SL Tools are Crude, Crude, Crude

I'm not happy with the terraforming and creating tools.

The creating tools work off a NESW grid, which is fine if you're working along compass lines, but when you set something at an angle, moving it by eye is for all practical purposes impossible. The terraforming tools are just as crude.

Undo disappears if you click off of the edit or terraforming boxes and they go away.

Why isn't there a step and repeat? Why are objects' positions calculated from their middle rather than from the end?

I'm a fracking genius. I can't work like this!

-----

Photo: Another fracking genius. This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

My Whorehouse

Yep.

Chey is now the proud owner of a Chinese whorehouse. It's hanging over the volcano at 300 meters

It smells a little funny, but it was a great baragain at only $200L. It's copyable and transferrable and modifiable, and the textures are beautiful.

Just call me madam.

Or maybe not. At that price, the whores were not included. I think they all hired on as extras in the TV show Deadwood.

The upstairs is where the business once took place. It has one-way windows, so it has become my bedroom. I've installed a bed and a huge and luxurious shower and couches and chairs.

Downstairs is not yet furnished, except for a white baby grand piano.

I think those who fail the virgin test will find themselves teleported to the whorehouse.

A Name

If you're wondering why I call it a Chinese whorehouse, that's because that's the way it was advertised. I've been trying to think of a name that will preserve its history yet be a little less vulgar. House of ill repute? Cathouse?

It just came to me. House of One Thousand Pleasures.

-----

Photo 1: House of One Thousand Pleasures

Photo 2: Bottom Floor

Photo 2: Chey's Bedroom

The Third Time's the Charm

I'm getting so I don't even blink when I wipe out my island.

It happened again on Friday. Somehow, I must have selected all the land by mistake, because when I looked up from my task, the mountain was 10 meters shorter.

I had the land in shape again in less than an hour. I even dug out Sam Stork's great lava flow, which got covered by the mountain.

Terraforming at Pele is finally and officially complete.

-----

Photo 1: Sunset on the northern beach

Photo 2: The eastern beach

Griefer

Written 14 December, 2006

Griefer

If you’re tired of reading My Volcano, I don’t blame you. I’m tired from writing it.

Things happen so fast in SL for me that it’s been difficult to get current. I’ve been trying to recapture some of the highlights and low moments of my early days, and I’m getting there. Soon I’ll be able to actually blog—react to and reflect upon what has recently happened.

This post is a blogging moment.

I was griefed last night (grieved? aggrieved?).

It was in the wee hours. I had logged off after a great night dancing at Velvet with Exuberance and Patrice and her wife Veronique (who I finally got to meet). I had stuck a turkey in the first-life oven earlier (no room for it in the freezer. Plan ahead, Chey!) and it was finally done. I ate steaming hot white meat while watching the last few minutes of Battlestar Galactica and the first few minutes of Medium (thank you, TiVo!), then went upstairs. Instead of going to bed, as I should have done, I opened Second Life and logged on.

I was absorbed in the construction of a pier on the riverfront when green fireballs began to fall into the sand around me. Some of them actually struck me.

I flew to caldera level to get a look around and spotted an avatar hovering over Dodgeguy’s lagoon. He was holding what looked to be an Airzooka and looking like a FNG. Indeed, he had been born that very day.

“You must not strike me with objects, I said in IM. “It’s against the rules of Second Life.”

He flew over and landed on the beach, and said “I’m new and don’t know what to do.”

I told him he shouldn’t be doing things he wouldn’t do in his First Life, like shooting objects at people.

“If you had asked me, I would have given you permission,” I said. “But you ambushed me.”

He asked what I was building, and I told him it was a pier for my catamaran. He wanted to see the cat, so I drug it out onto the sand. He asked if I was sure if it would hold me. I looked heavy, he said.

I said, “I’m not heavy. I’m just tall, that’s all.”

I moved a piling, then looked up and he was naked. And, of course, FNGing dickless.

“Ewww!” I said. “Put some clothes on right now if you want to stay on my land.” He didn’t, just threw objects at me and feigned innocence when I told him to stop. “You must be a lesbian,” he said.

