Did you know... Constellation sim

Here were are again folks, the third Blog article in a series of four, covering the entire GFC estate. Today, Constellation. This time, it was a bit more difficult to find things that were off, wrong, funny or strange... because the sim had just had a complete overhaul. Nevertheless, I did manage to find a couple of things. For instance, did you know...

... that you can actually climb up the stairs to the turbolift in the middle of the sim, which goes to the GFC Conference Room?

stairs to the turbolift

... that the Duty Officers and GFC Security don't agree upon the alert status of the sim?

Black or green alert?

 ... that besides the lawn, there's other things in the rezzer that can be put in the middle of the sim? (Like this, which is apparently a swimming pool for Micro's!)

Swimming pool for Micros!

... that there's a non-functioning holodeck in the sky? (at least, I couldn't get it to work...)

"Computer, I asked for a relaxing beach, not a transporter!"

... that underneath the ground there's lots and lots and lots and lots of walkways, which nature is trying to retake!

Bolders find their way through the ground!

... that it's difficult to party in a club which first has to be rezzed?

"Of course we don't *need* a club to party, but it would be helpful..."

... that there's leftover firework jars spread out across the sim?

What if one of those went off when someone picked them up? Medical, stand by for burns!

 ... that the stargate rises up from the ground?

An ingenious system!

... that on board the Voyager set, the doors in Engineering *and* the jeffries tube doors open the wrong way?

A less than ingenious system...

... that some of the items being sold at the mall are... uhm... well, let's just say I can't really see this becoming the standard uniform for women in GFC...

Not that I mind if the women here wore that... hehehe...

... that GFC has freebies to give out? A nice clock, or galaxy PJ's! And set of GFC sports clothing, but that hasn't been set as 'for sale' or 'free to copy' yet.

Clock, sportswear, Galaxy PJ's

Well, there was more, but this is enough for now. Hope you enjoyed it... next time we'll have the last part of this series of articles, and we'll look at Sovereign then! Enjoy!

Teleport  to Constellation Sim Click HERE

Novatech's Cheshyr Pontchartrain Arrested for....well, where do we start!!!!

The ink on your screen hadn't even dried from the Novatech interview with Cheshyr Pontchartrain before the GFC offices were raided and the writing team interrogated.

It was like a scene out of a bad war movie, there were angle posed lamps, a dingy room with second hand Ikea furniture, banging of fists on tables and waving of fingers.

Then they slammed the picture down in front of us, waves their hand in a pointing gesticular manner at it.
"You know this creature" says the dark figure in the shadowy corner of the room.

I indicated he looked vaguely familiar.

"We know you know him, we have people who say they know, that we know that they know you know him".

Thinking about that last statement, I almost convinced myself I did know him, but just couldn't place where, when, how, why or maybe if.

"He appeared on your blog no more that 6 articles ago, we caught him walking the streets of SL in that hat, the fashion police immediately pounced on him, threw him and the hat behind bars".

I wasn't proud, I Squealed like a pig in a slaughter house, gave up everything I knew, which wasn't much.I told them all the information they required was stored in that tardis over there. So they rushed to it like personnel to a new recruit. Once inside  I instructed the tardis to teleport 2000 meters in the air and destroy itself then ran like a scared girl in a horror movie, which meant tripping up every 2 feet for some unknown reason....

Novatech's Cheshyr Pontchartrain Galaxy Market Interview

With the new Galaxy market in full swing we thought we'd occasionally have a look at the shops in the GFC's new full sim complex and talks to some of their owners. If you haven't been, Galaxy Market an expansive sim wide shopping area with 40 nicely sized shop fronts which spans whole sim in a giant circle.

