Into Mystara

I decided to check out the Realm of Mystara, a very heavy roleplaying area. Mystara is a two-sim region with expansive waterways. I put on an observer tag so I could move around unimpeded, but that didn't seem to be a problem since most people were on land or in the sky. I only encountered a couple of mer folks under the water.

I landed in the Mystfolk Lagoon and found my way to the Merbrary, a Mer Library with an expansive set of notecards hidden in bookcases of shells. The cards contained information about Mer natural sciences, social sciences, and law and politics. I couldn't stomach reading the court transcripts, though. It was way too long, and it was too late at night for me to stomach reading a whole lot of something about nothing.

It was useful to read many of the other notecards, though. I found an actual map of the waterways. They seem to love ruins in this town. Witness:

The Dark Ruins:

The Light Ruins:

The Shallow Ruins:

With the Shallow Ruins, it really is shallow: you can't swim in the water surrounding the ruins. If by some chance you got there via boat, your boat would be stopped at the submerged steps if you had a keel. Only a catboard with a retractable centerboard has a chance at navigating that water, and even then it's so shallow that it's not very likely. There is also a secret cave behind the waterfalls at the Shallow Ruins.

There is some cool artificial life at the Shallow Ruins. A couple of birds caught my eye. They looked incredibly real.

Another thing that the designers of Mystara love is waterfalls. There are a few of them around, and they are lovely.

Lilypad Falls:

Another set of falls:

I think there are at least two more, not including the one near the Shallow Ruins and the one near the Shadow Market, as seen in the first picture. They are all beautiful. I especially loved hanging out at Lilypad Falls. It is the most beautiful spot I saw above the water, without exploring further on land or in the sky.

There is a lot more to Mystara. It has multiple levels of beauty and intrigue built into the environment. It is a prime example of a lovingly made fantasy roleplay environment. I cannot imagine how many hours it took to build it. I will come back and observe, probably as a human, so I can see the rest of Mystara's exquisite wonders.

Late Posting

I'm a little late but I wanted to post a few pics from my cruise with the Leeward Cruising Club last week. LCC is the offspring of the Mowry Bay Cruising Club, a group of folks who just want to sail for fun without racing. I appreciate this group, because I'm not a racer. I just sail for fun, and I don't race. I know my limits and right now, they don't include racing. :)

Instead of driving, I decided to hop a ride with Chaos Mandelbrot on his T-12. Along for the ride are Jane Fossett and Francois Jacques. We were a fabulous crew, hiking to help reduce any heeling. I was a little slow sometimes, though, since I was busy looking for good camera angles to take interesting pictures.

I haven't done anything like this for a while, since I wasn't really in SL very much. I hope that life will continue to permit me to do these kinds of cruises in the future.

Mermaid Life

I've been in SL a little more frequently, but not too too much. One reason why I haven't really posted here is because I got myself a mermaid outfit after my last scuba trip, and have discovered life as a mermaid. It's a natural progression, I suppose, since I love the water.

I've played with the look a bit; I want to get a good skin that is green, but doesn't look like I just put a green overlay on top of my existing skin. So far, I haven't found anything like that yet. I tried blue at first, but it just didn't work out. Then I decided green would be better but I'm still not happy. That's going to be a work in progress. You just have to look at my flickr to see what else I've done with the look. I just bought some gills because I was too lazy to make some of my own. They aren't yet pictured, but they will be, eventually.

I didn't realize that there was a mer subculture in SL. It's pretty cool, so far. I've met some nice people while swimming out in the waters as a mermaid. I've gone swimming in some places designed for mer folk. The Haven of Rogues and Haven of Mermaids sim complex seems to be a pretty strong center for mer culture. There are mer groups and one person is kind enough to publish a newsletter for mer folks. I haven't gotten into any of the roleplay for it yet, but I'm a little leery of that. A search inworld turned up a lot of D/s mer stuff and I really hate the idea that being a mermaid is just another kink in SL's BDSM scene. There must be more to it than that. I guess, in time, I will learn.

