Safari: Vive la différence

      Our first destination was Conference region on FrancoGrid, to meet some of the FrancoGrid regulars, including the democratically elected Grid President Nino Whitman, and the technical guru Ssm Binder, as well as Ange Menges, Cendres Magic, Archael Magic,  and Cherry Manga who all wanted to tell us something of the grid's story, and its future. 

Francogrid Conference

          About thirty of us gathered inside the fabulous spherical building where the grid holds its annual meetings.
          Francogrid is a non-profit grid. There is no 'owner' as you find on other grids. It is run according to European law for non-profits; decisions are made by the Administrative Council, and residents who have paid the membership fee are consulted about changes and new ideas, for example, they can vote on the look and style of the new Welcome regions that will be coming soon. 
         You do not need to speak French to be part of the grid; the website is bilingual, translators are available, and everyone goes out of their way to speak some English. And of course, it does us all good to at least try to communicate in another language. While most residents are Francophone, 'foreigners' like Lucy Afarensis, Snowbody, and me, are made very welcome!

Cendres.Magic: bienvenue / welcome
Thirza Ember: so who here is the oldest Francogrid resident?
Cendres Magic: nino
Archael Magic (fr -> en): this must be nino, the current president of FrancoGrid
Thirza Ember: what is the story of Francogrid? how did the grid begin?
ssm2017 Binder: none of the creators are on the grid actually, the first region on the grid was "orion" by "vinc sonic" and it was at the begin of 2008  the grid was called "virtualworldgrid". After creating the grid, the name has changed and people had the idea to make an association to manage money to rent servers in 2009   first region was online during february of 2008, and the association was declared in 2009.
Archael Magic (fr -> en): ten years old next year ^^
Isis Ophelia: with how many people did you start?
ssm2017 Binder: i was not there at the beginning but the grid was made by 3 persons who are not here anymore: vinc, jm louche and a 3rd one (a belgian one whom i do not remember the name now)
Ange Menges: For those who were on SL in 2006/2007, JM Louche was Osiris on SL



Sunbeam.Magic: Who designed the current Grid logo ? and when was it first used ?  It's very clever and colorful !
ssm2017 Binder: i think that the logo was made in 2009 maybe by vinc or gill
Cherry Manga: Wasn't it Vinc Sonic, Ssm?
Sunbeam Magic: When did Franco open up the HG gates ?
Archael Magic (fr -> en): I've seen an archive today, in February 2008, vinc made the first jump hypergrid. at the time, he had to move on the edge of the grid to be able to jump.
Freaky Tech: sounds like 4095 limit
Sunbeam Magic: Are most of your current residents 'artists' and was that a planned goal or did just kind of happen ?
Cendres Magic (fr -> en): not only artists ))  I am only cubes ==
Harthelie Deux: tes cubes sont sympa cendre
Freaky Tech: I think a grid of sufficient size has at least some scripters running around
Cherry Manga: Absolutely, Nino scripts like a god, Claudius like sto script too, and Ssm is above gods, he can script us a wine bottle appearing irl right now
Cendres Magic (fr -> en): I think that with the hypergrid we get to share our knowledge, and hence the scripts

Cherry Manga:  The grid takes its orientations due to the members, so it has been very educational, now it's more art oriented but it all moves with members, active or not here
ssm2017 Binder: for my opinion, artists are the ones that we see the most because they express themselves but there are other people hidden in their own home
Cendres Magic (fr -> en): it is the spirit that interests me = sharing - that's why I am here
Sunbeam Magic: I agree Cendres... it takes make individual skills to make a community
Thirza Ember: one of the most unusual things about francogrid is the way the various regions of the grid are on servers maintained by different members of the association, how did you develop that idea?
Cherry Manga: Well FG hosts some regions on its server, but like most of HG grids, it's possible to link its own server here so people who are interested to do by themselves link their servers to the grid and can host too
Cendres Magic (fr -> en): thanks to ssm, our technical support there is a cohesion of the regions and servers
Cherry Manga: When I arrived in FG, Gill hosted me, then I wished to learn a bit more, Nino helped me to figure out with server stuff and i decided to have my own, it's all about sharing knowledge
Ni Lemon: I would like to say thanks to Claudius [Utopy] who hosts my region Serenity here for veryyyyyy long...before it was on my pc
ssm2017 Binder: about the grid size, you can see stats in the right side of the webpage "infos"...sometimes more and sometimes less, but around 10... Technically we have some scripts to remove phantom regions and phantom avatars so i think that our stats are good... Every night a region clean is done and every hour avatar clean... Francogrid is hosting only few regions and most of them are hosted by other people who attached their regions to the grid.  The grid is using vanilla opensimulator 0.9 dev (version from february 2017) the grid is using everything from opensimulator (fsassets, groups v2, im v2, profiles v2...) In the past, we were using some custom php scripts for im, groups, profiles and assets but on the last year we have decided to only use everything from vanilla opensimulator... maybe we are one of the only grid using only opensimulator from a to z (except the website)

