Reading Radar

While everyone else goes over the SL5B sims inch by inch, Chug and I went to one of the locations she posted up in the Destination Station to look around. The name of the place is Whimsy, and there’s actually three whimsy sims and two Eccentricity sims in a group of five sims there.

There’s a lot of island theme here, but not with the typical bent. This is different, and the topography and the builds and the look of everything here is interesting, and extremely well done… it was fun to just fly around and look.

On the south side, there’s pirate ships and elephants… sculpties still have some issues, but they can also look really good in the hands of the right creators.

There’s life under the sea in these sims too, most of which I’ll let you find for yourselves, but the octopus here concerned me a bit. When your leg comes out between your eyes, one of your parents wasn’t living a clean life. That’s all I’m saying.

There’s jungle…

There’s oriental architecture.

And not to be left out, there’s a volcano demanding virgin sacrifices, or at least some kind of sacrifices. There can’t be any virgins left in SL, they’re all paying women who are really men to make sure of that.

I liked the terraforming a lot. It’s unique and very well done.

We wound up in this cove area, which looked like a relaxing little spot, and that’s where we teleported out from.

You can find Whimsy linked to in the Destination Station on one of the many boards that Chug has put up. I knew the place would be a great way for others to find cool places to explore, but thanks to her work there, it’s probably going to give me a lot of new places to check out too.

What can I say? It’s fun being a spider monkey!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0enBoRZbF-0&hl=en]

Exploring Bay City the other night, we came across a guy named Marcelles Dreamscape. I don’t know if he’s related to Nika or not, but his companion had the same last name. But who cares about her, check out this guy’s ‘fro. I LIKE it!!

I really should have asked where he found that. I just know Keeme would want one.

Previously, I blogged about how Itazura Radio came up with the concept of the Destination Station on Podcast Island, and how he planned for it to be a home base for the “homeless” to set their Home to, after they’ve joined the group so SL will let them do so. And of course, I mentioned the fact that it would be filled with destination boards to click on to go to a variety of fun and interesting sims and builds to explore. Tonight we started getting some of those boards operational with a few of our recent explorations.

True, there’s only a handful now, but we’ll keep plugging away and adding more. Instead of putting Chug’s explorations for the SL Under the Radar podcast in the podcast suite, we’ll put them on destination boards here instead. It will make it easier and more fun to find and click on something to go to.

When someone clicks on one of the boards, two things happen. First, the map opens with the destination on it, ready for them to TP to should they desire. Secondly, they are asked if they’d like to receive a notecard with information on the destination. If so, they get a notecard explaining more about the location (and typically an embedded LM for future use as well).

Hopefully this will be a fun place to hang out and watch video podcasts upstairs or find places to explore downstairs, and maybe set as home for those who don’t have a real place they call home or feel comfortable using to rez in or rez out.

If you hang around Podcast Island enough, you’ll soon realize that Itazura Radio has a history of coming up with nice builds and interesting ideas. Recently he came up with the idea of kind of a hub for people without home locations in SL to set their home to, provided they just join the group. He’s calling it the Destination Station, and that’s really what it’s going to become.

Inside, there’s a fire and a cozy roundabout couch for sitting around and yakking (there’s that word again) it up with friends.

Upstairs he’s got some video podcast screens, and woohoo! They point to the SLPN In Your Face! video podcast.

Okay, so what about the Destination part of this? On the walls are boards that we are going to start filling up with links/images to various locations around the grid. Chug’s explorations, stuff we’ve seen, locations of interest that our friends have come up with, etc. The idea is they can tp directly to the location of choice from the Station.

I like it. It’s got a nice open, comfortable feel and it will be nice once we start filling up the place with destinations.

Back on the art track, since a lot of the places we’ve gone recently seem to be about art… Awhile back, the same time we did the Far Away explore, Chug read in a blog about a place that was going to be shutting down, so we thought we’d wander over and take a look. Turns out it was up to its description: Callistie - Madcow Madhouse. I really have no idea why I’m providing a SLURL since you can’t go anymore, but hey. Whatever. It existed. Really.

Madhouse it was, but an interesting, well done madhouse. We usually like a lot of interactivity, and there was some here, but some of the things we assumed would be interactive weren’t, like the drums and pipes near the landing point. Still, it was a really well done build and, now that it’s gone, maybe it should live on in pictures.

Come on in! You land on a weird platform, and immediately notice that this build is a little different than the rest.

Finding a theme here isn’t too hard - this fellow gives it away (hint: think bones).

Some things in the sky caught our eyes, and we headed over to check them out. They seemed to be friendly enough, in the same way that a dead grizzly is friendly.

