Cape Florida

By Gemma Cleanslate

After all my winter visits to snowy cold places, I needed a short vacation in Second Life in a warm site. I was lucky enough to find a perfect region. This sim is the replica of a place I would enjoy seeing in real life right about now, Cape Florida State Park. In real life it offers all the enjoyment of beach and tropical foliage with boardwalks and trails to traverse.

 As soon as I landed at the SL Cape Florida I felt the lushness of the region. The beautiful vibrant flowers and palms everywhere relaxed me immediately. Right at the entrance, there is a teleport column giving you venues to visit. Since the famed Lighthouse was right there I climbed the spiral stairs to the top to get a view of the whole region.

Then I decided to visit the nearby beach where there are mats and towels . There were several people enjoying the sand and water. I found a nice shower to get off all the salt before I went to explore more. I stopped at an ice cream truck for a sweet treat. As I walked back into the palms along the boardwalk I saw several gazebos, pergolas , picnic areas with food on the table and dance balls for  couples  to visit , dance and talk.

I arrived at the impressive Club House. The ground floor has a welcome desk with a group inviter, a small lounge area and a shop, Apotheosis. I sat on a couch which was over a glass aquarium with numerous species of fish to observe.  Then I climbed the stairs where I found several areas: a bar , a lounge with an enormous TV and a great pool table ,and, in the final room a lavish buffet . I definitely stopped there to check out the food. In spite of the ice cream I was hungry after the time at the beach. Huge choice!

The next floor had another bar and a club atmosphere where events are often held according to the board. This floor has a large glassed floor with another aquarium below.The shows here include live singers, djs, tribute acts and more to come. I know they are looking for more acts and hosts. You can contact Chloe (ChloeElizabethGrace Resident), or Jackstir Resident, co-managers of the Club.

I asked the owner Teren Silverheart (Terenglen Resident), who is a Floridian, how long he had this region. “ this sim has been here since around September of last year. Previously I had a full sim I leased but  found it too restrictive and it did not allow me to have the landscaping I wanted. We allow people to rez here within reason if they are a group member and we hold concerts on the beach. The whole point of this is to have created a place that others can enjoy . “  Set aside a day to take a trip to this enjoyable site.

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cape%20Florida/215/71/21

Gemma Cleanslate

France Portnawak

By Fritter Enzyme

Delicious with pastel colors, and dreamy with semi -transparent furniture, the France Portnawak sim is the cream de la cream of romantic places.  Captured in a daylight setting, it is a painting to walk through.  Cats, rabbits, goats, donkeys and birds are about the many places with animated settings for snuggling and romance.  Picnic spots, horse rides, boat rides all available to meet your fancy. 

Bring your Second Life camera, for in this unique world of soft play with colors and light, you should surely find your artistic muse.   Ethereal ambient music streams in this little piece of French countryside.  Hang out in the maison, or home and paint, wash up at an animated sink or lounge and snuggle in a soft bed.  The transparency extends to the rocks in the water and trunks of the trees.  Cotton candy clouds roll through the azure skies ever changing the scene. 

 You might want to use a translator, English is not the main language.  But beauty is universal and you will enjoy finding the ‘sweet spots’ here.  There are many boats and inner tubes to spend time on enjoying the reflective water fronts and the fishies there in.  The bamboo grove have a nice dock feature where you can rest in some of the many types of law furniture they have out, or the blankets.  Change your windlight's settings and enjoy the many candles surrounding the sitting areas.  It is truly a meditative place to come to and a real treat for Valentine’s Day lovers. 

Teleport up to the gift shop.  It has many well-made clothes in French style and has equal amounts of clothes for men as for women, something I find very rare in Second Life.  Grab some free outfits and get in fashion for your explorations.  Yes, I did say free.  One side is gifts the other is a shop with great items you will not see elsewhere. 

Take a trip to the lighthouse island and absorb the scenery from there.  But sure to find the fine arts museum!  It is a very nice setting to see some great works.  Agence de Voyages has a link there, it is a Second Life travel agency,  All text is in French, unfortunately for me and my limited language, but it shows many interesting French places to go see when you are done with France Parnawak. 

Bring some virtual wine and some brie to snack on for your fireside fun.  Pounce on it now, you never know how long sims will last in our world. 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dreamworld%20Volcano/178/194/21

Fritter Enzyme

LPP Neo: A Place of Floods and Mystery

By Becky Shamen

This location seems to be a real paradox. On the one hand, it is one of the newest sims around, and yet it looks like a civilization, left in ruin by waves of rising sea levels. The Destination Guide gives only a brief description.

