I sometimes visit a world called Second Life, which is kind of a big 3-D space where you can hang out, build stuff, and fiddle with your avatar’s look. I’ve been a member since 2007, and in that time, I’ve seen the look of avatars change a lot. Also, the people I met there – Willy and Nostrum – influenced my avatar’s look.
When I first started, this was my avatar. I controlled its look through the use of slider bars for every part of the avatar, from body height to amount of fat to face shape. I think there were 15 sliders just for the face alone. There was plenty of room for error, and you would see these freakishly tall avatars walking around with little tiny feet and huge breasts.
The 2008 version of my avatar, achieved only with slider bars.
Willy and I met up from time to time to use the dance halls. It was fun getting dressed up, though time-consuming.
As I made friends and they showed me some cool new things, it was possible to buy skins, and later, shapes. My friend Nostrum Forder gave me her shape which was a more realistic height. Skins were expensive – about 500 – 1000 Lindens each. (1000 Lindens is currently about US $4) My complaint at the time was that most of the skins you could buy had overly made up faces, garishly bright and unnatural looking. I chose one that was pretty basic, compared to those other users selected.
Sylectra (without hair that day, apparently) with friend Nostrum Forder, one of the legendary personalities of Second Life and a resident of Organica. Nostrum, aka Jim, is now my husband.
In the pic above, I had a fairly good purchased skin and a mix of free and purchased clothing. Note the skirt – it’s a Second Life avatar skirt with prim ruffles for bounce and movement. A nice compromise. Nostrum preferred to go as female and had an amazing feel for shapes, skins, hair and clothing. In real life, he’s a regular guy with regular fashion sense.
My friends Steven (Stevenaia) and Cinco, two people that made Second Life a great place to be.
Skins made huge strides in 2010, 2011, and 2012. I had a DrLife skin that was worth every penny in the pic below. Outfits were still made mostly of flexi prims which ate up bandwidth and slowed down Second Life regions.
This skin was slightly green tinted but it was absolutely beautiful, like a painting.
Lately, it’s possible to buy mesh feet, hands, bodies, and heads – separately if you prefer. Then after you have a mesh body, you can buy mesh clothing, which is a snap to fit. Where before I had to use resizing scripts (that ate more bandwidth) or manually adjust prims for a better fit of hair or clothing, now I just add the item and it knows how to fit. Once in a while, some skin shows through the clothing. I can make that area invisible and – voila! Perfection. The only drawback is that it’s harder to look unique. Everyone now looks like a Barbie doll.
Here’s a pic of my avatar Psyche with her new Belleza Freya body.
Psyche’s new mesh body from Belleza.The trouble with mesh bodies, is that if you don’t also buy a mesh head, you have to use the body sliders for skin tone to try to match the head.Sylectra with a Maitreya Lara body and Lamb hair (awesome free gift for joining the group). She’s wearing Belleza Belle skin and the face shape is my own slider bar creation.
It took me about 5 hours and 5,000 Lindens to learn how to use mesh bodies and clothing, but it’s a fun new thing to play with. I have a huge inventory of items, most of which is clothing and hair (17,247 items after the latest purge). Most of my clothing won’t work with mesh bodies.
A very down to earth and open-minded Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble (Rodvik Linden) spoke August 13 at the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) in Oakland, Calif., and his message centered around focusing on making the user experience better and easier. Translation: bug fixes, not bright shiny new features.
However, there were plenty of hints at new features as well, although most were solidly in the usability category.
He seemed to be saying he wouldn’t replicate the Google+ stink about their insistence on people using actual names when he said that in our modern life, we have to wear a lot of hats – we have to be different people at work and when we come home from work, and that has to happen. “We want to be able to choose who we share those various identities with,” he said.
Many of my Second Life friends who are on Google+ have been complaining that they are not permitted to use the same avatar name in the new social network. Some have been banned or their accounts curtailed; others still have their SL names. All feel passionately that they have a right to segment their lives and have each with a different identity or style. I don’t worry about people knowing that Sylectra Darwin is Sylvie Dale, but I support the desire of any of my friends to keep those things separate as they choose.
