Belfast and Japan - Photo Finish

History featured strongly in this week's safari as we visited little slice of Asia and of Europe on two grids, Discovery and OSGrid, and found out about a past that may have passed some of us by. It's also a journey into the passion of builders, scripters, and virtual residents, as the kaleidoscope of creativity continues to enthrall us. HG Addresses as always at the end of the post. 

First up, the new project on the Belfast regions of Stiofain Mactomais. Known best perhaps for his music venue the Maritime, modeled on the real club of the same name where Van Morrison got their start, there's much more here - poetry, real world architecture, an exhibit celebrating the Belfast-built Titanic. 

This visit was to the Falls Road, and a project that can be enjoyed using your phone, Oculus rig, or as we did simply inworld.  Called the Belfast Archive Project, t's all about bringing the social history of this part of the world back to life in a vivid and accessible way. We met outside the inworld version of the historic Conway Mill.

Three Good Reasons...

Opensim Fest is still more than a month away,  but plans are already well in hand for this unusual event. A dedicated Festival grid will be home to a true meeting of minds as people from all over the hyperverse set up their exhibits and stores, and dozens of performers keep the party atmosphere going, each in their own way. 

Particles by Torben Asp

If you haven't registered for your free 'ticket' yet, don't delay. It will make it possible for you to sign up as a Greeter, or Performer, Sponsor, or Exhibitor. But wait - Still feeling a bit 'meh' about joining in? Here are three good reasons to get interested and involved - three performers who will be sharing their original content with us at gigs during the 17 day long event.

Come Fly With Me

This week's Safari was something of a time-travel trip of the mind as we visited two very different imaginings.  First on Kitely, at the International Spaceflight Museum where we saw the optimistic imagined future of colonizing Mars, and secondly, an imaginative past of empires and honor, on the grid CounterEarth. HG Addresses, as always, are at the end of the post.

I love ISM on Kitely, there is a stateliness and grandeur about the region.  A veritable forest of rockets dominate the Museum Ring part of the build, with ships, satellites and rockets from all over the world.

 The creators here include Kelly Bucklaew and Asterion Coen with smaller contributions by Samuel Greenway,  Ai Austin, and Miguel Rotunno, but the lion's share of the building is all down to the man himself, Mike Lorrey.

Aedifex Rex: the art of Nyx Breen

If you ever spent any time in the temples of art in Second Life, you will have come across the work of Nyx Breen. Based in Massachusetts, he has a long career as a real-world fine art photographer, and in virtual, a list of winning entries as long as your arm, in particular at the  UWA, the virtual campus of the University of Western Australia. 

After more than a decade of nurturing and rewarding digital art and artists, the UWA powered down in Second Life back in 2020. I thought the place was gone forever, but the great JayJay 'Zifanwe' Jegathesan tells me that the original UWA sim persists there, along with Nyx's Moreton Bay Fig. I asked JayJay about his friend and collaborator.

Kicking off in Canada and Japan

Finally, a true Safari! Earlier this year, on Season One, we had ten whole weeks of trips around the hyperverse without crashing a single sim or having any unexpected hiccups, in the main. That's disappointing, in a way, because for me, the Motto of OpenSim is Liberty, Variety, Instability. 

You've got to have a bit of danger, be kicked off a few sims, freeze, swap avatars, regroup at the clubhouse a bit. That's what adds to the fun, and the sense of group, the best bit of all in a Safari. That said, if you crashed or couldn't get into the two destinations this week, everyone who was able to do the tour will tell you they are both amazing builds, and merit a visit whenever you have the time. Both are huge, and give you the sense of the Great Outdoors, Indoors. 

The Queens of the Castle

               Imagine walking along a beach. Alone, or with a friend.  

Beaches are nice, but they can be awfully samey, same ole trees, and sun, and sky, and sand. 

That's why you often see people on beach holidays reading a book under the ombrellone. 

Now imagine that, instead of bringing your own book to the beach, you could go to a beach littered with books that you could jump inside of, where you will discover action, adventure, humor, and even the meaning of life... is that too much to ask? 

Not at the Nook.         

Third Life's A Charm

 It opened its doors in July 2016, and now, it seems, this week it will be closed for good. Not to be confused with 3rdRock Grid, or the Brazilian 3D Life, we're talking about  DJTommy Seetan's grid, 3rdLife Grid. 

It was really only luck that this weekend I heard about the closure from Safari regular Lite House, and it felt like a chance not to be missed - a final tour. It really was a charming grid, and my visits have never been frequent enough, much to my chagrin.

