Safari on the Socials

The Alps and the New York metropolitan area both have about the same number of residents - 19 million. They both have worldwide fame as tourist destinations, and are full of storied locations - some scary, some beautiful, all memorable in their own way. They say that in New York City, you can hear just about every language on earth. The Alps, on the other hand, have given life to scores of local dialects and languages over the centuries, from Romansch and Piemontese to Walser and Friulian, and of course the mysterious language of the Voynich Manuscript is an alpine tongue.

Thinking  of Opensim and Second Life in those terms goes a long way in illustrating the difference and similarities between the two. 
Opensim is like the Alps, which span eight different countries, from Monaco to Slovenia. The weather, the culture, the laws, the history, even the mountains morph in shape and nature as you travel from the Maritimes to the Dolomites. The people aren't always so easy to spot, down in the valleys or hidden by a range of majestic peaks.

Safari Goes Into the Light

 First stop this week, Dorena's World! We visited a beautiful art sim, more More Than Lights, in company with two of the creators, Miara Lubitsch and Kjs Yip. HG Address is, of course, at the end of the post.

Our arrival point on More Than Lights

Every Safari begins with an avalanche of greetings... and some teasing. ON the practical side, here's how Safari works. The LMs and a notecard explaining our trip are located inside a giant prim, at the Clubhouse on HG Safari grid. Simply touch and 'Buy' the pack, which has the Week number on it. The weekly LM pack is generally left up from Wednesday to Sunday, for anyone who wishes to take the tour but wasn't able to join the group. 

This week, we had the nice mixture of first time Safari goers, occasional and regular Safaristas, as you know all our welcome, and we're very happy to provide TPs and help if you're new to this group hypergridding lark, so don't be shy - join us if you can.

Inside the theater - very comfortable seating!

Star Ravenhurst: Hi Yara and Alex

Yara.Eild: Hi Star, Loru :-)

Loru Destiny: -*- HeLlO-*- everybody :-) I hope I'm not naked

Forest Azure: hi loru .. and no

Loru Destiny: ahh great, a new experience when I HG

Safari Maitai

May your journey and your drink never end, or be boring

Eiaha e pau to oe haereraa e to oe inu, eiaha râ e riri

Our second stop this week was on Alternate Metaverse grid, and a beautiful VARregion with low lag and dramatic scenery. As always, the HG Address is at the end of the post.

Thirza Ember: Welcome to Tahiti... waiting just a sec for any people are trapped between tps

Lynnestra Parker: Maldrul said he has to relog, he can't tp Star Ravenhurst: I hate when that happens, Microsoft did an update so that doesn't help

Thirza Ember: yes and that brings me to my next point... This region is by Yana Dakota - you can see her photo here Forest Azure: /me peeks Thirza Ember: it says 'offline' by her picture, that's because just a little while ago her computer did that update, and something went wrong, so Yana can't be with us today sadly. However, I have some of the background, if you'd like to hear about it... In RL, Yana in the Canary islands, like our friend from last week over on Astralia grid, Marpil (altho Marpil is a native of the Canaries, not sure Yana was born there). Star Ravenhurst: Oh wow! Small world.

Thirza Ember: Because Yana loves islands, she decided to make a sim all about Tahiti, as you may be able to see it's huge...

Call it Communauté

Community! However you spell it, it's important in virtual worlds.

Nadajdae region on OSgrid is home to Hella Yver and her partner Badr Norseman, and recently they've decided to open up the sim to social events for the Francophone community.

A little opensim history, which you probably know already. 

FrancoGrid was the best-known French grid, and arguably the oldest, it started in February 2007, and closed in March 2022 when the servers suffered an irreversible breakdown and the FG committee came to the sad decision that the grid was no longer viable. Just over a year later Metropolis Grid, the giant in the family of German-speaking grids, finally went offline (you may remember the wonderful party we had to mark the end of that era!). 

Metro and Franco - these two gaps in the Opensim scenery, not to mention Osgrid's 8 month 'hiccup' in 2014, brought home to most people that probably, the way forward was  to have lots of smaller grids, where people can do their own thing, and comfortably avoid people who have different ideas and uses for virtual worlds.

