The Corn Field

Aaaaah, finally! I've been to THE CORN FIELD! I wanted to do that ever since I learned about its existence. Quick info for those of you who never heard of it:

The Corn Field is a region of mythological status where once naughty avatars were sent to think about what they had done. "The corn field" is a vast star-lit field of corn and was cut off from communication with the rest of the world (a reference to the classic Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life").

Source: Second Life Wiki

Since bad avatars are not sent to The Corn Field anymore and it stayed closed to the public, noone could actually visit it. People only knew about its existence from a single post of an avatar that was once sent there. However, it was opened for October 28-30 this year, yay! It's decorated for Halloween, but I don't mind - my curiosity is sooo satisfied :)

The Corn Field is fun to explore.





But once it gets dark, it can be quite spooky ^^



I won't spoil the fun for you, you have to go and explore yourself, but be aware that almost all the Lindens you'll meet there are zombies. Also, Mia Linden is the most scaaaarrryyyyyy. And if you have a feeling that Lexie Linden is watching and following you, but when you turn around she's not there... SHE IS FOLLOWING YOU! Have fun :)

More than a canvas, more than a train

Have you seen AM Radio's Surface build yet? There's a wheat field surrounded by green hills, and a rich countryside scenery spreads as far as the horizon. A train is standing in the middle of this rural area and the atmosphere reminds me of an old farm. It would just be a pretty location like many other in SL, if not for one cool innovative idea: you can actually paint grafitti on the train! Well, the painting itself happens on a website, but once the picture is sent to project's Flickr stream, it appears on the train in-world as well - through SL media. Creative!







Click here for a TP and try it yourself, it's fun :)

Open Grid joke :)

Yesterday evening I went with Sql and Uzi to Open Grid. No, no worries, I'm not leaving Second Life. I'm just exploring the possibilities ^^ My first impression was that it's how early days of Second Life must have looked like - if you want someting, create it. We were busy chatting, testing stuff and teleporting around when suddenly our avatars turned into stick figures. But these were not really the kind of stick figures you are used to. These were really weird stick figures with all body parts in wrong places. We tried relogging, cache clearing and so on, but we couldn't figure out what caused the problem. Then finally Sql realized it was 4 minutes past midnight and April Fool's Day started :) We took a picture, trying to look our best - well, as much as a stick figure can look ;)


From the left, majestically floating: Ayumi, Uzi and Sql

Happy April Fool's Day! :)

A new place on the map

I've been super busy lately, together with a few other Polish avatars. In two weeks we created an island, which we called Polska Republika (the Polish Republic). It's a Polish place (the official language is Polish) where it's the community who decide about the growth and development of the island. The island is going to have its own government (chosen by the community and led by the queen - Uzi, who is the owner of the island) and constitution (currently in the making). We have the preamble ready and it goes like this (more less, I translated it from Polish):

We the Founders of the Polish Republic in Second Life, not professing any rules except ToS and Big Six, linking to the best traditions of Second Life, where everyone is free and even, and decides about oneself, bound by friendship ties with every avatar, we set up the Constitution of Polish Republic as the basic law and hand over the land to all of you to administer. All avatars who, for the good of Republic, will follow the constitution, we call to do that towards the common good and common fun.

Yesterday we opened the Republic and I must say it was a huge success. Here are a few pictures from the opening academy:


Polish Republic Town Square, right after opening the island to the public


Photo with visitors


The queen and the Ladies - Uzi, Morri and me


Group photo with visitors in front of the royal palace


Right before cutting the opening band - the preamble is read on voice


Right after cutting the opening band... Yes, Uzi did that with a katana :) And the royal fanfare was played.


Right after cutting the opening band... Uzi and Dru.


