A Look back on Land From O to H

There's something cleansing about making major changes on one's property. 

Bringing Cartoon World to Hydrangea seems to be a logical course of action, though not a comfortable one.  Cartoon World WAS my first land over four years ago on Gaeta 4 continent, and would have been fine if it weren't for those two griefers disguised as entrepreneur. They taught me to keep my borders wide with their two-bit alpha bushes routine.  As a result I went from 512 to 2048.  Since then the couple broke up: he left SL and she has sex and leather groups listed in her profile.  

Capital Improvements under way in Hydrangea

I would still be in Juliet (Nautlius) if it weren't for some land-grubbing weirdo from another sim who up and decided to expand to 3 sims to make a European village. The expanse of land to my south was on an incline below towards water, and as soon as they acquired it they erected a massive wall from a megapim so all I could do is look straight up to see the sky.  Within a week I had a nice piece of land in Anilis, perfectly timed a day before the anti-adfarm rules went into effect.  I was right beside TMA, the Jewish neighborhood founded by Beth Odets and along an SLRR line. Within hours Wacko bought the Juliet land.

During my time in Juliet I'd gained an additional area of land in Angler, an empty sim parceled out for beach property.  While Juliet was for a home, my gallery and a 7seas fishing area, Angler was for a pool shop.  Anilis was nice and roomy if not oddly shaped, and of course there were the neighbors in Nessus. Cartoon World - still in its original terra cotta design - was moved intact from Juliet.

I waited a good long time there while the SLRR project was set aside for things such as building Zindra.  Then Flossberg, Straaf and AnnMarie Otoole (aka SL's slumlords of transportation) started running their crappy boxes by my place on the tracks.  Since then and long after my departure SLRR has has proceeded and the Virtual Rail Consortium aka VRC now has a presencein Anilis with a rail house by a new junction (an additional set of tracks branching east was added by the LDPW.

Documented weirdness at Angler and the need to expand Cartoon World put me into a position to look towards Bay City.  I bartered land and Lindens to get my first parcel in Falconmoon just over 2 years ago.  Halfway through I moved to the street and sold the previous plot.

I wanted a diner. I made one on my Winterfaire land for the season to try out and was keen to move on to a permanent one.  Anillis wasn't conducive to a diner; I gave up on the concept of a Bay City Rollers Diner due to not being rich enough for an auctioned spot beside Route 66. I watched an abandoned parcel in Pawpaw at a 3-way intersection which was was given up by a Scion chicken breeder (we had a problem with those lagging down Anilis and neighboring regions during the Scion Craze).  It never saw auction; Linden Labs took it back and made it into an SLRR station.  All's well that ends well...

Remember Plano?  It was PG, too small, and situated too close to Prok's rentals.  I was glad to get rid of it.  1024sqm became "too small."

While exploring the atoll, I came on Hydrangea and abandoned land bordered by two routes and a winding path connecting them.  I envisioned people riding their vehicles along Route 4 and coming upon a sign with a rotating top and a "family restaurant," aka diner with parking.  That would be MY diner there someday. 

I waited for almost half a year when it happened.  I parceled out and sold Anilis (couldn't afford tier for both or I would have kept it) and saved up the money. I was ready to outbid anyone to US$75.  Times being what they were, with porn being relocated to the new Zindra continent, the market was mush. It was mine for less than $35 when it finally went to auction.  My friends and I partied on the bare land and I blessed it with a consecration ceremony. 

A little over a year ago I bought the last of my tier in Hydrangea when somebody abandoned a small parcel in the same sim. More prims...

Cartoon World on Gershwin Blvd in Bay City - Falconmoon.

Selling my Bay City property won't lower my tier in any way.  There's  nothing wrong with the location.  In fact, this is the finest parcel available in all of Bay City at the moment.

And Now a Few Words About Banlines

For those who wandered here from elsewhere, allow me to explain what banlines are.  They're an illusory form of security in Second Life.  A designated perimeter can be set to block specific people, everyone, everyone except friends, everyone except members of a group, everyone except those on a guest list, permit only those who pay a fee, and so on.  When this is set, a kind of forcefield is not only set along that perimeter but above as well. Usually 88 meters up from the ground.