That one struck close to home. I’m not a lesbian, and I’m pretty sure my avatar isn’t, but she is having strong feelings for another female av.

“And you must be an asshole,” I said, and pulled out the RPG Patrice had given me and blew his ass away.

Only it didn’t work that way. It didn’t knock him three sims away, as I had thought it would. When the smoke and flames had died away, he was still there.

“That did nothing,” he said.

“Put some clothes on or leave right now,” I said and opened the About Land menu.

He was still there, still naked and dickless when I banned him. He was instantly gone. I’ve not seen him since.

-----

Photo 1: Don't mess with a woman with a rocket-propelled grenade!

Photo 2: Chey's pier

nb; I filed a harassment report.

The Matrix, Version 1.x

Written 13 December, 2006

The Matrix, Version 1.x

I will no longer allow myself to refer to Second Life as a game. No, rather it is a simulation, or better yet, an on-line electronic world. But never a game. And from now on, I’ll say First World instead of Real World.

I was talking with a disaffected young avatar recently. He had been in SL for a couple of weeks, so I was astonished to hear him say, “It’s only a game. I should just go around destroying stuff.” This prompted a 30-minute lecture from me, in which I explained just why SL was NOT a game and why it would be terrible to be a negative force in the SL world..

My friend’s comment might have had something to do with his age (very early twenties), or it might have been an artifact of his Paleolithic PC, which, he says, brings in Second Life only as vague shapes and colors. Whatever the reason for his belief, I astonished myself with my passionate defense of SL.

Yes, on one level, SL is only electrons moving about, causing phosphors or plasma or LEDs to glow. It’s bits and bytes stored on the Linden Labs servers. But on another level it’s a fully interactive world full of people and objects, just like the first world. I know and interact and care about real people who are typing those words in chat, and I love my SL house even more than my first world house, which I love very much indeed.

Besides, perhaps the first world is itself virtual. Perhaps God (or the Goddess, as I prefer to believe) has the universe running on the cosmic internet.

SL is crude in comparison to the first world, but the elements are all in place to equal or even surpass external “reality.” SL is The Matrix, V. 1.x.

I could swear I see the first world pixilate sometimes.

-----

Photo: An amazing simulation

Pele

Written 14 December, 2006

My Volcano

XV: Pele

Pele is the volcano goddess. Or, rather, she is the volcano goddess of Polynesia. Japan has its own volcano goddess, and perhaps there are other volcano goddesses as well. If not, there should be. Mount St. Helens definitely needs a goddess-in-residence.

As soon as I saw my volcano, I knew it had to have a goddess. Since the volcano’s island is tropical, Pele seemed the natural choice.

Pele is a hard-time goddess. She was chased across the South Pacific by her irate sister, fleeing from caldera to caldera, finally making her way to Hawaii. She is said to live in Mauna Kea, but I know she lives in Pele.

Pele is now the name of my land. Pele: Home of Pele the Volcano Goddess and Cheyenne Palisades. It would have been sooner, but it took me a while to realize I could name the property. Silly me, I thought the name would be assigned automatically by the Lindens.

Straightaway, I knew Pele would want sacrifices. Virgin sacrifices.

Do you realize how difficult it is to find a virgin on the adult grid?

I mean, it’s only theoretically possible.

Yet Pele must be appeased.

I’ve thought about offering myself to her, but I’m not sure if I qualify. It’s because of that thing I sort of did that time.

I’ve acquired a stone altar, which I’ll eventually place at the lip of the caldera, overhanging the bed of molten lava. I’m going to make, or have made, a pose ball that will ask any avatar lying on the altar’s stone table if he or she wishes to be sacrificed to Pele, the volcano goddess.

If the answer is no, nothing, of course, will happen. We don’t want unwilling sacrifices, do we? Consensual sacrifices only at Pale.

If the answer is yes, the av will be plunged into the frothing lava in the caldera. After four seconds, he or she will, regardless of sexual history or lack thereof, be spat out, catapulted onto the beach, and Pele will say (I’m thinking about having a sound file) “You’re no virgin!”

Should be a riot.

