Fun with the Frenchies

          What keeps a grid alive? A sense of place, a sense of purpose. That is the secret behind Francogrid's longevity. The grid is founded on good old French ideals like Liberty and Fraternity, and they mean it. Freedom is paramount on the grid. A free exchange of knowledge. Creativity given the freedom to grow. And free space. The grid has an impressive history of sims donated to creative people. Freedom too from the humdrum cookie cutter architecture of the past.

Accueil, Francogrid's welcome area, with TP parlor. Build by DJ Phil and Cherry Manga

The English language is, obviously, a crushing force for communication in the metaverse. In Francogrid, just about everyone makes an effort to speak English if they meet a non-francophone, however, this grid does a little bit to push back and remind us all that there are other languages out there. 

Taarna Welles

             Our final  stop on this week's trip was to a fashion designer with her own grid. From Indigo to Bubblesz, Taarna Welles' little grid. Taarna chatted in voice as Mal Burns asked her a number of questions on behalf of the group. 

Taarna explained that her grid began just a couple of years ago. She had been active on a number of grids, including OSgrid and Metropolis, before she started Bubblesz with her husband. She has been making sculpty objects for years, and with the advent of mesh she's been busy making even more stuff, notably the BEST footwear in opensim. 

Blue Safari

There are two kinds of people in this world, those who do, and those who don't.

          This week Safari began with music and a big ole crash. Wolem Wobbit played the blues for us on the dance floor on hgsafari sim. Wolem is working on a great performance sim on Metropolis grid, called Chicago Blues. 

Go visit if you get a chance, you'll like it.

It took a while for stream to kick in. Wolem did back flips while we waited. I was thinking of all the signage I should have put up to make it easier for people to understand where we are and where we're going, but let's face it, nobody actually reads anything. 

Safari gets corny

This last week of February is, has been and, perhaps, will forever more, be Cornflakes Week in OpenSim. It's a celebration that transcends the rivalries of individual grids, that doesn't require any special outfit or costume, loosely based on the memory of Cornflakes Woodcock's zany, gaudy art, but not limited by his freebies. Anyone can do anything, as Virtual Christine pointed out, no-one's in charge! The week long celebration was publicized in facebook and in G+ and for a first year, seems to have been a modest success. It owes nothing to real life or second life traditions, it is wholly ours, and perhaps as time goes by it will be embraced by all those who love silliness and the mad variety and independence of OpenSim.

Franzi, Nara, Wizard, Mal and Apmel Fransson await the arrival of the latecomers

We celebrated with a few stops this week, picking up birdy nam nam shoulder pets, or

Goodbye to Gatsby

"In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." 

She looked at us all radiantly.

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? 

I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker.

                                                                                 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's easy to miss things in OpenSim; we are all so busy making, inventing and scratching our heads as the platform throws up some new curve ball that takes away an hour or two we might otherwise have spent  relaxing. 

But some things should not be missed, and this is one of them: The Great Gatsby build, part of EXPLORESeanchai on Kitely. After a month or more of performances and guided tours, the build will be closing, with a party on the last day of this month, Sunday 28 February, some time after 2 pm Pacific. Here's the address:
Hypergrid URI    grid.kitely.com:8002:EXPLORESeanchai  

East Egg and West Egg have been coming alive in this very special way throughout the past few weeks as the Seanchai has presented readings of the novel in weekly episodes with performances by both Caledonia and the great Corwyn Allen. The readings

Blueprint of a Safari

           Plans are like eggs, sometimes they get beaten.
           Sometimes the internet fades or folds in on itself, separating us from each other on this gossamer gauze we call the metaverse. Sometimes you lose your password.  
           Sometimes you lose the group.

          But then like a souffle, it all comes out golden and delicious.
          This week on Safari we started where we should have ended up last week, on Adrean's World. (URIs at the end of the post, as usual.)  Adrean Flux is a lovely person, and her grid is friendly and eclectic. The group's quest was to visit the pyramids and count them. It's an impossible task really, because what constitutes a pyramid, and what is a ziggurat... Right?

          Impossible for some of us to TP as we'd like to (or even log in) but everyone knows, if the first destination fails, head to the second. And if a Landmark fails, then use the HG address, which will take you to the Welcome Sim of the grid, and from there you can

Diary of a Newbie

When it comes to blogs, few stylistic crimes are more appalling than those of the pernicious self-referencer. An entry that begins: "In my last post, I think I told you of my love of castles" for example, is about the naked egoism of the writer and not about castles, at a ratio of  4:1. 

But to heck with that, here's a post about Thirza, a newbie Thirza, number 33 or 34; the tally is complicated by the fact that some grids (and their relative Embers) are dead and gone.