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SL Shortlist
If you had 7.5 minutes with the School President, what would you show?
New Device for navigation - from Logitech
A note to SL Training List
I wrote this just now in response to the question, "How will you use SL for training?" I had an argument with Martin Dougiamas (maybe argument is too strong a word- discussion then) the founder of moodle last night via skype. He'd spent many many hours in a virtual world in the 90's, and felt that in education we have far more important things to work on. I explained that while I completely agree the web, and LMS' have a long way to go, there is a huge segment of the population that is still spending a great deal of time watching sit-coms, talk shows, or otherwise killing brain cells- and anything to get them engaged in learning is useful- and if it helps the rest of us, that's great to. So my focus is in figuring out where SL enhances existing things we have setup. We're working on this with sloodle, but there are certain things where a webpage does just fine. Need a list of links? Need to see a photo, or get some simple text? I'm not sure that SL enhances this much. However, with some creative thinking, we can come up with areas, mostly involving BEING there and collaboration (real-time, not asynch) that let SL earn its stripes. For example, say you want everyone to compose a haiku? Each person creates a note, writes it, and then passes it around to others. They comment and pass it on. You can actually do things like one does in in-person seminars (everybody turn to the right, and introduce yourself). These kinds of things are simply not possible with existing technologies. At the same time, I believe we should not allow SL to limit our thinking - because it's a virtual real world, we tend to constrain ourselves to certain physical things- even while flying and building floating spaces. So our rooms are still square, and our seats are still ampitheater or classroom style, and our bodies are still....well, bodies mostly. So, lest this answer get too off track? Math and geometry? Teach 'em to build - since you're limited to 10m prims, make them make a tower 100 m high, with 3 columns arranged on a circle, supporting a globe. It'll have to be an equilateral triangle, and the ends need to line up nicely, but when you make one column, you can multiply it times 3 to get 3 and so on... there are many many ways to incorporate real-world stuff. Things we came up with to start: -idenitfying land fomations for geography -scenarious for emergency medicine (mock up the accident, have characters assume roles) -customer service role-playing (bank teller with payments, that sort of thing - even upselling at fast-food counter) -client-consultant role-playing. I teach web design, and there's lots to do in an interview. Overall most of these really need the sound interaction to get away from chat- and we've been using skype with some success. Time will tell. If anyone is interested, we've also been building a blog of our collective experiences- not refined, but may be useful regardless: www.javidi.com/slCheers! d.i.-- D.I. von Briesen God is Greater
Wonderful SL Introductory Report
SL Surfing, 0130, 26Nov06
Since every time i try to get something done it takes me downs various rabbit holes, i figured it probably makes sense to begin to document the distractions, and there is some interesting stuff there- if i don't, it'll be lost. If i do, it's here for posterity. So highlights of the last few hours (BTW, the average time spent on SL is about 3 hrs per session, so i'm right about there...): - you can make lava waterfalls: chicagon 966, 233, 142 - Goblin industries - there are folks making photorealistic body skins. Nothing new, but some are even modelled after famous folks. Had a chat with someone with a Vin Diesel torso the other day. Soon someone will do it with photos you provide - more useful for faces I think. FEELINGS- a few things that really make me "feel" in second life: -- falling long distance and slamming my face on the ground, or going up and bumping my head -- ending up in someone's living room, and they are there or appear- and feeling strangely awkward and embarrassed -- standing in front of a picture or product of dubious reputation and wondering what would happen if somebody saw me, "the professor." If anyone says this environment is not "sensorily rich" show them some of the more offensive art/photography/animation and tell them not to get offended!! (or titilated). -- wanting to know more about people I bump into. Why should I care? I do, but I'm not sure why. -- feeling remotely "proud" when folks compliment my rave stick. I mean, i paid about 20 cents for it, and people complement it. More so than just about any article of clothing i've worn in the real world. I wonder what that says about my real world clothing...? -- feeling like i'm snooping when i'm wondering around other folks houses, and even more so when i end up in their bedroom/jacuzzi -- TEACHING: Things we may want going forward: - many of these vending and pose devices make for useful educational/museum/library devices. For example, there are many vending devices that show a variety of pictures - you click one and it enlarges to the middle. Others show one on each side, which act as a next/previous link, with the current one large in the middle. There are many variants of these - unfortunately it's not easy to just find where to get one- though you can find the creator's name by right-clicking to it. One i just saw: VendNet. Now looking at JEVN/JENC - which you see all over the place. The interesting thing is that the commercial sector has built in all kinds of interesting things, like ability to give commission, pass out notecards, and perhaps even sale leads. So imagine having a slideshow type thing where each item has with it a notecard, perhaps including URL and other things. Check this out at: ironjaw 140, 39, 138. 