On Thursday Aug 17th, I got a notice from one of my groups about a Bar Train Tour of Bellisseria, starting at the Newbrooke Drama Llama Station. It came at a time when I wasn’t busy, so I decided to catch the train.
The tour was run by Greg Timmerman and lasted an hour. There was a bar at the front of the train and seating compartments of four chairs (two facing forward and two backwards) with a table in between. Of course, each table was stocked with some drink givers. The bar was already full, so I sat in the front compartment with two other passengers. I selected a glass of Don Perdigon, and have to admit that it was a very good year.
The tour brought us past some scenic Newbrooke Homes, Houseboats and Chalet Homes and along some coastal areas. It stopped at ten train stations before returning to our point of origin. Several of the passengers commented on how pretty the scenery was, and one person even decided to get herself a Linden Home after seeing how nice the neighborhoods were.
But there was a lot more to the tour than just the nice scenery. Greg, our conductor, had to deal with several challenges as SL was really acting up during the tour. He managed to keep a friendly pleasant demeanour and resolve each issue that came up. We had a region crossing where we lost a passenger. Not only did the crossing kick him off the train, it also kicked him out of SL. Shortly after that another region crossing threw me and one other off SL. As my connection was dying, I got an IM from Greg asking if everything was ok. When I logged back on and IMed him, he TPed me to where I could get back on the train. Greg did the same for other region crossing victims. At one point his camera went wacky and he had to stop the train and fight with that. But despite all of the SL challenges, he remained calm, collected and pleasant. It was as if SL acting up did not bother him at all.
Some of my favorite moments of the ride came from the other passengers. For example, there was one little girl on board with her mother. At one point she pretended that she was a bird, flapped her arms and “flew” to the back of the train. Then she sat at the table in an empty compartment and continued to flap her arms until her mother stopped watching. Then she reached for a bottle of liquor that was sitting on the table. She almost got away with it, but her Mom was a bit too watchful.
The train ride also emphasized the fact that Second Life really is a “small world.” One of the passengers' names sounded familiar to me, so we chatted and it turned out that we had been in the same Trek Role Play group about 9 years ago. And another of the passengers turned out to be a customer from my hair store, and she was pleased to meet me out and about in SL.
I did manage to chat briefly with bartender/conductor Greg as we toured, and I would like to share that with you.
Me: How often do you do this tour Greg?
Greg Timmerman: That all depends of my real life. The best way to know when I am doing a tour is to join my group Greg’s Bar & Lounge. I also have bar boat and bar airship tours.
Me: Which one is your favorite tour to do?
Greg Timmerman: Honestly? I love them all, but the boat tour is probably my number one. However, passengers can see more than usual from the airship, so that one is also my favorite.
Me: What inspired you to come up with the idea of these bar tours?
Greg Timmerman: I was at a Real-Life cruise with some friends and we met at the bar. Suddenly it occurred to me that would be a fun way to explore Second Life. So, of course, I started with a bar boat tour first. It took me a while to develop it. I later added the other bart tours.
The train tour was a lot of fun and I recommend that you try it out when you get a chance.
Article and Photographs by Teresa Firelight
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'll 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.
NEW LOCATIONS
Last week we announced new locations at Ariadne Zoo and its camping ground. A very different kind of attraction under the Ariadne brand is the escape room and post-apocalyptic town in the neighbouring region of Pasiphae. You can find your way out of the escape room or you can just explore and make interesting photographs.
Finally this week, find beauty, peace, and serenity in an imagined Californian setting. Each path leads to a unique quiet spot to sit and relax. Rez a boat, look for the dolphins, bask on the beach, cuddle up or dance. Once again, this is a great location for virtual photography. This is a location associated with the excellent Nature Collective, which brings together many "natural" places in SL.
On August 10th, Linden Lab introduced a new group named Bellisseria Help Group. This is a place that people can ask questions or get help with anything related to Bellisseria, Linden Homes, or Premium memberships.
The group is staffed by ten moles and (at the moment) fifty-seven trained Bellisseria Mentors. They are from all time zones, and the hope is that no matter what time it is for you, there should be someone online who can assist you. In addition to the help staff, some of the group members are also very knowledgeable about everything related to Linden Homes; and can also answer questions.
Let me give a few examples of things that have come up in the group so far:
Someone wanted to know how to find out what home themes were available before abandoning their current home to try for a specific theme. They were advised to log an alt into their Second Life dashboard and then go to this link.
A Premium Plus member wanted to know how to submit a ticket for a specific location. They were advised to submit a ticket with Issue Type of Land & Region with the subtype of Linden Homes. They needed to include the SLurl for the Linden Home they wanted and it is good idea to have a 2nd and 3rd choice in the ticket in case the first choice is not available when it's processed.
