VSTE Day 10

Day 10 was Saturday of a three day weekend. It was very much like what we had expected to do Dec. 22. Mandie, Alfredo, Jazmemo, and were there most of the day. Valinia and Cyrus dropped by to see our progress. Elijah was there most of the day working on the Powhatan Village. Mandie worked on the dirt path and tried to teach me to do it. We decided it was best for one person to work on that so it looks the same all the way around the island. Al studied the fort walls and worked on uploading the texture he wanted to use. SL was not cooperating with him at all! I looked for board room furniture and, typical of me, stumbled on generous people and got a beautiful set for free. There must have been fifty manhours put in today and we all left SL tired, but we got a lot accomplished. I searched for "Board Room" and ended up at The Ginny Business Center. They have conference rooms all set up for rental from businesses who come to SL for meetings. It's very professional with white boards and audio visual help. The owner, linkin Slate, gave me the rug, table and copyable chair. If you have needs for his facilities, please look him up! If he would give all this to a stranger what wouldn't he do for someone paying for his services!

VSTE Day 9

I tried my hand at making rugs, probably the easiest thing to "build" in second life. The problem is design. I'm not there yet. I tried to match the colors of the furniture but the patterns are too wild, too bold, too much. I made four different rugs with blue, green, beige, and brown that will never be seen at VSTE HQ. :-) My friend, Leonard came over and made a ceiling fan for me but in the end I bought one at a store. His was nice and I will use it someplace else. The downstairs of the HQ is furnished. It needs some finishing touches to give it warmth and that lived in look.

Flying and Barrie Visit

Day six was a great day! The HQ is in place and we started furnishing it with Identity's creations and a few freebies we had around. The building still needs minor adjustments. It's a really hard building to get tightened up.

Flying and Barrie came to visit and stayed long enough to talk a while. We got to meet Rodney, Flying's dog! VSTE Headquarters is starting to feel like home.

Out with the Old In with the New

Anibal has moved off of Channel Island onto his own brand new sim. This was taken his last day there. He had me remove parts of my Japanese house until there was very little left and added a lot of multimedia tools for his role play with psychotherapy sessions.

This is how the island looked while Skipper was terraforming for me so I could start over. I'm thinking of trying to come up with a colony of teachers who want to have small homes, share the space, and split the tier. Any takers? It is really nice to have a place to call your own and change your clothes in.

VSTE Island Day 4

Day four we rezzed the VSTE Headquarters building. It was too close to the edge of the island, about two meters too high, and turned the wrong way. Normally that is not a problem. Buildings come with "rez boxes," devices that are small, attached to the front of the building and are easily moved with the edit function. You move the rez box in any direction and the entire building follows. Sadly, VSTE HQ came without a rez box.

We tried to move the building into place. It was in several pieces. Some pieces were single prims: railings and a beam or two. It was impossible to gather all the pieces in one edit and move them together. We moved pieces. It was a mess.

Later on the same day Elijah contacted me to tell me that he was working on the Powhatan bits. After I expressed dismay over our building problem he came to help. We rezzed another copy of the building for him to refer to as he was putting ours together.

There remained some tiny spaces between prims. At about 11 PM we all gave up and went to bed!

On a positive note, the furniture and meeting house are nearly ready and the ships were also rezzed. Mandie made room for them by terraforming the edge of the sim. They are a work of art!

Got Google?

Today I got invited via TP to a meeting place to join a group that I know very little about. It has something to do with Google creating a presense in Second Life and Maggie Marat is involved. Jade Lily and Emanna Romano, who I don't know, seemed to also be doing a bit of the talking and sharing. I believe these three are Google Certified teachers which they earned by attending a one day Google Teacher Academy at Google Headquarters. They have aparently convinced Google that people really are using Second Life for educational purposes and that if Google teaches in SL they can reach a lot of teachers who will in turn reach a lot of students. One can apply to attend the academy. The requirements include a one minute video and answers to questions about using technology. You can go to Youtube and search for Google Teacher Academy and see a bunch of different GTA videos. I think I will have to attend some future meetings to really understand what I've gotten into now but I must say I'm very happy to be someone that someone else teleports to a place where something educational is happening. This happens to me more and more now, and it is not the same person. It's been KJ, Bonbon, Massinimo, and others. I love that something starts and somoene thinks, "Thunder would like to be here!" They are SO right!

VSTE Island Day 3 Elijah Shows Up

Day three! Elijah sent me a note via SL notecard. What a treat! He still wants to help with the Powhatan village. We had not heard from him in months, not much at all since he lost his home and business in the hurricane that his Houston this summer. He had offered to do a lot of building for us for the joy of doing it! We don't even know him well. I was sure we were going to have to make do with the Native American stuff we could find in SL as is, but no, Elijah is back and he is going to build based on our photos of the Powhatan village in Jamestown. What a relief! Flying Story (Danny Arkin RL) and Mandie (Marie RL) had a long chat about the VSTE Conference and VSTE island. Now we have a clearer understanding of what we are to do. I can't wait to start!