A Bumblebee Safari

          They are large, noisy, and it was once thought that bumblebee flight defied the laws of physics. So, very much like the Safari experience, where anyone who is lag intolerant is going to fall at the first hurdle, but those brave souls who push through the freeze/chat lag/slow rez/crash/lost aspects of group hypergridding are rewarded by destinations that are positively blooming. This week we visited three destinations that are ripe, one might say, for cross pollination. Addresses at the end of the post, as always.

         Firstly we headed to Ignis Fatuus Grid. This francophone grid is without doubt one of the loveliest in the hyperverse. You could easily spend a month visiting the landscape and fantasy regions here, and still not see it all.

Week 158 Details

Three destinations, so brace yourselves... if you get lost or crash a lot, come back to the Clubhouse on Francogrid, and we will help you get back into the game!
Each destination lasts just 60 minutes.

DESTINATION 1 Versailles - a work in progress. 

On Ignis Fatuus, Max Hill, Harthelie Deux, Chip Angelvi, and Jeff Kelly are working on a mega project to build a virtual Versailles 
Four stops on this tour of Versailles:

• Arrival in the Courtyard, with presentation
• Salon des Glaces
• King's bedroom and other interiors
• The gardens

Super large build = lag for the group, so we begin on the grid's Welcome region, to load, then use the portal to go to Versailles 2 .

Ignis Welcome region

HG Address:   ignis-fatuus.no-ip.biz:8002
 ...and then look for the Versailles regions on your Map 

DESTINATION 2 How much do you know about TanGle? 

Meet Leslie Kling, ask questions, dance on the Grid's HG Station, and take a quick visit the Steampunk Expo. 

HG Address:  tanglegrid.net:8002:HG Station 1 

DESTINATION 3 Racing on VarTown 
Hans Nerido invites us to his new grid, Vartown, for a super Load test. 

Part of the fun, RACING on his famous racetrack, ported to the new grid after 5 years in OSGrid, where over 3k visitors enjoyed the free cars and great curves.

HG Address:   vartown-grid.ddns.net:8002 ...and then we go to the racetrack!

Avatarfest 2017 Begins!

          AvatarFest begins today, it's a weekend of poetry and music, freebies and entertaining builds reflecting the creativity of Opensim. 
          The festival is the fruit of the hard work and imagination of Eryn Galen and Han Held, along with many notable opensim contributors...

Han Held

... like Arielle Delamerlibre, who set up the Avatarfest Event in Facebook, Danko Whitfeild,  the folks of Metropolis Grid, and the wonderful Neovo Geesink, an OpenSim hero - you have to go see his build, which has a bunch of useful script tools that you need!
The Fest is at avatarfest.net:6000

Safari rolls with it

The transition is a keen one, I assure you, 

... and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics 

to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. 

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 1: Loomings

          In his introduction to Moby Dick, Herman Melville explains the etymology of the word 'Whale' - it comes from a Teutonic word meaning 'to roll'... and we certainly were rolling all over the place on this week's Safari.

In the foreground Vivienne Clary, our hostess on PSSMG Sea, and Spike Sol

   It was Pirate week, and as part of the celebration,  we had a reading from Moby Dick by Emil Jannings of New Media Arts Inc (catch him soon at Avatarfest). The famous novel is a tale of obsession, disaster, and hardship, but also of friendship, resilience, and survival... something grid jumpers in opensim can heartily relate to.     

Pirate Week - today's lineup

Yesterday was Talk Like A Pirate day, so we're doing the Pirate thing on Safari this week...

DESTINATION 1 Pirates on Dereos
Vivienne and Victor Clary welcome us to their seafaring regions, for a dance (and maybe some freebie shopping!)
dereos.org:80:pssmg sea

DESTINATION 2 Pirates on Digiworldz
Strannik Zipper invites us to come dance on his region, Pirates Atoll, and also to hear a Dramatic Reading by Emil Jannings, taken from Herman Melville's famous novel, Moby Dick
login.digiworldz.com:8002:pirates atoll

Futurelab and Fairies

            It's been a while since the Safari visited Futurelab and South Horizon, regions that form one of the best art and performance regions  on Metropolis, and our return was a veritable four course feast of words, colors, music and remarkable images. 

             Juliette Surrealdreaming, the perfect hostess, led us seamlessly from place to place as we sampled a literary tribute, an original installation, a curated show of 'rl' art, and a fabulous light show. HG Addresses of the places we visited at the end of the post.