The two most popular scenarios people set public banlines are as follows:

1) Someone is harassing the landowner and said landowner either doesn't not know how to block the offending avatar or there have been alts used to get past a specified ban, and

2) Residents are having sillysex and don't want anyone barging in on them.

This doesn't prevent anyone from looking in though.  As my friend Peter once said, banlines simply "keep people out" with regard to an avatar's physical access.

Aesthetically, they can be an issue.  They appear from within 1 or 2 meters away, which means they are not obvious from a distance so they are not an eyesore to most, but having a banliner for a neighbor can be a problem as the alpha stripe wall appears along your property and through other alpha textures such as your windows, trees, and fencing.  Recent viewers have allowed homeowners to hide banlines so that paranoid neighbors are no longer a factor when selecting a place to settle.  It also helps to have a property large enough that you're seldom at a border.

This leaves vehicles.  When an avatar walks or flies into banlines they bounce harmlessly off.  Riding into them means that ride is over. 

 From an explorer's perspective, setting up banlines against a route may be seen as a form of griefing. Given their detrimental effect on the SL user experience, it's a shame either regulations weren't put into effect for Mainland parcels from the start or the technology allowed for vehicles to harmlessly bounce off banlines the same way avatars do. They've already changed the result on some sim servers: instead of autoreturning the vehicle and having one fall to the ground, the vehicle is most often caught on banlines like a web. You now have to take back your vehicle.  I'm sure in most circumstances you can do that, but if you've gotten snagged at an angle which causes you to fall off when you disengage, you might not have had the foresight to prepare and hover rather than plummet and lose sight of the vehicle.

 It's precarious traveling on the northern Sansara route.  Properties and roadside intermingle and one gets snagged by banlines while on the road.  I can see why there is now a protected buffer on newer routes (and even that is not enough with some sim crossings), But how about the old ones?  Either offer more rez zones or ask land owners to split off strategic parts of their properties and set bordering portions without banlines, creating a buffer which allows scripts so people can ride by.  Or use one of those security orbs since no one riding wants to stick around when they fly over or waver through a snippet of property while stabilizing their handling after a region crossing.  Vehicle users aren't interested in your place and what you do inside your homes anyway.  Good luck trying to enforce that though.

Update Scourgemobiles & Test Drive

Three more rezzers, one of them a "bus stop," were found in Heterocera since last writing.  I've updated the list I keep inworld.

Last weekend I sent Snurky to go for an ex-Scourge-sion. hahaha

It was interesting. Not a minute or two into the ride it offered to sell the car, claiming the vehicle was free and the price was for the automated script.  Even if that's the case, using these creators' builds to solicit scripts when at least one of them noticeably left over exploitation of their creations is a bit low.  The ride itself was okay for the first minute as a novelty concept, but the lumbering around got tedious very quickly. These vehicles handle the roads like someone drunk feeling their way in the dark at night to get to the bathroom.

I had an odd visit from a group with dramatic notions of non-involvement.  I neither came to them nor asked for help from any transportation group of residents.  Wouldn't non-involvement suggest that the best course of action would be silent observation from a safe distance?  If they cannot help as friends and individuals then that's that. It's very simple.  At any rate, my position concerns the quality of residents' lives being compromised by the actions of one selfish person's avatars.  Any limitations imposed - and there will have to be to do right by Mainland's denizens - will affect their group and similar ones.  I originally took them to be enthusiasts looking to see the routes built so they could enjoy riding on them with glorious constructs; turns out they have several automated projects among their members.

I'm calling the compulsion to schedule personal, unmanned vehicles on protected roads and rail Skimbleshanks' Syndrome.  That's what they have.  They missed the point of having routes to allow them to enjoy the ride and explore.  Sort of like losing one's soul in a way. I still maintain that if you want to run your own transportation service, do it on your own property like many, far more talented residents have.

This would be a separate behavior from what I'm trying to put a stop to.  The person in question just litters the routes, and enough of us have had our fill of them.  Now all we need is Linden Intervention.

