Telling: Like it Is

On the World Map from June 19 2003 , there are ten "pushpin" icons denoting themed community projects.  We've already seen four: Lindenberg (Tehama), Wild West Town (Oak Grove), Venice (Bonifacio), and Yamato/Shangri-La (Dore).   Two have vanished; one is in fragments; one retains the buildings in more-or-less good shape.  None retain any sense of community.  Of the four in the Color Sims, only Kazenojin survives -- and it is also the only one of the ten which has maintained any continuity of purpose, let alone use, in the years since its founding.

Because of that, and the diligence and care taken by its inheritors, Kazenojin is also the only community project -- and the only region of the 47 original sims on the Grid -- to have kept an independent history.  I am grateful to Huns Valen for answering a query posed to him at SLUniverse, by which he pointed me to the Kazenojin website's history page.  I suggest you stop reading this blog for long enough to click on that link (which should open a new tab), read that, and then come back.

Are you back now?  Cool... because there's lots to see, beginning with the main deck.  The airship permanently docked there (see above) was built by James Argonaut in June, 2003.


That photo of Kazenojin's (and Gray's) earliest days is displayed on a billboard by Nergal Fallingbridge (who I assume also took the original snapshot), September 2003.  Nergal also created this representation of a Spitfire, titled "High Flight" after the famous aviator's poem, in mid-August 2003.


Back on the main deck, right next to the billboard, is a certified antique notecard giver (November 2002, by Philip Linden), which hands you this card from August, 2003:


Behind it in that photo is "The Finish Line" lounge -- here's a look from outside the observation window:


"SLU" on that sign does not refer to the SLUniverse forum, but to "SL University", about which Huns wrote:

Ananda Sandgrain, Xylor Baysklef, Satai Diaz, and others started up several side projects late in 2003. Second Life University was a project to set up class areas where tutorials and other lectures could be given. To this end, the SLU building was built by Ananda and Xylor in southwest Gray. It survived for about a year.

Photo credit: unknown; 2nd Look Image Gallery, 2 April 2004

Above that land (which the Baysklef's still own), on the south side of the cliff, is this seated Buddha, by Ironchef Cook, July 2003:


And around on the west side, you can find this hypnotically kinetic sculpture by Huns Valen himself (September, 2003):


There's more in the Gray section of my online album... and three views of earlier incarnations of the Kazenojin complex in '05 and '06, at Snapzilla, by Bino Arbuckle, Shack Dougall, and Salazar Jack, respectively.

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[yes, I will be returning to "Seconderth"... soon, I promise]

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Back in August at SLCC10, Pathfinder (John Lester) gave a keynote speech wherein he invoked not only Watership Down, but a novel by Vernor Vinge titled Rainbows End.  Two days ago, I finally got up off my procrastinating tush and went next door to the library, in hope that their copy was on the shelf.  It was.

I read a tad more than half of it that night, and finished it yesterday... and I wonder now what the fuss was about.  Mind you, I love Vinge's stuff.  A Fire on the Deep was excellent, with its concept that the laws of physics are not isotropic, but depend on mass-density (interaction with the Higgs field, maybe?  he didn't say...), and its convincing hive-mind aliens with their feudal culture.  Rainbows End is a good story, don't get me wrong -- it won a Hugo in its first year of eligibility (2007), after all -- but, inspiration for a future we should be aiming toward?  Eh...

If the loose aggregation of near-future fiction in which the control and manipulation of information, a.k.a. data, is a major plot device -- that is, "cyberpunk" -- had a bright side, Rainbows End would be there.  Its backdrop is a world where you don't have to deliberately log in to an immersive virtual environment; instead, you can create one around you, and/or share a consensus virtuality overlaid on the physical.  You can also participate in near-synchronous global collaborations... seemingly, almost everyone does.  All of this, and much more, is enabled through a wireless network where every living human seems to be a node, supplemented by what can only be billions of manufactured ones embedded in everything, including the ground.  Oh, and the personal computers people use to access and contribute are clothing.  Vinge doesn't use the pun (which surprises me; he's good at them), but it does sort-of turn hardware into "softwear".

