Sweedish Connection

I've been meeting with my group partners in SL lately, yesterday I met up with Maya from the UK and another girl from Pisa Italy. The one from Italy works on tuberculosis at her college and the other was working for her masters. We talked about social interaction in second life compared to skype. We also talked about some of the issues of SL including language barriers.
I couldn't give put in my presentation at the end though, I left for my next class 15 minutes early.

Introduction Research paper

Social interactions are the acts of two or more people who are both engaged towards each other. These acts or actions take on one set of similarities when carried out in person and another when two or more individuals are in a virtual environment. The social interactions have similarities between these two categories and also have individual benefits. Both the environments of Second Life(SL) and of everyday life have the necessity of social interaction in order to accopmlish task and humans have the need for social interaction in general. What advantages, disadvantages, and similarities are their with face to face interactions compared to interactions in SL?

Murrell Smith Research Paper
I. INTRODUCTION - What advantages and disadvantages are their with face to face
interactions compared to interactions in SL and other forms of
communication.
II. BODY – Pros,more confidence,can be in different locations,more people
can communicate at once,virtual expressions Cons, lack of detailed
facial expressions, can be awkward,
A. Advantages of SL social interaction
1. Confidence
a. more outgoing
b. less embarrassment
2. Brings people from different locations together
a. Easier to group up over internet
i. More people can be in discussion with chat in typing
b. Can have international groups meet efficiently
3. Virtual Expressions
a. Avatar movement
b. Can feel realistic
B. Advantages of face to face
1. Facial Expressions
a. Nuances of physcial communication
i.Genuine reactions
ii.Eye Contact
2. Can be less awkward than meeting online
3. Physical Contact
C. Compared with other forms of Communication
1. Feels much more in-person than voice only
2. SL is real time and IM, is faster than email
3. Headsets give perception reality
III. CONCLUSION
A. Analytical summary
1. Pros SL
2. Pros of in person
3. Pros of SL to alternative forms
B. Thesis reworded
C. Concluding statement

Research Question

What advantages and disadvantages are their with face to face interactions compared to interactions in SL.

INTRODUCTION
Art can be defined as illustrative or decorative material(dictionary.com). Based on this understanding of art, the virtual art in Second Life falls under printed art since it is pixelized. There is a wide variety of art in Second Life featuring contemporary art and representations of classic masterpieces. These virtual creations are commonly housed in galleries. Beautiful objects and textures that can be called art is part of what makes Second Life entertaining, but is also a topic of its own in the virtual art community. Second Life has many 2D and 3D forms of art such as print art and sculptures that can be found in galleries like the Blackwater, Dresden and Faith Maxwell galleries.

Introduction

Here in Warrensburg there are not that many things to do for fun and I usually run out when I'm not doing homework or working. What I need is a neverending experience full of things to do and explore that I can't do in my confined life right now. I'm twenty and too young yet to dance at the clubs here, so thats out. There arn't so many waves to ride in Missouri either. Outside this place, inside Second Life there is plenty to do though. Entertainment, agreeable occupation for the mind, Second Life fits this definition perfectly with so many things to do like dancing at clubs with real streaming music, catching a wave at Tropical Island Surfing, or driving bumper cars in the sky at Fruitopia Kingdom and the only way to start is to jump right in.

Peer Reveiw

Feb 5th 2009 Kyle and I just went over each others blogs, he said my punctuation was a little off around the second comma after "occupation for the mind". I reveiwed his and said that 2nd Life should be spelled out. Other than that he ended with a closer statement and I could too.

My Thesis for Entertainment in Second Life

Entertainment, agreeable occupation for the mind, Second Life fits this definition perfectly with so many things to do like dancing at clubs with real streaming music, catching a wave at Tropical Island Surfing, or driving bumper cars in the sky at Fruitopia Kingdom.

Entertainment in secondlife By: Murrell Louis Smith

In Second Life, a massively multiplayer online videogame for the computer, there are many many things to take part in. One of them is entertainment, and that is what all videogames are theoretically geared to. Even in all it's vastness, entertainment and having fun is the activity that the majority of players take part in the most and it is safe to say that Second Life's main focus is to entertain. Focusing on this key activity, of entertainment, there are many things to do in the game, the possibilities are nearly endless. In certain ways the senses are being used exactly the same as in real life , but of course not all the senses are being used even though the interactions themselves are genuine during gameplay. So to be more precise, there are ten pastimes that people do in real life to entertain themselves and there are ten in Second Life also, the differences are the activities themselves, how people participate in these activities, and how they react making up the specific behavior during these activities.

My Adventures In Second Life By: Murrell Smith

Adventures in Second Life By: Murrell Smith
A couple of friends and I went on an unscripted adventure through several locations in second life and had some fun together, we started at InfoIsland and then moved on to Pondex and later Chakryn Forest this is an account of our doings.