3000 LD's gets you both. NOTABLES: --JEVN: networked vendors system --JENC: networked catalog system- live updates across all distributed catalogs --SL Courier: To distribute up to 30 things to a distribution list. Imagine a group of studentss... These are from esmay Rand... -- also a "slave tracer" which while not what we have in mind, seems to have the mechanisms for tracking users- which would be really cool for things like treasure hunts, or specific guided activities. Can do things like show if user stops for 3 minutes or more.... - VERY cool building demonstrator- you pick a building from the slideshow, and it builds it on the fly... which, if you could do with everythign, you'd really have solved the space dilema.. GEOJE 163, 201, 129 - there are a number of things at Apollo that seemed applicable, including a teleport HUD, which I bought. See Random Other Stuff for this. - Found a sauna. As a fan of real sauna's, i'm a bit cynical about this one, but a small enclosed sitting space has an interesting "feel" to it. Would be useful for seminars and such, or small group meetings - it's a different feel to NOT have the table in the middle - feels somehow more connected. Example: Kang Nae 225, 212, 69 - RANDOM OTHER STUFF: The lost gardens of apollo are really cool! Visually amazing. Apollo 245 18 56 Could that be done with normal terraforming? - Dane Zander's the owner/creator of the balcony.. There is a nice welcome map, that includes some scripting for showing all locations- probably another technology for good to education transfer. It also has an interesting teleporter- where you "ride" a jetpowered chair And i bought an HUD that allows you to have a bunch of TP shortcuts, AND, allows you to display a ball which others can click on to go to a location.
Dell hops into second life, and what's with the numbers?
A few days back (Apologies if you got this here already) : Dell jumps onlineNot quite clear why you would want to buy a computer in SL other than to look like an office machine (which i've seen a bit)... But it may be publicity like all the others. My neighbor came over the other night and took a ride in a Scion... which has pretty good dashboard graphics but crappy driving- but hey, this stuff is immature. What would be interesting is if, imagine the way you currently build in 2nd life, you worked on your computer in it. So instead of opening your browser in windows, you opened it in SL, and if you wanted the full - screen, you'd go to mouseview... basically SL could BECOME your OS... now just imagine if SL were written to run natively on the CPU, as linux and windows do.... there are some very interesting opportunities with that. So i've taken a free teleporter and converted it to a single-click teleporter. A few tidbits: Under the first tab when you edit an object (the exandable section you get when you click the more button) there is an option at the very bottom where you can set the left-click (that's regular click for most of you) functionality. By setting it to the SIT event, you can have the action occur when you simply click on an object (as opposed to right-click, and then choose sit, or teleport, or whatever). This, in my opinion, streamlines the functionality, so for poseballs, teleports, etc., you just click for the action to take place. As opposed to right-click, move mouse to option, and then release mouse- so 75% (or so) less physical action required (can you say metacarpal release). In the long run, much of this navigational stuff, and the communications in particular, must be simplified and streamlined for you to really become immersed... the keyboard as it stands and those special combinations are far more kludgy than they need to be at present. I wonder if something like a touchpad - like a wacom tablet that you touch with your fingers might not be the new device of the future. The mice (mouses?) are just not happening. I've got an optical trackball mounted to the left of my keyboards (home and work) and a mouse on the right, and find it to be workable that way. I do remember learning autocad when you had a mouse with multiple buttons - and a specialized mousepad that had hotspot sections. If SL gains more ground, it would behoove them to come up with a specialized interface. While I'm on that (since IE "has encountered a problem and needs to close) I'll finish with some ideas of what SHOULD be built in, tout suite!: - voice support (partner with skype, or something - and hurry!) - better inventory management ("object" doesn't cut it. How about a small icon for each item) - off the shelf avatar skinning - some folks want to reinvent themselves - others just want to duplicate themselves, with less wrinkes and fat - make it easy to drop a jpg onto a facial skin. - if the menu options don't exist, don't show them... and put them all on the next level, esp. if there are only a few. That's probably enough for now!~ d.i.
