But I guess all of my obsessive type shopping does have a purpose. I
can give useful advice and suggestions on where to shop now.

And given my new shopping hobby I suppose it's understandable how much
I avoid spending my $L. Which has a lot to do with the fact that I
don't actually want to spend any real money in SL if I can help it.
Not because I don't think it's safe or something -- It's way too
widespread not to be safe. But mostly because I'm a working girl and
prefer to spend my money in the real world, not the virtual one.

Sorry for the baby rant. Anyways, where was I? Ah right, me being
unwilling to spend very much for things. Before I knew better, of
course, I spent too much on too little. But I've learned since then.

So one thing to keep in mind is, if you're new to SL, there are a lot
of places that will offer really nice deals to people 4 weeks 'old' or
younger so get on that!

GuRLyWood 111, 113, 21 (PG) - Month old discount
ETD Isle 251, 251, 26 (Mature) - 2Month Old discount
Nantli Xolal 196, 142, 22 (Mature) - Month old Discount
Angel Haven 194, 234, 22 (PG) - 2Month Old Discount
Pazazz 89, 90, 22 (PG) - Month Old Discount

Also, there are a ton of nice people who offer free stuff! Yay! Free
stuff! Some of my favorites are

Freebie Jeebies in Boom County 81, 74, 23 (Mature)
Longbranch Freebies in Badly Moor 37, 109, 55 (Mature)
Freebie Freebie Freebie Freebie in Mount Curl 118, 245, 104 (PG)
Odds&Ends in Wagaland 115, 74, 29 (Mature)
No Covenant in Nedben 218, 16, 99 (PG)
Freebie in Bunyip 47, 170, 78. (PG)

Right. Well I'll probably add more to this later, but for now...I'm off to shop!

If you still feel a little uneasy about the whole thing then watch this YouTube video...

I've noticed a lot of people in SL seem to keep their look static.
Which I don't understand at all. I mean, I suppose it's all personal
opinion and so on and so forth, but I think changing how I look fairly
often is just fun. My other concern is that people might be afraid
that if they change how they look they'll mess something up. You can
insure this won't happen fairly easily, creating an outfit out of
everything you're wearing makes it possible to always go back. My last
concern is that maybe people just don't know how to change their
appearance, aren't comfortable with it. So I've set up a quick little
guide to it. Hope it makes sense!

Appearance:
-One main thing to remember is that your avatar can be whatever you
want it to be -- it's a representation of you! So have fun with it!
-To change your appearance you can either right click your avatar and
select "Appearance" from the choice wheel, or go to edit at the top of
the screen then down to appearance. Your avatar will stand up and spin
around and the menu to change your appearance will appear.
-The menu has side headings such as: Shape, Skin, Hair, Eyes, Shirt,
Pants, Shoes, Socks, Jacket, Gloves, Undershirt, Underpants, Skirt.
The first three of these have their own subheadings that will appear
to the right of them but still to the left hand side of the window.
-In each section you are given a wide variety of changes you can make.
For example, if you go into Shape, then Eyes, you can change your eye
size, the size of the eye opening, your eye spacing, you can make the
outer and inner corners of your eye go up or down, you can change the
depth of your eye, the creasing and bagging of your eye, you can make
your eyelids puffy or not, change the length of your eyelashes and
make one eye 'pop'.

-Also, you can randomize your appearance from any of the body part
selections-- which rarely ends well but who knows, you might get
lucky. Also you can change yourself from male to female with the click
of a button in your shape selection.
-When you leave your appearance you will be given the chance to either
cancel all changes or save them -- if you like the changes you made,
save them, if you have some issue with it, cancel it and start over.
-The huge number of things you can change -- and how you can change
them -- is fairly overwhelming at first, but you'll get the hang of it
pretty quickly.
-And don't worry about changing your avatar more then once -- part of
the fun of SL is constantly editing how other people see you.