Let me put it another way, for my fellow Second Life/InWorldz/OpenSim/etc. avatars:  It would resemble physically being your avvie, and bringing your favorite virtual world(s) out of the computer screen and into your immediate surroundings, with all of the global communication inherent in the system (including IMs, which Vinge calls "sm" for "silent messages").  No flying or teleporting, sorry -- but telepresence of the same quality: walk the streets of another city on a different part of the planet, with sounds and sights supplied in realtime by the ubiquitous, constantly morphing network.  Only thing I can think of that beats it for immersivity is a holodeck.

Now then...

I've been reading science-fiction for more than five decades.  I'm a dab hand at Suspension of Disbelief, and of accepting the standard memes of the literature, some of which are much older than I am -- time travel, for instance, or faster-than-light spacecraft, even though my rational brain insists that Einstein was right, and c isn't just a good idea, it's The Law.  As long as a set-up is internally consistent (and the author's not pulling a Star Trek) I'm along for the ride.  But, when the plausibility begins to resemble Jarlsberg -- that's like Swiss, but with lots of tiny holes instead of a few big ones -- Disbelief's suspension starts to rattle and squeak, and doesn't take the turns too well.

Near-future fiction is particularly susceptible to holey-cheese-itis, and when actual dates are given in the story, those holes start to look like quantum foam.  Worst-case example:  How long ago was 2001?  Never mind the monoliths; did we have anything like a double-pinwheel space station in orbit nine years ago, let alone commercial flights to it, permanent bases on the Moon, or anything even vaguely resembling HAL?

2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968, when its title year was "safely" 33 years ahead -- a third of a century! That same year, Apollo 8 took a loop around the Moon for Christmas, and it actually looked possible that some dreams with roots in the 1950s might come true by the turn of the century.  Then politicians and bean-counters decided differently, and the last footsteps were made on the Moon in December 1972.

Rainbows End takes place in 2025.  Are we only 15 years away from the kind of world envisioned in it?  Serious doubts cloud my mind... and they're made no better by some other cheesy holes in the backstory.  The big one: Some time in 2014, Chicago gets nuked.  By whom, for what reason, isn't explained -- it's a toss-off, "Oh by the way..."  Remember what an economic disruption September 11, 2001 turned into?  How much larger an impact might the radioactive wasting of the US's third-or-fourth largest metro area have, do you think?

And yet, the economy in the world of Rainbows End is humming right along, turning out computers woven into clothing, the electronically-augmented contact lenses to go with those, and (second-most ubiquitous feature of Vinge's world) automated cars that nobody seems to own but anyone can just get into and tell it to go somewhere... and a host of other gadgets and do-dads that nobody seems to have any trouble affording, and are made... where?  By whom? How are they paid for?

Tor Books published Vinge's Rainbows End in 2006.  The global economy tanked two years later, and shows little sign of recovery now. Ask Sir Arthur C.: the corollary to "Shit happens" is "Sometimes, shit doesn't happen."

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Science fiction is only "prophetic" in hindsight.  When it deliberately tries to be predictive, it almost always falls on its face.*  The closer the fictional future is (in time) to the real present, the less likely that future will occur when forecast... if at all.

In fact, science fiction is not "about The Future".  It usually takes place in a future, often with (hopefully) plausible extrapolations of current trends as backdrop.  But science fiction is "about" the same thing that all other fiction is: human interaction, and the change and growth of personality.
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There's a good human story in Rainbows End.  The rest -- the stuff Pathfinder got all excited about -- is set design.  Cleverly painted flats, with nothing behind them but the occasional stagehand and the props table.  Sure, it would be really cool to have those shiny gadgets and do all those amazing things with them -- but by the time I finished reading the book, I did not want to live in that world.

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* - For a real laugh, check out these predictive whoppers from Mr. Singularity himself, Ray Kurzweil. Sometimes, science fiction is disguised as fictional science.

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Last night, I delivered the second part of my first commission as a custom builder: the megachurch.  When I posted about it three weeks ago, all I had to go on was a footprint size (60 meters square), and a photograph of a front elevation of some anonymous church somewhere in the US (do megachurches exist anywhere outside the States?)

A bit more than a week later, I had the basics:


That was about the time when Pastor Dan gave me a photo of what he wanted the inside to look like:


I was able to use that information in the upper right corner to trace its ultimate origin, the Roswell (Georgia) United Methodist Church -- which happens to have an octagonal floor plan.  Compromise time: rectangular front, half-octagon back:


Skipping ahead a little, here's a shot of the completed rear elevation:


Not an easy proposition, getting that roof to work...

