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.