The Mush Room

The other night I had the very good fortune to attend a preview of a wonderful new build in Second Life.  This one is entitled “Mush Room” and was built by Scottius Polke, one of my newest friends.  My first visit was rather laggy due to the number of avies present, but the sim still allowed Bettina Tizzy and me to jump up and down on the bed with Scottius, pretending that we were schoolchildren again.

Bettina Tizzy and Wizzy jumping up and down on the bed with Scottius Polke.

Then I ended up climbing into the bed with Miso Susanowa.  Ssssh.  Don’t tell anyone!  okay?

The Mush Room is a delight.  There are lots of weird and wacky surprises in store for you as you snoop around in here – from dirty socks laying on the floor, to amoebas in the aquarium.

There are lots of things I like about this build.  I like the rendering.  I like Scottius’ use of color and the graphic method that he uses when hand-drawing his textures.  Most of all I like the lack of pretension present here.  Scottius doesn’t take himself too seriously, and neither do we. We are here to just have fun and hang out with him.

I have the pleasure to announce that Scottius has a little alcove off to the side where he has just made some of these wacky creations available for sale.  I bought a couple of dirty socks (buy two or three as gifts!) and a kewl amoeba clock.  But the kewlest thing is that you can now purchase your very own copy of Max the Mushroom!  Max is the gigantic mushroom who has these antennae sticking out of his cap, with eyes on the end of the stalks.  And when you click on him he releases purple spores into your immediate vicinity.  So be careful with your clicking.

I bought Max the Mushroom and some dirty socks and took them home with me.

There are other things available here too, like some smaller mushrooms and copies of the colorful textures Scottius uses on the build.

A good artist makes his work look easy.  There’s an elegance in simplicity.  There’s a simplicity here in conception, simplicity in execution.

Tp over and take a look –>http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cetus/223/111/31 .  You won’t be sorry.

The Flat Earth Society

I don’t know what got into me.  Back in August of 2007 (I was only a n00b then) I foolishly got it into my head to try to find out the names of the Second Life continents.  I did all kinds of research.  I googled like mad.  I checked the Secondlife forums (as advised).  I found out virtually nothing.  No pun intended.

Then one day I happened upon Hoboland.  And there was a map of the world, with five continents mapped… and their names.  With further research though, there appeared to be an as yet uncharted landmass out there.  And so I posted my attempt at the SL World Map of the Six Known Continents:

At least I was honest.  I indicated up front that I didn’t know the name of the sixth continent.  Compare my attempt with this one of about the same time period:

This is from a blog of September 23, 2007:  http://internationalschoolsisland.blogspot.com/2007/09/where-in-world-are-we.html

Where in the aitch ee double toothpicks does he come up with the name of Korea?!!

This is another attempt that is derivative of that last one:

These guys evidently think that Nautilus is made up of two continents.

Since that time I recall that I harassed the landlord at Hoboland about the fact that his map kept getting out of date.  I just now went back to see what he has up there and evidently he gave up long ago trying to keep up with the Lindens and their expansionist tendencies.

I recalled then that Carl Metropolitan used to have a bunch of historical SL World Maps displayed down at NCI, so I went down there looking for that, but it had all been taken down.  So then I called up Carl and asked him if he still had all those maps.  Gloriosky!  He called me right back and said yeah he did.  And then he sent me full permission copies of his whole damn collection!

Now meanwhile, I was obsessing big time.  I found some of the old maps on display (but not downloadable) here:

The SL History Museum

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Phobos/233/158/33

But since they weren’t downloadable I decided to post Carl’s collection to the Flickr “Maps of Second Life” group here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1006677@N20/pool/

And so there they all are.  You can peruse them all now at your leisure and I dare you to try to figure out the names of the continents.  As for me, I’m just too exhausted!