At one time, you may recall, the grid was home to HG Visionz magazine, the brainchild of Sunbeam Magic and Minetheree Anthanaios, with writerly support over the years by  Jessie Campbell, Reyn Softly, Serene Jewell, Virtual Christine, Zinnia Frenzy, and Chopsy Bode.

Lessons in... Making it in Opensim

The following is a Guest Post by My Virtual Beach grid owner Trizaria Hunter, and  her 20 year career as a content creator in virtual worlds.

The best place to start is at the beginning, and that goes back to 2002/2003 and a game put out by Blue Fang Games and Microsoft Game Studios called Zoo Tycoon. While the creation differed greatly from what I do today, it was the beginnings of it all. If any of you have ever played

Safari SGT: Sauce by Maya Paris

 Personal:   are you flipped, gobby, arch, or tricky?
Would you like to be beckoned with an indistinct finger of mildness? 
  Where do you stand on soup?

A darkened room, 1800m up in the air. Red phone boxes. And immediately you're being asked to choose. Who are you? What do you like? What's your number? Should you jump? 
And you wonder - what is all this sauce?

Think about it. That camp yet classy British look. Having all your own teeth, or not.  Brewing. Fish eating chips. Being tempted to cross the line marked 'Do Not Cross'. Surprising sounds with poses and particles. 

What else could it be but a Maya Paris build?

This is where the inner joy of OpenSim becomes replete. 

Chester and the portals

 Chester and me have been pretty busy jumping around the hypergloop looking for destinations for the latest HG Safari project, the Self Guided tours, and we are pretty close to being done. We have nc blindness now, hopefully some wine will fix that. 

Lessons from a Hypergrid Honeypot

The following is a Guest Article by Nara Malone of Nara's Nook. 

You can visit her grid at world.narasnook.com:8900 

Follow Nara's writing blog at naramalone.com 

The Nara's Nook Grid blog is at narasnook.com

The backstory: Nara and two writer friends, Siobhan Muir and  Tina Glasneck, founded their own grid 'Nara's Nook' in OpenSim about ten years ago. After several years of experiments in digital storytelling on the hypergrid, the resident authors branched off into other projects, leaving the grid online, but unattended. That was not good - their distraction was exploited by bad actors, who damaged the Nook. Here's Nara's take on this experience.

Nara’s Nook grid was an intentional hypergrid honeypot, not originally with intent to lure troublemakers so we could learn to secure things better. We left the grid portal unguarded to empower potential users to slip in, watch shyly from the shadows if they needed to, and eventually to experiment with the various elements of 3D storytelling on their own or by joining our projects. There was always a pot of stone soup simmering on the back burner, a fresh baked something or other to go with it, and plenty of wild honey or wild spirits to spike brewing creativity. Our doors and windows were left wide open. We left the porch light on, and NPC powers enabled for curious wandering souls.

Outdoors Indoors and more...

 Season One of the rebooted Safari has come to an end, and perhaps you're wondering - is that it?

Well, no. A brief burst of taking it easy, then it all begins again.

Season 2 will begin on Wednesday May 4. The theme of the first trip will be "The Great Outdoors - Indoors".  First stop: the French Canadian grid Creanovale, in its Spring/Summer mode. The Safari has been to this grid, owned by Dabici Straulino and Kelso Uxlay a few times over the years, but we have never seen their Canadian Summer look, so that will be a first. 

Our second stop will be on the German grid of Achim and Dina Twisterling, Next-Life Grid. Next-Life is gorgeous mix of regions, and a party destination throughout the year, and we will be hosted on their impressive sailing regions. 

That's just the first of 10 weeks of Safari that will include events celebrating 'The Little Prince', The Beatles, Dinkies, Gor, Space exploration, Opensim's top dev Ubit Umarov, the city of Belfast, OpenSimFest, and the music of Moses Rae - to name just some of our planned stops.

In the meantime, do drop in on HG Safari region on OSGrid over coming weeks, there will be some new items there.

Closing at Crista's

             For the second part of our final Safari of the season, we decided to "fechar com a flor" and so the Safari group came to UCI Mondego to meet up with a true Diva, Opensim's own Diva Canto, aka Crista Lopes. These occasions always produce a lot of questions and interesting answers, and on this occasion, Crista was quick to get in the first question, where were we all from?

