Safari Goes Jogging

      GeR.Orsini @craft-world.org:8002: benvenuti in Craft grid e in Italia

If you have been thinking OSGrid is a bit off color these days, between Notecards and prims and Landmarks and Friends acting up, then you are not alone. 
Hypergridding has always been ...unstable is the polite word, but with the state of things generally with this latest horrible release, we were braced for a pretty bumpy ride this week. 
And we were not disappointed by the crashy stuff... but equally, not disappointed by the absolutely gorgeous regions we got to see. 
HG Addresses at the end of the post... but you knew I was going to say that.

Gondolas and gorgonzola??!  Italian heaven!

First stop was on Craft Grid, an easy jump from OSGrid, which made a pleasant change from all the crashes that HG has been causing over recent days. 

GeR Orsini (it -> en): welcome to the craft grid, and in italy
Laura Bernasconi (it -> en): the pleasant Italian peninsula
Spike Sol: oh so many people here
GeR Orsini (it -> en): Ana, the creator of this region wearing a dress of the renaissance era.

GeR Orsini: if you distance the cam from the sim you will see that the shape of italy
Selby Evans: 20 people here

Etna... Italy seen from South Sicily

Jessie.Campbell: well done Ger, that's a neat idea!
GeR Orsini: Italy is subdivided in 20 regions and in each region, we have put tables, food, drinks and the characteristics of different regions. My region is Campania and was curated by the Settima and me. At this time we are in Emilia Romagna created by Terry Bond with the famous towers of Asinelli. You can hear our DJ Barbara has put a song typical of the Emilia-Romagna region. If you look at the objects and dishes around the sim, you can make a click on them and there is the description.
       It is all fascinating, but perhaps the most extraordinary part is in Sardinia, where plates with names like Panada di Oschiri and Culurgiones di Ogliastra are on display. I am pretty sure if you eat more than two culurgiones you have to go to the hospital.  
       This is the Mediterranean, the 'Mare Nostrum' with Sardinia in the foreground.

Tao Quan: I hope you can look at the tables and see the wonderful food of the various regions
Mal Burns: yep ,- found mozzarella and happy!
Tao Quan: this is the calorie sim only equalled by our annual chocolate party hehe hehe
GeR Orsini (it -> en): Italy is rich of different foods and drinks, and each region has its own specialities but also differences in music, art, dialect, etc
Tao Quan: please feel free to walk around (if you can) or swim to Sardinia
GeR Orsini (it -> en): or Sicily, two large Italian islands. Even though Italy is full of many small islands.
Ger Orsini explained that the builders of this cultural feast are Ana 57, alongside Laura Benusconi, Michelle Tech,  Eva Kraal, Terry Bond, Vicus Serenity, amaranta Verino, xSIBERIAx ILFREDDOPURIFICA,  xyonne fauno,  Giliola Allen and grid owner Licu Rau.
GeR Orsini: It took a while for us to put this build together, because the project was done by several people, working over time. People took on separate regions, and as you can see, there are different styles. It has been very nice to get different people involved, and we were very pleased to see how many wanted to participate.

Crafty lag

The Craftians are always a friendly, hospitable bunch and it was great that so many of them were able to welcome us... including a certain Mr Clooney, I didn't get his first name, but he seemed charming. 
But the lag was on us, strong and sticky, and we were just out of luck. 
GeR Orsini: visit us again, perhaps the many scripts that are giving some problems
Alya VonZ: Have been walking around, all looks so nice, thank you for sharing this with us:)

Lagless Sunbeam

   Some people like Sunbeam rezzed pretty good, but my own avie was a scary mix of half formed Cloudfix and missing attachments. Couldn't even take a pic by that stage. But I went back and got this one that conveys the build as a sort of Model Village, with cookery.

Tower envy

Craft is a super grid, and we've been there in droves before now. If you drop in on this build, now housed on the appropriately names Bel Paese sim, you will absolutely love it. And learn a lot too.

       Next stop Japan Open Grid, a world away in every sense. Most of us kinda left Craft in a crash, and those who ended up back on OSgrid couldn't get the landmarks or hg address to play ball. 
Endless crashes... but one way around them was to go to Sanctuary and walk through the gate there... although even that didn't work for everyone.
About eight of us finally got to JOG. The locals were not up, and why should they have been in was 6 am local time, but we had a semi local, the always delightful Sarah Kline. Our visit started at the Abyss Observatory.

