Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

Location: VWBPE Conference 2009

Tomorrow and Sunday, this gathering will bring together a few hundred SL educators to discuss Best Practices for teaching in virtual worlds.

Main page is here and schedule with SLURL links here.

Kennesaw State University hosts the event, and presenters are also taking participants to satellite locations and SL field-trips.

After my talky-talk I took a group to Richmond Island to see my students’ build-it project. There’s just a small group shown here, but we filled the island so no more educators could teleport in…a first for Richmond.

Archive note: This and other posts published in 2009 can be found at my Blogspot site

Blogs for 2007 and 2008 can be found Archived here.

Location: Armada Floating City

I’m fanatical about China Mieville’s fiction, so when I encountered a post in New World Notes about this region, based upon a city of ships in Mieville’s The Scar, I had to zip over and begin exploring.  The city, like that of the book, is an amalgam of pirated vessels rigged together into a Dickensian nightmare of multiple levels, dangerous alleys, and an acquatic underworld inhabited by merfolk and other water-dwelling races particular to Mieville’s world of Bas-Lag.

Armada very much fits the Steampunk theme so popular in SL, and my initial exploration of Armada shows that the residents are already appropriating some of Mieville’s puckish humor…

I will continuing looking at the residences and businesses of Armada, as my time allows. Perhaps I’ll even rent a dwelling and get into the RP. I want to support something based upon the work of one of the finest writers of speculative fiction now living.

Rationality definitely takes a hit in Bas Lag, a place where fog can solidify into stone, giant Spiders move in and out of multiple dimensions while reciting free verse, and hideous monsters feed upon our fear, like a bat lapping flower-nectar. Perhaps my favorite moment from the novel that gave birth to Armada is an ancient race’s playing with the laws of probability (well, to be honest, they mined probability, like ore) with disastrous results that ripple into the present.

Teleport link to begin exploring this world. Go now, and you can help residents shape the experience. And buy all of Mieville’s books. They are worth the mind-bending and night-fears they induce.

Archive note: This and other posts published in 2009 can be found at my Blogspot site

Blogs for 2007 and 2008 can be found Archived here.

Location: Our Virtual Advice Desk

Dear Di:

What is the proper way to un-friend someone who has a fragile ego,  without hurting him?  There’s a guy who I’m sure wants more than casual friendship with me. I’m not interested in SL romance.

Often when I log on, he invites me to events or wants me to “just hang out.“ Maybe he isn’t after sex, but at least he wants a close friend and I’m not sure I can spare the time for that and still enjoy SL.  He’s always online and I don’t want to log in as an ALT constantly.

I’m tired of making excuses.

Yours,

Ms. Popularity

Dear Ms. Popularity:

If you have truly exhausted the “I’m busy right now”, “I won’t be on for long” and have done the logging on as invisible, there are only 2 options I see. The one you pick depends on how blunt you are.

#1 (really blunt) - Just unfriend them and mute them. Don’t tell them, don’t say anything, just do it. They will not be able to contact you, and you move on with your SL. Chances are, unless they have few friends in SL, it will take them a while to notice you have dropped off of their list anyway. They will eventually get the hint tho. With this option there is no going back tho, even if they get thru to you somehow you have to ignore them and you can never be friends again.

#2 (not so blunt) - Tell them you are on SL to have fun, but you feel they are looking for more than that, and a SL romance is not on your agenda. Tell them you would like to still be friends and talk to them, but they can’t be smothering you and pouncing on you the second you log on. If they can stick to that maybe you can keep them around, and if not, see #1 above.

P.S. Can you set them up with someone else?

XXOO
Di

Archive note: This and other posts published in 2009 can be found at my Blogspot site

Blogs for 2007 and 2008 can be found Archived here.