Alterniverse here we come...

Life lesson - save regularly - grrrr. Lost the last attempt at this particular posting because I closed IE7 [and the bloody thing did NOT prompt me to close all tabs, just closed all at once - grrrrr] ok, here we go recreating the wit and colour of the previous posting....

I decided to stay out of 2L today and concentrate on 3L and 4L [3L is my MOO, 4L is my MUD]. I figured that getting angsty about stuff I _want_ to do but cannot is not productive, so decided to focus on 3L and brainstorm in there [I seem to think non-linearly, and my MOO is the prefect brainstorming place].
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Firstly, I decided a MAP was a plan, so I launched Confluent's "Visual Thought" [my mapping tool of choice - it is free, powerful, full of pre-made shizz and is brill at managing multi-page illustrations - my maps for 4L areas are often involved and need to span a number of pages]. Now to MUVE newbies [Multi-User Virtual Environments ... still with me?] the above illustration might look like a "Concept Map" or a "Mind Map" and although it will _also_ function as that, it is actually a GEOGRAPHICAL map of the area I wanted to build - Redbarn visitors in 2L will recognise this space. It will serve my building needs in both MOO and later in MUD, although the building processes in each are really different ... more on that later.
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I hooked into my MOO and connected to a suburb I call "The Alterniverse" - a portal of sorts that provides bridges to other spaces quite different to a normal school learning environment - this seems more natural than moving from somewhere in the school grounds [which the "backbone" of my MOO is modelled] to a space station, or under the ocean or..in this scenario, to Polstead in Suffolk in 1826. MOOs, MUDs and MUxs have been around for ages - ever since they spawned from IRC [Internet Relay Chat] - synchronous tools that allowed people from anywhere that a network reached to chat to others in real time [whatever that is]. Social worlds like 2L are really ancestors of these I guess... neways, on with the task. ***WARNING CODE ALERT***
I descended to command line level in the MOO - it is faster and I know what I am doing. I decided to do it this way to see how long it would take to make the geography navigable [all account holders in MOO can do this or use a point and click interface to build for themselves, for free, with no logical limits to the amount of geography they can create]. This command string was entered [one command at a time; each command is separated by a semicolon] but could have been scripted and pasted in on ONE operation, to instantaneously make the space - something I will do in QMOOnity when i clone the area to that MOO as well.
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emo cracks knuckles ready to begin; @dig r/r,out to The Red barn Mystery; go r; @dig f/f,out to The Farmyard; go f; @dig b/b,out to Outside the Barn; go b; @dig t/t,out to Toolshed Entrance; @dig d/d,out to The Barn Doors; @dig a/a,out to Beside The Barn; go t; @dig w/w,out to The Workbench; @dig i/i,out to Inside the Barn; go i; @dig t/t,out to A Trapdoor; @dig s/s,out to Stock Livery; go t; @dig d/d,out to Down to the Root Cellar; go d; @dig r/r,out to The Root Cellar; go d; go t; go s; @dig x/x,out to #1724 {a circuit to the barn doors}; @dig f/f,out to Feed Storage; go x; go d; go a; @dig t/t,out to Trail Across Field; go t; @dig u/u,out to Atop a Hillock; go u; @dig d/d,out to Towards a Stream; go d; @dig e/e,out to An Encampment; go e; @dig w/w,out to Inside a Wagon; @dig f/f,out to A Fireplace; go f; emote warms himself by the fire; go e; go d; go u; go t; go a; go b; go f; emo rests after a short and intense digging session. [bloody blogger will not let me insert a "downstroke char" so have put in slashes in their place]
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7 minutes later I was walking around in a fully navigable space. I used long descriptive names for the passageways to various places "To the root cellar" as well as keyboard shortcuts "r" for travellers in a hurry who do not want to click-frenzy. You can walk around now by clicking on the exit names or by typing the command "go t" to travel through the door labelled "t", say. MOO punters can get there by typing "@go alterniverse" and following the links from there.
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I uploaded to my website an MP3 I ripped of the song by Tom Waits that got me going on this quest in the first place, and embedded it in the entrance room to stream while you get your bearnings, along with an historic lithograph map of Polstead in 1828 I found in my Googling, embellished the room textually and saved. 2 minutes. I went to the farmyard room, embedded an historical lithograph of the Red Barn [the one at the top of the blog] and will re-visit this room to textually embellish and start defining the learning objects in that room as well.
now time for a cup of tea and to contemplate how to visually theme this suburb, decide what learning objects need to be there, what bots will say and how they will look...