Tag: Monday memes

Me and Flat Ebbe

Posted on by Inara Pey

Strawberry Singh’s Monday Memes are fun – not that I participate in all of them, but I do read them. A while back, she did a Flat Rodvik meme, which I actually missed out on, so when she decided to do a Flat Ebbe meme, I knew I had to give it a go.

The rules are simple, as Berry states:

Meme instructions: Pick up a copy of Flat Ebbe Linden from my marketplace store for free and take him to one of your favorite places on the grid. Also, share at least three things that you’d like to tell Ebbe. Please remember to leave a link to your post in the comments and share your Flat Ebbe picture in the Blog memes flickr group.

A week or so ago, I invited the real Ebbe to come see the sights of Blake Sea. While he did indeed do so, he passed on my offer to chaperone him to places of interest (I must not be popular, it was the second invite he’d turned down from me 😦 , even if he did come and sit with me for a while at the overspill auditorium ahead of Philip Rosedale’s VWBPE keynote before he managed to slip into the main presentation regions). So, deciding to make the most of the next best thing, I decided to take Flat Ebbe on a cruise around the Blake Sea estates.

Things started out well enough; he even brought some champers along and we had a quick slurp before setting out. Then, ever the gentleman, he offer to drive the boat.

A little pre-cruise champers. such a gentleman!
A little pre-cruise champers. such a gentleman! (click for full size)

Along the way, I thought about what I’d like to suggest to Ebbe, particularly as I’d already taken the liberty of saying a few words on the day he officially started at the Lab.  However, there are some things I’d probably say, had I the opportunity:

  • Don’t just consider the ToS issue to be about problems of ownership. The concerns are as much about the lack of limitations – duration, scope, purpose, all of which should be addressed if equilibrium is to be restored.
  • Encourage your marketing team to think of ways to engage with SL communities to help promote the platform. Leverage some of the incredible experiences people create here. Get marketing to think beyond just following IMVU’s banner ads, and to consider more engaging ways to broaden SL’s appeal.
  • Don’t fall back into just looking at the technical issues when it comes to getting new users engaged in SL. You may not be keen on talking to psychologists about matters, but do consider making use of an ethnographer It’s a diverse world we have here, and techniques used in the real world can have value here as well.
  • Keep those doors of communication open! It’s been great to see more informative communications through the blogs (not to mention your time in the forums and on Twitter).
  • Keep having fun 🙂 . And if you want to find out more on e-sports, always happy to take you skydiving or boat racing ;-). Or as you like skiing, why not take a look at the facilities Bay City and the East River Federation are bringing together for the SL Winter Games at the end of the year?

I could go on, but I always dread sounding like a cliché about grandmothers and eggs in matters like this. As it is, these are the things uppermost in my mind right now, so I’ll leave it there 🙂 .

Now, I just *know* this wouldn't have happened if the real Ebbe Linden had been driving...
Now, I just *know* this wouldn’t have happened if the real Ebbe Linden had been driving… (click for full size)

Getting a little bookish with Berry

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bookworm?
Bookworm?

Strawberry Singh offered another of her Monday Memes. I don’t tend to do a lot of them, but every so often one grabs my attention and does prompt me to actually start, well, thinking. Her Book Meme is one such example, in which she asks her readers to divulge their reading habits through a series of questions. So here are my answers…

Are you a bookworm? Probably, yes. There are bookcases crammed with books in almost every room in the house.

Which do you prefer: hardcover, paperback or electronic? Depends. My reference books, cookery books, history books, biographies etc., are almost all hardcover. Novels, anthologies,  etc., are almost all paperback, as they’re the ones that travel with me on holiday, etc. I’ve yet to really like electronic formats. That may eventually change now I have a tablet.

Which book is your favourite? That’s a tough one. I’m not sure I have “a” favourite, but there are a number I love to read and try to make a point of diving into every so often just for the “old friend” feeling I get from them.

Which children’s book is your favourite? That’s easier: The Hobbit, because it takes me back to my childhood and Dad reading it to me at bedtime.

What’s the last book you’ve read? Criminal Shadows, Inside the Mind of the Serial Killer by David Canter, the UK’s pioneering expert in psychological profiling. Prior to that, Lucky Man, Michael J. Fox’s memoir.

Name your top five favourite writers.  I can’t do five! Arthur Conan Doyle, P.D. James, James Ellroy, Patricia Cornwell , Colin Dexter; J.R.R. Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, David Eddings, G.R.R. Martin; Greg Bear, Kate Wilhelm, Melinda Snodgrass; Douglas Adams, Tom Holt; Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer, Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan,  …  I’ll stop there … 🙂

Name a book that had a strong impact on you. Fiction-wise, probably Juniper Time, by Kate Wilhelm. A little dated nowadays, but a powerful story with compelling characters.  Non-fiction, there’s more than one that stands out to me, all for different reasons.

