Month: April 2022

UPDATED! Cracked Tooth; No Blog

I have not been to the dentist in over two years, of course, because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. So when I started to develop a very painful toothache over the course of last week, I finally made an appointment and went to the dentists’ office yesterday.

It turns out that I have a cracked tooth under one of my dental fillings—no doubt due to all the teeth grinding I have been doing over the past couple of stressful years of pandemic living.

Because I cannot chew anything, I am living on a diet of various flavours of Boost and extra-strength painkillers, until my next dentist appointment tomorrow morning (with probably a few more visits to follow). I am NOT a happy camper, people.

So, unfortunately, the RyanSchultz.com blog (and the Metaverse Newscast show) will remain on hold for the foreseeable future, at least until I get my dental issues fixed. With the addition of a cracked tooth to the workload I was already trying to juggle, something has to give. Sorry, folks.

UPDATE April 21st, 2022: I had my cracked tooth fixed yesterday, but it’s going to take a few days to see if it’s completely better once it heals. I still might need a root canal (hopefully not!), and either way, the dentist wants to put a crown on top of it eventually. I still have partial dental coverage through my full-time paying job as an academic librarian, so I’m going to go with whatever the dentist recommends. Better to do it now than after I retire!

And I go back Friday for more dental work. Once all the work is completed, I will be fitted for a mouth guard, to protect against any further damage from my tooth-grinding!

Blog is still on hold for the time being. There’s no shortage of news to report on, and stories to write about, but I just don’t have time right now. Sorry!

UPDATE April 22nd, 2022: I’ve had four separate appointments with the dentist this week, to work on four different teeth. The good news is that I can chew food again without pain, but I still have a dull ache in my jaw tonight, where he patched up my cracked tooth.

I’m exhausted, completely worn out. Like I said, I’ll be back when I have time to post.

Housekeeping Notice: The RyanSchultz.com Blog Is on Hold Until Further Notice

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

While I have announced that I put my blog on indefinite hiatus so that I can focus on some important projects for my full-time paying job, you might have noticed that I have still slipped in one or two brief posts over the past week.

Yesterday, I learned that I have a family member who is seriously ill, to the extent that my entire family has driven or flown back to Winnipeg this week to see him in palliative care. I will not be sharing any further details about this, as I consider it a private matter.

But I’m juggling a lot at the moment, and frankly, I’m not juggling it very well. I’m feeling completely overwhelmed, angry, anxious, and depressed. And I am lashing out at the world in a way which means that I need to take a step back, and try to regain some equilibrium, to find some peace.

This blog will be on indefinite hold (with no exceptions) until further notice. I don’t know when I will be back. But I do need to step away from the keyboard.

The Anthem Shopping Event in Second Life Features 1950’s Rockabilly, Retro Style!

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: The RyanSchultz.com blog will be on an indefinite hiatus (with brief exceptions), as I am working on a brand new project: writing up a proposal for a VR lab for my university library system! More details here. I’ll be back as soon as I can, folks!

Catalina Staheli (the owner of Aleutia) has posted a video as part of her new series called Exploring Second Life: A Creator’s Perspective, where she unboxes all the items she receives as an official blogger for the various shopping events in Second Life.

Her most recent video is all about the 1950’s retro, rockabilly theme of the current iteration of the Anthem shopping event, and you can watch it here:

I quite like Catalina’s new series, and after watching this video, she made me do something that this avowed SL freebie fashionista rarely does: she made me pay (gasp!) FULL PRICE for something! Truly a momentous occasion… 😉

Here, Vanity Fair is wearing a new retro, romantic hairstyle from WINGS called ER0326, which cost me L$299 for a brown fatpack with a styling HUD. It’s available in several colour fatpacks from their booth (here’s the exact SLURL):

The camellia flower shown below is a separate, adjustable attachment, and it comes with its own HUD to tint it one of six different colours.

But what I REALLY wanted to show you were these absolutely delightful animated birds from TARDFISH, available at the WARETA x TARDFISH collaboration booth at the Anthem event for only L$199! Here’s the exact SLURL. Check out the video below:

Aren’t they adorable?!??

The rest of Vanity’s outfit is free! This light blue cardigan, yellow top, and long floral skirt set is available on the SL Marketplace from Marvelous (it’s all one piece). And you can pick up this Peace choker at the Salt & Pepper store in-world (exact SLURL; no group needed), or via the SL Marketplace. Both are some of the many items which Second Life content creators have made to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine (more details here and here).

Happy shopping! The Anthem event runs until April 30th, 2022, so hurry down and stock up on some great retro style before it closes!

Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times: A New, Feature-Length Documentary by Draxtor Despres Looks at Second Life and Animal Crossing Users During the Coronavirus Pandemic

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: The RyanSchultz.com blog will be on an indefinite hiatus, as I am working on a brand new project: writing up a proposal for a VR lab for my university library system! More details here. I’ll be back as soon as I can, folks!

Image source: the official website for the documentary

The full-length documentary by Bernhard Drax (a.k.a. Draxtor Despres in Second Life), titled Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times, has now been released on YouTube, where you can watch it for free! (I first wrote about the film here.)

It’s 1 hour and 24 minutes long, so go get yourself some popcorn, and settle in!

According to the official website for the film:

Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times is a new feature length documentary by media maker Draxtor.

Since March 2020, Draxtor has been following researchers Tom Boellstorff, Evan Conaway, Chandra Middleton and Sandy Wenger (based in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine) around Animal Crossing and Second Life to find out how COVID-19 is reshaping online interaction.

In the 85 minute film, protagonists from all over the world speak openly about their anxieties and everyday challenges during this global crises and about what virtual worlds and social games mean to them in the context of a pandemic.

Mixed reality interviews and group discussions provide the basis for a sprawling narrative: a mosaic of impressions, shared by people from all walks of life, some well known figures from science, arts and culture, some just regular folks (like the research team itself), trying to make sense of a new age dominated by uncertainty and physical isolation.

Enjoy!

P.S. If you watch the documentary, you can see my main SL avatar, Vanity Fair, sitting in the audience at the Virtual Ability 10th Annual Mental Health Symposium: Mental Health in Trying Times virtual conference, held on April 16th, 2021 (at which I also was a presenter on the topic of acedia). At exactly the 25:10 mark in Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times, you can see Vanity, busily knitting away… 😉 I’m tickled pink that I made a (brief) cameo in Drax’s documentary!

Screen capture of Vanity Fair (with her animated knitting needles!) sitting in the audience at the Virtual Ability Annual Mental Health Symposium (taken from Drax’s documentary)

P.P.S. Starting at the 1:17:42 mark of Drax’s documentary, in the discussion of social media/networks versus virtual worlds, Drax has an image of my popular list of metaverse platforms appearing on the screen of a virtual television set in Second Life! He even scrolls down the listing! My blog got a cameo!!!

My list of metaverse platforms gets a cameo in Drax’s documentary!

Thanks for the cameos, Drax! 😉