My3FBlog: Form Follows Function

The ICIE Blog and Website

ICI is an acronym for invisible chronic illness.

Some might say that I should just pretend like I don't have multiple ICIs, and to them I would answer: I did, for years. There came a time when it wouldn't work anymore. Today ICI colors every part of my life and even if (when!) I get healthy again, the experience will always and for ever after be a part of who I am. But - I do take it as a very good sign that I'm branching out from writing strictly about ICI topics, to something I've always loved: art & fashion.
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My inspiration: "Fighting illness with fashion, and an open attitude."

So. On with the art & fashion - with an ICI perspective, whenever it's called for.

Note: click any photo to see the larger version.

I attended these events today at Blogher '08 in Second Life:

DAY ONE, Friday July 18th (PDT)

1.) 9:00-9:15 AM, Welcome to BlogHer '08 from the Westin St. Francis Ballroom in San Francisco - This was streamed live from the real life (RL) event. The picture quality sucked but the audio was fairly good. Compared to what came later, anyway!

2.) 9:15-10:15 AM, "Speed Dating" for BlogHers in Second Life - this was a go-round-and-intro-yourself-thing. We were also supposed to ask about each other's blogs. I found myself having a much grander time taking pictures of all the interesting characters. See below. In SL you can get right up in someone's face and take their pic and they don't know it. heh heh.

3.) 10:30-11:45 AM, Second Life Break-Out Session #1: The Intersection of Blogging and Second Life - I totally misunderstood the meaning of the title of this session. I think I took it literally. What they meant was blogging about Second Life as in blogs that are completely about SL. Bor-ing, except for Gidge talking about her fashion blog. Now I'll write occasionally about SL on all of my blogs (I have three of them now), but I don't think it's interesting enough to devote 100% of any one blog to.

Panelists for this session were:

Cybergrrl Oh of Cybergrrl Oh Around Second Life,

Ana Herzog of My Life as an Avatar,

Queen Tureaud of Queen of Spain, and

Gidge Uriza of iheartsl community blog.

The panelists:

The Queen

Cybergrrl

Ana

Gidge

The sound during this session sucked really bad. It was way more fun taking pictures than listening, but I found I could do both pretty easily. See below.

I think they were having audio problems in general, but especially with Ana who didn't bring her headset microphone to the RL conference, where she was attending the SL session from. She caused beau coux feedback every time she spoke, which was quite a bit.

Funny things happened. Like right after the session started, Queen disappeared (indicates personal technical problems) from the stage then reappeared standing on her chair. Then she stood on Gidge for a minute. Another time a gnubie wandered up on the stage and stood here and then there for several minutes... I also yawned very loudly, thinking that because I couldn't see what I was saying in the dialog box (I could see what everyone else was saying!), that no one could hear me. Comment immediately following: "That was the loudest yawn yet!"

The Queen reappears standing on the furniture.

The Gnubie - I think she's gray because she was still "rezzing". My best guess as to what that means is that the resolution of her image is not yet completely loaded.

Toward the end of the session, my nephew and his friend came in my RL front door and my faithful but very temperamental Chow, Bear, started barking like someone was trying to rob or maim a family member. Everyone could hear this through my very sensitive noise canceling headset microphone (it blocks out some background noise, but barking dogs is not included) and someone immediately quipped "Who let the dogs out?" I took that as my cue to shut down immediately. That's OK; I was even getting tired of taking pictures.

The facility. No, I don't know why the sky is yellow. They said it was because it was sunset, but that doesn't seem to really explain the phenomenon to me.

Here I am flying round taking pics. (Does anyone know why I have that ugly black patch on the back of my otherwise beautiful head of hair?)

For some reason the facility in which Blogher '08 is taking place is split between two sims. To the best of my rudimentary knowledge, a sim is a simulation. Kind of like a mini-world. Why would they split one facility between two worlds? Your guess is probably better than mine, since I don't have one.

I wonder if she likes bunnies or if they're just a fashion accessory? I like elephants but I don't think it would translate quite the same. I'm going to give it some thought, though.

This lady gives new meaning to the term "red skin."

A Harley grrl. I could never be this kind of Harley grrl. Even in virtual reality, I do not want my butt crack showing. Buy hey, that's just me.

Tatts taken to a whole new level:

Very cute red head with piercing blue eyes. Ummmm...

Yours truly. I'm not sure why it looks like my chest is bruised. I didn't notice that then. I look like that lady in the fibro commercial that everyone liked, but that Pfizer decided not to run very much.

The very cute back of my cami. I don't think my butt crack is showing, do you?

There was some cool professional business attire was on location too:

A cutie pie named Emmo.

This post was intended in the spirit of constructive criticism and good fun, and I hope no one gets offended about anything I've written. I did learn some things at the conference in SL today, and in writing this post. And I have to thank CNN iReports for the one journalism class that I attended. I learned lots about picture taking there that I didn't know before.