In the meanwhile, I will continue to explore, either by boat or by tail, the waters of SL. I recently made a very cool trip around Gaeta with a friend. I know, I'm remiss for not posting pics. I will probably just do it again and take some pics next time. There is plenty to see, both privately owned and Linden owned like this Leviathan skeleton in the middle of a sea on Nautilus continent. Don't be fooled by the picture! There is more to see under the water. Details like these make the world so much more enjoyable.

Scuba Duba

I was too tired to post the other part of my travels last night. I decided to go scuba diving! I enjoy scuba in SL. I would love to learn it in real life, but in SL I can look sooo much better doing it. Ha!


I went to a place called Airithia to dive. I found it through SL's search engine. Airithia is a lovely complex of spas, shops, and fun things to do: surfing, tubing, swimming and scuba diving. There are nice cuddle spots all over the sim.


It is a nice sim, very fun. Being somewhat disconnected from SL for a while, I have no real idea how popular it is. It does have some traffic, but the numbers weren't all that much from what I saw. I am afraid that like all other labors of love, it too will be lost in a matter of time.


On to the scuba diving!

The ad in search said that I could swim with mermaids. Well, that's a bit of false advertising. There were places where I could pose as a mermaid, but no mermaid bots or sculpted mermaids to be found. The only mermaids I saw were in ads at one of the shops. Too bad.

I did enjoy playing a mystical harp that I found. It plays Ave Maria and the Moonlight Sonata. If I had a mermaid outfit on, it would have been perfect.


There is a pretty cool sunken ship under the water. If you swim through it, you will find some romantic poses to get your underwater kink on. I passed on that.


I did find a pretty neat glowing grotto with a lot of fish. That's where the top photo came from.

No sunken ship site would be complete without some lost treasure. I found plenty of pirate booty. Arrr!!


After all was said and done, I took the time to explore the island. That water slide in the aerial overview shot above is not as fun as it appears. You can't just hop on the vehicle and slide down, you have to drive it like a car to get down the slide. It needs better physics.

But one nice feature is the fire pit, where you can roast some marshmallows. It sits amid a field of flowers and some kind of ancient monoliths.


It was a fun trip, and I enjoyed getting out and seeing something different. We need to support the people who make these beautiful destinations for us to explore.

Getting Around

Today, I decided to sail a completely different area. I went to Mowry Bay and started sailing Oriel, my Trudeau One, around the mainland continent of Sansara. Sansara is one of the older continents that existed before the massive land boom of 2007 and the subsequent land gluts. It's got a certain charm to it that some of the newer places just don't have.


It's nice when you have communities that respect the water, and don't place ridiculous obstructions in your way. That is not to say that I didn't meet upon any obstructions, but there is an obvious respect for the maritime nature of this section of the continent here.


Sailing Sansara was a unique pleasure. Generally speaking, it's unobstructed. Unfortunately, there isn't an abundance of ocean sims like with Corsica and Gaeta, but there are protected channels so that you can sail around the sims. Even then, sometimes what stops you is the shallow water. I got stuck a couple of times because my keel just couldn't take the shallowness. When traveling mainland inlets, you need a catboat or some other boat with a small keel or retractable centerboard.


I really enjoyed the trip because there is some really unique architecture here. And I enjoyed the diversity of the builds; it inspires creativity. When diversity works to create character instead of vulgarity, it's very powerful and touching.


It is a sincere pleasure to explore SL this way. Now we just need more people committed to maintaining a cohesive world, without excessive abuse of property rights. I am thankful to those who make the coasts beautiful and allow us to wonder at the beauty without wondering how to get off your banlines.

Ridin' Around In My Automobiiiiillle....

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope you all had a safe holiday.

So I went for another sail. This time, I dusted off Joyeux, my J-Class, and I invited a friend along for the sail.

I started out again at Tradewinds Yacht Club, heading toward Corsica again. This time, I took the near passage and avoided the cluster**** heading west. This was generally a more pleasant ride. I ended up going all the way to the beginning of Gaeta. It was long, but fun. Here's the map:



It was not without its hazards, though. I guess I'm just beating an old drum with the banline morons and obstructionists. They will always be there. They are the result of the libertarian paradise that is SL. Because some dummy somewhere griefs other people, people use ridiculous measures with their land and destroy the coherence of the wider world.