Fortunately, Dan said I only needed to allow space for one row of choir -- but he did want the organ pipes.  Since I had no acoustics to consider, those were actually fairly easy:  make one, duplicate it, shrink a copy and duplicate that, shrink another copy still smaller and duplicate that, then stretch the upper tubes into a pattern:


450 prims, just for the organ.



Finished interior elevations.  The pews are rebuilt from the ones I made for the synagogue, with sit targets built in.  Dan wanted four rows, so he ended up with seating capacity for 112 avatars just on the main floor, and another 72 in the balcony.  Dan also provided the textures for the stained glass, and that's his logo on the big screens.

So... it was finally all done yesterday afternoon, and I IM'd Dan to come make a final inspection.  He said, "Just pack it up, bring it over, and rez it in place," which was actually going to be easier for me than trying to explain to him how to rez it, because I wanted to leave the furniture and the doors unlinked from the building, so they could easily be moved, modded, and duplicated if ever necessary.  I rezzed a reference prim, shift-selected everything I wanted to stay "loose", and chose Take from the pie menu while selected.  It came to almost 500 prims, in 42 linksets.

Deep breath... then shift-drag select the building itself, making the main piece of floor the root; 1001 prims all together (including the organ).  Another deep breath, click the "Link" button... and it froze in mid-link.  And I crashed.  And I couldn't get back in until Alisa restarted the sim to get the church to stop trying to link up.  Turns out, it had linked itself into two sections.  Once I was back, we debated, "Take it as two, or try linking them together?"  We decided, "may as well try to link them -- we know what to do if it fails again."  And that's what we had to do -- it crashed me again.  Another sim restart later, and it actually was all one linkset of 1001 prims.

One more deep breath... right-click select, Take.  Poof!  Without a second's delay, right into my Inventory.  ~whew!~  Off to Dan's sim, and lo and behold, it rezzed when I dragged it out with no more difficulty than creating a single block.  Then I dragged the furniture bundle out and got it located while still grouped so that I only had some very minor tweaking to do for the doors.


There it is, on-site, nestled among the houses that Alisa and I built for part 1 of the commission (hers are the pale green ones) and some builds that Dan put up, including the temporary church which mine replaces.


If you want to see it in person, use the InWorldz World Map to find the region called "Church of the Living God".

I have no idea how much time I actually spent building it -- it certainly wasn't every day of the three weeks, let alone a consistent number of hours on the days I did work on it.  My fee was I'z 10,000 = USD 20.00, which works out to 1-1/3 cents per prim.

It was my choice to build it at home, rather than in-place, and transport it when done; that way, I wouldn't be interrupted, except by Alisa, by whom I very much wanted to be interrupted  :)  I did learn one major lesson, though: next time I build this big, I'll link it in sections.

I'm ready for my next commission  ;)  IM me in InWorldz, or send a Tweet.

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By the way... yesterday, 16 Sept 2010, was the first anniversary of my first post -- this blog's Rezday, if you will. Two days prior to that, I posted Number 100.

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What has gone before:

There are two magical kingdoms, X and Z.  Part of the magic operating in both is the ability to make things out of basic raw materials -- let's call them "blocks" -- which appear out of thin air at command, and at no cost.  The supply of blocks is theoretically infinite. (There are limits, but not based on scarcity of materials; rather, each kingdom sets a maximum number of blocks that are able to exist on a given area of land.)

Everyone in both X and Z can be a magic-user, a Maker-of-Things; they merely need to wave their wand to cause a block to appear, and there are other incantations (which are the same in both kingdoms, and available to everyone) to warp, stretch, cut, color and combine blocks into more complicated Things.  Not everyone, however, chooses to use the magical potential of the kingdoms.  The reasons are various: They may not have the patience, or they may not have the talent to turn an imagined visualization into a realized Thing, or they may just not be interested in playing with blocks.  Others have found that they are good at making one kind of Thing, but not another.

Meanwhile... Like people everywhere, the inhabitants of X and Z want nice Things.  It's human nature.  And so, an economy grows around the desire for Things, in which people are not merely willing but eager to purchase Things from talented Makers, and the Makers are, of course, eager to provide.  At its base, the money that changes hands is a token for an underlying exchange wherein the buyer is saying "Thank you for the quality and convenience; I could never have done this myself," and the Maker (if she or he is a good businessperson) is saying, "Thank you for selecting my work over others'."