Safari goes Silent

 The final Safari of this first season of 2022, and we ended on a high note indeed! Two completely different, yet equally interesting destinations this week, as we visited the vast space installation by Ferd Frederix and Joe Builder, and then called in to see HG goddess Diva Canto, aka Crista Lopes. This is Part One, and deals with our visit to Outworldz. For information about our trip to Crista's grid, see the post 'Closing at Crista's'

Our host Ferd joined us at the Clubhouse in robot form yesterday, and brought a nice gift - it's a little

Francogrid : The Musical

 FrancoGrid, one of the oldest grids in Opensim, is down. That is sad news, indeed, for anyone who over the past 15+ years has enjoyed this grid as a visitor or resident.

FrancoGrid has always been known for the beauty of the builds - whether hyper realistic or abstract, it has celebrated literature, music, art and culture for the best part of twenty years, through events famous across the Metaverse, like Fest'Avi, to less flamboyant but equally intricate celebrations of art on dozens of lovely sims. So what is next? Is this the end? Or the end of the beginning...

Going Wyld

 Laissez les bons temps rouler 

Time had gotten away from us, and we were quite soon heading out to our next destination, on Wyldwood Bayou grid, where they had held over Mardi Gras just for our delight and entertainment.

The bright colors and lively music on Wyldwood Bayou are matched perfectly by the warm welcome on the Grid. The residents and regular visitors call themselves a Tribe, and immediately here, you know it's a family of like minded creative, musical people who are quick to make any stranger a friend.  Our guide was Harmony Beningborough, who explained a little about the grid, with help from the others.

Harmony Beningborough: I am Harmony and I am club manager here on Wyldwood! I'd like to introduce Wyldwood's owner, Kith (our awesome DJ for today and our RP leaders Fiteach (Fit) and Contessa (aka Tessa and Amara). The 4 of us and Maggie and Durham Redmond are Wyldwood Bayou's Admin team! There are freebies up here to your right by the stage!!

Nara Nook: I so need some Cajun spirit today :)

Kith Whitehawk: We got it for ya  Nara!!!

Nara Nook: I'm soaking it up

Xaria Aubrey: sorry if my tail feathers smack anyone around ;)

Lifted Pixel: yeah i clicked the freebies and they're finally showed up! Slapping all this stuff on, gunna be surprised when it loads lol

Wizardoz Chrome: I had an incredible desire to dance :)  Finally!

Lifted and Wizardoz

There was some lag, I can't lie, and we got this great effect of Lucy dancing by herself, and we were just all having a lovely time, camming around the region, and glad to be in such happy company, it was pure joy.

The New Orleans townscape is astonishing, with breathtaking attention to detail. Cam or go inside all the shops and houses, visit the Asylum, the river boat, pose on the balconies and do it all with the most amazingly appropriate soundtrack - good music played well!

 Harmony Beningborough: Wyldwood Bayou was created by Kira Wyldfire (Whitehawk) in Inworldz in 2011. It is a region based on New Orleans, Louisiana, and although Kira was never able to visit NOLA, she fell in love with the "Big Easy" and wanted to spend her virtual life there, sharing the blues music that she loved so much. When IW closed, she brought Wyldwood Bayou and her venues.... along with staff and many "Blues Tribe" members to open sim! Kira passed away a short time later and her partner, Kith, along with staff and friends, kept the venues going and in 2020, we moved to our own grid which we affectionately call "Our own dayum swamp"!

Harmony Beningborough

Kith Whitehawk: yessaahhh!!

Harmony Beningborough: Wyldwood Bayou grid is now home to the venues Rockin' the Blues, Hot Daddy's Dance Dock, The Bayou Belle and Lady Blue with some special event venues and two awesome Medi/Fantasy roleplay groups, Brigantia and Ravenquest!

Nebby Newman: awesome!!

Harmony Beningborough: We celebrate Mardi Gras every year as does NOLA and we think we do it better! We certainly have just as much fun! At the end of Bourbon Street, in front of a copy of the Bayou Belle Riverboat, who is berthed here for Mardi Gras, you will find Info boards with history, statistics, website links, landmarks and even recipes!  There are 36 regions on Wyldwood Bayou Grid that are mainly 4 x 4s, and all of our buildings in N'Awlins are based on prominent buildings and areas in New Orleans. We hope you will take our self-guided walking tour at your leisure and maybe you too will fall in love with this colorful city!

Kith Whitehawk: Every part of of the region has something special in it ...lots of bits of detail...   the Asylum is interesting and has RL pics

Fitheach Eun: We also have a new region called "Wyld Thangs Ride Park: where you can participate in many types of individual and group sports, attend musical events and go to the movies!! It's a great place to relax and play!

Rockin' The Blues

We made our way over to the beautiful music venue called Wyldwood Bayou Rockin' The Blues.

