Loch Avie and the Terrain Disaster
Nicholas K, Bellambi E. Unexpected loss of terrain data in a Caledon duchy. Proc Royal Soc 2007;8.
ABSTRACT
Caledon Loch Avie suffered a data casualty on Friday, August 10, during a period of ongoing unusual server performance. One of the authors (EB) witnessed a whole-scale disruption in the Loch Avie terrain. Land elevations were affected across the sim, with some locations receeding over 1 metre. Three woman-hours of terraforming was required to return the Loch's landscaping to normal.
Imagine my surprise when I logged-in on Friday and found water in the Loch along the rail tracks. Yikes! What disaster caused this?
As I then rather frantically flew around the Loch, I found trees floating in mid-air, pieces of my land fallen into the Loch, and mountains which had made themselves smaller than they once were. WTF?
My heart sank. What had happened to my beautiful Loch Avie?? Rapidly I checked my Estate Tools. Everything was as I had left it. Had Phillip (the volcano - not Linden) done this??
Understanding that there was nothing to be done, but to attempt repairs, I set about raising, smoothing, reverting, flattening, etc., the land. Meanwhile the curses coursing through my mind - and sometimes coming out of my mouth would make a sailor blush. One could understand this I am sure.
After working for more than an hour at this and making slow progress, I telegraphed The Honourable Kate Nicholas. Her skills with terrain work are finely honed. She was not in world. But thankfully, sometime later that night she was able to assist me in the RE-terraforming process. Our abstract of the event is above and you may read the full article at Proceedings of the Royal Society.
It should be noted that when I logged into SL yesterday (Sunday), I was an island unto myself. By that I mean that despite seeing all sims active and open (save for Vic City which was listed as offline for the second time this weekend) on the map, I could see NONE of the other Caledon sims. Odd things appear to be afoot. I hope Loch Avie's server is not declining, but I am growing concerned. We will continue to monitor.
6 comments:
Oh no! How distressing! I hope that things will return to "normal" soon. Things have been crazy for everyone with the grid being so unstable lately.
Zounds! grave news indeed. I do know that Caledon Tamranoach was in sorry shape last night. I hope this isn't evidence of future tidings for Caledon. Somehow I think the culprit is fare more mundane than the fictional "Phillip"... more likely, as you mention, the culprit is a degrading server and inattentive systems administrators. Of course, I'm no Linden cheerleader at the moment, so my views may be biased.
I have read Miss Nichols' depiction of events with great amusement, and yes, sympathy. I'm sure this 'glitch' caused many hours of tedium on both your parts.
Duchess,
I ran into Lady Kate as she worked diligently away....I too hope for stability, as our special project nears completion in the Loch! This warrior, as you know, is dying to begin.....
Martially yours,
Sir Tele :)
Ah - the Green awaits the warriors, Sir Tele! Do spread the word. A more official announcement will hit the æther later this week.
*smiles warmly*
I hope your probl;ems soon vanish, Lady Eva. I assume you have attempted to contact the Lindens about this, and got no return answer. I once had to wait almost two weeks for a reply to a payment problem on their part. Blessed be!
Regarding said ground, Your Grace, and after having an excellent time in them last night, I took the liberty of doing a bit of word spreading myself ;)
In addition, I can tell you that two nights ago, landing in my home in Tamrannoch, I was quite astonished to find NO HOME whatsoever, but a big body of water where my house and garden should be, and the only item in my garden that was visible was my water fountain. Go figure, everything was rectified the next morning!
DG
DG
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