Family Meeting June 6, 2008

Hucka D. absolutely *luvs* his new beehive, and does not lament about the fact that the Cub Run is over for us as a family. It was a good run. Now all builds will focus on the AI property. Hucka D.’s new beehive (see post below) is positioned around 100 meters higher than the treehouse, still low enough where you can take in the surrounding landscape with a 512m draw. I feel views are very imp. for a skybox, but it may also be interesting to experiment with the isolation of one way up high, say above 1000m. And Hucka D.’s beehive, 50 meters high, only used 16 prims (!). I can see building a number of these, although the treehouse skybox may have to be stored until later if I do. Or the ground house — can’t get rid of that yet, though!

At some point I want to purchase a Victorian house I’ve had my eye on and merge it with the present ground house. But that’s a little later. Also want to work on some CHRO cubes, which should be a lot of fun. OH, I think I’m going to buy some new keyboards in Asheville this weekend, speaking of CHRO. Definitely need a house keyboard. This is a birthday present.

I wanted to talk a bit with Hucka D. about the gallery, etc., so let’s bring him in. Hucka D., come in Hucka D.

“Hi Baker B.”

bb:

Hello Hucka D. Glad you like the beehive so much.

Hucka D.:

Walking through it for the first time may have been my happiest moment in SL so far, except for meeting Hurla Dontbee, of course.

bb:

Ahem… yeah. How’s she doing?

Hucka D.:

She’ll be moving in soon. I thought I’d give her the odd numbered floors and I’d live in the even numbered floors, or 2 and 4. The 2 main galleries. She’d have 3 rooms to my 2 rooms, although mine are admittedly larger. But they also have holes in them, though (smiles). The top floor, the roof, I call floor 0. We’d share that one, since it is the entrance to the whole complex. So it’s a kind of male-female club sandwich as I see it.

bb:

Interesting. Would you like to talk to Baker Bloch or Baker Blinker about anything in particular tonight Hucka D.?

Hucka D.:

Yourself is fine. How’s our volcano trip going? I take it something went amiss, perhaps?

bb:

Thank you Hucka D. I’m not sure if the tent still acts as a portal to the gallery. Or the loop back will ever be accomplished. Does this mean Verdy sacrifices herself for nothing? She went into the Cave of The Alphabet in RL to SL. She *melted* into the hot landscape at the volcano…

Hucka D.:

Oh, *that’s* what happened.

bb:

We may have to go into RL again to find out what happened and affect a proper solution. I mean, you and Baker Bloch would have to go. What do you think about that?

Hucka D.:

Sounds good. I have a question. If, say, an animal eats us in RL, do we die? “Cause I’m not ready to die yet. I just got my beehive. (smiles)

bb:

I don’t think you would die. You only have to worry about dying when SL goes the way of Atlantis. Or you switch avatars — I suppose that’s “dying” in a way, like giving up the body in RL. But you should be familiar with that now.

Hucka D.:

Yes.

bb:

If we do go into RL again, we’d perhaps manifest on that rez rock in New Hope. Bring your insect repellant, Hucka D.! Mosquitoes and gnats galore when I went there to take snapshots today. It’s very hot here for this time of year.

Hucka D.:

You need to do the chalky thing first. The glyph. NEW. That’s how we, Baker Bloch and I, will manifest. It’s been mentioned in the blog already. That’s actually where I thought I’d rez during the first SL > RL conversion, but it turned out to be Hilo Peak Mtn. instead. Trouble is, we’d have to go through The Wilderness to get to Jonesborough to the south. This may be a mission for a bee alone; it will be tough going. The Baker Bloch avatar may get too frustrated in the tangled mess of limbs. Actually, I might advise against walking through it, which means we’d have to go around. But it would have to be at the New Hope rez rock. The other rez rock is only used by the toy avatars — only works for them; don’t know why yet. But I agree with you: it seems we have to know what happened in the cave.

bb:

I wonder if Salad Bar Jack can meets us halfway somewhere?

Hucka D.:

I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to go to New Hope through The Wilderness at this time of the year.

bb:

But he’s an explorer, after all. And he’ll have T-Bonz and Mossman, perhaps.

Hucka D.:

No, I think I need to meet Salad Bar Jack alone, perhaps in the middle of The Wilderness. That way we’ll split the difference.

bb:

How will you contact him to let him know you’re coming to Jonesborough through The Wilderness?

Hucka D.:

I’ll have to go the board he frequents and talk to him through posts there.

bb:

Board?

Hucka D.:

Yeah, a Yahoo board.

bb:

Toy Avatars Unite?

