Greenies!

Managed to get an hour in the Greenies sim earlier... it's BIG.

And you're small.

Real 'Alice in Wonderland' stuff going on here. It's a regular apartment (very well rendered), but populated by tiny aliens and you're the same size as they are i.e. size of a mouse, so you see everything from their perpsective. It's strange being so teeny, and you have to set your draw distance to 300 (as opposed to 96 which I think is default?), but fun in a kooky way. It's pretty weird seeing other avatars flying about, looking like flies... all in all i'd say it's a play on perspective, and well worth a visit!


As usual I enjoyed the banal/everyday aspects, such as the cereal bowl, sitting on the MASSIVE pet cat, toothbrushing by the sink, sitting on the pet budgerigar etc. Favourite bit HAS to be the Green Bowie fan, listening to Life on Mars on his iPod...


(For more pics see Flickr)

Exploring In-world, Out-world...

While i've had great times with randomn SL meanderings, it's not necessarily the most efficient way to explore if pressed for time. Often the best way to find out about interesting stuff going on in-world is to explore SLifers Flickr sites, the result of which today I came across Therese Carfagno who works as a journalist for Second Life News Network. Therese has a blog and Flickr site, both of which point to places/in-world events and expos that look well-worth checking out...

So, inspired by Therese, my SL must-see list for today is as follows:

The Greenies - i don't think i can describe this until i've been but here's the SLurl

Sploland - 100 exhibits inspired by The Exploratorium, a hands-on science centre in San Francisco - SLurl

Flowerball - an interactive art thingy - SLurl

Girl meets Second Life

Being somewhat partial to a bit of in-world music-making, i'm loving Caterin Semyorka's mission, which is to play every last piano in Second Life - the only rule being that she has to wear a different outfit for every performance... like your style Caterin!

Aye aye Captain!

Yep, as predicted I’ve returned from RL holiday with fascination with all things BOAT. Just popped into SL and visited Greece, then on to another Greece, where to my delight I found a perfect sailboat slap bang underneath a Big Wheel! All kinds of virtual motion fun trickery going on there – such a shame I got booted off the Sim…

Anyway, have renewed faith in the FUN factor in SL after meeting a new crowd and going to a new club last night where we mud-wrestled (clothed – it was all good clean fun), sat on dancing cows and played Bronco on the BIGGEST BULL I HAVE EVER SEEN and basically swapped inventory items (drinks, dance moves, animations, objects) and listened/danced the night away to a stream of 80s classics. Ace bunch of people – it’s the Harley Davidson area, well worth a visit.

Came across this lovely lot as during my absence somebody had installed a wall of clouds into my apartment, and I can’t seem to move it. IM’d the creator, we got chatting and immediately clicked and she ended up TPing me over… interestingly, she thought I was a man when we were just talking through IM, apparently due to my ‘direct and no bullshit’ manner. Wonder if she would have thought I was picking a fight if she knew that I was female when we first started chatting…?

Anyway, she’s fantastic – definitely one of the funniest SLifers I’ve met…

But back to the sailing. Well I haven’t actually done any yet but hopefully will find time this week, and am more than encouraged by the amount of in-world yachting clubs and articles such as Sailors take skills learned in Second Life to Real Life

Ships Ahoy!

Procrastination and Escapism

Sometimes I wonder whether one of the attractions of SL (for me) is the fact that the banal and mundane becomes increasingly surreal and ridiculous. Since getting our hands on 2 swanky apartments in Manchester-UK, we’re now faced with two realms of domesticity; our homes in RL and our homes in SL.

