Gallery Picture, Then… August 5, 2009

A better view of the whole Noru gallery complex, minus the main structure, b_hivia, which sits way up in the sky instead. In the center you have the Temple of TILE with the newly added circle-based tower I’ve been speaking about in the blog lately.

A look up to the bottom of b_hivia using a longer draw distance.

b_hivia in all its, ahem, glory.

Then it’s on to new Atoll continent mysteries. Thanks, Flynn, for recent information about the history of Cypa and Sylvia, courtesy of one of its current residents. For the record, Flynn, who I’ve mentioned several times before in this blog (and who is a long time email friend, minus the more recent SL connection), rents in the Sylvia sim currently, and spoke of some odd similarities concerning the name of the sim, the next sim over to the west (Cypa), and then a parcel called Syd’s Place in Cypa but bordering Sylvia. In teleporting over to examine the place for myself after her initial email about renting there, I landed right in front of a quite nice duplex, I suppose you could say, and seeing the rent was really cheap there, promptly rented the southernmost of the two units. That was about a week ago, and until today I hadn’t had a chance to go back because of the building projects/moving projects I’ve been involved in. Now that’s resolved (hopefully!), I can get more involved in exploring, perhaps starting with Sylvia/Cypa. So I was able to get back to the rental apt. today, after a follow-up IM from Flynn inworld about the history of Sylvia/Cypa from that long time resident. I won’t relay details, but several things struck me about the history as it was summarized to me. The first concerns the relationship between the sim names Sylvia and Cypa, and Syd of Syd’s Place. Apparently all this is coincidence, as the Lindens named the sims in 2005 when the Atoll continent was originally formed. An avatar named Waleis Moseley owns both Syd’s Place in Cypa, and the majority of the adjacent Sylvia sim as well. Most of the Sylvia land Mosely owns is under the New Beginnings rubric, but the person who contacted Flynn also stated there are presently 3 other, smaller Moseley owned Sylvia parcels set aside for the “convenience of managing media.” One is named Diamond, for the current renter’s first name. When I read this, I immediately thought of Syd Barrett and the famous tribute song about him composed by Pink Floyd called “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”, on the Wish You Were Here album from 1975 (the album title also may refer directly to Syd). I won’t go into the story of Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett again, but instead point interested readers to the Barrett wikipedia article. But the presence of a Diamond parcel added to the Syd mystery brewing in this area.

To the name Syd’s Place itself, where I have my own current rental: apparently when Waleis Moseley first came to Sylvia in 2005, an avatar named Syd or Sydney was already living there. This might be Sydney 30 — yes, in searching for this name came up with a profile for “Sydney Thirty”, who must be the same. It’s a woman avatar (I was personally thinking male avatar, like Syd Barrett). Hmmm, apparently some kind of slave (?) of Moseley. Well, we won’t dwell on that aspect, but just to note that there *was* a “real Syd” in Sylvia, and that this Syd, again according to the note sent to Flynn, left Second Life in 2006. Then the note states — this again really, really interested me — it’s possible that you’ll still see Syd in Sylvia, although it won’t be the real Syd but a ghost (!). This again was much like Syd Barrett, who left from Pink Floyd in 1968 but retained a spectre like presence for the group down through the years.

Now to the maps below. When Flynn originally told me about the Syd name “coincidences” surrounding geographically connected Sylvia/Cypa/Syd’s Place, I told her that the Rubi sim where I first found a picture of Syd Barrett in Second Life is immediately west of both Sylvia and Cypa. In double checking this today (after knowing about the detailed history of Sylvia/Cypa), I noted the grid location of my Cypa apt., and then teleported over to Rubi to see what I could find on the same latitude. Firstly, I noticed a green dot near my Cypa apt., but in scanning the area could find no avatar. No big deal. But as I subsequently walked around the apt. to find the exact grid locations, the green dot moved closer; in fact, it seemed to be in the same apt as me, but, again, upon checking found no one there. I though that it may be just my own location trace — that might be part of it — but when I teleported over to Rubi, I decided on a hunch to find the odd triple 97 that marked the beginning point of my explorations of the Rubi Diagonal. My regular blog readers may remember at least an inkling of this from a series of posts on the Diagonal from last fall, found in the Rubi Forest category of the blog. I eventually found the 97,97,97 spot on the map, as demonstrated below.

