A Cane Received, Five Thrown

When I checked my e-mail today, I noticed a message from SecondLife that my bosom buddy Apmel Goosson had dropped a note card on me bewilderingly entitled "A cane".

To still my curiosity about what this was about I immediately logged into SecondLife to check what this was about. The note card didn't say much, only that Apmel had thrown a cane at me and that I should check a certain post on his blog, My Avatar´s Name Is Apmel; "Q&A plus cane throwing".

There I found these instructions on cane throwing.

"Throwing a cane means: someone (a blog owner) asks you five questions and you have to ask five questions to another blogger. It is a pyramid scheme but nevertheless some fun. So I will post the rules and then select some other bloggers. The rules:

1. Set a link to the blogger who has given you the cane..
2. Answer the questions.
3. Then throw the cane on five other bloggers.
4. Tell these persons that they have received a cane.
5. Ask five new questions."

Sounds simple enough, huh, so why not take part? OK, here goes. The first rule is already covered above, so on to the second, the questions Apmel asks me and my responses to them.

1. A blog usually is a factual report (albeit subjective) about real life. A blog about an avatar is a
factual report about a fictional life. Your thoughts about that?

I may be missing the point here, but I actually don´t see a conflict. On my blog I recount what I experience in both my realities and both are factual to me. My personality, thoughts, feelings actions and reactions are the same in both worlds. Only the superficial things are different, not the important ones, not the things that really matter to me.

2. Do you think of yourself as an immersionalist or an augmentalist Second Lifer?

"The difference in mindset between the two groups reflects the titles they're given: Immersionalists primarily see SL as an entire virtual reality, and enjoy doing the broad range of activities there that they also enjoy in RL (including shopping, sports, relationships and sex, artistic creation, tourism, vacationing and more); while Augmentalists primarily see SL as a next-generation platform for communication, and are there primarily to enhance a particular interest they already have in RL (such as marketing, architecture, filmmaking, music, artistic distribution and more)."
From the blog "In the Grid" by Jason Pettus, 2006

I am most definitely an Immersionalist. I am in SecondLife to meet R-E-A-L people and interact and engage with them.

3. Do you have more than one avatar? If so why and are they of different gender and/or species?

Yes I have ten alts  - Wild Zepp, Callum Beamish, Hedda Millar, Matt Gaboian, Ian Pomfret, Seamus Lycheborne, Angus Maldor, Duncan Aycliffe, Dan Zise and Minerva Xenno (in order of their creation). All of them are human and two of them are women, Hedda and Minerva .

I created my first alt Wild after a big row with Ars on the same day as he was going to do an important set. I did not want to miss that set but as I did not want to cave in at once Wild came to my rescue - sort of. I could catch Ars set and then make up with him the next day and not while I was still furious with him. I also told Ars that I had been there, he said he already knew because I had dressed Wild in a kilt.

Then I joined a silly in-world game called Tiny Empires (url), in that game you needed to gather subjects, so I used Wild as one and then created Callum and Hedda. The rest of them were created when Bara Jonson took part in a contest where every avatar could only vote once a day, I cheated and voted for him 11 times a day.

The alts are now entirely used for Tiny Empires and are mostly only online when I am taking my naps to gather gold.

4. Do you think you will still be in SL a year from now? If not why?

Hell yeah, I will be here til they shut down the last server at Linden Lab, standing side-by-side with Philip Linden and the rest of the aficionados.

5. What is the ratio of the time you spend on blogging contra being active in world? How has it changed over the last year?

It depends on my mood, whats on my mind and whats happening in my first or second life, but roughly I would say I am in-world about two times longer than I blog, so 66-33.

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I will now throw my canes at - and I agree with Apmel this is the most difficult part - but here goes. My selection was limited to blogs that deal with SecondLife and are mostly in English-

1. Butch Diavolo - Butch´s Ramblings
2. Carl Paneer - NakedCarl
3. Eddi Haskell - Eddi Haskell´s Second Life
4. NE0 Timeless - Free Your Mind
5. Ziggy Starsmith - Ziggy On The Edge Of Second Life

Now I must hurry to throw the canes at them, but I will post this before doing that!

My questions are:

1. How long have you been in SecondLife and why did you join?

2. It is sometimes said that there is a problem with "the threshold" in SecondLife, meaning that it is difficult for new users to learn. What are your thoughts on this?

3. What do you wish for most in the future development of SecondLife?

4. What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself in SecondLife?

5. Why do you blog?

All the pictures of the canes were found at Wayfair - Shop Harvy (url).