A New Nexus

My fellow Extropians would be excused for wondering just what I've been up to since accepting my role as director of architecture here. The shiny new, raypunk-style building at the centre of Extropia Core would, at last, be one example.

 

I'm told that this is now Nexus III, and I do hope it's an improvement. The old Nexus, while grand and functional for its time, was generally a bit uneasy as the venue for a now more diminished range of events. This version is intended to be a more open and capable take on the tower which serves as the focus for our community.

Naturally our most popular venue, the salon, remains the Nexus' core feature. Many attendees to previous salon events will know that seating did sometimes cause a distraction, and so we hope to get that fixed before functions resume. This salon is joined in this much more open-plan lobby by a lift and two small lounge booths. For the time being, these lounges are also unoccupied, however we would encourage residents to consider them open to small social gatherings, such as book clubs and small fora. To that end, I'm certainly open to suggestions about the types of furniture you'd like inside these 'common room' spots, which will be added to in coming days.

Lastly, the observation deck will host that most Extropian of features - its view. As well as offering a 'room with a view' for residents to drop into, we hope this floor will also serve some practical function, filling in where the older Nexus' more closetted offices left us. That most dreaded of prim-hogs, the map room, will likely find a place here too, but just as with the lounge booths I'm open to suggestions from you.

Thank you indeed for visiting, and I hope you enjoy Extropia's new 'home'.

Designing the Extropian Home

With thanks to Truthseeker Young for the tip, it seems that enterprising makeover artists at Meta Makeover have descended upon Alesia Markstein's Extropian myPod! They were there to offer some insightful tips on decorating these apartments of tomorrow, taking in Extropia's unique theme and aesthetic. Hosts Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin guide we, the viewers, through a most enlightening transformation in which designer Salome Strangelove weaves naturalistic themes into Alesia's open-plan space.

The show is called Designing Worlds, and is a weekly feature shot inside Second Life. The episode can be downloaded as a Quicktime movie at that link, or can be found as part of a video podcast and live broadcast via the Meta Makeover website and iTunes.

I'd like to extend the board's personal thanks to the show's organisers and to Miss Strangelove for demonstrating such flair in the project, and I hope this may give our other residents some ideas, too!

Introductions and Re-introductions

Felicitous greetings to you!

It is with humble apologies that I now attempt to make amends for a rather quiet and understated transition between directors here at Extropia. Such a change could mean big changes in any other climate, and while nothing has happened yet it certainly doesn't hurt to keep folks informed!

For those who weren't following recent Extropian news, My name is Sinnyo Wirefly and I am Extropia's new Director of Architecture. Vidal has kept an emerita role on the Board, but has recently left it to me to continue her work on developing architecture, planning our public spaces and keeping our home's unique and bold visuals in check. This also means that I have slid into new roles at this blog and our Tumblr-based source of inspiration, Extropian Wonders.

What does a new architectural director mean for Extropia? I don't mean to make anybody suspicious, but actually.. frighteningly little. After a heavy period of reviewing past plans, peeking around the buildings in place and basically just trying to enter Vidal's headspace, I've decided that I'm keen simply to progress as before. Right now I have just the one project active, as I prepare a third design concept for a Central Nexus better-equipped to hold our large, public functions. I also hope to cut out a lot of the old offices and schemes which never caught on, saving prims and space to make a much larger, more open hub for this community. Another sits in dormancy, as work to produce an interactive orientation in Extropia ran dry. I dearly hope to bring that back up some time soon.

From this point on, I hope to keep Extropia's broader picture in mind a lot. Our dedicated citizens continue to make Extropia a lively, changeable and interesting place to be with very little interference from the Board. I hope some day to repay this with the sorts of venues you really need, be that more spontaneous hangouts or even a more active cityscape to look at from your window.

One personal touch I wish to add to Vidal's prior work will be an ambition to make Extropia a truly recognisable city. Whilst keeping our breezy openness in mind, I do want to find ways of really communicating what each place is capable of, both to current and to new visitors. The Nexus would be the first example of this, and I look forward to working with you from there.

A Triptych of Changes

My apologies to all - it seems that things really can run away over a busy week, and it's now that my own push at building draws to a close that I take stock and try to sum up what's changed along our fair shores.

Extropia Odyssey

Odyssey has, of course, been the biggest development of late. Not even into its first month yet (the sim was opened to us on Monday, the 15th of December), and we look set to complete the community framework very soon.

Visitors may have noticed how different the sim looks from either Extropia or Extropia Core, and this is very much what was intended. It'll come as news to no-one that we of the Extropian Board had never taken on a task like this before, just like the majority of landlords and ladies on the Grid. Extropia Core took a great deal of effort to design as our first island, and is still in the process of evolving. Subtle tweaks are being made here and there in order to ensure that the Core feels harmonious and works well. Now after having enjoyed over a year of running Extropia Core, and just shy of months with Extropia's Neovenician grid to the North, we'd like to think that we've learned a few things!