A few current events - Around Turkey Day 2006
When i logged in to SL there was this link to the SL news: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/22/continuing-our-support-for-in-world-education/which evidently relates to Linden Labs (LL) compensating (or not) people to teach within SL. Evidently it's about those who act as mentors and teachers to all users, as opposed to folks like us working to develop courses. Which, as my mind churns, highlights yet again the tremendous potential of this platform. If we talk about teaching and learning, what could be more like the real learning process than real life? What could be more like real life (in terms of simulation) than something like SL? So if we can create experiences, then we'll really be on to something. In other news, Friday around 115pm there was an article on NPR - can't remember talk of the nation- or probably on the media... While looking, i found SL's list of articles: http://secondlife.com/news/ which is awefully weak- there have to be hundreds of articles in the last few weeks alone... so there must be another page, or they just don't have anyone looking very hard... So a search on NPR second life took me first to this article which is from earlier in november - what i noted immediately is that it said, "Second Life has built a booming virtual economy around some little animated characters called avatars." This is interesting, because, whether intended or not, "little" in this case sounds derogatory, as if i were to say, you go have lunch with your little friend, or go watch football with your little wide-screen TV. They may have meant little in terms of small... but you wouldn't say, "I built a little webpage" even though all webpages should fit onto a 17" monitor..." So the battle we are going to have to continue to fight is getting our language not to be little the environment - it's not a "game" but a "simulated virtual environment" - i wouldn't even say it's a virtual world just yet, though perhaps that's being overly limiting. Unfortunately, semantics are critical when we deal with things like funding, public opinion, etc... So for those on this project, please put on your PR hats so we are really presenting the benefits of what we are trying to do. So where was I? Ok, the NPR article: This was from JANUARY, decades ago in SL time... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4488103 but still not the one i heard... But i found this interesting bit about stats: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/17/more-second-life-stats/And evidently On the Media covered this before: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/09/on_the_media_on.htmlStill looking... OK, so it wasn't On the Media, it was Here and Now... progress... AHA! http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/11/20061124_1.aspNow i'm not sure that this article is all that much more than any of the others- but what's interesting is they started out by talking about Virtual worlds in general, not specifically SL. Then at another point, they introduced Pathfinder Linden, ( http://zero.hastypastry.net/pathfinder/) who is John Lester in real life- but referred to him as Pathfinder when introducing him, and then the other name when finishing- so if you didn't know about name aliases, it would have been confused. She also made a major gaffe, by referring to Pathfinder as the creator of SL; John Lester is not the creator Philip Rosedale is - but hey, that's the media, huh? Other notables? The host (Robin Young?) speaks with David Weinberger, the fellow who runs Games for Change in SL. She probes about why people would put so much of their life into a virtual environment, and he has a great comeback at one point. Here's the dialogue: Host: "What does that do to a community of people - a sense of community? Does it isolate people? " David Weinberger: "You mean the vibrant US communities where we all go out every evening and we spend hours and hours on the sidewalks talking with our friends engaged in deep conversation? - That community? That doesn't exist? That's the fantasy" (while the others chuckle). He finishes with some more interesting commentary: "This is an environment that we've made of ourselves that's intensely social... it's differently social.. [sic] this is not a video game dungeons and dragons video game where you slash and cut [sic] this is entirely populated by people projecting themselves and their interests and their passsions and their senses of humor and creativity into a terroritoy that we get to build" He also mentioned that Leo Burnett has a world-wide distributed staff, and that they use SL for business meetings - worth looking into a bit more. More so since Farhad is pushing us to have some of our staff meetings in SL. It was also puzzling that she mentioned over a million users, when it's actually a lot more than a million - 1.6 actually, this day after the story. Anyway, good stuff out there. They key to all of this is that this is not a REPLACEMENT for real life- but it brings richness to interaction with those in other places, and incredible possibilities when it comes to creating things or environments that would be difficult or impossible to deal with in the physical world. d.i.