"From the fallen lighthouse to the marooned submarine and flooded railway, this house of steampunk style survives amidst a drowned region that is well worth exploring."

At first sight, our eyes tell us that almost all of the three connected sims are covered in water, leaving little else to be seen. Soon, our sixth sense begins to draw us in deeper. Perhaps the water is telling us that there is a great mystery to be found and solved, hidden from our eyes, just beneath the surface. We will need to focus our eyes and look for subtle clues.

A picture is worth a thousand words. This article has been richly illustrated, to assist your preparations in your quest for the truth.

When given a map view, in Destination Guide, we see only the three sims of LPP, Studio4D and Club Zain. When we spot this local map, titled "Water Lost World Project", we have to ask where the lost sim is. Calling the phantom real estate "Endless" doesn't fit either. Endless implies always was, always will be. What premature pralaya has removed all but the idea of this, so called, Endless sim?

When we arrived, on a dock in LPP, there was a submarine moored before us. Before it could be examined, it sank beneath the water. Our original plan included using a boat or sub, to explore the area, but further research revealed this U-boat occupies the only channel, deep enough for a ship, and it is blocked at both ends and too narrow to turn around in. It is truly marooned, but still has some life left to it.

Near by, we find the remains of a fallen light house. It's beacon still shines and rotates, telling us to look around, to learn more of the story. The scene hints at how the land became covered by water. Only a fool would blame this on global warming. Melting ice caps would take years to cover the island with water and allow residents time to build higher. A tsunami could destroy buildings, but the ground water would all drain off in a day. If real life geology can be applied to SL, we must conclude that this sim has been the victim of an earthquake, which has lowered the land (subducted), perhaps by 10 meters, leaving only the hill tops.

If you keep to the paths, between the sparse attractions on these sims, you'll keep your powder dry. Stray a bit and you'll wish you had worn hip boots or a wet suit. There are almost no shopping places here. The main shop has clothing for women and a black ops suit or two for men, but the prices are high, so even Sha would avoid going there. This shop, for Cyber Dolls, has some unique and well textured outfits. It's worth a look, even if you don't buy.

We head North from LPP, along the flooded railway, to Studio4D. The sim is almost entirely covered with a shop that sells dance animations. We tried a few, but at more than twice the price of most, quickly headed for the last sim in the group. The largest structure on the Club Zain sim is called the Main Floor and seems to be built, on stilts, to accomodate for the water. Inside, it's like a mix of dance club and TV studio. It reminds one of the sort of place where shows like "Soul Train" or "American Band Stand" would be recorded.

Just North of the Main Floor building, there is another postdiluvian structure, called the Stadium. It has a large dance floor, made of clear glass, flanked by enough bleacher seating to accomodate all the people that have visited this site, since it's beginning. Music is provided by a state of the art DJ booth, with a crate of vinyl albums and more CD titles than Walmarts stocks. In the center of the dance floor, there is a group of blue and green prims, which, at first seem to be a senseless clutter. As we pan our camera around, we begin to see that there is some planning involved in their placement.

 

A Puzzle

Moving the camera up, for a birds-eye view, we can see these prims have been arranged to form a symbol which is communicating some kind of message. The prims are placed on three levels, which we can study, in an attempt to decipher the symbol. At ground level, 15 blue triangles, all pointing the same direction, are arranged into a large triangle, broken up by progressively smaller ones, all pointed in the same direction. We don't know, yet, which of three directions our attention is being pointed in. About one meter above the floor, three green triangles sit above the blue ones on the floor. This way of "highlighting" tells us to look in the direction of the DJ booth. Higher still, we find 12 green bullets, arranged in a circle, all pointed to it's center. Had they been spaced equally around the circle, they might suggest a clock face or time. These bullets have left a gap from 10:30 to 12:00, which could mean either the time has not arrived or has been cut short. We are being given a message about this DJ, or perhaps DJs in general. Either their time has yet to come or it has been cut short. We will need more clues, to get the whole story.

The thing is, everywhere you go, there are odd things, found strewn about, that could be another clue. In writing this article, we returned many times to see things that we had passed before, thinking them odd but unimportant, but now that the puzzle was being pieced together, they began to fit and fill in more detail. The return visits also turned up new things that hadn't been seen before. In SL, when you click on a door, it opens. We found two doors, one on the ground and the other on the base of the abandoned bridge. They should not have opened to anything, but when clicked gave the message that we were not allowed to enter. Knowing that there were no others on the sims, we used the cam to pan around to the backside of the doors and find a chair or pose ball to sit on and poof, we were inside forbidden areas and finding more clues. At the base of the bridge, this technique got us into the "Stray Sheep Diner". This is one of the most developed spots yet. It is very detailed and full of possible clues. It is difficult to understand why the doors are locked. We can only hope that entering doesn't get us banned.