Today's featured dick move is the invisible megaprim that stops your boat dead:


I had to turn on the view transparency option to confirm what I thought was happening. Some of these are phantom prims that you can sail through, like the waves that surround many rocks and beaches. But not these. No, these were just sitting there and making life miserable.

But overall, the trip was pleasant and I got to see some cool things. Particularly, this temple on Corsica was breathtaking:

My friend went offline and I decided to finish the sail in Gaeta. Imagine my pleasant surprise to see this:

It's beautiful, but a little dated. It has a huge Christmas Tree, welcoming people and wishing them a Happy New Year. Uh, it's April and Easter has come and gone now. Methinks it's time to log in and redecorate. :)

After passing that snowy wonder, I decided to end the trip. I wasn't going to go the whole way around Gaeta, not tonight. I will try to be on a little more often. Even with the access issues, sailing is still a load of fun.

One Year Later

Amazing. I didn't realize that it had been a whole year since posting, but here it is.

I haven't been logging in a whole lot. It is sometimes months at a time between logins. And then when Linden Lab made some kind of change to the code that was unfriendly to my video card, I just stayed away since I couldn't help but crash every couple of minutes.

Lately, however, I have tried my hand at logging in and it seems that my video card issues are clear.

I did a lazy sail with the motor today. I just didn't feel like dealing with the SL wind, so I dusted off my first sailing love: Renaissance, my Trudeau Tahiti II Ketch. Renaissance signaled the rebirth of my love for Second Life, after many months leading to burnout. Other than the few close friends I keep, sailing is my true joy in SL.


Life is all about change, and Renaissance is a little dated. Her sailing technology is so much simpler than what is out there now. As much as I love the new boats with the non-flat sail technology, there is a lot to be said for simplicity in things when your life is pretty stressful.

As much as I love Triumphal Yacht Club, I wanted to sail different waters than the Blake Sea. So I just randomly picked a yacht club out of search and landed at Tradewinds Yacht Club. Tradewinds, like Triumphal, is on Nautilus continent. But instead of sailing down to the Blake Sea, I decided to try to motor up toward Corsica.

Bad idea.


As it turns out, it's heavily obstructed once again. Mind you, I made a navigational mistake and missed a set of water sims that connected Corsica to Nautilus in the middle of the continent. I had intended to sail all the way from east to west, to the far western connection to Corsica. Little did I know, however, that that would prove to be an impossible task. Once I got to Cloz, I hit a banline. From the picture, you can see that someone else was also fairly unlucky in the task of passing by, too.

As it turns out, there is no protected path through Cloz or the surrounding sims to get to the open water sims that lead to Corsica. That's a shame. Had I taken the other passage, there would have been a small protected path. Alas, I didn't remember that connection, and I got stuck thanks to yet another sociopathic banline moron.

So instead, I went over to the Fruit Islands and set sail at Mango Yacht Club. It was a beautiful, peaceful ride.


It is sad, though, that people cannot be trusted to maintain the coherence of the world.

Maritime Estates

I had a thought about what it means to be a maritime estate and deciding factors, other than price, for whether or not I would want to live there, based on what happened yesterday with Costa Rica.

I took a look at the map on slurl.com and noted the pervasiveness of shallow water around the entire estate.


There are some deep channels that have been cut, but I have a distinct sense that I would have a difficult time getting around many parts of the estate with a boat bigger than a Leetle Cat with her centerboard up. I also get the feeling that there is too much land, not enough water - but then, as a financial matter, an estate owner has to balance that out so that it's livable at ground level and people don't have to escape to skyboxes.

For comparison's sake, I also looked at the Fruit Islands, as well as Sailor's Cove and the other USS sims.

Fruit Islands:


USS:


And my eyes were opened. I like the layout of the Fruit Islands, indeed. I like the wider expanse of water rather than the narrow layout of sims. However, the shallowness of water is even more apparent to me with the Fruit Islands, making me question the ability to sail any of my big boats.