If that were all, the story would have been done at the end of Part 1.  But, as we have seen, it is possible for people to travel between kingdoms X and Z -- in fact, with sufficiently strong magic, it is possible for them to be in both at the same time!  It is also possible for Makers-of-Things with a presence in both kingdoms to go into the import/export trade if they choose to: making their Things in one kingdom, but selling copies in both.

Of course, there are Rules governing import/export.  Intended to protect Makers from counterfeiting, the Rules restrict the magic so that only the certified Makers can export their Things.  This is all well and good when applied to the blocks themselves, the way they were manipulated and connected to each other, and even their color.  However... for every ointment, there is a fly.

Part 1 of this tale concerned two widget-makers.  The widgets they made represent the flies in the import/export ointment.  One kind invokes a special magic to reshape a block; the other changes its surface appearance so that it looks like something other than raw block material.  For arcane reasons known only to a handful of ancient philologists, these two kinds of widgets are known by their names in the Craft -- "maps" and "textures" -- even though one can neither navigate by the first, nor feel the second.

Kingdom X is the oldest and most populous of its kind -- it is where the magic they all use, including Kingdom Z, was first developed.  It is also where the Rules were written, long before other kingdoms ever existed.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of so-called textures to be found in X have been in circulation since its founding, and were free for use by anyone to begin with; hence, they are commonly called "freebies".  Others have (perhaps with their Maker's permission, perhaps not) entered the freebie stream over time, so that their provenance is at best muddled, and at worst, untraceable.  Nevertheless, since the intent of the import/export Rules is to protect all Makers, the magic is restricted such that Things may be exported, but not their textures -- not even when the Maker of the Thing and its textures are the same person.  The same restriction applies to maps -- when you export a block sculpted by a map, the magic goes away.

Where there is a will, there is a workaround.  Textures and maps which are not permitted by their Makers to be copied are useless -- they cannot be applied to blocks.  However, making them (in the arcana of the Craft) "copy-enabled" also allows them to be copied to the magical device through which people are able to visit, inhabit, and do business in kingdoms like X and Z.  This means that it is possible to buy textures in one kingdom and use them in both, by re-applying their magic to imported Things (and for any other purpose for which they might be used).

Some Makers of textures and maps don't worry themselves about this.  Their only plea is "Don't undercut our market by reselling these, or giving them away."  Others don't see it that way, and they make up their own rules to add to the kingdom's, to the extent of, "When you by these from me in X, you may only use them in X.  If you want to use them in Z, buy a second copy in Z."  Of course these extra rules (which, taking a cue from the Rulers of Kingdom X, they like to call "licenses") are completely unenforceable... unless they hire a bunch of spies to skulk around both Kingdoms looking for "unauthorized" use.

Mind you, those Makers of textures have every right to make their own rules.  It is a curious anti-magical aspect of Kingdom X (and by adoption, all the others) that no one actually owns anything, even if they made it themselves from start to finish... except something called "copyright", which is actually the right to regulate copying.  Thus it is perfectly within their purview to insist upon limiting the right to copy their work -- that is, to apply it to a block -- in one Kingdom but not the other.

But is it "good business"?  Only the market has the answer to that.  As you may know by now, I am a Maker-of-Things in Kingdom Z -- but not one in X, nor do I import what I have made from Z to X, yet I can empathize with those who do business in both Kingdoms.  Given the choice, I would naturally buy from a texture or map Maker who is satisfied to be paid once and once only for a copy of their original work -- a copy which, I remind you, costs them nothing to reproduce -- regardless of where I use it.

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Once upon a time, in a magical kingdom called X...

Person A invents a widget.  It's intended to be used by other people who make things, as part of their finishing process.  As widgets go, it's a good one, and just might be popular.  She decides to put copies of it up for sale, as much to find out how well her widget is considered as to realize any income from the sales. Since displaying a widget is a proven way to sell them, she rents a store and prepares her advertising.  Before she opens her store, Person A has to set a price for her widget.  Being fair-minded, she studies the local widget market and sets a price based on what other people are charging for similar items.  She has faith in the quality of her widget, and that enough makers-of-things will agree, and add it to their tool kit.