Archael Magic (fr -> en): and it works pretty well
Ange Menges: And if you have your own server, you are used to fight with the .ini ! SSM invented the francogrid.ini , hehe
Thirza Ember: question for ssm ... what is the most frustrating thing about doing the technical work on the grid.. and what is the most enjoyable thing
ssm2017 Binder: the grid is working fine, the most frustrating part is with simulator themselves. hypergrid is very modular... 
Isis Ophelia: ssm and what do you enjoy most?
ssm2017 Binder: what is the most enjoyable is when server scripts are working fine automatically and then residents are happy. Every year we have an irl meeting and this is maybe one of the best moments :)
Isis Ophelia: wow sounds cool to meet in RL
Archael Magic (fr -> en): I confirm, our annual meeting is the best moment of the year. It was  gill who has introduced this tradition of the annual meeting, an excellent idea
Freaky.Tech: if the core people of a grid know each other in RL helps a lot on grid stability
Cendres Magic: i agree freaky
Thirza Ember: so, can anyone attach a region to francogrid?
Cherry Manga: yes anyone can attach a region to FG, if they follow the rules of the association.

Thanks to Sunbeam who shared many of the photos you see in this post.

 Nino85 Whitman: Good evening everyone, sorry for my delay, welcome and big thank you to you, the whole francogrid community thank you
Ange Menges: Nino, rafraichis-nous la mémoire : au début de FG comment s'appelait le builder fou qui gagnait tous les concours de speed-build ?
Cherry Manga: ahhh Balthazar?
Ange Menges: voila
Archael Magic (fr -> en): and exactly to this topic, Nino, there is a lack of information on the birth of FrancoGrid, who are the founders ?
Ni Lemon: super une lesson d'histoire
Nino85 Whitman:  The first two, it seems to me Vinc Sonic and JM Louche. I arrived 1 week after its creation. the grid was created in feb 2008, it seems to me the association later. look at my profile :) 02/12/2008 ; (9 years 2 months; 3368 days)

Lucy Afarensis: Time flys when you are having fun
Ange Menges: mine is only 8 years 10 months :-( lol
Yara Eilde: mine is 8years and 5 months  :-) My start in the OS grid
Thirza Ember: wow .. you are so old...but you look so young!
Sunbeam Magic: Is the position of 'President' a democratic vote by all Franco Grid residents? and if so how long is the term of office ? and what is the difference between 'association' and 'citizens?
Archael Magic (fr -> en): we vote every year, the minutes of our meetings are public and searchable on the site, the members of the association have paid a membership fee (30 euros per year).  they have thus acquired the right to vote in our council. the board of directors shall elect each year a bureau composed of a president, a treasurer and a secretary.  Ssm is essential but has not always been the technical director, however, he assumed the dual role of technical director and president for a long time. thanks to his hard work, we have been able to evolve in the right direction. his role is probably the most complicated of the grid.
ssm2017 Binder: some people speak well to me because they are afraid that i cancel their account
Ni Lemon: hahaha
Cherry Manga: that's the administrative obligation with french law with association that makes us have to vote each year
Ni Lemon: democratic laws
Sunbeam Magic: Can anyone pay the fee and be part of the association ?
Cherry Manga: absolutely Sun, anyone can become a member of the association with an annual cost of 30 euros/year. Here is the Website

Cendres Magic (fr -> en): anyone can pay, Sunbeam  and help by this way to maintain the servers own by the association
Cherry Manga: yes , FrancoGrid is a non profit association, the money goes only to the association's costs, there is no profit
Nino85 Whitman (fr -> en): the role is the most important thing to be active on the grid without active members  we would not exist :)

Thirza Ember. Fest'Avi s probably the most famous event held on FrancoGrid, this Fall will be the 4th edition of the festival, can you tell us how it got started?