Safari 156 Details

Here are the details of today's Safari trip
Two spectacular destinations this week
DESTINATION 1 (90 minutes) 
Snow Crash on Metropolis, by Art Blue and Juliette Surrealdreaming
This is a performance to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the novel Snow Crash, which gave rise to the vw use of the word 'metaverse'.
This performance was originally part of a Second Life event.
hypergrid.org:8002:futurelab




DESTINATION 2 (90 minutes) Here Comes The SUN! A party to celebrate the contribution of Sunbeam Magic to the opensim community, with music, dancing, and more. Our host is Bill Blight, and there will be lively music and dancing. 
Wear your wings!
grid.opensim.life:8002:fairy sunbeams

What I Learned from Miney

             Some people step away from their online presence with a big, drama filled dust-up, or do the shock-overnight-exit; some make a long fond public goodbye, and others disappear gracefully. It's a choice all of us eventually will make, and there is no right way to do it. For behind the screens and scenes, a life our virtual friends can only hazily perceive is going through concrete changes. When someone moves on, we, the friends left behind, have a duty to respect and remember.

One of the most intriguing parts of virtual life is to muse on the names people pick for themselves. It is a little romance about the character behind the avatar. Minethere Always, or Athanasios, is one of those names full of hidden meaning. You know you're dealing with a poet, with a life full of incident and feeling. That's the first thing I learned about Miney. 

Safari Breaks the Code

            Well, maybe not the code, but for sure we broke Neiferleaf, at least for a little while. Yet, would it really be a Safari if there was no crashing?
             Exactly.

             Back after a two month break, over 40 people joined - or tried to join - the Safari this week, a sign that the interest in opensim destinations remains as strong as ever. Two really interesting places were our goals on this our 155th outing - Vibel grid, and CitizenFour on Osgrid - complete HG addresses at the end of the post.

Safari Restarts

          Today is the first day of the 2017/2018 season of Safari trips around the hyperverse, so welcome back to the crashy, crazy, creative and often semi-nude adventures of group hypergridding.
         There are some new features of the Safari. 

Mobius Grid Safari base

         We have a new base on Mobius Grid, courtesy of Serra Royale. The new base was put together by Wizardoz Chrome, and contains some information about our trips and some freebies.
         Spike Sol has added some HG Safari information, in both English and German, on the Weltraumbahnhof, the hypergrid portal base on her grid, Soloton.

Weltraumbahnhof

         

On DeReOs

        The Safari is on vacation for a few weeks, but of course, that does not mean that opensim sightseeing comes to a halt. This week and indeed right up to July 23, there is a Summer festival on DeReOs grid, well worth hypergridding over to see it - HG Address at the end of the post, as usual. 

        Here's the rundown of this year's Sommerevent  Wednesday 12 July,  9 pm   The traditional 'Wednesday party' with Samira (12.00pm SLT)
Thursday 13 July,  8 pm   Western party with Sylvia from Nextlife  (11.00 am SLT)
Saturday 15 July,   9 pm   Wolem Wobbit Live blues concert  (12.00 pm SLT)
Wednesday, July 19,  9 pm     Samira's party  (12.00 pm SLT)
Saturday 22 July, 8 pm Kueperpunkt Comedy Decaffeinated and out of control  (11.00 am SLT)
Saturday 22 July,   9 pm Rocking music with DJ Prince Von Halberstadt and announcement of the winner of the Exhibitor Contest  (12.00 pm SLT)
Sunday July 23,, 4 pm Quiz with Vivienne  (7.00 am SLT)
Sunday July 23,    8 pm Kai and Marina Baer with their 'showtruck'  (11.00 am SLT)
 DeReOs is a relatively young grid, but its origins are venerable. It began 
as a group of friends, and then, as people's expertise increased, a group of regions on OSGrid. The name comes from "German (Deutsche) Regions of OpenSim". From SL to OSgrid, in some cases then to Metropolis, and finally to a grid of their own, these friends have all got many years of virtual experience, in technical, artistic and social terms. More about that below.

Safari Goes Off the Rez-ervation

           Last Safari for a while, but three destinations well worth you visiting. The HG Addresses (that's the bit you copy and paste into your Viewer's Map feature) at the end.
Why give the destination address in this format? It's because the low tech approach (you simply Highlight text, Ctrl C, then open your Map and Ctrl V into 'Search') works for all Viewers. 

Adrean Flux

             Our first port of call was Miranda the Welcome region of Adrean's World. Usually grid owner Adrean Flux is not available during the Safari hours,  since she is in Florida. So it was a great treat to get the opportunity meet her. the grid has about 500 registered users, not surprising since the grid was founded in 2010.

Safari gets a Sinking Sensation

            The summer is the time for big concerts, and fun in the sun, trips to museums and splashing about in the waves. The great thing about virtual worlds is - it's always summer, if you want it to be! 

