Gaeta North, 04 December 11, 2011

On the eastern outskirts of modern (degenerated) Cashmere. A bay or “sunkland” (Hucka D. term, once more) runs from the Linden ocean to the Great Unknown, 2 1/2 sims to the east.

The land around the bay seems to be composed largely of beach rental properties.

Large, shallow lake in the area that has subsequently disappeared. The shape of the bay has changed, in other words.

Central part of what remains of Cashmere. Mostly empty shop rental units.

Just to their north, and between this central area and Cash Cow itself, lies a small jungle where Second Life magicians may live, at least according to the strange lights Baker sees emitting from the parcel. Hucka D. has since stated that there are two magicians that live on this property named Bonnie and Clyde. No, make that Barney and Claude. And that they are making toy avatars, among other things.

Back to Cash Cow.

Gaeta North, 03

Starting at Cash Cow once more, this night finds Baker Bloch heading away from the ocean and Sandy Beach Trail toward the east. A seeming impasse due to property banlines is bizarrely solved through a timely teleporter, which when touched takes him beyond the banned properties and allows him to continue his eastward journey.

Gargoyle…

… balanced by nearby, larger “Angel of Peace,” seemingly.

The angel stares towards what’s called Shop II of the Visions Gallery, according to the sign over the front entrance. This is the last structure directly west of Cash Cow before reaching the Great Unknown, the limit of the continent before it stopped forming in probably 2009 as well.

Story on the continent’s formation here from the Second Life Wiki, where it is called “Gaeta I”:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Gaeta_I_Network

I prefer to call Gaeta I an unformed or unfinished continent, however, rather than the Linden’s preferred term of sub-continent. But should probably think about that further.

Back to the Visions Gallery: Baker is attracted to a working, ticking clock. He takes note of the position of the hands in respect to the hour numbers: “Aren’t the two bits of Gaeta called “I” and “V” as well?” he ponders. In checking later on, he finds this to be so. The clock seems to somehow represent Gaeta itself, perhaps in its unmanifested wholeness.

Baker Bloch at the lip of the Great Unknown on the eastern edge of Gaeta I just beyond the Visions Gallery.

Superimposition of that Visions Gallery clock with the Linden’s map showing the spacial relationship of Gaeta I and Gaeta V, with the added caption stating that Gaeta was planned (or still is planned?) as a group of 5 linked continents total “sharing variants of the name Gaeta.”

More sights from the east and south of Cash Cow. Baker Bloch is making his way back to the coast now, and the site of the ancient city or community of Cashmere, according to Hucka D., which still has traces in the area.

Gaeta North, 02 December 8, 2011

Baker Bloch has a new, second home of sorts: Cash Cow, which apparently lies within the ancient limits of Cashmere. Hucka D. is telling me that Cash Cow is newer than Cashmere, and the latter represents the name origin of the former. I believe a relationship to Cashmere, Washington is being implied, and also to Little Robert Plant Variant of Sunklands fame, who mentions this RL city in a post from late 2009:

https://bakerblinker.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/well-lets-just-start-chatting-shall-we/

Baker Bloch leaving Cash Cow to explore the Cashmere area more. Cash Cow is composed of two identical, open structures within a small grove of mainly oak trees in fall colors.

Heading west to the Gaeta Ocean.

Properties at or near the ocean, all positioned around a central Linden path of the continent called the Sandy Beach Trail, which is about 5 meters wide and extends through about 11 sims total in looping around the central bay area of Gaeta North.

More on Sandy Beach Trail soon.

Gaeta North December 6, 2011

In the past several weeks, what I’m calling the Gaeta North continent, or partial continent to be more correct about it, has become a sort of focus of interest for me.

I found the oceans surrounding the partial continent to have some seemingly worthwhile subjects for study.

A beach front in what I now call Cashmere, I believe (formerly Cash Cow?).

More Gaeta North scenes in just teleporting around the partially formed continent at random.

More underwater ruins.

Representation of a former king or ruler of Gaeta? What about the red eyes? Evil? Looks a lot like the Neptune statue heads of Nautilus, but they had just the empty eye sockets. If there is lasting meaning to “Gaeta North”, Baker Bloch might find it at the central Cashmere location. Working theory.

Two of the few, legitimate peaks found in the area.