Cherry Manga: oh, the idea was to share creative content and imply hypergrid users to the project. Most of new comers don't know how to get a new avatar, find content, outfits... So it's a good way to offer them avatars. And the idea came to renew the proposal of FG's new accounts avatars that were quite poor at this time, then the Festival came more into sharing with all the HG community, in general. And why full perms, because we want people to play with them, redo them, mix them, and make new creative avatars with those bases.
Ange Menges: As we are in remembrances, I have a thought  for JM Louche who said 8 years ago "stop to pay SL to have your sim and come with us on opensim" and to Vinc Sonic who helped me to build my first server . I lost really good friends when they leaved. Sniff Nino :-)
Archael Magic (fr -> en): Vinc sonic has very long been a major player in the grid
Ange Menges: Search on youtube and you will find the videos of the beginning of francogrid made by JM Louche
Cendres Magic (fr -> en): and franco grid is a story of many people  who came and participated actively and you shows well the spirit -  sharing - knowledge, I hope that in 10 years; there must be a conference room of a 5-times larger!

Our next stop was on Genesis Metaverse Grid, you can read all about that in the next post

        

HG Address

Francogrid Conference region:   hg.francogrid.org:80:conference

Film Noir

       Two destinations that delight this week. Grid addresses at the end of the post as usual.
        If you have not visited Avacon Grid yet, put it on your 'Must See' list.

         Not only is Avacon closely associated with the organization and prep work that goes into the annual Opensim Community Convention (held over on OSCC Grid), it is also home to some interesting regions, including the Building Tutorial region Primland, you may remember it being originally on Fleep Grid; some nice work-in-progress Library regions belonging to Rockcliffe University, and of course Nebadon Izumi's regions bursting with interesting free stuff, called Oni Kenkon Creations.

Safari Goes Down Under

 After Neverworld, this week our next stop was on the other side of the planet.  In these troubling times, I always find some comfort in being with Australians living, as they do, where Tomorrow has already safely arrived. This time, we were on U4Ria.

Uriah Heep: ok any of the teleporters can take you to a destination

Arrival on u4ria

Juliette SurrealDreaming: i made it!  lol thanks
Sunbeam Magic: and with your clothes on too Juliette
Uriah Heep: covers my eyes
Juliette SurrealDreaming: omg did i not have them earlier?
Sunbeam Magic: you did not lol
Juliette SurrealDreaming: giggles, free show!!! :-P

Safari and the Gum Trees

 Australia was again our destination for the final stop this week. Our hostess Gen, lives in Australia where it's the middle of the night when we do Safari, so she asked if we'd mind showing ourselves around. As always, you'll find the HG Address at the end of the blog post.

           This time Kitely grid, and the fabulous Australian Home Land, by the beautiful Genavieve Paige. The experience of this region is breathtaking, make sure you have sound on, and have your environment set to the region windlight to get the full effect.

Genavieve Paige

Thirza Ember: The Murray River is huge, more than 2500 km long, it is Australia's longest single river. It begins in the Australian Alps and winds its way out to the sea not far from Adelaide , so it has lots of environments, from the beaches to the wetlands, and she has tried to include it all on her region.

A Quick Bit of Luster

 Our first stop of three this week on Safari - lil bit of lag, it can't be denied, but fun nonetheless. That's one of the advantages of multiple destinations each time. If one place has issues, or maybe isn't to your taste, another will be fine. 

Plenty of tasteful stuff on Neverworld though...

Neverworld Welcome 

Our first stop, however, was set to be on Neverworld grid, founded by Govega Sachertorte. We were invited by Locked Semaphore, and Pasha Theas was also there to welcome us to what was due to be a whistlestop tour of six different regions. Yes, I know what you're thinking, very ambitious...

           Neverworld is a grid of about three hundred regions, with about 200 in traffic monthly, between residents and visitors (pretty nice numbers) and the six regions being showcased were well chosen t demonstrate the range of activities available, from the airport, Banning International (great name) to the dark labyrinth of Ludicus...

Ludicus

..... to the romance of Luster, and so on. 

Here on Neverworld you will find fashion, freebies, rentals, sailing, and social events, as well as free parcels if you just want to try the grid out.  My favorite part in all of it is the Greeter, with his corny Pirate jokes. Unmissable.