But little grids, though they lead to less drama, also fracture the community, making it less likely and less easy to stay in touch.

If you read this blog often, you already know of quite a few Frenchies in OSGrid - from the lovely Paela Argus, who for many years served the OSGrid community as an active admin member; Ange Menges and nani Ferguson are here, with their signature Hunt builds three times a year; and there's Cheops Forlife of course, with the Theatre d'Adret; not to mention the delicious Cherry Manga who has sims here and on many other grids. That's just to mention a few of the better known folks on OSGrid - there are many more, plus a whole archipelago of Francophone grids out there, many of which we have visited, from Ignis, to Creanovale, to Logicamp, to Vibel, to Atlas and more. Wondering where the other French grids and French creators are located? Well, Prodyck Theas has compiled a useful list on Artefactix, his interesting blog, you can see the grid list here.

Tierra de Marpil

"Abre el ojo y desparrama la vista"

Love it when we end up on yet another new sim where paying attention pays off, and you get the full benefit out of all there is to see and learn. 

That was the case at our second destination this week, as the new season of Safari began with an exciting visit to Cloe Kegel and Vins Watanabe's grid, Astralia.  We were guests of Marpil Grafenwalder who exploded onto the Opensim scene less than two years ago. She has been a positive torrent of creativity ever since. The region is Tierra de Volcanes, 'land of the volcanoes' and of course, the full HG address is at the end of the post.

Marpil Grafenwalder

Marpil's region Tierra de Volcanes is famed for its wonderful Mall up in the sky, but our visit this time was aimed at learning more about her homeland, the Canary Islands. 

The build at sea level is beautifully put together to combine art, entertainment, and RL information and we arrived in the colorful, highly detailed plaza. 

Arriving on Tierra de Volcanes

Marpil Grafenwalder: Hello everyone, and welcome to “Tierra de Volcanes".Tierra de Volcanes was born as an inspiration from the Canary Islands

Safari Fall

It's September, so it's time for a new season of the Safari! We also have a new base for meeting up, on a dedicated grid, the address is at the end of the post. As usual, the event began at 12.00 SLT and as always, Safari trips are on Wednesdays. This post describes our first destination, you can read about our second destination in the post called Tierra de Marpil.

Appropriately, our very first destination for the Fall season was God Fall, by Tutz Zabelin, on Pangea grid, and Tutz was on hand to tell us all about it.

Tutz Zabelin: For those I haven't met before, a short history about me and Pangea. In reality I am a girl from Sweden. And i have a background from SL where i started 2007. Pangea started 4 years ago. Marlon Wayne is the man who came up with the idea.

 At Pangea, we are a blending of different skills and, like me, just a builder. There is much much  more to say about Pangea, there is some information about this on the Welcome sim. You will also find TP board to Pangea's various sims.

Thirza Ember: nice EEP

Tutz Zabelin: I was supposed to invent and write a story about God Fall but my imagination has been stuck in sim Construction.

Luna Lunaria: I get that way also

Tutz Zabelin: But briefly about the history of the God Fall is: It is at the beginning of the creation of the Earth. Good beings from space, gods and goddesses, come in a spaceship. They come to help create the Earth and protect it from evil forces that threaten to take over. On the way to Earth, the good gods spaceship is attacked by evil aliens The goddesses on the ship then stand around the ship and protect it. They succeed in using their powers to drive out the evil ones.

On Offworld

Any day of the week, no matter what the season, you'll find music and dance parties happening all over Opensim. It is one of the enduring and vivifying features of the hypergrid culture. I asked popular German DJ Genie Fegte to say why he thinks this is so.

Genie Fegte: Music is international and lets you forget the problems of the world for a moment. Music can connect people, even across language barriers. You enjoy the music together and shut everything negative and evil out of your head for a while. I think that's a main reason why parties are so popular in virtual worlds.