Humble also said that Linden Lab is about more than just Second Life, although Second Life is by far their more important creation. In anything they create, they want to bring forth the principles of shared creative spaces, privacy first, customer-created content, and shared and social environments. Â “It’s important for us to be as free as we can when it comes to content.”
The first half of the year was spent on creating the new Viewer 2 (with mixed levels of acclaim), making it easier to sign up as a new user, and making it easier for new users to get in-world and start interacting with others. The second half of the year and beyond will remain focused on bug fixes, improving usability, and improving the quality of customer service.
Among planned improvements Humble mentioned:
Usability:new viewer(?), search improved. Goal: Be able to give our family members a SL account and have them send that to any average intelligence computer user and have them be able to enjoy it and use it easily. Being able to move around the world, sign up, find things. Halfway through that project and ahead of schedule on some things (new viewer a big role?).
Lag: cache larger, region crossings improved
Service: Polish, bug fixes, ticket times bumped up, improve quality of customer service, make life unpleasant for griefers
Big initiatives coming out this year: gaming – no HUDS, hit one button for permission and have everything enabled. Premium members – more value coming, marketing and PR campaigns should bring in more users/customers for merchants. Engineers are looking at voice recognition and facial recognition at some point in the future.
Tablet and mobile devices: Massive threat to virtual world is the rise of tablet and mobile devices. We don’t now address mobile devices and you will see us participating in mobile devices with SL and with a new product coming out (!).
Q&A:
Pricing structure: he would not talk about or answer questions about pricing, though he said they have plans to further enrich the experience of premium members.
He acknowledged that Viewer 2 still has a lot of improvement to do. They don’t want to completely redo it because it took so long to get the new codebase; they really need to continue fixing the one they have instead. He’d like to get rid of the sidebar or at least change the way it works, but it’s unlikely to happen until maybe 2012.
Advertising: They might consider channel ads for in-world merchants, but they won’t be spamming us with Colgate banner ads in the viewers.
They’ve been removing barriers to signing up as new users, using the viewer in basic mode, and using the Destination Guide to meet people and socialize, but the next big step is helping people to buy and wear objects, build objects, and do some of those more advanced activities.
Monthly uniques – nice growth in new users in-world – 16,000 new signups per day on average; no other stats forthcoming (big decrease in tier payments??)
A Ph.D. candidate in Melbourne, Australia, is looking for a few good men.
Jon-Paul Cacioli, a clinical psychology student at Deakin University, is conducting a study on body image in the virtual would to see if the avatar can give us any insight into possible real-life psychological properties, he said in an email appeal to the author of this blog.
According to Cacioli, He has already conducted one study into this and requires some additional information, asking that males age 18 and up visit the link below and fill out a 20-minute survey. The focus of the survey is adult males who use avatars in Second Life or online games.
“Previous research has shown that the way people feel and interact with each other can be influenced by the individual’s perception of themselves. A discrepancy between how an individual perceives their own physical appearance compared to how they wish to look can lead to depression, higher levels of stress and anxiety and a poorer overall quality of life. The Internet has recently reached a level of sophistication whereby an individual can create a digital representation of themselves, such as an avatar, controlling each physical dimension. The purpose of this project is to investigate the differences between individuals and their avatars and examine their experience of how appearance affects them in real life and on the Internet, such as in programs as Second Life and World of Warcraft.”
A total of 300 people, all males over 18 years of age, will participate in this project. Participants are entered into a drawing for a $100 AUD Amazon.com gift
voucher, Cacioli said.
Jon-Paul Cacioli
Candidate, Doctor of Psychology (Clinical)
Deakin University
221 Burwood Hwy
Burwood, Melbourne, VIC, 3125
There are some learning experiences that are inspired by interactions within Second Life groups. I belong to a group called Play as Being, which gets together in Bieup to discuss things like meditation, mindfulness, the self, and play. Over time, we have evolved an inclusive method for discussion that helps all participants to be understood and appreciated.
It’s a gentle way to communicate, and especially well-suited to a virtual environment where we cannot see on anothers’ real life faces and so we must make an effort to show positive sentiment in our written chats.
In a Yahoo Group email list, we began to discuss an article written by one of our members, who is known as Bleu.