Someone wanted to know where the new Ranch regions were so that they could fly around them and try to choose a house. These regions were not on the map yet because they were brand new, so they were told about a couple of regions that border them, so they could teleport there and fly in to look around.
Some of the other types of questions that may get asked include things like:
Needing help resetting a stuck Linden Home Rezzer
Wanting to know which themes have a certain feature (such as lots of water or more privacy, etc)
Wanting to know how to use the control panel inside your house
Or any other questions that might come up that are not related to your personal account. (For those you will need to submit a ticket.)
The group is new and only has about a hundred and ten non-staff members so far, but is expected to grow. Anyone in Second Life is welcome to join, they do NOT have to be a premium account holder or Bellisseria resident.
If you would like to join the Bellisseria Help Group, paste this link into nearby chat and then click it.
Article by Teresa Firelight
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'll 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.
Heterocera Flag
Honorary Ambassador to Heterocera (and BBB Founder) His Excellency Boo Rojyo has designed a new flag for the Heterocera Continent. Referencing the distinctive shape of the atoll in stylised form it's available in a special flag pack from the Heterocera Embassy. The pack contains a flag pole flying the new flag and a texture you can apply to your own flags.
Boo told The Gazette;
This is NOT an official flag for the continent, but failing finding one that's generally recognised I've created my own. The design is based on the general geography of Heterocera. Green for land and blue for water. The thin blue and red lines represent the road and rail network around the continent.
The text is Greek themed, but certainly not Greek. The symbols are only intended to give the feel of the word Heterocera which in fact Latin and is the plural noun for "a division of Lepidoptera consisting of moths"
******
Error Message when attempting redelivery of non-Bellisseria Passports
Our recent article about fixing the hide/show bug applied only to Bellisseria Passports but users have been attempting to get redeliveries of mainland/generic passports too. This results in a – not very informative – error message, which we will try to improve.
The redelivery/bug fix system will be extended to other passports at some point, but for now please note that it works only for Bellisseria Passports.
NEW LOCATIONS
The Philosophy Class has been doing what it says on the tin in Heterocera since 2007. Our bureaucratic colleague Gemma Cleanslate is an Assistant Professor there. We always suspected she was a deep thinker!
There's a new exhibition at the Black Tulip Gallery in CDS. It's called Pensive and opens on August 20th with a party at 1-3 pm SLT. DJ Frank Atisso of Artsville will be providing the tunes. The event stamp will remain in place while the exhibition continues, which will be at least until September 1st.
Ariadne Zoo is family friendly and spans a full region with many animals and games such as bowling and mini golf. It's a great place to explore with your family or friends. There's a stamp available for the zoo itself and for the associated camping ground in the neighbouring region of Theseus. It has four bungalows, three tents and two caravans – all free to use for a short vacation. It also has a swimming pool with Linden water, a toilet/shower house and a small foods and drink store.
We have made great progress with our new website. Check it out here – we think you'll find it useful. It offers a web map, which you can browse directly and a searchable illustrated database of available stamps. Each entry in your search has a View on Map button to show you exactly where to find it. If your viewer supports it, you can then go to the location directly from the teleport link on the map! Failing that you can just copy and paste the SLURL.
Thanks to Ven at GridPlay Productions for all her sterling work on this. We asked Ven how the idea came about and what has been involved in implementing it:
Someone from the BBB reached out to me about adding stamp locations to my web map. After some chat in Discord and with Bel, I really saw the potential in the BBB and that they needed an official website.
It usually only takes me about an hour to setup a Laravel installation ready for web design and LSL communications. Thats an in-world script able to send data to the website. Laravel PHP is an awesome secured framework for web developers. It really helps with rapid deployment so I use it on all of my websites and web apps. There is still a lot of work to do on the BBB website so there's no time frame, I never put a time frame on any website project since it's always in active development.
In fact, we reached out to Ven after a user told your editor at SL20B how wonderful it would be to see our locations on a map so that she and her friends could plan their explorations to take in any stamp-issuing locations. He passed on the suggestion to the team and all this has flowed, it seems from that.
Full credit must go too to Robert Rhodan. His BBB databases developed for the Gazette Online Travel Guide and the StaFi (stamp finder) HUD in-world supply all the data for the new maps and search facility. Also to North, our chief scripter, whose database-driven V3.00 design not only made our passports better and more reliable in-world, but gave Robert a basis on which to take more of our services on-line, automate them and so allow us to cope with more users.
