Kazenojin - its Legacy and its Future

To all Kazenojin:

And please check your groups list, do you know who you are?

To date our legacy has been to create perhaps the most unique and impressive structure (certainly the largest) in Second Life. Our legacy has been to promote and share knowledge about flight, flight scripting, and flying craft of various sorts.

And our legacy is in jeopardy.

So this is a call to all People of the Wind, be they past, present, or future. Come get involved. Come talk with one of the Admirals, (Goodwill Epoch, Shijuro Romulus, or myself), about the future path of our group, and our status as a themed community. We have several exciting ideas about where to go from here, and would love to hear yours as well.

There is no general meeting scheduled at this time, so please post your thoughts and ideas here, or see us inworld.

I'd like to get a roll call as well of all those who are interested in working on further Kazenojin projects, or who are interested in settling in the Gray Sim.

ATTN KAZENOJIN MEMBERS PAST AND PRESENT:

A group meeting is scheduled for 9pm (PST) Friday, Aug. 1.

Come out to Kazenojin to mark the passing of an era with us.

ALL KAZENOJIN PLEASE ATTEND.

We will be discussing the future of the Gray sim, and then we will be holding a Burning Man Ceremony for the original air station.
Come witness the destruction of the old, to make way for the new.
If it suits you, come dressed in your uniform or in formal clothing for this solemn occasion.

All are welcome to attend, and those that do may be rewarded with land after the event, as the Gray sim opens up for more general settlement.

We will convene at the stage just to the southwest of the station.

BE SURE TO COME TALK TO GOODWILL PRIOR TO THE EVENT IF YOU WOULD LIKE PREFERENTIAL PRICES ON LAND IN GRAY.

Hosted by: Ananda Sandgrain
Date: Friday, August 1, 2003
Time (PST): 9:00pm-10:00pm
Duration: 60 minutes
Category: Buy & Sell
Cover Charge?: No
Location (simulator name): Lime (3,3)

"Our legacy has been to promote and share knowledge about flight, flight scripting, and flying craft of various sorts. "

So I take it there's some place or person where I can find a decent-working flight script that crosses sim boundaries without slowing down to a crawl or falling apart? And I won't have to know a person who knows a person who knows a secret hand shake? And I won't have to pay thousands of dollars for it? Wow! I'd like to see that!

I guess I've always had the feeling like flight was some dark ancient art shared only among fliers. But then, I don't get out much.

I'm still very interested in our group ananda. my only problem is that i'm not on much nowadays, so my projects are only coming together veeeeeery slowly. i just have some important first life stuff taking up almost all my time, but i'll do my best to make the meeting.

Hehe Kohne,

The art of flying is a closely guarded secret among us People of the Wind .

However, despite coming up with ways of moving huge ships, and pulling smooth aerobatic maneuvers, among other things, no reliable method of crossing sim borders in a vehicle has been discovered.

Ope, glad to hear from you. Come talk if you have a chance, either to Goodwill or myself.

I acutally have my current flight script tweaked so it fixes 100% of the sliding into vehicle or dropping to ground problems. You still jump a bit crossing bounds but it only takes a sec.

On sale now, for $1,000,000, yeah baby.
jk

"And our legacy is in jeopardy."
... (18 hours later) ...
"Burning Man Ceremony for the original air station.
Come witness the destruction of the old, to make way for the new."

That was quick. Didn't make much of an effort to deal with this "jeopardy" before deciding to scrap it all, did you?

Shouldn't the members get a vote in this?

Shouldn't all THREE admirals make this decision?

If there is anything really wrong with this universe, at the most fundamental level it is about TIME.

Too much time passes while waiting for things to happen. Then there is way too little time when they do.

I have run all over the place the last few days, trying to get to as many group members as possible and get their opinions on the tax situation and what we should do about it.

Well, when I talked about just holding land, I got blank stares. When I asked what we should do, who is out there with some enthusiasm for the group, I mostly got rude noises.

So I tried something different. I got in touch with as many Kazenojin as I could, with a possible solution, and with a bunch of new ideas for how we could get some real group participation going again.