And then look at the USS estates - lots of deep blue! That's what I'm talking about! A sailing estate (several, in their case) that has a lot of deep water so that I can comfortably sail my big boats.

What I cannot really tell from the picture is, how light of a blue is too light - how shallow is too shallow sail big boats. I'll just say this - I have definitely narrowed down my choices, should I ever decide to own land again. I would hope that the estate managers take a look and think about dredging their estate waters a little deeper.

Costa Rica, Once More With Feeling

I got stuck. Hud says it's a depth of .8 meters.

Really? I mean, really??!!

That makes me really unhappy. You know what they say about first impressions...

Costa Rica, Again

I don't know what is going on, it's not the sims... but it seems that when I'm doing too much camera work, I crash.... try to save a snapshot, crash. I managed to pull off a couple of pics and then crashed. The last crash, I don't know... I was stuck in shallow water. I think I need to switch boats.


This is where the trip ended, around 3 sims north of Guanacaste. I was stuck. I dusted off Renaissance, my Ketch, for use and got stuck in shallow water! Whoever cut this (somewhat narrow) channel didn't cut it very deeply and my keel got caught.

That shouldn't be a dealbreaker for me in considering this estate for buying land, but I'm feeling that it is. My Ketch isn't a particularly large boat, but I've got three big boats - the Larinda, the J-Class, and Columbia. How the hell could I use any of them to get around these parts of the estate? I haven't tested my One, but it could suffer just as well. I can't see myself buying land in this estate if I'm going to be too restricted in getting around it. There are lots of open water sections that seem pretty deep but there are some very narrow pathways too, as I can see from the world map.

*Pause* Maybe I'm just frustrated because of the lag and crashing. I will try again with the Twenty and if the same thing happens, that will seal the deal for me.

As a side note, I switched viewers in between crashing. The first picture was taken with the Dolphin Viewer 2 and the second with Boy Lane's Rainbow Viewer, a 1.22 viewer. You can't really see from these photos at this size, but the rendering between viewer 2.x and viewer 1.x is different - it's smoother with viewer 2. Antialiasing is on 8x in both and 1.x has more jagged lines in rendering. While I prefer the UI (the olllld pre-voice UI from 1.17), I am not enjoying the view as much now that I can see the difference with Viewer 2.

Costa Rica

I tried it, but it's too crashy today. Probably this crappy DSL, really, and not the sims. It's a lovely estate. I couldn't even get my first shot here done. Maybe later.

Lazy Sailing

Heigh ho, I'm back again.

I decided to try sailing around the Fruit Islands. If my financial situation changes and I am crazy enough to want to own land again, it could be here in this estate. I would need an estate with a lot of open water. So, a little early reconnaissance doesn't hurt! Plus, I think my bestie would enjoy being in this kind of estate, with so much open sky and water. Still, too early to put all the eggs in one basket, there are other maritime estates to check out.


I was feeling lazy and didn't want to deal with the wind, so I decided to dust off my trusty Twenty, Tania, and go for a whirl using the motor (The sails are up just for show). I chose Tania instead of Renaissance, my Tahiti Ketch II, because she handles shallower water better and I didn't know what to expect.

So I put the throttle around 50% and started off from the Mango Yacht Club. I went north a bit, and then kind of meandering around west and then far north before crashing off the coast of Ziziphus.


It's a lovely estate, and everything feels so serene. I love the attention to detail... things like jumping whales, circling birds, tall ships, off-sim rocks, waterfalls and waves.


This is definitely a candidate for the future residence, unless I become independently wealthy and make my own 500-sim sailing estate! Muhahaha...! :)

New Look

Blogger has apparently gotten jiggy with some CSS and put in new themes that are adjustable. So now we've got a new look. Yay!

Bummin'

I'm back again in SL. I made a new role in my old property group called "Beach Bum," to reflect my new role in my second life. I wear it with pride. My days are now mostly spent on the water, in as few clothes as possible, taking in the SL sun and improving my nascent sailing skills. It's an idyllic existence. Only faintly has some part of me wanted to get a SL job, so that I can finance my wants for new bikinis, skin, hair, etc. But I don't think my real life will allow it just yet. And I don't want this to become a second job again, so, I'll pass for now. I'm happy just hitting the water and saving my few ducats for later.


