Xiola Changes Address

Xiola Linden And Me!

Word reached me on Twitter, via a whisper, or more a shout, nudge and slight kick from the good people at the Bay City Post, Xiola Linden is changing her address!

Xiola Linden

“Nooooooo” was my initial response, not Xiola, AKA Sansar Jenn, AKA the artist formerly known as Lexie and maybe known as Lexie in the future. Leaving the Lab? Xiola?

Xiola Linden

Confirmation of the news was confirmed in the latest edition of Lab Gab with Strawberry talking to a clearly emotional Xiola about changing address after eight glorious years at Linden Lab.

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Our Digital Selves Scheduled For Release On 18th May

Ethnographia Island

“Our Digital Selves” is  scheduled for a full release on May 18th, I’m blogging about it a little early because I’m actually on holiday on a Mediterranean Island right now, hopefully enjoying some sun.

The man behind the documentary is Draxtor Despres, AKA Bernhard Drax. The documentary follows a research project supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Cultural Anthropology and Science, Technology, and Society). The project is supported by the University of California, Irvine; the University of Oregon; and the National Science Foundation.

The lead investigators are Tom Boellstorff, UC Irvine and Donna Z. Davis, University of Oregon. The research project has so far been going for three years, so it’s quite an in depth project.

Starring

To get some insight into what this project is about it’s definitely worth following the earlier link, but here’s some of the blurb :

This research will have implications for improving health care and social support for people with disabilities. But it also will use the insights of people with disabilities to better understand how new online technologies influence how we think about our bodies, how we think about social interaction, and how we think about the role of the internet in everyday life.

The documentary certainly captures the essence of this as we see people using technology to connect with others.

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Congressional Briefing To Feature Excerpt From Our Digital Selves Documentary

“Our Digital Selves : My Avatar is me” is a documentary produced with a large slice of work from Draxtor Despres, well known virtual world filmmaker and also known as Bernhard Drax.

The documentary follows Tom Boellstorff, UC Irvine and Donna Z. Davis, University of Oregon as they lead discussions regarding the connection between people with varied disabilities and their engagement with virtual worlds such as Second Life, High Fidelity and Sansar.

The documentary itself is part of a research project supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Cultural Anthropology and Science, Technology, and Society). The project is supported by the University of California, Irvine; the University of Oregon; and the National Science Foundation.

Tomorrow, Wednesday May 9th, Congressman Alan Lowenthal will be hosting a Congressional Briefing on Disability, Mental Health, and Virtual Worlds which will discuss the findings of this research project.

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Kent Bye of Voices of VR Visits Sansar

Draxtor and Kent Bye Talk

Here in the UK we’ve been dealing with the Beast from the East meeting Storm Emma and all too predictably, chaos has ensued. We don’t do snow in the UK.

Meanwhile, in the far less chaotic virtual world of Linden Lab’s Sansar, the Beast from Bavaria; Draxtor Despres met a storming VR enthusiast in the shape and form of Kent Bye, of the excellent Voices of VR Podcast.

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SpaceX Govsat-1 Mission Viewed Live In Sansar

Liftoff

The NASA Appollo Museum in Linden Lab’s Sansar was the setting for a virtual world / virtual reality gathering to watch the launch of Falcon 9 as part of the SpaceX Govesat-1 mission.

Watching Falcon 9

The blurb from the SpaceX website informed us :

SpaceX is now targeting launch of the GovSat-1 satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on Wednesday, January 31, at 4:25 p.m. EST, or 21:25 UTC. The satellite will deploy approximately 32 minutes after launch.

Falcon 9’s first stage for the GovSat-1 mission previously supported the NROL-76 mission from LC-39A in May 2017. SpaceX will not attempt to recover Falcon 9’s first stage after launch.

A fairly healthy sized crowd gathered to watch the liftoff, with the live webcast playing on a screen inside the museum and we got some pretty good views of the action.

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