The World According to Jennyfur

Since the death of Ginny Talamasca, a beloved fashion designer in Second Life, I have been keeping up on the controversy brewing with regards to there being a formal day of remembrance for her. I did not know Ginny well, but I loved her work, which was always top notch and exquisite by nature.

It saddens me greatly to see Linden Lab’s hands off approach towards an official day of remembrance, stating to the effect that — we’re just platform developers and providers, not your community not your friends. Ok, well they didn’t say it in so many words, but they might as well have. I am quickly approaching my fourth Rezzday in Second Life and one of the things I always loved about Linden Lab was that they WERE our friends and part of our community. It is a rare experience in our postmodern times to actually be able to interact with a company in the way that many of the early residents did with Linden Lab employees from the executive management all the way down to the liaisons. I’ve seen the change in behavior change more and more over the past year or so. For all intents and purposes Linden Lab might as well be Exxon Mobil or Microsoft. Its sad, really.

While I think it would be wonderful for there to be an official Day of Remembrance for Ginny, why stop at just one person. Second Life has lost some of its most amazing residents in the past year with the deaths of Feliciaa Feaver and Jesse Malthus (to name a few), who both deserve a day of remembrance as well as well as the countless others who have died over the past year.

Perhaps, the solution is a Day of Remembrance for all our of Second Life friends who have passed on. This is why we have Veteran’s Day or President’s Day in America. It would not be feasible to have a day of remembrance for every single President or every single Veteran. I would also love to see a region that would in effect be like a memorial shrine to those friends who have died. A solemn place where their friends could go, virtually, to remember…to grieve. Perhaps, a memorial fund could be set up, where resident donations would be accepted that would pay for the land and tier.

It struck me last night that one of the reasons I really like World of Warcraft so much these days is that I have no emotional attachment to it. Playing WoW is something I enjoy doing whether I am questing alone, with a couple of RL friends or with members of the guild or random people doing quests in the general vicinity.

I don’t have any desire to get to know them beyond the game play persona. On occasion some of the younger guild members clog up the guild chat with their “zOMG I got to first base with this hot girl” talk. I have no interest in knowing whether a player is male or female or how old they are. I’m sure that many people in WoW are the exact opposite of me. It certainly differs from my days in Second Life. Having been in the virtual spotlight for the better part of four years, I can safely say that I enjoy the anonymity.

I like not getting emotionally wrapped up in things and when I log out thats where it ends. Occasionally, I have conversations about WoW with friends of mine who also play. Second Life permeated almost every aspect of my life for nearly four years.

It was recently announced that the SLCC 2008 will be taking place in Tampa, Florida on the weekend of September 4th at Tampa Marriott Waterside.  Sadly, it is looking fairly unlikely that I will be able to attend the convention this year.

Despite my recent apathy towards Second Life, I was looking forward to seeing my SL friends again and seeing how the new SLCC organizers are fairing since Tim/Flipper and I retired from the SLCC team this year. Unfortunately, our biggest annual fundraising event is September 24th, which means that I most likely will not be able to take any time off for the convention. At best, I would probably be able to fly to Tampa on Friday after work and then head home Sunday evening. Seems fairly pointless to exert that much effort. As far as I know, Tim/Flipper is still planning on attending the convention.

I understand the lack of availability of scheduling dates for conventions depending on the size and location. The beginning of September is really a hard time of year for anyone working in academia — whether they are faculty, student or administration. We ran into similar problems last year though it was a couple weeks earlier.

How much is too much when it comes to blog posts per day?

I’ve been thinking about this question as I watch my Google Reader tip on average 100 blog posts or more per day from my various blog feeds. I realize that this number is probably low compared to some of the people out there with hundreds of blog feeds. On average, I follow about thirty blogs, which if you evened it out, that would make three posts per blog per day roughly. However, about 90% of the daily blog post count comes from Tech Crunch and the newly launched Massively. I will allow for the fact that the two blog feeds feature multiple authors, but at some point in time you have to ask yourself is 20-40 blog posts per day a bit excessive? Especially, when some posts are no more than a couple of sentences or a paragraph in length.

I tune in to each of the three aforementioned blog feeds for various reasons. Tech Crunch has great articles on happenings in the music industry with special notice to new media and technology. Massively I peruse to keep abreast of whats going on in Second Life (and other Virtual Worlds) during my sustained absence from SL.

I would hate to ditch the feeds solely on the signal to noise ratio argument. I’ve found myself wondering how some of the post heavy blogs with multiple authors could move towards a blog cluster format like myblog/tech or myblog/music or myblog/secondlife to provide more accurate filtering for readers who want to stay in tune, but not be inundated in blog fodder. The best example I can think of to illustrate this point is how the Electric Sheep Company handles their company blogs. Employees have individual blogs, which you can add piecemeal or you can add the We the Sheeple feed, which seems to be an amalgamation of all the other sheep blogs into one feed.

Update: Thanks Flipper for pointing me to the Massively feeds by category. I need to check Tech Crunch to see if they do something similar.