Why are humans so bad at reasoning in some contexts and good at reasoning in other contexts?
“Reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That’s why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning,” Haidt said.
Another friend responded with this exploration of reason and passion (Hume was one of my required readings a long time ago in college):
“That reminds me of Hume’s argument that ‘reason is and ought only to be the
slave of the passions.’”
To this, our group founder and leader, who goes by Pema Pera in Second Life, related Play as Being’s way of gently exploring issues. He said:
“Once we realize that reasoning is mostly arguing,
a way to consolidate your already existing opinions,
we can discern different ways of doing so.
“The simplest way to reason/argue, is to confront
someone else saying ‘I disagree.’ Here is an example:
“A: I think X.
“B: I disagree. I think Y.
“Clearly, that’s neither very helpful, nor very pleasant.
Chances are than immediately both sides harden their
position, drawing battle lines, and defending X and Y.
“The PaB way of reasoning, as it developed very quickly
and is still developing, is more along the lines of:
“A: I think X.
“[ B thinking: X??? How odd, I’m pretty sure it is Y !!!
how interesting that a nice person like A can have such
a strange idea — I want to know more about that ]
“B: can you say more?
“A: … (saying more) …
“[ B thinking: aha, now I have more of an idea where A is
coming from and the context for thinking X. But let me
make sure I understand, before comparing with my ideas ]
“B: ah, how interesting. So you think X, because of …
(this and that) …
“A: yes, but not quite like that, more like … (such and
such) …
“[ B thinking: okay, that is very helpful, now I have a
more clear picture — though I still think that Y may
be more correct. Let’s see whether we can figure out
our differences. ]
“B: I see. That helps me to understand why you think X.
I myself had thought Y, but I may have to reconsider.
My main argument for Y, rather than X was … (gives
argument) … How does that fit in with your picture?
“At this point, A happily can extend the picture already
sketched and shared, in order to point out how A sees
things differently from B, and they both can walk around
the issue, looking from different angles, while together
finding new vistas.
“Initially, I had not clearly realized that this had become
the PaB way of reasoning by playfully ‘comparing notes’.
It only became clear when we had a few visitors joining us
for a while who were not operating in that mode. Their
much more jarring way of reasoning (like in many academic
forums, or political forums) was very helpful to bring out,
in contrast, what it is that we are all sharing here.”
Sylectra Darwin arrives in Havana, finding not much.
There is a lot of discussion going on about Linden Lab’s recent policy changes. Recently, XStreet SL has decided to charge content providers L99 per month to list a freebie item. Many of these content providers are altruistic and just want to share their work. Most content providers love creating stuff and have no hopes of making any money at it. So charging them for listing their freebie items is making them very angry.
They are often the ones who are paying a lot of tier on some sizeable land in SL. Yet SL is truly the biggest and most used 3D virtual world that’s not a game. We come back to it because of the richness of detail – the builds, the scenery, the people, and the content.
So it occurred to me that I haven’t really spent a lot of time visiting other worlds. Let’s see what else is out there, I told myself. I downloaded the Hippo viewer for Mac and visited OSGrid first.
Aha – I’ve been here before – it remembers my email address and avatar name. I am reborn in the world with a basic “Ruth” shape but I quickly find a freebie avatar kit that contains jeans, hair and a hoodie. Yay.
Wanting to quickly wipe the newbie avatar stink off me, I head out to find more freebies that will at least help differentiate me from other avatars. In the process I hope to find content to buy.
In Cascabel Emporium on Quirm, I find a PrimBlender Importer for bringing my work in-world (once I know how to use PrimBlender, which I don’t). I take a free copy just in case.
Teleporting is an issue – can’t do a search in world and click the teleport. However, if you pull up a map you can teleport that way, or using SLURLs from regular web sites. Hmm. I am having trouble finding any recommendations of places to visit that also include SLURLs. Anyone have any recommendations?
Metanomics, a group that gathers in Second Life with a good “2D” Web showing as well, had a discussion March 2 on avatar culture.
The session preview stated that Anthropologists Tom Boellstorff and Celia Pearce are developing new methods and theories about human relationships in virtual worlds and would be discussing how traditional ethnography is being adapted to the study of online immersive environments and how virtual worlds shape identities, economies, communities and societies.
