Euro Linden Christmas Party!

Well it says it should only take an hour and a half... does it not mean walking?

I'm guessing that 65 miles in an hour and a half isn't walking speed. And thats a long way to walk to the pub! If they could drive down they wouldn't be looking at train journeys

There may be more straight forward coach journeys to be had, admittedly.

As it's an official SL event maybe Babbage could rez a telehub at the location..

Scorpio and I might be able to make it, sounds fun ) Would just be the Sunday tho as we have too many animals to leave overnight

How many are going so far ??

I hope you can make it Willow. If you can get a lift it would definitely be easier. I drive through Northampton fairly regularly on the way to London and it's probably about an hour away on a good day. Maybe someone from London could pick you up on the way?

The drive from London can be a pig, but on a good day I can get to Watford in an hour and a half by car. Driving on Friday night is bad, but if you set out Saturday morning and went back late Sunday night you'll probably be OK.

If you're in London and anywhere near St. Pancras, the train ride only takes 1.5 to 2 hours and if you book early as 2 singles you can normally get to Nottingham and back for 15-20 quid.

We kind of did have the last meet up in London when Philip came over in the summer and Jack and I had to travel miles for that, so we thought we'd hold this one in Nottingham.

Maybe the Easter event that was being planned should be in London? London is fairly easy to get to from most places, but then again it's fairly easy to get to most places from London.

For perspective, Data is getting a plane.

For convenience I was planning to get everyone to Telford at Easter but that could change.

Noooo .. not London .. It's full of strange people that wrap themselves in tin foil and stand still for hours on end!

For Xmas? I'll have to get one for my BF, see if I can encourage him into a little DIY...

Surina's just pointed me to this thread - I spend far too much time in General, I swear. As I've said to her, I may be able to make it for the Sunday afternoon and, if I come for that, I'll get a hotel room somewhere and stay for the Sunday evening as well Do I need to let anybody know in advance if I'm definitely coming?

Hi Moopf! Great to hear that you can come!

You don't need to do anything other than post on this thread, which you have done. I just want to get an idea of numbers really, I don't think we'll have to turn people away on the door. I'll go through all the can come/can't come posts early next week and try to put a list of people coming together. Anywhere between 10 and 60 will work and I think we're comfortably within those limits at the moment.

So, next question: Is there something that you'd like to talk about at the "C U in RL" event on Sunday? It could be something you've built, an event you've been to, someone you've met or a story about how you started your Second Life. Anything you feel enthusiastic about really. I'd like to get as many residents as possible presenting things.

Cheers,

Jim/Babbage.

I've blogged the "C U in RL" event and posted a flyer here: http://secondlife.blogs.com/babbage/2005/12/c_u_in_rl.html

Please plaster it all over SL and RL so that as many people as possible see it before next weekend.

The current plan for the "C U in RL" event is to have presentations on Machinima by Ricard Gras/Brutt Grasshopper, SLRR by Nigel Linden, Artificial Life by Surina Skallagrimson and Scripting by me. Each presentation should probably last about 10 minutes plus another 10 minutes for questions.

Would anyone else like to present anything? One of your builds? Something you've seen in SL? An event you've been to? Someone you've met? I'd like as many residents as possible to talk about whetever it is in SL that they're enthusiastic about.

Is there anything else you'd like to see at the event? A Second Life quiz? A UK Second Life awards ceremony? A game of charades with people in Second Life via a web cam? Panels or discussions on particular subjects?

Let me know!

Cheers,

Babbage.

Its looking unlikely!!

<--- needs a childminder (not for me personally you understand )

Maybe next time, if I can't work something out by the weekend

I'm not a million miles from Nottingham these days.

However, I have a shift that particular Sunday so you'll have to do without my scintillating company.

C. G.

And Saturday night??

Heya.

This looks great! I'll be there on Sunday. What time will the event be on until? The trains from Nottingham back to Peterborough don't run until very late (I used to do that commute every day...).

Hi Yarrel!