Neverworld Greeter

There was something happening with teleports however right when we all tried to go there (an hour later, of course, teleporting was fine, that's just the way opensim works out sometimes) so our tour didn't go quite as expected. Better luck for sure on our next visit.

Check out the next post for our continued trip...

Luster

Walk-through Safari

             Each Safari trip lasts about three hours. Sometimes, that's divided into three one-hour visits, and sometimes into two ninety minute encounters. This week was of the ninety-minute-times-two variety, and for good reason! Our destinations were on OSgrid, Metropolis and Mobius grids (huh? three grids for two destinations? You'll see.) and all the HG Addresses are at the end of the post, as usual.

Safari goes from the Foxx to the Absurdists

"In the simplest terms, Absurdism is the belief that universe is 

too vast and unknowable for for human beings to ever know anything for certain. 

Because of that, we do not possess the ability to say or know for certain 

what, if anything, has meaning of value objectively. 

This causes us to comprehend the absurd nature of our existence: 

we cannot exist without meaning but we are incapable of determining meaning."

from http://the-absurdist.com

The Absurdists were Post WWII writers, like Albert Camus, who you perhaps haven't heard of, or like the book Catch 22, which you have heard of. So now you've Googled that, you'll agree that nothing really fits the hypergrid paradigm better than 'you have to be crazy to work here'. Yesterday proved we're crazy like a fox, in this case, Foxx Bode.

The planned destination was on Foxx's Red Dragon Club X, built when Foxx first discovered opensim back in the year dot. Sadly, this didn't work out, so we decamped to the Safari clubhouse on Teravus Plaza. But do take the time to go and see Foxx's historic OSgrid build, HG Addresses are at the bottom of this post, as usual.

Safari goes Dutch

        It's a small country with a lots of names, and loads of personality. Whether you like to call their home Holland, the Netherlands, or the Low Countries, the Dutch contingent in opensim is large, active, and innovative! The Safari group got to see three different aspects of Dutch culture this week, all the destinations are open to the public, and listed at the end of this post, if you want to experience them for yourself.

            Utrecht Citycenter is a region on OSGrid built by Avia Bonne. The region is on land owned by Mark aka Repudiator Quann, one of the smart and generous people who have regions attached to OSGrid and allow others to get a parcel or even a whole sim in exchange for small donations used to help cover expenses.

The House in SL

The new Safari house in SL will be holding the first in a series of events on March 25, at 12.00 SLT
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sistiana/106/81/25


Back in September 2014, The Safari was lucky enough to be given some space on sim Sisitiana, in SL.

The 2014 Safari Embassy on Sistiana

 The beautiful sim is the home of John 'Pathfinder' Lester.

Safarina Wizard Gynoid immediately took in hand the space and put up a building, very much like an ancient church in the gothic style.

We held a party there in October 2014, with a crowd of bi-virtuals, or should that be multi-virtuals. It was a way to remind all of the symbiotic relationship between SL and the opensim worlds.

Inside there were some posters and information about opensim, including a link at the now famous video that shows the hypergrid jump by some of the Linden team to an IBM owned region in opensim... this video

Time went by, Wizard became busy with other projects and relinquished the land to me, and last November, I began rebuilding and rethinking the space.

As you can see, the classic look of the region has not changed, but the style of the new building is rather different. it's divided into 3 floors. The ground floor is all about general information on how to find people in opensim, how to get help, and some tips and tricks - from things like 'What is an .oar' to 'How come people friend me so fast in opensim'.

The middle floor is dedicated to specific information about grids. Click on the posters and get a notecard that tells you something about the size, location, prices, and ideology of each one. The central display gives you an idea of how the grids are distributed around the world, and shows - just for illustrative purposes - the names of about 200 grids that are hg friendly. Wow - 200, that's a lot!

A separate space called the 'school room'  will house some information about educational builds - everything from university grids to privately run sims with a didactic twist, like Graham Mill's Micrographia.

The top floor is for social events. While it's not my intention to have a lot of events in SL, it's nice to think we have a place where experienced opensimmers can share their experiences with people a bit shy about taking the plunge. And dance a bit too. The events here will not be SL-bashing, but will hopefully dispel some of the myths and misinformation out there.

