Zen and the art of Gridhopping

         For the final few Safari trips, I decided to indulge myself and just organize visits to some of my favorite places. This week, we went to TGrid, also known as ViewTwo, and to Kalasiddhi Grid. HG Addresses at the end of the post. These are two of the smaller grids on the hyperverse, and both have a distinctive look and purpose, that goes to the very heart of the owner operated HG friendly virtual homestead.

TG Lucan

     First up TGrid. It's small and built for testing the very heart of opensim. The Welcome region has a musical theme with clean lines and unscratched vinyl. For a long time, hg visitors would arrive on top of the satellite which was a sort of bug but a fun one. TG Lucan was there to meet the group, where we did some dancing before moving on to the massive 256 Var, so see (let's be honest) if we could break it.


TG Lucan: all here Thirza?
Phred 420: thirza is never more than half here
Lux Tergeste: lol
TG Lucan: true
Phred 420 : george's complexity is 1.2 million
Flidais Merlin: lol
 Cherry Manga: and thirza has a german 1980's footballer's haircut
TG Lucan: stuff still being pulled from osgrid
thirza ember: as long as i'm not naked again, I don't care about my hair
alex54.Salamander: i see all right
George Equus: Ahh  see Thirza's hair is bit strange..
thirza ember: just my hair strange??? have you not been paying attention these 4 years, George?
George Equus: am a diplomat  Thirza  :)
Phred 420: now George is 1582
Taarna Welles: lol
George Equus: frugal

Lux Tergeste: George's legs are a treasure hunt themselves :)
George Equus: I see everyone fine
Tryad Destiny: same here no probs at all
thirza ember: so as you all know, TGrid belongs to TG Lucan and friends... the avatars on this grid all have the names of characters by Thomas Hardy, this is the most literary grid in opensim
TG Lucan: This grid Hypergrid  enabled February 2012.  Several objectives - no preference order.
Objective 1: Here we demonstrate using modest  equipment, a grid can be successfully operated from home.  Alert Tech stuff: Toshiba laptop (around 9 years old) hosted Grid control (Robust) and this Welcome region
 Phred 420: what is your up/down bandwidth? and how much memory?
TG Lucan: Domestic internet connection (approx. 25 up / 100 down) 2GB, we are currently using 886MB total

Taarna Welles of Bubblesz grid: one of opensim's great mesh content  makers,
keep your eyes open for new stuff from Taarna soon

Taarna Welles: Nice connection speed
TG Lucan: There are no public registration facilities on this grid. Running the latest versions can be risky and content can be lost or damaged.  Objective 2:Testing - More tech stuff. Opensim version: Development branch named httptests... Why not into master? you may ask
Thirza ember: what does into master mean
Phred 420: master branch of the code
TG Lucan:  Opensim uses a versioning system named 'git' to manage contributions from developers
Phred 420: they never let me work on the master branch :)
TG Lucan: Master is the latest issue
Phred 420: mostly it helps in philosophy seminars
TG Lucan: Each time a developer implements a change, the server builds Opensim and reports the update on IRC = Remote Chat thingie, techies use Problem:  opensimulator.org server is dated and requires significant updates to run the latest dot net / mono framework that Opensim uses. The current mono is version 5.10 and opensimulator.org uses Version 2
Taarna Welles: Will there be an update someday??
TG Lucan: Hope so Taarna, Mono (now part of Microsoft) is popular and continually evolving to improve efficiency and reliability.
Phred 420: so what parts of the code are you experimenting with?
TG Lucan: Here we look at comms and thread management... So.... Httptests  created and maintained by Ubit

Spinning around TGrid's famous Welcome Area Satellite

Thirza Ember: management seems the weak part of Opensim, or am I wrong... always hard to herd volunteers
TG Lucan: not wrong Thirza
Phred 420: what is your laptop processor?
TG Lucan: celeron
Phred 420:  that can do threads? /smirk
TG Lucan: 274 at present

TG Lucan liberating some dialed dance moves

TG Lucan: Objective 3 I have a technical background and Opensim provides a number of challenges for self education. Welcome region = Chat range 240 m, so no need to shout
Phred 420: i noticed that, is it easy to change?
TG Lucan: opensim.ini config
Clubmaster Dance Machine v2.1 shouts: ERROR! Sorry, the controller experienced an error and will attempt to reset. You can attempt to use it again once the system is ready. We are sorry for the inconvenience
TG Lucan: ha, never seen the dance machine do that
Wizardoz Chrome: not works NPC .. they do not go :)
Phred.420: probably someone started pushing buttons at random - but not me, no sir!
TG Lucan: this could be the httptests code. The very popular and successful Dance Machine (grateful thanks to Aine)  acts as a standard ensure that OpenSim updates don't break stuff
Thirza.Ember : yes, if you break that, it's the End of the World
Phred.420: Hug and Kiss Deluxe as a last resort
TG Lucan: Next part is the big region. Fell walking (Is this a unique British pass time.. ?)  Please use the map to find region var16

Cherry Manga: you freeze your screen, or your feel like in sansar lol
Mal Burns: all came quick and fine for me but only have avies and terrain - no builds or anything, should i be seeing something else?
Selby Evans: could be a sim for sailing no significant lag
TG Lucan: No builds here Mal, strictly fell walking
Mal.Burns: well what there is was instrant for me ....prefer hills, vales and dales lol
TG Lucan: This is running on a server, same domestic network... equiv 256 regions, just wanted to see what happens
Cherry.Manga: nothing if nothing on it
Lux.Tergeste: wow
alex54 Salamander: tp on Varregions went very quick
TG Lucan: no prims, just long walks

