Earth Day & My Rules

A rainy day here in Maine, USA as a Nor'easter approaches to drench us tonight so it isn't the most exciting of Earth Days in Real Life. While I'm struggling to figure some nice connection with the special day and Second Life, Honour McMilan is taking the high road and writing about her rules for Second Life blogging to compliment nicely Earth Day-ish pictures. Go ahead, Honour, and make the rest of us again look like hacks. Sheesh.

Svarga (SLurl) is a fine place to celebrate Earth Day in Second Life.

I don't pretend (much) to be a journalist so I really don't follow rules outside the AP Stylebook or the grammar tips I get from the A Way With Words podcast. To put it another way, I watch how I write more than what I write. This is a blog. I'm beholden to none because I really write more for my own amusement than for any other reason. If I manage to entertain, impress, or inform anyone else in the process, it is purely by accident though pleasing nonetheless.

Dating back to 2006, Svarga is (or was) home to a very early experiment in virtual artificial life, with plants propagating on their own with the help of bees (as food for carnivorous plants and to pollinate others).

As I write, though, there are some personal guidelines that I do try to keep in mind ...

It is perfectly okay to bite the hand of the people who own the world I play in, but I try to not go so far as to alienate them should the opportunity to be an LDPW Mole come up or that I might get another chance to appear on the official blog again. Fair, well-reasonsed criticism — positive or negative — founded with documented facts is healthy. For this reason I've kept pretty silent on the recent news that there will be no Linden-sponsored Second Life Birthday celebration like there has been in the past. I don't know all the internal politics or finances and it would be unfair to speculate.

A L$25 donation to Taras Balderdash for the charity Modest Needs earns a note card with your fortune, just pay the orb in this underground chamber below what looks like an empty marketplace.

Pure speculation and opinion is also perfectly okay, but should be clearly identified as such. It would be one thing to claim that The Lab hires only satyrs for staff since the fall of M Linden, but proving it would be another thing even if I had a reason to spread such rumors. Not that I follow drama if I don't have to anyway. Life is too short and if I really want drama, I'll rent a movie. Or see another psychiatrist.

Focus, focus, focus. This is primarily a Second Life blog so I try very hard to not write about anything else, especially Real Life. You may have seen posts about Lego Universe and my Apple iPad and other seemingly random, off-topic posts, but they do tie back to Second Life in some (usually highly tangental) fashion. Since changing the subtitle of this blog to "Real Me. Digital Life. Virtual Spaces." I've opened up the possibility of expanding post topics but have more or less avoided doing so.

Very little has changed in Svarga since 2006. The shop is gone, as is the giant sea serpent and a nice cuddle hammock. You can still pay L$1 to feed the birds but you can no longer rez the seeds you get so don't bother. Somewhat recently a Stargate showed up but it looks entirely appropriate.

With all this in mind, I freely pillage Honour's rules and steal "Rule #5; Don’t take yourself seriously. We’re bloggers not gurus" for myself. If I ever appear to be more than I am, I expect and appreciate when someone takes me down a peg or three. While I grudgingly (or not so grudgingly, at times) agree with those who tell me I write well, I freely admit but sometimes forget that there is always someone much better than I am at any task I set myself or any activity I participate in at any given time. Having a blog doesn't make me an expert at all. Anyone can blog. Only in the last few years has the community of professional journalists acknowledged that this free-form, un-regulated forum often can and does contain proper reportage and punditry.

I'm not a professional like Hamlet Au, but as you can see, I try to keep at least some guidelines to my writing, if not actual rules conforming to professional standards.

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From the bee tour: "In European mythology Svarga or "Heaven" is the residence of the god Svarog."

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Windlight Sky: [TOR] Sparz puft
Water Preset: Glassy
No Shadows or post-process re-touching

It's BACK! SVARGA!!

New World Notes announced yesterday the return of Svarga, the legendary living ecosystem experiment in Second Life (Web; SLurl). Hamlet Au has confirmation that Linden Lab has purchased the property as part of a program to promote and preserve the arts (Web). When I heard about a year ago that Svarga was closing I had hoped that the Lab would do such a thing. Actually, I had hoped to purchase it myself, but I'm glad that someone did.

In my brief, 20-minute look around, almost nothing has changed. Most obvious is the lack of items for sale in the store, but some plants that I remember floating mid-air are still in place as is the slightly "suspicious" plant that yields a surprise. The futuristic sound experience that was tucked in a corner is gone ("[19:08] svarga wasp whispers: There was an exciting chat to sound experiment here [19:08] svarga wasp whispers: we hope to get it back soon," announces the tour wasp), as is the Wyrm sea dragon that I often swam near, and as I write this I'm looking for the "float in space" activity that used to make me nauseous. These "missing" items were likely No Trans so were retained by their owner. However, I did find a hidden library that I hadn't seen before.

Interestingly, the L$1 bird feeders still pay Laukosargas Svarog, the original owner (pay the dispenser at night and it refunds your money ... sometimes more) and she's still listed as the land owner in About Land, under the Svarga group, despite a statement in her profile that says that the land has a new owner. Confirming this is he region information. It shows that Patch Linden (Concierge Team Manager) is the owner. I would think that Governor Linden would be the owner. Perhaps it is all being sorted at this time.

Now I'm curious, though. Was the region simply hidden, like the Cornfield regions, or was it re-created from a back up? Either would explain the mis-positioned plants. If it was brought back from storage, the Lab could have gone far enough back to return the dragon and other items (Yes, the Lab can copy anything it wants). I'm also a bit curious that mushrooms seats from the Relic shop are still here yet the really great hammock from the same shop is gone. Again, it might have been No Trans. The one in my inventory isn't transferable.

In any case, I'm very happy to have Svarga back. From it's inception it was well ahead of it's time in design and execution. Compared with some of the marvels of texturing, sculpties, and particle scripting that have been developed during it's absence a few aspects seem a bit dated, but the region is still a masterpiece.

Postscript: I don't clearly remember the tour vehicle being a wasp, but rather an ugly pod. Does anyone remember a wasp?

Svarga ('nuff said)

Tatero Nino has a nice post at Massively about one of my favorite spots in Second Life™, Svarga! Eventually I'll do a post about this fabulous place, but for now just enjoy some of the the (pre-Windlight®) pix that I've taken over the past year.