      The Abyss sims are all educational gems. The Observatory is a giant spiral telling the story of our planet in the context of the other celestial bodies, and is full of really well made models and signs. 

Mal Burns: think is OSG problem - all us OSG avies have glitches wherever we are
Thirza Ember: i had to go with my francogrid avie my osgrid avie no longer loads at all
George Equus: Ok Mal. seem so yes...
Thirza.Ember: I had a skirt on when I left home. Just saying.
George Equus: I seem to miss a shoe.. hope you can see most of me  
Alya VonZ: blood sweat and tears to come here, lol
Sarah Kline: its on the other side of the world
Alya VonZ: yup, explains a lot

Sarah Kline, JOG version

Sarah Kline: It's run by Tokyo university of information sciences and a man called Fumi Hax is the lecturer in charge. He does a lot of good research for opensim and worked with kinect recently. He's working on Unity conversion of sims, he did a weather simulation of wind patterns too. Anyway he looks after us here like we are a little family. We are given a sim for our use after a while  and that forms the mainland here, so we have sim recruitments every few months or so, but others can connect outside  just like we do on OSG.
Alya VonZ: Kewl, so can make a continent? one thing I miss in osgrid
Sarah Kline: yes. We have a money module working here, but its just play money, residents can go to the atm and draw cash when they run out of J$ but most of the things are free anyway. The University is near Tokyo. TUIS you can find it on web, it is a big campus. 

Alya VonZ: wow my pixels in Japan:)

Lucy Afarensis: hehe
George Equus: Just my thought

Sarah Kline: Just by the central landing point is a copy of the university campus. It's in the process of being built by students there. i came some months ago and they were friendly,: so I got involved ^^ - always liked Japan.

     We checked out the Observatory and then headed to the shops, of course. As Sarah had said, it was nice to find free content. I really like the setup on JOG, that when you upload a texture or sound it charges you just like in SL, so you are aware of the cost that you put on the system when you introduce another element for the asset server to remember - while at the same time letting you replenish your money supply. So uploads are free but not carefree, and that is how it should be.

Billy romances his latest girlfriend... she is a model!

        Anyway, pretty soon Billy Bradshaw found himself a Japanese miss, and even though George had lost his legs, he was zipping all around the mall. Somebody found a kimono with built in a/o allowing you to bow appropriately, and we all enjoyed seeing a unique take on freebies, in some cases very different from the standard stock you find on Euro-American grids.

George faces with stoicism his temporary leg loss.

           It was definitely a struggle to get to JOG but it was a great experience and everyone agreed we should definitely return soon. 
       JOG has regular social events, for example they recently had a very beautiful Lantern festival, however bear in mind that these are all held in the evening Japan time - that is early afternoon in Europe, and early morning in the US, so when you visit at other times of day, those green dots you run towards hopefully will probably turn out to be only NPCs.

So finally we returned, battered and bruised by the hypergrid, to good old OSGrid. Our final stop was Pleasure Island, the home of Alya VonZ.
 If you don't think you could survive a Safari, then think again. Here are Alex Salamander and Yara Eilde who are German with only minimal English, and they regularly make it to the end, despite the late hour and the dodgy notecard and the unreliable landmarks. Not neccesarily with their hair, but still.

      Alya had lovely gifties under the tree for us, and dancing in a winter wonderland, but there is much more here, and more planned, of an industrial chic-grunge nature, including a club and stuff to grab - she makes nice clothes which you can also find at her shop on sim Festa24.

     Even George's legs returned for the occasion, but my skirt never did bother to come back. Lucky I have glitch shorts, really. Or I would have surely gotten some chilblains.

A final festive fling on Alya VonZ's sim Pleasure Island, our last stop.

HG Addresses:
Reginal Cuisine Map of Italy       craft-world.org:8002:bel paese
Japan Open Grid - observatory   jogrid.net:8002:abyss observatory
Alya's sim                                 hg.osgrid.org:80:Pleasure Island