We are lucky to have such experts to make our daft ideas work. Our bureaucracy is an elaborate joke, not in any way to be taken seriously, but these folks play it for real and that makes it all the more fun. Enjoy – and please keep those suggestions coming.
FIXING THE V3 BELLI PASSPORT – IN MINUTES – TO GET RID OF THE HIDE/SHOW BUG
Some Bellisseria V3 passports had the nasty habit either of going off-screen when you clicked the red hide button, or of rotating to edge-on, resulting in an invisible green "show" button. Our colleagues Sandy Burgess and Robert Rhodan have now fixed this bug in our script. However, this requires all 434 passports in use to be updated, which could have been a logistical nightmare.
Fortunately, Robert has also developed a self-service redelivery terminal, which allows anyone with a passport problem simply to get a fresh one, with all their data and stamps intact. This can also be used to distribute the new version, with the hide/show bug removed.
If you have this hide/show button problem, please just teleport to BBB HQ and click on the Redelivery dispenser board. It will give you a folder called BBB IC Belli PP Redelivery DPL. In that folder you'll find a notecard with instructions and an object called Template BBB IC Belli PP HUD blank redelivery v3.004.
Please teleport to a sandbox, e.g. this one, or any other place where you can rez. Put the Template BBB IC Belli PP HUD blank redelivery v3.004 object on the ground. You'll see it's a blank V3 passport.
If your passport was issued in response to one of the old notecard applications, your personal data is not yet in our systems. Don't worry! The redelivery mechanism will automatically take you to a web-based form to fill in the missing data – passport photo UUID, sex, species etc. That will then be added to our database and you'll never need to supply it again. Just zoom in on the front page of your passport. Click anywhere on that page and follow the resulting link to the online form. Come back in-world when the form has been submitted.
If your passport was issued in response to our current web-based application system, we have all your data so you won't be directed to the online form. You will complete the next step automatically.
Zoom in to look at the front page of your passport. Click anywhere on that page. This will begin the process of regenerating your passport – filling in your personal data and recreating all your collected stamps.
When you take it back to your inventory it will be renamed IC-Belli PP V3 BE-<Your Name>. That's your new passport HUD, free of the show/hide bug! The whole process should only take a couple of minutes!
Article and illustrations by Robert Rhodan
LINDEN LAB RELEASES SIX NEW RANCH HOME FLOOR PLANS
The ranch theme homes originally came with seven floor plans. Most were very open and had large rooms, irregular shapes and limited windows. Linden Lab received feedback that these were too large to decorate comfortably. Some creators began releasing kits to divide the huge rooms. Some great creations came out but not everyone wants to buy add-ons for their Linden Homes.
Linden Lab responded to the feedback on Friday August 4th by introducing another six floor plans that added more walls and rooms.
I am a big proponent of regular sized, squarish rooms that are easy to decorate. My comments on the six new floor plans are based on that. People who prefer large open spaces and dislike closed-off rooms may not agree with my evaluations. The new floor plans that I like most, they will probably like least and vica-versa.
Stable View and Stable Ridge:
Stable View is a two story with an angular staircase just to the left of the door. It has a large open space to the right with a back door, five small windows and one regular sized. There is a long rectangular walled off area to the left of the staircase. There are three rooms upstairs. For most people one will serve as a master bedroom, one as a second bedroom or office/study and the other as a bathroom. Personally, I find the downstairs part of the open model difficult to decorate.
Stable Ridge is the new walled version of Stable View. This is my personal favorite of the new floor plans. The large room to the right has been divided into three more usable sized rooms and the rectangular one to the left into two smaller rooms accessed by a small hallway behind the staircase. They walled off the original entrance to the left of the staircase so you can only access those rooms from the hallway.
In my opinion, the walls here are a huge improvement. The rooms are normal sizes and shapes and very easy to decorate. The upstairs remains unchanged. This remodel gets five stars. Well done.
Knotty Pine and Knotty View:
Knotty Pine is a one-story house divided into two sides. The right side has a hallway with three nicely sized rooms which could serve as bedrooms, studies, dens, an over-sized bathroom, etc. The left side is one huge narrow rectangular room. Most people would use that as a combination living room, dining room and kitchen. It has a bulge in the middle to help delineate it into three areas. There is also a special treat, a ceiling door which drops a stair ramp opens into a large square attic.
Knotty View is the same layout except that the long narrow rectangle to the left was divided into three separate rooms using archways and cleverly placed partial walls. I was very impressed with how they divided this one up into easily usable rooms and a very coherent feel with the other side of the house.
The new rooms are all a comfortable size and easy to decorate. This remodel also gets five stars from me.
