's lost. I found mine at Info Island walking around with ISTE Member over her head. Heh-heh!

Fireworks provided by cnyreject, with the campfire in the corner

Let's Go Surfin' Now!

Lludmila learns the meaning of the expression "Poking Ten"

I just love this shot. Notice how the other surfer's feet are poking out the bottom of his surfboard. This was so much fun and very easy. The waves are pretty fake looking, but the ride is convincing. I had to go back to the Weather Channel sim to take a screen shot of this (and then photoshop out the SecondLife elements like buttons, etc.) because I couldn't use the in-world camera while surfing. When I returned, there were other surfers and I ran into one every now and then, but it's about impossible to wipe out. Kasia confirmed that surfing was easy, but the skiing was hard.

I'm sure everyone will be tired of looking at Lludmila's backside, lovely though it may be. Without my camera controls (and it all goes way too fast to move them), that's all you can see.

Mountain Biking

To warm up aprés ski, Lludmila goes mountain biking in the desert

and contemplates the meaning of existence.

I guess skiing wasn't dangerous enough. However, as she is ever conscious of safety and the possibility that children might be reading this blog, Lludmila dons a bicycle helmet and goes for a pedal in the desert. Virtual bikes ride much easier in sand than real ones! The Weather Channel was nice enough to add a point of interest here and there. Lludmila just loves dinosaurs! But she wishes she could reach her handlebars. Oh, well!

Skiing the Weather Channel

Lludmila skis unsuccessfully

Someone else, perhaps Kasia, recommended the Weather Channel sim in SecondLife. Fresh from her successful jaunt into Chichen Itza, Lludmila tried out surfing and then went for the slopes. Skiing is not as easy as surfing, but she did not give up.

"I wanna try that again!"

There's nothing like a challenge. This time Lludmila bypasses the ski-lift (which was entertaining once) and takes the tp (teleport) back to the summit. On this run, she lost a ski ... and her foot. That's right, my avatar lost her foot. It's just a good thing the avatars don't die, or Lludmila would be in serious trouble: frostbite (she's still in Mayan princess garb), windburn, freezing temperatures, avalanches, blizzards, lost limbs ... Too bad I didn't think to take a picture of her with the foot gone, but it would probably only look as if her foot were in a snowbank.

So Proud

Lludmila shows off something she made all by herself: a s'less

SecondLife has spaces called sandboxes where one can go and make things. This sandbox on EduIsland is hardly ever used. In fact, I think it's located way up in the sky where passing avatars would not come across it. An avatar could stand around naked there for ages without being noticed. Not that one would do anything like that, but sometimes one needs to try on clothes and things accidentally come off ... all at once.

Anyway, after the ISTE social Thursday night, someone remarked that we had marshmallows but no s'mores. This prompted Lludmila to repair to a sandbox and see if she could build one. How hard could it be? Two tan flattened squares, one dark brown flattened square, and ... something white and squishy-looking. Lludmila used her skills from building chairs (that she adapted to making tiny things such as earrings and necklace pendants) to build a s'more. It's called a "s'less" because it might be a s'more, but not quite.

Objects in SecondLife are built from primitive shapes called "prims." The square is one, and there are other geometric shapes that can be used. The marshmallow is a flattened torus, or donut shape. It was made just slightly larger than the other shapes to look as if it were being squished down and oozing out the sides. The pieces were created, given texture (the graham cracker is actually textured with a tan marble), set on top of each other, and then linked. Lludmila copied and pasted the animation from a carelessly made food item and dropped it in the contents folder.

See how delicately she holds the s'less!

Doesn't it look yummy?

Aren't we proud?

Chichen Itza

LludiKris explores Chichen Itza in SecondLife as a Mayan Warrior

Sorry I haven't been posting lately, but I've been back at work and very, very tired. But not so tired that I can't sit in front of a computer and get bloodshot eyes finding more and more treasures to investigate in SecondLife.