Clothes:
-You can also edit your clothes in the appearance menu, make them
longer, shorter, looser, tighter -- as long as the clothes you are
wearing are modifiable. If they have (no mod) by name in your
inventory then you can't do anything with them.
-If the item is modifiable, in addition to changing how it hangs or
its length you can tint it.
-Also, you can make your own clothes. They'll probably be less complex
then some of the one you can buy, but you can give them texture and
color and shape, just like you would in editing your bought clothes.
-You can also make your own clothes in PhotoShop, though this can be
tricky at first and each item costs 10$L to upload.

Prims:
-In addition to clothing items, you might find yourself with a prim
attached at some point or another.
-Prim stands for primitive and these are items that you attach to your
person, they may have the appearance of hair, a skirt, shoes, jewelry
or any number of things. Prims allow more details and texture to be
added to an item.
-As long as your prim isn't (no mod) you can change its color, or the
color of just parts of it. You do this by right clicking the prim in
question, choosing edit from the wheel menu then choosing "More"
From there go to "Texture" If you want to change the color of the
entire object leave the whole thing selected, if you'd rather just
change sections go back to the top above "Less" now, and check "Edit
Linked Parts" Once you do that you can separately select parts of the
prim and edit their color.

As for that 'making of outfit' thing I mentioned earlier, here's a bit
about that: If you have found a combination you particularly like you
should go to edit appearance while wearing it and click 'make outfit'.
From there you can choose what pieces you want to be an outfit. You
will also be able to name the outfit, and there's an option for
renaming all of the items in the outfit after the name of the outfit.
This is not suggested since it can make it harder to look for things.

There. I hope that all makes sense. And really people, don't be afraid
of change, it's good for you!

One of the concerns mentioned in a blog response was that there didn't seem to be anything to do once you got to the onecleveland island.
All I can say is, "You haven't seen us lately!".

April 14: Red{an orchestra} Simulcast in Second Life

Let's make history....
The very first American live digital-simulcast of a classical orchestra in Second Life. Red {an orchestra} along with a very talented group of volunteers from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, OneCommunity and the New Media Consortium (Austin, Texas) made history on that Saturday night.
Experiencing the concert in Second Life was awe inspiring and exhilarating... what a way to participate in a classical music concert. The weather was perfect, the stars were shining and a full moon was visible on the horizon.

Before the concert we gathered in the martini bar under a large flowing tent for drinks and hors d'oeuvres. As the concert was about to begin we wandered over to our seats in the outdoor Amphitheater in front of the Kelvin Smith Library.

The amphitheater was surrounded on all sides by 6 large screens. We could see and hear the orchestra tuning their instruments. The audience in Second Life was not disappointed. The live stream was exceptional.

The constantly changing camera angles provided by 10 cameras and the superb audio quality from 22 audio channels presennted a feast for the eyes and ears.
The pictures I included can't do the concert justice. You just had to be there.

For a behind the scenes look at the production crew take a look at this video.

August 3rd: Cleveland IBMer Spirit Group Meeting

ClevelandPlus hosted a 2.5 hour in-world meeting for the Cleveland IBM Spirit Community. The agenda was jam packed with 4 speakers in 3 different locations. As guest avatars arrived at the SPIRIT welcome tent, they were offered meeting souvenirs and virtual refreshments. They also had an opportunity to practice animated gestures and enter a raffle for real life prizes.

The meeting’s main event took place at the outdoor amphitheater on ClevelandPlus where Lev Book (avatar of Dr. Lev Gonick, VP, Information Technology, CWRU and Ilike Mayo(IBM’s Dave Liederbach's avatar) gave engaging presentations using streaming media and PowerPoint slides.

To heighten the virtual experience, the avatar attendees were teleported, in a matter of seconds, to two breakout sessions -- one in the Cleveland Clinic Heart Center operating room given by Docmom Marsala, avatar of Dr. Anita D. Misra-Hebert, M.D., FACP, Cleveland Clinic

We recieved excellent feedback from the participants including this quote from Dave Liederbach.

"It was informative, engaging, and social -- well beyond what a conference call and/or a webcast can provide and should be replicated for other IBM community meetings." Dave Liederbach, GM, Public Sector, GTS Americas and Executive Sponsor