The Corn Field

Aaaaah, finally! I've been to THE CORN FIELD! I wanted to do that ever since I learned about its existence. Quick info for those of you who never heard of it:

The Corn Field is a region of mythological status where once naughty avatars were sent to think about what they had done. "The corn field" is a vast star-lit field of corn and was cut off from communication with the rest of the world (a reference to the classic Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life").

Source: Second Life Wiki

Since bad avatars are not sent to The Corn Field anymore and it stayed closed to the public, noone could actually visit it. People only knew about its existence from a single post of an avatar that was once sent there. However, it was opened for October 28-30 this year, yay! It's decorated for Halloween, but I don't mind - my curiosity is sooo satisfied :)

The Corn Field is fun to explore.





But once it gets dark, it can be quite spooky ^^



I won't spoil the fun for you, you have to go and explore yourself, but be aware that almost all the Lindens you'll meet there are zombies. Also, Mia Linden is the most scaaaarrryyyyyy. And if you have a feeling that Lexie Linden is watching and following you, but when you turn around she's not there... SHE IS FOLLOWING YOU! Have fun :)

Finding Magellan Linden

Today I joined a growing list of SL residents looking for Magellan Linden. If you don't know what I'm talking about, start with this blog post: The Search for Magellan Linden Starts Now!, this forum thread: Where In The World Is Magellan Linden? and a movie by Osprey Therian:



So today I went to see Magellan's camp site at the new continent, Gaeta, and to spot Magellan in-world if possible.



I've been teleporting to the green dots appearing on the map, but all these were other explorers in search of Magellan. The region itself isn't really helpful. It is often producing green dots where there are no avatars. Sometimes your dot stays in the place you teleported from and in result many explorers keep chasing their own ghost dots.

So many green dots, and none of them was Magellan. Where could he be?



I noticed his ship wreck under water, and more metal pieces under the beach nearby, but there were no clues.



I wonder if all the explorers are missing something... After all, Magellan asked the brave ones to follow him. There must be a clue somewhere.



As I sat at the dock to think, more explorers came. And so I met HeadBurro Antfarm and Teetah Beck. We quickly became friends, being on the same mission. Discussing together, we found some new information but it was nothing that would move us forward. At some point Dee and Guy Linden appeared. We asked them about Magellan, but they didn't see him around. Or so they say.



As we've been trying to discover some new trace, more and more explorers were joining us, including Natacha Chernov, who said she saw Magellan just yesterday!



Our findings:

• There's a new addition to the camp - a FIC badge. It wasn't there yesterday, and I think it wasn't there in the morning today. It must have fallen out of Magellan's pocket, which means he was there very recently. And probably too busy to notice the lack of the badge.
• There are two parcels belonging to Magellan. One, with the camp site, and land description: "Let those follow me who can!" and the other one, with the ship wreck under water, and description: "Follow me who dares!". A challenge, definitely a challenge.
• Just recently a "no-fly" restriction was added to Magellan's parcel. Why?
  
• As you look at the mini-map, you can notice a weird square object where the dock is. We flew very high using various devices to see if there's any platform in the sky, but there's nothing there. So we started to look under the dock, but nothing there as well. Does it have anything to do with Osprey's letter to Magellan? There's a part saying: "It's all water under the bridge now. I hope you understand". Is it really a coincidence?
• We tried to create an online indicator to see when Magellan is online and we noticed the script can't retrieve Magellan's name from his key. This might have something to do with his profile, that is showing up only in newer Second Life All tab search. Just in case, we retrieved Magellan's key from his tent and we can confirm it is the same one as posted in SL forums.
  

That's all we found, and mostly these are new questions, not the answers - but maybe this will inspire someone else to find the right track?

In the meanwhile, I created an aparatus checking whether Magellan is online (provided that the key we have is really the one). The aparatus should start emiting particles, say that Magellan is online every few seconds and stream a continuous sound alarm as soon as Magellan logs in.



I was going to give the aparatus for free, but I realised it could be used as a griefing tool. It is designed to be quite noisy, so that I can notice Magellan's presence even when switched to another application. But you'll probably get to see it, as I'll be taking it with me to Gaeta now.

If you notice anything new, I'll be very happy to know. Also, don't forget to contact Salazar Jack who leads the group of explorers - sharing information will help us all find Magellan faster. Good luck on your search!

What would Watson do? [UPDATE]

You know the little easter egg messages in Second Life client, right? So far I could get the meaning quickly. Bananas are the new plywood cubes - that's scultpties. Viva la Liberación! - that's message liberation and optional viewer updates. But what's with the Watson thing? The message in this SL release is:

Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you.

Shall we expect some new features? Are they asking us to start looking for something new? /me is definitely too curious :P

Well, the other thing is that in the book Watson would always guess wrong.. If Lindens assume we're Watsons, not Sherlocks, we're not going to find out by ourselves anyway, eh? Oh well, I'll just wait until they blog it :P

Pssst... hey... pssst.. if you know something, post it in the comments ;)


[UPDATE: A few minutes later] We have the answer!

Daedalus posted the answer in the comments (take a look). As a way-too-curious person I started googling, and found that you can actually scroll through Bell's lab notebook. A bit more searching and I found the page in the notebook, where Bell describes this part of the experiment. It says (if I read correctly):

Mr. Watson was stationed in one room with the recieving instrument. He pushed one ear closely against S and closed his other ear with his hand. The transmitting instrument was placed in another room and the door of both rooms were closed.

I then shouted into M the following sentence: "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you." To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said.

I asked him to repeat the words. He answered "You said 'Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you'".

Yes, I actually read those little letters in the notebook :) In case you can't locate the text I quoted, it starts on the left, close to the middle of the page, and continues on the right page of the notebook. So.. I learned something new today. Yay! :)

The mystery of The Man

In the old sim of Natoma, on the top of Philip's Hill, there stands a statue that remembers the ancient times of Linden World*. It is said to be one of the oldest and longest standing structures in Second Life (along with Arch'D Linden Grande and Delerium Castle).



The Man statue, built by oldjohn Linden in year 2002, is one of the very few builds that survived the transition to Beta. The statue was originally located in the town square of Linden City (the first city in Second Life as far as I know). The Linden City was completely deleted when moving to Beta and the Natoma sim kept changing a lot since then, but The Man remained intact. For the first 4 years, The Man was stretching his arms towards the sky. Since 2006 he is holding SL3B Time Vault, which contains items contributed by residents for future generations of SL.

Looking at the statue, you won't notice anything unusual at first. However, the more you examine, the more it gets interesting. One of the funniest facts about the statue is that one of its parts was built 3 months later than the others. And that would be the statue's head. Yes, the statue was headless for 3 months :)



It was probably quite simple in the beginning, with head added later to give it more detail, but it's still pretty funny when you think of it.

Looking closer you will notice a bottle of sake on the back of the monument.



And that's the mystery I mention in the title. Why is it there? It's certainly not a random object, since it's owned by Governor Linden. The bottle was built in 2005 and that's actually the only information I could find about it. Any ideas?
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* That's how Second Life was called in the Alpha stage.