It wasn't hard to pick the first shop to blag an interview off, its was staring us straight in the face. Not only is it a name synonymous with SL and especially sci-fi, to dare ignore it would be like ignoring the existance of air. The orders were set, check all known databases for Novatech in secondlife......providing you don't find it on google first. Its interesting to note their products have appeared in this blog afew times..1,2

We got our flashy communication system out and hailed Cheshyr Pontchartrain from Novatech, who replied via a subspace message filtered by two paper cups on a string. Our advance system of reel tapes recorded the conversation and a small army of Tribbles were employed to transcript the message before their next breeding cycle. Due to Union laws we were told that a tribble had to conduct the interview as it was a star trek minority character that doesn't get much screen time. We happyly complied and equipped a Tribble with a microphone and a recording device.

Tribble reporter: What's it like being in Secondlife for you.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: Here being Second Life? Not too different than anywhere else really. I've been active on the Internet since before it was called the Internet. Hosting MUDs in the days before MMO's and social networks existed, running BBS's and publishing software for my TRS-80 Color Computer back in high school, and more recently running GameSages.com until IGN bought it.

Tribble Reporter: What kind of relationship do you have with your customers?

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: Second Life is a bit more open than IGN's community, and *much* smaller. This is probably a good thing. I actually get to meet customers here. At GameSages there were millions of readers, but I knew maybe 30 of them, and half of those were on the staff.

Tribble Reporter: Novetech has a large star trek and doctor who influence, how did that come about and what are you most popular products

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: I've always been a fan of science fiction. Star Trek and Doctor Who in particular. I've been watching both shows since the 1970's. As for Second Life, well, that's more a matter of luck and word-of-mouth advertising.

Tribble Reporter: ah, tell me more....

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: I built my first Star Trek product years ago, a stellar cartography room made mostly because I thought the current offerings were overpriced, and not very interactive. The transporters and turbolift followed, to help tie things together.

Tribble Reporter: We see so many tardis's flying, rezzing scenes, changing shape and exploding, how exactly did that product come about.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: The TARDIS was more of a whim, to be honest. A friend of mine (Sen Pixie, who runs Hands of Omega) had sold me one of her builds, and I needed a way to get from it to the ground. I put my turbolift code in a police box and things sort of spiraled out of control. :)

Tribble Reporter: I've been fly around in a modified turbolift...who would have known :)
What are your best selling products?

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: Novatech's best-sellers are emDash

Tribble Reporter: Many members here use the emDash. We have teleport padds  placed in the sims at various locations so you can just select them from your emdash and the group feature has come in handy for private locations between division members. A very useful feature for use.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: the Type 70 TARDIS.

Tribble Reporter: Though this is a star trek influenced sim, many of our members are seen often flying arounds in the tardis. They are hard to track down as tardis's have a habit if changing shape, one minutes its a police box, then a pyramid, a chair, a briefcase and a myriad of other possible shapes and designs, it confuses our security team no end and we suspect borg involvement....who else would have an item turn from a policebox to a brief case and tens of other forms, who, but the borg.... Its an invasion i tell you...eh..em...back to the interview....

Cheshyr Pontchartrain looks a bit worried at this point, but continues...

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: HORIZONS (mostly the Home and Pro versions.) are also one of our best sellers.

Tribble Reporter: The GFC had a few of those around the sim, great for rezzing new sets and saving prim space so you don't have to have certain scenes in world all the time. Great prims saver.And finally, what's the future for novatech

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: At the moment, I'm working on a massive TARDIS overhaul, upgrading all of the console and expansion rooms, and eventually all of the Type 70 forms. The last piece of the puzzle was released with this week's server rollout.

Tribble nods in the a way only a tribbles can  considering it doesn't have a neck.

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: With over 50 rooms and 80+ forms, it will probably take a few weeks.

Tribble runs to the Galaxy market to look at all the available forms on on show....Cool!!!!

Cheshyr Pontchartrain: If all goes well, TimoL's Enterprise sets will get the same treatment, so you could, for example, rez the bridge, click a button next to the door, rez a corridor, and continue on building the ship as you go. Same way the TARDIS works now.

Tribble Reporter: Looking forward to that, Cheshyr, thank you very much for your time.

And with that statement the Tribble put down his microphone, found a nice quiet corner of the room and reproduced itself more times than I care to remember.

