CHANGES part 2

Purple.

 I’m here in Purple but where is everything???

Here I was ready to start the next leg of the tour .I thought I’d do this next section of the journey as a tiny purple bunneh. well why not ? 🙂

 Can you see the cute little bunneh 

there that’s better. Oh how sweet  but what lurks underneath? 🙂

There was something that annoyed me about the avatar that I had bought. It was cute and a rabbit and it was purple and  you’d think that would be enough to satisfy me and I must say  I’m not totally criticising it because it did what it said on the package  and I don’t know how else you’d make an avatar this small. (The new Viewer 2 someone shouts) (later not now I don’t want to deal with that right now) 🙂 

The thing is, when I look underground as I inevitably do and I look a little too close ,I get a glimpse of my concealed self. You have to put all that mass of avatar somewhere but it sort of puts me off having a mangled up naked body trailing along underneath me :).

Just a bug with invisi prims I guess. So what I’m going to do is,(hmmm thinks) yes I’m going back to default me. Boring maybe but I always end up as me I’ve been me  for too long to change I’m not that good at change.

 

I did buy a shoulder bunny with animated head and tail  instead and he’s rather cute too and next time I promise to try harder to have a go at change because change is good. Isn’t it??

Now getting back to where I began. Where was everything?

 What had happened to the beach house and landing stage and that funny little rabbit with antlers stuck to its head 🙂 taking a quick look at the land told me Purple was up for sale. The whole of it was up for sale good gracious me; gosh 🙂 I didn’t know purple was owned by one person in the first place. It’s a nice sim to own though especially with the coastline and easy connections by rail and ferry to surrounding Sims  . I click and buy the land for $3000000. I’ve had a good day and sold several pairs of binoculars ha-ha if only 🙂 Wow that is a lot of money. You either need to have some disposable cash or a good business, possibly renting the land out to afford a place like this. Think of all that mainland tier, $195 a month. I guess to some people it’s not that much of a layout .

After scouring the area just to see if the owners have left anything interesting behind (which they hadn’t ) I move on. I’m still thinking about what I could build if I had all that land. My friend  Head had suggested I try Open sim  but it all seems a bit techy for me at the moment and  I want as many people as possible to see my creations. It’s an attention seeking thing maybe but I don’t initially make things with that intention.

   Heading east I pass a couple of grand American Victorian looking buildings.

 I know this of course from my time in Steelhead. Lovely old buildings they are as well actually the second one is a bit more fortified than the first more medieval I’d say. Not that I’m a historian but I’m taking an interest in these things now So that’s good isn’t it that new interests are sparked by being in this world . There is definitely something for everyone here you just have to find it.(Search is a good starting point) I tend to drift from one interest to another, that reflects my RL as well. I never tend to stick to things for long although I have managed to stick at this virtual world thing for a while now. Maybe because of the diversity of interests within this world and being able to pick and choose what I do has helped. there are no massive outlays of money for a start this has also helped. I’d be broke by now if I tried all the things I’ve tried here in RL.

You do still have to work at things if you want them to be right though. I know this from my building. Anyone can build in SL its fun and it’s relatively easy to pick up. But to build something good that looks good whether it be a fantasy mushroom table with dolphin flipper legs or hi tech space weaponry with hundreds of complicated scripts, you need to work on your skills. The early bits and bobs that I used to build, I look at them now and think how bad they are and I dare say, when and if I, or even SL itself is still around in a few years time I’ll look at stuff that I build now and cringe . I do have a need to create but I wouldn’t call myself an artist, just a builder of virtual reality not a creator of fantasy and ideas, there is a difference in how an artist perceives the world around them and interprets that in their creations. I wish I could do that but I don’t think it’s something you can learn.

So what does this have to do with anything? well nothing much mainly just my thoughts on things, you know getting them out of my head and all that but the thoughts were strangely sparked off whilst I was looking at some Linden built road in Sido. Linden built road this is, not mole built I hasten to add. I’m not going to say which Linden built this particular road that I was looking at and It’s not the only example of Linden building that I’ve come across where the structure on initial appearance would seem to have been built fairly quickly and without much care.