In another part of Kingdom X, Person B also invents a widget with the same basic purpose as Person A's, but with a different style of finish.  Ideally (depending on what they make), the intended end-users may find it useful to have a copy of both A's and B's widgets at hand... thus, A and B are not exactly in direct competition, even though they're both in the widget business.  Person B also rents a store, and gets ready to open it.  Like A, B also has to set a price for his product -- but unlike A, B decides to price his based on a rate of compensation for the time it took to make the prototype, and the rent he pays for his store, and the cost of advertising in the local media.   He takes a guess at how many might sell in a given month, divides his monthly-expenses-plus-compensation figure by that quantity, and arrives at a price which -- fortunately for him -- is not excessively high.  Person B also interprets the phrase "you get what you pay for" to mean that his potential customers will believe in the superiority of his product because the price is a little higher, and be willing to pay it.

It needs to be pointed out that some other factors which might ordinarily influence this pricing exercise are not in operation in Kingdom X.  All each of them had to do was create the prototype widget.  The copies that are sold materialize out of thin air -- i.e., there are no production costs.  Delivery is free, too.  Also, A and B pay precisely the same amount of rent and advertising fees.  Their tangible overhead -- a.k.a. "the cost of doing business" -- is identical.

(Told you it was a magical kingdom...)

Lo and behold... Another magical kingdom, Z, is founded.  Its population is small to begin with, but there are makers-of-things, and more are immigrating every day. Meanwhile, there are almost no widgets to be had there (except some shoddy, outdated free ones).  Persons A and B get wind of this, and simultaneously decide to open a branch store in the new kingdom... and this is where the story gets complicated.

Z is an independent kingdom, not a colony of X, and it naturally has its own currency -- call it the Z$.  However, most (if not all) of the immigrants to Z are coming from X, and a means to change X$ to Z$ is set up for their convenience and encouragement, at a rate of X$1 = Z$2.

Z is also a much less expensive kingdom to live and do business in than X is.  In the way these things are calculated, one is permitted to have 3 times as many objects on the same amount of land in Z as in X, for 1/4 the rent (using a well-known third currency as a benchmark to compare the other two).

The result of this situation is: the early merchant immigrants to Z make a public pledge among themselves that they will not charge twice as much for their goods in Z as they do in X -- even though the money is only worth half as much -- because their overhead is so much lower.  Copies still magically appear at no further cost to them, delivery is still free, and so (for the time being) is advertising.

Person A and B move in.  They're both still paying equal rent for their stores in Kingdom Z, so their overhead is still identical.  Person A decides that the "conventional wisdom" about pricing is indeed wise, and only changes the currency symbol in her displays.  That is: if her widget cost X$500 in Kingdom X, it costs Z$500 in Kingdom Z, even though Z$500 = X$250.

Person B, on the other hand, is still looking to be compensated for each sale in the same amount of that benchmark currency mentioned above, no matter which kingdom the sale takes place in.  In doing so, he dismisses the 1:4 overhead ratio and sees only the 2:1 currency exchange rate.  Consequently he doubles the numerical value of his prices, charging Z$1000 for a X$500 widget.

All other things being equal -- and they are -- Person A will see more sales in Kingdom Z because her widget is priced at what the market will bear.  Person B will see few sales, if any, because his widget is plainly overpriced for the market, regardless of its equivalence to that benchmark.  Chances are likely that B's venture in Kingdom Z will not last long, while A will probably end up emigrating to Z, and begin to consider her original store in Kingdom X as "the branch", if she doesn't close it completely.

The moral of this story: Markets are not math alone.  They are psychological.  The citizens of X and Z  -- most of all, people who spend time in both kingdoms -- do not think of purchases in terms of some benchmark comparison.  They see a number, compare it to what they're used to paying, and decide if the purchase is worth making.  Furthermore, recall that the Kingdom Z customers for those widgets are makers-of-things, who have also evaluated the market for their own goods and decided that the conventional wisdom regarding prices is "good business"; it's fair to their customers, too.


(There's a Part 2 to this story.... stay tuned)
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soror Nishi's latest work, "Tree of Trees", opened today in the region called "IBM Exhibit C".  If you are not already a fan, you're likely to become one after exploring this masterwork, which is a grand summation of all she's done in the last three years.