Plan for the President
On Wednesday, we present to our school president, Dr. Zeiss. We had some grand plans originally, which were scuttled by the lack of an island. SL is so backlogged they are predicting we might get ours about mid-December. The meeting is only 15 minutes long, so it needs to be short and sweet. Here's what I'm envisioning, and pitched to Rod (our dean): We meet in a classroom (should it be 5122 or 5123?): -I'll work the podium and so have the overhead, with my own login -Dr. Zeiss will use his, but either Rod or Jean will sit next to him to help where necessary -We'll have a couple students in the room, as well as in another room. -Farhad and Alberto will be in the other room or their offices. -I will have skype, piped thru the room system, and each other person that can will have it. We'll meet in world, and then get the skype conversation going. -We'll have a quick chat in some central location - either the CPCC Futures site, or the SGD site, and then go on a quick tour: -- Reuters news service, specifically the building and the topical meeting areas -- SDSU campus, showing the role-playing, and then the building After that, it could go a LOT of different directions, but we have little time, and a lot to show. Rod's keen to show the classroom interaction, so assuming we have no more time, the thing to do would be to go to a virtual classroom. -so where's the best, at present? Edunation island? Black Library - there's a sloodle demo in the corner there... Within this class, we have limited time, but we should work to do at least the following: -demonstrate raising hands -demonstrate a slideshow -demonstrate giving out something (like when a box is passed out) -demonstrate giving inventory -demonstrate writing and giving out a notecard -demonstrate a link to a website (if not done already at this point) -demonstrate giving a small payment (attaboy) -mention things like attendance, and how we don't want to replace things that work well in RL. So that's the plan, man. Feel free to chime in, or help. d.i.
News agency adds virtual beat
Face Creation
Last night Farhad and I worked on SL creating our own avatar of Farhad's face. We worked until 4 in the morning but all we got was something that looked like something out of the living dead, but it was enjoyable none the less, and a learned a good bit about Character UV images.
My Face
I am in the process of creating my own avatar. To do this I started with my own face. Here is the UV of my face: 
Overcash Building
Marc Tucker, SGD student (one our best TechConnect teachers), is helping me to create the Overcash Building in Second Life. As the first step we decided to create the building in SketchUp. SketchUP is a free Google tool used to create 3D models for Google Earth.  
Our Second Second Life Meeting
 Doesn't the title "Second Second Life Meeting" sound funny? I conducted another Second Life meeting last night with 12 of my students in my Intro to Game Development class. We were in the meeting for over 4 hours building and scripting. We experimented with writing many different scripts and building objects from scratch. Most of my SGD students have SL account now and I am working very hard to bring SL development into the curriculum.
Your Face Image on Your Shirt
I have been working to have my own avatar, with my own face, in the last few days. I am not there yet. But, I just had an idea. Why don't we, meanwhile, post our face image on our shirts, like this: 
New avatar for Gary Goldkey
 I created a new for myself in Second Life. I bought a new "skin" for 350 Linden dollars. The skin is an older guy with gray hair. I wanted an avatar that looked more like myself :)
Educators explore 'Second Life' online
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The classroom of the future isn't on a college campus. It's in the virtual world of "Second Life." A growing number of educators are getting caught up in the wave. More than 60 schools and educational organizations have set up shop in the virtual world and are exploring ways it can be used to promote learning. Read more...
My New "The Spirit of CPCC" Shirt
 I just learned how to make my own T-shirt: 
Loved It!