Offworld grid is a popular spot for dancing on Friday evenings, European time. It's a grid with a long history, all the way back to 2007 when the owner, Genie Fegte, set up his first opensim grid called  "Land of Vikings". This of course was before hypergridding became a commonplace in opensim, pre-mesh, and things were still pretty basic and often very unreliable. 

Genie Fegte:  I never let that put me off and continued working with Opensim. I am a perfectionist and when I have a problem in front of me, I sit on it until it is solved. I got my first computer in 1988. There was no real internet or pre-made programs. So I learned to program from magazines and books. Everything I know about computers today I taught myself.

Fair Do's

Opensim Worlds Fair (OSWF for short) is getting closer, and on Saturday at 12.00 SLT there was another progress meeting for people interested in this project. The steering team - Kimm Starr, Koshari Mahana, and the magnificent Cooper Swizzle, were on hand to share the news, confirm details, get feedback and explain how it's still possible for you to participate in the event - there is still time to get on board!

At the meeting took place on the huge sim on Wolf Territories Grid, with some unique chairs and couches provided for the public.... all the fun of the fair!

That hatted figure you see silhouetted in these photos is, of course, grid owner Lone Wolf. For the address of the huge region housing the entire World's Fair, feel free to scroll to the end of the post, the traditional home of all HG Addresses on this blog.

M is for Music

Morlita Quan's Second Life adventure started 16 years ago, and it was pure boredom.

Morlita Quan:   I even remember myself thinking : " Ok, I won't stay here more then two days". But as you well said, SL is a nest of creativity and very soon, I had the luck to meet persons there who used SL as a professional tool for art and music, and not like a simple social game. 

Morlita at her new, as yet unfinished, gallery on sim MorlitaM on OSGrid.

Sixteen years later, Morlita is still working on projects that overlap between the real and virtual worlds. Recently she has revived her interest in Opensim, and has an exciting new sim on OSGrid - address at the end of the post, as usual!  What, though, makes virtual worlds a special place to be creative?

Safari Countdown

 It's just ten days until the new season of  HG Safari begins, on Wednesday September 4 at 12 noon Pacific time. otherwise known as SLT or Grid Time. 

If you are familiar with our region on OSGrid, please be advised that the OSGrid region is no longer online. HG Safari now has a new home.

The new Clubhouse is located on the grid HG Safari, here's the address:

grid.hgsafari.org:58002:HG Safari

Once again, we will have ten weeks of visits to different grids and regions all across opensim, visiting art and tech builds, some representing real places, others inspired by fiction and fantasy. It will be an opportunity to make new friends, meet builders, learn about projects, passions, and of course problems that all come together to make up the Opensim experience.

Austin's Eye

Opensim can be  a tough place to get your arms around. It's like Second Life, but it also has distinctive features in terms of the technology and the culture. It's a dislocated, often quite mysterious place, in the sense that people often give a lot of weight to their subjective experience when talking about 'how opensim works'. 

That's a fun way to live the adventure, but solid information about resources, innovations, and changes to Opensim, (and where the two are related, in SL) is a must for anyone who's serious about understanding the platform. An outstanding source of knowledge is Austin Tate's blog. 

Ai Austin on RuthandRoth region OSGrid

Austin Tate, known inworld as Ai Austin (pronounced 'eye' not A.I.)  is an Emeritus Professor of knowledge-based Systems at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. 

His career in Information Technology started in the 70's, but his interest in computers goes back even further. We chatted during a tour of three sims on OSGrid, and you will find the HG Addresses at the end of the post, as usual.

It takes an eye for detail, and a talent for sharing complex knowledge in a way that works for both experts and casual readers, and Ai has achieved this with his blog, making it the go-to read for anyone trying to parse what's currently happening in Opensim.

One of the community projects he has consistently championed is the idea of an original open source mesh body for Opensim, called 'Ruth' and 'Roth'. That's the theme of the sim where we met up.

RuthandRoth sim has resources, information and teleports 

Ai Austin: This is the Ruth2 and Roth2 home region as you might know. Its where the open source Ruth2/Roth2 mesh assets and avatars are made available. The NPCs here are examples.

