Safari goes Under the Radar

            Small grids! Hypergridding was made for them. We visited three outstanding examples this week. All three are open 24/7 and are worth visiting by yourself for their art, charm, freebies, music and information. Full HG Addresses at the end of the post. 

          First, Isis Ophelia's grid. Arcana. This grid is just exquisite. It's based on Epic Castle (here's a link to Austin's excellent blog post on the subject) plus extras from Kitely Market, and of course original touches by Isis herself.

Isis Ophelia rocking the shoulderpet

 
How do Safaris begin? Imagine a whole glorious mess of 'hello!' and 'hey! how you been' and 'welcome' and 'have I rezzed?' comments. 

There were about 20 of us in the perfect little meeting place Isis had set up. Not a wisp of lag on the sim, but looking around I saw a few skirts absent, including, I suspected, my own on other people's viewers. But while many of us all like to dress up for Safari, the real stars are the regions and their owners. Isis looked perfection, with the most precisely-placed shoulder pet I have ever seen in my life.

 Isis Ophelia:  willkommen buona sera benvenuti or so lol, welcome to Arcana!  please take a seat,  its so great to have you visiting my little grid Arcana.
George Equus: Hi to all I missed before (was fixing some goodies afk)
Jeff Kelley: heya Sunbeam, heya all ; which grid is this ?
Isis Ophelia: actually it is a little sandcorn compared to others hehe
strannik zipper: greetings! 
Isis Ophelia: shall we start? all rezzed now? ahh strannik is there, welcome! and Max so kingly :) strannik there is a cushion with a blue ball free
strannik zipper: ok, I have the blue ball
(Don't worry, he's feeling better now.)
Isis Ophelia: good strannik feel comfy. Perfect, ok let me tell you a bit about Arcana. Arcana is 2 months old. It is 24/7 hrs online. I rented a simulator with Dreamland to have a grid independent grid. it has only 4 regions and it will stay 4 region

Thirza Ember: 4 is a lucky number
Isis Ophelia: yes Thirza seems so, I am very happy here :) 
strannik zipper: Isis, you did the opposite of my move - I got tired of issues with the independent sim so joined a grid ;-)
Isis Ophelia: lol yes strannik, too, but this grid I don't need to manage myself :))) and with 45 usd monthly and 4 regions its 10 usd each region so actually a good price.
At the begin my intention was to have my music events in here, and to able to decorate oars for the events and decorate each time bit different but then the main purpose changed a bit. It is now a HG welcome center for newcomers. The intention is to try to help opensim newcomers to get started..... you see the Tutorials and to be independent so that any grid could send their newcomers to here. The tutorials took a while to write, now done. Now the next goal is to have activities to build a social community where newcomers can come and meet Hypergrid members.
Thirza Ember: do you have other languages ? german and french? For the tutorials
Isis Ophelia: Spanish, English and German, sorry no French :) ...other languages for tutorials, yes will come, as soon as I got time to translate them all
Sunbeam Magic: a little plug, Arcana is mentioned twice in this month's issue of Visionz magazine, coming out tomorrow
strannik zipper: Someone still needs to make a great video explaining what the hypergrid is to people who don't know
Mal Burns: yes Strannik - i should think about that
Isis Ophelia: so besides the events, there is each Sunday a Coffee Mornings chat, 2 hours to chit chat, where newcomers could come and meet others

Sunbeam Magic: at 3 am lol - I came first one... took long nap that day
Isis Ophelia: yes, because I am in Europe can only offer meeting at a reasonable time for me, but for other time zones you see a poster at the entrance, its Kitely
Thirza Ember: 3am = perfect time for coffee
George Equus: Any time of day perfect for that  :)
Mal Burns: guess even 3m qualifies as 'morning' lol
Isis Ophelia: they have Tea Time at later times
strannik .zipper: 1am grid time? I might make that if I can't sleep ;-)
Isis Ophelia: before I stop so you can ask me your questions, want to tell you I will be gone 3 month this summer, and Arcana will have a break in activities. I will be visiting my daughter :) and don't know if I can make it to come online but if I can I will
strannik zipper: When I moved to Digiworldz, Isis was the first person to greet me, give me a tour and make me feel welcome
Isis Ophelia: ok just last information. I have in 3 venues in here each Thursday a music event. I want to bring more live performers to opensim, and try to get them to come over from SL
Mal Burns: this we need
Isis Ophelia: its a mix between live Djs and live singers
Sunbeam Magic: and a fine job you're already doing in this Isis...  Tango tomorrow!
Thirza Ember: can you explain why you chose Thursday,for your regular events, Isis? And who have you had as musicians so far?
Isis Ophelia: yes tomorrow its Tango in Arcana South, with DJ Dings Digital!  I chose Thursday because my events are at European time, and therefore to not interfere with HG Safari
snowbody Cortes: good choice :)

Isis Ophelia: ...and with the osgrid Fridays parties. I chose the Thursday - could have been Mondays, but that day I am still sleepy from my long sleep on Sunday lol. As for musicians -  well Torben Asp I know him since 6 years, so he performs often here. Then new its a spanish singer coming from SL Merkabah Oh, he sings in spanish and english, then Ceci Dover she well known in SL and a great performer, Joao Frazao was here, he is amazing; BG Singer will be here when I come back, he sings blues; and Kobi Ohanlon he sings everything!
Mal Burns: We are creating  music fayre with free booths for all hypergrid-wide performers we can dig up
strannik.zipper: I used to like to hang out in neighborhoods that functioned as art colonies, e.g. SoHo in NYC, Kreuzberg in Berlin, etc.  These have all gone away, and shifting real estate makes it difficult to create a city of artists, writers and musicians. It occurred to me that the next big neighborhood/city for creative people should be in opensim... 

