Monday, December 6, 2010

New Features at In a Strange Land

Four Years On
Location: Like Janus, looking two ways at once

I advise readers that I'm going to run a couple of new features here.

One of them will be "Looking Backward," my account of some of the notable posts from my first year in Second Life, 2007; I rushed in like a fool should do, made mistakes, made friends, had fun, dragged my students along. Lalo Telling's recent reflections on the past twelve months in SL and OpenSim grids inspired me to take my own look backward as Iggy comes up on his 4th Rezz Day.

FYI Lalo, I started to call my series "Four Years On," until I saw your post's title and quickly changed things. I'm not into one-upmanship unless we are playing a board game, which we are not.

These posts were originally published at the Richmond Time Dispatch's Web site, before they deemed SL coverage to be a passing fad and buried the blog on their site. That earlier version of In A Strange Land ran until April 2009. I'm rather glad that these posts never moved to the newspaper's attempt to reach a younger demographic online. The results have been shallow and unfortunate.

The second new item at this blog will be a series that, for now, has the working title "Under a Virtual Moon." Elaine, the latest co-author at this site, is a member of my Unitarian-Universalist Church in Richmond, as she's a neo-pagan who has been active in the spiritual side of SL. I'm looking forward to her guest columns!

Welcome Elaine...and now I'll glance over my shoulder for a next post.

1 comment:

Lalo Telling said...

I wouldn't have minded at all if you'd kept "Four Years On"... after all, I lifted a title from no less a personage than Least Heat Moon.

Regardless - I'm looking forward to "Looking Backward" ;)