Favourite & least favourite book genres? Favourites: fiction-wise: crime, science-fiction, fantasy; I also like biographies, and I read a lot of reference works. Least favourites: historical romances, romances, anything to do with Harry Potter (see, you’re not alone, Berry!) …

Favourite & least favourite book-to-movie adaptations? In terms of number of times watched, probably Lord of the Rings (there’s a surprise!). I’ve been enjoying Game of Thrones (GRRM’s Song of Ice and Fire), and have DVD boxed sets of things like Sherlock Holmes (Brett & Hardwicke) and Inspector Morse, which can be the visual equivalents of sitting down with the books.  Least favourite: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. No studio can match the power of one’s own imagination when it comes to travelling through Adams’ wonky galaxy.

Have you ever bought a book based on the cover alone? No.

Where do you usually buy your books? Waterstones for the most part, or on-line.

Do you go to the library? No.

How many books do you own? A lot. Seriously.

If you were to write a book about Second Life, which topic would you focus on? The history of the platform and its social positioning.

Of memes and SL helpful tools

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s Monday, so Strawberry Singh has launched another in her series of new Monday Memes. This one is on how we make our SL experience better via the tools (viewer buttons, HUDs, etc.), we use, or as she explains it:

Share a screenshot of your viewer setup and/or a list of tools/HUDS you guys use to make your Second Life experiences better.

I’m actually totally boring when it comes to HUDs and the like, so I’m actually going to take things a little further to cover a few little things I use outside of SL which help me enjoy my SL time.

First off, my viewer-set up.  My primary viewer of choice is Firestorm. I’ve been with it since the very first iteration, and I’ve been fortunate in that by-and-large it has performed well for me across two main PCs, and also works reasonably well on my Intel ATOM / nVidia ION powered notebook.

My Firestorm UI
My Firestorm UI with the Phototools Edit Sky Presets floater open

My viewer window is pretty boring, as you can see. No HUDs are permanently attached as I utilise capabilities in the viewer for everything I routinely need. The only HUDs which get attached tend to be related to boating, flying or weapons.

For me, my Second Life experience is made somewhat easier by the tools I use outside of the viewer, These come by way of Lance Corrimal of Dolphin Viewer fame.

The SL-related search options as they appear when added to Firefox
The SL-related search options as they appear when added to Firefox

In May 2013, I picked-up on a pointer from Daniel Voyager and blogged about some Chrome browser extensions which can be used with SL. As a result, Lance tapped me about a set of Firefox Helpers he had created for Second Life. I gave them a try – and have been using them ever since.

The helpers are all search-related, and add options to the Firefox search bar which allow you to access:

  • Second Life Search
  • Marketplace Search
  • Marketplace Merchant Search
  • SL Wiki search
  • the JIRA search (search results subject to viewing permissions on the JIRA).

All of them are quick and easy to install, and all of them work reasonably well (or as well as the Second Life and Marketplace searches can sometimes be expected to work…).

The obvious beauty of these options is that I don’t need to faff around opening my SL dashboard to search the SL website or load the Marketplace and then search for something; it’s purely a case of tabbing over to my browser and selecting the helper I need.

Locate a Second Life Merchant directly from the firefox search bar ...
Locate a Second Life Merchant directly from the Firefox search bar …

Installing the helpers is a breeze. Lance has kindly hosted them in a ZIP file on his Dolphin viewer website, so it’s purely a matter of:

  • Downloading them
  • Dropping them into the Firefox browser Searchplugins folder (for Windows, this is located in either C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\Searchplugins (32-bit) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\browser\Searchplugins (64-bit)
  • Restarting Firefox to enable them.
... Or check on a JIRA (subject to JIRA viewing permissions), and more, using the Firefox Search Helpers
… Or check on a JIRA (subject to JIRA viewing permissions), and more, using the Firefox Search Helpers

If you spend a lot of time searching the SL Marketplace or website for products or information, having these helpers installed might high shave a little time off of initially launching and searching one of the websites. Kodus to Lance for providing them.

SL goes to the movies (thanks to Strawberry!)

Posted on by Inara Pey

Strawberry is at it again with her Monday memes and challenges. This week the challenge is to do with movies. The instructions are seemingly easy, as Strawberry explains:

Monday Meme Instructions: The challenge for this week is to create a movie poster for your SL Avatar or SLife. You can base it off an original movie poster or think of a completely new idea of your own! Get creative and have some fun with it!

