Drivers Ed Comes to SL | New Community Centre in Belli | Events & Announcements | New Locations

DRIVER'S ED COMES TO SL

Any self-respecting bureaucrat would be horrified by the free-for-all of driving in SL. You can rez a huge truck and barrel down the highway; knocking over any residents who get in the way.  What are the consequences? None! So perhaps it's surprising that our latest project was suggested by someone outside our SL bureaucracy. Three cheers for responsible SL citizenship!

The delightfully-named Persephone Emerald dropped a note in our suggestion box at HQ. She wrote;

I'd like to suggest adding a short written driving test to the driver's license process. I like that we have to do a few things and then wait a couple days to get a passport. (Anticipation makes it more rewarding.) I think there should be a bit of bureaucracy involved with getting a driver's license too.

The SL rules of the road are obviously more lax than in RL, but maybe we could have a few suggestions in the form of a written driving test? For instance, driving into someone's home is an obvious no no, but it's probably ok to cut across the corner of their yard when one comes to a sharp corner.

Our team went to work and, as we announced in the 5th November issue of The Gazette, a written driving test was promptly introduced. Never let it be said that we bureaucrats don't listen to the citizens we "serve". When you call the wolf from the forest of bureaucracy, however, don't expect him just to howl and move off! Mission Creep is inevitable. We are about to introduce a Drivers' Education system and a practical driving test. In addition (of course) to the written exam. 

We are in the process of building our Vehicle Licence HQ and Test Centre – the BVLA (Bellisseria Vehicle Licence Agency). It's right by a rez zone on SL Route 7 in Gaeta V.

BVLA Photographs

BVLA | Click to enlarge and scroll

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Building work continues, but as you see from the photograph album, good progress has already been made. You are welcome to visit. 

Model citizen Persephone, caller of wolves from forests, asked some good questions in her original notecard in the suggestion box. 

1. What is the speed limit in Bellisseria? Is it legal to drive while intoxicated?
2. Is it legal to run over other avatars?
3. May one drive a train on the roads or should trains only be driven on railway tracks?
4. May one drive a semi truck with trailers in residential zones?
5. Do avatars need a commercial license or motorcycle license for these types of vehicles?
6. What is the proper response when one drives into another vehicle? a body of water? or into a house?

All these questions and more will be answered by your instructor and tested by your examiner in due course. The un-regulated mayhem of almost 20 years is coming to an end soon, thanks to Persephone and your diligent bureaucrats.

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NEW COMMUNITY CENTRE IN BELLISSERIA

Town Hall

On November 22, Linden Lab announced upgrades to Traditional Style Linden Homes and a new Community Center/Region at Chippewa Junction. Technically, Chippewa Junction is not a new region, but was revamped and converted into a Traditional-themed Community Area. (I used to live right next to it in Wooremal, and I can tell you it has changed quite a bit.) It was nice before, but now it is even more scenic and impressive.

The community centre is located in Bellisseria, but all SL residents are welcome there.

Fountain, Park Area & Train Station

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The community centre is beautiful inside and out. The area has a Train Junction (complete with junction tracks, loading tanks and a ticket office), and a large Town Hall building. It also has scenic landscaping and small natural lakes. There is even a waterfall and a lovely fountain.

Lobby Entry and Stairs

The town hall building has a very commanding entrance with a double spiral staircase. The lower level has a lobby and a small wedding chapel with cute white benches. It also has a large reception area with a bar, a dance floor and 10 round tables that each seat about eight guests.

Community Room / Dining Area

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The middle level is a very large meeting room, which could be used for anything from a convention to a concert to a large lecture hall. There is a refreshment area at the back of this lecture hall with two large tables that will seat about 24. And there are some desks and work stations on both sides of the hall.

The upper level is a massive library and reading area.

Upstairs Library

So what can you do at the community centre? First there is the obvious – catch a train, or walk around to enjoy nature and the scenic landscaping. In addition you can book sections of the town hall for weddings, conferences, large meetings, or parties. If you would like to reserve an area or book an event, here is the form for that.

Article and photographs by Teresa Firelight

And in breaking news...

There's a chance you'll be able to get a stamp for your passport at the new community centre Soon®. There's no terminal there yet, but here's a sneak preview of the stamp design.

Watch this space for further details in due course.

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EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

If you have one of our stamp terminals at your place and you're having an event there or would like to make any other announcement, just let us know and we'd be happy to feature it here. Please drop a notecard on the Editor Dave (Lord.Junibalya) in-world or use the Email the Editor link in the sidebar to send us your information, posters or photos.

There are no new additions to the Parade of Homes this week. If you'd like to add your own home – inviting SL residents to visit – then you can find the application form here.