Looking at the new mole built roads they appear carefully laid down with nice texturing and an eye for detail,

(See how they curve the road and texture  around the bend.)

 built by skilled builders whom I hope as they say  were picked for their building art, and scripting  skills. In fact going by what I’ve seen so far, I’m sure they were. Now this example of the old Linden built road that I was looking at seemed to show a disregard for detail and planning. Just a quick rez plonk it down roughly level and not to worry if the textures are not quite lined up or come to that whether the prims themselves are lined up correctly.

 Then I began to think. Perhaps that’s my non artistic eye looking at it. maybe this road set as it is in a virtual world could be considered a form of art It did really get me thinking about what was classified as art and whether having things precisely right was all that important. Maybe it was the idea of the road being there that was important .Could it be that an artist would lay down a road different from a builder . In RL some things just wouldn’t function if they were built incorrectly. But here they don’t have to. Things don’t have to be to scale.  In a virtual world RL precision serves no real purpose (except of course in certain real life role-playing situations) Even driving a car was sort of roleplay it was a fairly pointless exercise when you could fly or tp. Maybe that’s why artists are so prevalent in SL with no RL constraints including gravity. There are no real limits here with the exception of material/tier and subscription costs possibly. Ok this is going nowhere and isn’t making a lot of sense, a bit like the last post in a way 🙂 still I’ll carry on and maybe like monkey’s writing the complete works of Shakespeare, something will make sense in the end.(some hope )  🙂 . So imperfect roads or not, I decided to walk on them for a while as they were close to the coast line. I stopped at a little shack by the side of the road to get my bearings

and then I moved on and stopped further along the road to take a look at a sign for the W.S.P.A. (The World Society for the protection of Animals).

This obviously took my interest as they were campaigning for animal rights. I am a patron for several animal rights and welfare charities in RL and I try to contribute and support their campaigns as often as possible but I wish sometimes that the campaigners of these various charities would band themselves together under one flag for greater strength. Just because they have different ideas on how to campaign does not mean they want different things. There are so many smaller organisations that would benefit from working under a united front. And I think this go’s for similar charitable causes in general. That saying, I do think virtual worlds are a relatively cheap and worthwhile place to make people aware of the work they do .

 bla bla bla there I go again  II STOP Right that’s definitely enough of the rabbiting . (For the time being)…On with the tour……>>>>>>>>> FORWARD.

After looking at the signs for the WSPA I started off down the road and found myself back to where I had come from back at the little hut by the side of the road.

Oh dear my directions were really messed up I think I travel north and south better than I travel from west to east 🙂 i should take heed of the map more. I set off again with intent on getting my direction right this time checking the map every now and then to be sure. I was approaching the volcanic island Sims and looking at the map I could see what appeared to be a huge volcano in the sim of Mahulu There was a river stretching down from the crater rim so I rezzed a boat on the coast of Palulop and set sail .

There was no wind as usual and for some unfathomable reason I don’t like to cheat by using false wind so after a while I switched the motor on. The scenery began to change to a sort of volcanic ash grey and the grass became greener I guess do to the high nutrient content of the soil.

I headed up in to the mouth of the river and managed to push myself underneath a low bridge.

There is a command for making the boat phantom but I can never remember it, still it makes things more fun getting under obstacles by pushing them.

The river wound round a series of bends and then it split with a second distributary heading off to the sea whilst the main body of the river sat higher than the two streams and flowed over a fall.

 There was a small temple structure with a landing jetty to my left so I moored up and stepped ashore. On the other side of the waterfall there was a blue disc like object floating in the water which said touch to rez an inflatable boat

 so I touched it and sure enough received an inflatable boat. when I sat in the boat the boat said “ You are not the owner” but then said, “But that’s ok “ which I thought was quite funny . One thing I think that everyone tries when they first arrive in SL is to sit on or in a vehicle that does not belong to them. Usually you just get kicked off, occasionally you’re sent skywards but you soon learn the “ This vehicle does not belong to you” message which is written in to most vehicle scripts.

