Where’s Barbara? A long-time, if irregular, contributor to SL Naturist, you may have asked yourself where she’s been. Has she given up blogging for us?

The answer is ‘no’. Barbara has been busy out there in real life, learning new skills that she thought that might have a benefit for the blog in the longer term.

I’ll let Barbara take up the story…

‘Being an older person, and utilising an avatar that reflects my real life condition, I’d generally played SL while nursing a terminally ill husband and occasionally blogged for Ella on naturist issues that might be more reflective of the older person, whether in a naturist environment or not. When my husband finally passed away I found myself at a loose end, and after a while came to realise I needed to fill the void with some new skills. To begin with, I’m not old enough to retire just yet, and I felt I needed some extra work skills to assist me get back into the employment marketplace. I’m pleased to say that I am working again, but as anyone who has changed jobs knows, it takes a bit of time learning the ropes and the politics of the workplace, which is why I’ve not been around much in recent months.

‘I’m finally coming to terms with the major upheavals in my life, and I purchased a new computer, a Mac, sometime back, and I’ve sat at nights learning new skills on it, as well as attending night classes on which to learn further computer skills. I’ve begun to slip back into SL with some regularity recently. With the term at night class having ended for the Christmas holidays, I spent a while, last week, giving my avatar a makeover. During this trawl around the grid, looking for bargains, I found a photo studio that included some dance animations, and I had a ‘Eureka!’ moment.

‘Remember that ‘Eureka!’ moments generally include a bit of nudity, hahaha, coming from Ancient Greek, and attributed to Archimedes. It means ‘I’ve found it!’ (the answer). In Archimedes’ case, that was about the displacement of water in his bath as he stepped into it, the water rising as a result. He was so enthusiastic to spread this discovery that he is alleged to have run through the streets of Syracuse naked.

‘My ‘Eureka’ moment was the realisation that I could make a video of this dance, and it could be uploaded. I sent it to Ella, and we’ve spent the last week or so discussing how it might be applied to SL Naturist. I’ll hand back to Ella to tell you more’.

….as a result of that conversation with Barbara, and others involved in SL Naturist, we’ve decided to set up our own ‘film unit’. Previously on SLN I’ve pointed you in the direction of, for example, Naturisme TV, where key naturist locations around France are highlighted in a monthly ‘travelogue’ film unique to the internet. The internet is also full of short advertisements for the delights of various naturist locations around the globe. So why not do the same in the context of SL?

So that’s what we’re going to do, on an irregular (for now) basis. I’m not particularly skilled in this sort of thing, so Barbara, Apricot and Mr. Keng will be doing the vast majority of the ‘video’ stuff. My role will be confined, as far as I know (and hope) to doing a bit of presenting for it.

Now you know why we stepped into a couple of seemingly ‘cul de sacs’ last week. Be honest: you thought that videos of Bruno Mars, or Mr. Keng’s makeover, were may just a little bit irrelevant? No, on the contrary, they were experiments to see if we could imbed videos, for Mr. Keng to look presentable if he’s going to be in world more as a result. It was a bit of a means to an end, and as I don’t have the facilities to do these in a ‘ghost’ blog, they had to be tried here and made to look relevant to SLN, even if it was a tight fit.

I have to say that the project is quite exciting. I’m not sure how it will develop, but I’m confident it’s going to add just a little extra to SLN in 2015. No, there won’t be full feature-length movies, and we’re also not quite sure how we’ll add ‘dialogue’, in text form? Using our own voices? but I do hope we can make SL seem a little bit more ‘alive’ with this approach.

What’s that? You’d like to see Barbara’s initial experiment with SL moving image, the silent, short clip that may open up a new area of exploration for SLN? Sure…you got it!

We’ve opened up our own youtube channel. I’ll keep you updated as and when new videos arrive, and they’ll all be available from that source (and maybe others) in the future.

Ella & Barbara