Jelly wrote about it today and it got me thinking. Why haven’t I been going into Second Life?

Quite honestly, I’ve had a lot of other stuff I’ve had to do and have wanted to do. Some personal, some professional, and some other. 

I’ve been working a lot. And strangely with the onset of daylight savings time, I’ve been a lot more interested in my work. That’s a good thing because for most of the winter I’d been really depressed about my work life. I recently stopped having clinical cases and instead I’ve been wrapping my brain around environments (real, physical and interpersonal ones) and trying to understand why they make us do the things we do. I don’t know where I’ll go from here, but I’m not uncomfortably bored and unchallenged where I am at the moment, and that’s really important. Never underestimate the power of a little sun.

I’ve been writing my novel again, and that’s where a lot of my creative energy has been. Blogging here at M is for Myg has taught me that I can write consistently in short spurts. So I set the goal to write two pages a day on my novel, and I’ve been really good at sticking to it. Two pages may not sound like much, but if I stay on this schedule I’ll have my first draft done in May. That excites me like I can’t even tell you. I’ve been working on this novel since 2004!

I’ve also been obsessing about politics. I have traded my SL addiction for a compulsive Dailykos habit. If you’re not a rabid progressive who thinks Barack Obama is the only obvious choice for president, then don’t even bother going there. Unless you’re on the fence and want to be convinced. Or want to argue and get a royal smack down.

One last thing.  I didn’t make a big deal out of it, but last Friday was M is for Myg’s 1st birthday. I am really proud of that and it wouldn’t be possible without the most excellent contributions from Esteban Moody, Sable Slade and Rain Laval, Xaxoqual Mandelbrot, Alex Burgess (remember him?), and in the way back of this blog, Vanny Richez and Lisa Takao.

It sure as hell wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for those of you who continue to read it. I just want to say thanks for that. It’s hard to explain how much that means to me, but let me put it like this.

Good blogging requires a writer to commit a piece of themselves, to surrender it publicly to the scrutiny and criticism of anyone on earth with a computer. It’s a powerful act, and not one devoid of intellectual and emotional consequences, however trivial the subject matter may appear. These blogs contain our ideas, and what are we if not ideas and feelings?

That’s why Second Life is so amazing to me still. You are almost purely an idea there, with your physical package stripped away and instead, represented by an image of mostly your own mind’s creation.

When you come and participate in M is for Myg as a reader or commenter, you let me and my friends know that on some level our ideas – we – matter. Even when you disagree with us or don’t like us.

Thanks for that. I needed it.

Love,
Myg

Well, we knew Alexander Burgess had a semester of gradual skool, so we gave him some slack. But what’s stopped him from posting during the break? That farking AWNM dudes’ blog? Harumph. So they have nakie pics. M is for Myg has podcasts! And DJs! And Hulk! And snarkiness! Is this not enough? Seems like there’s a trend here. One that must be stopped!

If anybody sees this chicken, remind him from Myg that there ain’t no date set yet…

A girl blogger has needs, ya know. Regular posting is one of them, right along with daily thumb massages and coffee in the morning!

from this original, sent as a postcard from Second Life:

Let me explain how simple this is.

You’re in Second Life. You take a snapshot and send it as a postcard to your Flickr account (go to your flickr account page and look under the email tab to find out the email address you send the postcard to).  And if only I didn’t have to paste the email address in every time, wow how much easier!

Then you go to the photo’s page on flickr and hit edit.  You can use picnik as long as you can use Flash.

In picnik, under the “edit” tab I cropped and adjusted the exposure. Then under the the “create” tab, I used the effects boost, soften, and vignette. Then under frame I made a border.

It’s super quick and easy. It’s no photoshop, but it’s free (for those of you who don’t have PS and can’t spend the L on it…) and there’s a bunch of fun stuff you can do with it. Also, you can upgrade to premium for additional features ($24.95 a year).

What I love is not stockpiling a zillion random photos on my hard drive and not using PS for simple editing coz I suck at PS and am too impatient to learn and besides, it runs like poop on my computer if I’m running SL.

So, are you using it? What do you think? And on my wishlist is for Vint to review and contrast with PS!

Blogher is having it’s big ass convention in Chicago next weekend. Well, I can’t be in Chicago, but thanks to the forward thinking women putting this together I can still go to the conference. See, these smarties are hosting a complimentary event in Second Life at the same time. Wow, what a great idea!

So refreshing, too, to see a big organization actually figure out what Second Life *is* good for. Like bringing people with common interests together across continents. See corporate America, was that so hard?