 The inflatable boat also told me that it had a leak but would probably last the journey up the river 🙂 . I took my chances and headed upstream. The boat did appear to have a leak as it had said, but it managed to carry me up the river eventually to a high fall cascading down from a small but fairly deep tarn.

Above this I could see a suspension bridge traversing the gorge above.

I deflated the boat and jumped ashore making my way up to the tarn (Not Gorean riding bird) above the tarn a huge rock jutted out from the slope. When I checked on it I found it to be even bigger than I thought as it was buried deep in to the hillside.

I made it up to the top of the gorge and waiting on the flat plain above I found four monkeys sitting around a black monolith

obviously a reference to the film 2001 A Space Odyssey. In the film when the black  monolith on earth arrived everything changed.

Crossing the creaky suspension bridge I tracked over to the foot of the volcano that I had first seen on the map.

At the base of the crater I met a scripted polar bear called Coldfoot who held out his paw for me to shake.

 Coldfoot was under the impression he was at the North Pole but seemed to be enjoying the heat generated from the nearby volcano although luckily it was not hot enough to melt his igloo.

 Leaving Coldfoot I started climbing the steep crater side.

 I slipped a few times on the unstable lava rock but eventually got to craters edge. It was very high up.

There was a little platform on one side of the crater built by Ryan Linden and there was another at the very bottom built by Eric Linden. I think maybe the volcano had been scripted to explode at some stage. Whether it still did I didn’t find out.

It certainly didn’t do anything whilst I was there. Eric had also made the red lava that contained bubbles made by Ben Linden. I’m sure it was all meant to do something but didn’t any more, maybe someone can tell me what it did. Perhaps the moles can fix it if it’s broken 🙂 .Donning a space helmet for protection 🙂 I jumped down into the molten lava

 It was deep and I found absolutely nothing at the bottom

 

oh well you never know do you. I might have found the answer to life etc.

 but jumping into the deep crater had reminded me about something  the Bakers had said in a comment on a previous post  that I should take a look at the rabbit hole (as they had called it ) that they had discovered in Blackmount so while I was thinking about it I thought I would go see it so that’s what I did .

There’s nothing like a bit of spontaneity  . I teleported over and found the rabbit hole just as Baker had said with the odd-shaped spike thing seemingly being tugged towards the hole.

Most peculiar, a bit like the bugspikes I had found in Spinach

but the other way round.

  Now this was a very deep hole even maybe a little bit scary look at the depth of that thing.

 I decided to throw something down it first before venturing down myself. I rezzed a wooden cube on the piece of land adjoining the rabbit hole then edited it to a position over the top of the hole.

Then I made the cube physical and it dropped down into the hole. I watched as it hurtled down the shoot getting smaller and smaller eventually disappearing beneath the water that I could see near the bottom.

 Hmmm Oh well In for a penny in for a pound as they say And without hesitation I launched myself off the side of the steep rabbit hole edge and dropped like a stone wooooooooooooooAAAHHHHH.

 When I got to the bottom I found myself beneath the water and standing on a greyish rocky surface.

Just by me was my wooden cube which had safely made it down to the bottom. I experimented by sitting on the cube and pushing myself through the sides of the rabbit hole

 but found I could not go any further out than the edge of the cube.

 I moved the cube back in and pushed it slightly . the cube being still physical rolled around  a bit with me on it

 then suddenly went ballistic and shot out of the hole like a rocket, carrying me with it AHHHHHHHHHH 

I can’t remember where it took me mostly straight up I was too busy trying to get off the cube .

In the end I had to reboot.