Just a tiny part of this massive Varregion. Var16

Selby.Evans: Would not have much on it if used as sailing sim -- ocean,  a few islands, a few boats
Phred.420: easy to get lost here! the minimap scale doesn't allow seeing the entire region, but the radar still seems to show everyone in the region
TG Lucan: does show up some viewer limitations... could play find the boat :)
alex54 Salamander: a speedboat
Tryad.Destiny: how long does it take to walk from one side to another?
TG Lucan: It's 9 square miles, or 16 sq km
Tryad Destiny: so a four hour plus walk then
alex54 Salamander: a superregion to fly
Flidais.Merlin takes a little over 4 mins to fly from one side to the other
Phred 420: curious, can you make a prim as large as the region?
TG Lucan: dunno Phred
Cherry.Manga: dunno the limit but you can change prim size limits in .ini, though, this size, you wouldn't be able to grab it easily inworld

Charry Manga adds some special effects to Var16 and makes the place come alive with content

Phred 420: now downloads are tending to zero during idle, what did you do?
TG Lucan: sorry for lag debug tripped
Phred  420: ah, that explains it...: hope you find something useful in the stack dump
TG Lucan: all recorded
Lux.Tergeste: lovely!
George.Equus:  Thanks TG, Great performance here, amazingly there isn't any lag to mention and think we did try to crash it..
alex54.Salamander: thanks and bye TG Lucan
TG Lucan: I just need month to process data lol
          Our second stop was on Kalasiddhi Grid, in the company of Nyom Chung and Drang Po. Kalasiddhi is unlike any other grid, it has a strong identity based on enlightenment and education, art and fun, with an overarching emphasis on Buddhist teaching. The given name 'Kalasiddhi' implies, I'm told, compassion, creativity, reliability, generosity, loyalty and a love for domestic life.

          We first visited Welcome_Kalasiddhi, an impressive forest region dominated by a snowy mountain, and from here, you can go and explore the region and find the many points of interest listed on a beautifully crafted Notecard by Nyom Chung which is available at the landing point. This card outlines thirteen points of interest, including several statues of Buddha, some meditation areas, water features, and other statues including this lovely one of Ganesh. It's a place of great beauty and spirituality regardless of your religion, and also a fun Hunt, with many free items you can copy!

Drang Po and Nyom Chung

           Drang as always took a very positive attitude to the prospect of the Safari crashing his grid....
Drang Po: figured if we are going to stress test let's really do it :)
Thirza.Ember: Drang, is running an opensim grid using Ubuntu a challenge?
Drang Po: Not really, I've made step by step manuals... that are on the website for all... if they just follow the steps it's up. [Link to Kalasiddhi Website]
Cherry Manga: I could spend hours and hours in this forest I'm playing with windlight, this forest supports all kind of light, it's wonderful
Thirza Ember: how long to build all this?
Nyom Chung: to build the welcome center a few days
Drang Po: I bought the trees as kits from kitely  ...took a while to put it all down and play with it and month's to make all the little stuff

Nyom Chung: i'm really slow and learning 3D at least in making things that will load into opensim... ugg
Original Character: I'm learning to model it's kinda hard
Drang Po: she is using blender and maya now
Nyom Chung: i have a thai style hut, i finished many times but it won't load into the sim...  I get a data issue.
Cherry Manga: why so, you cannot upload, or it doesn't appear rezzed?
Phred 420: probably has too much spiritual component

Lux Tergeste: I found absolutely nothing, but the place is charming
Original Character:who turned into a friggin rock?
Lux Tergeste: OMG... Obelix?
Original.Character02: oh it's a waterfall heheh
Drang Po: alex found the waterfall
alex54 Salamander: ;-) sorry
Thirza Ember: wow - you are so strong!!
Roland Francis: it's astonishing, so high on the mountain and I don't feel cold nor do I feel the strong winds
Nyom Chung: yup can breathe easy

Roland Francis: I visited a few times in the past, but that's almost 2 years ago, nice to see that the landscape has nicely evolved
Nyom Chung: we have been pretty slow and doing things here
Drang Po: with only 2 of us it takes along time to do all the scripting, and mesh creating... on top of work  :)   but with time it starts to come together... a labor of love

Phred 420: i found Ganesh! well maybe Ganesh found me
          Finally we went to visit Dharma Town, which is an educational resource. The pavilions and tent each impart a lesson about an aspect or an individual connected to Buddhism.

Phred 420: a town, rather than a village?
Drang Po: takes a village to raise a child, takes a town to support the Dharma :)   all those begging monks

Drang Po: well Ubuntu 18.04 and opensim .9 seem to work well together so that's a positive :)

HG Addresses
TGrid welcome area                                         hg.viewtwo.net:8600
TGrid giant Varregion                                      hg.viewtwo.net:8600:var 16

Kalasiddhi Hunt                                               kalasiddhigrid.com:8002:welcome_kalasiddhi welcome

Kalasiddhi cultural learning center                  kalasiddhigrid.com:8002:dharma_town