Classic Safari

Once upon a time, there was a grid called Virtyou, and it had gallic village on a sim called Niflar. This was all pre mesh, you understand. Well, Virtyou seems to have sort of morphed and amalgamated with another grid, Nick Zwart's 3DLES grid, a language acquisition environment in association with Digischool. The idea is to make immersive environments for the students to play and learn in - there are Quiz chairs, videos, Sloodle boards, and games like Snakes and Ladders, which is Snakes and Chutes to you, probably. This is Chatterdale, with its pub, Belisha beacons, Job Center, fish and chip shop, and so on. You'll find a potted version of France and Germany on sims Parolay and Plauderstein respectively.

 Nick frequently has 20 students on the grid at any one time without his system even blinking. OK, now you're thinking: "hahaha, famous last words" and of course, you're right. Hypergrid visitors are not like regular local visitors. We really should get that printed on a tee shirt or something.

Got Hippos?

Many kept trying to move around the grid to lessen the lag. Serene Jewell got as far as the language sims and came back and said nice things about the concept. Others attempted the games, but on the whole it was pretty tough going for a group such as ours - definitely worth adding to your 'list of places to visit by yourself' though.

Anyway, Niflar was a sim with an Asterix village on it. It was one of those cute places that many of us, wandering lonely as a cloud - often quite literally - just happened upon. Nothing all that mind shattering, but a classic build, and part of OpenSim heritage. It was offline, but Nick very kindly fired up the oar, so you can go visit it. 

Mildly Asterix/Obelix

There are full perm Asterix and Obelix helmets in a box at the Francogrid clubhouse, too, if you want to risk looking silly. Not as way out at Nick, but kinda.

Our next stop was a Christmas Carol reading in Kitely. Not everyone appreciates the Christmas spirit, a fact that people who do like Christmas often find hard to fathom. A bit like the way some smokers don't get why anyone would object to second-hand smoke. Dickens, who generously handed out large supplies of both, is a classic and whatever your views about Yule, we were extremely delighted to listen to a truly classic reading from Caledonia Skytower of the Seanchai Library whose Winterworld sim is a nice compromise between the season's greetings and a generally snowy playground. Getting Voice to work in hypergridding can be a bit of a challenge, but we soon overcame it (huh. Turns out, it helps not to have Voice muted when you're trying to listen to a reading.) 
Caledonia made the chains clank, she made Scrooge mutter and squirm, boy, you could smell the roasting turkey by the time she was through. Shandon Loring, dressed as a snowman when we arrived, did a reading for the later group at 6.15pm grid time, and by all accounts it was equally well done, with everyone donning the snowman look by the end! 
At the end of our session, we all hurried off, the Kitely contingent to their grid meeting, the rest of us bound for NGrid. 
Sadly Alpha Auer who hoped to join us was too ill to be present, but we had a great time exploring two excellent sims we'd not been to see previously on this amazing grid.

Arriving on Ouvroir. The cat is Guillaume-en-Egypte.

Chris Marker's installation on sim Ouvroir was our first stop. He's a pretty interesting guy, and if you take a moment to check out his website then the install will probably make more sense to you.  

Miso and Snowy check out the laxative

Ooo Twelve Monkeys associations. Plus this giant can of... something. 

Truelie's headwear choice of ape, not hair, proved strangely appropriate.

This is another Classic build, it actually dates from 2008, but for most of us, it was our first ever viewing.

 NGrid is always a joy, the biggest challenge is usually finding your way back to some completely mindblowing corner of a sim that you would love to bring friends to see. 

Blurring the line between books and film on Ouvroir

  After Ouvroir we took the tiniest look at one last piece next door in the Synthetic University on HyperSim. Works by Olga Vlasyuk,  Mosmax Max aka Max Moswitzer and others crowd and flow in mindboggling variety up into the clouds. We stopped in this Tron-esque structure, and took stock. What variety, what talent, what luck to be able to share it all with friends. A truly classic safari.