Somehow, I was asked to do the “meet your fellow blogger” activity in Second Life. I’m honored, to say the least. So, say you’ll be there. Promise? Okay good.

I’m on at 8am SL Time, Friday 7/27/07. And with that kind of spotlight I’ll be doing something goofy, you can bet on it. Then right afterwards you can see the mighty Vint Falken. on a panel with theDivaRockin of podcasting and dj’ing glory, and Koz Farina, creator of the second life blogHUD.

But if you want to go, you need to register. Then you’ll get the info about where, etc.

Check out the schedule here. And register here. (Don’t be fooled by the registration form! It’s painless and free to register. You too, men!)

Until then!

Some of the more addicted SLBloggers got together on Sunday to do a little planning and talk business in a lovely courtyard at DesertWolf‘s place. Present were DesertWolf, dinee, Zoe, Tiana, JellyBean, HawksRock, Myg, and myself. Technically I think the weekly meeting is for “officers” in the SL Bloggers Second Life group, but anyone in the group is welcome. If you want to be more involved, just IM Zoe Connolly to be included.

Piracy is the theme of this month’s SL Bloggers blogmeet (this Sunday, July 15, beginning at 1 p.m. SL time, at the home of the lovely and gracious dinee, watch the group notices for the LM). And no, we’re not talking about copyright issues or filesharing, we’re talking Aarrrrggh, matey! Pirates! Come in your scurvy nautical best.

An idea of what kind of things we kicked around after the jump.

There’s DW, lookin’ stylee in his new abode. Here’s what we talked about:

Monetization – Ads on your blog? Some say yea, others definitely nay. Myg volunteered to run a little sub-group discussion seminar on this topic. Stay tuned for info.

Bloggers’ Island – This was a group land idea that has been scrapped for the time being.

Logos for the SLBloggers’ group: Some type of voluntary identifier members could put on their blog. Basically, anyone with an idea and the merest hint of design talent, please take a crack at it and then submit it to Zoe. The designer of the selected logo will be awarded L$5,000.

The SL Bloggers Wiki: it’s not getting much use, none of us necessarily feel drawn to using it regularly, but when the conversation turned to discussing technical details of blogging (various platforms, plugins, customization) it became clear the wiki would be a good place to collect links and resources–without reinventing the wheel. Also, watch this space for some basic blogging tutorials.

SLBloggerCon 2008: Probably occurring February 2008, a showcase, kinda like SL4B but obviously much smaller, focusing on the SL blogging community. Including such things as a machinima night, possible live speakers on blogging, and exhibitions. An inworld event, though several of us voted for Tahiti as a RL location, so we may live blog from there.

Anyone with suggestions for what might be of help to the SL Blogging community, just let one of us know and we’ll see if we can’t bury it in committee. No, seriously, if there’s something you want to learn or an idea you have that needs more than one person or that would benefit the whole group–don’t be shy, tell us about it.

Last night, Myg, Esteban, and I caught a ride in a Caddy with a ghost driver. I tried to take a pic of it not being there, but my camera wouldn’t even move the frame that far over. Talk about supernatural power. M and E weren’t bothered by it at all, but you can tell by the look on my face I was a little freaked. I calmed myself during the spectral excursion by thinking about all the cool stuff I’d read about in the blogosphere this week.

The enthusiasm and talent of Wrath and Jellybean for machinima is infectious. Though you probably won’t see anything directly from me too soon, I have been reading up on it. In addition to the tutorial Tiana posted, Aenea (director of “A Public Affair,” one of the best music video machinimi I’ve seen) has written one specifically for Mac OS X (hurrah!) dealing with running and external frame capture program like Fraps (Windows only, Mac users must use Boot Camp to run it) or SnapzPro. I’m hoping that using one of these may lessen some of the jerkiness you see in most machinima (take note, Windows people, this could help you too).

For my fellow WordPress junkies out there, if you like to tweak things you should be reading WebBlog Tools Collection, where you can find the latest theme and plugin releases.

If you’re worried about your blog addiction, well, just think of me as your enabler. Have another, there’s no use fighting it.

80%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
Silly quiz time! Still, thought it was time to come clean with my addiction. So, what about you?

Be warned, the link takes you to the quiz, hosted at a silly online dating place, and who needs online dating when all we ever do in Second Life is get laid anyway?

What a life!