Thirza Ember:  Can you tell me a bit about how you got into computers to begin with?

Dreams on the 10th Dimension

All is like a dream

Star Ravenhurst's new grid Tenth Dimension is home to her art gallery Le Beau Retrouvé, and there's a big new show scheduled for September 29. 

You're still just about in time to participate. If you make art this could be your chance to exhibit alongside the likes of Tina Bey, Xenon Darrow, Remmy Ravenhurst (no relation), Savannah Joy, Forest Azure, Arcfury and a huge multimedia install by Cherry Manga  and Nico Kailani. The deadline to submit art is September 23, although the sooner you do it, the better it is for Star's nerves! Organizing art shows can be onerous, so why does Star do it?

Star Ravenhurst: It can be difficult to get into a gallery in the real world and most artists never get that opportunity. In fact, they are lucky if anyone beyond their family, friends, or instructors ever sees their work. Having my own grid, I can now give them more opportunities to showcase their work in virtual.

If you're a regular dipper-in to this blog, you may remember reading about Le Beau Retrouvé here although bear in mind, the location of the gallery has changed since then (just part of the way opensim is always in flux and keeping it interesting), and perhaps you caught the episode of Inworld Review where Star spoke about the gallery, among her many other projects. 

Star Ravenhurst:  What does the gallery mean to me? I am an artist in RL and have formal education in Fine Arts, Graphic Arts, Art History, and Design. During college, I worked for an art gallery and learned a lot during my time with them and also took classes in Marketing and Professional Practices to help me learn the business side of art. I do not have the funds in RL to open my own gallery, but in virtual, everything is possible. I have seized the chance to create an art gallery that is welcoming and supportive of new artists as well as established artists. 

Jimmy's Europa

 Jimmy Olsen's Europa has expanded! Most of you have already been to see this imaginative cityscape with its great Mall, sci-fi architecture and gadgets, and fabulous taxis, and soooo much more.

 HG Safari did a little tour last year - it was the season premiere, and (since we only have about an hour for each visit)  we only got a taster of this huge complex around the central build.

And now four months later the build has expanded even further.

Boom! another eight regions surround the original Europa. Seven are visitable, the eighth is a Sandbox, and there are multiple ways to see this build. You can use this greenish TP board to jump to Europa Raceway, Farm, Ranch, Mines, University, Colony, and Spaceport,

Lots of transport choices on Europa

 Loving that font, too - just comprehensible enough to make you feel like you're reading a foreign language you'd almost forgotten. A trip abroad without leaving your chair! Imagine the savings.

Victor's Great Gatsby

A great Great Gatsby build is taking shape over on FreeLife grid, and it has all that Long island loveliness that's a perfect match for the hot summer season of inworld exploration.

 It's built by grid owner, Victor DeAngelo. Free Life Grid came online approximately seven years ago, but Victor's virtual life journey began at another totally separate world from OpenSim called The Utherverse.  

Victor DeAngelo: That was eleven years ago.  It was there that I owned a large modern city where I rented out storefronts to business owners to provide links to their 3D stores.  The social life there was amazing but the graphics, compared to OS, are quite primitive.  It was one of the other builders, with whom I was associated as a provider of completed layouts, who first discovered OS.  She invited me to come and try it.  Of course, I was immediately hooked.  I rented a 3X3 from a grid owner who has since passed away.  After that, I was provided with the same size region by another grid that has since disappeared.  After those two situations, I made up my mind to own my own grid.  I downloaded Fred Beckhusen's "Outworldz" software which enabled me to set up Free Life.

3rd Wind, 3 Months In

 The 3rd Wind steering committee had just finished their meeting in the Infinity Classroom,  and were getting ready for the weekend community meet-up.  How lovely to be back at the Lyonesse Colony, now located on Zetaworlds grid.

It has been just about three months to the day since 3rd Rock, one of Opensim's oldest grids, closed its doors due to a series of events that had nothing to do with the solidarity and friendship of the residents.

