Are you a cyberbully?

Here's my May column for AVENUE magazine.  Photography this month is by Val Kendal.

Cyberbullying is a topic of increasing urgency, chiefly because it’s killing people.  The suicide of Tyler Clementi in September 2010, itself only one of a sequence of gay teens who had taken their lives in reaction to bullying, resulted in new legislation in the states: The Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act, which requires all schools that want federal funding to have in place anti-bullying policies and procedures.  This is something we need to take seriously.  Cyberbullying is coming out as more serious in its consequences than conventional bullying.

Geek humour, how I love thee

This actually brought a tear to my eye whilst I laughed about it.  The world is a better place for geek humour and creativity.

An SL rail travelog

SL's latest free gift to Premium Members is a "fully interactive railcar that you can ride across more than 80 regions of the Second Life Railroad."  Woot.  To celebrate - in an entirely non-self-promotional manner - here's an extract from my 2008 novel, Be Right Back, in which Texter Triste follows an SL rail track from Calleta to Bhaga.


I TPed away from Redclaw straight away this evening, worried that each second spent there made it more likely that someone might appear and steal my time away.  I went to my original 'home' location, in fact, that hobo infohub in Calleta  It was somewhere to stand by myself where I wasn't known, where people wouldn't chat to me.  I wondered around for a bit, looking at some of the items I completely missed when I first rezzed into existence because I was in such a hurry to get to Redclaw.  Cardboard boxes to sleep in.  Breeze block seating around a cable spool table.  Oil drums.  Bits of steam punk paraphernalia.  Old sofas arranged around a blazing fire of abandoned fruit machines.  I say I looked at them, but it wasn't like I was actually all that interested.  I filled my SL time there, waiting for the IM that would whisk me away from it all.  Nothing came.  As time wore on I started to grow impatient.  I walked to the end of the railroad pier, looked out over the dock at the rusty ship, at the crane, at the locomotive sinking into the trash pile at the side of the shore, all abandoned to entropy.  Beyond the heaped garbage I saw there was a railway station.  I flew over and walked up and down its platforms for a while, mentally comparing it to Redclaw.  There were more trains there, and their exterior textures were beautiful, but there was no interior to the trains that you could sit in.  No seating.  No tables to sit at with your partner, nowhere to intertwine your fingers and your eyes and your thoughts.  And no cafe; just a large booking hall/waiting area.  Coloured pink.