Great to hear that you can come! Do you want to do a presentation? Is there a build or event or someone in Second Life that you'd like to talk about? I'd like to get as many residents as possible presenting at the "C U in RL" event on Sunday.

The drinking on Saturday will be from 8PM until everyone has had enough. The "C U in RL" event is 2PM to 6PM on Sunday, although we can stay longer, they'll just let other people in to the bar too. I imagine there will be people around on Sunday until at least 11PM and I'm happy to hang around on Sunday until everyone else has had enough.

Cheers,

Babbage.

Thanks. I'm just a newbie to SL really so I haven't really got anything much to say yet (other than "wow!".


Hey that's cool. My last train back is at 8.30 (!) so I'll have to leave for then.

See you all Sunday.

If anyone's bringing a laptop feel free to join the Cosy Home beach party on Sunday evening. It starts at 9:30 am game time but we go on for three hours. Absolutely no cost involved - the residents just like to have fun, and we'd love to see you

There are only a couple of days to get everything sorted now, so I thought I'd ask whether anyone thinks we need any esoteric hardware for Saturday or Sunday.

I think that on Saturday night we'll have free WiFi in the bar for anyone feeling brave enough to mix laptops and lots of drinking and that on Sunday we'll have a single fast net connection and a plasma screen which we can plug laptops in to for presentations. We may have free WiFi upstairs on Sunday, but it might not reach. We can always head back downstairs for WiFi if needs be after the presentations. The room on Sunday isn't that huge, so I suggest we keep it simple for the presentations and just talk loudly rather than faffing with mics.

Do we need anything else? Webcams to stream the whole shebang in to SL? Augmented reality thingamies? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

I think we should have a enough laptops around, but if someone could bring a decent (video?) camera, that would be cool.

We'll have a constant supply of beer and a pile of interesting people to talk to, so I'm not too worried. I think we'll have a good time whatever gadgetry is available.

Cheers,

Babbage.

Lots and lots and lots of pictures please

And a virtual reality suit! But, oh well..

When in doubt - ask Flipper

Good idea, FLIP! Get in here!!

He'll know what you need hehehe

We`ll be there too.... bringing our crowd of drunken rowdies, so can we have a special (IM) mature area just for us ? *grin* and make it plain crisps plz hate those yukky flavoured ones

I can bring a DV cam, but I don't have anything to turn it into a webcam. Are you supplying a computer for everyone to use for their presentations or should we bring our own laptops for that? My laptop can handle SL quite happily, but the graphics are pretty shitty compaired to the 7800GTX on my home machine.

A full immersion body suit would be kewl if you have one that will connect to SL...

If we want to do live web streaming, I can set that up on my PowerBook and Lego MindStorms camera (!) but we'd need a streaming server account to relay the stream to people watching from inside SL, anyone have one? Anyone know a good place to get one and how much it's likely to cost? Who would watch a video stream inside SL?

If lots of people would watch and we could borrow a streaming server account from someone I think it would be cool, if not it would be a load of faff. Also if we wanted to stream the presentations we'd need 2 net connections, 1 for the presentation laptop and 1 for my PowerBook. I could bring my LinkSys wireless access point to allow this, but again it's more faff. We could just stream the party after the presentations, which would be easier and might be quite cool still.

A compromise would be to stream from the laptop without a relay streaming server account. The number of simultaneous streams would be limited by the PowerPook horsepower or the upstream bandwidth from the broadway, but it would be a lot less hassle.

It may just be easier to bring a Mini DV cam, record the whole shebang then edit it down to remove the boring and illegal bits before uploading it to a web site somewhere. Yes, it wouldn't be live, but it would be a lot less hassle.

On the laptop front we have my PowerBook which does a nice slideshow (!) of SL and has OpenOffice 1 which is OK for PowerPoint presentations that don't go too crazy. I think Nigel and Ricard might be bringing laptops too. I think if all the presenters bring their own it will reduce the potential for tears. If anyone else wants to bring one, that's a bonus.