Not everywhere in Second Life® is set in the modern age. The BBB's sleek passport stamp terminals can look a bit anachronistic. Licensed BBB blogger (holder of Permit 004) Cranston Yordstorm has come up with a solution in his medieval tavern in Bellisseria – The Toothsome Wench. He's modded the terminal into a more suitable form.
Now he just needs his Flickr sign redone by a monk as an illuminated manuscript!
With thanks to our friends at the Limoncello Art Gallery who published the BBB Gazette as a joint publication with their own, the time has come for this, the official communications organ of the Bellisserian Bureau of Bureaucracy to strike out on its own. All of the BBB content has been imported and, from now on, this is where we shall publish. Please update your bookmarks.
Remember, this is Bellisseria's journal of record. Nothing is officially true until it has been "gazetted".
This step coincides with the launch of the BBB's new logo which, as you see in the sidebar, can be featured at the discretion of the BBB in publications licensed to write about our activities.
If you would like a licence for your blog's sidebar, please apply to the Editor in triplicate with a link to your publication for review and the names of three respectable Bellisserians who will vouch for your good character.
Cranston has written another blog post about his SL travels with his Bellisseria passport. This time he's visiting one of the older locations issuing our visa stamps – Trilby's Mill in Caledon. Head over there, check it out and be inspired to fill up those passport pages!
There was a time when, on application to the BBB with photographic evidence of having met the Bellisseria Slenderman, you could have your choice of one of these two stamps for your passport. They have fallen into disuse so any passport holders who have one or the other can consider themselves very lucky.
If you have one, tell us in the comments how you earned it.
We were excited to read Cranston Yordstorm's new blog (h/t Prudence Anton for telling us about it). It's called Passport to Bellisseria – Cranston Travels the Grid, and is an SL travel blog about his experiences collecting visa stamps for his Bellisserian Passport.
Fenella, our editor, was lucky enough to catch up with him today. He kindly agreed to stop by the Limoncello News and BBB Gazette office in Campbell Coast to be interviewed. She asked him how he got into Second Life and what he does here.
I can't even remember how I was first introduced, but it wasn't through this avatar: my original was Cranston Matterhorn and he's going to be 15 in November – I keep him more for nostalgia value than anything else. A friend heard me singing one day and suggested I try my hand at it ... so I grabbed a suit and started making the rounds
Cranston is "a singer with a Jazzy, Swingy, Bluesy sound" and performs around the grid as well as having his own club. It dates back to 2010 and has been in a number of places over the years but now nestles in the middle of his region, Redwood Grove. He does "a fair bit of modding" and describes his region as his "current pet project aside from the live singing". He currently has an application in to the BBB for a passport stamp to issue there.
He also runs The Toothsome Wench a Tudor Tavern in Englesdorf, one of the new Bellisserian alpine regions with chalet homes.
Asked what gave him the idea for his new blog, he said;
I started collecting the stamps first. I knew I wanted to blog about something and also to explore more of SL so I figured it was a good marriage of the two. It also sort of reminds me of Geocaching in RL.
We at the BBB hadn't thought of the geocaching comparison, but we certainly want our passports and stamps to encourage people to explore SL. Cranston's blog is an example of exactly the response we were hoping for! As he went on to say,
When you go to great places such as Campbell Coast, you never know what you'll find when you explore past the initial landing spot
Asked if he plans to slog through every BBB stamp location he said;
So far I don't see why not! It's a travel blog so I suspect I'll also find other ways to explore plus every once in a while I'll throw in something personal. I've also been exploring the SLRR in Bellisseria but haven't yet explored mainland SLRR much. If I had to sum up the blog I guess I'd say 'It's a travel blog with eyes wide open to experiences off the beaten path'
It's certainly a blog we'll be following with interest at the BBB, and we hope you will too. Thank you Cranston for being such a perfect gentleman and so generous with your time. Good luck on the SL road!
The number of locations issuing stamps for your Bellisseria passport continues to grow. More and more interesting and attractive locations in Second Life want you to have an official Bellisserian Bureau of Bureaucracy record of your visit. We at the BBB are ready to oblige. Provided always – of course – that the appropriate forms are filled out and all our regulations are observed.
Watch out every Saturday for in-world updates issued to the BBB User Group (BBBug) as to new locations. If you're not a member of BBBug, shame on you. Head over to the BBB Head Office immediately and sign up.
We've had a spate of special event stamps recently and there's yet another coming soon for you to collect. This time it will be available from the Bellisseria Spring Festival to be held in the village of Bellishire at the Bellisseria Fairgrounds. The festival runs from Saturday 24th to Friday 30th April and the opening festivities will be from 11am to 7pm SLT on Sunday 25th.
The Festival's organisers say that:
The event is a nod to the the spring festivals of old and takes place in a recreation of a Medieval-Renaissance English village in the May Festival season. The village itself is not a one-to-one recreation, but rather a microcosm of what a Tudor village would have. It's designed to give a small taste of that time period and the May Festivals.
Here's a sneak peak at the special stamp but the only way you can have one in your own passport is to "go back to the Renaissance" to collect it. Don't miss out!
Final Warning: You have just two days left to collect the special stamp from the "pop up" art exhibition Mirages on the Mother Road. Head over there now if you don't want to miss it.
The limited edition visa stamp to commemorate the second anniversary of Bellisseria has been extended until April 30th and the BBB terminal can now be found at my favourite music venue in SL - the Bellis Blues Cafe. If you didn't collect it already, get your passport and head over there.
It's the second anniversary of our home continent of Bellisseria on April 15th and a special commemorative Bellisseria Passport stamp will be issued as part of the celebrations. It will be available to be collected for a limited period this month.
You can pick it from April 12th - 18th, 2021 at the Bellisseria Fairgrounds.
The stamp terminal will be set up there from next Monday so be sure to grab it before it's gone!
Another special stamp can be collected at the moment. Infinite Productions and the Limoncello Art Gallery are staging a series of pop up art shows called ART UNBOUND at unlikely places on the grid. The first – Mirages on the Mother Road – is very much on the wrong side of the tracks in the desert Mother Road region.
There's a BBB passport terminal outside the exhibition, where for three weeks only you can collect the special stamp. There will be special stamps available for the limited runs of all future ART UNBOUND pop ups too so make sure you get the full set!
We were delighted by Patch Linden's endorsement of the Bellissarian Bureau of Bureaucracy during his interview with Saffia Widdershins at the RFL Home & Garden Expo 2021 . Following on from that, and the successful Rally to launch the first passport terminals placed on LDPW land in Bellisseria by the Moles, Patch, Derrick Linden and Abnor Mole visited the BBB on 31st March. The meeting was chaired by our founder and CEO BÓÒ Rojyo and we discussed the roll out of more passport stamp terminals around Bellisseria and other ideas for the future.
The BBB members present were North Crannock who writes our scripts, Bel (Jezebel.bailey) who is our onsite manager, Sun (Dark Sunflower) who designs and makes the unique passport stamps and distributes the terminals and (very happy to meet her first "Blues" on her 5,000th day in SL), Fenella Allen.
A bureaucracy needs a government to serve and now we have one. It opens new possibilities for bureaucratic fun around the grid and we look forward to lots of that!