 The blog looks great. Gosh, and I didn't realize I was attending our first 3-D meeting last Thursday. I loved it. I learned a lot and had great fun. Next time I'll bring a coffee pot :-) jean
Nov 9th, 2006 First SL Meeting
 We did it! We had our first official meeting inside the Second Life world. On November 9, 2006, around 8:00 p.m., I initiated a Second Life meeting from my office. I called DI, who was in Massachusetts, through Skype and asked him to join me in Second Life. Soon thereafter, Jean, Nic, Alberto and several SGD students joined the meeting. Some were in their offices, others in the SGD lab. All attendees had headphones and were interconnected through Skpe, so they could talk to one another and interact with one another's avatars inside Second Life's 3D environment. Soon, we invited Cathy from USDU and Caroline and Ian from Nova Scotia, Canada. The meeting lasted for more than two hours. Attendees changed avetars and engaged in interesting actions/interactions. We all took turns leading the group on tours of the SL world through teleporting to the areas with which we were familiar. Attendees: Farhad Javidi, DI vonBriesen, Jean Hardy, Ian MacLeod, Carolyn Campbell, Caroline Burrell, Cathy Arreguin, Alberto Botero, Nic Colley, Marc Tucker and several SGD students. Audio Network: Skype
LSL Scripts - Lesson One
SecondLife includes a facility for defining scripts within existing objects. To create an object, start SecondLife, log in, right-click on virtual ground or water and left-click "Create" on the circular menu that appears. When you do this, an "object manipulation menu" will open on the left side of your screen and your cursor will change to a "magic wand" when you hover over the ground again. Left-click again on the ground. You will then hear a mysterious rumble and an object will appear. It will be some 3-dimensional geometric figure, such as a cube, cone or sphere. The colored lines emanating from that object are used for making certain positional changes in the object. ( screen shot) Return to the object manipulation menu, and if you see a "More>>" button, press it once, until the extended version of the menu opens. Within the extended menu, left-click on the "Object" tab, and you will see options for changing the overall shape and dimensions of the currently selected object. Left-click on the "Content" tab and you will see a list of scripts associated with the object. The "Contents" directory displayed within the "Content" tab will most likely be empty. Left-click on the "New Script" button, and a "Script" editing window will open. The editing window has a "script editing area" where you can type or paste in a new script, and buttons for saving the script, undoing changes made, etc. It will look something like this: The script editing area should contain the following script: default
{
state_entry()
{
llSay( 0, "Hello, Avatar!");
}
touch_start(integer total_number)
{
llSay( 0, "Touched.");
}
} Left-click on the "Save" button. You should see the message "Compile successful, saving..." appear in the box below the script editing area. After a short pause you should see the message "Save complete." appear in that box as well. Once the script is saved, you will see the message "Hello, Avatar!" appear in the lower-left-hand corner of your screen. This message indicates that the script has started and waiting for touch events. To test the object's responsiveness to "touch," close both the script editing and object manipulation windows, and right-click on the object. The circular object menu will appear from which you can select "Touch." You should then see "Object: Touched." appear in the lower-left-hand corner as well.
How to Start
 That's wonderful, and we'd be happy to have them on board. Farhad and I and a few others have spent a good deal of time with this in the last few weeks, and so here's some starting points. Please distribute them to your team, and we can get started! - Everyone needs an account on second life. They are free, and you can sign up at www.secondlife.com. One word of caution. The paid (authenticated by credit card) accounts allow you to own land, which is great - but if it's for work, you could end up charging your card for work stuff- which is hard to reverse. So if you do a paid account, use the card that would be charged from that point on. It's $70 a year for one, which includes an "allowance" - and if you've room in your budget, it greatly increases ones sense of ownership to do so - but not necessary. Because of the steep learning curve, a lot of this work will by necessity be outside the office.
- The graphics/bandwidth demands of second life (SL) are pretty heavy. I am able to run it off a new low-end dell laptop, but not off a PIII at home. I've heard that some machines here on campus can't run it- but so far the lab machines I've tried could (but they were newer, in the IT building).
