Plans, Plans, Plans… March 21, 2009

“I believe we should probably talk tonight Hucka D.”

Hucka D.:

I am here. I am there.

bb:

The new gallery space, the new and probably one and only Edwardston Station Gallery, seems perfect, Hucka D. A big, huge thanks again to Arcadia Asylum, wherever she is.

Hucka D.:

Might be a he. But: yeah.

bb:

The ESG [Edwardston Station Gallery] and the Temple of TILE (and assoc. Gallery) are obviously 2 halves of one thing, Hucka D. And this polarity, this duality, should be represented at Burning Life. That’s a totally new development.

Hucka D.:

But one in the making for quite some time now. You will be one and a half years old in SL by the time of Burning Life 2009. I think you could be ready… we’ll see. All this is pointing toward a *3rd* Life, though, one that can be thought of as existing inside SL. Is the phrase “3rd Life” trademarked yet, I wonder?

bb:

Funny. Or “First Life” for that matter. Like Jello.

Hucka D.:

That’s why we have to use the initials SL all the time in our talks. We can’t say second life, and notice I don’t capitalize second life there. That’s because I’m using it in a different context. Except I’m not, you see.

bb:

Funny once again. I can’t wait to talk about 3rd Life. I see marbles, marbles, marbles. Avatars becoming marbles and then back. Waterfall. Perpetual.

Hucka D.:

Marble Falls. Marbles fall.

bb:

I don’t know if the little hotties can give up their special, little avatar bodies, Hucka D., he he.

Hucka D.:

That’s mean.

bb:

Ok, yeah I went overboard there.

Hucka D.:

I was just joking.

bb:

Ok.

Hucka D.:

What were we talking about? And where’s my beer?

bb:

I’m wondering if the Cross of the Lamb is the same as the Cross of TILE, or perhaps Cross of Tyle?

Hucka D.:

44 years apart. 1930-1974-2018-2062

bb:

Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was released in 1974, Hucka D., as you probably well know through your research of Tronesis.

Hucka D.:

[Delete name] will be back soon enough. Peter Dunne, the Dunne deal. 1886-1930.

bb:

I’m trying to remember — 1886 is the same as 2062, correct?

Hucka D.:

Peter Dunne found St. Michigan on the map of Michigan in the Newton city library in 1886, baker b. He recognized it as the Head of Amereca at the time. He saw the St. within. St. Michigan. St. John. The Head. The Head is Dead. Long live The Head.

bb:

Esbum’s two ponds united as one. St. John’s to St. Joseph’s and done. Dunne. Two saints in one. Esbum. ESBUM.

Hucka D.:

When Esbum becomes — became — ESBUM, then the 2 saints were united. St. Michigan. Ascension. Assimilated. Hillsdale.

*****

bb:

Anyway, I don’t want to get bogged down into searching for Hillsdale/Hillsdale County images, Hucka D. What about Hillsdale? St. Michigan?

Hucka D.:

Peter Dunne, the Dunne Deal Peter, found the Michigan map in an atlas in Newton and recognized The Head. St. John. He then decided to change the name of his church from St. John to St. Joseph, to keep The Head alive. All this is in Paradox III: The Chanceling Continues. Where are we on that?

bb:

2062 is the same as 1886, though? In the giant Cross?

Hucka D.:

I think you need to look into Sorcerer as well.

bb:

Thank you.

*****

“Raelism may play a part in this, Hucka D. Rael’s contact with extraterrestrials happened in 1973, same time that Lamb was being pieced together in the study by another Peter [Gabriel], who played the character Rael in the rock opera on stage.”

‘Nother… January 24, 2009

The new location of the Otherland archipelago, after its apparent move halfway across the grid last summer, is on the extreme southern edge of the SL grid, below about everything else. One noteworthy exception to this rule is the presence of another large set of contiguous sims just to the east of Otherland, with almost all containing the first name of “FairChang”. We’ll call this, then, the Fairchang archipelago — or just FairChang — for lack of a better appellation now.* Baker has been making some tentative forays into this quite large cluster of sims, which, unlike the more sprawling Otherland archipelago, are bunched tightly together in a rough circle-ish shape. Although one must also call the FairChang group of sims an archipelago like Otherland, another obvious difference is that there are fewer multi-sim islands in the Fairchange complex, and none at all close to the size of the largest Otherland island, or what I’ve been calling Otherland Island #1 in this blog. The Fairchang archipelago is currently made up of 67 contiguous sims, and contain many hundreds of islands.

