Martien continues to maunder from aloft his new private flying island. Those with more than a passing interest may click “read more” to listen in to his excessive musings.

Wunderkammer, for those who don’t know, means a cabinet of curiosities — and it has led me to question my current designs for a steampunk flying saucer.

This isn’t to say I won’t eventually build such a contraption; merely that I have to re-evaluate my shop, dreadfully neglected, and what it is for. At worst, I may well replace it with an out-and-out home, give up hocking art in Second Life, and sell #14. On the other hand, I could instruct my User to stop being so damnably lazy, leave Cave Story alone for once, and get on with making vendor books and figuring out the secrets of chazre.

Do I truly need a full-blown private house? The gods know that I have precious little need for more than a “home base”, and I seem to have exhausted my prim count in some inexplicable fashion. Why not, instead, a private space above, and a combination gallery and wunderkammer below?

I admit already I see how to dismember that Four Winds shop and reassemble it — make it one story high — vaulted, coved, hollowed-out ceiling spaces — more space on the roof — Seating in the bay windows — maybe a balcony on the northern side, looking out to sea and the tower of Caledon Middlesea, looming overhead like a steampunk Combine) Citadel.

Artwork and (very) oddments picked up on my travels… interesting concept.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m redoing the site into something more fixed-width and stylish.

The style I’m using is from Free CSS Templates — or rather is loosely based on one of theirs. I’ve been doing things with transparent PNG and GIF files to produce a style that I can change the colour of easily on a whim.

Obviously this means I’ll have to go through the site and revise some of the YouTube videos and galleries — that’s next on my list.

Some of you might remember a book called The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy through the Maze of Computer Espionage. Well, here’s the astronomer turned detective turned sysop who caught the guy way back in 1985. (I have a copy of the book, which came with a page out of some paper or magazine which featured a review of the book! Wierd.)

This guy looks like the typical mad scientist, and has a mind that hurtles all over the place, at least in front of the TED audience. So he talks about… everything. Enthusiastically.

A touching tale of determination and really strong nails.

On Sunday I finally finished System Shock 2. It was quite a ride, not only in-game but also in getting the damn thing running again.

I first purchased a second-hand copy at Cash Converters with hazy memories of it being a first-person adventure game. At the time I had Windows 98 and DirectX 7 on a Pentium something-or-other, perfectly adequate to run what was at the time a striking sci-fi horror game.

Nowadays you have rather more work to do. First, you need to find a copy of the game. Next, you need to download a patch. You will also have to set its affinity to use only one core of your CPU; the engine can’t cope with multi-core machines. Then you need to hand-modify two configuration files to cope with modern graphics cards. After that you need to install two graphics packs for better textures and models. And away you go!

The game’s mechanics are simple. You stalk the corridors of the Von Braun armed with whatever weaponry your previous tours of duty and your searching everything searchable can find; hybrids, spiders and worse hunt you down. Cameras stand ready to activate alarms unless you hack them. PDAs contain messages pertaining to what happened on Tau Ceti III... and then there’s that graffito, REMEMBER CITADEL. SHODAN, the insane AI from the original System Shock, isn’t quite dead yet…

Actually, the levelling system is unlike most other RPGs where what you do directly drives advancement in various directions. Instead, you get rewarded at points with tokens called “cyber modules” that let you pick and choose what advance you want to take when you find upgrade stations. If you want to be a psi-freak with a grenade launcher, sure thing, go right ahead. Or perhaps you’re more the techie who can bring broken weapons back from the dead and run rings around the security systems… or maybe a generalist who’s good at everything. It’s entirely up to you, and if you get sick of tanking it, or sneaking it, presto-changeo. Its an interesting system which admittedly doesn’t share the common-sense action-to-XP mechanic of regular games. However with nobody to talk to aboard the Von Braun, it’s probably required. And since there are only a finite number of modules, they act both as a limiting device – no chance of becoming an expert on everything here – and a driver towards completing the game.