Last weekend I had mortgage issues and general upkeep to contend with in RL. It was all rather dull, and time-consuming, so after a while I decided to go in-world and channel my energies into furnishing my newly-acquired virtual apartment instead. One bubble chair, a 60s dining set, a chaise longue and a Picasso later, I realised that this was utter procrastination, logged out and dealt with the matters at hand in RL. (Having set out to buy a cow, a huge coffee machine and a pizza oven, my new acquisitions were not what I had set out to purchase - obviously Ikea syndrome strikes in-world too…)

Anyway, it’s been a hellishly busy week so I haven’t had a chance to go back into SL until tonight, when I had to go in to make sure our apartments would be safe in our absence as we’re going on a RL holiday tomorrow and won’t have any internet access (gasp!). I checked on Misty’s coots and flamingos (yes, we ARE allowed pets we’ve already checked) and made sure my ‘beware of the dog’ sign looked suitably threatening, oh, and had a slice of pizza (1L$) from the machine in the corner (oops, another purchase – forgot to mention that one) and came back into RL to pack my case and escape to a remote Greek island.

Of course I know that when I get home, after throwing down the bags I’ll immediately check emails, Flickr, facebook before entering SL and going to my apartment - and then no doubt go and buy a virtual boat and go and relax on a virtual island in the virtual Mediterranean…

In the Summertime (a.k.a. RL avatars)

People SLife for a variety of reasons; personally I began SLifing a) to see what all the fuss was about, and b) to explore the potential for virtual meetings, virtual internships and various other work-related projects. Unfortunately RL got in the way so I had to take a couple of months out (heaven knows what Puli’s been getting up to in the absence of her ‘maker’ ;-)
But I must admit that even though my SLife addiction had to be put on hold, my Flickr addiction took over. I've was thinking about online social networking, communities etc. and began to wonder if there was a seasonal element – specifically in terms of SLifing as a form of escapism.
SL was brilliant in during the cold, dark winter months. I/she (Puli) regularly TP-d off to sunnier climes and basked in the virtual sun with an unspillable cocktail in my/her hand. At the time I was also rather partial to in-world gliding and wrote about the after-effects of immersion and my dismay at the RL realisation that I walked as opposed to skated to work.
It’s such a strange feeling when cognitive ghosts appear and sensations from SL spill over in to RL. I rationalised this by drawing the analogy with my Quake addiction years ago.
But since returning to SL I’ve begun to experience a different type of ‘SLangover’, and again this is seasonal in that it relates to RL summer outfits. On several occasions during the past 2 weeks, I’ve been walking down the street and thought I saw an avatar.
There’s a generic male SL outfit/body type – that of triangle torso, wearing jeans and a white t-shirt – and now when I see that body type/clothing combo, with an avatar’s gait, I get a very strong (albeit momentary) sensation that I’m in-world...

Big Chip Awards (SL version)

We had an interesting time several weeks ago when Misty and I simultaneously attended the Big Chip Awards - Misty in RL, myself in SL; 2-way streaming as can be seen here:

Weirdly enough, neither of us got to bed until 5am.

After the ceremony I went on to Flickr to upload the pics to our Second Life account and hopped over to my RL account (which is where the ‘action’ happens, as it were) and of course some of my friends from various other time zones were around, comment frenzy ensued and which spilled over into private flickr mails. HG and I then moved over to instant chat (google) as we wanted to have a proper conversation, and before I knew it, it was 4.30am – the same time that Misty rolled out of the press club in the ‘real’ world having consumed her own body weight in champagne due to a lucky win on a texting competition.
That one of the problems with online communities; the lack of shared (externally-influenced) circadian rhythms combined with the mock-alertness effect of life in front of a screen means that you’re friends are always ‘there’ – by the time your European amigos log off, your US buddies are live and kicking and then before you know it your friends in the southern hemisphere appear and they're all so bloody engaging that you literally have to peel yourself away from the computer!
By this time it’s about 5am, you need to be up at 6.45 in order to put the anti back into the social by choosing to enter SL at a time when it’s quiet - otherwise you end up having the same banal chit chat with different avatars and not getting anything done. Jjust for the record: 1) yes I DO know that my avatar is flat-chested, 2) I’ve been slifing since Christmas, and 3) NO I DON’T WANT TO HAVE VIRTUAL SEX.