About… July 9, 2010

Route 4, the developed part of which deadends at the northern edge of Ello at this time, continues west in undeveloped form through a number of additional sims before merging into a newly paved and still unnamed road in Spectacle. Heterocera has quite an amazing matrix of roads running hither and thither!

Below Baker bites bikes in Shark, I believe, in what amounts to be a shallow canyon the protected route runs through just past where the pavement ends.

Moving to the woods just south of Heck’s Canyon making up most of the Cisseps sims, Baker stands in front of a decorative teleporter, but is afraid to head upwards because the land here is described as a Vampire Grove. Not that they aren’t probably quite friendly and congenial vampires, but Baker doesn’t want to take the chance, being limited in time tonight as usual.

But in checking behind himself today, Baker finds that he cannot use the teleporter anyways — apparently it’s private. And besides, the hover text at the top, also unnoticed by Baker at the time he took the below photo, states that this teleports one to the Mandala bead game, which Baker knows is just across Route 3B from here (road just to his left in the photo). More on that quite interesting place soon.

Just to the north, also in the Cissep Woods, is this nice cabin with accompanying pond and waterfall. Some hover text just outside the cabin states that everyone is welcome to use it. Interesting, given the land description here still includes the phrase “Vampire Grove”. 🙂

Another beauty spot within the woods, the layout of which is complex and dotted with many small ponds. If I stay in this region for any length, I’ll attempt to make a map so that I can understand the topography more myself.

Moving away from Heterocera altogether, Baker takes a snapshot of a lovely, hazy sunrise near the protected top of Dearheart Hill.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dearheart/173/215/137

This night, Baker also revisits the Red Leaf Gallery in Hamnida on the Jeogeot continent, one of the closest listed galleries to his Blue Feather establishment on this landmass. It appears to be in a state of reconstruction of some sort. Hope it sticks around — Baker is interested in the name similarity with the Blue Feather admittedly (another red-blue connection).

The empty land of Gukyeol, part of the 4 sim Hanja Welcome Center, is just behind the now incomplete Red Leaf in the below photo.

more Jeogeot-Maebaleia examinations, 01 January 13, 2010

Employing the timeline maps from the nifty Maps of Second Life site, I’ve now been able to chart, month by month, how the Second Life mainland formed from 2006 on.

Jeogeot, originally known as the Southern Continent, it seems, first shows up on this grid in 01-01-2006 according to month. I’ve also seen it referred to as the Korean Continent, because of its numerous sims named for Korean locations. It’s that bit of green at the bottom of the map below. To the top we have the larger masses of Heterocera (north) and Sansara (south), the two original Second Life continents, joined to each other by a sim-wide column of water.

By 01-01-2007, Jeogeot is still not complete, being slowly formed from top to bottom, essentially. One year on, the creeping formation of the continent, at least compared to those that follow, had only just started to move around the lower edge of what now is called the Korean Channel (the official Linden name).

What also surprised me is that the Sansara continent was still developing around the edges at the same time as Jeogeot’s formation throughout 2006. Compare this with Heterocera/Atoll Continent, which already stood complete at the beginning of 2006.

2 months later (03-01-2007), a fourth mainland continent begins to form to the east of any former continent. This would become the Maebaleia continent, also known as Satori or the Japanese Continent. This is also the first month that the Jeogeot continent has assumed its final shape, minus the filling in of the Korean Channel and the additional of Mos Ainsley sims about 1 year later (see below). To differentiate between what eventually turned out to be a whole eastern hemisphere of the mainland grid to complement the now almost completed western hemisphere, I’ll color the eastern continents pink in the maps to follow.

By 05-01-2007, the Maebaleia continent already stood complete. Compare its roughly two month creation to that of Jeogeot, which took well over a year. And by this time, even the continent above Maebaleia, Nautilus, was off to a good head start.

Slightly less than a year later (03-01-2008), the aforementioned filling in of the Korean Channel occurred, removing that central notch from Jeogeot appearing above. Difficult to tell from this map if the Mos Ainsley related sims, 3 in number, were added at the same time, but I’m assuming they were in checking other sources. You can also see that Nautilus is well completed by now, and also Corsica, the continent to the north, is rather slowly forming west to east, to be finished by 05-01-2008, at the same time the next continent, Gaeta, has begun. Interestingly, it took Corsica about 9 months to form after the quite quick creation of both Maebaleia and Nautilus in this hemisphere.