One of Metanomics’ many strengths is its ability to have a regular Web component at the same time that in-world meetings are held.
If you have a signon with Metanomics, you can participate in the chat even if you are not in-world, using ChatBridge.
The Metanomics group makes full use of its Web and its SL presences by delivering rich information in a variety of formats.
The first guest was Robin Gomboy of ReactionGrid, an alternative to Second Life which appeals more to some businesses and educational groups because it doesn’t have an in-world economy (although residents can buy and sell using shopping carts like people do on the “2D” Web) and the rules dictate PG content only. A single sim costs a “hosting fee” of only $25 a month, and a 6-sim private grid is only $75 a month. You can host your own server as well. In the near future they will be adding hypergridding to it (allows avatars to move between privately owned areas without getting a new signon, avatar, etc.).
For immersive education, Gomboy noted that the prerequisite seemed to be that there is not an in-world economy already in place. Educators typically don’t want an in-world economy.
Metanomics’ Beyers Sellers said he didn’t tend to agree but then he comes from a college economics environment and that may be coloring his perception.
Metanomics host Beyers Sellers asks questions of his guests during a discussion on virtual world cultures.
ReactionGrid’s terms of service stipulate that residents have PG-rated content only. There are some software tools which are being built just for ReactionGrid. Experience and leadership are playing an important role to help shape the culture and create trust among the other members, she added.
Advice for “Gridizens”? Remember how hard it was for you to learn the basics of getting around – help others out with teaching the technology, respect others’ meeting spaces, and respect others’ privacy.
ThinkBalm innovation community is a ReactionGrid participant. They decided to ask members to use their real names to increase the trust factor. Instead of using virtual chair and a copy of RL lecture setups, they experiment with 3D best practices in online learning.
First major cross-grid event last weekend. She is the speaker for the TechNet group in SL and in ReactionGrid. She was using HippoViewer and in both worlds at once. She used LiveMeeting to help in her presentations.
Next interview:
Tom Bellstorff, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Irvine, has done research on sexuality, globalization, etc., and cybersociality.
The session presentation screen shared these links:
Tom Boellstorff (Tom Bukowski in SL) – what would have to change in virtual worlds and what doesn’t have to change?
Boellstorff has been doing this research for a little over 5 years. He deliberately set it up to fail by using the classic methods he used in Indonesia and applying it to SL without consideration for the differences between the environments. Surprisingly he didn’t have to change a lot.
Would he use alts or not? He decided not to.
Questions about money and anonymity – have parallels in the real world.
He likes to refer to the non-cyber world as the physical world rather than as the Real World or RL, because he maintains that what you do in SL has real consequences and is real to its participants; just differently so.
IRB – institutional review board. When a researcher does research with people, they have to get approval from this board because you are working with human subjects. It’s about protecting people’s privacy and confidentiality.
He used a research design that was entirely inside of Second Life and didn’t try to get physical world information about the people. He only asked about the person’s SL life and used their SL names.
Pearce said in her research she kept encountering people who were in some way disabled and was surprised by the commonness of that scenario.
Demographics of Baby Boomer Computer Gamers – Players of the game Uru, which was closed in 2004. The majority of these players were baby boomers, she found.
Forums just for baby boomers – like Game Boomers. There is a myth that baby boomers want to play only casual games, but that turned out not to be true. Many of them were replacing their TV watching time with their gaming. They liked adventure games but don’t like to hang around with certain types of groups associated with online games. They want to play with people their own age for a more refined method of relating.
They all were really active in communities. Fav activity – exploring. 2nd fav – helping others learn the ropes.
Baby boomers with young people at home tended not to play with their kids. Most of the players used a PC rather than a console, which they tended to think were for the kids.
The Wii came out about the time her study was finishing up and they actually targeted the baby boomer generation.
Let’s talk about Uru – based on the game Myst – if anyone has a version of the Scarab of Ra on the PC, let him know (Beyers Sellers) because he misses it!
Crap Mariner noted that there was a hack of Myst called Pyst, in which you could see the ecological effects of 10 million users walking through the Myst landscapes. He called it crude, deranged and brilliant, which made everyone laugh.
