Life Under Pressure - research into the effects of living beneath the sea

It has become apparent in recent months that the effects of barometric pressure distort the life sustaining capabilities of the air the we breath. Operating at the depths of the sea bed in the Vernian Sea is difficult at best but has proven quite dangerous for my labourers and myself over sustained periods. During the construction of my undersea building, also known as Ægir's hall, I used steam labour wherever possible but until such time as the steam grid itself was connected and made live I had no choice but to employ human labour. We lost 3 men to the ravages of the ocean, a small cost I am told for an engineering project such as this but it hangs heavy about my neck. Three men, one of whom had a family to support, a role which I am now providing for as I will not see people thrown out upon the "charity" of the workhouse at my doing, were lost and many other injured while all of us were at times rendered unwell by various effects.

The apparently low cost in lives I can to some extent associate with the work patterns that I have enforced, patterns shaped by the research, recently published by great minds such as M. Paul Bert of the Sorbonne who in particular has informed me greatly as to the mysteries of the maladies that we have faced and who while documenting the effects of compression on the body built upon the work of the brave young Dr. Alphonse Gal whose early work was based upon his own experimentation using a steam powered air pump of primitive design and studies of sponge divers in Greece. Bert and Gal's research helps to categorise and explain the maladies associated with breathing air at abnormal pressures and gives explanations to those effects noted by Triger earlier in this century in Caisson miners, a line of work not too dissimilar to our own undertakings in the depths of the Vernian.

I will write more on this in days to come as I need, right now, to continue work on my solution to some of my problems rather than recording them for posterity.

Writing and studying in my Vernian Sea office at the top of Aegir's hall. M. Paul Bert's work on Barometric pressure is close at hand.

Hortas house reproduction - twists and turns

The skill and imagination of Victor Horta never ceases to surprise me now. I should have started this blog many weeks ago when I set out to start this project as my understanding of the task at hand is growing with each day. I shall recap...

I arrived in Secondlife in April and after a few visits found myself spending a lot of time wandering the streets of a steampunk themed sim known as New Babbage. I was drawn in by the atmosphere and the engaging characters that one found there. By mid-May I decided that it was time to settle somewhere and to build a house. Naturally, Babbage, or rather the newly opened Babbage Canals area, was my first choice. Initially I had planned on building in an Art Deco style but was steered away from this by the mayor (Shaunathan Sprocket) as this was deemed too late for the theme (Steampunk ideally finishes in the first few years of the 20th century. There are a fwe anachronisms in Babbage, like the ugly yellow building with the revolving door but for the most part it is broadly themed in keeping with the late victorian era. I rethough my position and chose to build in Art Nouveau. I few years ago I had travelled to Belgium on a short break and visited a number of Art Nouveau sotes including Horta's own house, now the Musee Horta. I was impressed with the style of the building and have remained so ever since. So naturally I (naively) decided to build a replica of this work.

Secondlife building is somewhat akin to the kids building blocks system, Lego. The builder has a limited set of basic "bricks" to use, these are known as prims. A given plot of land also has a limited number of prims available for use in building, this ensures that the online world does not grind to a halt due to a particularly complex build. It also places some interesting constraints on a builder, not all of which are clear at the outset.

The horta museum website gave may some floor plans and a few details while the web through up a number of images that allowed me to start my build. Scale was a hard thing to address, the viewpoint in Secondlife effectively requires that everything is upscaled by about 2/3rds or even double in order to look vaguely normal. My good friend Anabella was kind enough to point this out to me before I started and saved me a lot of angst.

I've posted a few images to flickr as the build progressed. I'll add those to this blog now to build the history.