Chug’s always been the smarter of us on our explorations. Here she gives more reason she’s brainier than me.

Ok, now where?

Flying around, we see some interesting things, some of which aren’t entirely explainable in terms of purpose.

I guess this makes Chug crabby?

At any rate, she decided to take control of the situation with some mystical powers.

I tried too, but all that happened was me burning my hand on the glowing orb. These things need a user manual.

There were some creatures I call “reindeadeer” and look… three of the people I work with showed up to say hi. That was unexpected.

All this makes an avatar hungry, so we decided to get a table.

I’ll have the ribs, please.

Apparently a restaurant that’s killed itself for some reason is the place to eat. Seems odd. But ok.

Ok, well. That’s how it was. And now it is no longer, this madcow of an art gallery.

Yay, Episode 4 of SLPN in your Face is up, and it’s on an exploration jaunt over to “the Far Away” (blogged about recently here).

The best news is that starting with this episode, the podcasts will be ipod formatted. I tested it out on my iPod Touch and it worked and looked great. Thanks to Gomem DeSoto for pushing me to get with the program and make that happen. It just makes sense and it’s actually a lot of fun viewing these on the iPod.

I blogged about Abbott’s Aerodrome before, and we found out the other day it’s changed a little bit in appearance recently… In the new “release candidate” with windlight, I noticed it was very neon bluish in places now.

I’m not really personally inclined to think it’s added a whole lot. It certainly is a feature, but sometimes features get added for features sake and not because they really enhance anything.

The runway is lined with blue neon as well.

A couple more tower views:

Compare to the previous look of the tower…

Oh, well. Next time, back to some of the art presences in second life, in case you don’t find neon blue prim strips artistic enough for ya.

There’s a new boat on podcast island.. tied to a dock.

Ok, that’s great, but where’d it come from? Believe it or not, a wheat field… the Far Away.

In this far away blend of art and (probably) nostalgia, AM Radio has created an interesting scene with more to it than what’s on the surface. He’s clearly making a statement or statements of some kind, but exactly what that is would be an exercise for the reader.

The first thing we saw was the windmill… it allows for some windy flights, try it out.

Then we sat at the table of retro/modern technology. Click things here. There’s presents in those prims.

The train is really interesting.

Weird things happen here. Standing, waiting…

Looking to the sky, and then…

It happens… is this an alien abduction? The classic “country encounter” with something from out there? Or is it just someone who’s never felt the sun before? I don’t think so… look at the chairs behind me in the second pic.

After this bizarre experience, something else out of place. A dining room in the wheat field.

The man behind this is no less interesting. Covered in dragonflies and wearing a unique period garb, he’s somehow exactly at home in the remote country setting he’s created here on the Dreamworld North sim.

So, back to the boat.. he’s got a banner with vendors for his various objects on it, one of which is the boat, which I didn’t see on the sim. But you can buy the train and some of the other scenes from the field as well.

I think it looks great on PI.

Ok, I know you’ve all heard of the Privateer Space sim. What’s that? No, you have. No, really. YES, YOU HAVE, NOW ZIP IT, BUSTER!!

Ok, calm… calming down now. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Privateer Space. You’ve heard of it, maybe even been there. It’s been blogged about endlessly, and Chug and I went there early on in its development process, even shot a little video. But the sheer amount of stuff to see is worth multiple trips. And that’s what we did last night again, shooting video for the first exploration cast for the upcoming “SLPN In Your Face” video podcast. Most likely this will be a serious multi-parter.

The SLPN In Your Face video podcast is going to have content from several members of the Second Life Podcast Network, and will have a variety of stuff from explorations, tutorials, bits of musical events, explosions, and a lot more. Expect at least 4 10 minute or so videos per month between the lot of us.

Ok, so in the meantime, until the podcast is ready, check out the following pictures of us exploring the sim and having a great time doing so. It’s a packed place, from top to bottom. Get in there… see it… pee in the truckstop toilets. Whatever suits your space fancy.

The fun starts at the Galactic Truck Stop.

It really is a truck stop, complete with a store with sci-fi toys and trucker caps.

The Agriculture Station. I was told by the sim owner/creator that there would be NO produce isle, no, never.

Staring into space and thinking… “do avatar sheep dream of”… no, nm. I’m not gonna ask. I’m sure certain Robots already think everyone’s dreaming of them as is.

Wow, what kind of funky Windlight first look is running on THIS computer?!

History is fascinating… really. I’m telling you, there’s a whole channel developed around history!! (But not on SLCN, so don’t check)

I have a bunch more pics in the Privateer Sim set in my Flickr Account.