- Everyone needs a skype account, and the equipment to do voice. At a minimum, mic and speakers, or a headset with mic. We've been doing it both ways- and CDWG has mics for under 4 bucks, and headsets for about the same. Skype reduces the reliance on typing. Once skype is set up, please ping farhad and me and add us to your contact list. We'll give you the other team members' info (including gary gilbody, alberto botero, and others).
A review of www.secondlife.com/education is also important, and I'd strongly suggest a subscription to the SL in Education (SLED) newsletter, which is comprised of hundreds of educators working with this. - Consider joining sloodle.org, which is working to combine moodle with SL and for which i'm on the admin team.
- Step by step: So for SL, these are first steps
a. Create account - it makes it easier to match your first name, but not required.
b. Go thru orientation island (give yourself half to a full hour to do so) and do minor setups to your character (you can tweak this over time). Specifically you need to learn how to:
- fly and land
- center on an object
- rotate view around that object
- zoom and pan on centered objects (including yourself)
- use the chat feature
- then send a friendship invite to me (icabad vallejo) and farhad (farhad sakai)
- Explore, and use the search tool to find education related places. A few of note:
- Education Island, Edunation, NMC library, SDSU campus, Glidden campus, Australian School of Film and Sound, and others
- Once these things are done, we can take everyone on a tour. We did this thursday night with me up here, farhad and alberto in their offices, and students in the lab. We all chatted via skype, and hooked up with some educators from nova scotia, and another from San Diego. Sometimes a little guidance goes a long way.
- If you'd be more comfortable walking thru some of this in person, we can arrange a meeting on campus, but no sense in wasting time on things like account creation. For the next few days i'm in Mass for a death in the family - so the skype option works nicely.
Please let me know when i can expect to see everyone on board. I'm the project manager on this, but will rely heavily on Farhad becuase he's actually got an architecture degree, and all the background (and students) with the SGD program. He has also committed to running one or more classes in SL next semester, and his students are already working with it and logging in every day. - If you know of other teachers who are willing to try this out, please include them. I think i've got alisa hylton on board, and imagine there are others that should be - i just don't know who they are yet. We need innovative, out of box thinkers. In a world without real gravity or distance, you gotta think differently.
- For marketing purposes, please refer to second life as second life or as a "simulated environment" - not a game. It's not actually a game anyway, but calling it that just causes problems - if it were a game there might be battles, or objectives, or points- but there are none of these (though you can have battles in some places I suppose).
This should be enough to keep you busy!!
d.i.
Innovation project
Your innovation project is quite exciting. I would like all of the Developers to included in this endeavor. They meet with faculty frequently and will be the "carriers" of this "new" technology. I request a meeting with both of you to chart a plan for their inclusion. Thanks so much. - Dianne Cates
"$1.6 Million US Dollars Spent," and It's Fake
 I was impressed when I check the LL homepage yesterday and saw that it was announcing $1.6 Million in "US Dollars spent" in game. But then I checked my email and found an anonymous letter from a Herald reader claiming that one million of that amount was genererated in one and half hours by a script s/he wrote in which money was passed back and forth between two avatars (letter below). Nothing was bought and nothing was sold, that is, not one penny was "spent". But now if it is that easy to fake these much-hyped numbers, how do we know that someone at LL isn't doing precisely the same thing? Or generating accounts? Or regularly logging in dummy acccounts? Is there any independent auditing on these claims or are we just supposed to believe the Linden numbers because ... um because...(I'm drawing a blank here). Folks, a lot of money and investment is coming into SL because of these numbers. date Nov 9, 2006 6:00 PM subject US$ Spent in last 24 Hours mailed-by gmail.com
I just wanted to let you know that I ran a little experiment today. I passed a fixed amount of L back and forth between two accounts via a scripted system that was able to pass the money back and forth repeatedly. When I started the test, the 24 hour total was approximately 486,000 USD. After about an hour and half, my system pushed the total to over 1.5 million. What this means is that Linden Labs does in fact include transactions that net a zero sum. After all the testing was complete, I had the same amount of L as when I started. I have the transaction history for both accounts involved, as well as the scripts used for the test.
