Telling: Like it Is

Welcome to the Camp!  I guess you all know why we're here... 

Simultaneously with Boardman, De Haro was created as another managed community, but with an entirely different style: that of an American "campground" typical of the first couple of decades post-WWII.  If you're my age (give or take 10 years), your family may even have rented a cabin for a week or two in a place that looked like this... or bought a family-sized tent, sleeping bags, and kerosene-fueled appliances from Coleman, stuffed it all in the back of the station wagon, and trekked into the countryside for a few days of "roughing it".

Campgrounds in the "real" world are, of course, meant for transient occupation.  The kind I'm speaking of -- which, in their original form, still augment rural economies with tourist dollars -- became the seeds from which motels grew, when moved from the woods to the highways.  De Haro, on the other hand, was and still is a picturesque setting intended for permanent residence.


...and it has its share of those. Most prominent among them are four names, two of which might be familiar to readers of previous entries of this series: Ingrid Ingersoll, Teeny Leviathan, Cathy Curie and Tatanya Dawn.

Ingrid's

Teeny's "Undisclosed Location"

Both of those homes-away-from-home are "Linden freebies" in the original spirit of De Haro.  Ingrid's cabin was created by Bill Linden in January 2003, in the shades of green and yellow which were Second Life's logotype colors during beta (you can get one for yourself at Park's Fireworks in Taber).  Teeny's tent was created by Ryan Linden, May 5-6, 2003, specifically for the opening of De Haro, and you can get one here:


There are three of these kiosks, one at each of De Haro's "entrances" (there is no north entrance from the adjoining region).  The one depicted, at the south, facing Varney, is the most complete -- the other two are missing either the tent or the "I am..." sign.  The kiosks themselves are also by Ryan Linden (May 6, 2003).


This cabin is also available at those "Supply Store" kiosks... and, by way of a technicality, and a precedent set by Philip's Beachball, it's the oldest build in De Haro: created by Bill Linden during the second week of October, 2002.  However, you don't need the kiosk to get one -- next chance you get, look in your Inventory.  Library > Objects > Household.

As always, there's more to be seen in my online album... but we'll finish with this:


You may recall, there's one of these in Morris, too.  This one has been restored even more faithfully: it has the barrel full of bows and arrows, which the Morris copy is missing.  However... it's on private land, and the owner has -- mistakenly, I'm sure -- set the parcel to "no scripts", so it doesn't work.  Looks real nice, though.

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OK, this is strange...

Maybe you remember: three weeks ago, I blogged about the synagogue I built in InWorldz. It's been sitting on Falconvale's main sales floor (we have two now, each 150 meters square -- Hah! to SL and their antiquated 10-meter size limit) waiting for a minyan to inquire about it.

So... Monday afternoon, while Alisa and I were up there doing something or other, a visitor drops by to look around.  After tp'ing back out, he IM's her (there's a bug in InWorldz IM code that sometimes shows people as being offline when they're not), asking her to ask me to get in touch with him. I'm thinking, "Hot darn, somebody wants a copy of the schul..." Then she tells me the name: Pastor Dan.

So I send him an IM. He wants to commission a custom build project, in two parts. He's just bought an InWorldz sim and named it after his church, "The Church of the Living God", and he wants houses for his... um, flock.  Here's what the sim looked like two days ago:

And here's Pastor Dan and I on a typical parcel, discussing what he wants:


The grassy area of each one is 17 x 24 meters (55'-9" x 78'-9").  He wants me to design and build 3 different two-story houses to completely fill each space;  no yard, no landscaping.  That's 408 square meters per floor, just shy of 4400 square feet.  Think about that... Who needs 8800 sq. ft. of living space for their organic selves, let alone their avatar???  I'm guessing there will be, at most, two avatars per house: a duly "married" couple -- one man, one woman, what else? -- unless they also have people roleplaying children (I won't ask).

Anyway... I agreed to do it, and to come up with a price.  I went back to our building platform and started "sketching", as I call it -- beginning with the floor (since I knew its dimensions), copying that 5 meters up for the second level, and throwing up some walls -- all right-brain activity, while the left brain was visualizing a final look.  Lemme tell ya, brothers and sisters: 17 x 24 meters is just as huge as it sounds, and as it looks compared to avvies standing in it (see the second photo).