Use the World Map to get there -- I did -- it has a landing point, where you find yourself inside this:


... about which she says in her recent blog:

..at around 300 meters I have rezzed a little home. It is a sample of the type of building I would imagine avatars inhabiting rather than poor copies of RL houses.

[I, myself, am a maker of "copies of RL houses", but I don't begrudge soror her opinon... I merely envy her imagination and creativity :) ]

It is suggested that you set your view to Midnight, and that's always best with soror's luminescent work... but if you are using a viewer that includes a library of Windlight presets, by all means experiment! (For example: the top photo, and this next one, used a preset called "outdoor city - weird lights")


That is the top of the Tree of Trees.


You may also want to experiment with turning clouds off (Advanced > Rendering > Types > Clouds) for part of the time.  soror has built the Tree in a way to make use of the default clouds for atmosphere (pun intended),  but sometimes it's just easier to see with one less source of alpha-on-alpha flare.


A detail from around the middle of the trunk (regular daylight).


The crown of the Tree, from below (using "Coastal Afternoon", clouds off).

And here's the artist herself, looking very much like... well, an avatar.  Of the Hindu variety, which is where the word comes from:


Hare soror!

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I haven't been able to learn, yet, whether all 14 of the first batch of "Color Sims" came online simultaneously, or not.  Assuming that they did, I've chosen to read the map from south to north, and from east to west in each row; making Tan the first (and Slate the last, before finishing the series with the noncolor sims of Darkwood and Gibson).

Tan resembles some of its older cousins to the south among the First 16 (such as Varney, Stillman or Minna) in that much of it was quickly settled, those parcels remain held by the original settlers... and that among those are many Charter Members (a.k.a. Lifetime Accounts).


This lovely cottage was built by Ezhar Fairlight in October 2003, and is owned by shelah Sunshine (Charter Member, rezdate 1/39/03), who claimed her land in Tan only a few days after the cottage was built.  The lamppost is the oldest object in Tan: September 30, 2002, by Richard Linden (and is soon to be added to the list of the Oldest Objects in SL, which has already been revised three times as my explorations continue).


A Roman bath with roof garden, built by Viola Bach on various dates between August and December 2003, on land she claimed in September 2003. Viola is also a Charter Member (rezday 3/8/03).


This parcel belongs to Pippin Armstrong (rezday 12/17/02); he claimed it two days before Opening Day. Most of what's there was built in '06, but not all. The flags are from Dec 2003 (but the gold ball at the top is by Haney Linden, Dec 2002); the arm giving the peace sign was built by Pippin in March, 2003.


The most aesthetically-pleasing build in Tan, by far, is The Watermill.  It's not from the Elder Days, but unlike every other significant site I've investigated so far, it includes some of its own history in the About Land information: originally built by its owner, Pontroe Portocarrero, in 2004 in the region called Cayuga and moved to Tan in 2005.  In the owner's Picks, the original Watermill is listed as an "animated art gallery".  In Tan, it's empty.

The entry for Tan in the SL Wikia includes some notes about "historical landmarks", none of which still exist.  Besides the Gassy Cat Workshop and a clock tower (which I would love to find pictures of), there was:

Tan Tower: The Tan Tower was built by Lordfly Digeridoo right after version 1.2 [December 2003] as an exercise in very large construction projects. It featured 15 floors, each one 20x20x20, and each floor was rented out to tenants. It also had a working elevator. It was a bit of a minor landmark in SL, as at the time Tan was the only place that you could go through to get to the north continent (without teleporting, of course).

[uploaded anonymously to 2nd Look Image Gallery, 3/20/04]

Unlike many (most?) of the oldest "oldbies", Lordfly Digeridoo is still an active Resident, both in-world and in the SLUniverse forum.  By contrast, one could say that Tan -- and many other regions in addition -- suffers from the inactivity or permanent absence of their oldest Residents.


Here's another overhead view, taken from above Tan's southern border.  All of the elevated land (except the Watermill, of course) is Abandoned, as is a "water parcel" on the eastern edge.  Of the remainder, two large parcels are for sale: the one just east of selah's cottage (which used to be SLU's clubhouse, and still contains random objects left behind when it was moved to another region), and the parcel in the southeast (lower right) corner... and then there's this:


The legacy of Lifetime/Charter Membership -- land for which no tier must be paid in order to remain "owned" -- has two sides.  The brighter side preserves historical associations among land, builds, and people against the depredation of time and change.  The darker side is illustrated above: something between 1/4 and 1/3 of Tan is unusable, either because it is abandoned without resolution by Linden Lab, or belongs "in perpetuity" to a Charter Member who never needs to log in again, and -- by examples I've found all over the oldest sims -- probably has not logged in for years.

