Newbie forced to make time to update blog

Once again I find myself apologizing for a long absence from this blog. I haven't posted in so long because I've been so very very busy. My job has finally caught up with my hobbies, so instead of blogging for fun and killing time in Second Life, I've been blogging for work and spending loads of time in Second Life organizing and attending a series of author events.

Ok, so I did make some time for an After A Fashion outing in Second Life just before the holidays. We bought Xmas-y outfits from Total Betty and went skating:





Who would have thought that skating in Second Life was just as much fun as in real?

But after that I was all business, in Second Life every week in January with Deanna Raybourn, the charming author of Silent in the Sanctuary, doing a live-audio reading and Q&A, hosting a fabulous (and very well-attended) Victorian ball, and hosting a more intimate group of aspiring writers for a writing workshop. All of which required a collection of new, fancy, Victorian gowns for my avatar, but of course! A lady must never be underdressed.





All of which was way fun, but whew! Glad to get back to RL for a while!!

Return of the Newbie!

Happy New Year! Tag, I'm it! Kate tagged me for an "8 things" meme that seems to have been kick-started by my fellow Girl Geek Maggie Fox, and as much as I normally dislike memes, I can't think of a better way to kick off 2008 than by the oversharing of personal info. And awaaaay we go!

Eight things you might not know about me:

1. If you didn't start reading this blog at the beginning then you might not know that my parents co-founded a commune in 1971. Yes, it's true, I was raised in the woods by hippies. We made our own cheese and had no indoor plumbing. We had a communal garden and a shared cow, and in the summer we wore no clothes. Some of these tenets have fallen by the wayside in the ensuing years, notably the nudity, but the commune is still very much a going concern (in fact I am regularly courted by the current members to join).

2. And that crunchy-granola upbringing perhaps explains why in high school I was a full-on goth. Black clothing, white makeup, lots of Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees... the whole iconoclastic shebang. You can't get much less outdoorsy than goth culture, so I suppose in my way I was rebelling by embracing a subculture dependent upon urban living. There aren't many goths in the woods.

3. I'm an only child with 6 siblings. No, not a riddle -- a result of a broken home. After their divorce my parents both hooked up again (and again, in my Dad's case), so I have 2 half-brothers and 3 half-sisters plus one bonus stepsister -- but no full-on sibs. It freaks me out a little bit to think that the people I think of as my brother and my sister could get legally married since they're not related except through me. It gets even freakier when my mom talks about how my sister Alix and my brother Steve have SO much in common and would make SUCH a good couple... (All together now: EW.)

4. I'm distantly related to the King of Sweden. My Dad is second-generation Finnish-Canadian, and is still in contact with my grandmother's family in Finland. They are fond of telling the story of the Crown Prince and our great-great-grandmother, who used to work for the Swedish royal family... until she got pregnant, left Sweden, and moved to Finland, settling down in a small town on the coast to raise her young son alone, speaking only Swedish. (All together now... Hmmmm...)

5. I'm epileptic. It's not a secret, just not something I tend to publicize. It's easy to forget that I have this chronic, incurable condition because my seizures are controlled by medication -- in fact until a couple of weeks ago, it'd been 6 years since my last seizure. Then I had a seizure on Jan. 2nd. Quite a way to usher in the new year, wouldn't you say? There's a fairly lengthy recovery period involved, and now you know why I haven't posted until now.

6. I have a 3-year-old daughter, Zoe, whom I absolutely adore, even though she is single-handedly responsible for turning me from a jaded sophisticate into a pajama-wearing marshmallow who cries at the barest hint of sentiment.

7. When I was young, I wanted to be an actress. I took acting lessons all through high school and minored in Drama in University. My career peaked with a one-time appearance on Degrassi Junior High and I eventually realized that to be a successful actress one needed to get used to baring either one's soul, or one's boobs, or both. I chose modesty and baring my soul only online in blog form.

8. I have a deep and abiding love for good single-malt Scotch. I used to be strictly a wine-or-beer-or-cooler girl, with the occasional G&T thrown in on special occasions, until I went to Scotland on our honeymoon. After touring a few distilleries, I spontaneously and somewhat accidentally entered a blind-nosing contest (in which you are given opaque glasses of Scotch and must identify the vintage only by smell) and against all probabilities, I won!

Now I'm supposed to tag 8 others and keep this chain going, but all of the people I know who blog have already been tagged! So I'm going to take a cue from my sister Alix and dead-end this meme right here. Unless of course you want to pick up the torch and carry it for me!