As a group, they decided to find a new home (you may have read a bit about that process in this post). It's a story worth telling because, out of what could have been a huge tragedy, has come a great success story.It was so nice to meet up with old friends and new, the elected members of the 3rd Wind community steering committee. 

The committee includes Jedburgh Dagger, Ellemir Maven, Kestral Roffo, plus Dolfke Barbosa, who is Chief Security Officer in the Star trek Infinity group, and also there to help solve any issues 3rd Wind members may experience on the new grid. Then too there's Nila Mari who's the 3rd Wind Treasurer,  and produces the Starfleet Infinity Newsletter. And finally Alia Soulstar -  she is tireless in her work for the Starfleet rp group and the wider 3rd Wind community, doing a lots of building, organizing, researching and planning.

Kestrel Roffo, Nila Mari, and Dolfke Barbosa

Alia Soulstar: Nila is a community asset who just happens to be a lovely person on the side

Dolfke Barbosa: Nila does a few excellent jobs here for us all - we have a newsletter too, right Nila?

Nila Mari: for Starfleet Infinity we do

Dolfke Barbosa: Due to Alia's and others great work, I am able to call this here home again, Thirza, and much from 3RG is imported here, Land as well as Avatars

Touring the Starfleet Infinity build, you'd be forgiven for feeling nothing had changed for this RP group. In reality, after it became abundantly clear that the old grid couldn't be saved, a huge amount of work had to be done retrieving .oars, rethinking the way the new regions would be laid out, and transferring personal and group inventory. That was after the group did plenty of research and some serious thinking before choosing their new home, an enclave on ZetaWorlds grid. 

AviWorlds: Josh & Co

Sometimes, seeing is believing. AviWorlds owner Josh Boam discovered Second Life thanks to a friend who told him that 'there was a place you could live a virtual life and do anything create anything and meet people from around the world'.  

Josh Boam: I did not believe him it was all so much to take in so that night I went home and joined.

Josh Boam

In Second Life, Josh split his time between running RP regions and building stuff - JP Collections opened in 2008 and is still on SL Marketplace offering furniture, aircraft, buildings, and Josh's main love, yachts - he went on to build 100 different watercraft.

But, as we all know, SL is pricey!

Josh Boam: At one point our Friday Harbor RP had over 15 regions and the cost to run was just way too high, so in 2014 I was turn onto the open simulator platform by some friends.  It was at this point I could see the profit that could be made by running your own grid, and thus SkyLifeGrid was born.  I ran Skylife for many years and learned over the years more and more about the backend of opensim.  Having no previous knowledge of opensim or databases or anything I studied the code for opensim line by line during my working days and was able to develop a system that worked for me.

Racing in Pangea

Looking for somewhere new to put the pedal to the metal? Do you have the heart of a Marshal?

Whether you're an expert racer, or just a crazy driver, Pangea grid would love to have you come over and help test their new race track on a dedicated sim set up for an event set to be held in October, the Pangea Go-Kart Cup.

This competition will feature as part of the Pangea 4th birthday festival, they are planning a whole series of different activities. You will be seeing the details pop up in the socials, also don't overlook their website (worth bookmarking) called https://pangea-grid.com/ ...and right now, if you like your sport sitting down, you could be a huge help! 

What's the idea? Let's ask  Karsten Runningbear, the grid's script guru, what he and the Pangea Grid team, led by Grid Owner Marlon Wayne, have in mind.

Karsten Runningbear: you are welcome to try the track and give your feedback, so we can make the racing experience the best it can possibly be before the big day. In particular, there is an information evening tomorrow, Friday, 9 August between 11am and 1pm SLT (that's from 8-10pm, Berlin time). The focus of this evening is the planning and organization of our upcoming birthday go kart race. 

Lil Bit More JOG

 Just as I publish a post about JOG, yet another cultural event happens there that's worth recording.

The summer festival called Obon, sometimes just called  Bon, is a joyful celebration of the dearly departed, and a moment of reflection about all the positive ways in which our ancestors near or far  have affected our lives, a sort of spiritual giving of thanks.