Nara Nook: loving the music

Thirza Ember: so what was it like for you guys, when you left Inworldz? Was it a shock or did you know it was coming to an end?

Kith Whitehawk: lol   well....  we had done a trial run in a grid that went down shortly after it went up  so we had a small inkling. We were not really prepared for IW to go down of course...

Nebby Newman: hey, a whole 4 days notice! it's good the Kira wasn't on vacation <sigh>

Kith Whitehawk: lots of rushing around to get the important stuff. Kira had made all the important builds, so... we were fortunate in that ....

Thirza Ember: you guys managed to stay together, that's not easy when a grid disappears

Kith Whitehawk: Anyway  :)   was a great surprise  but  we were fortunate and had a lot of Tribe around us and a lot of support. Tribe is an amazing group of people. We still get folks that come in that we haven't seen in years.... is like old home week - don't care if you come in once a year or are a regular... once you Tribe, you always Tribe :)))

The focus of Wyldwood Bayou is on being a destination for dancing and roleplay, leaving drama and real world problems outside, making it an oasis for anyone looking for a relief from the stress of day to day life. There are five weekly music events, two roleplay sessions, and of course, you can visit any time to enjoy the scenery and explore the cultural history of New Orleans. 

Sometimes you come across grids that, maybe out of concern for losing content, or members, or some other paranoia, are not big fans of hypergridding and the challenges and opportunities it offers. With their background on Inworldz, a closed grid, how quickly did they take to the crazy pastime of gridjumping?

Fitheach Eun: Well personally I found OS to be a wide and wonderful place and I love the hypergrid

Maggie Redmond: Agrees completely with Fit! There are so many people here willing to help with just about anything, quite unlike SL

Contessa Lacombe: I love the HG.  It took me just a little while to learn to navigate, but I'd never go back!  And I love that we are a Destination here at WWB!!!  We are your prime HG vacation spot!!!

Amara Uloran: Please everyone....on each side of the stage is a big box It's loaded with landmarks for N'Awlins, as well as our music venues, Wyld Thangs, and the WWB Roleplay HUB!!! We hope you will all come back for many visits!

HG Addresses: 

Downtown New Orleans  

wyldwoodbayou.com:8002:Wyldwood Bayou N'Awlins

 Music Venue 'Rockin' the Blues'

wyldwoodbayou.com:8002:Wyldwood Bayou Rockin' The Blues

Books and the Bayou: a Cultural Safari

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of grim news in the world today that we all ought to be aware of, but it's good for mental health to take a short break from worrying about it.  And what better way than by taking in a nice 2 hours of culture, friendship, and beauty.  

But before we get to the eye candy, (supplied in this gif by Kith Whitehawk, check out the post 'Going Wyld'  for even more Wyldwood Bayou gorgeousness) there's an important new cultural hub on Craft Grid, that we visited as our first destination. Hosted on regions curated by Roxelo Babenco aka Rosanna Galvani whose Museo del Metaverso  has been a beacon of art in virtual worlds over 15 years. HG Addresses are, as always, at the end of this post.

Super Coopersville

 

Koshari Mahana: Welcome to Coopersville! It's so great to see you all here!

Koshari Mahana

Koshari Mahana: I'm Koshari and I am the creator and hostess of Coopersville. If you did not accept a welcome kit when you arrived, you can click the sign behind me and take one. There are a lot of goodies inside.  We have a lot of textures and prims here so you may want to turn your draw distance down depending on your computer. It will also help to turn off Advanced Lighting Model if you have it on. Our community is based on the Edwardian era which is roughly between 1900 and 1915. 

Koshari Mahana: Technically, it's the time after Queen Victoria died until King Edward died. We are flexible here though simply because it's not always easy to find Edwardian-era things in the hypergrid. Generally, anything from the Victorian era to the Roaring Twenties can be found here. We are not limited to the United Kingdom by any means.

 Koshari Mahana: The "feel" of the era was happening all over the western world. In the United States, it is often referred to as "The Progressive Era" because Teddy Roosevelt was president at this time. A fun fact is that the first transatlantic two-way radio call was between President Roosevelt and King Edward in 1903. Most of the world enjoyed the early years of the new century. This era was often referred to as the "Edwardian Spring". Even though it was short-lived, many people were feeling very hopeful about the future. Little did they know though that the Great War was right around the corner. But, like all eras, not everything was rosy for all people. In Coopersville we are more focused on the happier moments of the era.