That’s Lillie Yifu–whose blog, 2nd Sex, I discovered earlier this week boldly piloting my browser into the badlands of the blogosphere. Lillie writes intelligently and thoughtfully about issues intersecting her life as a highly paid, highly visible escort (I’m sure I’ve seen her name attached to comments at various other blogs). What drew me in this week was her post on the obnoxious practice of teleport spam. You’ve all been reading her, I know. How come you didn’t tell yr pal, Alex? And for those of you interested in more titillating tales of her business, she also posts at The Red Lantern.

Other sites of recent note:

• I’ve taken to reading Metaversed, which strikes me as a more business-minded 3pointD, getting down into the dirt and discussing the intersection of meatspace politics with virtuality, as well as all manner of metaspherical business–think of an expanded version of Tateru Nino’s Monday Reality Mix at New World Notes or Second Life Insider‘s Mixed Reality category. (Hey NWN: How about some categories–preferably linked to yr Technorati account and some pingbacks.)
• A Virtual Village Voice is Laetizia Coronet’s personal blog that offers brief, thoughtful posts on things we’re all talking about.
• And last, A Better World in Second Life, not a blog at all, but a page dedicated to promoting a machinima film of the same title about the intersection of Real World activism with Second Life. And since we dig machinima and activism, we’ll dig you if you check it out. Dig?

We arrived in shuttles, vipers, and phoneboxes. We materialized out of thin air. Dressed in uniforms, armor, and old sockses. We were all there. Yep, it was the sci-fi-themed June blogmeet. My head still hurts. But probably not as much as Wrath’s. Make sure you click on the pic and go look at the full-sized version at Flickr to get the full effect. Notice even at this stage in the evening, Wrath has forgotten what he is wearing. Though, I’m no one to point fingers. I have no idea what I was dressed as. After the fact, it appears I was channeling some long-lost relative of Mrs. Whatsit from A Wrinkle in Time.

Many thanks to the lovely Veyron for hosting. Your home and deck were an ideal location and the sim was virtually lag-free. (Sorry, I only got this one headshot–does anyone have a good photo showing her sporting the hawt top from The Fifth Element?) Representing the blogosphere at the outset were: Hawks and JellyBean, London and Natsume, Dalien, Korbin, TheDiva, DesertWolf, Zoe, dinee, Veyron, Looker, Wrath, Sun, and Elusyve. And missing from the pic but who I know were there early on: Vint (who has a great write up of the party here), CodeBastard, Caterin. Who else, avs? Let me know. Read on below the fold to see how this lovely afternoon dance party turned into a scene of excess and debauchery of lunar proportions.

When Myg and I arrived, Zoe was dressed as Cara “Starbuck” Thrace from BSG. As if I didn’t have enough trouble talking to her. I’m kicking myself now, I had so many questions. Like, why Apollo, ever? He’s so obviously interested in the boys and is far more interesting as Horatio Hornblower’s sidekick Archie. As the evening progressed, Zoe went through a number of costume changes, finally ending up as some kind of angel (Timelord?) who I began making all kinds of rude passes at, completely blocking my pal Wrath. (Sorry dude, I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe it’s that comment you made about going home with Myg when you thought I was passed out.)

Ensign Paine wore the red shirt, and got drunk fast because he knew he was most likely going to be the first casualty in this episode of Blog Trek.

Still radiant from their nuptials last week, JellyBean and HawksRock danced close and took the prize for cutest couple.

TheDiva was there in full-effect, spinning a series of mashups that did, indeed, end up mashing up in a 15-car trainwreck. Let this be a lesson to all you DJs out there: don’t drink and spin. No, I’m just playin’–she did a great job and kept us entertained well beyond the call of duty.

Veyron brought out her trashcan with all kinds of free goodies. I think we emptied it. I know I spotted Myg with tell-tale FrootLoop powder around her nostrils.

At some point, someone hit the particle button and the scene got pretty trippy. Something happened and the dancefloor tp’d straight to the moon. Below is a shot of it in transit.

Just one of the many reasons SL rules. You can move your party to the moon by virtue of a holodeck and there’s no mess to clean up afterward.

Another screenshot showing the crew getting loose on the holodeck. In attendance were now Col. Hotspur, Sir Edward, Vint, Myg, Sun, Looker, Bella (Myg’s Italian cousin), dinee, Dalien, DesertWolf, Veyron, loki, Elusyve, Wrath, and me . . . and a bunch more–like Timothy (hurrah!)–as the party rotated for a couple of hours. Many thanks to our European friends for staying up late and bringing it hard.

Here we have some prime representatives of La Communite Belgique, Bella (ah, ché ragazza bella!) and Looker, who gets my vote for best dressed man of the night.

By this point, I was running through my inventory and consuming anything consumable. I would have been spinning even if the low gravity had not set me that way already.