It’s bloody knackering all this and i can regularly be seen sporting eye-bags the size of Cornish pasties due to living a significant portion of my life online. Because my social software addiction is becoming apparent visually in terms of under-eye baggage, I’m beginning to wonder if SLife will become increasingly desirable as no matter how much time I spend in-world my avatar doesn’t age. Basically, the more time I spend being Puli the more I age and yet she just stays the same. Yeah, it's vanity but she annoys the hell out of me sometimes – oh excellent, yet another socio-emotional digital identity discovery; envy of one’s own avatar!

It’s like one of those awful TV confessional shows (Jerry Springer etc) – ‘Avatar Envy’ or ‘My Avatar Ruined My Life’. Ha ha, could have fun with this: ‘My avatar slept with my best friend’s husband’, although an interesting one is ‘My avatar used to be a man’ – doesn’t really work does it? Obviously in RL this would be about a sex-change, but things are different in SL aren’t they? Rather than the dilemma of which workplace toilets should be used when a he becomes a she, our gender-related quandaries are related to whether the avatar you’ve been virtually bikini shopping with really IS a female (or is it a ‘man behind the mask’?).

Things should become a little clearer when voice finally gets off the ground in Second Life. Although I’m saying that as somebody who has actually been referred to as ‘sir’ during a phone call to a customer service centre, so perhaps not…

Big Chip Awards (RL version)

Puli and I were pretty excited about attending the Big Chip Award together, albeit one of us was going in the flesh and the other would be rendered of pixels. Questions flew through my mind; Would we be able to see each other? Would our new dresses be a hit on the night? How would the experiences differ? Would the real and the virtual experience be seamlessly fused together, thus blurring the traditionally accepted notions of existence? What would they serve me for dinner? It was enough to make a girl giddy.

Unfortunately it turned out that my table was too far away from the projection screen to see what was going on in SL, but I was told by others at my table with better eyesight than me that Puli was clearly visible and never without a drink in hand. Spookily, neither was I when our table won six bottles of champagne for texting in the most responses to a question about Second Life (My joy at this was slightly hampered by the fact that they were all texting in an answer to the effect that all people who use Second Life are losers. Frankly I would expect more open mindedness of a forward thinking New Media team, but I'm sure that drinking more than my fair share proved punishment enough)

Exploring SL

I love wandering round SL and discovering new places and things, but a fundamental part of the pleasure in the experience seems to involve seeing which objects I can sit on. Is that just me?

SL Sound Studio

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in a recording studio this week; the SL Sound Studio that is, which is based in the virtual reconstruction of Gregory Ain's 1948 Mar Vista Residence (part of the mid-century modernist movement and an experiment in planned social engineering). If you'd like a tour there's a video right here.

In one of the rooms there’s a brilliant electronic music studio, spec as follows:

• Roland TR-808
• Roland TR-909
• Moog Minimoog
• Moog Prodigy
• Korg Trinity v.3
• Oberheim 4-voice synth
• Decks
• Sampler

What really makes this special is the spatialization. No mixer as such but move around the room and you really FEEL it. I ended up with some ok tunes after a slightly shaky start (you need to start with the 808 and build on that – being practically a ‘digital native’ I never read instructions…). It’s been good meeting people in there as we’re all into the music thing, and also you tend to be taken more seriously as a female avatar and less likely to be hit on if you’re doing tech stuff.

Other than that I’ve been skydiving at night, visited Rome, the Kasteel Verloren (amazingly huge castle complete with maze), discussed the pains of memory and bandwidth issues with a couple of German ladies on a train in a Japanese city… the list goes on.

However, I’ve also been doing a hell of a lot of desk/web-based research into SL and writing a fair bit…

Started Sunday by popping in to the Webheads meeting place on Edunation Island for a meeting with a (potential) colleague, and was also interviewed not once but twice on the joys of SL; first time from an intercultural perspective, second time educationally-focused.

