Inter Milan - Under Construction

Regular readers may breathe a sigh of relief when they realise that this post does not concern itself with Japanese islands in Second Life. Just for a change, I thought I would tell you a bit about an Italian island, Inter Official Site. As the name might suggest, this is the official site for Italian football ("soccer" for those of you in North America) club, FC Internazionale Milano - better known simply as Inter.

Inter is one of the giants of world football. It was founded in 1908 following a "frank and open exchange of views" within the Milan Cricket and Football Club. A group of Italians and Swiss, unhappy about the domination of Italians in the AC Milan team, broke away and formed Internazionale, offering places to foreign as well as Italian players. Quite how this situation came about is something of a mystery to me, since AC Milan was founded only a few years earlier, in 1899, as the Milan cricket club by a group of British ex-patriates. I am struggling to see how it could become so thoroughly italianate in such a short period. An ironic twist is that the "international" team uses the Italian "Milano", while the Italian-dominated AC preserve their British roots by using the English "Milan." Since its creation Inter has never been out of the top flight of Italian football, Serie A, which they have won 15 times.

The island is still under construction and is a bit messy at the moment. You arrive before an imposing blue-and-black glass archway. As I am sure you have figured out, the team colour are blue-and-black, and this combination occurs just about everywhere. Beyond the arch, underneath a giant football shirt, you will find a large meeting area. At the back of this is an old Milanese building which perhaps I should recognise - but I don't. To the left you will see a number of footie photos, and behind a glass barrier, half a football pitch. Why only half? No idea. Perhaps, as the build progresses it will disappear altogether - or be shrunk down to a 5-a-side pitch. There is an optimistically large amount of public seating overlooking the pitch. The last main feature is a the blue-and-black tubeway that borders most of the island. I could not find a teleport entrance to this - but one end is open, so you can fly up if you wish. The tube features images from the club's history, right up to the winning of the scudetto - the award for winning Serie A - in 2007.





Nic at Kzero posted an entry about the island some weeks ago. You find it interesting to compare and contrast "then" and "now".

Although a fair amount has been built, it currently lacks much shape and offers little for the visitor, even for fans. It looks to me that a great deal more work will need to be carried out before this build can be considered to be finished.

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For info - I finally got around to upgrading my graphics card. I had been labouring along with a GeForce 6200, which to be fair had done a tolerable job. However, the (re-)arrival of Windlight starkly revealed the shortcomings of this card. I went for as good an AGP card as I could, given I have no plans for replacing my old workhorse PC in the foreseeable future, and opted for a GeForce 7800. This then meant investing in a new power supply, too, since this is a greedy little sucker. Amazingly, I don't seem to have a complete b0ll0ck of installing it all, and the new card munches through graphics like a very hungry, graphic-munching thing. Nice!