And the mainland grid as it stands today, with a completed Gaeta and an as yet unfinished continent to the north of Corsica, even. The still forming Zindra and the spanking new Nascera are not added in, I assume, because of space purposes, both being well to the east and southeast of this central continent cluster respectively.

Another important addition since 05/2008 is the Nautilus City/Blake Sea region, sandwiched between Maebaleia to the south and Nautilus to the north.

To be continued…

Teasdale November 30, 2009

Y-borough, Teasdale, X-ville. November 26, 2009

This night, Baker Bloch daringly, perhaps even foolishly, decides to take a closer look at Y-borough. And in the middle of the night, ta boot! Foolish for certain!!

Scary graffiti and a giant, unformed white tube of some sort. Sometimes the unformed things are the scariest, especially if placed in Y-borough.

Bizarrely, maybe, the building with the broken out windows, or what Baker perceived as such, has been derezzed, apparently. Or maybe they just sent it somewhere to repair the windows. Most likely, whoever owned it just wanted to get the heck out of here.

Then it’s back to X-ville, looking better, better, better!

Baker briefly contemplates renting a 4096 parcel at the main crossroads of X-ville (“could *this* be the true home of the 10×10?”, and so on), but circumstances shift his attention back to Sunklands soon enough. He is leaving open the option of renting in X-ville itself, though.*

New “Something To Chro About” in Teasdale November 23, 2009

Small, new store in Teasdale currently showing 6 of the Oblong collage series and providing landmark for Edwardston Station Gallery in Aotearoa.

Also my apt. is fairly set up in Teasdale. About 200 meters from the gallery.

Gaeta/Teasdale, 02 November 22, 2009

Another shot of the Rafail maze right behind Baker’s new Teasdale rental unit. Click here to find out more about the differences between mazes and labyrinths.

Now Baker Bloch is already really enjoying riding his bike around the numerous paved streets of Teasdale, a big attraction to renting there in the first place. Here he pedals through the middle of a park area marking, in turn, the center of Rosser, the eastern sim ( of 2) of Teasdale as a whole. Not far from his new rental atall.

As far as Baker can tell, at least until he opened his own “Something To Chro About” the night of 11/22 (see above), there’s only one artsy gallery in Teasdale, owned by Claire Radikal. Not very big: only a handful of art pieces within the one story, approx. 10×10 room. But some quality work here — not sure about the eye sculpture though, but it might just be a taste issue.

I’ll be stopping in again I’m sure. Hope Claire sticks around.

A police car is parked just outside the small gallery. Nice to see the town has a law enforcement unit in place; makes Baker feel safer when he’s pedaling the streets late at night. Problem is, this car always seems to be parked right here just outside the gallery, and with no one inside. Hmmm, maybe its like those empty cop cars in RL you see parked on the side of a street, just to make you aware that they are around, and if there was someone inside you might get a speeding ticket if you’re going too fast in this spot in the future. But I’d still like to see this particular car move around once in a while. I’ll keep an eye on it… probably Baker will ride by it many nights if not the majority of nights he’s out biking around Teasdale.

Baker now sits in a definite highlight of town: the Evergreen Pub, apparently specializing in live folk music. Baker’s joined the associated group — suppose he’ll get notecards about upcoming events in the establishment. Might be fun just to hang out in back somewhere and look at the locals filing in and out.

Interesting old timey style Second Lyfe map on the wall in front of Baker here as well.

On this same night, I believe, Baker Bloch also finds another “old” map of SL featuring the Jeogeot continent — his “home” continent now I suppose we should concede (since he’s lived there in a mostly consistent manner for over *1/2* a year now — hard to believe!). This is not from Teasdale, though, but from Jeogeot itself, somewhere in the northern panhandle, or what this map mysteriously calls a “claw” of the continent.

I’ve never seen any of this terminology used in other maps of SL or Jeogeot… “Bay of Fundi” (actually Korean Channel), “West Claw”, *”Centralia”* (roughly the same as what I call Sunklands, it appears), “Golden East Coast”… strange stuff. And I was able to take a copy and add it to my inventory to study later on — cool.