I'm sufficiently bored today to *walk* from Iris at the northernmost point in the new continent to Alcona (180,14) where the highway ends suddenly. At that point we'll be tired enough not to care that we're in the middle of nowhere and log off.

Map of the pointless walk: click to embiggen.

Did I mention it was a pointless walk?

If you'd like to join me please do. I'll be in Iris at noon, game time. My route will be posted on www.CubeyTerra.com. Photographers welcome. No running, no flying, no vehicles.

Photos (click to embiggen):

6 minutes: The trek begins underwater in Iris.


45 minutes: The highway makes for easier walking... or rollerskating.


1 hour, 6 minutes: We stop to chat with a couple of curious W-Hats.



1 hour, 23 minutes: We've officially gone insane. For some reason we walked through the mature snow sims, au naturel. Good thing avatars are immune to the cold.


2 hours, 13 minutes: Journey's end! Alcona's highway ends suddenly at the sim wall.

It's hip, it's modern, it has kick-ass coffee, and it has a view of the mountains. Well, it has a view of the mountains when it's not raining. I'm talking about Vancouver's Eight East Coffee House on Broadway.



This place will BLOW YOUR MIND. The music, the decor, the dancers, the juggling troupe, and -- not least by far -- an olympic-size ice rink. Come for the coffee, but you can also watch the out-of-work NHL players vie for coffee and biscotti in a series of no-holds-barred blood matches. Sundays and holidays are family days, when they replace the players with clowns. Instead of sticks, they go at each other with balloon animals. Yesterday a clown had to be rushed to the hospital after being garotted with a giraffe.

Well, to be honest the ice rink isn't yet past the planning stages, and may have been just my own caffeine-induced hallucination. And the dancers, clowns, and juggling troupe never really existed. If you're lucky, though, you can catch sight of a cyclist or two from the bike shop next door.

In the meantime, Dan, Pam, and their staff have themselves a nice little coffee house. I think I'll definitely come back, even if it's a while until I see the rink.

Out of curiosity, I dropped in on ActiveWorlds this morning to see what it was like. As Eggy put it, "it's SL's grandpa". It's a 3D world with chat, like SL, but the feel of it is like a computer game from ten years ago. Avatars are stiff and lifeless, chat is IRC-style in a separate window pane, and I can't tell if there's a physics engine. But it's all there -- user-made content, socialization, and a gigantic world with lots of places.

Naturally, the first place I visited was an airport.



(When I switched from the default first-person camera to the third-person camera, I was a little surprised to discover that I'd turned into a fish!)

As Eggy pointed out in-world, the models are mesh-based, so they have shapes that may not be possible in Second Life, where building is primitive-based. Look, no seams!



Not all planes looked expertly-made, but that's the same in SL, where all content is created by users -- everyone has different skill levels, but everyone contributes. Some of the planes would do very well if they were built and scripted in SL.

I can see why ActiveWorlds lasted so long. It must have been cutting-edge in the beginning, and even now it offers much of the same experience and community as SL... but without the lag.

Two years ago this week, Second Life finished its beta and went "gold". To celebrate the occasion, Pathfinder Linden pulled together a gaggle of builders and olbies to fill the four sims with well-known builds and objects from throughout SL's two-year history. Some of the attractions included carnival rides, towers by Maxx Monde and LordFly Digeridoo, Cannabis Cathedral, a city street, the beta time capsule contents, and my contribution, Zoe Airfield.

Founded in autumn 2003 by Apotheus Silverman and me, Zoe Airfield quickly became a meeting place for propeller heads to exchange ideas and hold aircraft-oriented events like building contests. Many of today's prominent aircraft builders were among the original Zoe Airfield group members. Apotheus and I later moved our operation to Abbotts, where it became Abbotts Aerodrome.

Zoe Airfield in November 2003

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any snapshots of the 2nd anniversary celebration, and I took down the Zoe Airfield re-creation too early, thinking the event was just the one day. Oops.

Today,
I bought pickles
and cheese
and some udon noodles.

And I saw a pair of geese
standing at the side of the street.
Urban geese.

Bling.

Thanks, Adrian for the idea to turn the geese entry into a poem.

I visited Black Dog Video yesterday to pick up a couple of movies. Black Dog is one of the few remaining independent video rental shops in Vancouver, and have managed to stay in business by keeping in stock a stunning number of art and foreign films. This places them in a niche market with little competition from the low-brow megastore, Blockbuster, which stocks only hit movies, and whose clientele tends to get confused if the title contains one or more polysyllabic words. Black Dog customers are film connoiseurs who appreciate the true art of filmmaking.

So as the clerk checked out my copies of Ocean's Twelve and Ladder 49, something strange and wholly unexpected happened. "You have a late charge," she said, adjusting her black-rimmed glasses to peer at her computer screen.

It was true. It was true: I had returned a movie an entire day late last week. Upon being caught, I was almost overwhelmed with guilt. I lowered my eyes, and felt the flush of shame creeping into my cheeks, edging around my ears, and leaking out my scalp in the form of sweat.

But then something remarkable happened.

"But... I'll forgive you," she said simply, as if it were nothing. But it was everything! I was forgiven! She forgave me. I could barely contain my relief. I wanted to shout out loud! I wanted to reach over the counter and embrace her with joy, but fortunately I stopped myself because the last time I did that -- well I won't get into that. I thanked her, and left Black Dog feeling purified in spirit. I had been forgiven.

It had happened so quickly, and without ceremony, in dramatic contrast with the early days of video rental, where late-fee forgiveness often required penance, the presence of a priest or rabbi, and on occasion a bout of self-flagellation. Times change, I suppose, and as is so often the case, tradition falls by the wayside.