The Scourge Continues

So during my break, instead of working on the comic and some new T-shirt designs for the gallery, I went on a mission to track as many Rezzers I could find on Mainland responsible for the Scourgemobiles.  It's very possible that i've missed some in Sansara for the reasons brought up last post. 

I continue to be in awe of what residents have created.  It's really quite nice, from ambitious urban downtown districts on Corsica to lovely seaside towns on Nautlius.  Gaeta along Route 8 consists predominantly of marinas and tropical resorts: Tiki and fishbait; you can smell the seawater.  The inland routes are like driving through a New England Colonial town.

And then the Scourgemobiles - a representation of everything wrong in our society - mar these landscapes.

It's a sin.  It truly is. 

There's even more going on: the use of one Arcadia Asylum's vehicles for this among other builders.  Way more than one fan of AA's expressed that she would not be happy knowing her builds were used to disrupt the Second Life experiences so many at the whim of one person.

In my travels I've met more supporters and made a couple more friends. If anything good comes from all this, I've already got the icing on the cake.

I haven't ridden those things personally, but from what I've heard maybe I should.

There are two bits I've been told about them: first that they nag for money whenever you unsit from one.  Asking for a tip: it is what it is. Either you put a jar in the prefab station or you stop touting it as a free ride.  The other is that if you ride in one long enough, it offers the vehicle for sale - more soliciting.  They're worse than anyone thought: they're adfarms in motion, solocitation scripts dominating protected land, shoving residents out of their way.

Remember my recent post about Linden Labs having to set rules and make concessions?  Remember when new ones are set for automated and unmanned vehicles, and that it won't have been the fault of Linden Labs, Philip, Jack, Blondin, or even the new CEO Rod.  The changes and restrictions were the result of one resident's actions.

The Road Less Hoverboarded

  As mentioned previously here and/or on Twitter, I've taken to going to places in Second Life either via TARDIS or hoverboard over teleporting or by Stargate. The folks at New London have given me my own TARDIS landing spot on a moon just a ways from a Judoon ship.  I've mastered three different routes from The Starship Diner to TMA Nessus and the railyards of Gluphasia.  I've easily navigated from Purple in Sansara across the water to Heterocera up the Atoll coast to Starship Diner.

What fascinates me the most is the roadside content.  Think of it: about two-and a half years ago most of Mainland was cluttered with cheesy porn and adfarms along bare roadbeds.  Now the porn is gone, the adfarms are 90% clear, and the roads paved.  In fact it seems properties along these roads live up to what the Moles have put down.  There is true inspiration at work.

While I've made the excursion from Cartoon World in Bay City to Abbotts Aerodrome, it's a dodgy route which involves skirting the Ahern Welcome Area to avoid the lag and 4-way region crossing (especially since once you crash, the ride is over; there are no rezzing zones nearby) and traversing terrain there's the risk of hitting a banline.

I've even attempted from Heterocera to Bay City, a very difficult and irritating route by virtue of poor terraforming and intermittent patches of road.  Even went from Andrew Linden's office hour location in Denby to Abbotts, an equally unpleasant feat with the added obstacle of a full help island region bordered by banlined parcels.

Sansara needs a major replanning.  No access to key areas from roads - when there IS a road - except between the Bay City- Nova Albion - Suburbs sector (and guess what? Two of those communities are not recognized by LL as part of Sansara).  You can see they plopped down some regions, added more regions, still more, pieces added here, some snowy ones there, some beach terrain in the corner...

There's no budget for it nor staff.  It seems to me many people who once owned estates - when they stay in SL - could be embracing large chunks of Mainland more and more; the dollar auctions are empty.

We're certainly seeing less 512's on Mainland.  Homesteads are bringing people into the Noob Continent as a first step (when inhabitants aren't Oldbies or estate owners).  They break out from there in search of open spaces and roomy, configurable land.  It could be why roadside lands more and more have that fresh look to them.  Michael Linden has indicated that he and the Moles have been assigned to add more land to the N C so there's certainly fresh meat for a new generation of property owners to set the look.