So all-in-all it’s been a fun, virtually multi-faceted and professionally-fulfilling weekend. Meanwhile MT has been living in the real-world - i.e. the one with mountains that make you lose your breath - although we did have a rather excellent Wii session on Thursday evening. I'm counting the days until Wii/SL integration (more on this in a future post).

Now for a glass of Rioja and a RL cuddle…

Second Life goes into therapy

... the world's first virtual hypnotherapy workshop.

http://www.radiocrazy.tv/

Wow.

‘My Avatar Hell’ pt.3

After what can only be described as an uber-productive few days, last night I decided to sort this avatar issue out once and for all…

Went ‘in world’, teleported my Zebra-self off to somewhere quiet and removed the offending avatar. Well, I say offending, but if you read the previous posts you’ll realise that what was under the Zebra was far, far worse. Nightmarish, I’d say.

But then I realised that I still had a few emails to fire off before bed, so I moved over to Outlook and after about 15 minutes a familiar clickety-click typing sound came through the speakers. Please no, don’t let them be talking to me…

And she was. A very nice lady who said, ‘hello, can I help you?’ – I WAS IN HER HOUSE:

Lady: this is my house
PZ: oh no i'm so embarrassed!
Lady: no thats ok
PZ: i'm sorry i didn't realise...
Lady: where did you think you were?
PZ: i didn't have a clue. Basically, i messed up my avatar so wanted to go somewhere quiet to sort myself out!
Lady: I understand

Anyway, we had a great chat- in fact probably one of my favourite SL interactions yet because it was so utterly NORMAL. We chatted for an hour about our RL work, SL property, taxation and inflation in SL (she has made money), SL coverage in the media, she showed me around her place, complained about the neighbours (in SL... really!), we had a few drinks from her impressively stocked virtual bar…

... and then got back on to the topic of avatars:

PZ: did you not think 'who the hell is this freak' when i appeared?
Lady: it did take me back a little
PZ: yeah, really need to sort it out... i was trying on a triceratops avatar, but it was HUGE
PZ: so i became a zebra
PZ: also HUGE
Lady: heehee
PZ: but when i tried to detach the avatars - some sections remained...
Lady: I know that feeling

Lady: you do have a wierd body on
PZ: i know... i'm going to change back to normal now... can i do it here?
Lady: go right ahead
PZ: ok...
PZ: oh shit how the hell do i do this?
Lady: heehee
PZ: don't laugh! ;-)
Lady: do you have another shape in your inventory?

(PZ - i.e. me - tries new shape)

PZ: holy moly - that's not me
Lady: Ok thats scarey
PZ: right, ill try something else
Lady: I used to have that body when I first started
PZ: this is getting more humiliating by the minute...
Lady: thats ok I kind of enjoying this
PZ: hehehe
Lady: Yes, I would like to figure out how to take some of this make up off, but can't
Lady: I will some day
PZ: can't you do it from face properties?
PZ: you mean you don't take it off before SL bed?!!!
Lady: no my skin that I bought won't let me
PZ: typical.
PZ: being an avatar is not easy, is it?
Lady: No just as hard as RL

At this point I teleported my RL friend in and they chatted away while I tried to sort out my avatar. Gave up in the end, but have made a new SL friend who I like very much, and we’re all going to go for a ride in her friend’s spaceship in a few days and I’m going to take her to the fox club.

Or at least I will when I’ve had the chance to sort this bleeding avatar out…

‘My Avatar Hell’ pt.2

After Monday’s debacle (see My Avatar Hell pt.1) I hadn’t had the chance to modify my avatar due to RL workload. Frankly it was embarrassing looking so freakish, so when I went ‘in world’ the following night I became a Zebra again, which was preferable to the unidentifiable hybrid avatar resulting from my dalliance with the ‘furries’. I didn’t stick around long, teleported around a few places, nothing much happening – although it was interesting to land beside an amorous couple (in a romantic sense, as opposed to seedy) who were obviously oblivious to the fact that a big-bummed zebra had accidentally gate-crashed their private party. Either they didn’t care, chose to ignore me, or didn’t realise there was a human behind the avatar… who knows? It seemed inappropriate to ask, so I logged out and went to bed.