-----

Photo: Pele, New Pic

-----

Postscript for the Humor-Deficient
Yes, I believe in volcano goddesses—or, rather, I believe, like the pagans, like most of the people in olden days, that the Creator is closely associated with our grandmother Earth. I don’t think the Creator bears much resemblance to the malevolent male Jehovah of the Bible. The Goddess is the same deity, restored to her original gender after hijacking and forced sex change by the dead-white-male-God-people some thousands of years ago.

No, there won’t actually be sacrifices at the caldera. It’s a joke, son. I say—look at me when I’m talking to you, boy—it’s all in fun.

-----

Photo: Foghorn Leghorn. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, boy."

So That's What Revert Land Does!

Written 13 December, 2006

My Volcano

XIV: So That’s What Revert Land Does!

Oops.

Oops.

Oops.

Dammit.

Yesterday, I came home for lunch. It wasn’t that I wanted to save money, or was even particularly hungry. Rather, I was anxious to tweak the beautiful waterfall I had put in and put more fish and plants in the river and ocean areas.

When I logged in, I got delayed IM messages from Exuberance and Patrice the terraformer; Xubi had lowered the house a bit and Patrice had touched up the land at the edge of the house. They were offline and so out of reach.

My underwater house might have a little sand in it, Patrice said; I could dig it out. Xubi merely wanted to make sure the main part of the house wasn’t intruding into the underwater section.

It was, but not badly.

I thought the ground around the edge of the house was a bit lumpy, so I began to flatten and smooth it. That put the area I was working on beneath sea level.

One thing led to another, and soon the shoreline was messed up. Before I knew it, I had altered the shape of the mountain. The more I worked on it, the worse it looked.

Finally, in frustration, I selected revert land. I wasn’t sure just what that would do, but by that time I really didn’t care. I hit revert and watched the mountain change shape. Then I hit it again and again, until the land had been restored to its condition at the time of purchase.

It made me sick.

The thing was, just the night before, I had congratulated myself, telling myself the terraforming was officially completed. I had begun to landscape, building a beautiful waterfall edged by a screen of bamboo, and placing an octopus, two sharks, more than a dozen fish, and assorted plants and sea creatures under the water of the ocean and the river. Now, with the ground reverted, the fish were buried deep underground and out of reach.

I chose About Land and ticked the box that would return all of my objects to my Lost and Found folder. Bam! It was all gone. My skybox and the deck I had worked on for so long, the waterfall, the trees I had placed on the mountainside, the denizens of the deep. Vanished into, I hoped, although it didn’t turn out that way, my inventory.

Unfortunately, more than a dozen paid-for objects didn’t show up—sea creatures mostly. This did not improve my mood.

I IMed Live Help and cleared the cache and rebooted, as instructed. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. None of the objects in my Lost and Found rezzed the missing menagerie.

I set about recreating, as best I could, Patrice’s work, mentally kicking myself all the while. I hollowed out the mountain, excavating below sea level, and shaped beaches and deepened the river and ocean areas. I told myself I would hold off on the excavation for the underwater room until I could coordinate with Xubi.

I was working on the last section of beach when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone fly past. It was, of all people, Patrice.

As you might imagine, I was in a foul, foul mood. I mean, I had wiped out Patrice’s $3800L landscaping job and it was long past time to report back to work in RL. I felt like kicking a wall. The last thing I wanted was for someone—much less Patrice, whose work I had destroyed, and toward whom I was feeling a great deal of guilt—to show up. I just wanted to work on the land.

It wasn’t about Patrice; it was about my stupidity. Still, I was taking it out on others. I was replying reluctantly and sporadically to friends who were asking me how I was doing. I was feeling shame and anger and remorse, and I was—a rare thing for me—incapable of being gracious.

But feeling bad and being frantic to finish the beach line was no excuse for being deliberately impolite, especially to someone as committed to her work as was Patrice. I stopped throwing earth around and told Patrice what I had done.

“I know how serious you are about terraforming,” I told her. “You have a meddling fool for a client.”

She kept saying she was sorry. I repeatedly reassured her that it wasn’t her fault, although of course what she meant she was sorry it had happened, sorry I was upset. It's a girl thing.

