A Tale of Two Cities

       Opportunity City and Gotham City... or Metropolis, the choice is yours, the tour this week took us to two of OpenSim's most respected grids, TanGle ad Craft, HG Addresses at the end of the post        
Aime Socrates: coool party Leslie !!!
          It's all in the eye of the beholder. We arrived on TanGle grid somewhat late and in disarray thanks to ... well that is a long boring story you did not come to this blog to read about. 

          The lovely Leslie Kling had invited us over to Tangle's Expo Isle, which for today let's call Opportunity City, because you could use it as a way to get yourself and your creations known all across the hyperverse, This was not the Safari's first visit, we've been here to see the lingerie show, the Steam Fair and the Winter expos over the past two years, so it was nice to be back, enjoying the icy dance floor hidden away in one corner of the vast Expo region.

The Safari Goes on ... Safari

pat gresham: Wow. A real HG safari.         

Sun and savanna, wild animals and wilder teleports, African thoughts, history,  and ideals - that's the spirit of our most recent trip. Our first destination took us to the var region Virunga on Outworldz grid. 

           There was a lot of interest in this Safari, more than twenty of us gathered on the HG Safari clubhouse, not to mention all those who tp'd directly to the first destination. If you can make it over to the hgsafari sim on Francogrid, you will find the Landmarks in a big box marked... Landmarks, and can go take the tour at any time. In a few weeks, we should also have the safari archive set up, too, with all the LMs of the past two years. Sunshine Szavanna, hostess for our second destination, had set out some clothes with African themed textures, which are still available at both clubhouses if you would like to get them.

Safari Went To Portugal

On December 7, the Safari went to visit 3 very special regions, created by Portuguese builders to tell the story of their native land. 

Below, an account of the visit, as told by Aime Socrates, 

with photos by Wizardoz Chrome.

HG Addresses at the end of the post.

 DESTINATION 1 Belem Tower is the creation of Ni Lemon, it's an exploration of some of the history and culture of her homeland /hg.osgrid.org:80:belem_tower

Approximatively 15 Explorers went to the sim at the right time..but sadly, Ni couldnt join us...

Azi.Az gave un a lot of informations

Aime Socrates: Azi can you tell us a bit more about this sim ?

Azi.Az @hg.osgrid.org: that is in Lisbon

Azi.Az @hg.osgrid.org: Lisbon is the capital of portugal

Aime Socrates: the harbour of Lisbon ?

Azi.Az @hg.osgrid.org: and yes u can say its the harbour

we flyed all together up to a big tower:

We Are One - are you in?

            You may know that most grids like to celebrate their anniversary, and you also know that lots of grids don't stick around very long. So for an opensim grid to be celebrating seven years of existence is really something!
        Craft, the 'Friendly Grid', has its 7th anniversary coming up at the end of January.

        Every year, they hold a building competition. Perhaps in past years, you've attended the anniversary party, even admired the winning entries to the building competition. The first prize is a free region for a year.  Second place gets a 10k prim region for a year... which to my mind is just as good.
       Wowee, you may say, lucky Craftians... but did you realize that anyone from any grid can take part, and win that prize?
        Yes, you too can compete in the Craft competition!    

Another Arty Safari

Three artists, three countries, three genres, three grids this week.
The theme this week, the interplay between real and virtual worlds when it comes to art. Obviously, it's all art. But working in virtual worlds can be a great stepping stone to begin or re-ignite an artistic career. It can inspire your creativity,  suggest new ways to express yourself,  give you the courage to put your work on display, and help you find fans and clients. HG Addresses as usual at the end of the post. Landmarks are available at our clubhouses on OSGrid and Francogrid for the next few days also.
Our first stop, A'Shaala on Francogrid, home of Talie Tramont also known as Talie Tramontane. An art school graduate based in France, Talie is best known for her photography, which you can find on Deviantart, as well as on this lovely region.

Thirza Ember: everyone has the Lms?
Malon Wyngard: got all
Thirza Ember: her computer broke suddenly yesterday, she was fixing up many winter things for us to do but... boom - no computer
Cherry Manga: She has computer issues so she leaves us on her region, she can't imagine what a safari can do when alone!
Sunbeam Magic: Does it snow in France?
Cherry Manga: here, it's fog and fog and fog since 3 weeks
Spike Sol: liegt überall schnee im Moment.. nur draussen nicht
Dabici Straulino: na hier her haben wir ca 50cm Schnee - Quebec
       .... as you can see we're a very international bunch.

Fully Loaded

            Billy Bradshaw asked if we could do a quick Load Test on TGrid before we headed to our first official destination this week.

             If you've been doing anything more than sitting at home alone dropping cubes off towers or checking the hiccup time you get when you cross a sim boundary, you will know what a horrendous condition intergrid communications has reached. For many months now, sending offline IMs to people on other grids - which used to work just fine - fails more often than it works. When this started, it took me a few days to notice that the 'User not online. Message saved' message was actually saying 'Unable to send instant message. User is not logged in.' which caused some really amusing headaches. But of course, now we have all learned that to be sure your reply gets through, you must actually go to the other person's grid to send it.