Early that morning Kilo Mnemonic and I started off at infoIsland where we started looking around and found a wide variety of posters under a large oval saucer. Their was a lighthouse in the distance and the first thing we saw when we got close to this area was more of a pink poster but it didn't load well so we took a pic in front of this movie poster on the left. It turns out that InfoIsland is a big place and we had a lot of exploring left to do. I found a resource center and a Librarian by the name of Gray Pennell, who told me that the information panel with a schedule was in front of us. He was very polite and helpful. I saw two interesting events on the schedule including Smooth Jazz on Infotainment Island and a Renaissance meeting. Thats about when Kirk showed up and started exploring with me. The first thing he helped me with was the microphone.
Kirk and I started our exploration on InfoIsland by visiting a Spanish Heritage Museum since he made the joke that it was part of his heritage. It had some interesting paintings inside, but we were quick to move on to something more interesting and picked up Kasey along the way and continued to explore. Here on the right is the three of us sitting on a bench. At first I sat on the back then, Kirk and I sat on the front of the bench and then Kasey sat on the bench backwards. It was a funny moment. Later I checked out the March of the Penguins Room with Kirk, but not before seeing the penguins and polar bears myself. Later I chilled in the top story of a Resource Center. It was a glass domed building that was rather peacefull. That was probably the feeling that I would describe for several good locations on second life.

Moving on, next Kirk and I went went Pondex. Pondex was founded by Very Mulberry and is a part of the Australia Telstra Big Sand Box. We ran around a bit and Kirk showed me how to use objects and gave me a fighter helicopter. We stuck to the mainland by the dock that we started on and Kyle or Kilo Mnemonic joined us a few minutes in, then things started to get very interesting again.
All three of us, shagodelic Kilo and all piled onto a motorcyle and started testing the limit of the framerate as we zoomed up a mountainside at top-speed.

I came back to that location later and saw a good sized operahouse shaped amphitheator. It was big and flower shaped and had similarities to the one in Sydney, Australia. We had a lot of fun on what seemed to be an empty area at first.
Then Kyle and I moved on to Chakryn Forest. The first thing I noticed was the lighting change and a waterfall. Already it seemed like I was in a much more interesting area and I was very in awe by the graphical creativity in this very different landscape. It was nothing like InfoIsland or the beaches and mountains of Pondex. This place was full of trees and small faintly blue glowing orbs. There was a frog object for donations. It look like a cute lawn ornament. I know If I played this game long enough I would find a way to gain some cash and maybe make a donation, but at the same time, there is so much to see. Why not just keep looking around, although the purpose in many videogames is to gain money or levels or make a more powerfull character, this one seems to aimed somewhere completely different and takes videogames in a new direction. The last thing I did to end my long day was to find a hamock, not far from a giant mushroom and a tree house, and relax.

Then another day I moved on to the Amazon City of Themiskyra. It was founded by Surina Skallagrimson. When I teleported there the first thing I saw was an old brick wall. I was in the middle of an old village. I climbed a marble ramp maybe a hundred feet up and saw the village. Then I turned at the top and went into some sort of building. At first I thought it was a castle but I wasn't sure I climbed the stairs and went into the first room to my back then, I found some sort of hole in the room. I decided to jump into it. It was probably about thirty feet deep, so deep I couldn't fly out. I reteleported and continued to explore this strange landscape. About a minute in on my second try I was amazed to see a large egyptian structure. In I flew, there was a large throne room with a stairway behind the throne. At the bottom of the stairs was a slightly more empty room and a boat on the waters edge outside. I wanted to take the boat on a tour but I couldn't figure out how. I proceded to fly around some more and re-enter the throne room. It was very authentic looking and had these lamps by the walls. There was a large fire in the middle on a metallic looking disc. That is where I ended my adventure.

“Let Me Introduce my Second Self”

Murrell Louis Smith "mu77e11 mnemonic"
Overall I would say the changes that I went for on my second life character would have been motivated more towards making an avatar that was similar to myself. I altered the face and body to be closer in appearance to my own face and body. The amount of graphical selection for changing the appearance is astounding on this game, I haven't seen a more extensive engine for altering an avatar appearance than this one. I changed the hair to a strawberry blonde color and cropped it short around the neck and lengthened it near the eyebrows. The eyebrows are, now that I think about it the wrong color, but are small and a little bushy and the eyes to a blue green. I changed to body to look a little more similar to my own and experimented with it a bit at first. He is at about the right height now and not too buff. The cheek bones were obviously nothing like mine so I moved then around, along with the size of the forehead, chin, and nose. I want the face to be something I can stick with and move on to clothes later.The body will be standard for the most part, although at first I went in a completely different direction with huge spikey orange hair and being just under 7” tall. When I first picked up the game my character look more like a piece of art than a person. It's pretty amazing how funny you can distort the face. However, I got tired of looking like a Picasso painting so I changed the hair back to something closer to what mine looks like. I made my jeans baggier, thats the way I like to wear them. Also I stretched the sleeves out on my shirt, I wear shirts similar to the one I started with. I want to look into getting a brown jacket and tennis shoes though. So far I havn't spent any money yet, I don't quite feel that comfortable with the game yet. I am very satisfied though with second life and my appearance and similarity to my actual one. The expression were also quite a laugh, I like acting like a chicken.