Do they have power cuts in Second Life?

[major_clanger]

Most of today was spent preparing for our class assignment on Thursday (basically 'brief the rest of the course on the World Intellectual Property Organisation's arbitration system - without sending them all to sleep') but at 4pm I fired up my recently-acquired Second Life account to try out this Virtual World thang by seeing autopope - or his avatar - giving a interview. Once I'd figured out how to sit down (obvious really: point at a chair and click on it) and had twigged that the 'play music' option would get me whatever the local soundtrack was, i.e. in this case Charlie being interviewed, I was well away. And quite an interesting talk too, with questions that were for the most part no dumber than you would get at your typical con. All it was missing was a virtual fluffcthulhu.

Then it was on into college for a meeting to plan the aforementioned talk... except that before I'd gone a hundred yards all the lights went out. It soon became clear that there was a massive power cut affecting all of Old Town out as far as the edge of Bruntsfield, with no steet lights or indeed traffic signals. This made the walk across the Meadows rather more interesting, thanks in particular to the utter fuckwittedness of certain idiots who went one better than cycling along a no-cycles footpath by doing so in the pitch black.

It soon became clear that the whole of the George Square area had been cordoned off with the police and fire service out in force. That, and a pungent aroma of burning insulation, was a hefty clue as to what might have happened. (Sure enough, it turns out that one of the transformers in the old mews near the main library had blown up.) After a bit of a detour I arrived at the designated meeting place to find the main student coffee bar dark and evacuated, so once the rest of the group arrived we decamped in search of somewhere with electricity. Fortunately Old College was inside the power boundary, so we were able to plan our discussion of WIPO arbitration after all...

Comments

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

Oooh cycling in the dark on the pavement and burnination.


Bet it was cold though.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Lord they really get you to do the work on that course don't they? My lot won't even read the handouts in advance..

oh my God~

[(Anonymous)]

So it's true that day that the whole of the George Square area had been cordoned off with the police ?!Oh ,I didn't know that and when my friend told me about that I thought he's just kidding~!