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NEW LOCATIONS

There's another new hangout for you at the Sea of Fables this week. It's a land-based location close to the mer grotto we reported on last week. If you see the merfolk from the dock there, give them a friendly wave!

There's a new airport location issuing our passport stamps, but the Township of Daybreak is much more than its airport so do take a look around when you stop by passport control. 

The Sea of Fables Hangout | Land SN
Township of Daybreak HE

 

New Masthead | Welcoming New Homeowners to the Parade of Homes | Mount Campion Tours by Request | Events & Announcements | New Locations

NEW MASTHEAD

There have been changes at our HQ since the masthead to The Gazette was made, so we thought it was time for an update. Most noticeable is the addition of a Post Office on site, with all the facilities you need to use our unique postal service. Yes, we know you could just use IMs to mail your stuff, but – trust us – our way is more fun. Come over and get yourself set up in time for Holiday gifting! 

BBB | CPCB HQ Pictures

HQ Gallery | Click to enlarge & scroll

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There's almost always something to do or see at our HQ. Not only can you apply for your passports, driving licences and vehicle registration plates, but you can find information about community events or contact those of us showing green on the online indicator boards with your questions.

You'll find the editorial office of The Gazette in the gardens. Our editor is to be found there every Saturday morning at publication time, sending out all the group notices, updating our Facebook Page and adding location images to the in-world slideshows of stamp-issuing venues.

Our gardens are lovely. Our terrace is welcoming. The wine is free. There are group gifts to be had for BBBug members. Come visit and bring friends to hang out with. If you want to come by road, there are two rez zones outside so you can leave the same way. If you want to come by boat, seaplane or float helicopter there's a rez zone at the dock down the stone steps from our gardens. 

Our HQ is a community resource open to all of SL. It's not a fortress of bureaucratic solitude and, while we may RP being bureaucrats, we are (with the exception of Mr Beeb) more welcoming than real ones!

Our location features in the SL Destination Guide and is a Resident-Owned Place of Interest in the Parade of Homes. Please – make yourselves at home in our home and feel free to share any nice photos you take to our Flickr Group.

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WELCOMING NEW HOMEOWNERS TO THE PARADE OF HOMES

We are introducing a new regular feature in The Gazette. This comes from our BBB subsidiary – the Parade of Homes– courtesy of some nifty HTML work by PoH's and the BBB's Robert Rhodan. From now on, new additions to their official listings of SL homes and other places of interest open to the public will be announced here first in our Events & Announcements section.

Visiting open houses in SL is fun and can give you great ideas for your own interior design projects. If you're willing to share your own lovely home with the virtual world, you can find the Parade of Homes application form here.

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MOUNT CAMPION TOURS BY REQUEST

Willow Scout Tour Of Mt Campion | click to enlarge

Mount Campion National Park now provides its celebrated ranger-guided tours on request. If you need an outing for your club, group or large family, you might enjoy a hike through our scenic woods. We have three different tours to choose from:

1. Our main tour which visits several sights in the park, including a short venture into our massive underground cave system.
2. Our Bearpaw tour, which traces the migration of the Bearpaw Tribe through the park, visiting several scenic locations and
3. Our photography tour, which lets you hike to 5 particularly scenic areas and pauses while you take pictures.

Most recently, the Willow Scouts (led by Carline Thistle Studley Moon) took the Bearpaw Tour. There were about eight scouts (mostly small children) and a couple of adult guests. The scouts had a great time learning the story of the Bearpaw Tribe and exploring the park. Most of them were able to move along the steep trails much faster than the adults accompanying them. Ah.. the energy of youth!

If you would like to arrange a private tour of Mount Campion, please contact either Ranger Hex North Shining Star or Ranger Teresa Firelight.

Article and Photo by Ranger Teresa Firelight

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EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

If you have one of our stamp terminals at your place and you're having an event there or would like to make any other announcement, just let us know and we'd be happy to feature it here. Please drop a notecard on the Editor Dave (Lord.Junibalya) in-world or use the Email the Editor link in the sidebar to send us your information, posters or photos.

... Cynoir Blanc's Somerville Sips Café @ BE = Bellisseria
Somerville Sips is a cozy camper café. Sit outside to enjoy views of the nearby waterfall and railway. Borrow a bike and ride the trails. Everyone is welcome

... Hazel Silvermoon's Silvermoon Café and Hangout @ BE - Bellisseria
A Cozy Little log Café that will change with the seasons. A quiet place to grab a coffee and chat with friends.

 

Mt. Campion wants your photos

Mount Campion National Forest has an art gallery, which is located here. Our intent is to fill it with pictures of the park taken by park guests. There is a little mailbox just inside the door where you can drop off your park photos. So, what are we looking for? We are looking for nature shots of the park – including trees, plants, waterfalls, steams, statues, caves, or of the wildlife in the park, etc. We are not looking for snapshots of guests, friends or visitors to the park. Photos must be of locations in Mount Campion National Forest.