Mind you, this is InWorldz; the prim limit on a private island (tested and proven, by the way) is 45,000 -- hardly a "limit" at all; I can build with as much primmy detail as I want.  Balancing that: since I use the Imprudence viewer, I can make a single prim as big as I need; no sticking pieces together.  But, even though I'm way to the left on social issues, when it comes to architecture I'm a conservative, and when it comes to virtual architecture I'm not only aware of the issue of many builds being drastically over-scaled (camera placement or not) but agree for the most part.

So I'm sketching... and deciding what the first of the three should look like, all the while trying to ignore the rising aesthetic misgivings... and something else, too.  As virtual architects go, I'm a n00b on the scene.  I have no reputation -- yet -- which means that this project, by default, will have a big influence on how my work is perceived.   I surprised myself to discover that's important to me.  The "Seconderth" series has introduced me to some builders I really admire, and I aspire to be thought of in the same way.

Anyway... misgivings aside, I'm going through with it.  I tp'd Pastor Dan to the build platform yesterday to give him a look at what Alisa and I have come up with so far.  He liked them, and he didn't blink when I gave him the price.

That's the first part of the commission.  Here's Part 2:


Pastor Dan wants me to build him a megaprim megachurch.  That's the photo he handed me... it's what he wants.  A friend of his gave it to him, and Dan has no idea what it's called or where it is, so I can't even Google for more images of it.  That's all I have to work from -- that, and the size of the plot (60 x 60 m), and a maximum capacity of 40 avatars.  No clue at all how the inside should look.

Have you caught on to the irony yet?  Let's put it this way:  I'm giving Pastor Dan the benefit of the doubt, and am willing to assume that he doesn't care that he's commissioned an unbeliever to build his house of worship.

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05-19-2003 15:15

Announcing the grand opening of Boardman - a new, distinctly different region designed for those looking for a simple way to establish a home in Second Life.

We will cut the ribbon on this new area on Tuesday, May 20th, at 4 pm. Boardman is located north of Clara. Use your landmark for the Amphitheater and fly north. A Linden will be there to answer questions.

Welcome to the land of palm trees swaying gently in the fresh sea breezes. Designed in a southern California style, Boardman is host to “Pre-Fab”. Structures here are limited to an easy-to-assemble pre-fabricated mini version of “House-In-a-Box”.

This region is designed to especially appeal to newer residents who may not have developed expert building skills. While all structures are pre-fabricated, you can customize them to express your true inner spirit. It’s a no-hassle, inexpensive way to get started making a home in Second Life.

The center of the region also offers an open-air market where any residents can offer their products. Owning a home in Boardman is not required.

[source: Haney Linden; SL Forum Archives]

Zoning "ordinance", dated Jan 19 2003, five months before Boardman appeared.

Boardman: The first, but by no means the last, of Linden Lab's attempts to inject the quiet order of suburbia into the behavioral and aesthetic chaos of the Grid. As with subsequent attempts (Lusk Estates excepted), it didn't last long:

By the time 2004 rolled around, Boardman seemed to have failed as an experimental Linden-zoned, suburban area. The Lindens had relaxed their rules about the use of Linden pre-fab houses only and the sim fell into disrepair. Many of the road pieces had disappeared, and much of the land was unused and unwanted. Land dealers at the time indicated that it was a hard sell to get people to buy land there for even as low as 3L$ per square meter.

In early 2005 a group of Second Life residents decided they wanted to see this unique sim brought back to life and began to slowly buy the land as it became available for purchase. In addition to resident efforts, Jack Linden, a liaison who had replaced Haney Linden in early 2005 as the watch dog of the zoned sims, redid the roadwork, planted new trees and completely overhauled the old market in the center. By the end of 2005, Boardman was much improved and home to an active little community.

[source: Second Life Wikia]

You see, I have this dilemma: There's almost no trace of Boardman's earliest history left on the land, yet its history after the period this series is intended to cover is -- or rather, was -- rich and varied, if the collection of Boardman photos at Snapzilla is any indication. Most of those are from 2005 and 2006; many of them were taken by Ingrid Ingersoll, who appears to have been a central figure in the restored life of Boardman, post-2004. Since I began researching the written record to augment my photos for this series, I've come to rely on Ingrid's prolific contributions to Snapzilla during those years. She is also the creator (January 2005) of the Second Life Nondenominational Church, which can be seen at the left of the overview (above), as well as a large multilevel house in Boardman's northwest corner, seen here to the right of Joan and Harald Nomad's "Stonecreek" home:


Dilemma or not, there are a few scattered artifacts with creation dates reaching back to Boardman's first incarnation. They're all generic, Linden-built items used everywhere in those days; for example, the sign for the Market.