In what’s called the Fairchange Lost Isle sim near the northwest corner of the archipelago, Baker Bloch comes across this huge steampunk looking — well, what’s really a small, enclosed city I guess you could call it. Baker walks around inside a bit, but shortly suffers from a bit of claustrophobia and has to teleport out. It’s very “cagey” feeling in there… not the kind of environment he prefers. But it apparently is an interesting space to some, because according to my map there were quite a number of avatars on the sim at the time, although Blochs didn’t run into any of ’em during his brief visit.

Back in the Otherland, Baker decides to visit what turns out to be the only other registered sl art “gallery” in my home archipelago, called the Normanisan Strait Gallery and run by a Danish woman named Betty Tereaud. The setting is an underwater location in a sim directly south of my home sim of Stephen, near what I call Otherland Island #2. After Baker Bloch’s visit, he im-ed Ms. Tereaud, complimenting her especially on the outside sculpture. Below is a snapshot of how some of the art appeared to Baker Bloch at the time.

Weird thing is, I didn’t discover this only Otherland “gallery” by sheer chance. It’s name appeared on the kiosk located at my own, er, Baker Bloch’s Otherland gallery. Hmmmmm… “Normanisan Straits” I found myself saying aloud. Isn’t that the name of an Otherland sim? Sure enough, a glance at the SL map gave proof that this was so, leading to my immediate visit. Ms. Tereaud was nice enough to repay the visit later on that night with a trip to my own gallery.

Returning to the subject of the FairChang archipelago, Baker Bloch found this underwater series of passes in FairChang Laguna and couldn’t help but take a couple of snapshots, such as the one below of the main entrance…

…and this one of the central “pirate ship” of the complex, complete with a giant squid (!)

In yet another FairChang sim — can’t remember which one — Baker Bloch comes across this interesting rectangular shaped gorge filled with sea shells.

Finally, that same night Baker Bloch finds himself looking for the estranged Esbum all the way out on the now almost deserted Burning Life island. I’ll have more on that search very soon.

* a small bit of research turned up this website on the archipelago

New Island! (Very Atlantean), 1 October 20, 2008

Have come across several new Linden builds in SL and have admittedly given them the short stick in this blog at times, like the Moonbase just off Jeogeot and, going further back, the Magellan Linden landing site on the western tip of Gaeta. More significantly, I also didn’t visit Burning Life (just completed) nearly as much as I expected, since that’s one of the things that drew me into SL in the first place and I’ve had the week long event circled on my virtual calendar for months and months. So I’ve decided to change my tact a bit on this new find and cover it quite extensively, or as much as my energy will allow. I’ll treat it like one of my own builds, let’s say. 🙂

First off, let me get this out of the way on another topic. Ross Falls is an “official (SL wikia) name… nifty.
http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Ross

The island has surfaced, Atlantis-like (except the opposite way, I suppose, coming out of the water instead of sinking into the water — more on Atlantean parallels later, though, when I get my writing warmed up a bit more), out of the sea between the continents of Nautilus and Mãebaleia, or the two southernmost of the 4 eastern continents (east of the 3 “western” continents of Heterocera Atoll, Sansara and Jeogeot, that is). It really just appeared, as a whole, overnight, because I was teleporting around the edges of Nautilus Friday night, maybe even Saturday night — didn’t see hide nor hair of it. But by Sunday night the island was there in full force. I was actually teleporting and running around the sea interior of Nautilus (as I’ve been doing for a couple of nights) and then teleported over into a slightly more southern, greenish water sim which I didn’t remember before. Cool, I thought, seeing actual ocean plants and fish and hills… why didn’t I find this before in my extensive explorations of the Nautilus water sims? Then I pulled up the SL map… and saw the island. This was pretty big news I realized, and it was the ocean floor around it that impressed me first. It seems the Lindens have really gone all out on this one. We’ll see how it develops, though — I hope they aren’t planning to divide most of the island into sellable property. It would indeed be very unique if they didn’t, then, and quite a reverse, in this limited scope admittedly, from the decrease of Linden protected land we’ve seen in these newer continents in comparison with Sansara and Heterocera.

So I’ll begin a shot from the interior sea of Nautilus, which has some quite interesting patterns at the bottom — very Okinu-like. I also liked how there are actual hills on the sea floor to help highlight the patterns further.

Moving again to the new island, it seems to be about the same size as the Burning Life island just derezzed in the ocean beside Heterocera, which covered precisely 22 land sims. Most of the sims here are a mixture of land and water, so this is just a guess. But it’s big. It’s maybe not quite the size of the main Azure Island where I lived, (I’ve called this island AI1 in my blog, or Azure Island #1) but it’s clearly somewhat bigger than the second largest of these islands (AI2).