This build has a strong not-for-profit bias. It celebrates the generosity of opensim, not the people trying to make a fast buck out of it. The idea that we can all give something back to the opensim community is paramount - because those are the kind of people I hope will join us.  Finding your way around opensim can be a huge challenge to new people. I say this - if someone showed you kindness in opensim, then please, pay it forward by helping someone new.  And if you're not fond of newbies, just consider this, if you help them, it is also a way you can help put the rip-off merchants out of business.

It makes no absurdly self-aggrandizing claim to being the official home of Opensim in SL - nobody can speak for the massive variety of worlds, with all their fiercely individual ideas and aims. However, I'm proud to say that people from some 50 different grids have contributed to the build.
Many have provided posters and notecards, advice, moral and practical support, and some have given a few Lindens to help with the upload costs. Thank you all!

Safari gets Picture Perfect

Two stops this week, on Francogrid and then on OSGrid.
Find the HG Addresses at the end of the post, and add your photos of the destinations to our groups in G+ and Facebook, if you'd like! HG Addresses as aways at the end of the post.

First, to Parcdesarts, a region of Francogrid. Paintings and other 2D art is surprisingly difficult to show well in virtual worlds.  But Katia Parcdesarts has achieved something special here.

The landscape suggests an airy oceanside estate, without too many trees or water features to distract from the principal attraction, the galleries, which, even though each represents a very different style of architecture, all come together in a harmonious patchwork.

Safari Samples the Write Stuff

          Yesterday, we answered two questions about Opensim with one big party. Firstly, what is the most popular publication in the Hyperverse? and secondly, is opensim really 'empty'?
          The answers are 1. HG Visionz magazine, and 2, Opensim empty? No way!!

          There are quite a few competing events on Wednesday evening, European time . There's a DJ dance party at Event Plaza, OSGrid, there's the traditional-back-to-the-dawn-of-opensim party hosted by Samira Samtanko on DeReOs, there's the midweek meeting on Metropolis, and a bunch of other music and social events, you need look no further than the  Events Tab on opensimworld.com or go to hypevents.net to see what's going on.  Why mention all these 'rivals' to the weekly Safari trip? Because an astounding 43 avatars gathered on 3rdlifegrid to wish HG Visionz a happy second anniversary.

Better Places

Stop me if you've heard this one.
Person A tells Person B about a great deal, or scheme, they're working on.
Person B gets excited, and tells their friend, Person C, all about it.
Person C invests.

Sun, Sin, and Saraneth

          To visit Ignis Fatuus is a bit like watching a French film. The scenery is beautiful, and invites long, sweeping, cam shots. The sound track is epic, the dialogue, rigorously atmospheric Gallic. After a while you begin to wish you'd sat up front in your French 101 class, and fear that the subtitles are missing something crucial, and then after a little bit more, it occurs to you that you're not following the plot because ...maybe there isn't a plot.

            Once you've embraced that - and most experienced Safarians figured this out about 2 years ago - what's left is a wonderland of photo ops, cute corners, and remarkable architecture. It's intime and indéchiffrable, not two words readily associated with a field trip, but we kinda made it work.

Escape Safari

          The second destination for this week's Safari tour was Escape! on Digiworldz.
          This is a region dedicated to the teaching of Spanish in an immersive 3D environment. Our guide was Eugenia Calderon, a language teacher living in Mexico, and the region's creator, James 'El Profesor' Abraham was also there. Here's the website.  And here's their Escape Facebook page and here's the page for 'Spanish with Eugenia'.

Colleagues Eugenia Calderon IRL Martha Eugenia Lino, and James 'El Profesor' Abraham

El Profesor: Hola!  I'm in a RL class, but I have my students working on an activity so I'm kinda here and kinda not....did you hear them?

OMG Safari

      This is the first half of this week's Safari which was split into two 90 minute destinations. First up, OMG... HG Address at the end of the post, as usual.

snik snoodle: welcome all to OMG!  it's short for One More Grid.  We have sailing at the docks where you can rezz a boat and go for a sail, rain and i thought we could either split the group into two, one group sail one explore and then say swap over in 30 mins or so. Do feel free to dance while you wait, if you wish or feel free to ask rain or I anything - should you have any questions.
Thirza Ember: Why did you decide to make your own grid rather than join a larger grid?

Flakey Safari!