Vist Galaxy Market and the Novatech stores HERE

More pictures HERE

High on Grass

On visiting the Constellation market place Lt.jg Richardjrn Weatherwax and I noticed something different from the 4th of July opening. Its one of those things that slaps you in the face and say's "Oi, look at me", so we did. We stared at it in bemused wonder.....Drawn towards it like a magnet to a fridge

We stood in it and watched as our feet disappeared under its green pastures wondering if one of those stores had a lawnmower we could borrow.

In the centre of the market was a large green space, the kind of space governments are forced to place in the middle of urban cities to remind residents  that grass, flowers and trees still exist and weren't destroyed in a low budget sci-fi like catastrophe depicted during the time before tv period drama's.

As we both stood in the long grass we half expected a herd of wildebeest to come charging or a multitude of wildlife to come jump out at us....Well that's what i thought, Richard was still looking for the store that sold the lawnmowers.

Fortunately we didn't find anything untoward in the swaying mini meadow, no treasures, secret tunnels or divisions that had stopped functioning and had been overtaken by weeds....we found non of these things, so we left the mature lawn and placed our feet back on good old solid prim pavements.

In hindsight, I wonder if we laid down in the grass would anybody be able to see us....<pause>....Last one to constellation lawn is a tribble lover......<TP>

4th Party

Greetings Readers

G-Man here

Well yesterday was a pretty exciting day here in GFC. We had the Grand Re-Opening of the sim Constellation. It has been re-modeled and we have a brand new Galaxy Market with all the latest in technological advances. It's a wonderful new "open" air market and definitely deserves a look. Anyway after the ribbon cutting we held a "ZZ TOP" concert that was really awesome! I know that one of the other bloggers here plans on a more in depth report on this so I will just say it was a fantastic concert that we managed to pack 50 people into, along with all the fireworks. A record I think, or at least close to it on the number of people in a sim.

After the concert was over, everyone wandered off to do whatever it is they do in sl. And being a holiday in the US. i'm sure alot of people had plans in their real lives for the day. So the sims pretty much quieted down for the day. Later in the evening as I was wandering around looking for something to do,  I stopped by the sandbox in Aeon to see what, if anything was happening. Was pretty quiet except for Thomas and Dustin. I asked if there were any plans for fireworks later in the evening and Thomas jumped up and said let's do some now. And that's how our "little" impromptu party began. Thomas brought out some fireworks, Lillian stopped by and threw out a dance floor. I even brought out the "old" Gokyu and dressed him up for the occasion.

Some pretty colorful characters stopped by for our little party. Uncle Sam himself made an appearance.




One of our Resident Vulcans also stopped by and put to rest the question of "Can Vulcans Dance?" It seems they definitely can as Sodak definitely showed us some of his "moves".

K, our Sigma Squadron leader dropped by and added a few more fireworks to our showed and made it even more awesome!

So all in all, a day that I thought would be relatively quiet and un-eventful, turned out to be one heck of a impromptu party! Fun was definitely had by all, and it was a wonderful way to end the 4th of July for me. It also goes on to show that just because nothing is scheduled here in GFC, doesn't mean that "nothing" is going on. Events happen all of the time, whether it's a 4th party, or a group of people shooting phasers at drone targets in the tactical sandbox. Or something even simpler as a small group of friends sitting around and talking about their adventures in this wonderful place we call SL. So if your ever having a day like me and looking for something to do, drop on by the sims here at GFC. You never know what you may find. Below you will find a link to some of the other pictures I took at the party. I hope you enjoy them.

Until next time

G-Man

More 4th Pics

A New Build

A New build

So, what do I know about the new Sim Build? Not much actually, only what I'e secretly cammed into find. What would I say about it? Well anything has got to be better than what it was before, let be honest. I am sure that the new build will be great! But if you can't wait for that and haven't got the heart to cam in there yourself, then here is a sneak peak! 

Brought to you by Jimmy Vehrous.