‘My Avatar Hell’ pt.1

It’s been a strange week for Second Self. After taking the advice of a colleague and uninstalling SL for the weekend (having spent the w/e prior living virtually) in order to tackle RL, I re-entered on Monday evening and was overcome by the urge to try living my SL as a triceratops..

(I’d picked up some free furry avatars a month ago, and hadn’t tried them out yet for fear of becoming the virtual equivalent of the stereotypical festival-goer donning ‘wacky’ headwear…)

The problem was that the triceratops avatar was HUGE and unwieldy, so I tried to take it off. The resulting avatar can only be described as…

Ok, will stop there. But SEE???

So I hurriedly tried to amend the monstrosity by becoming a white wolf… Nah; too similar to my fox friend… So in one last attempt to ditch my freaky avatar I decided to become a Zebra. Now the Zebra was kind of ok – I liked the way it flew (although couldn’t get my roller boots to work) so I teleported off to the Haunted House ride.

Oh dear. Unfortunately my Zebra behind was rather… erm, large. The ride seemed different. And then I realised.

MY BUM WAS STUCK!

Oh the shame… I quickly exited the ride and detached the Zebra avatar, which unfortunately led me back to freaky avatar part 1. At this point I decided to call it a night...

O.D.Catastrophe

I had a work meeting yesterday where the subject of Second Life came up (not my fault, honest) and once again faced the accusation that if someone spends a lot of time in Second Life it is at the detriment of their regular life which they will be unable to maintain to a satisfactory standard. Bearing in mind that this invariably comes from people who have never tried Second Life, I wonder where it comes from.

Media scaremongering and a surfeit of half-remembered science fiction plots are what spring to mind. Sure there have been times when I have accidentally stayed up till sunrise exploring SL, but personally I have been a lot more concerned about my Flickr addiction. It has proved much more time-consuming, yet you never read articles warning of the dangers of hanging about with virtual friends on a photo-sharing network - probably because it sounds utterly ridiculous and wouldn't sell many papers.

Is when I SL overdose (SL-OD?!) really so different to when I get my hands on a new Michael Connelly novel and spend all day at work thinking about it, and racing home to get back to it, staying up too late devouring it before lying in bed, eyes closed, mind racing and with minor heart palpitations knowing I should be asleep? It doesn't feel so different to me, but reading this post back I'm staring to wonder whether I just have a problem in general...

How to be polite in SL (and typically British)

Sample from conversation after I had mistakenly skated into a fox in a tuxedo:

[17:03] Fox: Whoops

[17:03] PZ: sorry!

[17:03] Fox: No im sorry

[17:03] PZ: i'm more sorry

[17:03] Fox: Im the most sorry by far +1 (:

[17:03] PZ: i'm sorry x100

[17:04] Fox: Ok I so sorry that I would win the 'im sorry compition 5 years runntin' (:

[17:04] Fox: and the cand spell compitition

[17:04] PZ: for be, being sorry is a way of life

[17:05] PZ: cand spell = can't speel?

[17:05] Fox: Bless you, you must be English also

[17:05] PZ: heehee yes

... after which we had a lengthy discussion on the lack of chicken in SL.

Immersion

I set off walking to work today, and suddenly had a very weird sensation where I truly felt I should be gliding. It was pretty much akin to deja-vu, in that I came round quickly and realised that in this world I actually walk. But in the other world I glide around on rollerboots. Having spent pretty much the entire w/e existing in SL, my first self is experiencing momentary lapses into second self (as also evidenced by turning round to MT in RL and calling her by her avatar's name).
But i'm not overly worried. In seems like only yesterday that after a particularly heavy Quake session I would get into bed and close my eyes and wouldn't be able to sleep due to fighting my reflexive instincts, which were urging me to shoot-up a myriad of enemies. Obviously they weren't really there, but the after-effects of immersion can stay with us for days...
I haven't played Quake since 1997. Not only have I not played it, I haven't even thought about it. So I'm not overly concerned about SL/RL lapses - perhaps I'm secretly hoping that it's just a phase...

