SW City Newsletter/August - December 2002

This is an archived copy of an SW City newsletter. Mentioned events are not running and links may be broken.

↢ March - July 2002	SW City Newsletter August - December 2002	January - May 2003 ↣
August YETI CITY PART OF SCARABIAN REPUBLIC Yeti City will officially become part of the Scarabian Republic on August 1, 2002. Yeti City also now has a forum of its own at http://forum.swcity.net. Congratulations! The Scarabian Republic is a virtual nation that now includes SW and Yeti Cities. As a nation, the Republic strives to work together on events and projects and building upon each member city's community. The Republic officially came into being on July 9, 2002 with the signing of the SW City Charter. For more information on the Scarabian Republic, please telegram Syntax, SW Comit, SW Chris, Captain MAD Mike, or Yeti, or read the City Charter SW City CharterWM. VORNOX AND CYPRIS CREEK PROMOTED On the 26th of July, Vornox and his suburb, Cypris Creek were both promoted to a higher SW'ian status! Vornox has been a member of SW City for over a year now so SW Comit, Governor of Central District, initiated the vote to promote Vornox. After about one week of core staff voting and preparations, Vornox was promoted! That means that Vornox is now a Manager his suburb is now a subcommunity and is free to expand as much as it needs. Congratulations Vornox, you deserve it! Contributed by Syntax. SYBIT AND CATURN ISLANDS SURFACE This month, SW City thought of some plans for city expansion. It all started when CMM noted how little land Central District have left, and it got SW Comit thinking. Later that day he posted a picture of the Sybit projectWM - a large island about 1/3 the size of SW City Island located to the north. Central District would own one half and Syntax Estates would own the other half. Inspired, Nutinmuch decided to do the same on the southern side of the city. They called it Caturn islandWM. It's about 300x100 coords big, estimated. Contributed by SW Comit. BUILD RAISING Grab your friends and tell the neighbors! SW City is having a build raising! What is a build raising you ask? Like the barn raisings of the last two centuries, it is a collaborative effort by many people to create one single building. And it will be FUN! Hang out with your friends and make new ones as we build a big ol building utilizing the talents of many across the cyberverse. Be there at SW City GZ on Saturday August 3 at 10pm VRT. That's THIS SATURDAY! See you there! CY AWARDS PRE-VOTING PARTY SW City will hopefully take home some awards this year, including the Best Community (aka Community Initiative for a Community or Town) award. But as always, we can't do it without your support! We value our residents as well as anyone else who has visited SW City. Show your support for SW City by showing up to our rally the day before the polls open! There will be fun and games, guaranteed! This is one event to tell everyone about. The date is August 16 at 10pm VRT at SW City GZ. We hope you can come! RUMOR MILL WITH COB T. RWX It's Cy Award time again. Yes, there is that anticipation and excitement of another showstopper in the air. Well, for the pre-nominees at least. Could I care less? Not really. But congratulations to them. And who better to steal the best community award than SW City, right? After two long years of disappointment, no Amigos worlds are here to grab it this year, who were the winners in the last few awards shows. The only thing possibly stopping our beloved SWians are AWTeen and MrBruce's world uh, A!!CT. There is still that stiff competition. It follows this award around like a dog to its master. Will SW City finally come home with an award? Maybe. But that's what they thought last year. And they lost by a very slim margin. Ah, but this time SW City has put on a rather slick advertising campaign. Keep an eye on the Xeon TV feeds and the Adz@GZ network, especially around August 17. Will it really be effective? Are these awards becoming too political? At any rate, even if you don't really care who gets what in the CY's, get out there and vote. And not for SW City because I'm telling you to. I'm really not. But this is their newsletter. Vote for who you think is the Best Community. SW City tries hard, and so does everyone else up for the award. Only one city can bring it home, but not if you don't vote for them. Contributed by Cob T. Rwx, author of the Rwx Report (out of print) at http://rwxreport.skywalkeronline.netWM SYNTAX'S SW PICK OF AUGUST This month, I just had to pick my favourite build (or collaboraton of builds) in all of SW City, Orton Strip Mall. Orton Strip Mall, located on the border of Central SW City and Palm Grove is an amazing place to explore! Packed with stores such as furniture shops, gaming zones, computer stores, flower shops and food stands, everytime you visit there's something new! The back streets are my personal favourite, but if you venture into them, be careful! (>_< @ the crime rate there) Another thing I personally like about Orton Strip Mall is that it was built by many builders, not just one. Tauntaun even dropped by and built a popular "CMM Sucks" clothing store! I highly recommend you check out OSM as soon as possible. September This month's content is mostly missing FIRST SW CITY EVENT SINCE 3RD BIRTHDAY BASH A SUCCESS The SW City "Build Raising" which is much like an amish barn raising was a huge success! Held on Saturday, August 3rd, 11 people got together to participate in the event. "My idea was [to build] an arcology...but somehow it was just turned into a biodome," said Captain MAD Mike. So that's what all the builders did, they started with a large glass type structure and started different