The Red and The Wild

Okay, so everyone is posting and putting up pictures about and from AM Radio’s latest amazingly wonderful and enigmatic and lovely and intriguing build “The Red and The Wild”, so here I am doing it also. I’m just posting a few here (all of which are better viewed larger), but on flickr I have a whole set (and see also the relevant flickr image pool).

A jaunt northward

So v good friend Chestnut put up a weblog entry about her an’ Zha’s new mainland land, and I thought I’d pop over and look at it, being a big mainland fan myself.

I’d heard somewhere that it was now possible to get from the southern continent (Jeogeot, where my Hughes Rise park is) to the northern continent (Sansara, the original core of Second Life, where’s Ches an’ Zha’s new place is). So having a few minutes free in the middle of the day, I thought I’d give it a shot.

There I am, hovering over Hughes Rise on my Personal Flying Saucer, ready to set out. (The saucer was a Hunt prize at SENRIES ; I expect they probably sell them too.)

To start the jaunt, I went overland on the Rise, up to the Linden protected-land right-of-way in the northwest corner (parcel 01 on my map from the other day). Here I am on the right-of-way, passing by Sadie’s Dyke Bar.

There’s a nice long strip of Linden protected land cutting SW to NE through this part of the continent; maybe the Moles will put in an actual road!

Continuing roughly northeast along the right-of-way, here I am passing over a racetrack or… something in Bulgogi.

I was in a bit of a hurry, so couldn’t stop to look at all of the interesting things (or even wait for them to finish rezzing completely).

Here’s a nicely-designed office park or something in Muk, with the moon shining over the ocean visible between its levels.

Some slightly more chaotic mainland, along the Linden right of way, with big yellow LAND FOR SALE signs, a castle, and a hot-air balloon:

There were various hot-air balloons drifting majestically about in this area, between the Rise and the northern tip of Jeogeot. I got off my saucer and floated briefly around on one. It was relaxing. Here I’m passing over some construction sites (or possibly buildings that haven’t finished rezzing!) in a vaguely urban area.

(I actually detached the saucer rather than getting off of it. One nice thing about it is that it’s actually an attachment and not a vehicle, which means it’s pretty easy to steer, and I never get knocked off by banlines. A clever idea!)

Shortly after this, back on my saucer, I happened to notice a familiar-looking parcel name go by in the parcel-name bar, and looking down I saw that I was flying over a friend’s house, where I’d been visiting just the other day! I didn’t take a picture of that because, I dunno, I guess because it’s a friend’s house :) but these coincidences are always fun. Huge as the grid is, it’s still a small world.

At the northernmost tip* of Jeogeot, I came to a nice beach area with inlets and rocks and dunes and cattails and poseballs. Here I am gazing northward, out to sea, talking with a woman who was out there sorting inventory.

Flatteringly, she asked me for the numbers for my shape! I gave her everything but my face; that’s mine. :)

I scrolled around on the map enough to convince me that there is in fact no navigable bridge between Jeogeot and Sansara (it’s a long distance!), or at least none I was going to find that day. Time was getting very short, so I said bye to my flattering new acquaintance, and teleported directly off to Marawa.

Ches an’ Zha’s new land is in a lovely area, lots of water, and it looks like a quality neighborhood. I look forward to memorable land-warming parties. :)

Having done some part of what I intended, I TPd home and put the flying saucer away, and relaxed in my giant chocolate donut to get back to RL. There’s no place like home!

Although yeah the Rise is not strictly speaking home; that’s Extropia. But the Rise is my mainland home, and I love it there!

What are they smoking?

Okay, so back in an earlier post we were all annoyed by the idea of banning all “adult content” from the mainland, and the initial definition of “Adult” that the Lab had posted. Then we were amused and frustrated by the replacement of that definition of “Adult” by a page saying “Oops!”, so that all the subsequent discussion of what to do with Adult content might as well have been about what to do with Frazmataz content, since “Adult” was undefined.

Now the Lab has put up a new definition of “Adult”, and although it’s nice that it’s marked “Note: This document is undergoing a round of edits. The final version may be different”, it’s sort of a pity that it’s completely bonkers.