Looking down from the castle at the party venue

Mint B's region is a classic, with Cuteulala's castle as the backdrop to the main dancing area. There's a cool romantic midsummer moonlight feel to the sim, perfectly contrasted by the red and white colors of the festival - those are lucky colors!

I really love the little ghosties that dance around the central tower or yagura.  

The Jogged Heart

井の中の蛙 大海を知らず

A frog in a well knows nothing of the great sea

Doguu by Daiki Aabye 

On a hot day, there's a cool grid to wander through half a world away from Europe and on a very different planet, culturally. It's the Japan Open Grid, called JOG for short.

The main part of JOG is the great square continent, with the region Jog Central at its heart and all kinds of builds surrounding it, those closest to the middle have a permanent feel, like the 5 year anniversary Grand Staircase, the shopping regions and JOG Meet...

...and of course Dejima, 'Exit Island', as it was called, the one point at which, during the Edo period,  the West could interact with the Japanese culture and economy. We are talking the long period from the mid 1600's to the 1800's. 'Exit through the gift shop' comes to mind.

This, of course, was a period when Japan was trying to have as little as possible to do with outside cultures, in a bid to preserve their own culture and to repel the less attractive effects of western culture.  It meant, however, that the traditions and philosophy of the country were protected while a bit-o-bartering could go on undisturbed.   

Torch For a Nation

Marcel Mosswood lives and works in Indonesia... and Opensim. She started in Second Life (SL) around the year 2010. Six years later, she discovered the flexibility of Opensim, particularly for its potential in terms of creating education-friendly environments. A lot of hard work, learning, building, organizing and networking, and today she has her own school grid, called, Suluh Bangsa.

Marcel Mosswood: it means 'torch for a nation'.

Arrival sim, Suluh Bangsa

This sim she put together in just five days... she is a quick worker, and the design is very bright, modern and airy. You'll see some familiar, elegant and modern architecture. There's a lot of energy on the sim, which is surrounded by a tramway, and the central torch has delightful images projected on the marble.

Lessons are taught inworld using Discord, because the quality is way better than Vivox, and Marcel has a group of teachers, as it would be impossible to do everything on her own. She learned building in SL and has also been studying Blender, plus so the look of the grid is unique to her vision of a place for learning. 

Since this is a school grid, set up to educate students aged from 7 to 17, it's not open to the public - Marcel kindly let me in with my own student avie - check out the shades!

Thirza Guest

Will You Participate in 3px ?

DeReOs grid is approaching its 10th Anniversary very soon, and you're invited to participate! 

DeReOs grid

DeReOs is a beautiful grid of about a hundred regions. It is home to one of the oldest dance clubs in opensim, the Blue Wave, as well as lots of art. And pretty soon, there will be even more hypergrid art on show...

Akita Sonoda: We're looking for your wildest, most beautiful, and innovative artworks for an exhibition called "3px" (pronounced: Three Pix), which we'll be opening on our Grid birthday.

Tony, Jerry, & Little Willow Bay

Here is a heads-up ... or should that be deadheads-up? ... hmmm ... good question. 

What isn't in question is the following news - tomorrow,  August 1st, at 5pm - 8 pm SLT, there will be a concert by Tony Saunders to mark what would have been Jerry Garcia's 82nd birthday, held on the sim Little Willow Bay, on Neverworld, with some very special architecture put together by some of  NWG's best known builders.

Govega Sachertorte: Mr. smokes and Nexus Storm built the sim and I added the art and art info. The pieces are a gift grant to the SCA who is collaborating with the foundation on this. They will be livestreaming the event, and so will we. 

Little Willow Bay region on Neverworld is a virtual take on RL Sausalito

The full address is at the end of the post, as always! 

Wait a minute, why is this event on this sim, you ask, and not the Jerry Garcia Tribute sim that we visited back in 2023? 

Close Encounters

Encounters - of any kind - it's not a word we always associate with Opensim. It's a whole lotta space! 

If you think that opensim's kind of empty today, then you should have seen it ten, fifteen years ago. The small population of pioneers was pretty sparse, and you'd be forgiven for describing it as a place of rare encounters, maybe even zero! 

