It's All Over Now Baby Blog

The last post...

Now its over all, at least for this year. Big thank you to all the folks who helped me along the way and to all the RFL crew in Caledon, especially Erasmus and Patty Poppy. 

It's been fun and I've discovered so much in SL. These blogs barely scratch the surface of the weird and wonderful places and people across the Mainland. 

So glad I could contribute in a small way to such a great charity. 

Love, hope and charity to you all

Falcon

over L$10000 raised in all!

RFL Charity Walk: The Facts

Walking over 150 regionsfrom Beck-Nemeth Estatesto Seranil - the entire length of the Mãebaleia, Corsica, Nautiluscontinents!

This the longest, uninterrrutped collection of connected sims in the SL world.

Without walls, obstructions or hindrance
this would take 3hrs 45mins. And wear
your 'w' key finger out.

Allowing 30mins in each region for
chatting, getting lost and tending
to blisters this journey will take
at least 75 hours.

Remember this guy? He's throwing YOU a Party!

Ladies and Gentlemen, you are most cordially invited to Falcon Darcy's evening of glorious celebration. Marking the completion of the first known walk across the length of the Mainland for RFL.

Join the party in Caldeon, 12-4pm (slt) Thurs. 17th July, 2008 Caledon. 

using my wii to blog - time consuming. don't recommend. |-)

Sophia Trefusis & I discover a collection of stolen street lamps

Having considered the crime scene for a moment it actually appears these gas lamps were not in fact stolen but were in fact for sale. Another crime solved and more adventures to come. Sadly, by this point on the walk I was suffering compass problems and my position was known only to the gods and I am unable to provide a location of this shop. It is surprising easy to lose your bearings in SL.

Nar Duell on a wave of undulation

Nar Duell accompanied me across the straits between Nautilus and Corsica continents. Not much to report from the dark depths of the continental shelf but great place to find some virtual peace and quiet.

May pole dancing for Charity!

This is me performing traditional variation on maypole dancing that appears quite popular on the mainland. My kind hosts were very generous in their support RFL and appeared to enjoy my jig. Funky.

The Habitat Hobbit

The Habitat Hobbit

In a quiet corner of the SL shire, misted the rolling hills of the little folk, is the resource centre for a the habitat trust charity. Go there, save the shire, realm, nay the entire world from destruction by the dark forces....or something.


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zecksnine/159/138/47/

Eaten alive by zombies!

Attacked by zombies. I only wanted to make friends but they eat me alive. I fended them off with my walking cane but I has finally defeated and my health bar diminished to zero. I was then immediately teleported to my default start location (the first time, I've ever been 'killed' in SL). Not letting death and marauding zombies stand in my way, I quickly teleported back to the location and commenced my running away quickly strategy. This classic zombie evasion technique proofed successful and I escaped with my coat tails intacted.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rizzo/239/46/93/

2 leagues under the sea

Completed the 'continent'!

I reached the edge of the first continent (Corisca, i think its called).
I must now make the perilless journey across the ocean to the
 (as far as I'm aware) un-named continent to the North. Will I make?
Will I get wet? Can I steal the lovely yacht pictured...find out in the
next thrilling installment of Second Life Explorer!

...btw there is a lovely goth jewellery shop called Scarlat Tears in this sim
if you are so inclined :-)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Maat/234/94/21/

Dutch Windmill

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bunyip/176/68/59/

Dance to the rhythm of..

Shu's Music factory - great pianos, drums, guitars
even Harmonicas with mouth holders. Jazz.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bunyip/146/197/64/

Bonnie Scotland...and a wee dram

After another long trek comes to an end in a pleasant Scottish based
sim with a cosy bar. A few drams later and I'm off to sleep. Recommend you
all drop by and enjoy some scottish hospitality. Aye.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spectre/145/226/37/

Wearily burdened with his large rucksack, Falcon
eyes-up some wonderful flying machines...will he
resist the temptation?...find out in the next blog.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mapinguari/116/188/32/

Spad's acre gallery, the curator is a Miss Dian Aster.
She is a self-confessed romantic and claims to own all 
the pictures in the gallery in RL too. She gave me a music
harp to aid me with my journey. Enchanting.


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hidesmore/56/141/42/

Ars Virtua gallery. Eclectic collection of art curatored by
my SL friend J C Fermont. This is one of the first places
I've come across that I have visited before this walk began.
Its a good feeling seeing something familiar in a wilderness
of cyberland.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Leodegrance/242/92/47/

Great indie music club. I've often wondered in the wee
hours of the night if I would ever find good music in SL.
Now I don't have to fool myself anymore. This little club
rocks. They even let me make camp outside for the night :-)


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Phasmogoria/50/31/36/

Annex Gallery - 'Need'

Abraham Maslow's art exhibition exploring the concept of how
avatars mentally interact with the virtual world as well as
expressing real life needs and wants (click the picture for a
bigger zoom view). For instance, there is an installation with a
link to a blog depicting the artists travels through World of
Warcraft while in the persona of a Franciscan monk. A fellow
adventurer in cyberspace! See the link below inthe 'other blogs'
section of this blog.
 
