Channels of communication

When you're in SL, and you start IMing someone for a bit, but you're both doing different things, and perhaps IMing others, and the IM conversation sort of tails off - do you need a goodbye before the other person signs off?

The reason I ask is that this happened to me the other day. I arrived inworld and someone IMed me to say hi. We chatted for a while with the usual 'how are you?' and 'having a good day?' stuff but then we were both busy and the conversation just sort of tailed off. You know what I mean, you've all been there, I'm sure.

So I continue what I am doing for a bit and then have to leave. So I log off. But then next time I log in I find an IM from the person saying "fine. good bye to you too!"

Now, I'm not really writing about that particular instance, but more about SL communication in general. It just got me thinking about communication in SL. I hadn't really thought before how we might treat it differently.

Y'see for me, I guess I see it a little like walking into a busy room at an RL party. There are people around. You chat to some for a bit, you move from person to person, group to group, don't necessarily have to speak to everyone there, and then when it is time to leave, you might say goodbye to the person you are currently speaking to, but you don't stop the party, get everyone silent and then say "Ok, I'm going now. Bye everyone." That'd be a little arrogant wouldn't it?

But it seems, for others, that IMing is maybe more like a telephone call. And you wouldn't hang up on someone without saying goodbye, would you? I know the analogy doesn't work perfectly because you wouldn't have three or four conversations on different phones at the same time, while shopping for new shoes, while talking to someone in the same room who is blinging with their buttcrack hanging out. But you get what I mean.

Maybe those people are just more needy and self-important than me. Or maybe I'm just rude and ignorant. Or perhaps reality lies in the grey area somewhere between the two extremes. Doesn't it always, eh?

A tad remiss

I've not been in SL much recently. This is a busy time of year for me, RL-wise, and then when I have made it online recently, my time has been spent with one person in particular for the odd hour or so I have, rather than out and about doing stuffs, seeing stuffs and meeting stuffs...erm... people.

As such the much promised inventory sort will have to wait, Wherever Wednesday is taking a sabbatical, and the continuing new house furnishing is delayed a smidge.

[Ooh, that's a point - did I tell you I'd moved? I don't I did, did I? Well, more on that when I can show we're ready to accept visitors. But the bottom line is that I have moved. But you probably gathered that much by now, eh?]

So yeah, no interesting pics to show you. No news of exciting new places I've visited. And no random musings on SLife.

I whole-heartedly apologise. Normal service will be resumed in a bit. I promise.

Getting into the spirit

I don't usually do halloween. For a number of reasons. The primary being I just cannot be arsed. And when halloween in SL seemed to start in August I was so definitely over it even before we reached October.

But then some cheeky little Kiwi kids came knocking at the door last night asking for candy and threatening to throw eggs at my windows so I embraced the spooky season. I wish I had an attack dog to chase them off at times like that but I had to make do with the hosepipe.

But yes, sorry, I am waffling. Halloween and SL. Below you will see my efforts to fit in. OK, so dressing at a giant marshmallow Caspar-type thingy is not really ever going to mean fitting in, but you know what I mean.


As always, please excuse the dodgy water shots. My video card has extreme limitations when it comes to water.

[Oh, and speaking of water, if a certain person is reading this - you know water, right? It's that stuff that can be both under a bridge and off a duck's back. For everyone else who doesn't know what I'm on about - don't worry about it.]

A hats gripe

I have a gripe. In case you missed the title, the gripe is about hats.

I would love to be able to wear more hats in SL. I would love it. Really. But I just can't figure them out.

It seems to me that there are four options. You either switch your hair for a buzzcut, you have hair sticking through the hat, you postion the hat so it perches delicately on the top of your hair, or you make your hat so large that you look like Jamiroquai.

Surely if boobs can bounce someone can do something about making hats work, can't they?

Skate-less

Sometimes it is just good to hang out with friends, dance a little, chat a little, and laugh a helluva a lot.


I am lacking in the roller-skates department though. I've decided.

Wherever Wednesday - Bug Island

It's a little late, I know. But I got there. Eventually.

This week's random explorer tour (I'm not explaining again - if you want background read back here and here and here) took me to Bug Island. Look at the view below that I saw as I landed. Erm, not a good start, eh?. Just once can I go somewhere interesting!?!


Yes, you guessed it, it is a sandbox. The gods of the loading screen decided I should explore a sandbox. Genius.

But, on your behalf, I decided I should still walk around to see if anything interesting was around.


There was some mildly interesting stuff as I cammed around. Some blocks and some balls and some numbered blocks in the sky.


Probably the most interesting thing I found, and everything is relative, was a Dan Linden shiny test. You sit on a pyramid and get given 4 huds and then check a picture the HUD shows you against what you are seeing in order to check that your shiny works. You do it for noon, midnight, sunrise and sunset settings. Yes, that's it.

There was also a lighting test. But I figured I could only take so much excitement for one day.


The final piece of relative excitement was noticing a blue dot on my mini-map. I don't think I've seen a blue dot before, only green ones and yellow ones. So I cammed over, and ooh, hello a Linden. I always expected them to dress better.


I then left because someone sent me a TP and dancing with friends in her roller rink sounded much more appealling than a sandbox.

Unreachable

You know, there are some great things to be said for SL. For plurk too. We virtually meet people, we make friends, we share our SLives (and lives, to some degree) with wonderful people all over the world. Who would not want that, eh?

But then sometimes there comes the realism that our friendships, our relationships, are really quite detached and vague and really quite unlike their RL equivalents. When someone is a plane ride away you can’t just nip round for a coffee. If they’re offline, usually we can’t just phone them or send them a text to say hi and see how they’re doing. If they are not inworld or plurking, for the most part, there is just no way of reaching them and no way to find out why. No way at all.

I feel lucky in some ways because so far in my SLife I haven’t had a friend disappear without warning. Speaking to friends though, it seems clear that at some point it will happen. It happens to us all sooner or later.

Now, this post is not really melodramatic or anything emo like that, and is hopefully just prompted by storms causing power outages in Queensland, but it just made me realise, I guess, that when we need to speak to someone, sometimes we cannot. And that is frustrating. And there is pretty much no ideal solution. Our world-wide community has its limitations and drawbacks as well as it’s attractions and advantages. We just have to hope that the latter outweigh the former.