Grizzly Point and Grizzly Pass:
Grizzly Point is a simple, very large two-story home. It has a single room upstairs, which most people will use as a bedroom. You enter into a large and mostly square room. I say “mostly square” because one end extrudes into the porch area, giving a little corner nook. The left side of the house is a long rectangular room with two entrances – an archway at one end and a doorway at the far end. Many people add a wall to divide that rectangle into two rooms, and use them as a bathroom and a kitchen/dining room There is a c-shaped stairway that leads upstairs to the bedroom. I really love how they did the stairway, it hugs the walls and divides the stairs into three separate short walkways. Very classy.
Grizzly Pass adds a wall and long archway to break the room you enter into two. The main room is squarish and still large, but not too difficult to decorate. The new room on the other side of the archway is a long and narrow rectangle. It can still be nicely decorated with a bit of clever furniture placement, but not as easily as a squarish room. They isolated the left room by adding a wall and door. Now it is now a hallway by the stairs plus a smaller rectangular room with doors at both entrances. I suppose it is possible to still add a dividing wall and use it as a bathroom and small kitchen
This layout is easier to decorate than the open model, but only moderately so. I give it three and a half stars.
Silver Spurs and Silver Ridge:
Silver Spurs is an L-shaped house with a few unusually shaped walls. You enter into the rightmost room, which has a pentagon shaped nook near the back door. Most people use the entry as the living room and the nook as a kitchen. Some of us, including me, walled the odd corner off to be a regular square shaped kitchen area. There is a hallway leading to two back rooms. The one on the left is a regular but large rectangular bedroom. The one on the right is a smaller but unusually shaped room that many people use as a bathroom.
Silver Ridge added only one wall with an arch. This wall separates the kitchen area from the living room area. It is a minimal change. I was not impressed by this modification, I don't see any benefit over the original model. I give it two stars.
Spring View and Spring Crest:
Spring View is a cute 2 story house. It has two rooms upstairs, suitable for a bedroom and bathroom. The downstairs is divided into three distinct areas. There is a diagonal staircase and a wall to partition the first room into an entry or den/office. There is a larger room behind that has one diagonal wall and multiple windows on the two exterior walls. Most people make this their living room, but I would be tempted to put my kitchen and dining room here. The left side downstairs is a large rectangular room. Most people are making this their kitchen and dining room, but I would be tempted to make it a living room and den. I think this is one of the cutest models of the original seven open homes. It seems rather well laid out and I don't think it would be that difficult to decorate.
Spring Crest is the same upstairs, but downstairs it divides the home into 4 distinct areas plus a small hall. The room behind the stairs still has a diagonal wall, but much of it is now an archway to a small hallway. Their rectangular room is divided into two easy-to-decorate rooms with entrances from that hallway. All of the rooms are reasonably large and more or less a “normal” shape that's easy to decorate.
I give this model four stars because the open plan was so nicely laid out that it is hard to improve on it too much.
Buffalo Pastures and Buffalo Paddy
Buffalo Pastures/Buffalo Paddy are almost identical to Grizzly Point/Grizzly Pass. The only difference is that the main room is smaller on Buffalo Pastures and is regularly shaped. The Buffalo Pastures room still seems large to me and was a challenge to decorate, but it is possible to do it nicely with a bit of effort and forethought.
The only difference between the Buffalo Pastures and the Buffalo Paddy is a single wall and door along the top of the left room (the long narrow rectangle). This separates it into a smaller rectangle with two doors and a hallway near the stairs. It seemed like an unnecessary separation to me. It would have been better to separate off a small bathroom on the end where the door was.
I was not particularly impressed with this addition and give it three stars.
Creek Stone
Creek Stone is a smaller one-room house, and they did not create a new floor plan for this one.
Article and photograph byTeresa Firelight
RANCH HOME VIDEOS
The Parade of Homes staff (Teresa Firelight and Robert Rhodan) decided to celebrate their new Ranch homes by making videos of each of then. Robert is the talent behind the videos, but each decorated their own home.
You will notice they use different styles and have distinctly different tastes. Hopefully one or the other of their homes might serve as an inspiration for those of you trying to figure out how to decorate your own place.
That is what makes Parade of Homes successful – the fact that people have different styles. Parade of Homes exposes people to multiple ideas of how to furnish and/or landscape their Bellisseria residence. Since the Ranch homes are still relatively new, we hope people will find these videos helpful.
Teresa’s home is here and you can watch her video here. Robert’s home is here and you can watch his video here. Please feel free to visit either or both of the homes, to pet the cats, enjoy the animals, etc.
In addition, there is also now a Ranch Homes listing category for Parade of Homes. If you want to list your home for others to come visit, you can do so here.
