Feb 232013
 

Second Life is an international community, as exemplified by this official YouTube Video:

This has absolutely sod all to do with this blog post, but I love that accent! Well it has a spurious link, the issue I want to talk about is bringing authors to Second Life. On my Twitter feed I have a few authors, writing is of course all about the imagination, but I think Second Life is missing a trick by not reaching out to the creative talent of authors.

Authors create visions, you can deliver those visions in a 3D world, which Second Life is. So how do we go about encouraging the creativty of authors being delivered in Second Life? We certainly don’t do it via notecards. I’d love to see an improved notecard system that could at least deliver HTML books.

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Dec 052012
 

Tonight at 7pm SLT Caledonia Skytower will be doing a reading of Mircale on 34th Street at Seanchai Library. The reading will be in voice, which means it won’t be suitable for all and the reading is at 7pm SLT, which means it won’t be suitable for all! However that’s the nature of a worldwide platform. However this is a seasonal tale to get you into the spirit of the season.

The story will be read in two parts, with part two on December 10th, I believe! Seanchai isn’t the only place in Second Life that engages in storytelling, indeed we have storytelling on one of my sims, but not anywhere near as regularly as Seanchai does and with nowhere near the variety, but it does happen and I’m happy to see it happening.

I do believe that storytelling and even reading, within Second Life, is an undervalued art. Reading of course has its own pitfalls, texture loading times or reading notecards, it’s not exactly easy on the eye and yet, with 3D props, it has potential to add to the form of storytelling by recreating locations, or readers getting in character.

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Nov 052012
 

So my ususal Monday trick of listening to Digital Human on BBC Radio 4 for blog inspiration failed this week because they were talking about Cyborgs, transhumanism and whether we are all subsconsciously becoming Cyborgs and try as I did, I couldn’t find an angle to get to Second Life from that material, a jolly good listen however.

So I decided, after urgings, to investigate e-books. This was a tale of woe, first of all I tried to get an e-book from Waterstones. However to read e-books on the PC I needed to download Adobe Digital Editions, this was a breeze and now I was cooking on gas, all I needed to do was remember my Adobe password and I could install my soon to be purchased e-book on different mediums, if I didn’t register, I’d only be able to read it on my PC. At this point things went tits up, I couldn’t remember my password. Aha, there’s a password reset request and sure enough, I was informed an email was on its way. Several hours later and I’m still waiting.

So instead I went to Amazon, installed their Kindle for PC reader, realised I’d forgotten my Amazon password… oh heck but this time a password reset request actually worked. The only annoying thing left was having to pay VAT on my e-book, in the UK we don’t pay VAT on physical books but an e-book is considered an electronic service, not a book, even though it is a book, I’ll save that rant for another day, although Remember Remember, the fifth of November is an ideal day for a rant about The Government! The real moral of this story is to remember your passwords.

Then I read a little and decided to quickly take a look at the Second Life storytelling scene and popped to the Seanchai Library.

Seanchai1

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Oct 222012
 

It is time to regroup, rebond and rebound!

The Barcic Circle, held at the big tree in the village is to be held today at 1pm SLT.

Stories, poems, recounting of events in Dee, whatever you want to share.

All races, genters and persuasions are welcome .

Medieval Roleplay event so please were suitable attire.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dee/229/150/24/