Hucka D.:

Close! But no. Can’t give out the name. I know him already.

bb:

This comes as a bit of a surprise Hucka D. Did Blinkerton know him too?

Hucka D.:

Yes. We need to talk about the gallery too. I’m going to take notes on the collages. I, like you, however, don’t think the loop will be closed. Unless you close the two parts of the Hidalgo Gallery itself, high and low. Physically unite what is separate and north-south now. We must pull out of the [delete name] sim; end the camping trip. Something else must manifest at the treehouse besides the gallery now. Position it between the treehouse and the beehive. Stick one of those eucalyptus trees in it (smiles). Those are great. A lot of wallop for one prim. But I think that’s one of our answers: to unite the two parts of the Hidalgo Gallery, perhaps quite soon. But, like I said, I’ll take notes. We’ll pass through it again soon, maybe Saturday night when you return from Asheville. Winesap is also coming soon.

bb:

I was wondering if you were going to bring that up. Any concrete thoughts on that yet?

Hucka D.:

I have visions of a wall of pages. 100’s of pages. Making bacon. Money. Public domain. Pages are the flow of CREEK. Take more pictures of CREEK; complete the visual aid. Hand-Drink. Herman. That’s it.

bb:

Thank you Hucka D.

Cub Run Over ( Sigh)

Well, the Cub based beehive didn’t work out… went back to the sim and the build was deleted and my primitives autoreturned to my inventory. Hucka D. cried when he found out, and I so hated to see the little guy unhappy that I allowed him to build a new beehive in the sky above our property. It’s mostly based on the design of the former beehive. And what a little builder he’s turning out to bee! (sorry) Check this out: only 16 prims used in the construction of this 3.6 meters wide, 20 meters long, and *50* meter tall structure. It’s a little complicated. Let’s start at the top.

Here you see Hucka D. at the top. Usually he sits in the white chair to position himself on this top while flying above, and then stands and walks over to the holes that lead inside. If you look closely here you’ll notice the two distinct “holes.” One is created by hollowing out the 10 x 10 x 3.5m prim (the whole structure is a 5×2 stack of these prims hollowed or cut in various ways) to create a circular hole. Then the prim is additionally spliced off from the corner in such a way that another hole that Hucka D. can fit through is formed. Then, in addition, Hucka D. can just squeeze inbetween the two holes, a crucial linking aspect to access all parts of the building.

This is what happens when Hucka D. drops into the circular hole, which is mulithued internally (Linden tie dye texture). He enters the first of two main galleries of 20m long by 10m high by 3.5m wide, with one long side made entirely up of windows. You can see through these windows on the inside, but outside they don’t show up. All you see on the outside, in front, is a rusty door texture chosen from Atoll textures option given to us all by the Lindens when we were birthed in their metaverse.

Notice there’s also a giant eucalyptus tree in the gallery, and I stuck this in the two cut holes of each of the two galleries. Which moves us to…

… the intermediary rooms, which make up floors 1, 3 and 5 in Hucka’s naming scheme. The main galleries I’ve already mentioned would be floors 2 and 4, with floor 0 being the same as the top of the structure. All of these intermediary galleries (floors 1, 3, 5) are reached only through the *cut* holes in the prims above. These intermediary galleries are actually 1/2 galleries, but with a little additional solid floor just below the cut hole to allow Hucka D. to land in the gallery in the first place. All of these have window that run across the bottom of the floor, and all except the bottom have parts of one of the 2 eucalyptus trees poking into them, a nice visual. So below we have a view within the 3rd and last (lowest) of these 1/2 galleries, with Hucka D. observing through the window in the floor our skybox and land property immediately below.

One of the neat things about the beehive is that you get views in all four directions, since the window of the main galleries (floors 2 and 4) face in opposite directions — north and south — and the top and bottom of the 3 1/2 galleries have open sides facing west, while the middle of the 1/2 galleries has its open side facing east.

Here’s the whole structure with a happy, smiling Hucka D. posing in front of it.

So to review briefly: using the hollow cuts, you can access only the 2 main galleries (floors 2 and 4). With the corner cuts you can access all the intermediary or 1/2 galleries (floors 1, 3, 5). Confused? It’s just something you have to really visit and get inside to understand. Niether Baker Blinker nor Baker Bloch have been inside, but they could probably fit into the holes as well. I think.

Since the cuts are so small the easiest way to get back to the top is simply fly out of one of the open sides. If you choose to move through the entirety of the structure, top to bottom, you can then just fly out the bottom hole on the end and go back to the top, or other destinations.