Remembering Mal Burns

Mal Burns died a few days ago, and if that comes as a bit of a shock, you're not alone. 

The news of his passing has with much dismay and sadness rippled across Opensim, where he had his home, and in Second Life, where he got his start in virtual worlds in February 2007. A vital piece of our virtual network is now missing. 

From his earliest days in virtual worlds,
Mal always loved to see a beautifully landscaped sim.

News aggregator, videographer, talk show host, critic, builder, intrepid traveler, and all round communicator, in Mal's eyes virtual worlds were an opportunity to discover one another, to be better, more creative, and to stay in touch with the people who matter to us, despite the challenges of our far flung real lives. 

In a world where most people's pronouncements on social media are all about themselves, Mal kept the focus on others, on the places and projects that he found fascinating. He probably would be a bit embarrassed to think that people were reading and talking about him, rather than some cool new sim or innovative development in virtual worlds.

Mal will no doubt be memorialized in Second Life and of course RL. As you know, this blog is about Opensim, so the focus of this article is to share comments by a few Opensim friends of Mal, their words represent hundreds of voices from all over the hyperverse. 

Let's start with James Atlloud and Tosha Tyran, Mal's current co-hosts on his talk show Inworld Review. It's worth pointing out that the original 'Inworld Review' - an offshoot of other talk shows Mal produced and presented - first aired on January 13, 2013 in SL, with Tara Yates and Petlove Petshop.  The show was revived in Opensim in 2016 with Maria Korolov as co-host beside Mal and James, at Mal's studio on the Great Canadian Grid.

James and Mal on Inworld Review, 2025

James Atlloud: My relationship with Mal was a unique and amazing journey.  In YouTube production there were times I became so irritated with him! I’m also sure he had those moments with me, and even so we made it all work - just like so many of us do in virtual worlds.  I will miss him more than I can say and I know I’m in a huge community of people who will never forget his influence on our lives.

Tosha's Timbuktu

Timbuktu is a thousand year old frontier town, the southern gateway to the Sahara. A slightly newer, slightly more accessible version of the city was our first destination on Safari this week, the sim of Timbuktu... HG address, as tradition demands, at the end of the post, where it belongs.

The name of the city has been synonymous with the utter limits of the world, an unknowable place in the middle of nowhere, and it's a reputation earned through the centuries, through the writings of people like Ibn Battuta in the 1300s and Leo Africanus two hundred years later. Timbuktu is protected by the port town of Kabara twelve miles to the south, on the Niger River, the chief communications route in this part of the world. Many a disappointed traveler in both ancient and modern times has been turned back at Kabara, adding to the mystique of the city of learning that few outsiders have ever had a chance to see firsthand.

Edinburgh born explorer, scholar, and soldier Alexander Laing is thought to have been the first European to see Timbuktu, hoping to win the 9,000 Franc prize offered by the Société de Géographie to the first non muslim to visit the city and come back with information about it. After a traumatic crossing of the Sahara, he arrived in town in the summer of 1826 and spent some time in the legendary libraries. Weeks later, as he departed the city, he was killed by the men he had paid to protect him, just a few months shy of his thirty-second birthday. 

Less than a year later, Frenchman René Caillié won the prize, bringing back a firsthand account of this almost mythical city of learning and culture. Today, travelers face very similar risks as those first journeyers did. The city has been on the edge of a war zone since about 2012, with the usual mix of tribal interests, global politics, poverty, historic resentment, opportunism, way too many weapons floating about, testosterone and religion all causing havoc to the fabric of the fragile treasures of the town.

For that reason, we're lucky to be able to visit the city virtually, on Craft Grid, thanks to builder Tosha Tyran's sim Timbuktu. It comes alive with NPCs and interpretive boards, making the experience one of the richest in opensim, if you like learning about exotic places. The biggest obstacle for anyone who hasn't teleported to Craft before, is a few clickies to authenticate your avatar. It can be a bit confusing, but no firearms are involved in the process! 

Crystal Craft

 Craft Grid is celebrating its Crystal Anniversary - fifteen years of community, international friendship, big art, lovely residences, educational projects, and a warm sociability that has kept its residents amused and absorbed all these years. It's a tightly knit community, with people from all over the world, though it's fair to say, a nice slice of Italians who will make you feel welcome in the grid's general Chat group whenever you log in. 

It's a grid that has always been generous - for example, for many years, Licu Rau, the owner of Craft, donated the regions for the Hypergrid International Expo. Licu has also invited the HG Safari group more than once to celebrate Cornflakes Week with him - here he is, dressed for the event, back in 2016. 

I asked Licu  what is planned for this birthday party on Monday 27 January starting at 12:30pm SLT on Jubilee sim.

