Archive for Geography

The Flat Earth Society

Posted in Obsessiveness with tags , , on November 3, 2009 by Wizzy

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Since that time I recall that I harassed the landlord at Hoboland about the fact that his map kept getting out of date.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!