Here’s the really queer part of this particular aspect of the subject. When I shifted over to Cypa and my apt. using the SL map, either my trace was still there in the symbol of a green dot, or someone else was still there. Again, it was probably my trace. But when I clicked on it, miraculously the “97, 97″ popped up (!). The last “97″ was explained by the fact that the elevation I would teleport into would be the same as where I was standing in Rubi. But the middle “97″ means that *that green dot*, whether it was the last place I was standing in Cypa or where someone else was currently standing, was situated *exactly east* of the 97, 97, 97 triple point in Rubi. Could it have been the aforementioned “ghost of Syd” if not my trace? And, if so, I could ask, “*which Syd*?” (Thirty or *Barrett*).*

I also should point to my quite mysterious dialog with Hucka Doobie upon first visiting the Rubi sim and finding the Barrett/Floyd picture in Zarek Lock’s gallery, just before I bought land there myself and stayed for 4 additional months. It’s, then, also the earliest post you’ll find in the Rubi Forest category of this blog. To summarize, Hucka Doobie paints the picture of Barrett as a ghost or spectre that perhaps haunts the Rubi Forest. Creeps!

Add all this up, and I think you get a pretty deep mystery. At any rate, I rented in Cypa for another week; I’ll relay any new developments asap.

* I should add that when I teleported back over to Cypa after this to see if anyone was there, discovered only an empty apt. once again.

Old Haunts July 11, 2009

Another view of recently terraformed water-filled concavity from above showing more the precise lineup with the void center of the Edwardston Station Gallery.

The mound again, which I’ll probably name (Aspinwall Mound?). Oh… I remember why I took this particular picture and the one above as well, mainly. I wanted to show the two yellow-reddish 1 prim Draceana plants, which I planted at these specific spots for a reaons. Remember those old posts about the Rubi Diagonal? Probably not, but whatever, these 2 plants also lie along this Diagonal as extended to the Great Wall itself, at spots 25,25 (nearer the house) and 50,50 (in front of Blochs below) in the Horisme sim on my property. Baker sometimes enjoys walking this diagonal using these 2 Draceanas to align himself as best as possible.

The giant cube of the Edwardston Station Gallery viewed from the ne corner of the Rubi Forest itself, then.

Baker has forgotten how magical the forest feels at times.

Onward to Mr. Lock’s roller coasters, my old caddy corner neighbor in Rubi.

Just beyond, a suddenly wistful Baker looks down on the empty lot that use to be his home. Could it be again? Perhaps not now.

He sits in a lounging chair just to the north in the parcel situated between his old property and the Rubi Forest itself. If only my former land bordered the forest itself, he ruminates. That would have made a lot of difference.

Or, again, would it have?

“Spirit” in the Rubi Forest February 20, 2009

TEXT SOON.

New “Beach” House, Te he… September 23, 2008

It’s always fun to have new land for Baker Blinker and to lesser degrees, Baker Bloch and Hucka D., to check out what they have in their inventory to put on it. Here Baker Blinker digs way back into a freebie raid for this low prim Beach House (origins unknown), which seemed to fit the land better than other houses or structures in her inventory.

Then she and Baker Bloch had a lot of afternoon enjoyment decorating the place and doing some landscaping. I haven’t edited any of the terrain yet save for a tiny part to give a solid base for a sculpture turny thingie I bought next door for L25 at a texture shop (like to buy local when possible, you see). I used an unusually high number of prims for me in this decorating and landscaping, but still have about 226 prims left for skybox experimenting at last count.

As with the Ziczac house I just see it as a place to hang out more than a commercial or otherwise highly ambitious build, such as the gallery could be classified as. Great view of the Rubi forest to enjoy. I’ll spend some time there. I already like the new house better than the Ziczac house.

I moved the front of the structure as close to the road and the Rubi sim as possible to gain the maximum view of the forest.

This is how it looks from the back right now. Didn’t bother with doors, but put a shrub in front of the back door for a little extra privacy. Amazingly, perhaps, I only had to delete 1 tree, I believe, from my original small forest on the land (the brown one in the center of that first snapshot) to make room for this longish but quite narrow house. So you can really say the forest is still there, and I’ve added more trees to it even, including some 3 and 4 prim affairs such as the privacy shrub I mentioned above, just to give it a bit more character and flare.

This is the current view of the bottom room as you come in the front door. Well, it’s actually a side front door. Anyway, the stairway didn’t come with the original house but was fitted in nicely by Baker Blinker. It acts to divide the bottom floor into two logical areas, the front area surrounded by couches and centered by the rug and glass table, and then the back area with the 2 Blinkerton paintings and my standard 1 prim table and 1 prim chair arrangement (3 chairs total for now) commonly employed in my other builds.

And then a view more from the back door. Baker Blinker fitted an old coin she had in her inventory to use as a table top. Ever resourceful that woman avatar is! The Tiffany style lamp behind the couch was also purchased dirt cheap at the shop next door.

Then a view of the loft upstairs, which has about 1/2 the area of the lower floor. I also used some particle objects that I first tested out in B_Hiva, such as ones called “Jopsy’s Sparkle Ball v2″ (beside spiral stairs), and “Jopsys Tree Blossom”, both discovered in a free Box of Decorations available at SL Marketplace Exchange.