Licu Rau: We will have a musical evening in an environment inspired by crystals. Being a moment of transition in which various technical changes and specific needs overlapped, we were not able to organize special events as done on some other occasions.

Thirza Ember:  What kind of changes? Tell us more.

Safari Sees Scario

Craft grid was our first stop this week on Safari with a RL place, recreated, and some nifty reproductions of ancient technology that will make you think and wonder. The sim was NoiLab 2, we were guests of Tonino Lane, and the full hop address is, yes, as always, at the end of the post.

Tonino Lane [it→en]: follow me and take your place around the compass of the winds, I hope there are chairs for everyone, what a great group, I'm honored to have you here

The compass of the winds  is of course a great way to enter into the spirit of the Mediterranean world, and  to further facilitate our visit, Lorenza Colicigno helped out with some explanations in several languages in Local Chat so we could better understand the place. Some people think 'oh just tell the group to take a Notecard' but let's be honest, nobody reads notecards, especially long ones, and Notecard Givers fail due to the lag that a big group of people often makes, and anyway it's way more fun if you tell us about your build piece by piece, so we can absorb the information gradually, and ask questions. 

Tonino has been fascinated by virtual worlds and the possibilities of the digital worldwide community from the days of dialup, and his reputation as a builder covers the past 20 years in both SL and Craft Grid. We had arrived in the small port of Scario, about 150 km south of Naples. Tonino spent his summer holidays here for almost 20 years, and had a sailboat with which he used to sail around the Gulf of Policastro, reaching the wild and inaccessible small beaches.

HIE 2024 Starts !

Yesterday at 11am Pacific, the Hypergrid International Expo kicked off with three hours of music. The HIE expo regions are on Craft grid, you can get to them by coming to craft-world.org:8002:HIE Welcome and use the portals to get to HIE 2, HIE 3 and HIE 4, where all the fun takes place.

And what music! The divine Zoree Jupiter kicked things off with a truly beautiful set of Fado, the traditional portuguese songs of love, passion and of course, 'fado' or fate, destiny...

HIE - Art on Craft

 The Hypergrid International Expo is an annual event where people whose first language is not English get the chance to speak about their grid, their projects, their inventions and their opinion- in their own language - with subtitles for the rest of us - about places in Opensim.

While the emphasis of the presentations is to give non-English speakers a voice, the HIE Park is full of publicity booths that celebrate and inform you about all kinds of places in opensim. 

Tosha's Bilbao Wow

Wow, just like that, from Louisiana to the northern coast of Spain, and some of the most interesting modern art remade in the virtual, all thanks to the spectacularly talented Tosha Tyran. Craft grid veteran and self-confessed 'bricklayer' Tosha has created some of the most amazing opportunities for opensimmers who want to tour world heritage sites without ever leaving the house. From her Taj Mahal to the Hopi Indian village, her interest in architectural heritage is truly global. We arrived on sim The Caravan on craft to a nice welcoming bit of graffiti on the plaza. 

Thirza Ember: i find it so fascinating how art could change a city and change people's lives

Tosha Tyran: yes! for example that wonderful Zubizuri, and all the new metro stations, they really are like this, and a new university building, and a lot of art and theater and music all over the city of Bilbao.

Forest Azure: was fighting with the terms of agreement

Unadecal Masala: having to sign gdpr... for what, there is no personal information collected beyond an avatar name, a mac address and an IP address. People need to get off thinking that an IP address is in any way private information

Lucy Afarensis: what is a GDPR ?

Master of Art: Gianni Spada

Lu sule, lu mare, lu ientu 

'The sun, the sea and the wind' have shaped Apulia, the 'heel' of boot-shaped Italy. It's a peninsula of a peninsula, reaching out across the Adriatic towards Albania, a land of olive groves, rocky beaches, with mountains in the north and vast tracts of fertile farmland, timeless villages, and busy ports.  It's the home of Gianni Spadavecchia. His last name means 'old sword' in English but inworld, he shortens it to just Spada - way easier to type.  

Gianni Spada at the HIE conference in October.
Apulia is called 'Puglia' in Italian - don't let that g fool you, it's pronounced Pull-ya

Italy has the most UNESCO sites in the world, and there are 1.5k museums in the country. So much history! There are about 300 recognized archeological sites, but you'd have to add several zeroes to that figure if you were to count all the places with notable archeology. With so much out there, it would be completely impractical to make them all accessible. There just aren't the resources to preserve, protect, excavate and investigate every single one of them, so many of these treasures remain buried, or otherwise undeveloped in terms of a visitor friendly  destination. And of course, not all of us can take a day trip to Italy to check out these fascinating treasures.