Odyssey is a place which we hope has character, and will grow character. That's not to say that the city proper will never have it, but unlike Odyssey the Extropia City sims were not made with a design goal in mind. As our chairman noted, Odyssey is a place of adventure and discovery, and so right from the off we wanted ports to form the centrepiece. Alterations have been made even in this short time thanks to a very helpful community of citizens, and in coming months we hope still to offer open, friendly skies for the pilots and astronauts of tomorrow despite the closure of our Openspaces.

The most recent addition to Extropia Odyssey is an exciting one for us, as clifftop myPod apartments and residential plots offer extensive views over the port and set the stage for future expansion plans should the opportunity arise. We will of course be introducing the new myPod apartments on this blog and Extropia's various news channels.

Extropia Mall

A long time in the making and fixed far above Extropia's follies for a good few months now, Extropia Core has finally welcomed in a new mall! This Ralph McQuarrie-inspired building fills in what was once held by CyberBunker, offering a trail of multi-function shop spaces which are ideal for vendors who are perhaps put off by our larger commercial spots. There is space for three to five small shops in all, and although no formal announcement can yet be made on pricing, we invite you to contact Sophrosyne Stenvaag or Galatea Gynoid to express any interest you may have.

Tycho Beach

Finally, the most recent change to Extropia has taken place in Neovenice, where until the birth of Sen'Jin Island we held Extropia's fishing contests and beach parties. Now that the Dirac Sea has been closed off, we return here with revived seaside activities to come. Seaside properties are still available for office or small vendor use (contact Sophrosyne Stenvaag for details), and citizens and visitors alike will be welcome to come here for fishing, fireside stories and friendliness - plus big waves to surf on.

... and then?

Moving into 2009, it's tricky to say where Extropia may be. This time last year, we couldn't imagine that two months later in March, we'd have grown from one sim to six, and much less that we could shrink back again and absorb such change afterwards. For my own part, I'm committed to propegating an exciting place to live and play in Extropia Odyssey. I also hold some hope that Extropia Core and Neovenice will continue to grow and become more vibrant places to live, while Extropia's presence on the web matures too.

Postcard from Extropia Odyssey

Extropia Odyssey as of today. Work on this new sim is plodding along nicely, and we're endeavouring to add in an unprecedented amount of detail. What you see here is a view Northwards from about halfway along Floating Point - the revived name of our city harbour. The Point includes little coves and grottos for relaxation and paddling (of the legged or finned variety!), marina berths to the right of frame and a forested area on the clifftop. The patch of empty land to the left has been reserved for an exciting new flagship store, with a third array of myPods and Club Suncrown, rescued from Sen'Jin island, overseeing it all.

Blogging about work is rather like trying to lead two lives. If I'm not working on whatever field the blog's for, I have plenty of time to blog but not much to talk about. If I am working, I have no time to actually talk about what's going on. Thankfully, plenty is going on and now that we're only a week or two away from Extropia Odyssey's birth, I'll be in a much better position to write about that work in the near future.

In the meantime, the Board has been working on a few ideas to try and give our culture just that extra little push, hopefully in positive and happy directions. One of these schemes is a pet project of my own, which I highlight in the hope that our architects and builders might find it interesting.

Those of you who have perused the sidebars of this blog may have noticed the Google-made widgets, for articles from Blogger and links via Delicious. That was simply stuff I came across and slapped a tag on, and while I hope that some of it was useful, I expect that for many people, the delivery was a little off. If you wanted to keep an eye on both feeds, as well as shared items from other tag-happy Extropians, that was an awful lot of futuristic inspiration being piped into your RSS reader by too many channels.

Well, worry no more, for the world of tomorrow has a solution! Presenting... Extropian Wonders., Tripsa-Stenvaag-String-Bury-Gynoid collaboration. Pause for breath.

This may seem like an odd title, but our new venture is intended to represent a magazine or journal, inspired by the pulp magazines of the early-to-mid-1900s. Thanks to the wonder of Tumblr, all the inspirational art pieces, photographs, articles and website links which used to float around Extropia's periphery can now be collected into one place in order to visually and practically explore just what the world of tomorrow might look like.

We cannot claim to be a Paleo-future, Dark Roasted Blend or a Steampunk Pics, nor would we want to be. For what it's worth though, we will be exploring these and other spots on the 'net, as well as some of our First Life personae's goodies for imagery and ideas which share our vision for the future.

We of the Board hope you will enjoy Extropian Wonders, and remember that while it is an authored collection of pieces (and therefore not open to public contribution), you can get in touch with any of us via the Extropia Forum or by email if you have a suggestion for good raypunk, steampunk and retrofuturistic content.