Regards,
Anonymous Sl User
Source: Second Life Herald
DI's Update
- I'd like to represent the island as a collection of opposing things: north south, east west, hi low, sand forest, old new, to create an interesting and rich environment where anything we can imagine has a place (futures institute could be a floating building, geology could be an ancient fossil on the beach). - the compass metaphor with symbolic "campus building avatars" is a focal point, integrated with the flag and fountain symbolic of the current quad - but is NOT meant to be a duplicate of all the campuses. Based on his list we then begin to incorporate buildings that serve the necessary functionality, but do not attempt to replicate anything just for it's own sake, except perhaps the overcash building (which will symbolize central campus) and the statue in front of it. -Immediate quick wins should be the gallery, the 4 other buildings i've agreed to purchase, and perhaps a number of the freebies we've collected, along with various plants, landscaping, etc... that we've already aquired. -We have a planner/designer (Liam Kenno) who's eager to help and is looking at the big picture. -Farhad is planning to work with 3 star students to put some things together. I hope to get online with them if they still plan to meet thursday night at 6. We will jump on the island as soon as we hear from them. Farhad, if you can go ahead and meet, buzz me during the day and we can check my status as far as computer/skype setup - if we can skype and meet in SL, it'll be good practice. Also, i'd love to participate in the program chair meeting if you can do speaker phone - could you call me when you guys meet? If you can get Antonio, Nick, etc.. to go on this, here are a few things we need on the more technical side: - how to easily create scripts that get you from one sim to another (not a normal teleport- it must load the map, or window, and then the user choosed to teleport). - how to apply a photo to an avatar (want to build zeiss' face, and maybe rod's and others) - how to mimic the sculpture in fronnt of overcash- can maybe take photos from differnet angles and create with just 2 interlaced (Gary knows a bit about this) - find some really cool building for the futures institute, and how to buy it with right to edit- and tweak for that purpose. -anything else you can think of... Jean, what you could really help with is a few specific things in second life- i'll lay out, and maybe you can call or reply by email with thoughts/questions. We need art, digital, and lots of it. I'm hoping you can do the following: contact elizabeth ross, and (gallery named after her) and explain what we are doing (she might remember me) and ask if we can have digital copies of her work. How much? Whatever she's willing to give us- but not less than 10 or 20 pieces. My intention is to name the gallery in SL after her, as it is here - and so want her work to start as the center. Then, or in parralel, and maybe with her help, contact other art folks (start with director or whoever) and get some more art, and find digital copies of the student submitted artwork - if we can get each page as a jpg (jen in student services is connected to that, as is robert mungo, who i believe has a cpcc account) we can easily make books of them. this all shouldn't take much time, but would be easy to get bogged down in- my target is to have 50+ pieces ready to work with - gary or I can give you money in SL to allow you to upload, or you can put the pix on a website we can access and we can upload them. Then we can start putting them in-world. We also need headshots of all key players - zeiss, drumm, malik, rod, you, me, etc... anyone who is a key decision maker, or who may be interested. I'd like to get marj orell and david goble in on things (I think goble would look dapper as an avatar). So that's a big priority, and would help us immensely if you could pursue it - the key is delivery. Other things we need: - a tall flagpole to match that of the quad - a fountain like the quad one - you to be familiar with all the teaching tools- search on thinc, check out NMC, join SLED, join SLOODLE, and check out the ITC (??) library. - you to be familiar with how to get around, look at objects from all sides, zoom in and out, pan, etc... can all be had thru the tutorials. That's what comes immediately to mind. I'm envisioning a multi-themed island, that goes from one extreme to the other- we have 4 pts on the compass, four seasonal themes, sea level to mountains, sand to forest, and in architecture old (ruins representing something like a roanoke era ship) to new (futures insitute). d.i.