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Seventh%20Eye/155/18/34/

Starry night

Another night under the stars. Check out my new official
Realy for Life donation kiosk tophat. Dapper.

Great sculpture park called imagine Land, Moliman 72, 196, 75
Lots of surreal and abstract structures, inlcuding a stained-glass
air balloon. Most exceptional!

Traveller's rest

After a hard day's hike, I rested the night at Blue's Britches Bars.
Although my sore feet weren't quite up to the task, there was
lots of dancing and gaity to be found. Plus a neat hover robot
barmaid. Nice

Windfarm

Huincul Motors Wind Energy. Not much to see.
Work inprogress, but good to see SL getting sustainable.
Noticeable lack of birds in this region...suppose
you can't have everything

Wordsworth moment

Daffodils in shepherd hills.

Cargo Dock mall

For swings, signs and shoes, everything in one place.
If you can't find something, its probably here somewhere.

The great space-time rift

Here I am walking down a long rift through the continent near Makalu.
This is protected land and makes for an interesting feature in the flat SL
landscape. It's also good walking, but does seem to have a high number
of billboards and adverts along its route. Still, you never know who may
find God or at least the nearst night club walking along a rift in SL.

Alientech - those devious aliens

Superior Alien Technologies - Sukhareva 212, 79, 41
Impressive collection of fun gadgets based on an alien theme. Probably one of the most unique shops in SL. Selling anything from laser eye attachments to poisonous gas farting technology its half joke shop- half arthouse lunacy. And if you want an alien abduction story to tell your friends, there's even a sinister alien
autopsy table to probe your unmentionables! If you want even more fun, there's all sorts of free 
bits and pieces to explore including an incredibly difficult maze.

Good Old Junk

Jordan's Junk shop in Vyacheslav. Great curiosities to decorate our home with a unique touch. Neat.

Fire station with all the accessories; helicopter, engines and a fire pole.
Always wanted to be a firemen/women go play...

Quite simply, one cool horseless carriage

I walked out the door on a winter's morn

Seriously, this cross-continent walking gets boring. I don't know if it was the time of day or the regions I was wandering through but I hardly saw a soul or a little green radar dot the whole day. Anyhow, found this huge gothic/robot/cyberpunk malls, it was all quality stuff (barely a gold bling necklace in sight ).

Found this little shop selling just one product - a finely crafted calculator.
Is this madness? is this art? We will probably never know, but one thing is for sure; you can take a calculator to
 second life but you can't make it drink. 
 

After hours of walking I took a well deserved break at a lecture theatre for TED videos. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and it is a conference of top specialists in their field to share ideas. Each presentor is given 18mins to demostrate their ideas to other delegates. You can browse through various videos from the conference at your leisure. I particularly enjoyed the optical illusion talk, having thought M.C. Escher's 'waterfall' illusion was good, the pictures and videos in this piece will really twist your mind.

First section of the walk

The first region on my journey was the Beck-Nemeth Estates, it is beautiful residential area and has a wonderful tranquil feel. There it a pretty lighthouse overlooking the sea and tudor style mansions built amongst woodland. This region was worthy of my favoured Caledon homeland and I hardly felt out of place. This was not what I was expecting but maybe all the rumours about the mainland were unfounded. Sadly, nobody else was in the region, so I ventured on in high spirits.


I soon came across a region called Tigerclaw, where upon I met my first resident on the journey. Her name was Ferdynand Straaf and owned a small house in the area. We spoke briefly on our interests and the freedom SL allows. It turned out she was actually a shemale but male in RL. As we spoke I couldn't help noticing a couple in a nearby house were in full lesbian romp. Nearby a shopping mall loomed. I felt the adventure was really starting on the mainland.

But as soon as I thought things were getting interesting, I experienced my first dead end, where pockets of protected land or high walls hindered my forward progress and I had to back-track to find a clear route. However much romping, stomping and shopping may come to pass, one thing was for sure, this walk was going to need patience.

and so it began...

After literally minutes of planning, I set sail for the Southern shore of the great continent of Mãebaleia (the large archipelago of islands to the East of the known SL world). Without a map, supplies or a toothbrush I set out to walk the long and non-existent road to the Northern most tip of the islands.

The standard reason given for partaking in such an adventure is 'because it's there'. Possibly in the context of the virtual world 'because its not there' is more fitting.

A less matter-of-fact reason is that while speaking to friends unfamiliar to SL, they posed the question of the size of SL and how long it would take to walk through it. Unable to provide a definitive answer, I decided to make it my quest to walk through the longest stretch of uninterrupted and connected sims/islands to provide at least a partial answer to my friend's question.

Having spent most of my time in SL as a resident of Caledon (victorian/steampunk sim) I also wanted to provide news and insight to its citizens. I wished to ally some of the residents fears of the mainland, many of whom believe that the SL world is actually a globe - let me firmly assure you that it is indeed flat and comes to an end like God intended - if it 'twas any other way people at the south pole would fall off.

Anyway...and so it was I landed on the shores of Beck-Nemeth Estates on the South Coast. With a great journey ahead and nothing but the deep blue sea behind.