A New Odyssey

Visitors to our website will already have read the chairman's recent statement on matters concerning change to Openspace sims. For those who haven't yet seen it though, here's a cross-posting which will be of interest to your, our local builders and architects:

As most of you probably know by now, Linden Lab is making changes to its Openspace product. Four of the sims in the Extropia estate - Future Current, Dirac Sea, Skies of Tomorrow, and Port Moravec - are currently running in Openspaces. Linden Lab has offered three alternatives to current Openspace owners:

1. Continue to operate as Openspaces, but with extreme usage restrictions that would forbid them being used in the way we currently use them.
2. Convert to Homesteads, with an extreme price increase combined with new usage restrictions (albeit not as bad as those Openspaces must suffer with).
3. Convert the Openspaces back into a normal sim.

Given these options, only the last is viable for us in Extropia. Therefore, sometime in December, our Openspaces will be consolidated into our third full sim: Extropia Odyssey. Port Moravec will be rebuilt as part of the new sim, [as will] Second Skies, along with any of our other Openspace residents who choose to join the new Odyssey. Extropia Odyssey will host our seaport, airport, and spaceport, and thus will offer plenty of open water as well as shiny new aerospace facilities that will make Skies of Tomorrow look like yesterday's news. So whether you sail, fly, or even surf, you'll find fun in Extropia Odyssey.

Any ideas you'd like to see implemented in the new sim? Contact Galatea Gynoid with your thoughts. If there's interest, we will be holding a planning meeting with residents before December to discuss ideas and plans. More info soon...

So, any residents wishing to discuss arrangements for their new building projects, or indeed anyone with suggestions for the new sim, to be appearing South of Extropia Core (i.e. where Port Moravec lies now), please do get in touch with Madame Chairman, Galatea Gynoid. She can be reached in-world via notecards.

Catching Up on Promises

As a blogger in personal, journalistic and semi-professional spaces, I find that I am always learning new things about the practice. In this article, I would offer some personal advice: 'coming soon' posts, like that from a few months ago here on Building Extropia, are both dangerous and life-saving.

Some time ago now, I promised articles which were never written. I return to you now, after some unavoidably prolonged time off to reboot a first life, to try and make amends to that. Back in May I had decided that this blog could benefit our community a little better with some more exploratory material. Our theme is a tricky one to communicate without simply showing what it is we're all building, and is worse still to try and teach, but try we must, for this is where inspiration is born. The move started with Designing a City with No Past, and I hope to attempt this again, in more concise form. As a recap, I had also suggested the following titles for paths this blog could take:

• Shiny Spires for Outer Happiness?
• Matching Art Deco to Raygun Gothic (focussing on the Secret Goldfish cinema)
• The Domestic Tomorrow
• Extropia's Future

Now, as is expected, a few things have changed since May in Extropia. I can also assure you that things will continue to change, in some quite noticeable ways for the next few months. To avoid a premature dash for goal, we will be endeavouring to roll out a more complete plan to pitch for our citizens before acting on such notions. I can rule out certain schemes, however, and so I present an updated checklist for articles I hope to cover in this blog:

• Designing a City with No Past
• The Worlds of Tomorrow
• Extropia's Future

...but what do these titles mean?

Designing a City with No Past is, as before, my attempt to show precedent for what we're doing. Placing even its visuals to one side, Extropia is, at its very core, a utopia with no history to draw upon, and it sits at the end of a long line which sci-fi fans, technocrats and virtual world gridnauts will be familiar with. We look to Wings Above the World, Olympus and the Culture Orbitals for our synthetic history, and so those who are not so familiar with the Extropian way of life can look to such examples in order to broaden their ideas about our culture.

The Worlds of Tomorrow is part of a much larger scheme for the Department of Architecture, which some of our residents may already have been made aware of. Extropia has come to recognise the potential of many other futures, and while the raypunk 'world of tomorrow' ideal still forms our foundation, we would be neglecting our culture by ignoring the many other forms of future-positive technology out there. Extropia's second year will be one in which we hope to continue our growth, and adopt new ideas and themes in a harmonious and socially profitable way. Tomorrow is about broadening our vision.

Finally, Extropia's Future will address the practical steps we take in new ventures. For a few months now, we of the Board have been continuously impressed by the enthusiasm of our citizens, keen to try new schemes and creative endeavours within Extropia's shores. I have no doubt that incoporating such inspiring work into our global design will be an enjoyable challenge for the Department of Architecture. By the time I come to address this article, I hope that we will have ground-breaking news for you, our citizens and visitors.

So, enough of the teasing, and on again with the show. Stay tuned for a resumption of normal service here at Building Extropia, and thank you for staying with it!