Build: Tomb of the Unknown Adfarmer

Another build by the Association for Whimsical Land Use (which really means me).

This is a one-tombstone cemetery with nearby chapel. The chapel has a tree in it, for some reason that made sense at the time.

Here's the parcel description: "Come pay your (dis)respects. Repent, for the end is nigh, o farmers of ads.... [NOTE: Items are copiable.]"

Visit here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Myeolchi/58/238/54

Build: LandZen Zen Land

I 'blogged a few Arbor Project builds here... Before I was involved with the Arbor Project, I started my own project having to do with putting art in the midst of the adfarms. This was a long time ago, back when adfarms were much more of a blight than they are now (by orders of magnitude).

The point being I started up my own SL group called the Association for Whimsical Land Use. The Association still does stuff; at this point it's just me doing 'land healings.'

Some months back I got some land in Picnic sim, for the purpose of healing it or building something within the constraints of junk land. It ended up being the latter.

I call it LandZen Zen Land. Here's the parcel description: "Cut land as zen garden. The wabi-sabi of former adfarms. The landscaping might make more sense if you View -> Property Lines. If you are a neighbor interested in obtaining this land for your own use, IM Cinco Pizzicato"

Basically, I decided to embrace the fractured nature of the land. Some elements of the zen garden are 'disrupted' by the microparcels, such as the water and the rock garden. As pieces became available (with the land cutters selling out or abandoning their land), I left the fractured elements un-fixed.

Most of the elements of this landscaping effort are freebies that I made; one of the buildings in the southern end of the parcel has boxes that will give them to you. I'm especially proud of the 6-prim teahouse. The rocks are sculptie prims unlinked from a juniper tree I bought from Organica.

This junk land has reached equilibrium, in the sense that I can't really buy any more of it, and none of the sellers are going to do me any favors at all. So here it is, empty in its fullness, finished and unfinished.

Visit here:http://slurl.com/secondlife/Picnic/103/140/145. But be sure to turn on View -> Property Lines in order to understand it.

Note: Melodie Darwin wrote a nice piece on this land.

Build: Valeyard on the Gulf Coast

I've been wanting to build something like this for a while. I come from the Texas gulf coast, and I've been feeling a little homesick for wide flat wetlands and fried shimp.

The land came up for auction, and I won it. A friend of mine really enjoys underwater spaces, which will be the next addition.

For now, it's a fishing shack and dock. Come on down. Bring yer fishin' pole. Try here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Valeyard/101/47/24 UPDATE: Valeyard is no more.

I wanted to create a little bit of narrative, so there's a solar collector on the roof, hooked to a car battery, and subsequently to a power inverter and then the lights.

Main building was done in a day and a half. Some texture tweaking over another day, spread out, and some custom coding for another couple days, spread out. The shadow under the shelter dissipates as the sun goes down, and reappears when the sun rises. The lights light up at night, and bugs start swarming them. And also there's a water-lapping sound embedded in the build, which can be switched on and off if you know where to click.

Build: Arbor Project in Zakarisz

Another Arbor Project build I did. This is a sort of exposed sewer that lives on about 368 square meters of land. I did it over the course of a couple of days, off and on.

When I build something like this, it's mostly done within two hours. The rest is tweaking.

When I first built this, all the nearby land was full of terrible junk builds and detritus on land with no autoreturn. Basically the place looked like a metaphorical sewer of ugliness, so I added a more literal sewer.

Since then, the land on three sides has been abandoned, even where you see the little mall next door. Some people will abandon land but leave the vendors.

Visit here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zakarisz/220/12/81

Build: Arbor Project

For a while now I've been working with the Arbor Project in Second Life.

The Arbor Project is a community that arose to champion the cause of a more beautiful Mainland. This was mostly in reaction to the activities of a few unscrupulous land dealers who cut up the land into little tiny chunks and put extortion builds in them.

The Arbor Project has been taking donations of this 'junk land' for quite a while, and has quite a bit. Neighbors who want the land can claim it and join it to their existing land.

A few months back there was a call for volunteers to 'landscape' the larger parcels, and make them nice. I jumped on that. :-)

Here are a few of the builds I made:

The first was in Weinlos sim. It doesn't exist anymore; someone claimed it. Since it bordered Route 8, it consisted of a nice old-timey billboard and a 'prim' station. The station features a gravity-fed pump and rotating prims floating inside.

This is a low-prim build, and took about 5 hours spread over two days. I used mostly textures from the Bay City content pack, and from Torley's textures. The Primoco texture I made myself. And the ad is, shall we say, 'fair use,' because I'm using it ironically; this is, after all, recovered ad farm.










Here's a build I did in Porcupine sim with Nostrum Forder. It's a little zen garden nestled within 128 square meters. My original idea was to echo the shapes of the objects in the nearby microparcels within the sand garden part, thus drawing them into the zen garden. But Nostrum started putting down rocks, which looked a lot less like a junkyard and more like a proper zen garden.

This garden still exists. It was claimed by a friend, Silverr Andel, who left it mostly in place, with only minor changes.

Welcome to CincoBlog

This is my new 'blog for Cinco Pizzicato, an avatar in Second Life.