Newbie on hiatus

If it isn't already obvious, things have gotten really hectic for me these past couple of weeks, with the result that I've completely forgotten about this blog. And the next several weeks look to be about the same, what with work, holidays, and all the festivity associated therewith. So let's call it a holiday-related hiatus, and I'll rejoin the blogosphere in 2008 refreshed and renewed and full of sagacity and fascination for all things digital!

Happy holidays! See you in 08!

Plugging back in, ready to... party with the pervs?

While we were, as my darling husband put it, "vacationing in the 19th century" during our bathroom reno (ie living without internet or TV -- if you call that living!), I missed the episode of CSI:NY that featured Second Life. Luckily, our home is equipped with a PVR, so upon our return to a 21st century lifestyle I fired it up and watched the episode.

Wow. Did anyone else see that piece of dreck? My first impressions are that Gary Sinise is way slumming on this show. Leaving aside Second Life for a moment, the plot relies heavily upon technological contrivances that beg disbelief, and the dialogue ranges from wooden to cliched. But whatever. At first I was mildly excited that Second Life would play such a big role in the plot of such a popular show. "Finally," I thought, "I won't have to explain to people what Second Life is, and how it's not a game, and it's not populated exclusively by weirdos, freaks, and pervs!"

Well, no such luck. Anyone watching CSI:NY that night would be left with the strong impression that Second Life is all about gameplaying (eg fighting monsters, air surfing) or meeting up with weird, freakish, pervy avatars controlled by friendless, loveless losers. What a disappointment.

Disappointing for me especially, not only because the portrayal was wildly inaccurate according to my own experiences within Second Life, but also because the negative impression engendered by the show is going to make it that much more challenging for me to convince various holders of purse strings that Second Life is a worthy markting venture.

I can't help wondering how Linden Labs feels about this!

Newbie Unplugged -- not by choice, but by necessity

The good news is we're having our bathroom renovated -- totally gutted, and rebuilt from the studs up. The bad news is, it's our only bathroom. No powder room, not even a water closet in the basement. So, we've moved in with my mom for the duration; and if you've read my previous posts, you know that her household is not exactly enabled for the 21st century. So if I'm not posting much in the next few weeks... you'll know why!

I'm choosing to look at this as a golden opportunity to catch up on my reading. So if there are any books out there right now that I should be reading, please let me know!

Reconnecting with friends... Well, their avatars

Monday October 1st saw another After A Fashion social-shopping get-together in Second Life. Check out the the AAF blog for details of the amazing outfits and free hair fat packs I picked up!

Every time I get together with the AAF girls in Second Life I'm amazed at how the virtual world enables me to reconnect with people that I seldom see in RL (real life). Even though it was ages since the last AAF excursion, we quickly fell into an easy conversation. Of course it helps that the social shopping aspect gives us an activity to share in, so there are few awkward pauses in the conversation; but even when I encounter utter strangers in SL, the chat seems to flow, and folks are just generally more friendly and approachable than anyone I've encountered in RL.

I find myself musing about this more and more, and wishing that I could put my finger on the element of Second Life that makes for such easy interaction. What do you think? Any ideas as to why this is so?

Newbie is now "Second Life expert"

Ironic, isn't it? But true: to a big group of former skeptics, I'm now their go-to person for info on virtual worlds.

On September 25th an event that I've been planning for months finally happened: a live-audio reading and author Q&A in Second Life, organized by me, in a gorgeous sim designed and built by the good folks at purplestripe. By all measures it was a successful event -- attendance was good, and we got some decent blog buzz before and after; but to me, the real measure of success was that the folks I work with are now, finally, starting to get it. A large part of the planning process involved selling the concept of an in-world author event to TPTB where I work -- no small feat considering the deep-seated skepticism around all things digital and SL in particular.

On the day of the event I arranged for my office PC to be moved into a boardroom and hooked up to a projector, so that anyone who wanted to could view the event as it happened, live. I wish you could have been a fly on the wall when people saw SL for the first time and realized its implications. "You mean to tell me that each avatar represents a real person?" "So these people could be anywhere in the world right now? And they're all hearing the same audio we can hear?" "You mean I can chat with more than one person at a time, in real time?"

One small event for an avatar, one giant leap for the Great Unplugged. :)

A few snapshots from the event:
The build:

Chloe looking studious: