Challenge #6: What I Got From It

Location: Rock--> me <--Hard Place

For the final BBBC blogger challenge, Alicia put this question to us:

What did you get out of your experience? Do you think it will change the way you blog in the future?

I liked being given these writing prompts. They were fun, but to be honest, I didn't learn a thing, Alicia. I am cursed to always ask "what does it mean?" about everything I encounter. So many folks, in both real and virtual worlds, recall the bound figures from Goya's "The Spoonfed," shown above in our House of Usher simulation.

We all should question more. We might even, as my colleague Beeble Baxter puts it, see "the man behind the curtain" who pulls the levers that make us dance.

Finding that man and the levers will continue to be my focus. The BBBC topics were a bit too Iggy focused for my taste. I prefer not to lifestream but to poke fun at myself while exploring Second Life and other virtual worlds.

I'll be sure to participate next year, if there even is a Second Life worth blogging about.

Challenge #5: What's On My Mind Right Now

Location: Summer Doldrums

Best late than never, Ignatius! Alicia challenged us with this BBBC topic: blogger's choice.

Even coffee cannot help this morning. I'm wondering today if I'll still be interested at all in virtual worlds in a year. My explorer's desires have waned. This is not good. I feel a little like Molotov Alva did, at the end of his journey.

I am wondering what I still need to see in SL to rekindle that flame. I'd also welcome suggestions for locales in Reaction and Third Rock Grids.

Viv has been after me to check out the Journal HUDs in Heritage Key, so this week I think I will. Maybe that will sail me out of the summer doldrums.

Blogger Challenge 4: RL & SL Age

Location: Rockin' Along in an Old Rockin' Chair

Alicia's posting of the BBBC challenge goes this way: Is your avatar more or less your current biological age? Do you portray a younger avatar, or older? Why is this?

You are, as the overused saying goes, as old as you feel. Except when my knees creak or my muscles tense up from hard physical work--and I do a lot of that on our farm, in our vegetable garden, and in the woodlot--I don't feel old.

Iggy looks like me at 30, though ironically, I have better stamina now than I did then.

The Iggy avatar, however, could not appear older without becoming a cartoon of an old guy. Aged skins were hard to find, and when I did find them and put on demos, the results were not pleasing. I wanted a bald-headed freak avatar with a gray beard, my actual look IRL, but with a well muscled torso. I'm fit and trim IRL because of my biking, yoga, and my physical work outside in all sorts of weather. I embrace my age.

I'm also a typical Middle-Eastern peacock about my appearance, and it saddens me to see how many guys in their late 40s let themselves go. They have big guts, flabby arms, and double chins. They put on Rogaine to rent some hair, though if they are fair skinned that's usually a good choice.

Dark skinned guys work out better as bald-headed freaks :)

Final note, since folks have asked: I added the dreadlocks after a friend in SL insisted I do so for a photo shoot, and I find it hard to say no to friends. Then, in an act of whimsy, I kept the dreads, added a tophat, occasionally a bowler or cowboy hat, and there I am.

Blogger Challenge 3: Relationships

Location: Doldrums of Slacker Land

Time for some analysis. I just cannot motivate myself during the time when my annual report, assessment data, and other tedious rituals of summer oppress me. Thus I completely went slack after my first two answers to Alicia Chenaux's Blogger challenge. In fact, I am rather bored now with SL, but Alicia managed to apply the jumper cables nicely to my attitude. I'll cover the rest of her challenge topics in coming days.

The third of her challenges involves this question:

How hard do you think it is to find a relationship in SL? If you have an SL relationship, have you met in the physical world? Would you meet them? Do you think it would change your SL relationship if you met?

I'm going to have to talk about this from a distance. Mrs. RL Iggy put it clearly when I began SL: "cyber" is the same as RL infidelity. Fair enough, but what do I think about the idea of an SL relationship?

While I've not been involved romantically with any ladies I know from SL, I do think it possible to have a satisfying intellectual / platonic friendship and even form working partnerships for writing or professional presentations. That would include men as well as women. AJ Brooks and I drafted a grant proposal, Dan Holt and I share ideas about writing classrooms, Viv Trafalgar and I have worked on a conference presentation and are drafting an article based upon our advice for developing literary simulations in virtual worlds. I plan to meet both AJ and Viv next year in person, when we travel to a few conferences. I doubt it will change much in SL, since I chat with them in real life.

I consider several of my VWER colleagues to be friends, and I plan to meet Kali Pizarro when, fates willing, Mrs. Iggy and I trek across the U.K. on foot in 2012. The nice thing about all these SL-to-RL meetings is how it gets us in touch with a network of folks who share an interest in these irreal spaces for professional reasons, a circle hard to find on one lonely campus.

Moreover, they put up with a lot from Iggy, who can be a smartass and dumbass.

So while I don't know how folks manage the pixel-to-person transition for romantic relationships, professional networking can develop into friendship and real-world collaborations out of Second Life.

Challenge Post: Why I Blog

Location: Archives of Old Pics

This one, Alicia, is easy.

I wanted to write daily in a low-stakes manner. I work on fiction, editorials, and academic articles, some for pay and some for play.

Writer's Block is a constant for anyone who works in the field. For me, blogging seemed to be an "idea factory," and since I have a long-time interest in the history of technology and its impact on cultural practices, I figured I'd use that topic.

Then, in 2007, I began to explore Second Life. Thus, this blog. It began at our struggling local newspaper's site, and the old archive is still there. The site is such a mess that it'll probably never be deleted until the inevitable happens and the print operation folds.

As the hype about SL flagged, so did any promotion of the SL blog at the paper. So I moved over here. And here I've remained.

A Positive Challenge to SL Bloggers

Location: Darned Crow-Dinner Again!

Lalo Telling, whose blog I greatly enjoy, alerted me to Alicia Cheneaux's Big Bad Blogger Challenge. The challenge: post three positive things going on in SL for the blogger.

Here, Lalo and Alicia, you have it:

• Richmond now has a little showcase of my students' work in SL. I'm awfully proud of these youngsters.
• It must be a slow night at Treet TV. Iggy will be holding forth on "Designing Worlds" tomorrow, part of a panel discussion. I plan to be as positive as I can!
• Pappy Enoch reports that after six weeks of squatting on abandoned land, the Lindens have not yet evicted him.

How's that?

And thank you.