Friday, November 30, 2007

Gate Crasher

Today we were having class in SecondLife on the school's island. We were discussing ethics. The students had met (in world) earlier to discuss different questions. Today we came together in our amphitheatre to go over each group's conclusions.

While we were discussing, someone noticed a new avatar in the seats. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture. A white haired (on the head anyway) squirrel type furry sat down. I think the person was just looking for other folks to talk with, used the map to find people and saw our little cluster of green dots.

They didn't cause any trouble. And the group that is investigating furries is going to contact the squirrel to see about doing an interview.

And tonight on our island I met a furry from Cornell - they're a programmer working on the open source viewer. Very cool. They were a bunny with big feet. It was good to see someone actually using Cornell's island; the bunny mentioned that Cornell proper has another island that profs use for classes and office hours. I'd love to have office hours in world.

When we teach about games - wouldn't it be funny to have office hours inside World of Warcraft or Puzzle Pirates

Winter on the Park Island

I got inspired to change the season on the island. So I changed the textures for the land to be snowy. Here are a couple of pictures of the first changes.





Then I started putting out snowy trees, poinsettias, wreaths, and some roping. Right now I have been focusing on the Park School building on top of the mountain.






I did put a snowman and wreath down on the welcome center too. Here's a couple of pictures of the snowman.




There's a rumor that we'll be taking a photo on the island to use on the Park School holiday card. That will be cool.Here is a shot of the front of the park school building where we might take the photo.



Thursday, November 15, 2007

this is so amazing

I just downloaded the windlight firstview viewer - hooks you to the main grid but things can be buggy

in this case it is oh so worth any bugs that might pop up - the new light and water and cloud effects are freaking amazing - real. not videogame real but real real.

go here to download the viewer - remember anything you do yo do to your real account.

then try out sunset and sunrise. go to the beach and look at the reflections on the water. check out the clouds. It is so real. hmmm - SL sunsets were always great, but now they're just incredible.

ok - maybe real isn't always good - just trying to imagine what it would look like with real sky in Bedrock - have to check that out next time

blog about secondlife freebies

amazing blog with a new post everyday about free stuff - lots of free clothes

and there's a list (link on the right side of hte page) of all kinds of freebies

this is a goldmine