In the photo above, there's a quasi-spherical object stuck into the side of the cliff bordering the empty parcel where Viola had her store.  Because the center of the prim is in Abandoned land, even if Viola logged in she could not return it.... but the situation is worse than that.  I tried to Abuse Report it under "Object Littering", but its creator/owner cannot be found in LL's database -- from which I infer that the account was terminated for one reason or another; therefore, the AR could not be completed, which halted the filing process.

In the Best of All Possible Virtual Worlds, someone like the SL DPW would be looking for things like this... Then again, in the BoAPVWs, abandoned land would not remain abandoned for long; it would either be auctioned, or become Protected and therefore under the purview of the Moles.

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Another "loose end" post; they happen, from time to time. But, I'm at another convenient rest-stop on the Seconderth blue highway (winks at Iggy O). Well, actually, Tan will be next. Blue won't be posted for a little while, but when it is, it might turn out to be the longest post of the whole series. Folks who remember Americana will know why.

So...

Emerald: (yeah, had to say it, one last time). All the drama is over -- I hope! -- and I deliberately did not jump into the fray, except for some snarky potshots I took in Twitter. I could go into a long rendition of why I adopted it, why I stuck with it for as long as I did, and why I eventually dumped it in favor of Imprudence. Macht's nichts.

"Show's over, folks; nothing to see here, move along now..."

No... wait! This just in (while I was writing down the page a ways): Some of the ex-Emerald team (including the trustworthy LordGregGreg Back), and some others, have started up what they claim is a "clean" fork of Emerald code, and are -- predictably -- calling it Phoenix.

I wonder where the former Qarl and Data Linden have been in all of this, and why they haven't said another word after announcing they'd joined Emerald, just before the terminal shit hit the fan.

~yawn~ Next!

Display Names: Sorry, folks, but I just can't seem to work up a sweat about this one. I get the whole "fear of impersonation" thing, and I voted for JIRA SVC-6194 that, if adopted, would prevent display names from duplicating existing user names... but I doubt it'll be adopted. When the Lab gets a plan in its head, it can make pit bulls look amenable to persuasion, by comparison.

Personally, I'm not at all concerned about being impersonated. Alisa jokes that I'm "famous" -- that is, I think she's joking ;) -- but seriously, what could anyone gain by trying to pass themselves off as Lalo Telling, except maybe some rotten tomatoes? Besides which, I spend almost no time in SL any more, unless I'm popping in for detailed follow-up in a sim for "Seconderth". And aren't Display Names exclusively a feature of Viewer 2? If so, I'll be missing them completely.


Transworld Notes: You see, there's an advantage to taking some of your eggs out of that one basket and putting them in others. My reputation, such as it is, is no longer tied exclusively to SL. There's this blog, first of all -- nobody can impersonate me here. Same with InWorldz... where maybe I've found a calling. I build Godhouses. (OK, it's only my second one; even so...)


In spite of the huge admiration I have for artists who do things that are not possible in the physical world, my brain's just not wired that way. Or maybe a career spent in the architectural branch of engineering is responsible for tweaking those synapses... whatever. I'm coming to love the challenge of reproduction; give me a photo and say "make it look like that," and I'm on it.

I'll let you know when that's done and I'm ready for a new commission ;)

There's another basket I've had some reputational eggs in, so to speak, which I haven't directly mentioned in this blog before, even though there's a link in the sidebar: TQR: Total Quality Reading (I was a Transworlder before I ever heard of virtual worlds, let alone joined one). It's a tri-quarterly lit 'zine with a twist or three; the most important being, if your submission survives the initial reading, the second level of readers (I'm one) posts a review on the site, so you know why it does or doesn't make it past them. No other publication like it does that. If you've ever submitted writing anywhere, you know: you wait to get an acceptance or rejection form-letter, and rarely do the rejections say any more than "Thanks, but no thanks."