... or this notecard-giver (where the zoning info came from), placed at various street corners in the sim.  Also, the streetlamps by Alberto Linden, which -- by their creation date (May 14, 2003) -- lead me to think they were first created for use in Boardman.


Well... perhaps not all of the Linden items are generic.  Boardman has a soccer field (another of Ingrid's builds, June 2005), but the goal nets were made by Ben Linden (April 3, 2003), and the digital score indicators above them were made by Philip Linden (February 18, 2003).


There is also this house, a Bill Linden prefab (and the only one of its design I've found, so far) which, even if it was not rezzed in Boardman when the sim was new, certainly encapsulates the spirit of the place when only Linden prefabs were permitted:


As you see, it's the home of Aradia and Apollo Aridian, who also happen to be the Boardman Preservation Society:


Touring Boardman today, one finds on Inspecting that almost all of the parcels are group-owned by the BPS, and the builds on them list Aradia Aridian as their owner.  At least half of those are tasteful stone, wood, and glass constructions built by Ingrid's partner Barnesworth Anubis in 2005 and 2006 -- which rival, in style and quality, the homes of a similar era (RL, as well as SL) by Juro Kothari, to be seen in Stillman.

There's another point of comparison -- or rather, contrast -- between the collection of Kothari houses in Stillman and the Anubis (and others') houses in Boardman:  they're both empty, but for different reasons.  Kothari's land, even after all these years, is an open-air showroom to sell copies.  Boardman only looks like a showroom; that "active little community" spoken of in the Wikia has evaporated.  None of the empty houses are for rent; neither can you buy a copy to rez elsewhere (except for the Nomads' "Stonecreek"). Even the Ice Cream Shop is a shell now, missing the counter and the prim ice cream.

Oh, the sim is preserved, all right -- like a museum exhibit, but without any explanatory notecards.  I had the pleasurable and informative company of Marianne McCann for one of my photo-foraging expeditions; at the time, we bandied the expression "Potemkin village" about, but that's not exactly correct.  Potemkin villages, no matter how apocryphal the story of their origin (but see also Theresienstadt) were built to intentionally deceive.  It's impossible to determine if a zealous urge to preserve Boardman discouraged the BPS/Aridians from permitting the houses to become homes... Regardless of the reason, the result is an attractive, well-kept, peaceful ghost town.

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Note: The Linden "Houses in a Box" can be seen here and here, and can be obtained in the freebie barn at Park's Fireworks in Taber. Many more present-day photos of Boardman are in my online album.

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I forget now which evening it was (Wednesday?), or even what got it started (#emeraldgate?), but somehow Toxic Menges concocted the idea for a party for SL Twitter-ers; a.k.a. a Tweetup. Skate Foss volunteered her gorgeous tropical island sim, Matanzas, and it took very little time for a consensus to decide that 11 am SLT, Sunday, would accommodate all of the necessary timezones.

Five hours (the sun set twice) and four DJs later, the party was still happening when I logged and started editing photos. Without further ado:

Our host Skate, and Nat Merit

The Instigator, Toxic

Indigo Mertel

Katherine Berry

Suella Ember (as "the Twitterwhore")

Kristine Kristan and Ghosty Kips

(l - r) Dawny Daviau and KirstenLee Cinquetti

Fiona Haworth and SecondLie (Scribe)

Phaylen Fairchild

RacerX Gullwing and Snowy Hoobinoo

Grace McDunnough

(l-r) Toxic, Botgirl Questi, Gianna Borgnine, Weekon Thursday

The Bagheads (l-r: SecondLie, HUGSaLOT Valkyrie, Chantal Harvey)

Many thanks to the DJs for the tunes: Electric Monday, Oliver Szondi, Ghosty Kips and Imdy Paine -- and again to Toxic for the inspiration and Skate for the wonderful venue!  And to everyone who showed up: it was great to meet and gab with no 140-character limit  :)


[if I missed anyone's Twitter link, please add it in the comments]

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Someone whose blog I recently began following just royally pissed me off:

Since an under age user can wear any avatar, I would insist on there being some clear indication on the avatar that they are under age. Obviously there would need to be an indication of this on their profile, but it wouldn't hurt to include it as a symbol or something on their name tag to broadcast to all users that the person they're dealing with is not an adult and they can adjust their behavior and their language and interactions with that user accordingly.

