Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

While I convalesce here at home, I am trying out some features of Second Life that I haven’t had time to figure out! I did a suggested SL update yesterday, and low and behold the program has enabled voice!!  So I went to the Blogger’s Cafe in SL (where I find that most anyone there will answer my questions) and listened in while a few visitors there talked about enabling the voice feature. There was a Pippy and a Celie Bailey (not sure of names and pronunciations), and a Lessa and a Ken.  All had voice except me and Leesa. I wish I’d paid more attention to the names! Sorry my new almost SL friends… Apparently  they were all using PCs, so they were not a whole lot of help to me.  But  deciphering their conversations and suggestions for the PC environment  caused me to check a few MAC settings. 

When I first logged in yesterday after the update, it asked me if I wanted to set up my voice, which I declined at the moment.  So I went to edit–>preferences, and found where the wizard walked me through voice set up. At first I could not even see the menus for it.  Remember now, that my vision is very blurry for close up material (like reading distance).  Pippy suggested that if I just had eye surgery I probably shouldn’t be on a computer, but I did ask my doctor this morning in the post-op checkup, and he said I could continue normal activity, just use reading glasses.  My corrected vision will be in place in 10-20 days (read this morning’s post for reasons.)  (On a side note, we have a hi-def television at home–had it since LAST superbowl, and shockingly, through these cheap drugstore glasses the picture is more crisp and clear than I can ever remember seeing.  So the correction has commenced!!) So anyway, listening to the small group there made me think of things to try on my MAC.  Then C. Bailey mentioned that she was using a head set when they were talking about some with tunnel talk, and some with very loud and clear voices.  Mind you I was sitting here with just one ear bud from my iPod following, and chatting with the keyboard–and not very well due to blurry vision!  Since I haven’t a clue where my headset w/ microphone is (it’s probably packed away in my school stuff,) I just disconnected my earbud, and clicked on the “talk” button that was at the bottom of my screen. “Viola!” I had voice in SL. Tickled the group immensely.  They informed me that I wasn’t very loud, and suggested I make adjustments, but I had to beg off and confess it was because I was using the external microphone, and didn’t know where my mic was.  So that was it. I now have voice capability in SL.  So cool!  

Initial response to it:  I had to ask the SL speakers to identify themselves so I could associate the sound of their voice to the avatar.  When an avatar has voice enabled, apparently there is a faint white dot above their forehead.  When they talk, you see that dot turn blue (i think) and it has red lines emitting from it, sort of like a signal.  I did not stay long because again I still have bad blurry vision for objects close, and so trying to figure out buttons in the program was difficult.  But it was interesting.  

Now my SCASL session coming up in March as facilitator of a Second Life guest speaker does not seem so daunting.  Oh and one more thing. It seems I’ve somehow earned money. I have $1000 in SL.  Maybe my next venture in I’ll look at getting some cool hair or clothes. (Just like a woman, huh?)

Okay, last night I went shopping in SL, and found more suitable articles of clothing, things that fit my personality better. What do you think? The “make-up” is heavier than I like, but overall, I’m satisfied. I’ll have to figure out how to put bags under my eyes (old age is killing me!) and a strand or two of grey, but I think the avatar sort of represents me a little better. Sooner or later I’ll be able to take off some of that eye liner!

UPDATE (7:00PM Today): I think Edublogs may be having some problems. I’m going to post a link to the image of my Avatar here.

UPDATED (Monday, July 16, 2007): I don’t know why I can use my pictures hosted elsewhere, but I did manage to find that I could upload them directly to Edublogs. So Bentley Noel hopefully is appearing at the top of this post.