So far, most everyone's response has been very positive. If I haven't got to you yet, please stop by the Stage in the southeast corner of Gray. There is a model there showing how we may be able to save the group. Because when all is said and done, it is having fun together, and being a real group that is my main interest. The model there has a whole collection of building projects, and open land for the group to fill to their heart's desire.

I think we may yet make some very sweet and cool lemonade, despite the very sour lemons we've been handed.

>>BE SURE TO COME TALK TO GOODWILL PRIOR TO THE EVENT IF YOU WOULD LIKE PREFERENTIAL PRICES ON LAND IN GRAY.

Yikes! Does this mean the 10K worth of land I transfered to the group was actually just a 10K land donation to Goodwill?

I hope I'm mistaken, but if not I need to make a bug SUCKER tattoo and apply it to my forehead.

Hey everybody, I know this post has become alarming, but at this point:

NO decision has been made on whether or how we keep the station up. So Friday there will be no fireworks, of the special effects kind anyway. We will be trying to figure out what to do with Gray, and whether we can keep an air station going.

Accent, please, beat up Goodwill if he doesn't give you whatever land you want for free.

Gasp, no, you can't let the station fall. It just wouldn't be right, I haven't even held a treasure hunt there yet. If the station remains its my #1 choice for next week.

Hi fellow wind people,

I've been away from SL because I have no time to do anything besides work. I currently have a 64 hour work, 40 hours during the week days and 12 hour graveyard shifts each weekend night. (Yes, that means I have a 24 hour work day every Friday with a four hour nap break in the middle!) So my schedule is a little bit full, and I'm tired all the time due to switching from days to nights and back once a week. Sadly, this leaves me with no chance to play on SL.

Anyway, I just wanted to post and tell you that I'm still around, sort of, and will be back in September. Here are a few messages: Ope, I hope you've been good to my stuff in the month that I haven't seen it. Ananda, good luck with your race; sorry I couldn't help as I had promised. Please keep the station as it was originally envisioned. Goodwill, I'm still holding my 1/16th of Grey, and though I'm probably dropping into debt as we speak I don't need to get rid of it in any hurry. (What happened to Goodwill, anyway? He's not an Admiral any more?) And to everyone who keeps voting on my slab of wood marked Coming Soon: hey! please vote for my race track platform instead. ;)

Thank goodness for lifetime memberships: I don't have to think about paying for a subscription to something I don't use. Still, what a pain to think that I'm losing Linden money every week just because I'm not actively earning any.. ugh.

Hmm. Back to work.

It's good to know you're not gone for good. Hurry back, we miss you!

Goodwill, Ananda and I are the current admirals (and Goodwill's still in charge of Kazenojin station).

I'm trying to contact him regarding the current crisis and some conversations with Lindens from yesterday, hopefully we can still work something out.

HAHAHA ALL YOUR LAND ARE BELONG TO US!!!

J/K

No, anyone who transferred land or donated has that immidieately put towards any land they would like to control. So if you transferred a 16th to me, that could be transfered directly back into your control.

[/B] Yeah, I'm still in admiral (Although I feel more like a figurehead now ) Unfortunately my schedule the last 2 months has been horrible work wise and not getting any better. I just got recalled on an emergency assignment that has unknown hours (until it gets done) and I leave on Wednesday the 6th for a family reunion. And I know the feeling about just thinking of your SL account slowly slipping into the negative 10,000's. Hopefully we can get this taken care of. But I am very afraid it will require a reworking of the entire way the Kazenojin sim is handled.

Given the postponment of the removing the debt limit, are you still releasing? I am one of those that transfered land to you as well...

The model of Gray is at the corner by the events seating. Admiral Ananda and I spent a while looking at options for if/when the structure changes. A station supported by a space tether is modelled at the moment.

Tether example is in the sky above, running up to about 250 meters or so; an actual example might be gotten up to above 300 meters. Taxes are based on the 'bounding box'; if a tether starts at 0.5 meters and decreases 4% in X and Y every 10 meters, it'd come to a point about 250 meters up. Better for perspective, and the taxes are manageable, since the higher primitives will be the smallest. Assembling the sucker might be a ... task.

An elevator, running up one side of the cable (or hmm, encircling the cable if the cable ended at a cantilever truss supporting the dock level) would lead to the lounge. By not having the tether extend into a ground anchor, it'd be more clearly "supported by the tether", and not just look like a very thin tower.