Those who played in Uru became “Uru refugees” or “diaspora” when Uru shut down. They tried to recreate some of their favorite elements from the world later, which she calls a trans-culturization process.
Like refugees in the physical world, the Uru refugees were kind of moved around and given a hard time for the lag they caused everywhere they went.
Fleep Tuque said: “I’ve written about the total fail of trying to move the BBS community to here, I think you lose a lot when you try to switch platforms if new platforms don’t facilitate the kinds of ineraction that the community formed around in the first place.”
“We aren’t spending enough time in the question space. Sometimes it’s the question that matters more than the answers. There’s often a real interest in design or implementation research but we need to also stay in the question space so that we come up with some good questions to ask before we rush to those solutions.”
— Tom Boellstorff
His book – “Coming of Age in Second Life” – he tries to write for multiple audiences, some of which know a lot more than others about the basics of virtual worlds/online games.
This wonderful new mode of interaction has its problems but shouldn’t be dismissed outright. In The Matrix, the virtual world is used to enslave the humans, so there is a fear factor here towards virtual worlds.
For Pearce as a game designer, when you design games you are also designing cultures, and you may not know what kind of culture will emerge with your game.
AbaBrukh Aabye
I asked one participant, whose background is in anthropology, to tell me what he got out of the discussions:
AbaBrukh Aabye: well, the concept of culture in virtual worlds has interested me since I first was an early beta tester on what became AOL
AbaBrukh Aabye: and it’s clearly becoming a larger part of human culture in general
AbaBrukh Aabye: I discovered SL from a feature on NPR
AbaBrukh Aabye: but when I’ve talked about it to some of my RL friends, they just laugh
The way people think about virtual worlds is varied depending upon their experience and what they want out of life. Having a little imagination is helpful for enjoying the concept of spending time in a virtual world. The fact that real life (RL) is called the physical life by one of the speakers is very telling: real things are said here in Second Life and in other virtual worlds, real relationships are forged (my own present relationship included), and real struggles are fought. Anytime you have a mix of people interacting, that is real.
But it will be some time before a significant part of the Internet-visiting population will feel that way, too.
The NPR radio show Science Friday has been airing its shows with an added Second Life component. The team has designed a spiffy outdoor ampitheater and Ira Flatow has an avatar he uses in world to represent him. His producers read the questions and comments that fly by in chat, relaying the more interesting ones to Ira, who will acknowledge the questioner and answer the question on national radio. During this session, I was delighted to actually have him addresss one of my questions on the air. It was my fifteen seconds – hehe!
Following is my Coveritlive.com transcript of my notes I took live. Please forgive the rough nature of the notes.
1:20
Science Friday host Ira Flatow on Oct. 10 hosted a 2-hour radio show which ran on National Public Radio and also in Second Life, with opportunities for questions from both.
The show included guest Robert Colwell, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut.
1:29
Scientists have found a bacterium that is self-sufficient – contains all the tools they need to eat and grow.  Here’s a link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080929104601.htm
1:33
Off-duty Linden Prospero Linden attended the show in Second Life. “Self-sufficient bacteria should be able to take over the Earth,” he commented in the chat window during a discussion of the self-sufficient bacteria discovered near a gold mine. “They really CAN kill off all other species without worrying about themselves.”
View image
Visit Science School in Second Life
1:34
Be sure to visit the Science Friday Web site for background information about the guests and the topics discussed, as well as a replay of the show.
1:35
You can listen to the show live online at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/listen/.
1:45
Bjorlyn Loon, the Science Friday group manager in Second Life, adds: “From Birth to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for Journalists, Policymakers, and Campaigns http://www.thehastingscenter.org/publications/briefingbook/.”
1:53
Question: re: Congress getting pertinent information from lobbyists, why can’t legitimate science organizations provide information to Congress in addition to lobbyists?
Answer: There is an increasing effort on the part of nonprofits to provide good information to the government. Example: The Bioethics Briefing Book.
1:54
The Hastings Center is next working on a book about end of life issues like hospice care and palliative care.
1:55
Also, the Hastings Center is working on researching the ethics of performance enhancers such as steroids, etc.
