I'm back

Well, here I am back at Seeker's Brain. I'm determined to document my thoughts, insights and general ramblings and I hope I can get in the habit this time.
I had a fun day yesterday, in between catching up at different ends of the day with the gorgeous ones (my step-daughters), and seeing the Sex and the City movie at Crown Gold Class (fantastic!), I managed to get sucked into the vortex of another virtual world - Twinity.
Twinity is still in BETA and at this stage the developers are limiting the number of people with access (4045 users at 15/6), but I got a registration invitation from The Metaverse Journal (thanks Lowell!). I made some notes about the experience, here they are:

• When you register at the website be aware that the name you register will be your inworld name (only your first name is able to be seen by others even though you can see your full name on screen). For some reason I haven't yet figured out I want Seeker to be my ambassador for all virtual adventures so I had to create another account to change the name as I couldn't see an option for doing this inworld.
• You have to download the client which includes one or two (I didn't note) add-on applications so it takes a while, it also takes a while for the client to load - probably due to the complexity of the environment.
• The application is being developed in Germany so you have a choice of aa German or English interface.
• When you enter the world you are provided with basic orientation instructions, I'm undecided whether this is a good or bad thing but it certainly makes SL's Orientation Island seem like overkill.
• When you first enter the world you are in a room of what appears to be a house. Like most people the first thing I started doing was customising my appearance. Customising you appearance is amazine - there are an awesome array of options available (see pics) and you can even upload a photo and it creates a kind of weird overlay on your face. Something else I found a bit freaky was that your avatar breaths, that is, you see your (avatar) chest rising and falling.

It inspired me to start blogging again and to document my travels to other 'worlds'.

A new start

Well, it's the second last day of 2007 so it seems as good a time as any to make an early resolution to get my blog entries happening.

I've visted some amazing places in SL and found some fantastic tools and resources over the past year and it struck me this morning that this would be a good place to review and categorise the things I see on my travels, so here we go:

I logged in this morning at Dedric Mauriac's Gadget Shop (Woodbridge 99,91,44). I read about Dedric somewhere and thought I'd check out his shop to see if there was anything that might be useful for my tool inventory. There are heaps of really useful items for sale here for varying prices. Many of the items are on display and you can test them out. He also has a selection of fun toys.

I took a lot of photos so I could remember what was available. Some of the items that stood out were the:

• Visitor Counter ($299)
• Notecard Touch Box ($99)
• Chat Relay Set (for speaking to people over long distances; useful during events using large auditoriums or spaces - $679)
• Item Dispenser (for handing out items to visitors - $399)
• Password Generator (creates random passowords - $179)
• Large Message Board (displays up to 1200 characters - $1999)
• Web Browser (links to web pages - $299)
• Audio Browser (like an ipod for your land - $299)
• RSS Reader (shows latest blog or podcase entry - $339)
• Visitor Notifier (notifies you when people visit - $139)
• Teleport Load Balancer (directs people to multiple locations - $139)
• Landmark Provider (gives landmarks and logs requests - $329)

Vandeverre's Emporium (Caledon II 79, 180, 24)
I read about this shop on a SLED post this morning and it sounded like it had some items I might be interested in. After a bit of phaffing around I found the location only to be notified that it had moved, fortunately this is SL so after a quick teleport I was whisked off to the store entrance. The store describes its wares as 'Victorian, Medieval, (and a few modern) items of clothing, furnishings, Mad Science, and silliness', the items in here are mostly what I would describe as 'old England' and not really my taste but I could appreciate their craftmanship. One thing that caught my eye was the 'Medieval Cloister Wall', I'm looking for ideas for my new office space on Monash Island.

I was in the mood for exploring so I decided to visit some of the many places I have scribbled down on bits of paper on my desk. I read something recently that mentioned 'popular' places in SL i.e. where there are often people, so I thought I'd start my 'paper scrap' visits with one of them.

Armory Island (Armory Island 131, 124, 22)
As the name suggests Armory Island is a sim devoted to all things combat. It's funny that most residents of SL that I have spokne to don;t like the environment to be called a game (myself included) and yet many want to interact inworld as though it was an action game. Hmm.

Welcome to Seekers Brain!

I commenced my PhD journey in February 2007 and by August 2007 I realised my information was already getting out of hand. I've created this blog to record the journey (hmm bit of a hackneyed term 'journey' but it really does feel like that), and a wikispace, to attempt to manage my information.

If you've stumbled across this site you will soon realise that I have a research interest in Second Life. If you are an educator a good place to link in to the Second Life education community is through the Second Life Educators (SLED) mailing list.