2014 June edition – Editorial

Welcome

… to the first edition of the Caledon Oxbridge Gazette.

The gazette is a monthly publication for and about the community of scholars, staff and visitors that come through our beautiful campus. Also an integral part of the community are the volunteers, businesses, and personal sponsors who donate time, resources and knowledge to help us achieve our educational goals.

In this first edition we feature an interview with Mr Snow. This is a scholar who has, after attending most of our classes, taken his skills further in building us a steampunk robot to distribute copies of our gazette. ‘Charles’ the robot will be introduced to the SL world at our university’s display at the SL11B Second Life Community celebrations. You will also find out why Charles is otherwise known as the Infernal Machine…

You might already have met our colleague Miss Larkylouz. She coordinates our popular Photo Salon and is often seen helping newcomers on campus. She offers us Larky’s Tips, in what will be a series of informative articles for the newbie to make the most of their Second Life experience. Her first article is particularly helpful for those of us who face the perils of ever increasing inventory size… so why not learn to control your inventory size when you are still young and green?

Did you know that our campus had undergone some renovations? Angels, while you slept, made the changes swiftly and quietly, after working hard on them for many months prior.

Speaking of angels, one of the favourite sports of our university’s Dean Ravelli Ormstein is virtual fencing, En Garde. A very good player and coach herself, Captain Stereo Nacht has obliged our editorial request to introduce us to this sport of ‘mathematics, tactics and bluff’.

Intrigued by the Ballet Pixelle’s participation as the only Second Life based endeavour at Immersion 2014, I asked arts and special events correspondent Lady Fauve Aeon to report on this professional ballet company. I was also keen to share with our gazette readers what appeared to be an advanced use of animation skills, an extension of the basics you can pick up from our classes.

When I saw Professor Rudolfo Woodget on our university faculty list, I remembered that he is also an RL professor (at the University of Michigan-Dearborn), and decided to interview him to get a better idea of how an RL course uses SL. This gives us an idea of the kind of RL course mentioned in the interview with Mr Snow.

One of our goals of this gazette is to provide a supplement to the class material taught on campus, with a series of activities (call it homework if you like) that will build on what you learned at our classes. We will focus on the areas of building (and texturing), scripting, pose-making and photography. The experienced creators know that creating is a journey of self-learning and discovery. Our classes can give the newcomer a big helping hand, but why not also provide fun little monthly challenges that you can pick up as you wish along the way? Scholars who submit completed works to our gazette mailbox within the due date have a chance of receiving a prize for their effort. We are pleased to present to you our June edition activity sheet.

We hope you enjoy and return to read future editions of the Caledon Oxbridge Gazette!

Caledon Oxbridge at SL11B

Thanks to the hard work of Chancellor Emeritus Carl Metropolitan, we were one of the first finished sites at SL11B, The theme this year is based on the Winston Churchill quote – ” The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” What better way to prepare for the future than to improve your mind through studying and working at our campus?

At our site in the SL11B Spectacular sim, you will see a display of posters about our campus as well a collection of models representing steampunk: steam engine, cavorite container, airship, and a petite replica of one of our colleges. Visit here also to say hello to Charles, our Gazette Vendor. He’d be ‘beaming’ with green delight to be clicked by you!

Class Updates

For readers who may have attended our classes formerly, but not in the last two months, we have the following updates.

Carl Metropolitan’s A Trivial Entertainment on Wednesdays was an immediate hit success in our class schedule. Literally. For the earlier rounds, don’t blurt out the answer if you know it. You need to be first to hit on the green globe on stage. Unless, of course, you mean to throw out a red herring to confuse your opponent. For sure, I have found my knowledge of science, and history and geography greatly needing improvement. I have also gained renewed respect for the librarians who do so well at these trivia nights. Believe me, they don’t only gatekeep the knowledge, they surely must partake often too?… But more importantly Mr Metropolitan has linden prizes offered at different rounds.

Since Professor Beth Pentwyn has gone on sabbaticals, her senior students have taken up coordination of the Photo Salon with rotation of different guest and regular teachers. Miss Larkylouz is the coordinator of this format. Her introductory class, Photography for SL, is normally Thursdays 5pm SLT, but once a month she reschedules this to the more EU-friendly time of 12 noon SLT.

Have you created a ‘pose’ yet for your avatar? That’s only the beginning of an animated adventure. Professor Red Quixote has introduced the follow up class, Poseball and Attachment class. Let’s get to it! Make your avatar move with original and distinguished style.

Did you know that the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) comes from the same family of programming languages such as C, PHP and Javascript? Certainly there is a lot of challenges for the beginner scriptor, but once you learn it, you would be surprised how easily you might pick up other programming languages. Our Dean, Wordsmith Jarvinen delivered the keenly anticipated Basic Scripting class recently. More advanced classes are now in preparation.

We trust that maybe you have found something new to interest you. You can visit the class schedule and catalog for more information.

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