          When you visit Arcana, take time to walk around this lovely quartet of regions, or fly high above it! There is so much to see, from the medieval  castle and its attached village, to the Arabian Nights ballroom and the bright yellow big top in the valley. Impossible to find an object out of place or poorly positioned, this is a triumph of attention to detail, and all accomplished in - what, two months?
Isis Ophelia: oh actually in less than 2 - I worked day and night - in 2 weeks 2 regions were done, since 2 months Arcana is active with events and tutorials...

Looking for a bar, or possibly a 2x4... Serene Jewell

Serene Jewell: It's wonderful, Isis! Also, there's a bar around every corner which is always fun.  :-)
Isis Ophelia: ...but but you see I used the Epic Castle that saved me lot of time
George Equus: regions are rock solid and tp respond instantly, and I am still in one piece 
Isis Ophelia: the simulator responds well I have had here around 26 visitors and Arcana not even protested !
          Speaking of tp, it was time to go. Our next stop on Radiola was an easy jump, at least as far as the landing point.. a little trickier getting up to the dance hall in the sky.

           The first time we visited Radiola, it was like magic how quickly we all rezzed. It's a very small grid, where one would expect the server to go ape at the arrival of a ragtag bunch of hypergridders, wearing more or less anything their bizarre imagination dictates. 

          But this time - who knows? one member of the group wearing something especially funky? Just a bad day on the intertubes? Our teleporting up into the sky instead of dancing at the landing spot? - it was a different story, a full 30 minutes went by before all of us could see each other's clothing, not to mention the fabulous decoration of the hall, and the wider landscape below. 

It's annoying when your psychobilly dress goes walkabout. Just sayin'.

          None of that prevented us from partying, of course! Or trying to look the part. See, this is why it always worries me when people who work on OpenSimulator code say they 'don't do social'. Apart from the fact it makes it sound like being part of the community is beneath a dev, but worse than that, it also means they're like a pastry chef who never eats anything with flour in it. How can you effectively make a product you don't experience? As Gordon Ramsay would say - did you taste it?

            Radar was doing that weird thing it does when the server is struggling. It showed loads of people off in the distance at 300m. If you click on a person's name, you see the whole group kind of mashed together under the sea, - not a pretty sight, hence no photo.
            

          When word had gone around to new arrivals that the dancing was happening up in the sky, they gradually made their way up - but despite arriving within a few meters of us, radar continued to show them off in the distance. This resulted in even more tp invitations... adding to the lag, no doubt. 

DJ Livio looking the part

          Generally speaking, rezzing assets is a first come, first ...served situation, and indeed our host Livio, who was on the sim from the start, looked perfect as one would expect. 

Cherry Manga

            The later someone arrives, the harder it is to see what they are wearing, yet in a break from the rule, Cherry Manga who got there after me was instantly visible and looking quite the thing...
       It's all voodoo.

          Radiola is like a wonderfully weird toy-box, a fusion of found objects re-dressed into an unbalanced landscape where the line between fun and fright, humor and horror are slightly blurred. 

          Livio Korobase (better known to us in opensim as Livio Mondini) had proposed a Psychobilly theme to the dance, and played us all kinds of gems from the genre, ranging from the Lucky Devils playing 'Please don't let me be misunderstood'
 to the Frantic Flintstones playing their unique rendition of  'My Way'.

           Great fun. And again, time to go, to Endive World, the grid of Thai Low and Christine Endivatomic. 

This is another small grid, with loads to see including a gorgeous trattoria build, complete with 'half-drunk head in the shrimp salad' poses, svinazzato ai gamberoni. Here is Thai showing that off to great effect. 

 But our final destination was the Viewpoint club on sim Toul. I'm not going to say none of us were missing bits, but Wizardoz Chrome and Aime Socrates certainly weren't missing anything... especially not style!           This was essentially a load test, and Endive World passed with flying colors.
James Atlloud: I count 18 avies
Thirza Ember: Thai, Christine, what is the story of this grid? how did it start?
Christine Endivatomic: Ouffff
Thai Low: :) it started 1 years and half ago
Christine Endivatomic: It started when I asked to Thai what was opensim and what it means
Thai Low: we were both in SL looong ago. When Chris asked about opensim... i got crazy about the idea to have a grid, and for months we fight with a standalone version
snik snoodle:  having a grid, makes one *more crazy* (just saying) :)
Thai Low: DEF! snik, LOL
snik snoodle: i was already bonkers, sooooooo.....no biggie ;)

Endive World - there is a lot to see

Christine Endivatomic: I still understand nothing here, Im just doing silly things and Thai do the serious ones
Thai Low: AHH FALSE!!!!

Thai Low (left) and Christine Edivatomic (right) each with an NPC dance partner

Thai Low: not true - Christine is the creative one, she does things.. i copy.
Thai Low: then.. one day.. we discovered there was this nice things called "hypergrid". Anyway.. slowly slowly we are tying to build the grid as comfy as ... "home".
Thirza Ember: so is this the most hypergridders you've had on the grid so far?
Thai Low: mhmm.. yes, I think yes
Ni Lemon: great test for you tonight Thai, and great results. Congrats!
Thai Low: Yes, and .. this encourages me for a mad project
Christine Endivatomic: Lolll yes, Go on saying all is good and I'm sure Thai will be ready to sing!! :))

HG Addresses:  
Isis Ophelia's Arcana      arcana.hopto.org:9021    
Livio Korobase's Radiola vps228543.ovh.net:9000
Endive World by Thai and Christine endivatomic.eu:8002