The Kids are Arles Right

James AtLLOUD: Thank yous to our hosts and organizers. W00t w00t.

If you'd been on Metropolis about 3 hours before the start of this week's Safari, you would have found Art Blue rehearsing his performance on a perfectly functioning Futurelab sim.  Art's Performance, which kicked off the first Safari of the month had as its theme 'open sim identity', although this being Art, it was a lot more complicated than that. But to help him illustrate the point, there were four Thirzas online, three of them hanging out in Futurelab, his combination workshop, theater, community sandbox and meeting-place sim, complete with Harry's bar. We sat in the Safari zoo and tested the stage as he went through his lines, little thinking that by 12 noon grid time, something sinister would happen.
 Here's Lena's 11 pm post on the Metropolis Forum *thanks, Google translate!*Huhu metros,
Metro is already been the target of an attack. This time the attacker has taken the inventory structures targeted. It seems that he knows / she fits well for the OpenSim code and has exploited a vulnerability in the inventory-handling.
Zak Spot, Uncle CM and I are just going to sift through the damage and take remedial measures. Until we have the database properly restored again, we have to turn off the grid. We can not yet say whether we still hinbringen today now. But we try.
Since it seems someone pretty nasty sight on us. We will keep you up to date.
many greetings
Lena

Patti, Strannik, Pathfinder and four or five other avatars form a TP Totem Pole on Futurelab

What does 'hinbringen' mean? You find out.
The only thing for sure was, the show couldn't go on. Those outside Metro were not getting in and those inside couldn't communicate except by yelling at their computer; satisfying, but not, as you know, terribly safari-efficient. What to do in the circumstances? Regrouping on Francogrid at our clubhouse worked for some, while many more headed to the second destination, clearly much too early. Nothing new there.

Aine shows off her marvellous mesh

Aine Cohime also known as Mata Hari greeted us graciously as ever. She makes lovely mesh items, and her sim Hedonism is on a new and pretty stable grid, founded by a handful of experienced open sim creators after the effective demise of OSGrid. Refugegrid is really easy to get to, and sim Hedonism is an exotic dance venue with a clean and simple layout, designed to enhance the many NPC performers and to keep lag low.

The Galaxys show us how it's done

But not last night.
Was it the lingerie or the lusty boy dancers that managed to keep everyone's enthusiasm piqued enough to keep coming back after the crashes? It's always fun to hear people speculate about what's making a place or an avatar crash: it's the Atlantic, or your choice of Viewer. It's packet loss, or something hinkey with your a/o, or any one of a few dozen other variables. There were freebie boxes of lingerie available on the sim, but with  so many of us, we seemed to overwhelm all scripts. Mal Burns appeared to be ogling, but he claimed the lag made it impossible for him to move.

A likely story.
Despite the problems, we couldn't help but admire Aine's dance systems, or her beautiful mesh work, not to mention LadyJo's dee-janeing, and we all hoped that the second party - the Safari by Moonlight event, debutting yesterday, would have more luck than us.
As the sim crashed and crashed again, many regrouped on Francogrid. It was tempting just to stop there since jumping seemed so fraught, but Wizard wouldn't hear of it. And thank goodness we followed her lead.

Mudpuddle Cleanslate's Arles sim is an absolute gem with seventeen viewpoints that re-evoke his paintings. It's a sort of artistic quest, but there's even more than that, for he's also expanded the build upward and outward. The ideal start point is in the square in front of the cafe, but beware, if you hypergrid in, using the hg address rather than the Landmark, you may find yourself inside the railway bridge.

Find van Gogh's house, tucked away on a quiet corner of the sim, and go inside.

Downstairs there's a special tp among the artist's brushes. Upstairs, if you walk through the famous bedroom... well, you need to go yourself and see what happens.

You'll be astonished. Quite astonishing was the sight of Apmel in lingerie. It seems the Ladies got all the good stuff and the guys felt left out.

Apmel Fransson mixes and matches in a way best described as 'disturbing'.