Lorenza's Women

 Lorenza Colicigno [it→en]: Welcome to The City of Women

Unadecal Masala: The City of Women??? I'm coming to live here

Arriving on NoiLab

This beautiful region is made up of historical backstories and fine Mediterranean architecture representing layers os history going back several thousand years. As usual the full HG address is at the end of the post. This is an opportunity to expand your knowledge of western culture, with a feminist bias, while being entertained by so many sights and animations, you'll barely realize you're learning something! Our hostess, Lorenza Colicigno, who together with Tonino Lane has put together one of the most uniquely useful and attractive builds on the hyperverse.

MdM - Rededicated!

 The ribbon was cut today at the rededication ceremony of an old friend, the Museo del Metaverso on Craft Grid, now sporting a brand new look!

In a dark sky, just above the black waters of the sim, the new structure floats like a glass cage, full of movement and color, history and innovation.

Whirli Placebo on HIE

Our second destination was a preview of the HIE build. The Hypergrid International Expo is coming this weekend, with 3 musical guests on the Friday (starting at 11am SLT and then two days of talks and artistic performances, starting at 9am SLT on Saturday and Sunday.

HIE Welcome.  Join the Group best for your language,
and then walk through the portal to the Auditorium

You can find the whole schedule here - HIEOPENSIM - and also read about the artists and the speakers. The event gives an opportunity for people whose first language is not English to be able to give a talk to a wide public. As they speak, the main points of their talks will appear in 'Subtitle' form. Join the Language group right for you and just read the subtitles in the Chat.

Getting Hie in Opensim

 October means beer, pumpkin spice cheesecake, leaf peeping, and gearing up for Halloween with outrageous sims and costumes. This year, add HIE to that list.  

HIE = Hypergrid International Expo
It is a weekend event from October 6 - 8 and it's part conference, part performance, part exposition. oh, and part party. It's not a music fest, although there will be music. It's not an art show, although there will be art. This is a conference and Expo where opensim residents - not 'hobbyists' or 'amateurs' but everyday users - Natives if you will - share their experiences of  life on the grids.

Maybe you know that for over a decade, each year, the English-language Opensim Community Conference allows folk from all over opensim to tell about their projects, art, inventions and work experience in opensim. 

The HIE is kind of the same, but focused on Opensim residents who are more at home in other languages - French and German, Italian and Spanish.

Lorenza's Ladies of Lit

 Lorenza Colicigno's build on sim NoiLab in Craft is the coming together of a project dear to her heart which she calls "A room of one's own - Ariadne's Labyrinth". A long name for a big build you can enjoy in diverse ways: exploring this region just for fun, because it's full of treasures with a feminist twist, or if you're in the mood for a deep dive, take a moment to soak up some serious info on women who by and large have gotten a raw deal in the pages of literary history.The build is a walk in the park, matching humor and elegance of style with a thought-provoking trail through time. It's got a circular feel - the landing point, and first writerly mentions (Hellenic lit) are a stone's throw from the Enlightenment-age Ca' Rezzonica. 

Castle of Isabella Morra Valsinni

Buildings abound, some of them are general representations of houses in different eras, some are much more specific, like the hilltop home of 16th century poet Isabella Morra. 

Imagine - a Safari Finale

Medora Chevalier: if anyone cannot listen in voice in English please let me know - I will post the key points in chat

Thirza Ember: yes please, post key points in chat, Medora

Alazi Sautereau: it is so exciting to see all the different Virtual Worlds

Medora Chevalier: Alazi is welcoming you, sim is built by zimp. The Imaginals have been performing for 10 years, we welcome our virtual wanderers, we are going on a walking tour with many stories, stay to see our performance space at the end, and join a couple of dances, enable voice, set environment to midday, set draw distance to the highest you can manage, and LOD to 3 or more, and candles show the path.

James Atlloud: Can I ride this candle throughout the tour?

At first, it seemed as if the sim was based on real people, but gradually it became evident that the history being recounted was a fiction, like a sort of RP plot.

Aphra.Hendrix: Hello ! Happy to see you all, i was busy and did not see the time

Forest Azure: /me waves

Alazi Sautereau: We are in Voice, Welcome to those just arriving

Thirza Ember: hi those who finally made it

Seaside Safari

Ernest Moncrieff: very 'hygge' here

This week's trip took us to a pair of maritime sims, first the bright  and beautiful city of Tromso, Norway, on CCI grid, then to Alanna, a boating venue on Craft Grid. HG Addresses, as usual, at the end of the post. 

SIWAS S: Welcome to Norge, I hope you will enjoy the stay

Beth Ghostraven: thanks SIWAS!

Ard Rhys: Hi Siwas

Angelic Kisses: Thank you

SoA BAD: welcome all

Bugged out

You've got one. We all do.

It's not a Big Mac, and it's not an Apple Mac. It's not even a rain mac.