 I’m guessing I was lucky to get away with my second life but there you go these things have to be tried. What risks I take for SL science  🙂

I figured it would be safer back inside the volcano:)

After I got back to the crater and had climbed out . I made my way down

I came back down to the river and near the landing stage I found another type of inflatable boat that I could rez 

and make my way back down to the sea at Olopue. I swam across the channel there to the road . Someone had built a large sort of landing strip with brightly coloured markings aswell as a couple of little creature things,

 most odd and interesting 🙂

I think the one on the right looked a bit like Mickey Mouse but without arms and legs and the one on the left was a cat but it’s ears were not finished or perhaps it didn’t need ears. Why would it need them ????  🙂

Around the corner in the sim of Laka I came across a funicular railway which is a train that goes up and down a cliff side usually pulled by cable.

This one was powered by water. I’ve looked it up and there is such a thing in RL there’s one down  in the county of Devon in England.

I took a ride down the cliff side in it . as I went down water was pumped from a tank beneath the train I’m not sure exactly how this worked but it was cleverly scripted to do so.

 At the bottom was a boat chandlers selling several different types of boats . I resisted the urge to buy one, my inventory seems pretty full of stuff at the moment  I was due for a stock take . Every now and then I take myself off ,usually to Mischief where I can sort through my inventory . Often rezzing stuff out on the beach that I have no idea what it will be until it’s standing there in front of me. It’s truly amazing the rubbish I pick up in world. as well as that I tend to hang on to half-finished building projects just incase I decide to carry on with them. I still end up keeping stuff that I know I’ll never need.

 There was still an urge to buy something so I took myself off to the malls in search of an invent filler

Meanwhile while I satisfy this craving for something new here is a commercial break ………………………..

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Ok I’m back

 There we are that’s better New clothes new hair and ready to carry on

 🙂 I know it’s just a small change  and I’ll probably not stick with the hair  but hey I’m still trying .

 Back in Laka at the boat shop, I studied a map of the route out to sea so I could head out to the Nuba regions.

 I didn’t study it too well though and after rezzing the motorboat and heading out I ended up hitting the ban lines.I even tried flying out on a magic carpet

and still managed to hit the damn things. I found the Nuba regions very pretty with their  winding water ways around the small islands. The only thing was the sheer amount of ban lines and I know I mention this nearly every post but it just so infuriated me this time. Every turn I made I was hitting them . I ended up swimming a lot of the way. I would have loved to have sailed gently down the stream around the many fine builds, but you little island mentality people who put those ghastly red flashing strings things up all over the place just will not allow me that pleasure You won’t will you Ggrrrr. I always hope when I have a moan that someone might see this and think twice about sticking ban lines up. (Yes crazy) .So between swimming and trying to rez the boat time and time again I did manage to see a few nice builds like this little homestead

 and this hopeless lighthouse at Urdu not because it was a bad build, it’s just that it failed to keep the ships off the rocks 🙂

 My favourite build though was the Sinking Inn at Zazi by Paradox Ruska

 a fantastic  building in sort of separate time frames showing how things change.

 Now I’m not quite sure if I’ve got this right but one of the inns is a ghost of a building as it would have been in the past  and the other is the present day building when the waters have risen above it with all the fittings and fixtures strewn all over the river bed and fish swimming through the remains. I think that’s it  although it might be the other way round and the building in the water is in the future. 🙂   I went  back there later to take a few extra  pics and I chanced upon the builder Paradox   standing on the jetty. it’s not often I manage to meet the creator of  a great build like this  so I stopped to have a chat with him and a very pleasant gentleman  he was indeed, a fellow Brit I might add which probably explains why I managed to meet him in the first place.(time differences and all that ) Paradox did tell me all about the building  but my head was so jumbled with stuff by the time I got to write it down  . But anyway If you get the chance , it’s definitely worth a visit .

Inside the present-day Inn,  a clock on the wall Tp’s you through time and under the water to the sunken Inn of  emm the future/past/present 🙂

 I carried on past the ban lines and security systems mostly swimming as the lines seemed to go from one side of the stream to the other

It was nice to find a security system at one point that actually said” Hi Welcome” ,it even said “Goodbye” as I left the area which made a pleasant change from being given 5 seconds to leave . I think I must have crossed this again as I received an emailed IM from the security system saying another goodbye to me. I wonder if it’ll send me a birthday greeting. Perhaps I should send in a jira requesting that you should be able to make friends with inanimate objects   🙂 then we could  build our own friends

 In Lozi I found a really nice sandbox called Harbinger It looked like an excellent place to learn to build and I would recommend to anyone who is learning building skills to take a look here.