environments such as Grasslands, Alpine, Wetlands, Jungle and Desert biomes. The building lasted right into the wee hours of the night after starting around 10pm VRT and ending around 5am VRT. The SW City Staff would like to thank everyone who showed up and contributed their skills to create a wonderful build! October FOLDING@HOME PROJECT: TEAM SCARABIAN REPUBLIC SW City now has a Folding@Home Team. Folding@Home is a screensaver, must like SETI@HOME that uses your computer to help researchers understand protein folding, protein aggregation, and related diseases. If you would like to help this cause, join our Team, #11309. TRIPOD HITS SW CITY We need your help! Last week I discovered that Tripod, one of our file hosting providers has deleted almost 8 megabytes of pictures and sounds from our sw_city.tripod.com account. If you have ANY images, midis, or mp3s in your AW cache with sw_city-tripod-com in their file name, please, attach them to an e-mail and send them to the e-mail link belowRemoved. NEW SUBWAY STATIONS The River Line has gotten quite a boost in the number of stations. Open now are Temple of the Triforce Station and Silo Bay South Station. Triforce Station provides direct links to Nimbus Land and Hyrule Castle Town. Silo Bay South is a direct link to Rossyboy's Viceroy lot, Silo Bay, which is on the southwestern shore of SW City Island. Also on the Estates Line is the newly opened Orton Station, which is linked to Orton Strip Mall and SW City Hall. SYNTAX'S SW PICK OF OCTOBER This month's SW Pick of October has to be the SW City Hall, where all the SW'ian meetings are held. The original hall was located directly south of SW City Town Square but was demolished by SW Comit because it looked old and shabby. The new hall was constructed right along SW Main Street down by Kithicor Forest and Orton Strip Mall in September of 2001. I decided to redesign the hall a bit to reflect how we have grown as builders in the last year. The result was a great new interior and exterior design. If you have not seen it already, I suggest you drop by and check it out. A whole new lobby, grande staircase and meeting hall have been constructed for you viewing pleasure. :D November SW CITY WINS BIG AT CY'S On October 26th, the highly anticipated CY Awards took place in the world Cyawards. With over 260 in attendance, the night started off with some speeches by some of the CY Committee. This year the speeches were kept short, so the awards ceremony took place early. The first award of the night was in the category of Community Development in Architecture/Urban Planning/Design. This award, after a very truthful introduction by the presenter, was awarded to Central SW City Governor SW Comit for his work on the Praxten Oil Rig! After XelaG accepted his award for Community Development in Technical Enhancements, it was time for the big Community Initiative for a Community or Town award. There was some tough competition this year but SW City managed to clasp this one after three plus years of hard work! An acceptance speech by the Mayor, the embarrassment of Goober King and a quick lingo lesson by Vornox was what the staff did on stage while receiving the award. The SW City staff would also like to give some shout-out's to friends that have also won CY awards! Creative Vision & Application Environment Design in a Public Building World which went to our friends Seiya Faye for her awesome Starbuilds Factory and dreamer2 who won Creative Vision & Application for a Virtual Art Project for Olympic Park which is located in the Scarabian Republic partner, Yeti City! Congratulations everyone! Contributed by Syntax. ESPERION ISLES OPEN TO PUBLIC! The Esperion Isles, a new viceroy in the Palm District, has opened it's doors to the public! The Isles, which is currently only one island called Optimum Island, is a tropical paradise located in the new eastern ocean expansion. It's owner, Espilae, has done an amazing job giving a tropical feeling to the island. The GZ is surrounded by things like tiki huts and narrow pathways. The island is also inhabited by a small bird-like creature called Casanemus. They sell various metals throughout the crowded streets of Optimum. Currently, Optimum has a working Monorail system and a subway station for transportation. The Subway Station, aptly named Optimum Island Station, hooks up to the main SW City Subway system via a new station in Clandestinian Village called Eastern Plains Station. If you would like to take a gander at the new island, you can visit there by teleporting to aw 2430.45S 4529.98E 0.7A 0 . Expect big things from this small community! Contributed by Syntax. SCARABIAN REPUBLIC FORUMS GET FACELIFT After some short downtime, it was time for the Scarabian Republic forum to get upgraded. Not because we wanted to, but because we had to. The reason for the downtime was because that YaBB Gold, the cgi/perl based forum software that we use, was hogging too many server resources so the host had to pull the plug. SW Chris suggested that we upgrade to the PHP version which uses fewer resources. After our FTP had begun working again, Syntax immediately went to work installing YaBBSP, a PHP based forum, and converting old YaBB Gold files over to the new version. After about 2 and a half hours of work, the new forum was online and ready for usage! YaBBSP contains many features that the old forum did not have, such as a calendar and the ability to post polls. It's also way faster! If you would like to check out the new forum, simply visit the old forum URL which is http://forum.swcity.net/. If you would like to have your own YaBB forum, visit http://www.yabb.info! It's easily the best free forum software out there on the net. Contributed by Syntax. VR VILLAGE - ONE