          Cornflakes Week, a seven day festival of silliness unique to OpenSim, began yesterday with a 3-stop party on Safari. If you missed the party, you can still go visit all 3 destinations, addresses at the end of this post.
          We started on HGSafari region on Francogrid, with a concert by Torben Asp. 

          His particle show and original music was a wonderfully smooth way to get us started on our - let's be honest - difficult trip around the Hyperverse.

Good Causes and Good Corsets

         A very musical Safari this week, with a trip to 3rd Rock Grid for the first two hours, to hear two musicians, and learn about the No Borders Festival,  a two-day concert for charity, which happened last weekend. Want to visit the places mentioned in this post? The HG addresses are at the end. Copy paste them into the Map feature of your viewer.

Truelie Telling, photo by Wizardoz Chrome

          First up, though, Truelie Telling warmed up the crowd at the Lodi Ballroom with some avatar-centric songs, in her inimitable style. She soon had the room hopping!

Safari Goes Canada

         This week, Canada! Opensim is a great way to explore cultures and places in the real world, and also see how people express their world view through pixels. 
         Our three destinations were on Pathlandia, GreatCanadianGrid, and Creanovale, all three with strong Canadian connections, although that might not be obvious from first impressions, and about 23 avies joined in the fun. HG Addresses at the end, as usual.

Nobody say 'I'd tap that'. 

          I was all ready to go - I'd even made mesh moose rack, and a Maple Syrup dress. But then disaster struck - I came down with the flu about 3 hours before the Safari and couldn't to join the group. So, how cool that John 'Pathfinder' Lester decided to Livestream the first hour! 

Goodwill

          Goodwill. Stop and think about it. Why? Because that one word holds the key to the survival of the human race, and to your personal health and happiness. It's also the world's greatest time-saving gadget. Find a way to slip it into all those nasty sharp bits of your life. You'll be glad you did.
          Two builds that speak to the good in all of us this week, one is a celebration of pixel power, the other a meditation on what it means to lose your home in the real world. HG Addresses, as always at the end of the post.

          First, a crowd of us went over to Littlefield to see the new region, Goodwill. Shopping galore!

Birthdays, Borders and Bunnies

        HG Safari is a hypergrid tour group. 

Every Wednesday we meet on the HGSafari region on FrancoGrid. About 15-20 people join each week, trips are organized in advance so we can meet grid and region owners. We go to two or three different grids each week, spending about an hour on each. The entire event lasts about three hours, some people stay for the whole thing, some people come and go, depending on other commitments. 

To make it easier for people to join us partway through the Safari, event details are posted on opensimworld.com, G+ and Facebook.
To keep it interesting for all, there's a mix of destinations, from social to sporty, from arty to educational, from technical to theatrical. No one grid is promoted above all others, though we tend to spend a lot more time with people who are not in virtual worlds for the money. Cuz if we were into that, we would just have stayed in Second Life.
You will find the HG Addresses for this week's three destinations at the end of the post, should you wish to visit them yourself. You put the address in your Viewer's Map, hit Search, and then teleport. It's a simple low tech way of discovering opensim for yourself.

Building competition entry by XsiberiaX Ilfreddopurifica

         Craft Grid turns 7 on Friday, and there will be a big party from around 1pm Pacific time, which is ten o'clock in the evening in Europe. They will be awarding the prizes for the annual Build

Golyfeydd... and other views

George Equus: as far as Safari goes, pretty successful one today  ;}

Two destinations this week. HG Addresses at the end of the post as usual.
 First up a Welsh Paradise, devised by Susannah Avonside.

Susannah Avonside

            Views of welsh scenery, and views about the future of opensim were on the menu this week. Although it almost seemed like we were going nowhere, at first. Seemed like none of us were entirely present from the very beginning, some of us foggy, George's trousers had gone walkabout again, and a new friend Spax Orion was just hair and a sword, leading us to wonder if he had remembered to put his mesh avie in his My Suitcase folder.

Scripts... and scripts

          Two very exciting projects in OpenSim that you will be hearing more and more about in the future!
          Ask most safari-goers, and they'll tell you they're into love, not war... but there are always exceptions, and Konk Combat is definitely exceptional. 

The King of Konk, Valerious Strongborn

          We ran over to Konk on Kitely (full HG addresses at the end of the post) to see what it was all about. There were almost 20 of us by the time all arrived, and it being Kitely, of course, everything rezzed super fast, except for the occasional person with some kinky cloud issues. 