Not only does it again define Adult regions very broadly (as any region that “advertises or publicly promotes… Representations of intensely violent acts… Photo-realistic nudity [or]… Expressly sexually themed content, spaces or activities (whether or not photo-realistic)”, therefore getting Michelangelo’s David and nude beaches again despite having assured us they would not, and for that matter probably getting most lingerie stores) it also (just a sentence or two before, and contradictorily) defines adult regions as those regions “that host conduct or display content that is sexually explicit or intensely violent, or depicts illicit drug use”.

Illicit drug use.

Illicit drug use!!

I mean, what the hell?

I had a slippery-slope argument in my original posting on the Adult Exile, saying that if sex-stuff was exiled to its own continent then people would start to whine and want anything else that they didn’t liked also exiled. I actually thought it was a rather weak argument, and I put it last, but here it is already!

Can I have a show of hands of how many people have been traumatized or offended, while innocently wandering the mainland, to come across someone smoking virtual mari-huana (the devil weed!), or shooting up virtual heroine? Or been offended by a virtual head-shop opening up next door? Or who thinks its reasonable that no one not age-verified should have been allowed to go to SecondStock (a fun virtual Woodstock that was chock-full of ganja references), or should be exposed to those funny “enormous roach” attachments that people bring out at parties, or should be able to use your typical cute group waterpipe, or should for that matter be able to play with the variety of “virtual drugs” that do strange things to what you see on the display and how your AV moves?

Anybody? Anybody at all?

I mean, doesn’t this wording even ban those anti-drug posters that show ugly losers smoking pot, with the words “pot smoking is very glamorous” under them? They’re depicting illicit drug use!

(If you read a little further on that page, you’ll also find that you can’t have a cocktail party on a PG sim; no social alcohol use.)

I hope I’m going to look really silly tomorrow when this turns out to have been a typo or cut-and-paste error or April Fool joke at the Lab, or that I’ve missed the entire point because I’m just back from a business trip and I’ve been out of touch and I’m too sleepy to think straight. I would be okay with that. I would not be okay with someone at the Lab actually thinking that this is a good idea, and that people who are not age-verified must not be allowed to see virtual people using virtual illicit drugs. I mean…

I mean…

What are they smoking?

Lighthouse, Error

Spennix the Explorer and friends

Spennix has been busily exploring the world and leveling and so on. Here she is literally rocketing into the cold adventurousness of the Storm Peaks:

She recently hit level 80 (yay! currently the highest level in the game), but I don’t have a picture to go with that (ya don’t look any different at 80, and catching the yellow leveling-flare would have taken split-second timing with the camera).

She also finished exploring the Entire World, and got the corresponding title; here she is in the obscure corner of Storm Peaks that was the last place to be filled in on her map:

(Note that it’s so cold you can see her breath; I like how Blizzard puts in cute details like this.)

Not too long after turning 80, she went on her first 25-person raid; into the Obsidian Sanctuary! Spennix-like (and for that matter Dale-like), she wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but was not disturbed by the fact; she just ran in and stabbed whatever it was everyone else was attacking.

Here’s the group about to go after Sartharion, the main OS boss:

If you look real real close, you can make out the back of her head more or less dead center (because the WoW camera is always centered on the character, which is probably necessary to prevent rampant cheating, but really limits the pictures you can take!).

The raid did really well; we didn’t lose anyone until we got to the final boss, and while it did take us three attempts to down Sartharion, we did it without too much trouble.

I wasn’t expecting much in the way of loot or anything, being mostly along for the fun and not really knowing what I was doing, but I rolled a 99 (after the person before me had rolled a 98!) and came away with a lovely set of Concealment Shoulderpads, which you will probably see in future Spennix pictures (can’t imagine she’ll get anything better to replace them with anytime very soon).

It was great fun. :)

In other WoW news, I rolled up a lil gnome mage on a different server where some friends are putting together a guild. Here is Tashalorum (currently level 12 or so):

Extremely perceptive readers may notice some resemblance to Spennix…

And back on Spennix’s server, I finally got Spennatrix (originally a Holy Priest, but respec’d to Shadow when I realized that I was never playing her because Holy is so hard to solo with) up to level 30, which in these enlightened times means she gets a mount! Here she is on her Spotted Frostsaber:

somewhere in Darnassus (the Elfish capital).