1:56
The chat log is scrolling very fast now and people are vociferously debating the ethics of health care policy and how it should/can be made better.
1:58
*End of first hour**Second hour to start soon*
2:08
A law has been passed which classifies some forms of mental illness as coverable by health insurance. William C. Moyers, Vice President for Internal Affairs at Hazelton Foundation.
2:09
The biggest highlight is that Congress and the President have acknowledged that diseases like bipolar and depression are actual chronic diseases that need to be treated and included with other diseases in terms of coverage by private health care insurance.
2:10
So the bill is a major step in the right direction of acknowledging mental illness as a legitimate illness. This would affect businesses over 50 employees and are already covering addictions treatment. It would require the same copay for that kind of treatment as for other kinds of treatment that are not classified as mental illness.
2:13
Will insurers be able to refuse an application for insurance based upon a family history of mental illness? Moyers said he really didn’t know – it is possible. He said he is a recovering addict and alcoholic and he thinks being able to talk about one’s recovery is a healthy thing and not a negative.
2:13
Is addiction treatment a bipartisan issue?
2:14
The reality is that this is an illness that has reached across both aisles of Congress. We have a terrible problem with the War on Drugs where we just lock people up for being addicts. Governmental leaders are waking up to the idea that we need a different way to handle this by holding addicts responsible for seeking their own treatment for this.
2:15
Correcting an earlier attribution: Not “Hazelton” but “Hazelden” – http://www.hazelden.org/
2:16
Has there been an emergence in this country as talking about addiction as a form of treatable illness.
2:17
Stat: Only 25% of people who need treatment for addiction ever get it in this country. (needs attribution)
2:18
Question: Does the new law limit the number of visits to the doctor for treatment? It’s not a carte blanche and companies need to be able to limit the overall costs of health care, but the point of the bill is to make the treatments for mental illness and addiction treated in the same way by insurance companies (copays, etc.) as other kinds of illnesses, for companies that cover both already.
2:19
Broken: My Story of Redemption and Addiction is the name of Moyers’ book.
2:19
Next segment: Gardening
2:22
Topics
Gardening all year long: four-season gardening.
Most important ingredient for a buffer crop in your own back yard is COMPOST.
2:23
Find out why your compost heap just isn’t working.
First guest – Barbara Damrosh, owner of Four Season Farm in Brooksville, Maine and a Washington Post correspondent.
2:25
Maine is very cool, moist climate, but not a lot of sun. Growth is pretty much continuous so right now there is just harvesting going on.
ABCs of fall gardening:
1. Clean up any debris or weeds.
2. Put down a couple of inches of well-rotted compost to begin soaking in
If you don’t have to till or dig you can get started more quickly in the spring.
If you want to get crops in early winter, you have to sow crops in early fall or late summer. Some areas are still okay to start this stuff. Look for unusual greens that do well in cooler areas like asian greens, etc.
2:25
If you’re in the South you probably can leave them in the regular ground. But if you’re farther north you need to use a cold frame in the ground.
2:27
Some of the root crops do very well in colder soil.
Debra Martin on worms and composting. You can set up a worm bin in your home with a plastic storage container of about 14 gallons. Your worms will eat a couple of pounds of kitchen compost per week. The soil should not be too wet but only lightly moist. Martin started her bin with about 200 red worms from a fishing bait store.
2:28
Interesting: red worms like warmer environments like manure rather than wild worms which are for the most part night crawlers and like cooler temps.
2:29
Preparation of the worm bin – drill some holes in it about 6 inches apart for air flow.
Shred some 3-inch pieces of wet newspaper, mix in a cup of compost and a cup of soil to help the worms digest the food.
Throw in a cup of corn meal to start the food. Mix well and add worms.
YUMMY!
2:29
When are the worms ready for the kitchen scraps? Not long – a couple of days. Monitor the bin by lifting the lid – if there is a lot of condensation or the worms are near the top, it may be too moist and you’d want to prop the lid up for a while to air it out.
2:31
Worms don’t tend to like anything with a potential to grow, as in seeds. They like:
coffee grounds and filters
tea bags
peelings
apple cores
bad spots on veggies
egg shells
bread crust
moldy bread
cooked vegetables (not greasy or salted)
NOT onions or citrus
2:31
Damrosh has a compost bin outside.