Start Experimenting
So earlier we got the go-ahead to start experimenting and get a couple premium accounts- and that we did. I've spent a number of hours exploring and learning, and boy is there a lot to learn. Now I feel like an old hat, and have walked folks thru a number of things, and get more excited as time goes on. So the latest mandate- we got a small innovations grant to do an island, and a huge strategic plan from the dean, which i'm working to convert into a workable checklist... you know, when you convert a paragraph into nouns and verbs and such so that you can break it into discrete tasks and concepts. When I do that, the list gets REALLY long, and I'm going to need a lot of help. But here's a quick summary of some things I've picked up and learned: You need a magic feather to fly over 250 or so meters. You can't usually teleport over about 300M. Scripting teleporting is a pain in the butt, and has something to do with radians - so that rotating an object that teleported you to a point fine, will then cause you to shoot out on your ear, or miss your target, or whatever. There's a setting to have the default "sit" action occur when you left-click instead of the normal right-click- which is cool becuase it means faster teleporting (I'm all for less clicks). Two people i'm very intrigued by that I came across: - ariane brodie at http://virtualunderworld.net/arianeb/secondlife.htm She seems very smart - with skills and scripting, and has included some interesting initial tips and scripts. She also seems to have some pretty amazing modeling skills. - Kisa Naumova http://www.flickr.com/people/eyefood/ has some amazing art, which you should look at. It's not clear to me whether the cool architecture within SL is hers, but seems clear that much of the art is... another ubergeek with scripting and design skills. In addition, there are a few notable people that have already been invaluable to me and our efforts: -Mari Asturias - my first helper, who showed me the SDSU campus, and spent time patiently explaining many things to me, including what "cybering" is - and no, we didn't. Her friend gave me a magic feather for flying, and some related tips. -The robot guy who was building part of a library on NMC (or was it?) who gave me my hard-hat, which now universally has folks asking if i'm one of the village people. -Gary... who quickly put some teleporters on my land for me, but more importantly put a link to HIS land, which i've taken scads of people to visit, since it's just way cool- the dome and the butterflies, especially- plus the idea of up/down televator buttons. -Dagmar Kojishi - the first other Community College person I met (that I knew of) and who's been helping me with this and that. -Liam Kanno who has a really cool gallery, and who I hope will help us with building designs with his degree in industrial design. And everyone else. So now, before I forget, a few things my memory banks will lose if i don't note them: - putting a panorama on a curved wall (the inner side) makes a cool effect, and creates a panoramo in SL without needing a helmet. You can use such curved "walls" at the tops of spiral staircases and such for interesting architectural designs. - ramps work just as well as steps, but steps look cooler - see shinsa 232 85 58 for a cool spiral stairway - for videos/slideshows, you can have rows of benches facing in both directions - you can buy a stargate that jumps you around, or randomly jumps you to another stargate... gimmicky or cool? You decide - certainl LOOKS cool, but a bit much work for a basic teleport. Conceptually like a webring, actually... - cool pink building at : shinsa 232 85 58 (actually not there, but look for starkissed studios) - can do long videos, which look good. Need to take our SGD and other vids and bring 'em into SL. Wonder how... - there are a LOT of art galleries in SL- each with something to offer - a hedge maze might be an interesting way to demo things (drawbridge 17, 229) - near that point is part of a building that looks a bit like our levine campus - levine campus might actually be a good one to build to match RL- unlike most of our other buildings... - can we use picture of our statue to build a statue like it? - at gallinas 178 32 i bought some animations.. way cool... and made me laugh out loud - it strikes me that you could build a "ghetto elevator" by making a tub, with a cutout on each end, and just walk in and fly - if you put an angle at the top/bottom, it would simply force the user ina nd out - just have 'em walk in, and fly and thell go up and then bounce out on that floor- would save all the click, teleport nonsense... - It looks really neat when you fly above a highway, as low as possible, essentially "driving" yourself thru the countryside... got to find a highway though - on in gallinas... 139 146 - later in gallinas 123 38 - mideast style -camping gourdneck 30 252 -Obscuru Valkyrie 49, 39, 27 - nice example if a 6 item screen with center selection Been about 5 hours, now almost 6am, and i'm off to bed!! d.i.
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CPCC 3D Campus / SLC3
