Librarian Avengers » Second Life

SXSW Interactive 2009 – Funologists live and in person: Guerilla Game Research

Erica Firment — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:39 +0000

appy news! I was invited to be a panelist at the South by Southwest Interactive conference next month, as part of their ScreenBurn track. I’m on a panel called “Funologists live and in person: Guerilla Game Research.”

I’ll share my experience starting some low-budget user research cycles for Second Life, and my work translating those frustrating observations into shippable engineering requirements.

There will be pretty pictures, and possibly cake.

The cake is a lie, but you should stop by anyway. There could be cake.

There certainly won’t be cake and not cake. Not at the same time, I can assure you.

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Drunken blog post #3

Erica Firment — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:51:37 +0000

he Thursday night Linden Lab whisky tasting has degraded in the traditional way. I’m surrounded by tipy nerds, discussing the glories of JQuery. One of my co-workers is wearing a shirt that reads “The Age of Consent Tour 1997″. Nerdcore rap blares from the QA office.

Life is good.

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More Second Life employee Rap Battles

Erica Firment — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:44:27 +0000

h yes. The IRC Rap Battles continue at Linden Lab, creators of Second Life. Bridie Linden is in town, and we decided to bitchslap some suckah MCs…

Bridie Linden:
I got so much chips I swear they call me Hewlett Packard
I got so much chips you can have a bag if you’re a snacker

Erica Linden:
Running on energy I stole from Half-Life
Too dark to see gotta use my keyboard backlight
Preying on newbies / I like to watch them break down
Running with Bridie / We start the grid they take down

Both:
Aww. Aw yeah.

Previous Linden Lab rap battles

Nerdcore Rap Battles in which I have participated… n my new role as a user experience goon at...
Drunken blog post #3 he Thursday night Linden Lab whisky tasting has degraded in...
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Wikipedia entry on a Second Life location

Erica Firment — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:23:50 +0000

took a stab at writing a Wikipedia stub on one of my favorite Second Life locations, Caledon, the steampunk/Victorian sim. I’m a Wikipedia n00b, and my stub got flagged for deletion (rightly) due to a lack of notable references.

Any of you SL-lovin’ librarians out there wanna take a crack at improving it?

Link to deletion discussion

Notability guidelines

Link to Caledon Stub (fictional places???)

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Arr! Yahoo, prepare to be boarded!

Erica Firment — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:47:25 +0000

With the recent news of Yahoo’s potential acquisition by vile Microsoft and its prior layoff of 1000 hardworking geeks, there was a bit of an air of piracy in the office last week.

Linden Lab is going into another round of recruitment, focusing on web developers, QA folk, and other nerdy types. If any web developers out there (you, yes, YOU Joy!) want to work in a more stable, hilarious, and weird environment, you might want to fill out an application to work at Second Life. Free beer, the Love Machine, and a frightening amount of RockBand can all be yours!

Linden seems to be where the socially-developed nerds go to work. There’s a much larger % of women, extroverts, parents, and charmers working at Linden than is considered industry standard. Which means you tend to not find yourself in conversations with dudes who can’t make eye contact with a girl, or folks who get REALLY EMOTIONAL about their code.

It’s good to be a god, too, even if it’s only in-world. You can read more about our wickedcool office culture in the Tao of Linden.

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Nerdcore Rap Battles in which I have participated…

Erica Firment — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:06:59 +0000

n my new role as a user experience goon at Second Life, I’m often called upon to participate in rap battles with other employees.

Because we’re all busy, rap battles tend to be text-only and asynchronous, conducted over IRC, twitter, or instant messenger.

Past themes have included: My prowess as a Developer, My (imaginary) Car, Linden Lab Office Culture, and Various Programming Languages.

Below are a few examples of my amazing rap power, mostly gleaned from IM logs. Enjoy responsibly, and please remember check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Killing jira issues like Rambo kills commies / Tasks and subtasks crying for their mommies /As&Os got me going mental / Yoz wants to rap but he’s too CONTINENTAL

Chillin wit’ Jonhenry / Talking ’bout JIRA / Drank me some coffee / Wish it was a beerah

open up email to try and cat-heard / 60 threads later / time is going backward / I just get in when wham! it’s lunch / wtf have I done besides data-crunch?

think you bad / ’cause you so much taller? / you may be blue / but I’m white collar / rollin’ in my office working on a search / you think you’re rapping but its SO MUCH WORSE

Kickin’ it smoove in my GTO / ops wants to have a meeting / but I’ve got ta go!

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14 Weird things I’ve learned this week

Erica Firment — Fri, 18 May 2007 20:06:16 +0000

Queen Bees are expensive
It’s damned difficult to find a cat-sitter in Ithaca
Johnathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love me Yet is, so far, an absolutely perfect book
Tom Phillips is an artist who did a really great book painting featuring fictional books with titles stolen from Shakespeare
Roccapulco is a salsa club in San Francisco. I’m going next week with my friend Jake
The Lunch Meeting is the gold standard for interviews at eBay

Oldschool Metadata

You can randomly teleport somewhere in Second Life and end up getting juggled by a large pink elephant
Hotels in San Francisco are way cheaper than hotels in NYC. Jobs in San Francisco pay way better than jobs in NYC.
All it took for me to get my finances in shape was to get some software with a decent interface
The only cure for pregnancy-induced hypertension is childbirth (hi clay!)
My friend Josh has taken over things digital at the NYPL
Adobe CS3 will steal your soul with its compelling beauty
Google Analytics has a new interface that will steal whatever bit of your soul is leftover after Adobe gets done with you
Half of you people are still using Internet Explorer. I’m saddened. Please, for the love of all things holy: Use

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