2:32
Flatow says there is a video on the Web site about how to make a compost tea out of worm compost. I think it is this one: http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10112
2:33
Correcting the spelling – not “Damrosh” but “Damrosch”
2:34
Managing larva in your compost bin – scrape them off and remove them.
Bury the food in the compost soil to make the scraps more available to the worms and also to discourage the flies from being attracted.
2:34
Damrosch’s book can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Primer-Second-Barbara-Damrosch/dp/0761122753
2:35
Other ways to garden when it’s cool:
floating row cover
wall of water
cold frame
greenhouse
2:36
Martin’s book info can be found here (as well as her Web site with lots more info about composting): http://www.compostgardening.com/
2:38
Martin – on the care of the worms and harvesting the compost :
dump the compost out on a piece of newspaper in a lighted place in a volcano shape. Gradually scoop off the top and sides of a cone. The worms will continue burrowing to the center to avoid the light, and in this way you can get compost for the garden without getting your worms. Use a soil sifter to get the rest of them before putting the compost in your gardens.
2:40
The author of this blog gardened in Oklahoma for 10 years and thoroughly enjoyed it (except for weeding in August!). I got a strange pleasure from handling the worms, but I didn’t know to try out the red worms. I just had night crawlers. But my compost bin was a great design – like two farm pens with a lower dividing section in the center. Both sides had a gate with latch so you could easily turn the pile from one section to the other. Bricks were underneath.
2:42
Can you compost with seaweed? Yes, you can – has lots of nitrogen and trace elements and composts very easily. Shells are also wonderful for the compost bin and will gradually break down. Lobster shells and similar chitin coverings also will compost, a bit more quickly than the clam shells.
2:56
“Worms Eat my Garbage” by Mary Hasselhoff
Great starter book on worm composting.
Can you grow mushrooms in the worm bin in your house? I asked and Ira repeated on national radio. Answer: Yes, we’ve grown mushrooms in worm compost before. It’s worth a try.
3:00
These notes were taken using the online live blogging tool coveritlive.com. If you haven’t yet tried this tool, you really will like it. See the CoveritLive.com transcript and get a link to the site so you can try it too.
Nostrum Forder gave me a simboard lesson this weekend so I wouldn’t look like a complete idiot while playing with my new toy.
Sylectra Darwin: help me understand how to change the design. Sylectra Darwin: It’s asking for a texture but when I opened the Paw Prints design there was only a script in there and no texture. Nostrum Forder: What version of the simboard do you have? Sylectra Darwin: 4.3 Nostrum Forder: OK Sylectra Darwin: Just updated it Nostrum Forder: Rez the board [pull the object from inventory onto the ground]
The simboard talks on the main chat channel to give extra hints and information.
FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: -Click board for Menu- FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: Startup Tip: Hold C and any movement key to roll & tilt if you fall over. FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: Stand Position Adjusted. Nostrum Forder: Do you have the design? Sylectra Darwin: I do, it’s a folder called Simboard Paint Job: Paw Print Nostrum Forder: Are there instructions in it. Sylectra Darwin: And it has a script in it called Simboard Paint Job: PawPrint Sylectra Darwin: No. Nostrum Forder: You put that script into the simboard. Nostrum Forder: Edit your board. Sylectra Darwin: And when I open the script it says I don’t have permission to see it. Nostrum Forder: Drag the script from inventory into the contents tab. FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: If this script is in your simboard, Touch the board to activate retexture process. (Ignore the boards menu for this process) FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: Setting Texture.. Please wait.. FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: No image found. Make sure you have a full perm texture in the boards inventory. FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: Make sure the image shows in the boards inventory before clicking ‘Set Design’ FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: Paw Print design is now set. FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: Texture script is now removing itself to minimize lag. Nostrum Forder: there you go. Sylectra Darwin: I dragged the script into the content folder Sylectra Darwin: hey! Sylectra Darwin: that worked! Sylectra Darwin: Glad not EVERYTHING is hard. Sylectra Darwin: OK, I am ready for my lesson, Nossie. Nostrum Forder: before you get on. Nostrum Forder: click on it and open the menu Nostrum Forder: and click “engine” Sylectra Darwin: ok FS4.3 SIMBOARD: Vetox Mono: -Directly click engine panel to select options- Sylectra Darwin: ok Nostrum Forder: this part is a little tricky. Nostrum Forder: You want to get the settings down to where you can control it. Sylectra Darwin: I see the warning about taking a copy Sylectra Darwin: OK Sylectra Darwin: so less power, right? Sylectra Darwin: lol Nostrum Forder: You have to cam to where you can see it [alt-click on the engine panel to orient the point of focus and then zoom in]. Sylectra Darwin: OK, I see F_Gain 10.00 Sylectra Darwin: There are up and down arrows on the board Sylectra Darwin: Plus and minus buttons too Nostrum Forder: Press the up arrow until you see “Speed” Sylectra Darwin: rez…rez[all the controls were shown with textures, which take a long time to load in Second Life] Nostrum Forder: and then press minus until you have it set to 5. Nostrum Forder: It’s a pain. Sylectra Darwin: I hate texture-dependent interfaces. Nostrum Forder: textures are a huge problem in SL. Sylectra Darwin: yes. Sylectra Darwin: what’s the default setting for speed? Nostrum Forder: all of this should be addressable by commands Sylectra Darwin: I am still waiting for the words to rez Nostrum Forder: I dunno. Mine was 7. Sylectra Darwin: Maybe they are through the HUD [a user interface with menus visible to the person but not anyone else]? Nostrum Forder: that’s it Sylectra Darwin: okay, found it Nostrum Forder: Make it 5 Sylectra Darwin: ok, got it Sylectra Darwin: what next, my guru? Nostrum Forder: Click, get the menu, and press engine to close. Sylectra Darwin: We’re just adjusting speed? Nostrum Forder: Right Nostrum Forder: now we ride
Sylectra Darwin: I’m looking for my copy I just made Nostrum Forder: Just ride this one. Sylectra Darwin: ok Nostrum Forder: Use the arrow keys to control speed and turn Nostrum Forder: OK Nostrum Forder: Here’s a tip Sylectra Darwin: it’s a little disconcerting Nostrum Forder: View menu Sylectra Darwin: no brakes Nostrum Forder: Back arrow slows you Sylectra Darwin: view menu? Nostrum Forder: down arrow Nostrum Forder: View menu – Show Property lines [on the View menu of the Second Life program, there is a check box item to show or hide property lines] Nostrum Forder: Stay in the blue boundaries. Nostrum Forder: 🙂 Sylectra Darwin: what happens when you cross? Nostrum Forder: Nothing usually Nostrum Forder: but if there’s a ban line Nostrum Forder: it sucks Sylectra Darwin: then all hell breaks loose? Nostrum Forder: left-up
Nostrum Forder: Now for the more interesting ones Nostrum Forder: hold “page up” and press left or right arrow Nostrum Forder: this causes you to spin Nostrum Forder: which also kills your forward velocity. Sylectra Darwin: that’s actually a good thing if I go out of control Nostrum Forder: also try the combinations of arrow keys Nostrum Forder: left-down Nostrum Forder: press left and right puts you into a “crouch” Nostrum Forder: Press left, right, and up and you’ll go Real Fast. Be careful with it. Nostrum Forder: press up and down together, you’ll do a “layout” on the board. Nostrum Forder: the page-down button controls rolling Nostrum Forder: Try page-down and left together Nostrum Forder: You need some forward momentum
I went upside down. So sorry, I didn’t get a pic of that for you to enjoy. The film didn’t turn out. 😉
Sylectra Darwin: holy crap! Nostrum Forder: You can also forward-roll or backward-roll with page-down and up or down Sylectra Darwin: um… Nostrum Forder: nice face plant Nostrum Forder: If worse comes to worse, edit yourself back. [right-click on the simboard and select Edit, then choose the Rotation radio button and drag the directional markers until the simboard is right-side up again] Sylectra Darwin: thanks Sylectra Darwin: haha Sylectra Darwin: thanks for the lesson!
I think I did pretty good. Only one completely stupid moment.
upgrading my life with good intention and positive action