How does this work? We have 26 picture frames up. Not all of them have park pictures in them yet. For the moment, we are allowing up to 3 pictures per photographer. But when we get enough submissions, we will only display 1 or 2 photos taken by any given person. Over time, we plan to remove some of the older pictures to make room for new ones – but we are not close to there yet. We still don't have enough photos submitted to fill the gallery.

How do you submit pictures? First, upload the photos as 1024x1024 SL textures. Fill out the submission notecard, which asks for the aspect ratio, such as 4:3 or 3:2, etc, the name you want on the “photographed by” tag and attach the photo texture to that card. Then submit it to the mailbox in the art gallery. You will find instructions and the submission box just inside the door, here.

Photographs in the gallery will not be sold, but you are welcome to sell your photos elsewhere.

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NEW LOCATIONS

With Linden Ocean on all four sides, Vicina Island is a special location worthy of a spectacular build. It's also now a useful transport hub for sea and air traffic. Speaking of transport, it has a cute little narrow gauge railway which is the perfect way to explore it – and now a stamp terminal to commemorate your visit. 

The Sea of Fables is a storied location in Second Life® and a great place for SL sailors. There's a new hangout for you to enjoy there that the merfolk of SL will particularly appreciate. As for us "leggers", we had best put on our scuba gear to tp in to collect the new stamp! We love our SL merfolk and hope the feeling is mutual so – tailed or legged – don't forget to exchange a friendly "tala" when you meet. Fans of our special mer stamp terminals will be happy to see another one in world. All praise to our tech guys that they work underwater, but the industrial design still needs some work because they do rust terribly!

We at The Gazette have a special affection for residents who dedicate their Linden Homes to public use. In Bellisseria you can visit art galleries, music venues, pubs and cafés. Because the Bellisseria Covenant forbids commerce, all of them are faux businesses. Everything on offer is free of charge from the kindness of a fellow-resident's heart.

The latest café in this category is a cute little trailer in the Somerville region. Our researcher/photographer didn't click and run and we suggest you don't either. IM a friend, have a chinwag over a brew and then go for a ride together on the free bicycles available out front. You'll need to work off the virtual calories from the cakes on offer!

There's another café to visit this week on the roof of an art gallery in the Soho Contemporary Art Center. The Center is an SL arts and cultural attraction with the look and vibe of the historic iron front district in Soho, NYC. We think you'll enjoy spending time over there. 

Vicina Island HE
The Sea of Fables Hangout | Underwater Grotto SN
Somerville Sips Café BE
Infinite Art Café

Down with teleports | Situations Vacant | Events & Announcements | New locations

DOWN WITH TELEPORTS

There was a time when teleporting was only possible in Second Life® at special telehubs – and then only for payment. Just as in real life cities, where proximity to transport links affects land value, it really mattered in those days to be near a hub. After all, your visitors were going to have to walk, fly or use a vehicle to get from the nearest hub to your place.

That changed when point-to-point teleporting became the norm. Your location can be in any old skybox anywhere: if residents know about it, they can get there.

This is wonderful, of course, but has a downside. Many residents have little appreciation of the geography of SL. To some of us, it's just a collection of spaces we like. We have no idea if they're next door to each other or a million miles apart. Here at the BBB and CPCB, we often meet residents who don't know what continent they live on. How embarrassing would that be in RL?!

There's more than one way to get about in SL

This tends to undermine the clever way that Second Life® is organised. When they set it up, Linden Lab could just have charged subscriptions for the amount of server space used. Users could have built and lived in their own bubbles or boxes without any neighbours. In a sense, that's what the owners of private islands choose to do. Sometimes, when our mainland neighbours place something particularly hideous in our view, we may wish SL did work that way!

Instead LL chose to rent out virtual land and our SL; with neighbours, explorers and the chance meetings that give us most of our friends was born.

The more land you own or rent, the more stuff you can have and use – just like in RL. It was an idea that made the SL metaverse instantly understandable. It also gave us SL geography – even if TPs make it mostly irrelevant.

Vehicle rez zones are your friends

To heck with relevance! SL'ers can all fly but we still choose to walk. We can TP at will, yet there is a booming market in cars, boats, planes, helicopters, space-ships and bicycles. Why? Because Second Life® – like life itself – is not a destination, but a journey.

Journeys are fun. Journeys are eventful. Journeys involve adventure, incident, jeopardy, chance meetings and a sense of achievement. Whether a solitary exploration when friends are offline or an organised trip with a guide, getting to know SL's geography on foot, keel, wheel or wing is worth it. Give it a try – and then send us your stories and photos!