There are many helpful tutorials and tips as well as free textures and sculpties to help you on your way.

As much as I wanted to stay and build something I remembered I was on a tour and would forever be if I didn’t get a move on so I headed off south

crossing several sims worth of open sea

and edging round the Grange and Carnforth sim with its excellent  statue of liberty

Then a quick canoe ride in Furness. I think it was Furness it could of been a bit further on my notes are terrible.  It did remind me though that I want to buy a canoe before the next leg of the tour . Such a nice way of travelling unfortunately I lost the canoe at the next sim crossing.

 I made my way steadily towards the hidden lake sims, passing Pooley stage (another welcome area) and then up to the very first place I ever saw in this amazing world:

 Orientation Island. I have to say I didn’t think Orientation Island was still around. But when I saw it on the map I just had to pay a visit.

It was exactly how I remembered it over 3 years ago.

(wavy lines and harp music as I reminisce)

 I had been seeing stuff about virtual worlds for a while on the internet and on TV once or twice.

 Just to get away to a place outside of the real world, which at the time I had completely become disillusioned with, seemed like a good idea. I would still have to come back to the real world, but my intention was just to escape from the hurt and cruelty of reality for a while which is how it’s mainly been since.

 I have to say SL was not my first choice of worlds. I tried the world “There” first of all which incase you haven’t heard has ended recently.

 At the time I tried it , for some unknown reason it didn’t want to work on my PC. Remarkably for SL 🙂 when I loaded it ,It worked first time and dumped me straight on to orientation island.

 I don’t know about other people but I found Orientation Island a great place to learn the basics of SL.

 With its simple path across an island leading to tasks that showed you how to use your interface, why would you need more. Yes you had to read the help cards and not just run across the island to the end like I know some did . I made an effort to learn the controls. It wasn’t a huge effort. The basic movement and communication control is all you need to get started in this world. The rest you can learn as you go on but a small effort on your part is all that’s needed. The rest of the stuff like building, photography and groups etc I just read up on using the internet, Googled it as they say now. That’s what search engines are for aren’t they. I’m still amazed when people in group chat ask for things like site addresses and how to do this and that etc. I just do a search and find the answer for them, but why can’t they do it? It’s all out there. People have spent time and effort to tell you so have a look you lazy sods 🙂 I guess people enjoy helping people really, I do as it makes me feel slightly more needed.

So here I was looking down that path again it really was a memory jogger. At the bottom of the path I found the parrot that would talk back to you and give you a kiss if you asked it for one

 and there was also the beach ball where you learned to push and lift physical objects. At the end of the path was a chasm that you had to fly across in order to get to a temple.

 If you succeeded you were ready to enter the big bad world of second life. I made the flying lesson  first time but I notice now when I look down into the water there are instructions down there for folks who are unsuccessful at their first attempts .

This process was enough to have me hooked especially the flying business that was a big Wow factor. It felt like I had entered my dreams. Even then I had some affinity with my avatar I felt like it was a part of me, something more than just a game character, some part of me had definitely gelled with the clunky badly moulded Ruthed out character that waddled on to the screen in front of me:)

(wavy lines and harp music brings us out of nostalgia )

 I didn’t know this back then but up from Orientation Island was the home of some of the Lindens, Linden village Annexe and that is where I headed for next.

Linden village spreads across six sims the first being Levenhall and lies north of the orientation island and the two public help islands. I briefly stopped on one of the help islands

 but as I didn’t really need any help I swam off to the rest of the village .

 The first Linden owned building I came upon was a sort of cinema conference setup. It had a large screen showing a film about space travel.

 The complex was owned by Infinity Linden and there was a sign up on the left hand screen .

I sat and watched the film for a while but it was rather dull so I decided to see if I could get any bears whilst I was visiting the village.