Today I bought pickles. And cheese. And some udon noodles. And I saw a pair of geese standing at the side of the street. Urban geese.

See, this is why it's a bad idea to write in a blog when I have nothing to say.

If there's proof that Second Life is not a game, but a virtual world, it lies in the fact that I just spent my entire week doing chores. I tended to rental units, put finishing touches on the passenger terminal, updated my hot air balloon, and... well I did a bunch of other things too, but I can't remember. Oh, yes... I did some touch-ups on this website too. I'm hoping to add a help section soon, where I'll post how-to info and FAQs.

The highlight of my week was revisiting the hot air balloon. This has got to be one of my favourite vehicles. I dropped by the Welcome Area several times and picked up random avatars for an aerial tour of the city and surrounding sims. And thanks to a new feature in the balloon, I was able to hand off the controls to passengers for a bit while I enjoyed the scenery and conversation.

And back in Abbotts, the aerodrome's new passenger terminal is just about done. The last coat of paint is just drying, and the new one-hour parking lot is open. That's right, park your vehicle in front of Abbotts Aerodrome for up to an hour while you skydive or fly, or whatever. Drop by to take a peek.

Is it my imagination, or has Nick Cage played the exact same character in every single movie he's ever appeared in?

I am just now putting the finishing touches and squishing the last bugs on the newest in the Futura line of hovercars. The Futura 6 is a sleek, sporty vehicle that switches between ground-hover and flight modes automatically.

New features in this Futura include:

• More paint colours to choose from, plus a painter accessory that helps you create your own custom paint scheme.
  
• Pop-up menus to configure options and appearance.
  
• Scripted decals. Choose one of the preset decals or use your own texture.
  
• Terra Combat System. Duel with any other vehicle that also has the Terra Combat System (almost all of my vehicles have it). Comes equipped with a particle cannon.
  
• Automatically switches to ground-hover mode when you fly close to the ground.
  
• Turbo-boost kicks in for an extra zip when you go uphill.

And like the Futura 5, the Futura 6 also has these featres:

• Seats 2 avatars
  
• Landing gear retracts
  
• Thrust effects and sounds
  
• Canopy opens/closes

And it's available right now at my shop at Abbotts Aerodrome.

The other night, a friend and I had a... debate... over the pronunciation of "Glenmorangie". Is it like "glen MORE an gee" or "glen MORE an jee"? Or maybe even "glen MERANGUE gee", like the pie? We didn't fall to fisticuffs over it -- there was a lady present, and we didn't want to offend her sensibilities and make idiots of ourselves doing it. Actually she changed the subject quickly to something more sensible, like beer.

This debate has raged among family and friends for years, turning the "gee" faction against the "jee" faction. After calling it "glen MORE an jee" for years, I heard more than one person who should have been in-the-know call it "glen MORE an gee", so I converted from the "jee" camp to the "gee" camp.

Today I went to the all-knowing prophet, Google, to settle the debate. At www.Glenmorangie.com, I discovered the truth. The one, true pronunciation, right from the source, is this: "It rhymes with 'orangie'."

Next, have I been mispronouncing "Glendronach"?

Link: Glenmorangie.com: "Your Questions Answered"

Sadly, I have to admit that today I lunched at the Scottish restaurant. I had avoided it for months, but while passing McDonald's I succumbed to a combination of hunger pangs and delicious posters of hamburgers. (No, that wasn't a misplaced modifier -- the posters are far more delicious than the hamburgers.)

I'm pleased to report that the menu is exactly as I remember it -- a lineup of vaguely beef-related sandwiches accompanied by tallow-soaked potato product. After consuming the "McDeal" of the day, I dumped the remains of the day into the nearest garbage receptacle, and was startled when it spoke to me.

"Thank you," it said. Its voice was deep and gentle, and imbued with paternal kindness, as if someone's dad had accidentally fallen into the garbage can and decided to make the best of it by thanking passers-by for cleaning up after themselves. It turned out not to be my dad or anyone else's, thankfully. It's actually an electronic recording that's triggered each time someone throws something away -- an innovative way to imbue a feeling of warmth and personal attention that doesn't actually exist at McDonald's.

I can't wait to see what else speaks to me next time I need to satisfy my hamburger addiction. Maybe my chair will thank me for sitting down, and my table will thank me for placing objects on it. And toilets too! "Thank you."

Yep, that was a short vacation. Sometimes, however, it only takes a short time away from Second Life to ferment new ideas. This time I'm back to construct a new main terminal at the aerodrome.

Oddly enough, a main terminal was something we'd planned to build since the founding of Abbotts Aerodrome in early 2004. We even made a start on a grand art deco style edifice, but somehow it didn't work out, and we ended up building a collection of hangars and shops instead.

I suspect the reason the terminal has been delayed so long is that, when you think about it, it's completely useless. In real life, terminals are designed to process passengers and shuffle the masses around like sheep, in and out of secure zones, through checkpoints, and past assorted food courts and shops, where they're separated from their money. Abbotts Aerodrome is, in reality, not a transportation hub. With free teleportation, nobody actually needs to travel by airplane, and security really isn't an issue.

Even so, I want a main terminal because it completes the illusion. I just saw Tom Hanks in "The Terminal", and it inspired me to recreate the lifeless artificial environment that is an international airport.

Who can imagine an airport without maze-like, velvet-roped queues, and a luggage carousel? What's an airport without the generic white tile floor, sterile waiting areas, and plastic plants? So I'll go ahead and build all that, even though we don't technically need it. Maybe it will attract groups of people lingering near the arrivals gate as they return from the Abbotts-Gray round trip.