Ordinarily, I would have been quick to compliment Patrice on her guerrilla-chic outfit—camo pants, a CCCP shirt, and a beret, but I was too busy with self-blame to work around to it. I’m afraid that despite my best efforts, I was not, at that moment, a particularly pleasant person..

Knowing how I would have felt if had been in Patrice’s shoes, I was astonished to hear from her that she really liked me. It was just what I needed to hear.

Thank you, Patrice. Thank you for your graciousness. Thank you for making a black day better.

-----

Photo: Patrice in commie mode. Note Sam Stork's lava flow in background.

Working in Three Dimensions

Written 12 December, 2006

My Volcano

XIII: Working in Three Dimensions

A 4096 square meter property isn’t all that big, really. It’s about 37,000 square feet, about 190 feet per side, if the property is square. That’s room enough for a good-sized house and a lawn.

The volcano makes my land seem much bigger. There are beaches along three sides of the island, and underwater areas near the property lines, the mountain itself (one can walk up it if one wants), the caldera with boiling lava, and the under-the-volcano area. That seems like a lot of real estate.

The addition of Mother Ship Guy's former lot gives me more than 400 additional prims, more beach, and a riverfront.

So my 6144 square meter property seems much larger than it is.

The hollowed-out volcano increases the livable space. So do skyboxes. Currently I’ve placed two-- the one I’ll use for entertaining, and Chrissy’s house. She’s still searching for that perfect low-prim, low-cost bed with just the right sexual pose balls, so her house remains empty and uninhabited.

In the excavation I had asked Patrice to make beneath the house site, I’ve placed a room. I made a 10 x 10 x 7 meter prim, hollowed it, made two copies, and joined them, then made end walls. At a net cost of five prims, I managed to make a new floor for my house that is 30 meters long, 10 wide, and seven high.

There’s a catch: the room is entirely underwater.

It’s okay; avatars can breathe underwater. We’re not like the Sims, for goodness sakes! We don’t have to take ourselves to the bathroom, or eat, or build up relaxation points. We never have to come up to breathe. And so it’s possible to add an underwater addition to my house.

Long distance vision is obscured underwater, so the far end of the big room looks dark from the near end. Lights would fix that, but a more elegant solution is to divide the big room into three sections, using round doorways that match the house above.

The outside of the underwater house is yellow coral—appropriate for its setting, I think.

I’ve laid in the floor-- hardwood along two sections, and a carpet on the third. The carpet has a moving reef pattern that is quite spectacular. I’m still thinking about textures for the walls and ceiling.

I’ve turned the inside surface of the two end prims into giant television screens. Right now all that plays is “Minnie the Moocher,” a Betty Boop cartoon that features a live performance by Cab Calloway and his band. I need to find a video player that will let me change stations like my Wurlitzer lets me change radio stations.

The island is shaping up!

Chey Shapes the Beaches

Written 12 December, 2006

My Volcano

XII. Chey Shapes the Beaches

Patrice didn’t say much when she came back, but if I were her I would have been pissed.

“You did what?” I would have roared. Instead, she took a look inside the crater and seemed satisfied, even though the swimming hole had shrunk considerably.

I’m sorry I was terraforming behind your back,” I told her later. “I couldn’t restrain myself.”

“Don’t worry, hon,” she replied. “Clients do it all the time.”

I was happy to learn it wasn’t just me.

New Beaches

I hired Patrice to make beaches on the newly-acquired east side of the island and lower the riverbed.

But she had to leave again, and I couldn’t restrain myself.

I used the Lower, Flatten, and Smooth terraforming tools to turn part of the mountainside into beach and to lower the river bottom. It took a good ninety minutes, but when I was done, there was a nice flat beach and the river was deep enough to swim in.

The job was pretty well done by the time Patrice got back. I would have been seriously pissed, but if she was she didn’t show it.

She left my work alone, which I guess meant that she thought I had done an okay job.

I paid her the agreed upon amount, of course.


I’m glad she’s still my friend.

-----

Photo: Beaches

Photo: A shark and an octopus await those swimming in the river.

Correction: Shark and octopus were lost when items were returned to owner (me), before I could get a snapshot. There's a $100L reward for their safe return.