Close Encounters - the space ship

Yet, for seven years from 2008, there was one fixed appointment on OSGrid where you'd find a regular band of happy dancers, some good tunes, the latest gossip - of a friendly kind, nothing hostile - and the chance to finally see someone after a week of building and experimenting in this brave new world.

The place was Close Encounters, a spaceship dance club on a region that was home to Dorothea Lundquist and Jay Maze. 

Twirling time!

Revisiting Susa

My name is Susa. We come in pairs.

'Susa Bubble', by Saskia Boddeke, text by Peter Greenaway

Confusion, conflict, and consequences;  love, life, and loss. That's the story of Susa Bubble, who went to bed single and woke up double. It's a very long story, stretching back to the golden age of art in Second Life. It is the brain child of Saskia Boddeke, in virtual worlds Rose Borchovski. From 2008, about a year after Saskia joined SL, she has been sharing chapters in this tale, via a symphony of multimedia -sights and sounds, video and music, images and objects, wonderfully woven together into unsettling and detailed Big Art.

And it is a family affair, with contributions by Saskia's husband the well-known filmmaker Peter Greenaway, (read more about their CVs here) and their daughter Pip.  The story of Susa stretches out over well over a decade, and well into the real world. Check out the pictures of  'Why Is It So Hard To Love?'   the 2020 installment of the Susa Bubble story, at the  MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. 

But real world galleries can't keep installations up forever. In virtual worlds, SLEA land grants expire, and Second Life sims are notoriously expensive. You won't be surprised to hear that Two Fish, Rose's region there, is no longer online. That makes sense, as Saskia is very busy in RL with film projects and installations all over the place, from Lithuania to Lucca.

Love & Peace on ArtDestiny

 Coming soon - get out your diary - a musical treat where you can show your true spirit as a lover of peace. 

Saturday, July 27 from 10am to 7pm Pacific time 

at artdestiny.de:8002:Lothlorian

When you arrive on the sim you'll find this convenient teleport board tht will take you to the concert venue in the sky.
These days, it's all too easy to get sucked into the latest round of name-calling and outrage, which doesn't help anyone. As a global community, let's stand side by side with our fellow residents of all nations, in a spirit of tolerance and love. 

Four Bits By Bink

Anyone who is well familiar with the Safari is familiar with the name Bink Draconia. I think the first time we had a proper group visit with her was back in 2016 on her grid Kroatan. 

That's a classy name for a grid, Kroatan. Grid names should be catchy, short, and imaginative, don't you think? 

In fact, that name was our first clue to the level of talent we were going to come into contact with, on her Halloween build, made in collaboration with the wonderful Kiki Bailey and with a storyline by Malon Wyngard - you can read about it here. 

Flash forward eight years, and Bink continues to deliver fabulous builds, now on Marlon Wayne's Pangea grid. 

You may remember seeing in 2023 Bink's The Good Place build, which is not just a triumph of landscaping, but a full-on game that shadows the plot of the television series. It's a brilliant synthesis of the story, with a decor so close to the real thing at times that you feel like you're inside your TV. 

But Bink has other fab regions on Pangea to visit, and this post highlights four of them, conveniently set close together in the Great Pangea Ocean. The region names are: Eternal Ice, North Pole, Koburk, and Needful Things. The addresses are, of course, at the end of the post - but what can you expect to see if you go there?

How Not to be Lonely in Opensim

Ever heard someone say 'there's no-one in Opensim'? Or maybe that was you, talking to yourself - hey nothing wrong with that!

Opensim can often feel like a wide open, empty place. Quite intimidating after, say, the bustling sims of SL. That's not surprising when you compare its size to that of Second Life. 

SL in 2024 by primerib1 aka Claire Morgenthau

SL is not small. This picture shows the main continents at the center of a galaxy of private regions, but if you think that's huge, Opensim is waaaay bigger - if fact, if you're wondering why there's no map of opensim here, that's because it's impossible to say how big the connected hypergrid universe is. 

