Finished. Done. Sorted. Fini. Etc.

As much as I enjoyed the travel guide task, my ADHD kicked in after about 25 hours (this is not me being flippant - I have been diagnosed with mild Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - though when I was a kid it was called "showing off" and earnt me more clipped ears than the Newport Pagnell branch of "Claire's Accessories".) Anyway, as ever, I digress.

I have to say, and again I sound disparaging here, but I got a bit fed up with the orange group comprising of just the three of us - there were 6 (I think) to start with, but one didn't make it to the final selection process of the course, one never made it to the group's forum / wiki pages or inworld meetings, one posted sporadically but was swamped at work so couldn't really commit to the task...so that left three of us posting to our pages and meeting up inworld to get the travel guide written and our asynchronous treasure-hunt styled guide written collaboratively.

Guide written on wiki page, it was time to set the virtual tour process up. I looked through my inventory and found a sandwich board. I also found a mailbox. Lord alone knows where I've managed to pick this stuff up from, but magpie-like, I have acquired it. There's stuff in my inventory that would put Steptoe's Yard to shame. I smell a virtual scrap yard business in the offing.

I digress. Again. I decided that based on the "basic box design, notecard - authoring and scripting" tutorial I'd attended inworld I'd tinker with my mailbox and drop a notecard in it that gave the URL of our group's virtual travel guide. The sandwich board would announce the group's presence...et voila: one asynchronous-treasure-hunt-styled-travel-guide-tour-thingy!

Just before what ended up being the orange group's final meeting, I placed the mail box in a suitably ostentatious position on MUVEnation Island, dropped in a freshly written notecard, then waited for the 2 other group members who had been involved in the task to show. This they did, I invited them to try out the mailbox...and nothing happened. Years of Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Basic and, laterly, HTML coding headaches came flooding back. something was wrong. But what?

Remembering that I had the gift I made in the tutorial, we decided to use this as the mailbox instead. As it already had a notecard in, it would be easy to simply change the text to the travel guide's URL.

This didn't work either.

And so the three of us ended up with 2 boxes - one that had the correct notecard in (but, to my chagrin, with spelling errors), one that, when touched, whispered a jovial message. But not one that did both...

After much playimg about, scratching of virtual and real heads and even asking a passing MUVEnation mentor and her virtaul penguin (Pengi - gotta love him!) for assistance, my two other group members had to leave - time zones and impending Chrismasses being what they are. Being obssessive of nature, and the thought of the half-finished task hanging over me like a Christms hangover until the New Year, I decided to figure out what I had to do.

Half a bottle of RL wine later it dawned on me/ The virtual mail-cum-gift box I'd rezzed looked great. It whispered a suitably welcoming message when touched. The notecard I'd written contained clear instructions. But, in my best Eureka moment to date, I realised: I hadn't amended the box's scripting to enable it to give the "toucher" its notecard! This I quicly added and ta da - it worked!

I figured out how to change the signboard - by adding a "2" texture I'd picked up in my travels. I made both signboard and gift/mail box bright orange (group 2: subgroup orange)...and the task was complete:

All I had to do now was tell the group that I'd finished the task - and apologise for taking a lead of sorts without any vote being taken. I announced that the virtual tour was open on moodle's events area:

And with a feeling of satisfaction (and closure) I turned off my laptop and had a bloody good Chrismas!