Article by Teresa Firelight and videos by Robert Rhodan
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'll 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.
Nice write-up in the Newser
Our new BBB Scout, Gemma Cleanslate, is best known for her work as a journalist at the long-established SL newspaper, SL Newser. She's recently interviewed our founder, Boo Rojyo, and published a very good article about our work.
For all our efforts at publicity it was clear to those of us who spent a lot of time talking to visitors at SL20B that there are still many SL residents who don't know who we are and what we do. There are also some very odd conspiracy theories in circulation about us, as to which it's best we just smile and move on!
An article like Gemma's in one of SL's most widely-read newspapers has to be a good thing. Thank you Gemma.
Wumpkins Wood is being taken over for a special celestial celebration with music by DJ H. The event is at 8-11pm SLT on August 17. The stamp will be available until August 20 though.
We love a good diner and the one at Mowry Depot in Sansara looks like fun. It's part of an open-to-all complex that includes a roadside GTFO! cargo hub, a helipad and Donut truck.
Continuing our series on the resources available at BBB and Bellisseria Diplomatic Corps locations, this week we draw your attention to the Embassy Room at BBB HQ in Swordfish, Bellisseria, where you can find information about our embassy locations. It's across the landing from our photo studio upstairs.
Since we started – through the Continental Passport Control Board (CPCB) – to issue passports for mainland we've been surprised to find how many residents don't know which continent they live on. If that's true for you, this room is a good place to begin. It has a map of the mainland showing where all our embassies are located, as well as information boards for each of the continents – showing more detailed maps. By comparing your home location on the world map with these, you should be able to figure it out.
If not, message your Editor in world and he will drop a free continent detector on you. It's out of date and does not know about Bellisseria (which it describes as "Western Ocean") but it works well enough otherwise. There are more recent, paid, continent detector HUDs on MarketPlace, but we can't speak for how up to date they are.
Once you've answered that question, you'll know where to go to get your passport. If you're homeless or live on a private island, you can pick up a generic SL Passport at any of the embassies. To get to your embassy, you can use the LMs from the information boards or the teleporter in the Embassy Room itself. If you're an SL time lord, we know you don't approve of teleportation. So we're pleased to announce that there is now a landing spot at every embassy featuring the BBB's custom exteriors. So you can return to your TARDIS parked outside The Gazette's office and travel there in comfort!
The information boards (apart from the new one for Zindra, which hasn't been placed yet) also give out embassy landmarks and information notecards about each continent, with suggested places to visit. The boards have not all been updated with details of the current ambassador, but you can check that in the sidebar of The Gazette, where you'll find The Diplomatic List.
Not to blow our own trumpet here, but eight times out of ten, any question your Editor is asked about our work can be answered by reference to the links in the sidebar to The Gazette!
Our locations are open to all. Please feel free to stop by any time and make yourself at home.
Article and Photo by Gazette Staff
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'll 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.
New articles in Parade of Homes Review
Teresa Firelight has written two new articles in our sister publication, Parade of Homes Review. Parade of Homes is a BBB enterprise that lists "open houses" around Second Life®. These are the homes of residents who have kindly agreed to open them to all visitors; particularly those seeking inspiration for their own interior design or landscaping.
The first article is on precisely that subject. It talks about how to get inspired by someone’s interior design and use their basic layout. It explains how to add your own style and flair to make a unique build that is not just a copy of the one that inspired you. You can read the article here.
The second article is off the usual subjects for Parade of Homes Review but is very topical. Teresa writes about the new Senra avatars added to everyone's inventory this week by Linden Lab. She focuses on the Jamie (female) avi and how to set her up.
It's a really helpful introduction and you can find it here.
******
Some changes at BBB HQ
On the subject of our Parade of Homes venture, we've decided to give it more prominence by moving its office into the separate structure to the left of the main building (viewed from the front). The post office has been moved upstairs inside the main building – opposite the photo studio.
Our founder Boo, in relaxed gardener mode in retirement, has designed and laid out a new Zen Garden to the rear of the HQ buildings. Whether you meditate or not, we hope you all find it a relaxing place to hang out.
NEW LOCATIONS
We have two new transport hubs this week; both in Zindra. They are the Northern and Southern locations in Kama City for Fox Box Logistics (FBL, which specialises in LTL (Less than [truck]Load) shipping. It's a location for GridHaul, a parcel based freight hauling game similar to the popular GTFO!
We also have a new location in SL's oldest democracy, the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS). Turn left out of the Rathaus front door and follow the street up and over the hill where you'll find Kaffeehause Talenstrasse on your left, in the shade of the city wall. The café is open to all. SL Time Lords will find a convenient landing spot for their time machines nearby.