I decided to see what changed on Corsica. The passageways themselves seem okay, albeit a little narrow in some spots. Unfortunately I didn't make it too far, but what I have seen is good so far. I was very sad to see some of the changes, particularly the loss of a friend's port in Watchman. Gabriele Graves had an awesome little spot there and she sold the land. Change is part of life, and yet I'm not sure we ever fully get used to it. I also swung by my last bit of land in Excellens, which seems to have been taken over by a beach club. My trip ended when I crashed somewhere off Dura.


It was still a great trip. I love the open water, and seeing other boats, and all the lighthouses. The offworld lighthouses are really wonderful, they add so much character to the landscape.

I only got close enough to see one banline idiot, but perhaps there were more off in the distance. Ironically, it was in Excellens, the last sim where I had land. Looks like I dodged a bullet.

But I did find some communities that welcomed passing boats, and I love them. See, for example, the picture below. I can't express how much I appreciate it when people go out of their way to make an area nice in SL. I'm not going to sit there and watch you bump pixel-uglies, I just want to admire your home while the wind pushes me along. And you can admire all the pretty boats from the blissful serenity of your waterside home. Sounds like a decent deal to me!


There is still much to see in SL, and sometimes change is really good. I love to see others' creativity, and we should be out celebrating that instead of holing up behind banlines.

Back! Sort of.

I've spent a long time away, and when I got back, I found joy and relaxation again in SL thanks to sailing.

I have been busy in real life, but I have peeked in a couple of times. It's usually very long stretches of time between visits, but it's nice to be in SL as a visitor having fun instead of a stressed out landowner. There is great pleasure in this level of freedom.

I also note that there are a few new Trudeau yachts out that have come since I was last here regularly. When I departed SL, the last yacht I was aware of was the Patchogue. Since then, Jacqueline has released a number of vessels - Rozinante, The One, and a new Leetle Cat, Leetle Cat II. Sucker that I am, I had to get a new boat. I chose The One, for its styling. I probably should have gotten the Cat since it's a little more advanced, as it has reefing. But I prefer the One, as it's a nicer looking lady, and can hold an extra crew member over the Cat.



So I started off at the lovely Triumphal Yacht Club, one of my favorite places to launch. Sailed down to the Bingo Strait. The Bingo Strait is my favorite stretch of water, it's comforting. I rode out to Trudeau yesterday, bought The One. Mine is now named Oriel, which means "golden beauty."

The One is very different from the other yachts, because it forces you to sail by the senses. I thought it would be more difficult, but it's not as hard as I thought to pick up. I dare say it's actually teaching me things I never really learned about SL sailing, and sailing in general by extension.

I'm learning how to use the spinnaker, and am beginning to internalize the role of apparent wind and how it works. I think I have previously just been too excited and wanted to get on the water with these lovely boats, and the notecard info never really sunk in. Not until now. A little extra reading and some trial and error, and I think I'm finally getting it! lol.

The second picture above is entitled "Headed for Knaptrackicon." Yes, I decided to visit my old nemesis and things changed so much for the better! No more crazy obstructions, and a large protected channel to preserve the crucial North-South passageway. It looked like there was a yacht club there too, or at least some kind of boat launch. Very different from the series of humper bunkers there before, with the only channel mercifully cut by a well-meaning individual or two, but ultimately still difficult and almost useless.

Let me remind you of what it looked like the first time I went through.



That cutesy little marina off to the right was private and not passable. If I recall correctly there were banlines up. Even though the channel was wide enough for the Twenty, it was shallow and there were obstructions, possibly from the shallowness of the channel itself. That isn't a problem today. After the land was sold off and generously donated to the Lindens, the Lindens preserved a channel. It has now gotten even better since I revisited Knaptrackicon after the first Linden setaside. The difference is striking.

So I made it a good distance before finally crashing. And now I physically need to crash, I'm tired. But it's good to be back. I'll be back a little more often.