A few people try to give statistics about it, but they do not, and indeed cannot, know the full extent of opensim, since it is a completely decentralized and unregulated meta-place where anyone at any time and for any duration can have a grid without reporting to any higher authority. 

That means there's no central control, nobody keeping complete records of all the comings and goings of our hyperverse - it just can't be done in a meaningful way. 

Creanovale: Tout Doux

 If you're in need of some R&R, far away from the draining drama of world events, and the vociferous, but luckily not too many, angst-mongers inworld, why not take a little time to enjoy the season on Creanovale.

This grid is built by Dabici Straulino and Kelso Uxlay. They live in the French-speaking area of Canada, and their grid is based on the beautiful countryside, traditions, products and history of their part of the world.

Each year, they modify their VAR region to reflect the passing seasons, so you can experience everything from surfing to skating here, depending on when you come to visit. The sim is a resort, a wilderness and a fine collection of perfectly assembled tableaux, complete with appropriate sounds that bring the sights to life, and here and there animesh...

In the Mix

You won't find Abyssinia on a modern map, unless it's a map of Zetaworlds of course! After some time on the Science Circle Grid, Skip Dahlgren , known as Aba Brukh inworld, has moved his build to a new grid, and a new start. 

'Abyssinia' as a geographical place is more or less the current land territory of Ethiopia and Eritrea. 

A term used in the West from around the 1600's, in the 1970s Haile Selassie nixed the name 'Abyssinia' because it has unflattering roots in an arabic word meaning mixture. 

Politics and deliberate slurs aside, this rich tapestry of an area, sometimes called the Horn of Africa, was undoubtedly enriched by the miscellaneous trade in goods, cultures, religious and philosophical influences, and DNA from three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, all passing through the area of the Red Sea. Not to mention a very mixed fortune over the centuries as powerful people came and went, leaving their mark on the landscape.

Lost Summer

 It was the year when we had a huge party to wish Bon Voyage to Justin when he left to go back to RL, Total Sorbet's Outbreak was the breakout pastime of  OSGrid,  and Opensimworld was in its infancy - before the highs and lows of Traffic Classification, and the Box with its merry band of prolix commentators. 

There was AvatarFest, and the gloriously Cherrified Fest'Avi. Inworldz and Twinity were still places you could go (hard to believe that Twinity didn't shut down until 2021), Blue Mars and Cloudparty were already gone. 

The idea that these were real options for the grid-trotter seems a little crazy nowadays, when hypergridding is so easy and facilitated with all kinds of directories and events calendars but back then, they were serious options. OSCC unveiled its treasure hunt, a super way to motivate people to visit all the expo sims, and there was much dancing during the event.... 

The year - in case you didn't remember it, was 2015. We were all so young and energetic! HG Safari trips had become a common event,  and somehow, not sure why,  for about two months this blog went silent.

Summer-palooza on AMV

 A long weekend of summer fun on AMV and it all begins on Thursday 11 July! 

Alternate Metaverse Grid is famous for its many festivals and special events, and this happening is bound to be a great one, with five VAR regions dedicated to getting your summer started with a swing. If the great outdoors has been nothing but heatwaves and downpours, why not stay inworld, where the best weather is always guaranteed?

HG Addresses, as usual, at the end of this post, and of course if you look here you'll find the calendar of events on the grid's website

Cat on The Arts

Cataplexia Numbers: OpenSim and its community are blessed with so much art and creativity! This is our way on Alternate Metaverse to celebrate that, and encourage more arts in every genre! We open our festival to all who wish to be a part of it! Join us on July 11th through July 14th - Help us celebrate and enjoy the arts!

Community Art exhibition

You've probably visited this festival in previous years, and will remember the names of the sims - The Arts, In Tribute, OpenMic Arts, AMV Special Events, and Festival of Arts. Having 5 regions allows for plenty of space for exhibits, fancy stages and unique venues for all the performers and presentations.

What kind of summer fun? It's fair to say there's something for everyone, from burlesque to community art exhibits you can tour by boat.