We could tell you much more about this adventure, but our goal is to tempt readers into having adventures of their own. Test your Sherlock Holmes skills and solve the mystery of TPP neo.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/LPP%20NEO/183/88/22
 

 Becky "Sha" Shamen

The First Sims: Stanford

By DrFran Babcock


Stanford is the fourth sim to come on line in Second Life™. I have to confess that I don’t think I have ever visited there until this article. Two big parcels are for sale on the sim, rendering it half the size of most sims, and there are a few ban lines on some of the properties.

Ban Lines

I will use this opportunity to opine about ban lines a bit. I…hate…them. Hey, ban line people, the moment that I see them, I use my camera to look into the place that is blocked out. Just because folks think they are important enough to believe they can have privacy in Second Life™ doesn’t mean they should make things ugly. Ban lines interfere with transportation and movement in general here, and I oppose them simply for that reason. Please don’t use ban lines. Especially, do not use the kind of banlines/security I encountered on Stanford. This security device sent me home a few times before I had time to fly away, which I found quite rude.
Anyone who wants access to you can figure a way to get it, and you disturb the serenity of nomadic people like me when you use them.

Rant over: We now return you to our regularly scheduled history.

History of Stanford

Before Jessie, Stanford was one of the weapons sims, or the Outlands as they were called. This all got changed when Stanford, along with Federal, Hawthorne, Shipley, and part of Clyde were changed to residential sims. This happened in 2003, a long time ago, in Second Life’s™ timeline, way before most of us remember. Since this time Stanford has been home to Annie Butlers residence, and to the Stanford mountain. Most of the rest of the island has changed often.

Stanford Mountain exists thanks to  the benefit of being able to terraform the early sims to great heights. The peak of the mountain overlooks the whole sim, and provides a relaxing break from the stresses of everyday Second Life™. There is a nice old-school bench there to sit and ponder your next build project, relationship, or whatever. The really striking feature of the mountain is the stream and waterfall that meanders down the mountain, and was build by Jake Cellardoor, whose profile said that he is ten years old! Jake is responsible form much of the parklands and the waterfall on Clementina. One of the lessons I am learning is that there are a handful of old-timers who are devoted to preserving, creating, and maintaining the beauty of the mainland.

Annie Butler’s residence is clearly based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water. It is perched to the south of Stanford Mountain at the base of the falls, and was built by old-timer Juro Kothari, who is also my neighbor on Varney. Sadly, he is never around.

I recommend highly that you go and visit this house. Remember that it was built before the era of sculpts, flexiprims, and mesh. Yet, it is a beautiful representation of the Arts and Crafts movement in architecture and furnishings. The look is timeless, luxurious and earthy all at the same time. Outside there is a deck with many lounges, and an ultra-modern infinity pool. If you don’t know what that means, you will have to go look. The house is open for wandering, and it actually would make a nice date outing. Don’t miss the works of art, the hot tub, or the very necessary kitchen.

I had thought to contact Annie and ask her about her time on Stanford, and her lovely home, but it seems that her profile makes it plain that she is now committed to medieval role-playing, and has left her previous second life behind. One of the reasons I love Second Life™ is that you can be whatever you want to be, and change your course at any time. I respected her desire to not be contacted.

The last public building on the island is a lighthouse—one of the icons of Second Life™. It is on group land owned by the aforementioned Annie Butler and two other people. It is a simple build, well-executed by a younger resident: Sandy Clymer, of Pillow Talk fame. You can teleport to the tower to have some more views.

For Sale

The three plots for sale on Stanford are large and pricey. One is 10,240 meters squared and costs 62,000 Lindens; the next is 8,416 meters squared and costs 51,000 Lindens, and a tiny plot of 160 square meters is a pittance at 15,995 Lindens.

None of these plots have water access, and all are very expensive, but reflect the historical value of the land, and the almost limitless terraforming. The one plot that was on the water that was not for sale, but for rent was attractive.

So What?

As I conclude the fourth visit to the first sims I am struck again by how little history has been preserved. I was pleased to find that much of the topography of Stanford remains unchanged, but there is little of the old sim that is identified or recognized. I know there are history museums in Second Life™, and many places that have information about the past, but I wouldn’t want to go visit the Alamo in Michigan, and I don’t want to see have no place to go to see the roots of this world that I love.

Visit Stanford: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Stanford/128/128/2

DrFran Babcock