Sim Deathwatch: The Crooked House, Ingenious Tesseract Home Among Second Life's Greatest Creations, Leaving SL

UPDATE, 7/5: The Crooked House was saved at the last moment by a silent benefactor. Click here for more information and to visit its new location.

Click this SLurl to teleport to the Crooked House entrance

The Crooked House, the brilliant Second Life creation of a Stanford-trained mathematician inspired by Robert Heinlein's classic short story about a house that exists in four dimensions (or a "tesseract"), is leaving Second Life very soon. This tragic news just came to me from the creator, known in-world as Seifert Surface. Trouble is, he's not in SL enough to justify the monthly land expense.

Click here to teleport to The Crooked House landing point. To get the full experience, read the posted instructions there, then click the large metallic sculpture to teleport into the House itself.

I wrote about The Crooked House in 2006, and since then, it's been covered on Boing Boing and many other blogs. Garrett Lisi, the physicist considered by many to be Einstein's heir, has personally visited The Crooked House, as have many others. But unless a buyer steps in to cover the land tier or hosting expenses, you have until July 20th to see it yourself before it disappears from Second Life forever.

"I think [Linden Lab's] tier day is the 20th of each month," as Seifert tells me, "so I'll leave it until July 20th... it isn't worth $125 a month to support (it has been a homestead for a while now, attached to Kim Anubis' Abracadabra.) I thought people might like a chance to see it before it goes." IRL, Seifert is Henry Segerman, now an academic at the University of Melbourne.

Why is The Crooked House so brilliant? Well, for starters, it's a building with no front or back, so if you start walking from the entrance and then go from room to room, you'll end up right where you started. Watch the video at the bottom of this post to see how that's done:

As I said before, Seifert is open to selling his sim, called xyz, which also hosts the very cool Sculpture Garden (click here to teleport), or The Crooked House alone.

"[I] am willing to sell," he tells me, "as long as Kim Anubis and Qarl Fizz (my current neighbors) would be OK with it. Technically the sim is owned by Kim at the moment anyway (since you can't have a homestead on its own.) I'd also be willing to set up The Crooked House on someone else's sim if they'd be willing to host it (just over 700 prims, needs a sim's sky to wander over.)"

If that doesn't happen, The Crooked House, one of the best demonstrations of the creative genius Second Life makes possible, will be gone from Second Life. So for posterity's sake, here's the video that reveals how a tesseract home with no front or back can exist. Brilliantly simple, really:

Using a complicated algorithm that tracks the viewer's perspective relative to the house, the rooms of the Crooked House rearrange themselves dynamically as you go from room to room.

And while one might hope that such brilliance could exist in Second Life forever, the hard fact is that with current sim fees (even at a discounted Homestead level, which amounts to $1500 a year), that's not very likely. So once again, click here to see The Crooked House before it's too late.

Update, 12:40PM: Ironically enough (because I thought YouTube was reliable as an SL content archive), the first video I shot of The Crooked House interior is having trouble playing, so I had to pull it. (Thanks, Franklin Lubitsch.) Will add it back if I can resolve the issue.

Comments

[Emerald Wynn]

Very cool - I was unaware of it. Thank you!

[Wayfinder]

I strongly suspect that Linden Lab is well aware their pricing is ludicrous... but they're hanging on to it just as long as they possibly can before being forced to either drastically cut prices-- or go out of business.

That's common sense from a profit-business standpoint. But what it fails to take into consideration is that by the time they get to that point, they'll have lost so many customers and made so many enemies because of their greed... that it will be past the point of no return and they'll self-destruct anyway.

Already there are other grids that are ramping up as direct competition to SL. Inworldz has already re-written their entire LsL-compatible script engine, removing script lag from the grid (something LL has failed to do in 11 years of operation). When other grids finally incorporate physics and the bugs become fewer and fewer... Linden Lab will very likely find it impossible to compete on an even level. And by that time, there will be few that will care about their demise. Even now customer loyalty is rapidly declining. Customer trust of the company is near zero.