             This week we went back to Sensation Millennium for a third visit, this time to see the Rock and Roll Museums on the ground level, two buildings dedicated to performers of international repute, David Bowie and Jim Morrison. to see the other part of the build which is on Craft Grid.  We were lucky enough to have the wonderful Whirli Placebo playing for us... so 3 rocking legends all on stage together!

Safari Potters About the Hyperverse

      Fourteen Harry Potter regions, of which nine are open to the public, featuring thousands of scripts and gazillions of beautiful textures, fully furnished buildings, including shops and houses - not to mention a spectacular reconstruction of Hogwarts school... this was the first of two destinations this week to Metropolis and then to neverworld, with an intriguing Extra stop at the end on OSGrid. All hypergrid addresses at the end of this post, as usual.

          Franzisca Bossi is an Opensim Treasure; she has been around longer than most of us, building and contributing to the hypergrid in many ways.

Safari Makes a Scene

         Three more great regions that show opensim at its best! HG addresses at the end of the post, as usual.
         Once again, some funky teleport issues for our intrepid hypergridding team, whose tenacity and resilience makes them HG Heroes.

         Obviously, when it comes to opensim code, nobody who matters cares about what I think, but it bears pointing out the frustration that the code creates in the following scenario: A desperate IM arrives, asking "where are you all?' and 'can you tp me?" The person is definitely online, but when I reply, there's this popup: 'Unable to send message. User is not online'.  But the person IS online. And their message reached me - so why can't my reply reach them? *SCREAM: THIS SHOULD BE A BASIC FUNCTION OF OPENSIM WHY DOESN'T IT WORK RIGHT*
          That said, here's a more positive take on it all....
Sunbeam Magic: LOL what a comedy of errors ;) lol all worked out fine as always ! HUGS ♥

A Triple Space Safari Part 2

This week, our final stop was at the International Space Museum, on Kitely. Rosa Alekseev, Shanna Starship, Kat Lemieux and Mike Lorrey were inworld to welcome us and give us the tour. 

Rosa Alekseev: Welcome to ISM!
Mike Lorrey: how many are coming today?
Thirza Ember: well, we started out 24, but Outworldz had us crashing, so i don't know how many will survive
Lucy Afarensis: Thanks rough weather getting here

Mike Lorrey: Welcome to the International Spaceflight Museum, we are the same organization which operates in SL, we just have a little more room here, twice as much actually.  ISM is a Texas 501c3. Our mission is to document and exhibit all the worlds endeavors with spaceflight. 
Thirza Ember: what's your rl connection to space, guys?
Kat Lemieux: Thirza, I grew up with the space program since my dad was a chief engineer at the Cape in the 1960s

A Triple Space Safari

          This was week 150 of the Safari, and one might think that after a hundred and fifty trips around the hyperverse, we would have run out of new things to see, and just be tootling around previously seen places... if you think that, you could not be more wrong! 

Pangea, Metropolis

           Here are three amazing first looks for the Safari, on three iconic opensim grids. Details of how to get to each one at the end of the post, and you're definitely going to want to see all of these this summer. 

Safari Double Parks

              This week, once again, two destinations with a lot going on! We started on Kroatan Grid, and then went to explore 3rd Life grid (as usual, addresses at the end of the post)  where, once again, we got to meet the locals and get some of the backstory of the places we were seeing. 
               There's nothing better for appreciating your surroundings than to have a bit of context, don't you agree? So here's what we found out, hopefully you will take a trip to see these lovely places, and make some new friends.

              First up, Kroatan, a park-like grid, where the opensimworld Beacon registered our arrival and bumped us up to the top of the webpage... you could tell that, because suddenly some people from a Brazilian grid, and from  partydestinationgrid showed up, rather bemused to come across a crowd, it seemed. We invited them to join us, but it appeared that the concept of a tour group in hg was beyond their ken... maybe next time...

Three years of HGSafari

          Sunshine Szavanna, Whirli Placebo, and Joao Frazao, with some help from the magical special effects of Cherry Manga, and in all about 60 friends and fellow conspirators, all came together to celebrate three years of crazy crashing, awesome art, intrepid investigating, and excessive exploring around the metaverse.

          Sunshine shared with us some fabulous World music, from Africa and Asia, on the theme of travel and family, both central to the hypergrid experience. 

Safari Does Stuff

          This week was a whistle-stop tour through three smallish grids, each one uniquely beautiful and interesting.  This is the first post, please do check out all three. The grid addresses at the end of each post, so you can go and take a look for yourself... they're all well worth a visit! First up Phaandoria.

We landed in the shadow of a Linda Kellie creation, the Autumn Castle, a symbol in a way of the share-alike mentality this grid is famous for. Then we moved over to Nerdpol region, distinctly different in design... time for some fireworks!