The island (note the shape) was full during the concert. The limit was set to 80 avatars (to keep the lag to minimum) so we kept getting IMs from people to let them in. What a success, eh? We need another island ;)

The island is open to everyone, so I'd like to invite all of you to come and see it. Particularly I invite you to our public library because I manage it ^^ and because the books in there are mostly in English, so you may use them freely and learn a bit about Second Life. Some of the library staff might not know the English language though, so you'll need to get by yourself if that's the case :)


The public library

As always let me know what you think.

An evening at Getsuei Okiya

Where do you go when you want to drink some really good green tea? A Japanese tea house of course! Geishas are masters when it comes to preparing tea, as well as singing and giving performances. Yesterday evening, together with my friend Uzi, we decided to visit Getsuei Okiya to see geishas performing traditional dances and playing instruments. We dressed up in kimonos and geta sandals, and went to Antiquity Township East where the tea house is located.





The atmosphere of the place is indeed very Japanese. Upon arrival we were greeted by blossoming apple trees and the tranquil mood of the area. One of the geishas invited us inside, to the room decorated with tatami mats, paper lanterns and incense sticks. We took a sit at one of the tables and watched geishas prepare for the performance.



(Yes, I took that picture to show the beautiful back of our kimonos :))

I tasted a California roll and then decided to drink tea, while Uzi enjoyed her hosomaki.



As more guests arrived, the show started and we spent the evening listening to music, watching the performance, talking and enjoying ourselves.





There's one thing I missed though - there should have been a third geisha, reading haiku or some Japanese stories. It would complete the evening perfectly. Also, the number of local lights in there could solve the energy crisis, but I guess that's a result of 'old client to Windlight transition'. Nevertheless it was a nice experience. And we took some pictures in the garden after the performance finished.

Finding Magellan Linden

Today I joined a growing list of SL residents looking for Magellan Linden. If you don't know what I'm talking about, start with this blog post: The Search for Magellan Linden Starts Now!, this forum thread: Where In The World Is Magellan Linden? and a movie by Osprey Therian:



So today I went to see Magellan's camp site at the new continent, Gaeta, and to spot Magellan in-world if possible.



I've been teleporting to the green dots appearing on the map, but all these were other explorers in search of Magellan. The region itself isn't really helpful. It is often producing green dots where there are no avatars. Sometimes your dot stays in the place you teleported from and in result many explorers keep chasing their own ghost dots.

So many green dots, and none of them was Magellan. Where could he be?



I noticed his ship wreck under water, and more metal pieces under the beach nearby, but there were no clues.



I wonder if all the explorers are missing something... After all, Magellan asked the brave ones to follow him. There must be a clue somewhere.



As I sat at the dock to think, more explorers came. And so I met HeadBurro Antfarm and Teetah Beck. We quickly became friends, being on the same mission. Discussing together, we found some new information but it was nothing that would move us forward. At some point Dee and Guy Linden appeared. We asked them about Magellan, but they didn't see him around. Or so they say.



As we've been trying to discover some new trace, more and more explorers were joining us, including Natacha Chernov, who said she saw Magellan just yesterday!



Our findings:

• There's a new addition to the camp - a FIC badge. It wasn't there yesterday, and I think it wasn't there in the morning today. It must have fallen out of Magellan's pocket, which means he was there very recently. And probably too busy to notice the lack of the badge.
• There are two parcels belonging to Magellan. One, with the camp site, and land description: "Let those follow me who can!" and the other one, with the ship wreck under water, and description: "Follow me who dares!". A challenge, definitely a challenge.
• Just recently a "no-fly" restriction was added to Magellan's parcel. Why?
  
• As you look at the mini-map, you can notice a weird square object where the dock is. We flew very high using various devices to see if there's any platform in the sky, but there's nothing there. So we started to look under the dock, but nothing there as well. Does it have anything to do with Osprey's letter to Magellan? There's a part saying: "It's all water under the bridge now. I hope you understand". Is it really a coincidence?
• We tried to create an online indicator to see when Magellan is online and we noticed the script can't retrieve Magellan's name from his key. This might have something to do with his profile, that is showing up only in newer Second Life All tab search. Just in case, we retrieved Magellan's key from his tent and we can confirm it is the same one as posted in SL forums.
  

