Someone's junk is someone else's history.

Earlier today on Plurk, Daniel Voyager showed us this notecard from YadNi Monde of YadNi's Junkyard fame.




I remember heading to YadNi's back in the day. YadNi's, Sarah Nerd's, The Free Dove...they were heaven to a newbie. But YadNi's was the first, and when you go, you can even check things out by date, starting from when the Junkyard began in April 2004.




Six years later, we face YadNi's closing down. And I know what a lot of people are saying. "So? There are better freebies. That stuff is old. There is free stuff everywhere from big designers."

The thing is? These items are our history. In some ways, it's like a museum of old SL artifacts. Yes, our legacy might be old rave sticks and system shoes, but if we don't have somewhere to look at the old items, how will we be able to see how far we've come? There's a reason that museums in the physical world are fun to go to - you get to see life before air conditioning and internet. At YadNi's, there are even big maps of SL on the walls, dating back to 2002!




I grabbed some items from the April 2004 shelves. I couldn't help it! You all know what a prefab addict I am and there was a box of free houses. The funny thing is that some of them were "kits." You couldn't just get a house, you had to build it yourself. I attempted the September 2003 House In A Box, Log Cabin edition.

Now here's something that a lot of people don't know these days: Back a long time ago, before 2006, SL residents had to pay to rez prims. And not only did they have to pay to rez them, they had to pay to keep them out. Can you even imagine?? So on my notecard for the Log Cabin, it said:

"This is a fairly large house, and it will cost you a pretty penny to build. Depending on some customization choices, the actual building can cost as much as L$3000, and your maintenance taxes will be considerable."

Wow. There really IS no such thing as a free lunch, huh?

Luckily, I'm living in 2010 where I can rez prims for free. [Um, relatively free.] So I pulled out the box and looked at the picture.




Well, that seems simple enough.

The folder contained several pieces for the house, and some extra textures for customizing. I was instructed to rez the base out first, and then lock it down so I wouldn't accidentally move it. Heck, I wish I'd remembered those instructions before taking the bedroom off of my house the other day and landing in the grass.




Ok, the base is down. Do you see the big red thing on the side? That's the positioning pin, which is very important. You have to line up the other pieces with their positioning prims to get it just right. In many ways, this is GREAT for newbies because it helps teach building and camming, including the ctrl-alt-left button hold to scroll around the screen. I always just see people do alt-click to zoom. The other one is so much easier to use. Oh, I'm getting off topic.




A few moves and pieces down, and boom! I had a free "vintage" house that would have cost me at least $3000L back in 2003. Geez. I wouldn't even pay that much for a house now!




And sure, I'm not going to use it. But the fact is, I got it for free and without YadNi's, I might not have ever found it. It's history. From the notecard to the build, it's history.

You know what else is hanging out at YadNi's that probably some designers would rather forget? Clothes.




Do you know who made those jeans? Nephilaine Protagonist of PixelDolls. And that top? Why, none other than Launa Fauna of L.Fauna/Chai. So many names in these boxes. And you can see their potential.

It's usually only in places like YadNi's Junkyard that we can find the old items. We can look at them, laugh, and say, "Wow, what an amazing trip it has been so far! I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!"