Stretching The Forest A Tiny Bit… September 22, 2008

Well, I think we’re officially at the doorway of Phaze 8 of this blog. I just sold the Ziczac/Zoe property to a grateful neighbor, and have replaced it with property essentially bordering the Ruby Forest, but not in the same sim as my gallery. And I decided to just kinda extend the forest a bit for starts. I’m still paying the same tier. Hated to give up the Ziczac property but it seems the right thing to do. And I think I might resurrect B_Hivia on the new land (!), but maybe double the height. Also I’ll probably put it way up in the air, unlike the Temple of TILE in Rubi. Now whether I also extend the gallery to the new B_Hivia I’m not sure, but that’s what plans I have now.

Initial pictures of the property:

Ain’t it purdy?!

I hope the Lindens don’t mind that the eucalyptus trees hang over my property line a bit on the road side, but for a good purpose: to match the same across the road in the forest proper.

Diagonal, Part 5 (SW Corner) September 18, 2008

So just to complete the story of the left-to-right sim diagonal in Rubi, here Baker Bloch stands at 15,15,92, and within sight of the extreme southwest corner of the diagonal, which would lie at 0,0,sumtin, he knew.

And here’s Blochs at that spot, finding the elevation to be exactly 90 meters. Baker Bloch is relieved to find out that the rest of the world outside of Rubi didn’t wink out here, unlike what happened when he was at the opposite corner of the sim.

And then, lastly, he stands at 33,33,94, just on the other side of the corner of the gallery containing the fountain colored red, green, blue, and yellow already discussed in the last post of this series.

Diagonal, Part 4 (Other Gallery) September 18, 2008

So now we return to the starting point of 97,97,97 and move *down* the Diagonal into inhabited land instead of up through the forest. This is the other half of the picture, perhaps. When I, as Baker Bloch, was originally standing in this 97,97,97 spot I noticed that I could clearly see the 4 chairs through ZL’s gallery windows already spotlighted in this blog as being strong w/ the force of TILE. But what I certainly didn’t know at the time was that Baker Bloch, in this snapshot from several weeks back now, was standing *right on* the as-yet-unknown synchy Diagonal line of the sim when snapping this picture. Let’s demonstrate…

So in moving down The Diagonal to position 61,61,96 now, Blochs finds he is right outside the window. Could the Diagonal possibly run right through the center of the circle containing these chairs? he ponders.

And, yes, he found it did. Here he stands at 56,56,97.

He decides to “sit” on the central table to get its coordinates. An awkwardly positioned baker is now at 57,57,97. Since the table obviously centers the circle of chairs, then, yes, they are all directly aligned to the left-to-right Diagonal of the whole sim.

Now I must say here that this oddity seemed queerer when I first ran across than upon later examination and research. Turns out it is aligned to the corner of ZL’s property here, which is on this diagonal. I’ll attempt to create a map soon to show these property/diagonal alignments more clearly. But still I think there is synchronicity present for certain, with a powerful piece of evidence found at the *other* corner of the gallery also lying on this diagonal.

In the following 4 snapshots, Baker Bloch takes turns sitting in each chair of the configuration, first green, then red, then blue, then yellow. He is amazed, at the time, to find that the first two coordinates, the ones that determines the location of the diagonal, invert each other in red-green and blue-yellow pairings as follows:

57,58,98 (green)
58,57,98 (red)
55,58,98 (blue)
58,55,98 (yellow)

He is amazed at this because these colors are also inverted in a similar way in the philosophy of TILE, and through a circular arrangement again. I’ll insert a picture of the TILE arrangement here shortly.

But for me, the clincher that something weird is still going on here is this fountain also positioned on the Diagonal, but in a directly “opposite” corner of the gallery. This is where the left-to-right sim Diagonal exits the gallery, just as the semi-circle of chairs is where it comes in. Notice the colors: red, green, blue, yellow again (note: the Diagonal runs exactly through the center of the red, circular bowl). Now, in looking around the quite large floor of the gallery and the multitude of sculptures present, I found only one other sculpture or related set of sculptures colored in a similar way. It’s not a floor full of sculptures of these colors, in other words.

In rechecking the coordinates this morning, Esbum Michigan finds that the center of this bowl, and thus sculpture, is at 35,35,97.

Diagonal, Part 3 (NE Corner) September 18, 2008

Here at 244,244,116, Baker Bloch has reached the Atoll road to the north of the forest, and stands a mere 12 meters south of Rubi sim’s northern border. He’s looking back along the line from whence he came.

Here he’s at the extreme northerneast corner of the sim, as far as you can go without crossing into another sim (256,256,116).

A remarkable thing happens as Baker Bloch continues to stand in this place and look around: all the 3 sims around Rubi in this spot wink out of existence, seemingly. Actually I’ve encountered this kind of event a number of times now, but it’s a really cool visual anyway, despite its causal nature (something about being in-between two or more simulators).