That's all we found, and mostly these are new questions, not the answers - but maybe this will inspire someone else to find the right track?

In the meanwhile, I created an aparatus checking whether Magellan is online (provided that the key we have is really the one). The aparatus should start emiting particles, say that Magellan is online every few seconds and stream a continuous sound alarm as soon as Magellan logs in.



I was going to give the aparatus for free, but I realised it could be used as a griefing tool. It is designed to be quite noisy, so that I can notice Magellan's presence even when switched to another application. But you'll probably get to see it, as I'll be taking it with me to Gaeta now.

If you notice anything new, I'll be very happy to know. Also, don't forget to contact Salazar Jack who leads the group of explorers - sharing information will help us all find Magellan faster. Good luck on your search!

Saving Codestation

I've been hearing about IBM's Codestation game, Sentinel 2.0, for a while now but hadn't visited the location until yesterday. For those of you who haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, here's a little explanation from the game FAQ note:

This is a puzzle-based adventure game that will test your coding and building skills while working your brain. IBM CODESTATION has been overtaken by a foul, pink beast named Double-Bad Bugra. Your object is to rebuild SENTINEL, the defender of CODESTATION, and defeat Double-Bad Bugra. If you succeed, you will be rewarded with a car designed especially for the challenge by The Electric Sheep Company.

Basically the idea is that there are four parts of Sentinel (arms, body, legs and head) hidden in different locations around SL. Your job is to find them, rebuild Sentinel and participate in the final challenge on September 19. To find the parts you use black boxes released every two weeks at IBM Codestation (you need to figure out yourself how these work).

So far there have been two black boxes released and I must say I'm a little disapointed. I was hoping for some difficult riddles, that take time to solve. But the parts are actually very easy to find and there's not much guessing involved. There are still two more boxes to come though, so I'm hoping for some difficulty increase :)

Nevertheless, the whole idea is very creative and promotes the Codestation in a humorous way (devastating pony-tails, lol!). The Codestation itself is a nice contribution for SL community too, offering open-source scripts and objects. All in all, I like the project and I'm looking forward to see what's coming next.

Speaking about the game, I need to mention the sim where the second stage takes place - it's the most beautiful sim I've ever seen in SL so far. It's a stunning woodland area filled with trees, foliage, slopes, waters, bridges and light beams. Here's a photo I made there... Yes, it's a paradise for photographers:



Definitely worth seeing. Care to go for a walk?

The mystery of The Man

In the old sim of Natoma, on the top of Philip's Hill, there stands a statue that remembers the ancient times of Linden World*. It is said to be one of the oldest and longest standing structures in Second Life (along with Arch'D Linden Grande and Delerium Castle).



The Man statue, built by oldjohn Linden in year 2002, is one of the very few builds that survived the transition to Beta. The statue was originally located in the town square of Linden City (the first city in Second Life as far as I know). The Linden City was completely deleted when moving to Beta and the Natoma sim kept changing a lot since then, but The Man remained intact. For the first 4 years, The Man was stretching his arms towards the sky. Since 2006 he is holding SL3B Time Vault, which contains items contributed by residents for future generations of SL.

Looking at the statue, you won't notice anything unusual at first. However, the more you examine, the more it gets interesting. One of the funniest facts about the statue is that one of its parts was built 3 months later than the others. And that would be the statue's head. Yes, the statue was headless for 3 months :)



It was probably quite simple in the beginning, with head added later to give it more detail, but it's still pretty funny when you think of it.

Looking closer you will notice a bottle of sake on the back of the monument.



And that's the mystery I mention in the title. Why is it there? It's certainly not a random object, since it's owned by Governor Linden. The bottle was built in 2005 and that's actually the only information I could find about it. Any ideas?
______________
* That's how Second Life was called in the Alpha stage.