[emphasis added]

As soon as I stopped seeing red long enough to type, I left this in the comments:

What do you suggest: a yellow star?

Yeah, that was harsh... it was meant to be. Think about the history of making a certain class of people wear labels, and remember how old Anne Frank was when she wrote her diary.

And then tell me it won't matter because "Second Life isn't real".

Yeah, yeah, I know... The topic of "underage" people on the Grid -- to say nothing of people roleplaying underage, at least in appearance -- makes people say weird shit they might not otherwise think about. Some of them just plain "get the creeps" at the thought, and some of those are eager to tell anyone, whether they care to listen or not, just how creepy they think it is. Others get all worked up about protecting the children:

Access to content is nothing. That hasn’t been prevented for decades and will always have holes.

Real problem: Anonymous adults will be able to communicate via IMs to underage residents. Like a fox in a chicken coop.

[superfluous emoticons removed]

That, by the way, is from someone who has spent a large chunk of her time in SL (and the forums about it) defending herself from accusations that she is "playing" a sexually-active underage girl (cf Lolita), merely because of her avatar's appearance.

I left an answer to that in the comments, too:

Underage residents will be able to mute IMs of anonymous adults, and to AR them. 16- and 17-year-old people are not defenseless. A good (rational, civil…) argument can even be made that they are not children.

Meanwhile, I have also seen verified adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s victimized by domination that did not stop at roleplay. It’s not a matter of chronological age, it’s a matter of maturity, self-respect, and powers of cognition.

People of any age with common sense and an awareness of the world around them will probably agree that there are more immature people over the age of 18 than there are mature people under that age. I would be hard-pressed to deny that Second Life has a reputation for attracting the immature, especially the ones who think that what they do while in SL is of no consequence because "it's just a video game." And no, I'm not just talking about griefers. But you will find people who will argue against the acceptance of 16- and 17-year-olds into the Main Grid (which will, by the end of the year, be the Only Grid) on the grounds of their behavior: 

They'll act *gasp!* like children!

As if a whole lot of Residents don't already...

To give the author of the first quote his full due, he did provide a justification in the same breath that he advocated visually stigmatizing the under-18s:

...they [adults] can adjust their behavior and their language and interactions with that user accordingly.

What's wrong, I ask, with behaving like a mature and responsible person to begin with? Is the presence of someone younger than some arbitrary standard age necessary to curb one's desire to act in "virtual" public the way one would not act in "real" public? If so, an examination of one's desires is at least as relevant as proof-of-age of the nearby public. Either that, or you've fallen into the "it's just pixels" trap again.

On the side of common sense -- granted, I say that because its the side I'm on -- is another blogger who I just began following: Suella Ember. She puts forth a SLightly Loopy facade (it's the name of her blog), but there's no doubt she thinks hard. In her review of Philip (Rosedale) Linden's speech at SLCC, which is when the news about the Teen Grid was announced, Sus lists some very good points about why it's not a bad idea. Here's her last one:

They need to look at the content and age verification controls to make sure they fully protect 16 and 17 year olds on the main grid. However, we should all also be careful of using 'protection' as an argument for not having 16 and 17 year olds on the main grid when it is in danger of really being 'over-protection, prejudice and exclusion'.

Content and verification controls -- and lest we forget, it's also going to involve another major re-write of the Terms of Service that we'll all have to agree to before being allowed on the Grid.

Aware, active parenting (another of Sus' points).

Mature, responsible public behavior for its own sake, not because "OMG, there might be kids around!"

And not -- not ever -- making some people wear a badge.

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The map above bears a date of June 16, 2003 -- a mere five days before Opening Day.  I suspect that was when the image was recorded, and that it's a little older... but not much.  Note, first of all, that the community projects in Bonifacio, Dore, and Oak Grove now all have map pins, and the Welcome Area in Ritch is no more.  More significant, of course, is the addition of four more sims, of which the first (April, 2003) was Kissling.

