Blog

Posted on

Another pointless walk

I’m sufficiently bored today to *walk* from Iris at the northernmost point in the new continent to Alcona (180,14) where the highway ends suddenly. At that point we’ll be tired enough not to care that we’re in the middle of nowhere and log off.

pointless walk map: click here to embiggen
Map of the pointless walk: click to embiggen.

Did I mention it was a pointless walk?

If you’d like to join me please do. I’ll be in Iris at noon, game time. My route will be posted on www.CubeyTerra.com. Photographers welcome. No running, no flying, no vehicles.

Photos (click to embiggen):


6 minutes: The trek begins underwater in Iris.


45 minutes: The highway makes for easier walking… or rollerskating.


1 hour, 6 minutes: We stop to chat with a couple of curious W-Hats.


1 hour, 23 minutes: We’ve officially gone insane. For some reason we walked through the mature snow sims, au naturel. Good thing avatars are immune to the cold.


2 hours, 13 minutes: Journey’s end! Alcona’s highway ends suddenly at the sim wall.

Posted on

Eight East

It’s hip, it’s modern, it has kick-ass coffee, and it has a view of the mountains. Well, it has a view of the mountains when it’s not raining. I’m talking about Vancouver’s Eight East Coffee House on Broadway.

eight east coffee house on Broadway

This place will BLOW YOUR MIND. The music, the decor, the dancers, the juggling troupe, and — not least by far — an olympic-size ice rink. Come for the coffee, but you can also watch the out-of-work NHL players vie for coffee and biscotti in a series of no-holds-barred blood matches. Sundays and holidays are family days, when they replace the players with clowns. Instead of sticks, they go at each other with balloon animals. Yesterday a clown had to be rushed to the hospital after being garotted with a giraffe.

Well, to be honest the ice rink isn’t yet past the planning stages, and may have been just my own caffeine-induced hallucination. And the dancers, clowns, and juggling troupe never really existed. If you’re lucky, though, you can catch sight of a cyclist or two from the bike shop next door.

In the meantime, Dan, Pam, and their staff have themselves a nice little coffee house. I think I’ll definitely come back, even if it’s a while until I see the rink.

Posted on

Poking about in ActiveWorlds

Out of curiosity, I dropped in on ActiveWorlds this morning to see what it was like. As Eggy put it, “it’s SL’s grandpa”. It’s a 3D world with chat, like SL, but the feel of it is like a computer game from ten years ago. Avatars are stiff and lifeless, chat is IRC-style in a separate window pane, and I can’t tell if there’s a physics engine. But it’s all there — user-made content, socialization, and a gigantic world with lots of places.

Naturally, the first place I visited was an airport.

Heartsville CybAirport in the ActiveWorlds area, 'Atlantis'.

(When I switched from the default first-person camera to the third-person camera, I was a little surprised to discover that I’d turned into a fish!)

As Eggy pointed out in-world, the models are mesh-based, so they have shapes that may not be possible in Second Life, where building is primitive-based. Look, no seams!

Inside a hangar at Heartsville CybAirport

Not all planes looked expertly-made, but that’s the same in SL, where all content is created by users — everyone has different skill levels, but everyone contributes. Some of the planes would do very well if they were built and scripted in SL.

I can see why ActiveWorlds lasted so long. It must have been cutting-edge in the beginning, and even now it offers much of the same experience and community as SL… but without the lag.

Posted on

Happy 2nd birthday, Second Life!

Two years ago this week, Second Life finished its beta and went “gold”. To celebrate the occasion, Pathfinder Linden pulled together a gaggle of builders and olbies to fill the four sims with well-known builds and objects from throughout SL’s two-year history. Some of the attractions included carnival rides, towers by Maxx Monde and LordFly Digeridoo, Cannabis Cathedral, a city street, the beta time capsule contents, and my contribution, Zoe Airfield.

Founded in autumn 2003 by Apotheus Silverman and me, Zoe Airfield quickly became a meeting place for propeller heads to exchange ideas and hold aircraft-oriented events like building contests. Many of today’s prominent aircraft builders were among the original Zoe Airfield group members. Apotheus and I later moved our operation to Abbotts, where it became Abbotts Aerodrome.

Zoe Airfield - November 2003
Zoe Airfield in November 2003

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take any snapshots of the 2nd anniversary celebration, and I took down the Zoe Airfield re-creation too early, thinking the event was just the one day. Oops.

Posted on

Urban Geese

Today,
I bought pickles
and cheese
and some udon noodles.

And I saw a pair of geese
standing at the side of the street.
Urban geese.

Bling.

Thanks, Adrian for the idea to turn the geese entry into a poem.