Just to get my nomenclature straight, I’d personally call the main Azure Island landmass an island and not a continent, as some people do, although it could be the largest such island that’s not a continent (unless it is matched or surpassed by the main Dreamland landmass?). Kind of like an SL Greenland, I suppose. Either Gaeta or the Heterocera Atoll, then, would be the smallest currently completed continents using this standard.

I don’t know what most of the things I saw really are yet, and I’m sure all this will be cleared up more in official Linden releases coming down the pike. But here’s a snapshot of a particle, sculpture thingie that gives you some idea about how well done some of this stuff is.

The centerpiece of the whole island seems to be this large circular area that I haven’t explored yet. The door to the interior is certainly impressive enough, though, and Baker Bloch was mildly surprised that he was allowed to open and close these huge doors himself. The doors come at the end of a *long* canal that runs through about 1/2 length of the whole island up to this point, and continues another sim-length to a central pool inside (according to the map).

As I said, Baker decides to leave this central part of the island alone for now, and teleports instead to this quite interesting and picturesque hill on the eastern side of the island.

I’ll continue this exploration in the post above… see you there.

Abominable, 2 October 2, 2008

“Hucka D., I want to keep talking a bit about the Yale collage picture we were examining before. Now to me, and to you also, it seems, Rudolph is obviously a symbol of Hilo Peak, as The Abominable Snowman perched above him is The Abomination itself. In taking more measurements today we know some additional things about The Abomination. We know that it is 5m x 5m at its base, but 3m x 3m at the top. We also know that this 3×3 top is owned by one group, but this group also owns, as a whole, 4×4 of the overall 5×5. This 4×4 piece of 16 square meters is aligned directly west of the 8×4 piece of 32 square meter land that represents the only jut of the overall parcel belonging to Urtahra. This jut, in effect, bridges Hilo Peak and The Abomination. But I’ll have more to say about those overall measurements in another post.

Hucka D.:

The dimensions of the Temple of TILE were also based on 3×3. Interesting you have 3×3, 4×4, and 5×5 all directly referenced by The Abomination. Has it been tamed, then?

bb:

I also wanted to talk about Burning Life. My theory, Hucka D., is that Burning Life is represented by Jay Cutler [likewise standing in for John Elway — see below], and the burning car in his hand is the central sun or Burning Man of that event. Now at his *feet* we have the marble that represents the planet Uranus, the most distant planet depicted on the roller coaster [starting with Mercury, which is the same as the roller coaster cart directly below the burning car/sun]. So my new theory is that Uranus is found in the Kerchal forest. Just like the Uranus planet you can *just* make it out on the map if you know where to look. And this Uranus is 3 cubes, 1 being transluscent. They’re set at full glow. *Barely* make it out, [just like Uranus is barely discernable to the naked eye, if you know where to look.]

http://www.maineskies.org/uranus.html

Hucka D.:

You think this is the opposite of Burning Life, then. Brightest verses the very opposite, so dim it lies on the very edge of perception. This is a contrast of opposites.

bb:

That’s right.

Hucka D.:

Hand high and feet low. Hilo.

bb:

Another interesting thing about the collage is the direct comparison, it seems to me, between Maria von Trapp-Herman Munster pairing and Abominable Snowman-Rudolf pairing. That could be the deepest part of the collage.

Hucka D.:

2 Monsters in each case.

bb:

The Temple of TILE is the Abomination. 3×3.

Hucka D.:

In part. (pause) It is the top of the Abomination, before the widening.

bb:

Is The Diagonal also The Abomination?

Hucka D.:

You have two opposite things, one very high — highness itself — and the other the highest of the low. (pause). The bird sculpture [red, green, blue “birds” The Hiker stands directly beside in the collage, also known as “Opus 19”] is suppose to lie on the periphery of a virtual burn, basically undetectable, or, again, you have to know where to look to find it. This is Uranus again. Blue. Beside the Uranus marble in the collage. Hilo. Hi Lo. Pluto.

bb:

Pluto?

Hucka D.:

Well, yeah. The unseen, maybe even the unplanet now. The ultimate in unnoticed. 9th.

bb:

I’m not quite getting that part yet.

Hucka D.:

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; red, green, blue; spiralling downward, a continuation of the solar system immediately to the left, but the unseen part. Uranus marks the border between the two.

bb:

[“Opus 19”] is… lost my track of thought.

Hucka D.:

Grasmere. Go to Grasmere. Resolution. Monster perpetually tamed. Man, Moon, Munster. Calm. Moonshine. Jack Daniels. The *10×10*.

bb:

Thank you.