Fellow librarian 50winx recommended the Chichen Itza sim to me and it was well worth an extended visit. First of all, you get these cool costumes: Mayan Warrior and Mayan Princess in full regalia! I liked the warrior costume best and I think it suits Kris, don't you? Shows off his tattoo nicely. The butterfly that usually gives the flying audio tour was not available so Kris and Lludmila actually had to walk around. Next time I might click on the info posts, but there was just too much to look at: pyramid, shaman's huts, sacrificial pool, tropical landscaping, village of gifte shoppes, and outdoor bar and dance flo- Is this place run by the Mexican tourism board or what?

Lludmila shows too much thigh as she admires the waterfall at Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza is just one of the high quality sims with educational (as well as entertainment) content in SecondLife. Also, there's no language barrier, bugs (well, there was a spider dangling down), amoebic dysentery ... what's not to like?

Society Hill Storefront!

Yes, just down the street from the South Carolina State Library is the SecondLife Society Hill Library! What a cozy little place with both a Bible and a cover on display from the Dawkins book The God Delusion. Talk about fair and balanced! On-line reference materials line the walls behind me. There's a small conference room and Yohan's office. Visit and leave him a message! Note the flags at half staff; they don't miss a thing! And they have some nice Canadians for neighbors across the street!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City/46/187/24

"Why Aren't We in SecondLife?" I Hear You Ask

Okay, maybe I'm the only one who wondered about that. Other libraries are putting up shingles and have storefront presences. And I was not necessarily thinking about our own library. We are in enough places, perhaps, on Flickr and MySpace, and we have a blog. There's no reason for our library to be as scattered on 2.0 as I am. But, shouldn't someone from South Carolina be there?
Well, they are. I met an avatar today who made some off-hand remark about South Carolina and I perked up. "Who's from SC? I'm from SC!" - except I don't have italics in SL chat. We chatted a bit. He invited me to join a Palmetto Librarians group (!!!). After lunch I ran into him again and he asked if I'd seen their library in Cybrary City. As soon as I agreed, he vanished in a puff of stardust (as one does here). I waited a little bit and then he sent me a tp to join him. And this is what he showed me:

The South Carolina State Library in SecondLife, Cybrary City.
Interior of the State Library. Lludmila thinks, "Today SC, tomorrow, The World!"

They are looking for input in this area. Why didn't I know about this? Are they waiting until SCLA to make a big announcement? I must plumb the depths of this conundrum. In the meantime, he has something else to show me! Lead on, Macduff!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City/41/37/23

I'm Off the Opiates Now

I was having hallucinations in Real Life, so I've stopped the prescription painkillers and gone over-the-counter. Phew! There's nothing wrong with these opiates when you are in pain, but the minute it starts letting up, throw them away! I had trouble differentiating between dream and reality, chat and IM (which could lead to embarrassing moments - Sorry, Kasia!), and was having tactile hallucinations - feeling things that weren't there.
And now that it's out of my system, I go back and look at my blog and ... oh, my. I'll leave it in. It's not the content, it's the execution. I was repetitive and obtuse. I apologise. Perhaps I should go back to cartoons. From now on, all misuses of the English language are the results of carelessness rather than drugs. My bad!
Anyway, Kasia and I staggered around Book Island and above we are trying to figure out what in the name of Yehudi Menuhin (whose quote hangs over my desk at home, just below one from Protagoras) is "Mind Space"?! Book Island looks to be a very nice place for a group conversation and I think the owners said they had Voice available in some parts. I crashed twice, at least, while I was there.
Of course, I crashed seconds after arriving in Thothica this morning. Nice touch, waterfall ending in flames!

These Are Totally Out of Order Anyway

There is a Virtual Starry Night exhibit in SecondLife (Slurl? Shmurl! Don't be such a baby - look it up in Search!) with an exhibit of Dutch Masters, beginning with Vincent van Gogh. Some paintings are set up so you can enter them! Here Lludmila waits patiently in Vinnie's bedroom for him to return. I got terribly lost in the museum last week (drugs!) and at some point was automatically expelled, which was a mercy, as I was able to get my bearings and reenter. Anyone who would like to go with me sometime, IM me inworld. I'd like to see more. More Masters will be added. Perhaps I will get to yank on that darn pearl earring!

SecondLife is just getting better and better!