Mo Money Mo Problems

When I signed up for Second Life, I deliberately avoided the checkbox to give Linden Labs my bank account details. I wasn't interested in it as a consumer, for me it would be an investigation, about the experience rather than the goods I could purchase. I had read all about people making money from it, about the drive for big corporations to get involved and flog their crappy goods to us in yet another market place and was sure that I wouldn't fall into their trap.

Or so I thought. This weekend I couldn't register my paypal account fast enough. It had been brewing under for a while. I had grown tired of my pink fluffy bunny rabbit slippers and was having trouble finding anything to replace them. I didn't want to wear the same outfits all the time, and deep down I didn't want other people judging me for my lacklustre wardrobe. That's right, I didn't like the possiblility of total strangers making assumptions about me by my avatar. It had really come to this.

Second Life is a place where you can style yourself to be who you want to be, to look, to dress and to act however you desire. The reality of this seems to be that most women chose to dress themselves like cheap hookers trying to impress a Kwik-Save Hugh Heffner. Skimpy clothing, unfeasibly large breasts and blond hair like a nest of snakes are what passes for normal in there. I can understand that people feel driven to make themselves as attractive as possible, I guess it's just that I'm surprised at their perceptions of what is attractive, and believed that I wasn't really like that.

As soon as my Lindens register, I straight away purchase two pairs of shoes. One buckled pair of rocker boots and a pair of converse high-tops. I then raced to the wig shops and bought two sets of hair, one with a fringe, one without. Both brunette, and all items provided me with the consumery thrill that you get from RL shopping. Yup, it turns out virtual shopping is fun and addictive too. Admitedly I'm still wearing a victorian gown, rock boots and a yellow hard hat with my silky new flexible hair but I'm not as immune to the pressure of fitting in as I once thought I would be.

Clubbing on a Sunday morning

Sunday morning, 9am. Alarm BLARES out some (rather good) music beside my sore head, fresh coffee lures my weary self towards the kitchen and I check my emails. And then before I know it I’ve clicked on the ‘magic hand’ and – woops – off we go – back into SL. I really don’t know how it happened; it was like some invisible force pulling me in which I was powerless to resist!

The next minute I’m teleporting myself to the FOX club (it sounded good in the search listing), where I’m greeted by pretty much everybody, grab myself a few dance moves and OFF WE GO…

The music was brilliant, really friendly crowd, ace lights, atmosphere… everything! Before I know it I’ve been granted VIP membership, given a magic bubble stick and made 6 new French friends – not bad going seeing as it was now only 10am.

But I thought I really should do something productive in RL, so began sorting laundry, hanging things up, cleaning… but all the time streaming the tunes from the FOX club through my speakers (and what a playlist!!) while periodically looking over at the screen to see how Second Self was doing. She (I?) was having a fine old time, and so was I (in RL). Weirdly, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between my RL and SL selves; after the time, emotions (and money – ha!) invested in my virtual self, and the experiences we/she/I have had together, her joy is my joy; her pain is my pain; her dance moves are… well actually perhaps I need to challenge her (me?) to a dance off. I’m still a nifty mover.

Mind you, she’s got 60 different sets of wings… and can rollerblade up the sides of high buildings. She scaled Sony BMG headquarters yesterday – that’s my girl!

But yeah, to feel ‘excitement by proxy’ through ones avatar dancing in a virtual club – could get into this. Being able to feel (genuinely) glamorous, highly sociable and ecstatically happy while wearing pyjamas and doing household chores… now that’s what I call multitasking! Being able to exist on a recreational level and a practical level at the same time, this is what I’ve always dreamed of!

This third space is fascinating. After an entire w/e spent in SL, with both virtual and RL friends, the boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred. I actually turned round to MT last night (in RL) and called her by her avatar’s name... oh dear.