Mal.Burns: yep - need male lingerie Thirza!
strannik zipper: I have the painting in my Cafe on Pirate's Atoll! I love having a kilt! Now I just need a Ghille shirt and a skindoo!
We were all loving not having lag.
Mudpuddle joined us, and we were all able to compliment him in person for the wonderful install.

strannik.zipper: Mudpuddle, did you ever see the Van Gogh exhibit in SL about 5 years ago? You have outdone that for certain!
No surprise there, since Mud has been modelling van Gogh paintings in 3d for thirty years. But he's also a fine machinima maker, and more!
Apmel Fransson: this was worth all the trouble we had on this safari.
Mudpuddle.Cleanslate: I'm gonna give you all a link to my new and last machinima regarding van Gogh. The music was specially written for it by keoki trask [here's that link]
Fairy.Constantine: omg, amazing that you tube thing:)
Nara.Nook: bookmarking all the videos
If you haven't joined us on Safari, this build alone should get your hypergridding juices flowing. You can find, as always the URI at the bottom of this post.

beware the friendly Ironbridge NPCs.

Our final stop was Ironbridge, on the newly hypergrid-enabled 3rd Rock Grid. What a build! What a welcome! Tommy Rock, Sunny Tomorrow, Kered Owl, and more of the team were on hand, to make it even more special. Ironbridge, the lovely work by VelvetVoiced Vixen, surrounded us. It's an important real-life Heritage site in England, marking the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The build is educational, but also fun as it involves a quest for pies. What on earth more could you possibly want? And now HG Accessible.
Tommy.Rock: We figured it was time to join the crowd, or be left behind, and being pioneers of the permissions systems, we have no plans of sitting on the sidelines

3rd Rock Grid gives every indication of being rock solid, and there was very little lag and almost instant rezzing for 8 or 9 HG visitors. Famous for its music, the grid has in fact numerous destination sims and if they are all as high quality as this one, you are going to be heading there again and again.
Thirza Ember: after metro failing, and Hedonism crashing 3 times, these last two destinations have been a lot better than we had any right to hope, tonight.
Nara Nook: all ended well :)
sunny tomorrow: I'm glad we worked then hehe
Thirza Ember: I know it's been a lot of work for all
sunny tomorrow: well we sure have been trying hard for sure
Nara Nook: Metro needs some serious relief
James AtLLOUD: ah, that's where the original HG Clubhouse is, no?
Apmel Fransson: so Francogrid is next for big trouble.. first HG clubhouse at OSgrid..and then Metrogrid and now.. oho

An unattached Fuschia makes friends with the pieman. Let's hope his hands are oven-warm.

Kered.Owl: reminds tommy no hg safari club house here
Tommy.Rock: Nope; PLEASE, TRY to crash it, lol ;)
 James.AtLLOUD: That's the spirit!
Tommy.Rock: Our servers eat a can of spinach daily! ;)
Mal.Burns: Were you going to put clubhouse on Hyperica Thirza? Using that as safest jump point recently
Apmel Fransson: well we even have an embassy in SL..and it hasn't crashed SL yet
Fuschia.Nightfire: we should put a club house on every grid, then we always got back up
Nara.Nook: yes you can never have too many alternatives in the hypergrid
Thirza.Ember: Keeping track of more embassies?  I need to lie down in a darkened room
Fuschia.Nightfire: This is Thirza without wine - normally she would be agreeing with me
Apmel Fransson: got a head ache Thirza?
snowbody.Cortes: I confirm she is without wine :)
Nara.Nook: *passes Thirza mulled wine*
Thirza.Ember: I think it better be absinthe at this point
Tommy.Rock: :)
Tommy.Rock passes his glass...

URIs  
Art Blue's Futurelab performance space:   hypergrid.org:8002:futurelab
Mata Hari's Hedonism dance club :   refugegrid.com:8002:hedonism
Mudpuddle's Van Gohn installation: lfgrid.com:8002:arles
VelvetVoiced Vixen's Ironbridge reconstruction and quest: grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002:ironbridge