And this was the last thing I saw before the evening went dark. I can only assume my darling Myg, love of all my lives, picked me up and took me home. I imagine what she really wanted to do was leave me face down in a crater and get naked and crazy with the rest of the party. Hmm… I’m not so sure that didn’t happen. But I’m mostly certain she got me safe and comfy first.

P.S. Make sure you all check out the SL Bloggers’ Wiki.

Orchid and I are building Myg’s exhibit space for the Second Life 4th Birthday (SL4B) celebration. Above we’re hard at work brainstorming. She’s cute, isn’t she? She’s like my annoying kid sister copping my look like that. No matter what she says, I saw those boots first. I admit, she did help me find the camo cut-offs, but then went and bought her own just to wind me up. Notice the way she adores me. Who could stay bugged?

It’s a Wednesday and the grid is going to be down for six hours, at least, so I’m going to get meta on you.

One of Second Life’s great strengths is the rich social networking the 3D virtual space enables–well beyond that of any chatroom or MUD. The vibrancy of the relationships is startling. Sue Stonebender wrote a thoughtful post about virtual networking recently. Sue is one of the first people Myg met through blogging way back when she only had a Vox blog four months ago. Besides being a great blogger, Sue–along with her incredibly talented partner, Baron Grayson–is responsible for some of SL’s most beautiful builds. More society pages and interpersonal dirt after the jump.

The hookup for the Second Life 4th Birthday celebration came from the tireless Vint Falken, who Myg and I and hundreds of others have met through blogging and Flickr. It turns out that one of the organizers for the event is Shoshana Epsilon, another Flickrite who we had already noticed because of her photos and the fact that she is the administrator for about a half-billion SL Flickr groups.

There’s a ton of crossover between the blogging community and the Flickr community–which makes sense because Flickr provides a great platform for hosting blog photos–and there are a variety of plugins and widgets available to integrate it into the different platforms. (We blog with WordPress, and use Flickr Photo Album plugin and Flickr Widget.)

The interaction with the bloggers spills over inworld, of course, because it’s all about the metaverse. And the interactions here and in Second Life–people like Wrath, Tiana, Zoe, Codie, Timothy, Vanny and Lisa and a whole ton more look at the blog list–are inspiration, motivation and assistance for the Met A Stranger series and sometimes wind up in the story. Talk about a hall of mirrors. Who wants to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes?

This morning I added the Sociable plugin to the blog. See those slightly-faded little icons at the bottom of the post? Those set up easy links to social bookmarking sites and other blog networking tools. We’ve only got co.mments, de.licio.us, technorati, digg, and StumbleUpon activated right now to see how it goes (those are the only ones we’re actually familiar with, but the Sociable will allow you to enable a whopping 64 different networking agents).

I added Sociable because I was lead there by a link at co.mments. I’m digging the co.mments service because it allows me to track conversations and comments on other blogs even if there is no comments rss to subscribe to. I comment frequently, but then often forget where and can’t remember where to look or take the time to search. co.mments keeps track and allows you to subscribe to your own feed of all your conversations.

The interesting thing is that while writing this, I noticed Vint has a co.mments link at the bottom of her posts. I hadn’t spotted it before, and I’m wondering now if it’s because I gloss over certain kinds of text links in blog posts. On the other hand, I find too many chicklet icons can really muck up a design (one of the reasons I like sociable is that it darkens the chicklets so they don’t pop out too much until you hover over them). This got me thinking about how much design plays into usability and building traffic and I wonder what you all think.

Maybe we can discuss this during the blogmeet at Veyron’s on Saturday. (I have no idea what I’m going to wear. Aren’t I sci-fi already by default? I can has cheezburger?) Though I’m sure we’ll all be buzzing about the exciting Bloggers’ Island project. That idea sounds really cool. (Myg and I are a little down that we don’t have the extra funds and time to participate. We’ve got so much invested in Topgol and still so much building to do it just doesn’t make sense to us at the moment, as heavenly as a peaceful private class 5 server would be…) So:

What are your favorite blog tools?
Do you favor one platform over another?
Have you tried blogHUD? Other kinds of cross-platform tools? Dalien’s DeliHUD?
Do you think the networking or bookmark tools increase your traffic?
How do you promote your blog?
Do you care?

With any luck, the grid will be up on schedule at Noon SL time, and we can all get on with our second lives. And if you made it this far and are still waiting for the dirt, here it is: A certain campaign manager for Wei ’08 was reportedly spotted, um, fraternizing with one of the other candidates. Rumors of a film are circulating.