Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Events special

With the introduction of regular party nights and pub quizzes there have been quite a few events on OUtopia recently. Here we present a round-up of the latest events. Big thanks to Tori Landau for writing up the articles and providing some great snapshots of the events!

Pub quiz 3
Pub quiz 2
We're off to see the wizard...
Eshala's 2nd rezzday party

Pub quiz

The monthly pub quiz saw a new winner!

It was Friday 25th June and soon after 8pm I teleported to The Open Arms for the ‘Fourth Friday’ quiz. Being a very hot evening, residents had decided to sit outdoors and were already consuming both virtual and real alcoholic drinks apart from Kered who was having a mouse for tea. A real life power cut meant that our Quiz Mistress vanished without warning for a few minutes before the start of the quiz, however, the time was filled talking about iphones, acupuncture, hypnosis, liposuction, and queries from the new contestants about the difficulty level of the previous quizzes. With the return of Jadis, but no sign of Rocky appearing to defend his quiz crown, the instructions on how to take part were issued.

So that we couldn’t spy on her for answers, Jadis stood away from the contestants, but Kered sat on top of the fountain to try and gain an advantage. Perhaps due to this, newcomers were then told that because questions are asked at a fast rate there is no time for cheating and were then taught how to make a note card in which to save their answers. To make a note card, open the inventory, click Create on the top toolbar of the inventory, click on new note, change the description of the note, write in it whatever you need, click save at the bottom of the note, then find new note in note cards under recent items in the inventory, right click it and select rename (for quiz mine was ‘Tori’s answers 25/06’). At the end of the quiz we would swap note cards, Jadis would give each of us the answers on a note card and then via instant message we would give her the score of the person whose answers we had marked.

With note cards at the ready and several people jokingly asking if they got points for doing that, Jadis finally got the quiz underway. There were five categories: name the rivers these capital cities stand on, food & drink, science & nature, sitcoms and film quotes.

Of the fifty questions asked, see how you fare with this selection (answers at bottom of the page)

1. Cairo is on which river?

2. What shape is the pasta called rigatoni?

3. Which subterranean animal shares its name with a measurement of substance?

4. Look at the picture and how many of these sitcoms can you name?

5. Which film does this quote come from: "All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases. It's all frightfully romantic!"?

Perhaps due to the difficulty of the questions frying our brains we then had a major and amusing mix up over the note cards with more than one person marking another’s card and then Jadis receiving different scores for the same person. Eventually the situation was resolved and around 9.30pm the winners were announced: joint second with each winning $500 were Groovy Magic and your very surprised reporter and the winner was Jonno Stromfield who received $750 and the congratulations of everyone. Organising the quiz is time consuming so many grateful thanks to Jadis for doing it and educating us all in areas outside of our academic interests.

Friday 23rd July (fourth Friday) at 8pm is when the next quiz will be held and with Rocky promising to be there to fight for his crown it should be an interesting and fun evening. Please come along and join the regulars, the more the merrier! All of the photos from this quiz can be seen at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ouvirtualworlds/sets/72157624232166845/

Answers to quiz questions: 1. Nile, 2. Tube shaped, 3. Mole,

4. The sitcoms are:

4. (1) The Young Ones

4. (2) MASH

4 (3) Friends

4. (4) Only Fools and Horses

4. (5) Open All Hours

4. (6) Fawlty Towers

4. (7) Chance in a Million

4. (8) Just Good Friends

4. (9) Two point Four Children

4. (10) The Ghostbusters of East Finchley

5. Heavenly Creatures

We're off to see the wizard...

Tori Landau reports on the latest themed party on OUtopia

Our usual party venue is OUtopia’s green, so as instructed I arrived at the green just before 8pm on Saturday 8th May expecting to possibly see the Emerald City. Our Events Officer, however, had other ideas so below me and leading away from the green towards the Exhibition Hall was a yellow brick road. Following the yellow brick road I soon heard voices and began to question my sanity but inspection of the road revealed it to be the source of the audio clips from the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’ with “I’m melting. Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world”, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” and my personal favourite given that it was a university party, “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking!” The road’s ultimate destination turned out to be the OUbliette which is below the Exhibition hall on the seaward side and so after seeing that it was being guarded by flying monkeys I took a deep breath, readied my axe (I was a tin woman) and ventured inside.


As a lot of regulars were either busy in real life (tsk!) or having problems logging into Second Life, for a short while the party was a bit on the quiet side but thankfully some new students turned up and ‘got the party started’. Whilst admiring Jadis’s decor we instructed the new students on how to hear the music, dance and as Linden Labs new policy had come into effect there was an extremely useful exchange of information regarding how to update 3rd party viewers such as Emerald and also Viewer 2 of the standard viewer. It later transpired that out of date viewers had been the cause of the late appearance of some regulars.

Though not compulsory, some of us had dressed for the occasion with Quentin as the tin man, Jadis as Elphaba, Titiana as Dorothy, Angel as a beautiful blue-haired witch, and Rocky not only dressing as but behaving as the lion. GiroBatol fitted in perfectly as a wolf and by bringing on his alt we then had two wonderful sentient wolves bopping away along with the DJ’s very cute dance–containing wolf. Not wishing to disappoint (regulars will know that I nearly always change outfit half way through a party) I changed from being a tin woman to Dorothy and then much hilarity ensued when Xara and Kered arrived – both as Dorothy though Xara had black hair. With Xara’s dog Cassie doubling as Toto for the evening all that missing was the Scarecrow. The conclusion regarding the lack of a scarecrow was that perhaps he had been used by Kickaha for a real life barbecue... a raven’s revenge?


As we had new students to educate some absinthe was handed out ensuring that drunken dancing was again a feature of our parties. Quentin as always played great music and it was wonderful to see so many new students attending the party and having a great time.

When gently asked about the night’s festivities Rocky responded with, “I was vvvvery nervous going to the the Wizard of Oz ppppparty. The music was vvvvery loud and scccary but everyone was very kind and caring - apart from the nasty things behind the ccccurtains. I particularly enjoyed flying round the dance floor. Yours, The Cowardly Lion (please don't yell at me if you don't like these comments)”