I love movies so this one grabbed my attention, and although I’m the first to admit that my graphics / photo manipulation skills are not the greatest, I decided to have a go…

Bladeserver Runner-3a

Related Links

Blogging and me

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’m getting to this at least a week after everyone else – if not longer. The reason why is simple: I’ve actually had something of an internal fight with myself over whether to a) do it and b) press it.

What am I talking about? Strawberry Singh’s meme (one of a whole series she has been setting, which have been thought-provoking) of “Why do I blog?” The format is easy enough – answer a series of questions on the subject of “why do I blog?”

So after several rounds of yes / no / yes / no arguments with myself, here (finally, and for whatever they’re worth!) are my answers.

Thinking about why I blog while sitting at Hazardous
Thinking about why I blog while sitting at Hazardous

How long have you been blogging? I started in January 2007 using Blogspot, then in 2009 made the move to WordPress.

Why did you start blogging? This is a little complicated. There was a time when I was very involved in D/s in my real life (I’ve actually written extensively on the subject elsewhere in the past – and no, I’m not saying where or under what name!). In coming back to SL, I opted to explore how D/s is perceived and acted upon. While it may sound presumptuous, I was so taken aback by a good few of the attitudes and misconceptions surrounding D/s as seen in SL, that I started blogging to try to offer a counterpoint and present D/s in a wider context. Over time, my own interests in SL changed such that the nature of my blogging shifted focus, particularly after the move to WordPress, and the blog evolved to what is read today.

How many times a week do you post an entry? Currently, I’m running at least one post a day, although sometimes I can hit 4 or 5 a day – it really depends what is going on, what I read about, what I learn and what generally comes my way.

How many different blogs do you read on a regular basis? I try to run through all the blogs on my blogroll at least a couple of times a week. Some are daily reading (or very nearly). I also read a number of other blogs as time allows, although they should perhaps be read more frequently (Strawberry’s being one … hence coming to this meme so late!). My problem is that I can either blog or read (or blog and read … and ignore the realities of real life!).

Do you comment on other people’s blogs? Yes, when I feel I have something to say that actually might be worth saying.

Do you keep track of how many visitors you have? Yes, although I’m actually more interested in the geographic diversity of those who visit. In the last five months this blog has averaged 32,800 page views and an average of 14,000 unique visitors a month – which I find amazing. What amazes me even more is that these people come from all over the world. Obviously, the highest concentrations of page views comes from the USA, Europe, Australia and Japan, but I’m genuinely stunned when I look back across a month and see multiple page views from Fiji, Belize, San Marino, Tanzania, Oman, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka,  Macau, Taiwan and more. Of course, these views likely all only add up to one person each (especially as some don’t climb above 5 or 6 views a week), but the fact they are there month on month does remind me that Second Life really does have a global reach.

I track visitors, and do get a buzz out of seeing how far-flung across the world they are
I track visitors, and do get a buzz out of seeing how far-flung across the world they are

Did you ever regret a post that you wrote? Some of my pieces take a good while to germinate and take shape, particularly as I try to keep to a certain “maximum length” of article. This has meant in the past that I’ve sometimes pushed the “publish” button when perhaps a little more polish or simply walking away one more time and then coming back with a fresh pair of eyes for a final read-through might have been better.

Do you think your readers have a true sense of who you are based on your blog? I hope that people have a clear sense of my values. I don’t have a hard-and-fast rule on differentiating between the “real” and “virtual” me (although I have various limits on how far I will go in talking about the “real me”). Whether this gives any real sense as to who I am for anyone reading these pages without encountering me – I’ve honestly no idea.

Do you blog under your real name? Nope. All my VW writing is done under my virtual identity of Inara Pey. The vast majority of my writing elsewhere has been under pseudonyms as well.

Are there topics that you would never blog about? Yes. Real world politics for one. Religion for another.

What is the theme/topic of your blog? Virtual worlds and environments, although the primary focus is on Second Life, as I simply cannot keep pace with everything else going on out there!

Do you have more than one blog? If so, why? Yes. No. Sort-of. I have two other blogs, one for my builds and one for *some* of my D/s writing carried over from my original blog – but both rarely get any real attention from me.

What have you found to be the benefits of blogging? A greater understanding of Second Life and a clearer appreciation for Linden Lab (warts and all) and the work they put into making this incredible environment possible. A growing love of virtual photography (I’m even starting to venture into the world of post-processing!), and the discovery of in-world interests and hobbies.

Blogging has encouraged me to try to improve my ability in framing and taking snapshots
Blogging has encouraged me to try to improve my ability in framing and taking snapshots – such as with Keisei

So, why do you continue to blog? I can’t stand going cold turkey when away from my blog :).

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