Mind you, even though the posts are public, they're done behind a screen of pseudonymity. (You think virtual worlds are the only venue for drama? Try dealing with a rejected thin-skinned neophyte writer!) As a beneficial side-effect, that's enabled me to consolidate disparate identities so that Lalo Telling is who he is, everywhere he is... I am. I've even worked being a SL/InWordz avatar into the backstory over there, treating the TQR environment as yet another VW I fell into during a failed teleport.

The reason I'm bringing it up here now (beside the opportunity to plug)? The guy who owns and runs it is entertaining the notion of starting up a Facebook page for it. Recall, if you will, that pseudonymity is a technical violation of FB's Terms of Service... because their underlying purpose is to serve as a source of data for aggregators like EquiFax, for "targeted advertising".

You all know where I stand on this issue; I'm not even going to link to my previous rants about it. My own ethical dilemma right now is: Do I stand firm on principle and disallow my name, image and work on TQR itself to be re-published on FB, even if the re-publisher is the guy I work for? Advice is solicited...


Mileposts, again: This is post #96 on this blog -- I just might hit 100 by thirteen days from today (September 16), which will be the first anniversary of my first post. Last night, at 5:48 my time, Visitor #6000 dropped by.

Woot!

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Compared to the intentionally planned communities of Boardman and De Haro, and the village into which Harald and Joan Nomad transformed Kissling, Immaculate seems almost an afterthought.  Without its four distinctive landmarks, it looks just like its older neighbors -- Da Boom, Ritch, Zoe -- precisely because it was not planned.  It also appears to have spent the years since its first appearance on the Grid (early June, 2003) in obscurity.  Searching the official Second Life Wiki returns no hits at all. There is an entry in the SL Wikia (a.k.a. "the history wiki"):

Held the Neo Tokyo project, run by the Noise Tanks, led by Rygar Grimm.

That's all. No links to further information, and looking up Rygar Grimm's profile or the Noise Tanks' group information on the SL website search doesn't get far, either.

While the distinctive builds in Immaculate have not been there since the very beginning, they're not that much younger...

[Photo credit: Chromal Brodsky; 2nd Look Image gallery; 3/29/04]

Spot the Dragon has been guarding his creator's land since forestrock Flower first built him, in January, 2004.  The tower he guards is older still: November 2003.  Spot's next-door neighbor is a game space:


"Medieval Crusade": invented, scripted and built by Tedd Tigereye, beginning in January 2004.  One of forestrock's profile Picks is labeled "Tedds Land", and notes "The only place you can play Simon Says and be accosted by fire beetles at the same time."


(... and I thought fire ants were bad news!)

forestrock has another piece of Immaculate.  You can't miss it -- it's the 500-meter black tower.  In pure "not possible in RL" fashion, it's not anchored to a massive concrete foundation; instead, it sits on a wooden pier that can't be more than a half-meter thick.   Here's what things look like from the top (draw set to 1024, cloud rendering disabled):


Last, but maybe most significant for a surprising reason, is Tainted Steel:


A personal note, first: when I was still more-or-less a noob, I found this place while exploring and had a look inside.  Among the images arranged around the walls were copies of the June 2003 map of SL -- my first inkling of anything like an early history of the Grid, and the inspiration for what eventually became this series.

The build itself was almost entirely assembled (by its owner, Ash Rose)  from megaprims created by others, mostly in 2006-7, so an absolute age is impossible to determine.  Now, here's the surprise:


The very top of the tower was assembled by Ash two days after she joined Second Life... and it contains items rezzed by Steller Sunshine on the precise same date as the oldest prims in the Governor's Mansion!  Those five prims labeled "New Object" tie, with the Mansion itself, for 5th Oldest in SL.

(Which means I'm going to have to update the "SL 8.25 B" entry, again!  But hey... that's what this project is all about.)

I'm led to think that Ash Rose was not a prodigal noob who absorbed building skills in two days, but rather, someone who had been in beta under a different account, and probably a friend of Steller.

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We have, incidentally, come to the end of "The San Francisco Sims" -- from Natoma through Immaculate, 31 in all, named for streets and alleys in the neighborhood of Linden Lab's original headquarters. Sixteen more remain to be explored: 14 bear the names of colors, one is named for the roleplay area for which it was created, and the last one honors the godfather of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. So it's doubly appropriate to end with the map that I first saw in Immaculate and began all this; dated June 19, 2003 -- four days before what SL now celebrates as its Birthday.


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