BIG HAPPY VR FAMILY Ever wondered what it would be like if all the virtual worlds on the net united to one common place? *advertiser voice* Well wonder no longer! The VR Village, an online community dedicated to the unity of all users of all the different Virtual Reality programs! The VR Village is a huge website with tons of resources. It has everything from webrings and chat to polls and forums. The forum they use is the exact same as the Scarabian Republic forum, YaBBSP. There is so much stuff here, you have to check it out for youself! If your a VR buff and love everything about it, then VR Village is a great place for you to visit. Help make the VR Community strong and visit the VR Village @ http://www.spiraline.com/~vrvillagevoice/html/index.phpWM Be sure to sign up for the website so you get full advantage of all its features! Contributed by Syntax. FOLDING@HOME UPDATE The Scarabian Republic F@H team has been busy lending their spare CPU cycles to the research team over at Stanford University. We are currently in 1079th place with 147 WU's (work units). Don't know what Folding is? Here is an excerpt from the front page of their website. What are proteins and why do they "fold"? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out their biochemical function, they remarkably assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease. If you would like to help out the teams, both Stanford F@H and the Scarabian Republic, download the free Folding@HOME client from http://folding.stanford.edu/ and join the team number 11309. Every little bit counts. Remember, team number 11309! Contributed by Syntax. SYNTAX'S SW PICK OF NOVEMBER November's highlighted build is a very obscure build that I had never seen before. It is the JR (James River) River Rafting tour! This tour takes you high into the citrus mountains the point where the James River starts. You then hop onto a raft and raft down it's exciting rapids, eventually ending up back at the dock near Mountainview. While rafting, you will experience amazing views of some old ruins which are high up in the mountains. You will also raft right through Mountainview, getting a glimpse of a couple of the residents' houses, after rafting under big cliffs and bridges. If you would like to take a rafting tour, then head to the corner of Mountainview Road and North James River Parkway. Another option is visiting the coordinates below. :-) Happy Rafting! December EDITOR'S NOTE Hello everyone, This month's newsletter is a little short. Some of this is because of the relatively low level of involvement this month from the SW City Staff and its citizens. But most of it is because there are only so many things that can be announced at a time. We do have several projects in the works and are planning on announcing them in the coming months. I myself have been working on another video game recreation for the last month and a half. And somewhere down the line is a tourism video. My personal goal is to have it done in time for the Avatars 2002 conference at the beginning of January. But we will see. :) Everyone else has their little pet projects. I know for a fact that Rossyboy has been working on expanding Silo Bay, his viceroy. But even if you don't see anyone on AW, you can always find someone on the SWCity.Net forums. So please check those out. Cheers, SW Chris, Editor-in-Chief SW CITY AVATARS 2002 BOOTH Avatars is a yearly conference that is held in Active Worlds. It is a cross-platform event, meaning that other Virtual 3D browsers like Blaxxun and Adobe Atmosphere participate as well. This year the conference is being themed around J.R.R. Tolkein's universe of the Lord of the Rings and his eleventy-first birthday. SW City will be showing itself off to folks wondering around the Avatars 2002 Middle Earth themed worlds. So please look for us! SILO BAY CELEBRATES 10TH BUILD Silo Bay celebrated today, Monday 9th December, the completion of their tenth build. "Trashcan Sellin' Dudes" was constructed on the first day of December, however, a 10th build was already being constructed, but it cannot be completed until Rossy finds a new host for his pictures (grr). At exactly 11:40pm VRT, Rossyboy, Silo Bay's only citizen, came to celebrate. He said "Yay" then left. "Silo Bay's average build rate is about one build per month. However, this is just an average and the build rate will definately be increasing. Maybe by the end of 2003 I'll have 30 builds!" - Rossyboy, owner of Silo Bay. SYNTAX'S SW PICK OF DECEMBER This month's SW Pick is something that fits in with the cold, wintery month of December. Mount Volon lodge, a small lodge located in the depths of Syntax Mesa area is a retreat for those hiking in the Avatar Mountains. Mount Volon lodge has some small hotel rooms but really isn't the main attraction. If you got outside the lodge, you'll see all sorts of wonderful nature. Just behind the lodge is an insanely long hike up the Avatar Mountains which leads you to Rama Village, a snowy village at the absolute top of the Avatar Mountains. I suggest dropping by and checking out some of the cool builds located in this area. If you like, you can keep heading east from the Village down the mountainside to visit Syntax Manor. That's all for this month, enjoy! :)
SW City Staff Members Network Captain MAD Mike • Espilae • Ferruccio • Hyper Anthony • Joshua •OniLink • SW Chris SW Comit • Syntax • Vornox Alphaworld Enhanced • Birthday Bash • Builder's Academy • SBN • Scarabian Republic SW City Interactive • SWiki Notable Locations in SW City AWIA Adventure Game • Grimmwood Forest • Ilexus Caves • Irenic Ocean • Hyrule • Mazenda Caves • Nimbus Land • Palais d' Ferruccio • Pamozo Island • Rising Glen Retreat • Town Square Park • Sharman Caves