And that’s todays news from World of Warcraft. :)

Yuri’s Night 2009 in Extropia

I have been a bad little Second Life Weblogger by not posting things in my Second Life weblog! I thought I had done an entry with pictures from the 2009 Yuri’s Night Party Marathon in Extropia (my home town!), but it looks like I only just posted them on Flickr and not on the weblog tsk. So here are just a few of the thirteen pictures I took. It was a great time! (Click through to flickr for the commentary.)

Yet more of the reasons I so love Second Life. :)

Region Mapper Update

My last post on this subject caused a bit of confusion and amusement, of the “what the heck are all those numbers and things?” and “upside down and sideways hahaha” variety. So here is an update!

As will be obvious, I have switched from the nontraditional “as seen from below, with north to the right” view to the more familiar “as seen from above, with north upward” view.


00: Hughes Rise (25,224) Mature 1600m:
01: Protected Land: Protected Land
02: Hughes Rise :
03: Workshop Prim Farm: Workshop Prim Farm
04: Heavenly Bodies Tattoos & Shapes: Tattoo, Tattoos, Shapes, Shape,
05: AI WorkShop: AI Skybox Workshop
06: Ad-Vatar and The Question Center: Dr. Destiny
07: Jilly and om's Japanese tryst:
08: Sweetwater Retreat (240,232) Mature 1536m:
09: Sadie's Dyke Bar & Butch Store: Quiet hangout. Dressing room, butch
10: Hughes Rise - First Land: Land For The Landless
11: Hughes Rise: Hughes Rise
12: Galaxy Design real estate - Hughes Rise 6: Flat green land available for
13: Galaxy Design: Primland
14: Himmis Kleines Eckchen ;):
15: Abandoned Land: Land abandoned by Cricket Zipper on 31-Dec-2008
16: My Secret Hideaway: Sometimes you want to go, where nobody knows
17: DAT LAND:
18: Workshop Annex: Workshop Annex
19: A Garden : Murasaki Suisei
20: : My first house
21: The Camel's Prim Farm:
22: Abandoned Land: Land abandoned by Errol Bazar on 09-Oct-2008
23: oms studio 2:
24: Abandoned Land: Land abandoned by Ash Alecto on 14-Dec-2008
25: La's Tipi: Keep Out
26: oms studio 1:
27: Gray Estates Part Deux:
28: Hughes Rise (216,145) Mature 512m:
29: Marqs Gettaway:
30: Abandoned Land: Land abandoned by bWhittl Kips on 08-Jan-2009
31: Microparadise: Some Land! Woooot!
32: Dale Inis random Hughes Rise land:
33: Computer Land:
34: Land ID:21089 (B.O.S) Hughes Rise, Green grassy flat land: Rent land
35: Hughes Rise Park, upper section:
36: Workshop More Prim Farm:
37: Land ID:21085 (B.O.S) Hughes Rise, Green grassy flat land: Rent land
38: Land ID:21088 (B.O.S) Hughes Rise, Green grassy flat land: Rent land
39: Land ID:21086 (B.O.S) Hughes Rise, Green grassy flat land: Rent land
40: Bippie's Home: Bippie and Halo's home. Friends welcome. IM one of us
41: AVATARS AVATARS,Batman,Pooh Bear,Star Wars,Betty Boop,Lalinda:
42: Workshop: Wherever you go etc.
43: Land ID:21087 (B.O.S) Hughes Rise, Green grassy flat land: Rent land
44: free resell freebie store full perm: somethings are free , such as shoes ,
45: Abandoned Land: Land abandoned by My World! (group) on 28-Jan-2009
46: MeadowSide: Portal to Happiness
47: Scott's Seat: Land in the Mist
48: =Hughes Rise=: objects included
49: Julie's Place: Julie's Place
50: Scott's Seat lowlands:


(I’ve put up the map itself as an image even though it’s ASCII-art, because I gave up on getting WordPress to display it from text in a way that looked decent. The script just says it in chat for one to copy-and-paste elsewhere.)

Much more maplike, eh? The Park is obvious (heh heh) in the center, there, as parcels numbered 31, 32, and 35.

A couple of notes on the map:

You may notice a few un-numbered areas (like the big one just south of 31). They are unnumbered because they have the same name and description as some numbered area that they aren’t contiguous with (the big one just south of 31 has the same name and description, and may actually be part of the same parcel as, the area numbered 36, I think it is). I may update the program to be more liberal in its number-displaying, so as to pick up these at the cost of the occasional unneeded second number on a contiguous, but oddly-shaped, parcel.