Diagonal, Part 2 (Forest) September 18, 2008

So here we are at 108, 108, 98, or 11 meters north up along this diagonal I speak of. Now just to paint a complete picture, of course there would be two of these kinds of diagonals running across opposite corners of any one, square-shaped sim (and again, they’re all 256m x 256m square). But for practical purposes only the left-to-right diagonal can be followed using the coordinate numbers, since this is the direction that produces the two needed equal numbers to trace the line. But just as a contrast and as far as I’m thinking it through, walking along the other, right-to-left diagonal would create the most *widely* divergent numbers possible among these two produced by any one stride. Believe that makes sense.

At 124,124,98, Baker Bloch encounters this tree in the way.

With another small step he is actually absorbed into the phantom tree, now at 125,125,98. This is the only place along the diagonal that Baker Bloch *directly* encounters a tree head-on, and also the only place that he can actually fully disappear from sight. Just fyi.

And although I didn’t take a picture of Baker Bloch walking through this location, the exact center of the sim, at 128,128 (one-half of 256 in all horizontal directions), lies just beyond this tree. This would also be the centerpoint of the left-right diagonal, and where it would also meet up with the unwalkable right-left diagonal of course.

Another, smaller tree is met at 142, 142. Unlike the first, which is a massive eucalyptus tree btw (such as the one formerly centering B_Hivia), this one cannot hid Baker Bloch inside it, however much he seems to be trying here.

Baker Bloch at 150,150,99. As you can kind of tell at this point, the forest itself — in fact the whole sim — is essentially flat except at its far, upper right corner, which we’ll reach in a moment.

Another tree, this time a cedar I believe, encountered at 184,184,100. The ground is now starting to climb a bit as Baker gets nearer the upper corner.

Diagonal, Part 1 (All Things Being Equal) September 18, 2008

When I first ran across this little oddity in the middle of the night, I was pretty excited. Here was surely the only place in the whole sim that I live in where the 3 location coordinates match each other: 97, 97, 97. As such measurements begin in the lower left corner of any sim, this means that Baker Bloch is standing 97 meters from the south line of the sim, 97 meters from the west line of the sim, and is also 97 meters above SL “sea level”. What sea level means in SL is a topic for another day, although I’ve never run across a place where this number turns negative. “0″ is, to my knowledge, the “bottom” of this virtual reality.

So here Baker Bloch stands at this unique place in the sim. There are other oddities attached to it. For one, Blochs is standing right on the border of the vast Ruby Forest (again I call it Ruby instead of Rubi for a particular reason) which I know now takes up 5/8ths of this sim, or the entire northern part of the sim and then a little more. Here is a line, then, dividing the sim into its two basic parts: the livable, buyable, sellable part, the inhabited region in other words, and then that part which will never be developed and will remain natural for apparently as long as SL is around. Baker Bloch then stands on the edge, at this unique spot in his own chosen microcosm, between man and nature in a virtual sense.

As you can see when I leave the interface showing in the snapshot, this line I speak of, shown in yellow now, is not *right* where Baker Bloch is standing although it’s very close. I now know, in doing a little subsequent research and mapping the coordinates of the entire sim out for better visualization and analysis, that the this line is at 96 meters north, not 97. In other words, it is exactly 3/8ths up in the sim from the bottom (a sim is always a square with the length of a side being 256 meters).

The land just to the south of Blocks is owned by the other gallery owner in the sim, ZL, who also is its biggest landholder by a considerable margin (just for a comparison, out of __ other owners I am the 3rd largest landholder, with a little less than half the property of ZL). You can see the main building in his gallery complex in the snapshots above and below, and that’ll play a big part in our “Diagonal” story in just a minute.

I use the two snapshots below to show the reader just how close Baker Bloch is to this line, though, in a practical sense. The first is a picture of Blochs on ZL’s land. The coordinates here read 97,95,97.

But one more stride and he’s out of the inhabited region and into the forest itself, now at 97,97,97. So Baker Bloch here actually strides over the 96 coordinate; it doesn’t register on his interface at all. This means, I suppose, that Baker’s stride is a healthy two meters or so.

Thought I’d also include this shot since you can see the edge of my gallery to the right. Blochs is not very far at all from home, then.

Now let’s go ahead and send Baker Bloch into the woods. You see, a logical extension of this unique 97,97,97 spot seemed to me to explore the diagonal that it lies on, and which runs across the entire sim southwest to northeast. The diagonal is easily traced on foot because the first 2 coordinates (leaving out the 3rd, elevation coordinate number) would always be the same, like we have with 97,97,97. If you stray from this diagonal, one just moves up or down to find the place where the 2 numbers become equal again. Simple enough? Let’s head into the woods then.