We have already seen many regions which hold no examples of their earliest occupation, and others which have remained nearly intact through their history.  At first glance, even after Inspecting a few builds, Kissling seems to fall in the latter group... that is, until you look it up in the SL Wikia, which carries some poorly-explained references to "prim banks" and "griefing", and this photo:

Photo credit: Charlie Omega, SL Wikia

Then again, we know how quickly things can change in Second Life.  By June, the high-rises had been scraped off the plateau and replaced by the quaint village which still stands.  Most of the builds, but not all, are associated with two names: Harald and Joan Nomad.


Both of them were prolific builders, working often in collaboration, and were involved with community projects in other regions besides Kissling (such as Yamato in Dore, and Americana in Blue).  Harald also appears to have been a pioneer in vehicle construction and scripting.  The photo above is his shop, where his glider and hovercars can still be purchased, seven years later.


Joan's style was both more domestic and more whimsical -- for example, this part of a nutritious SL breakfast:


Though their names dominate, the Nomads were not the only well-known oldbies to establish themselves in Kissling.  Buck Weaver, who sold some of the first items in Natoma's Avatar Central, still has a shop in the center of the village -- "Established 2003 (& still the same crap)":


That's how the store is listed in his Picks, but it's not crap -- even after seven years, a texture on a prim is a texture on a prim.  The deciding factor is the quality of the textures, and Buck's have stood the test of time.  His prices are also extremely affordable -- L$10 or less for most items.

Kissling, Boardman, and De Haro are connected by more than just history.  There's a flying trolley, called the Telehopper, which makes regular automated runs back and forth.  For reasons perhaps only oldbies understand, it's driven by a hippo.


After leaving Central Station (Harald Nomad, June 2003), its next stop is Joan's Bar and Marina, down off the plateau and snug up against the border with Boardman.


Almost completely built by Harald, and also mostly in June 2003.  I think they were in a hurry to prepare for the 4th of July of that year:


No nametags, and the avvies in the photo aren't identified otherwise, but I suspect that's Joan and Harald.

There are many more photos in the Kissling section of my online album (including one of Haney Linden, who's been a visitor to this blog of late)... but I should mention this one in print:


A look at the overview photo at the top of this entry (which was taken in May) shows a high-rise on the western peninsula.  It was the main store for Builders Choice, a texture outlet owned by another long-time Resident, Bob Bunderfeld.  After standing in that spot for longer than I've been in SL (easily seen from the Luskwood Tree unless you turned draw down), it was replaced a couple of months ago by that sign, which otherwise speaks for itself.  Bob Bunderfeld is alive and well in InWorldz - he's on my friend list over there.

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I've been well and truly scooped -- twice! -- on the way to this post... but hey, that's no reason to not publicly and pictorially welcome LittleBlackDuck Lindsay's Victorian reconstructions to InWorldz.

Back on the 25th of March, I had the sad task of reporting the withdrawal of the 9-region Nation of Victoriana (along with its 4 adjacent open-water sims) from the Second Life grid. The ultimate reason: extremely poor customer service in exchange for ridiculous prices. Sound familiar?

No matter... This is about new beginnings, not another rehash of old problems. Mayor Lindsay (or "Ducky" as I have seen him called in the forum -- we have yet to meet for me to take such liberty) was able to export his builds and his regions' RAW files; his unique, architecturally accurate textures were, I'm sure, already safe on his hard drive. It is the good fortune of InWorldz that he chose that grid upon which to reappear and rebuild.

Pay in mind as you look through these photos that these are not mere "Victorian revival" fancies. The major buildings -- and some of the minor ones, like the train stations -- have physical counterparts in the soi-disant real world. The Pavilion contains, as it did in SL, an exhibit of photos of the real buildings standing next those of their virtual counterparts. It is as eloquent a tribute as one could hope for to the work and love that went into the making. Photos of some of those exhibits (along with all of those presented below) are in my online collection, taken in SL in March but reproduced so accurately in InWorldz that there was no reason to re-record them.

Town Square

Pavilion Station

The Pavilion, with the Alp in the distance

Alpine cog train

Hedgemaze

Tinytoriana

A courtyard of tiny homes

Lakeside

Victoriana's website is back online as well, where you can see and learn more, including a well-written primer on InWorldz.

I'm looking forward to the time I can stand His Honor the Mayor to a congratulatory pint at The Salty Squirrel.

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