          So what is Konk? We decided to ask the Man himself.

Safari Calendar 2017 - where, when, and why

          This year's calendar features 13 destinations visited by the Safari during 2016, with an emphasis on the landscapes we've seen.
           The calendar is available free and full perms inside the Clubhouse at Teravus Plaza, OSGrid - just 'buy' it from the box on the Rhino table. You can also get it if you visit the courtyard of the Safari Embassy at Mal Burns' Metaworld Township on Great Canadian Grid. And of course it's also available in the Safari Market on HGSafari sim in Francogrid.
          The calendar bit contains all kinds of opensim-relevant dates, the first hg experiment, the birthdays of most of the major grids, and so on, as well as real-world holidays.
          If you like to mix opensim with real life, you can also buy a high quality paper copy version at Lulu.com
            Choosing just 13 photos from the thousands we have from hundreds of places visited was a daunting task, and one that is never satisfying - we could easily have ten different versions of the calendar, and still find places and people have been left out.  But hopefully this goes some way to showing the wealth of variety that OpenSim has to offer.
             Not all of the places in the photographs are readily visitable. As time goes by, regions -and sometimes whole grids -  close, or change their look, or move beyond our ken. But these are all places where we had memorable Safari visits last year.

Vinyl, Copters, Oz... and Socks

          Three stops, on three continents this week, and three places you should definitely visit. HG Addresses and details at the end of the post.

Aime Socrates: first time here Roff ?
Roffellos Kisses: for the safari yes but i have been here this area befoe
Aime.Socrates: safari is a great experience, if you survive you are strong
Roffellos Kisses: lol well I like to explore so its a perfect thing for me to tag along on
Thirza Ember: so 3 continents this week... Europe, America, then Australia... I need some sandwiches
Aime.Socrates: Billy..you know a lot about our first destination..right ?
Billy.Bradshaw: yes, it is my home :)
Aime.Socrates: insida a laptop..funny idea
Billy.Bradshaw: I am a funny kind of guy :)
Aime.Socrates: great! world needs this kind of guys nowadays
Billy.Bradshaw: the days of sat surrounded by noisy computers has gone for me
Aime.Socrates:Opensim way Of Life: just to be cool

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.

The Safari Goes on ... Safari

pat gresham: Wow. A real HG safari.         

Sun and savanna, wild animals and wilder teleports, African thoughts, history,  and ideals - that's the spirit of our most recent trip. Our first destination took us to the var region Virunga on Outworldz grid. 

           There was a lot of interest in this Safari, more than twenty of us gathered on the HG Safari clubhouse, not to mention all those who tp'd directly to the first destination. If you can make it over to the hgsafari sim on Francogrid, you will find the Landmarks in a big box marked... Landmarks, and can go take the tour at any time. In a few weeks, we should also have the safari archive set up, too, with all the LMs of the past two years. Sunshine Szavanna, hostess for our second destination, had set out some clothes with African themed textures, which are still available at both clubhouses if you would like to get them.

Safari Went To Portugal

On December 7, the Safari went to visit 3 very special regions, created by Portuguese builders to tell the story of their native land. 

Below, an account of the visit, as told by Aime Socrates, 

with photos by Wizardoz Chrome.

HG Addresses at the end of the post.

 DESTINATION 1 Belem Tower is the creation of Ni Lemon, it's an exploration of some of the history and culture of her homeland /hg.osgrid.org:80:belem_tower

Approximatively 15 Explorers went to the sim at the right time..but sadly, Ni couldnt join us...

Azi.Az gave un a lot of informations

Aime Socrates: Azi can you tell us a bit more about this sim ?

Azi.Az @hg.osgrid.org: that is in Lisbon

Azi.Az @hg.osgrid.org: Lisbon is the capital of portugal

Aime Socrates: the harbour of Lisbon ?

Azi.Az @hg.osgrid.org: and yes u can say its the harbour

we flyed all together up to a big tower:

We Are One - are you in?

            You may know that most grids like to celebrate their anniversary, and you also know that lots of grids don't stick around very long. So for an opensim grid to be celebrating seven years of existence is really something!
        Craft, the 'Friendly Grid', has its 7th anniversary coming up at the end of January.