So chances are, the powers that be are trying to just grab as much cash as they can while they can. Imo that's not very likely to change. And I'm not going to bother telling them what the SMART move would be at this time. They haven't listened to their customers in 8 years of being online... so I've gotten to the point I've pretty much stopped talking to them. These days I just sit by and watch the train wreck... and unfortunately creative builds, homesteads and regions walk out their door... many for brighter and far less-expensive pastures.

[AldoManutio Abruzzo]

Like I said on his FB page:

Hey, Wagner! Guess what? You can thank the Lindens for making it so bloody difficult for those of us professionally involved to preserve this kind of content ...

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Hamlet, thank you for again pointing out the obvious to Linden Lab. They seem to need multiple reminders.

You get some grief for being too much of a LL fanboy, but I disagree. Their tiers are just too high but, sadly, that is their revenue model. Lower the tiers and...no more SL without a new revenue stream.

My university would have loved to have hosted this build...but raised tier ended our presence in SL, as it has for too many colleagues' sims.

[Franklin Lubitsch]

The interior demo isn't working for me, some kind of problem with the link. Don't know if it's actually the link, or me, though. The other demo works just fine. I haven't been to this build, yet, I will definitely check it out. Thanks, Hamlet.

[Hamlet Au]

Franklin, you mean the video demo or in SL? If the latter, you need to hit the focus button on the table in the foyer.

[Rob Knop]

Too bad he can't just save an OAR file that would allow him potentially to bring the build up elsewhere....

[DBDigital Epsilon]

While I haven't checked the build in question in detail. One possible solution is to link the build, take copies to inventory. Then create a backup file (or possibly more than one if it is too big for one object linking) using a viewer than can do this. I suspect it was all the creators original work and therefore should be straight forward.

Then it could be moved to another grid at any point in the future (open sim, etc).

[Franklin Lubitsch]

@Hamlet I mean the video demo on NWN.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

The petabyte of inventory assets is the hostage that keeps people in SL. Can't take that hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of bought clothes, shoes, hair, skins, structures, weapons, tools, and stuff with you (legally anyway). LL knows this.

Sorry to see another one leave. The business closing notices are becoming common as well.

People don't have to quit. They can just drop all their land, drop group tier donations to zero, downgrade to basic, and then only one last payment is due for the mainland tier. (If you do this then make sure you have no recurring charges showing on your dashboard summary and understand that last month's mainland use is still going to be charged.) Once you are basic and landless then all you have to lose is all your assets you can't take with you. Then if something changes and things improve then you can ramp back up if you want. Better than flouncing.

[Hamlet Au]

Crap, Franklin, you're right, thanks. I'm going to pull the top video until I figure out WTF.

[Stephane Zugzwang]

Hi Hamlet,

Couldn't it be moved to a Kitely Island, for preservation purpose? The price is way, way, way cheaper!

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Ann's right: we are held hostage by choices of hair and shoes. But not forever.

@Stephanie, our group's work with Kitely shows how well OARs can move from grid to grid. Of course, SL does not let us save anything like an OAR file :(

Still, one could save linked objects and export them, then upload them to an archive at Kitely for free, while still maintaining the option for visitors to stop by.

I'll never build any edu project in SL again. The alternatives have long been cheaper, and now they work well enough for what I need.

[Desmond Shang]

Whatever issues there might be concerning my extremely minor input into Seifert's brilliant project, consider this a 'full approval' to not worry about my IP w/respect to the Crooked House.

I'm cool with it going to another region, getting saved or transported or whatever.

Of course, Linden Research may have restrictions on copying stuff far beyond my scope, I don't know what the great powers out there say about this kind of thing, but at least I can do my little part and say 'go for it' to any would~be curators.

* * * * *

Finally, to the time travelers that kept up with the clever teasing back in the early days of the Crooked House, yes, yes, I 'get' it now.

You were right about the whole interdimensional thing.

But even if I see the proof before me, jumping from theoretical physics aaaall the way to the practical aspect of "buying Michael Jackson memorabilia in 2006" was just... too much for me to comprehend. Ah, and I know what "apps" are now, yeah, I blew that one too.

Maybe I should finally listen and bet all I have on the Cubs as you guys suggested. What year was that happening, again?