Questions? Ideas? Comments? Rants?

-- Athos Murphy
Pilot, 2nd Class

Kaz meeting results
We had our meeting last night to decide the fate of the Kazenojin station. I'd like to thank all those who attended. Sorry for the short notice, it wasn't until the meeting that most of us found out that the tax deadline had been extended so people had something like one day to read the notecards Ananda sent to everyone explaining the situation and options.

We decided that our survival depends on reallocating the group-held lands among the members, and we're proceeding with that (ensuring it will be done in a fair manner, especially with respect to those members who already paid for land or donated money).


We voted on which of two directions to go from here: Maintain a (slightly modified) version of the current station, or tear it down and start again.

The vote was for the second path (start again).


If you have any questions about this, please contact Goodwill Epoch, Ananda Sandgrain or myself in-game.

Athos,

The current station costs something like 10k per week. I did a floor-by-floor analysis of where those costs were.

The "observation level" just below the dock level (with the central gondola) costs over 1000 per week, more than everything below it (main struts, both shops, lobbies, hangers, basement level, etc.). This means that approximately 80% of the taxes are on the dock level.

Replacing everything below the docks with a tether won't save a great deal.

We were planning on the following for the dock levels had we kept the original station:

1. reduce the radius of the dock arms by several meters. A 2 meter reduction drops the surface area by over 300 square meters. Ensure that the flooring throughout the level is minimum thickness (to reduce volume throughout).
2. Lower the entire dock level by 3 meters (to where the "observation level" is now). The taxes at that altitude are noticibly lower, just those few meters make a big difference without altering the character of the station too much.

We felt that just these changes would be sufficient for Goodwill and I to support the current station. They should be taken into consideration when designing the replacement.

Any member of Kazenojin who has previously donated land or money to the project, please come see me. I will be IW most evenings, from about 6pm to 11pm, PST. You can get back any land you wish to hold for the group, for the price of

1$

This land is yours to do with as you wish, although of course it's all the better if you build something related to airships and flight!

In the interest of promoting maximum group participation in designing the new station, let's have a contest!

Anyone who's interested, stop by the model at the northeast corner of Gray. Pick out a structure you'd be interested in building, and do a more detailed model.

Then we'll get together and collaborate on putting together the group favorites.

Here are a few of the areas to be built:

elevator base platform or tower.
observation pod under the docks.
the main dock level.
individual dock arms.
the method of holding up the station (tower, rockets, propellers, space tether,...?)
the Kazenojin Store.
a memorial structure, showing pics from the early days and the original structure.


Here are a few structures which might be set up to be there part-time:
A commons/event space.
An "officer's club" lounge level.


Plus, if you have your own ideas, please, build a model!


Here are a few factors to consider:

Raising the land into a mountain under the station, to save on taxes.
Reducing the overall radius of the main dock level.
Whether or not to build a full deck at the dock level.
Setting dock arms to be designed and owned by individual group members.

Thanks, and let's have fun and get busy!

The test tether dock at 85 meters yields some interesting results: a 72 meter diameter dock runs to about L$500 per week; the 50 meter dock is about L$380. This is of course for only the 'deck', and our dock will hopefully be closer to the ground (or the ground will rise to the dock). At whatever altitude, though, a 50 meter dock will be very roughly 25% cheaper than a 72 meter dock.

Also, a cheer for ADM Ananda Sandgrain for spending about a day removing and **storing for later re-rezzing** the 'old' dock.

-- Pilot Athos Murphy

Um, does this mean the station or a good section thereof is gone? Um, I thought it was going to stick around for this week. I guess I shoulda checked on it earlier.

They just fade away.

Kazenojin Station, much like the quantum fabric of the universe, has only a tendency to exist.

Was it aliens? At times, there is no station at all, only a mysterious crop circle. At other times, pieces seemed to be missing. And at other times, the station is back again whole! My theory is that the probability drive on one of the docked spacecraft has malfunctioned.

This mysterious phenomenon has been noted, and efforts are under way to tap the invisible forces which seem to be at work here.

Jericho, I think we can convince the station to make an appearance for your treasure hunt! The station may show itself again, at least a few more times before the final destruction.

w00t