Thirza Ember: we all need the rosier side of life, this week

Koshari Mahana: They also saw the invention of airplanes, moving picture nickelodeons, lively music like ragtime, and of course the suffragette movement, which we all know led to women earning the right to vote. Oh, and dare I say, women's ankles were beginning to show!

George Equus: Outrageous!

Roffellos Kisses: disgusting!

Unadecal Masala: personally, I am a sucker for wrists

We took a tram, which was a really great way to stay together as a group and still see a huge part of the main island. It is dotted with all kinds of houses that echo the period, and literally hundreds of small and exquisite details. You can enjoy a wide range of activities on this huge 64 region community, and even rent an island, if you wish.     

There are shops with items for sale, but also many free activities, like ballooning, vintage airplanes, and (courtesy of the great Kayaker Magic) plenty of watersports, from surfing through to sailing or sunbathing on the lovely beaches, with their cute bathing chairs, and simply enjoying the serene and lovely view. There's a vintage movie theater that plays films, places for dancing, and wherever you go, you can delight in the vintage music which really brings the atmosphere of one hundred years ago to life.

It would take many days to see the whole of Coopersville by foot, so if you don't have time for that, you can quickly and easily get to all the main points of interest with a very well thought out and decorative teleport board, which manages to blend in with the build without, as so often happens, being hard to distinguish from the rest.

At length, we arrived at the Funfair, which is enormous, and hugely photogenic, and after quite a remarkable walk, in which some of us got a bit lost looking at the palm reader, the acrobats, and the wild animals.

Koshari Mahana: Down the hill to the left is a swan boat ride that I'm still working on, it's not quite finished yet but can still be used.  Here I've sort of combined a circus, amusement park, and fairgrounds into one area. I'm still working on a large dance hall that is still being built ... so we won't go there. :)

 To our left is a beach for hanging out, sunbathing, or swimming, and over here are several arcade games to play, most give prizes too.

We finally ended up at the Dodgems, where as you may expect we managed to crash. A lot.

The very last part of the visit was the delightful summerhouse that evokes all kinds of thoughts of sleepy afternoons and the sound of cicadas and waves rolling over the shore.

Here, a band of NPCs was playing some great dance music, and we all jumped onto the dance floor and showed our ankles. And our wrists.

To learn more about Coopersville, do drop in on Kitely, and check out the dedicated website at https://coopersville.mystrikingly.com/

HG Address:  Coopersville by Kosari Mahana   grid.kitely.com:8002:Coopersville

Safari Jukes it Out

Unadecal Masala: personally, I am a sucker for wrists 

The Jukebox was invented by Louis Glass, and the first commercial use of this iconic music maker was in 1889, in the city of San Francisco.  An intriguing and beautiful invention, it brought together technology and art in one magical box, very much like the two builds we visited this week, in two completely different styles, but both pretty mindblowing!

Aphra Hendrix at Jukebox

 We visited Coopersville on Kitely, the enormous Edwardian region owned by Koshari Mahana, where you can enjoy a wide range of activities, from ballooning to old time movies to bumper cars, all in a perfect historical setting. You can read about that on the post after this one. Before that, we jumped over to Cherry Manga's brand new Jukebox installation, on CopyKat grid. Complete hypergrid addresses are, as always, at the end of this post.

Corn-o-graphy

 This week is Cornflakes Week, a festival of fun that is exclusively OpenSim. Only a handful of grids are  participating this year (we were up to 11 grids back in 2017) but maybe Cornflakes 2023 can prove to be BIG for original OpenSim silliness, if the world doesn't end up a cinder before then, 

Put it in your calendar just in case, February 22-28, 2023.

The idea of Cornflakes Week? It's not morbidly focused on one late lamented person. Goodness knows, so many dear companions, fine artists, and generous friends have left this virtual life and we miss them all. No, the idea of the week is that it's an open ended festival, in the sense that you can have your own home grown Corny party, it can be adapted to the style of any grid or region, it's not affiliated with the weather or time of day, or the local religious, cultural, social, or political goings on of any one corner of the planet. What the world needs now is more gentle silliness, more than ever, and Cornflakes Week is all about that in a uniquely OpenSim way. 

Just to show that the concept can be modded, brought forward from the aughts to the twenties, and from pure prim to magnificent mesh, Cherry Manga took a journey through the creations of Cornflakes and came up with her own take on gentle fun. The build is still visitable in the sky above our clubhouse on OSgrid, and guitarman Whirli Placebo agreed to sing for us. But before that, we popped over to see fireworks conjurer Wordofthe Wise, who kindly invited us to see a copy of the region where all the Corn fun began. 

As always, the addresses of the destinations are at the end of the post.