Ears as well as eyes are required. Cameras whirr. You might hear a droid chattering away to Xerxes beyond a door. Was that an arachnid? And did the music just switch from ambience to combat? This, combined with the sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere of places on board, makes for a tension I haven’t felt since catching myself leaning sideways in my chair, trying to see around a corner in Doom.

In other ways I admit the lack of side quests and the poor stock models (apparently the designers made an error in their calculations) limit the game’s replayability; it takes about 15 hours from start to finish, and generally you’re led by the nose and while for most of the game you are free to roam the Von Braun and Rickenbacker, toward the end you are effectively forced in one direction towards the boss battles. And both are pretty much the same: knock out the central target’s defence system, and then the target, while being harassed by sundry other vermin. Finally, the end cinematic, and back to the start menu.

Ben Croshaw has accurately identified Bioshock as a virtual remake of System Shock 2 — the psi powers (plasmids), the repairable, modifiable weapons, the hacking minigame, the cameras, the mutant monstrosities, an unreliable (turncoat) guide, and being trapped in a can surrounded by instant death.

At the same time, I wonder if my nostalgia for SS2 was in part because I never finished it before my computer died spectacularly. Now I have, and I’m uncertain if I’ll stick the CD in the slot to try another way. But I don’t regret playing it. It was one hell of a spookhouse ride, not in the splatterfest sense of Doom 3, but a more psychological sense.

One of becoming your enemy.

Recently I have been investigating — with the reluctant assistance of my User — the possibilities of a skybox home. The Barnesworth Anubis cottage wherein I reside is fine, yes, but at the same time I find it oddly restrictive. Perhaps it is the simple fact that it is on the ground, and difficult to modify to my liking — Mr Anubis seems to have made the wall textures no-transfer. Also, it does not seem to reflect my stature as a gentleman Martian of Caledon, a being from another world; also I was hoping for more intensive foresting.

So I have been, as I say, studying the possibilities in skybox design with a distinct airship-cum-spaceship flavour. Thus far I have been disappointed. Airships for sale feel poky or are simply too small in terms of headroom; skyboxes using the conceit of a floating vessel veer toward the overly sleek and futuristic.

My current aesthetic is not so much steampunk as what Greg Broadmore, cartoonist and one of the chaps behind Dr Grordbort’s Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory, has had described as “aetherpunk” – his machines are all radio and atomics. He himself describes it as “retro-future’.

(My User admits he cannot find any actual reference to Mr Broadmore’s work as aetherpunk; however one exists now, be sure of that.)

Anyhow, I have started building such an aether-ship, but then my User showed me a picture of someone’s build of a submarine. Almost immediately I realised I would have to stop and rework my designs, especially about the control area and the bow. It looked like, frankly, just a gussied-up cylinder, which it was. Skinny, and little room to maneuver. However, I have seen a way of fixing that now… of course it will be a monumental pain to do. Ah well.

Part of my downfall involved the Venusian drink known as chazre. I was very pleased to be reunited with several unbroken bottles of this beverage, salvaged from the wreck of my ship by various Caledonians, and I have been working on means of synthesis of a chazre palatable by both Earth and Martian standards.

Which is to say, I have been performing acts in Linden Scripting Language.

One of my windfall finds was a free sipping animation, which I will document once the beverages are complete and all “flavour” particles are uploaded. The other was some trial and error in working with the extremely unwieldy if powerful llParticleSystem() command.

The upshot is that I now have a cup that puffs a graphic expressing the “tasted” flavour, in a fashion similar to the “visible stink” that Mr Goode experienced over in OzMoz. And, mercifully, doesn’t just keep spewing. My knowledge of the sciences advances by leaps and bounds!

(I consider this to be a SPOD — Significant Point of Difference — in retailing. I’m sure we all have endured the inane babble of food and drink which chatters on channel 0, the “public” one we all speak with. A brief particle poof… well, a picture speaketh a thousand words!)

The real Mont Saint Michel, if I recall accurately, is an island only accessible by a narrow causeway which is drowned at high tide somewhere off the coast of France.

The virtual Mont Saint Michel may be found in the sim of the same name. Just type it into the map and away you go — it’s a hubbed sim, so you land at the base of the landmass.