I’ve been off the blog for the entire month of May, haven’t I? I’ve been swamped with other things and have unfortunately been too busy to blog about it all.
I started May with a week of lectures on Dr. Dobb’s Island in Second Life. Dr. Dobbs is a tech journal put out by CMP Publishing. They put together a series of talks, lectures and classes that went on for a week. I learned about what’s coming up Second Life, learned some scripting and building, and toured some amazing places. I had some good, useful conversations with some of the people I met.
I also attended a talk in Second Life given by Pete Worden, Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. It was fascinating to hear what NASA is planning to do to take advantage of the virtual environment.
I’ve been working on getting things set up for Robert J. Sawyer’s visit to SL as part of our monthly book discussion at the science fiction library on InfoIsland. We will be discussing his latest book, Rollback, and Rob has agreed to join us for the event. This has spawned interest from other science fiction authors, and I’m very excited to get them in-world to meet their readers in a new way and to promote their work.
I have also torn down the library I was building in Second Life, and now have a much clearer vision in mind of what I will do with that space.
It sounds like I’ve spent the entire month in Second Life, but really I haven’t. I’ve also been working on some business-related things which have kept me extremely busy. And I’ve had a major breakthrough in my CSS cross-browser compatibility issues, so I am once again working full-speed-ahead on the library’s site redesign. I created two networks on Ning: one for my extended family, which has turned out to be a ton of fun, and one for a group of like-minded technical people, where we are sharing resources and nudging each other toward interesting projects. I came up with a list of training workshops I’d like to conduct, and have sent them out.
Since it’s summertime, I’ve also been having some fun. I took a mini-vacation to Pennsylvania, and have been hiking and kayaking. : )