        Every year, they hold a building competition. Perhaps in past years, you've attended the anniversary party, even admired the winning entries to the building competition. The first prize is a free region for a year.  Second place gets a 10k prim region for a year... which to my mind is just as good.
       Wowee, you may say, lucky Craftians... but did you realize that anyone from any grid can take part, and win that prize?
        Yes, you too can compete in the Craft competition!    

Another Arty Safari

Three artists, three countries, three genres, three grids this week.
The theme this week, the interplay between real and virtual worlds when it comes to art. Obviously, it's all art. But working in virtual worlds can be a great stepping stone to begin or re-ignite an artistic career. It can inspire your creativity,  suggest new ways to express yourself,  give you the courage to put your work on display, and help you find fans and clients. HG Addresses as usual at the end of the post. Landmarks are available at our clubhouses on OSGrid and Francogrid for the next few days also.
Our first stop, A'Shaala on Francogrid, home of Talie Tramont also known as Talie Tramontane. An art school graduate based in France, Talie is best known for her photography, which you can find on Deviantart, as well as on this lovely region.

Thirza Ember: everyone has the Lms?
Malon Wyngard: got all
Thirza Ember: her computer broke suddenly yesterday, she was fixing up many winter things for us to do but... boom - no computer
Cherry Manga: She has computer issues so she leaves us on her region, she can't imagine what a safari can do when alone!
Sunbeam Magic: Does it snow in France?
Cherry Manga: here, it's fog and fog and fog since 3 weeks
Spike Sol: liegt überall schnee im Moment.. nur draussen nicht
Dabici Straulino: na hier her haben wir ca 50cm Schnee - Quebec
       .... as you can see we're a very international bunch.

Fully Loaded

            Billy Bradshaw asked if we could do a quick Load Test on TGrid before we headed to our first official destination this week.

             If you've been doing anything more than sitting at home alone dropping cubes off towers or checking the hiccup time you get when you cross a sim boundary, you will know what a horrendous condition intergrid communications has reached. For many months now, sending offline IMs to people on other grids - which used to work just fine - fails more often than it works. When this started, it took me a few days to notice that the 'User not online. Message saved' message was actually saying 'Unable to send instant message. User is not logged in.' which caused some really amusing headaches. But of course, now we have all learned that to be sure your reply gets through, you must actually go to the other person's grid to send it. 

Safari Goes Pear Shaped

 Words Matter.
          George jinxed us. Or maybe it was the fruit. Or the sudden decision to get out some NPC line dancers.
Thirza Ember: Hello all and welcome to the Safari. Two destinations this week, first grid EVER and then on to Kitely. You should know that grid-jumping directly to the EVER grid welcome sim, Gutenberg, is a problem. For some time now, it's not been working right. I have given an alternate LM that always works, it takes you to a different part of the grid, and from there you can get to Gutenberg.. and then to theater... so multiple jumps....Aime, can you confirm for me that the direct jump to Gutenberg region doesn't work?  
Aime Socrates: OK
~momentary silence and distinct lack of teleport particles ~
Aime Socrates: no, cannot go there directly, you are right thirza, we must use the alternative lm.
Lucy Afarensis: We have already started ?
Aime Socrates: yes Lucy..we started the party before safari..you know why ? its a dangerous safari...
Thirza Ember: you can tp out of the grid, but to get in, you have to do contortions - multiple tps
Lucy.Afarensis: oh dear
Aime Socrates: some will not come back

Lucy Afarensis: shudder... Thirza, You have a pear on your head ?

Safari Goes House to House

        Three destinations, and all the Hypergrid Addresses at the end of the post, the first house of this week's trip around the magnificent metaverse was a lighthouse. 

          It represents a point of reference, of illumination, and security, while hinting at the feelings of loneliness  and isolation that can afflict all of us, any of us, at different times in our lives. Leighton Marjoram is here to help, specifically people dealing with gender issues, and where they fit in to the spectrum of attraction and identity.

La Dolce Safari

          On the day after the night before in the US election, the special Italian Night Safari was a much needed moment of  restful, intelligent fun in the company of a borderless band of creators and thinkers. 

          We meet on Francogrid. Some Safaris have last minute changes, or there is a special gift for the group, so it's worth taking the time to join us here, rather than going straight to the first destination. 
          Also, the LMs for each Safari remain in the LM giver for about a week, in case you want to get them on a later date. And as usual the HG Addresses will be at the end of this post.