A deep map revisited : Da Boom

Then..

The Origin Point — not “the first sim”, but the Anchor of the Grid, the place from which all other regions (as of June 6, 2010: 31,978 of them) are located.  In the photo, the conical point of land at the lower right is The Point (give or take a centimeter or two).

The name itself invites being played with: “Badda bing, ba Da Boom!” or “Life is but a dream, Da Boom Da Boom…”   It turns out to have been partially a typo.  The first 30 regions are all named for streets or alleys near Linden Lab’s original office, and have in the past been called “the San Francisco sims“.  However, the street name is De Boom, which I learned here.  If you go to Google Maps and enter “De Boom Street, San Francisco”, you get this, from whence you can zoom and pan around and find all of the other sim names from that earliest bunch…

Carry on with Lalo’s original post here – Seconderth (a deep map) : Da Boom

And now..

Da Boom, January 2013

Now this is more like it.

Whereas both Natoma and Welsh have remained fairly static with only small cosmetic changes, on arrival within the Linden Playground at Da Boom I was hit straight away by the differences. The most obvious, as noted by Zerozoxx Binder on Lalo’s original post back in December of 2010 is that both Jovino Zircon’s Burning Man and Shijuro Romulus’ Lakshmi Building upon which it stood have now gone. In it’s place now stands a gallery to mathematical art by Seifert Surface, with a faithful representation of M C Escher’s ‘Relativity’ by Furia Freeloader floating in the sky above it. This is what I was talking about last time with the old and the new complimenting each other with a nice touch by the land owner (Veritas Raymaker) being the walkway from the gallery which joins on to Mystic Sunshine’s house. This still houses the Voting Box mentioned by Lalo and still has the 2002 furniture made by Alberto Linden.

Now not far from the house is the memorial wall built by Sascha Fall in 2008 and sadly no longer working. I mention this purely from nostalgia on my part, as the day after reading Lalo’s post I went to Da Boom for the very first time and while exploring came across the wall. Clicking on the giant prim with the hope of adding my name to the list I remember being bitterly disappointed when I went back a week later that there was no change to the list of names which includes a certain Opensource Obscure and a Linden named Neuro…(Heh.. the joys of being a noob!). Even though I knew it wouldn’t work I still had to click on the prim..purely for old times sake. Having indulged myself I couldn’t resist walking back and having a quick go on the Linden Playground, so  I indulged myself again with a few minutes of silliness.. running round the ship, swinging from the Octopus tentacle and playing on the surfboard.

There are a few nods to Lindens past dotted around Da Boom. One stands next to the playground, as someone named Gamxor Resident has recently (Jan 31st!) claimed a small piece of Da Boom and placed an actual Linden Telehub, created by Eric and Alberto Linden in August/September of 2003.  Skirt around the other side of the ship and you’ll soon be walking across a Winter skating pond owned by Dimitrio Lewis, who holds a store on Da Boom and has done so since 2007. Now if you take a look on the roof of Dimitrio’s store you’ll find a reference to a previous Linden : a working Second Life Light Cube created by Stephen in August 2006. And just next door in the Da Boom Building, owner Zerozoxx Binder has his own Linden created item. In front of the building (which by the way has some nice bits and pieces made by various residents over the years) is a bottle. This was made byPhoenix in December of 2002.

Dimitrio Lewis’ Skating Pond. In the background is the Gallery displaying the Mathematical art of Seifert Surface.

Of course a visit to Da Boom would not be complete without finding the Origin Point and yet again indulging myself. To those of you who have no idea what the Origin Point is then read Lalo’s blog post again. Failing that.. well..Second Life lore says that it starting point for the whole grid.

Yours truly doing an Edmund Hillary at the peak of Origin Point

The last time I was here I was running Second Life on a pretty lousy Laptop on the lowest graphic setting, which meant I missed an awful lot of Da Boom, including the Origin Point. This time round I found it easily, even though it is somewhat obscured by a private property. Here perhaps the nicest touch of all and a hopeful sign that the past is not completely forgotten in Second Life. Although it is divided by various Sim boundaries the peak on the Da Boom side is owned by a group called JRL Industries. And they have given their small piece of land the most appropriate name.

It All Started here.

I bet Lalo would have approved.

Next Time : Freelon

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