 The Lindens are famous for their bears amongst other things. Also I wanted to know if any of the Lindens that lived in the village were builders. And just possibly I might pluck up the courage to talk to one of them, they always seem so busy though.  I didn’t want to disturb them too much.

 I hiked around taking photographs and looking for bears for some time .

 I did manage to find a few bears I could copy. One of them from Enus Linden who had also built a nice little temple where the bear sat.

 and the other from H Linden who I noticed was one of the Brighton Brit Lindens.

 H had built a sort of stempunk/ robot bear

and had also built prim processing machines inside his house.a bit like the prim rig in the ANWR sim.

 Most of the builds were mainly built by other residents but the occasional part of a house was self built . I can’t say I found any Linden built builds that really impressed me. I was surprised to find a plot of land owned by the renowned artist Poid Mahovlich in the Linden village.I only know of Poid through her art which I’ve seen at Burning life. I guess she works quite closely with the Lindens perhaps they have no artists of their own. There were a couple of Lindens at home but like I said I didn’t want to disturb them. If I had seen one of the Lindens just walking around like me I would have said hi and got a pic but the opportunity never arose. I made my way back to Levenhall where I had began and then crossed over to Beaumont where I found another bear to copy by Periapse Linden.

More of a cat actually but I’ll not quibble. He also had an avatar cannon that I thought I’d have a go in as I had never tried one before.

 BANG     

It shot me right over to Rodney Linden’s futuristic black tower. Wooo great fun I did it again and again lol.

NOW (Just a little side note about the new viewer  ) It seems there were not a lot of real builders or Linden artists amongst the Lindens in the village which might explain why the new version 2 viewer I was starting to use seemed so awkward in dealing with prims and generally looking at stuff. With all those clunky menus popping out everywhere destroying the view I was still finding it awkward after a couple of weeks of using. Yes it is a Beta version but I just didn’t like the whole feel of it and couldn’t see myself doing so unless they completely redid it ,which they weren’t about to. Now I know I said you should put a bit of effort into these things and I did, I tried, am still trying but any FOOL especially this one could see this was no improvement over the last viewer.

 I knew how to use it, I knew what all the controls did, I just couldn’t see the improvement , I couldn’t see much at all with that great big menu of buttons scrolling over the screen and pushing my huds off the other side .

Look at this screen shot if I want my inventory open and minimap and chatting at the same time and as for building don’t even get me started  why do away with the pie chart (idiots) GRRRRRRrrrrr.

 Sure there were a few bells and buzzers like web on a prim which was cool and extra layers but that wasn’t swaying it for me and so for the time being, as I had a choice I thought I’d try Kirsten Lee’s latest shadow viewer.

Now look at this also with inventory open minimap and chatting

 This at the time was her S19 viewer. Ah bliss I even managed to get some shadows with it.

 Everything I needed neatly packaged.

 Mind you the new viewer 2 might of fixed my purple bunny with its alpha layer you wouldn’t need invisiprims for the bunneh then and Kirsten has now started making a v2 viewer of her own.

If only we could have the old style viewer with some of the new features I’m sure it would be a winner.

 To round this leg of the trip up I left the Linden village and moved across into the Campus region to visit a build by the artist and writer Mariner Trilling who had built what was called “the Tallest thing in second life”

It’s an enormous stack of around 300 prims reaching way up into the sky about two miles high.

 Whilst I was there Kou the Rabbit sky pirate came over and when we had eventually reached the top of the structure

we jumped off the top and sailed gently down using Kou’s wonderful paraglider Wind rider.

I don’t know if you’d call Mariner’s tallest thing in SL art or a structure or what. I think I would just call it, great fun, here’s what Mariner said about it.

Well that’s it until the next time and who knows what changes will have come by then, So whether you’re reading this in the future or present or even if you’ve read it in the past 🙂 have a great day and Enjoy your second life 🙂  (yes even you people with red  lines round your houses you have a good day too  🙂    )

Bye for now.

🙂

~ by Nish Mip on March 15, 2010.