But it is a MAC. 

This is the definition by some dudes at Bluecat  ...  Either you already know this, or else you don't care. Why should you? Well, ordinarily, no reason, but for your hypergridding pleasure it may be at issue. Because people are getting banned.

Take the lovely Eva Noir, the least bannable person in opensim, probably. Sweet, creative, helpful, respectful of all. 

Yet she got the heave-ho from a grid I won't mention (there were LoTR elements to the build, so that leaves the field wide open) because I'm at my legal limit of 'European dramedy' this week.

Those of us who get a lot of haters and dufuses in our Chat would probably just shake the dust from our feet and move on at the mere mention of being banned/blocked, but -dear grid owners- please take a moment to think before you just ban the ass of some poor soul. They may be completely innocent, and the experience of being banned can be quite traumatic. 

You're under a lot of stress, sure, but let's try to be civil.

Anyway, Eva reported this situation to Licu Rau, opensim guru and owner of Craft grid, and it turns out that, thanks to some kind of bug going around, multiple people are showing up as having the exact same MAC - physical address. So if you travel with a pal, as Eva did, both of you appear to be on the same machine. This of course raises red flags to a grid owner trying to deal with the constant threat of griefers. 

Licu very correctly opened a MANTIS on the subject. Go here to read all about it.

Wrong mantis

Let us pray.

Girl Power

More woman, less violence! That's the unequivocal message of Rosanna Galvani and her group on the region Piu Donna Zero Violenza, over on Craft Grid. This year is their second festival, aimed at raising awareness of the need for men to be less idiotic, for women to seek their voice, and for a lot less horrible acts of violence in this world. If the theme appeals, then the artwork that you will find on this unusual and interesting region will provide further food for thought.

This region is home to a multi level exhibition area, including a performance space about halfway up the construction,  and a park-like area at ground level. 

Più Donna Zero Violenza - in Italian, you can write it like this "+donna 0violenza" - means more (plus) woman obviously zero violence. Rosanna is Italian, but this is an international project comprising a long series of artistic and social events. Alongside Rox you will find artists and performers who speak French, English, Portuguese, Hungarian, Spanish - the common tongue is equal rights for all. 

Performing in VWs by Laszlo Ordogh

 The following is a guest post by Velazquez Bonetto, in rl László Ördögh. Vela's long career in virtual worlds is best known for the many performances and presentations of the Cybernetic Art Research Project 'CARP'  which was founded in Second Life in 2007. Now based mostly on Craft Grid and a close collaborator with Rosanna Galvani and her Museo del Metaverso, Vela reflects here on aspects of performance in Virtual Worlds. 

The miracle that we are experiencing today: the Cyberspace, the dematerialized virtual time-space, the worldwide webbed society, where we surf at lightspeed. Any artist NOT using this virtual universe as a challenge and a goal does not deserve the name Avantgarde.

Velazquez and colleague Rosanna Galvani, on Craft Grid, 2022

Why work in Virtual worlds?

1: Everything built in virtual worlds has no material consequences. Everything is Illusion but is useful as a model situation.
2: There is a unbelievable potential in variability and flexibility.
3: Nowhere else you can express and experiment new ideas and thoughts in such a fast spontaneous way. For creative people this world is a  playground to model new situations and experiment with them.

Fatal Attraction

Frank Gresham: Yay for opensim 

There is crazy good and crazy bad. We all know that. Second Life has been, for many of us, crazy Good, in its way. It was thus for Safari regular Loru Destiny and the three friends who, together with her, form the heart and soul of ArtDestiny grid, our first destination this week. It's a very attractive combination of so much art and beauty that for us to visit, it has to be fate. Addresses, as always, at the end of the post.

          

             We teleported over and arrived in a large, airy art gallery, everyone rezzing pretty quickly considering how many we were, and that it was not a great night for the internet. The whole visit was so well organized, it was pure pleasure to meet our hosts and take a tour around Spooky City.

A Tale of Two Cities

       Opportunity City and Gotham City... or Metropolis, the choice is yours, the tour this week took us to two of OpenSim's most respected grids, TanGle ad Craft, HG Addresses at the end of the post        
Aime Socrates: coool party Leslie !!!
          It's all in the eye of the beholder. We arrived on TanGle grid somewhat late and in disarray thanks to ... well that is a long boring story you did not come to this blog to read about. 

          The lovely Leslie Kling had invited us over to Tangle's Expo Isle, which for today let's call Opportunity City, because you could use it as a way to get yourself and your creations known all across the hyperverse, This was not the Safari's first visit, we've been here to see the lingerie show, the Steam Fair and the Winter expos over the past two years, so it was nice to be back, enjoying the icy dance floor hidden away in one corner of the vast Expo region.