The algorithm only looks at, and therefore the map only reflects, the center point of each aligned 16-by-16 meter piece of the region. This usually gives a pretty accurate picture of what’s going on, but in fact parcels can have boundaries at a finer granularity than that (4-by-4 maybe I think?), and so the map will not reflect the entire truth, and may in some cases have significant errors. I don’t know of any significant errors on this Hughes Rise map, but for instance the situation in the region of Sadie’s (parcel 09) is considerably more split up and complex in reality than it appears on this map.

I hope this one makes a bit more sense to those readers who are not me. :)

Beyond Blogging: Dancing!

The other evening I held a session at an unconference put on by some virtual-world-savvy IBM types.

The (un)conference was called "Seeking business value from investment in virtual worlds on the 3D internet", aka "Beyond Blogging". My session (the last on the first day) was "Field Trip: Social Aspects of Virtual Worlds". My original plan was to take a bunch of inexperienced AVs out and show them what fun Second Life can be (since, as the abstract says, this is an important part of understanding our potential customers).

But it turned out that most of the attendees were far from newborn, and already knew how to poke a danceball. So I just took everyone up to Indolence and we partied and danced and discussed business models and adult content and stuff. I was fun!

And not one person seemed to mind any of the pictures on the walls.

(That’s me in my red Mohawk again. I didn’t wear it to the main conference sessions, but it seemed appropriate for Indolence.)

More dancing:

Ahuva was too tired to dance (she was one of the clever people behind the (un)conference); so she just came along and rested on the rug and talked and I suspect dozed off a bit now and then. :)

A good time was, I think, had by all. And I got to see Indolence again (I just recently took it back out of my pocket after having it packed up for some time), which was very nice. I should have more parties there.

(Note that this was a conference session and not a party, so don’t be miffed that I didn’t call and invite you. :) )

Chapter XXVII: The Hollow Earth

“Next morning we awoke to the wild calls of cave-frogs carrying across the lapping subterranean water, and the King’s attendants offering us an odd but flavorful breakfast and a variety of civilized past-times. The others elected to return to their beds, pleading aches and exhaustion from our ordeal the day before, but I accepted the Royal hospitality, and soon found myself moving smoothly through vast caverns of muted blue, grey, and brown, seated in an elegant cave-boat of exotic design, and accompanied by the King’s eldest daughter, Princess of the court of the Underdark.

“While her attire would have raised eyebrows back home, she behaved with as much decorum and charm as the best-bred young woman of Boston or London society. We spent a pleasant hour drifting among the luminous fungi and smooth stone walls of the buried world, while she laughed at my amazed exclamations at the passing of gigantic fish with glowing fins, and we smiled together at the soft loveliness of the caverns into which the river opened out at intervals.

“I was sorry to return when she said that the hour for luncheon was approaching (although how the people of the Underdark tell the time without sun or chronometer is still a puzzle to me), and we turned the boat around to wind our way back to her father’s palace”

[Amazing build in the Hollow Earth region, by Tekelili Tantalus. As well as the lovely caverns (free boat available at the dock), there are shops for fantasy and Lovecraftian-themed home decor and clothing, including the exotic outfit Michele is wearing in the picture, and the cool Cthulhuoid monocle that I’m wearing but you can’t see it because I’m facing the wrong way, which is or was available for $1L, and which I suspect I’ll be wearing quite a bit.]

Goodbye, Hello

As one of SL’s biggest me-related blogs, I thought I’d post some more random pictures of the Big Move, now that the story has a (temporary) ending. Click through to flickr for a few more words on each.

That’s the Shack at the instant that I first set it as my home location back in July 2007 (courtesy of the screen_home.bmp file).

That’s the Shack on the sim’s last day, everything of mine moved out except for the giant flower on the roof, the empty vendor stalls looking all emosad in the background.

An interior shot of emptiness. If you look closely you’ll see a single rose in a vase on the windowsill. Sob!

And here, in the happy ending, is my new screen_home.bmp, showing me in my new home location, my little myPod in the airy upbeat shininess of Extropia. I’ve been renting it for some time, but now it is officially Home. Hurrah!

(And don’t ask me why I haven’t just set my home location to the biggest chunk of land that I actually own and control and where I spend lots of time: the Park in Hughes Rise. Just too obvious, maybe, haha.)