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SITUATIONS VACANT

Wanted - Volunteers for new BBB Licence Projects.

We already have people on board to kick off the project, but the BBB are still looking for more volunteers with a few hours a week spare to assist in our new driver licence programme. It won't be a full BBB role since that's too big a commitment. However it will be fun.

In the first instance we need somebody to simply examine the new written tests we're giving out to licence applicants (the power!) But in the long run we'd love to help form a group that not only oversees written tests, but creates new tests too. Possibly even giving in world road tests. Maybe a group of instructors and examiners?

We have in the pipeline both 'air' and 'boat' licences too, so tests (written and possibly practical), instruction, and examinations for them is also a possibility. In short it's initially just a commitment to mark a few short written driving tests, but it's open ended where it goes. A new division of BBB transport control would be a fun concept.

If you are interested contact Boo Royjo or Zoo Suki in the first instance.

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EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
This weekend, the Sansara Embassy collaborates with Starlight Corporation to offer a flight from Gateway International Airport to Chamonix City Regional Airport, which are two of the largest airports on the Sansara continent. They are operated by Lethra who is an active SL community member with a lot of love for aviation and the Mainland. Of course, you can find a stamp to collect for your passports at both of these locations! 

Sansara Air Tour

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At both airports, you can also find some unique spots, for example a Glacial Park with historical animals. Join us to explore and find out more! Our final destination will be Chamonix City where we can also test our skills in bobsleighing and ski jumping. 

As usual, we recommend preparing a travel outfit with as few attachments and scripts as possible to avoid region crossing issues. Your host will be Yukiko Yeshto.

You are invited to the opening party of The Magical Art Adventures of Cate, Esta, Poppy and Amanda on the rooftop at the Infinite Art Gallery at 7pm SLT today (Saturday).

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NEW LOCATIONS

If you have any interest in art in SL, you will probably already have heard of Artsville. It's quite a new venue organised by some of the best thinkers on the thriving SL art scene. The café there is as arty and elegant as you'd expect and now offers a stamp for your BBB/CPCB passport.

In the Satori region of Nanga, there are several stamp-issuing locations. On the ground, there's Satori Post Office #1 and the LG Tower – an annexe of the Limoncello Art Gallery. In the air above, there's the 120 metre-long Airship "Limoncello" – an art location in SL since 2007. Now there's a new location in geostationary orbit above the region - the Limoncello Space Station. Feel free to visit and to use the space elevator to explore other locations below. Beware of the captured Dalek in the brig though.

Artsville Café, PE
Limoncello Space Station ST

The Bellisseria Driving Test | Events & Announcements | New Locations

THE BELLISSERIA DRIVING TEST

We at the BBB have noticed a steep decline in the standards of driving in Bellisseria this year. We feel partly to blame¹ because we have been distributing driving licences with no prior testing of the recipient.

Therefore, as from next week all driving licence applicants will be required successfully to complete a stringent (well, reasonably stringent) Written Test in order to receive their licence. 

A demanding pass rate of 55 per cent will be required in order to receive a licence from now on.

It's our mission to make Bellisseria a safer place!

¹The Bellisserian Bureau of Bureaucracy denies all legal liability for any and all claims, demands, suits, or any other actions arising from the provisions of this article.

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EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

If you have one of our stamp terminals at your place and you're having an event there or would like to make any other announcement, just let us know and we'd be happy to feature it here. Please drop a notecard on the Editor Dave (Lord.Junibalya) in-world or use the Email the Editor link in the sidebar to send us your information, posters or photos.

Our very own Amanda's art installation continues at the SL Endowment for the Arts until the end of the year. The third phase is now open and you are all invited to a celebration featuring live entertainment by singer Frank (DonFranko) at her Pink Pavilion. Details are above. If you haven't visited already, please don't forget that there are special event stamps to collect; three of them in total, inluding a new one for the third phase. 

As reported in detail in last week's edition of The Gazette, today at 12pm SLT you can join the Great Wall Tour at the train station at Tersa. Details in the poster above. 

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NEW LOCATIONS

The first signs of the forthcoming holiday season have appeared in Second Life® already. At Holiday Magic you can experience "the best of the winter holidays" in our virtual world. You'll find a zipline, photo spots, ice rink, table games, fishing, a restaurant, romance, camping, dancing and a scenic train ride. There's also a constant soundtrack of holiday tunes. This is an event stamp, but you have quite a long time to collect it as it runs until January 7th next year. Winter is coming!

As reported above in Events & Announcements Amanda's third phase is open of her art installation at the SLEA and it will be issuing a new commemorative stamp. 

Holiday Magic
ATG Pink Pavilion @ SLEA until Dec 2022