HG Safari: A Safari Year

What a year it's been! The Safari started up in January, in the usual timeslot, Wednesdays from 12 noon SLT, but with a new sim on OSGrid courtesy of Ange Menges. The immediate response by old fans and new of the weekly group hypergridding concept was great - thank you all.

Prodyck, Lux, Frank and Truelie

The more familiar clubhouse on Francogrid had become unworkable - just teleporting to the grid had become difficult, and regions would often be unavailable for days. The heart of the problem was an issue with server hosts, and as much as Francogrid was the home of the Safari, it seemed unlikely to have a future there.

For that reason, I got busy immediately with porting most of the Safari's Francogrid assets over to other grids.

Aphra, Cherry, Lifted Pixel, and Mal

It was a time consuming process, with permissions and scripts playing up a lot of the time due to changes in ownership - something most of you are familiar with, from your own grid changes! But the new base on OSGrid works well.

The address of new the clubhouse is hg.osgrid.org:80:HG Safari. On January 5 we kicked off the new format Safari with two hunts, first to OSGrid and then to Mobius Grid. Here are some pictures of just a few of the 20 plus group who joined in at the multilevel Hunt build by Nani Ferguson and Ange Menges, with a dinosaur egg theme.

And then all ice and fishing and pontoon boats on Mobius!

The new format Safari is shorter than in previous years, just two hours long, and two destinations each time, and it is broken down into three 10-week seasons, rather than running continuously all year long.

Dorenas-world

We got to celebrate with the folk at Dorena's-world and on Craft, as the grids both celebrated their 12th birthdays. I asked Doernas-world guru Anachron Young what was the secret of longevity in opensim - his answer - "Do your own thing and don't listen to what others think about it."

Sounds like a plan.

Craft Birthday party

On Craft, the theme for this important anniversary was International - lots of flags, but also lots of builds on the adjacent region reflecting all the countries and projects going on over there. Wolem Wobbit sang live, and it was a great opportunity reconnect with many friends, like Nara and ToshaSpeaking of good friends of the Safari, we also got to visit Karima Hoisan over on Kitely, and experienced her amazing ride/immersive multimedia build/art experience The Wizard - spectacular!

Cornflakes Week was in February This is a uniquely Opensim party event, not linked to any real world religious or national festival, any grid can participate in any way they like. Cherry Manga built a dance hall for the Safari complete with animesh, EEP, and lovely textures, re-imagining the classic Corny look for the new decade. Whirli Placebo sang.

Ferd Frederix welcomed us to his sci fi film build Silent Refueling

and Max Hill to see his fantasy build Phaedra

Our first season in March with plenty of light and color, including Jukebox by Cherry Manga

A taste of New Orleans Carnival on Wyldwood Bayou grid,

and finally a visit with Crista Lopes the fairy godmother of Hypergridding

Ubit

Season Two got going with a trip to meet Ubit Umarov, the top dev of opensimulator and a trip to see the space museum at Kitely, but we also went to Counterearth the Gor grid and took a ride on the Tarns,

as well as meeting historically correct Japanese gentleman on Jillian Quintessa's region on Discovery grid.

Nyx Breen's amazing art was another big hit, over on AMV grid

as was a visit to JOG where we glimpsed just a corner of the Abyss Observatory

Tall ships on Kitely, small trains on Winxtropia, the Little Prince on OSgrid, and Alice in Wonderland on Copykat were among our other stops along the way.

Historic Liverpool with Graham Mills

Winxtropia with Cuteulala Artis

The Little Prince, Exupery

Alice in Wonderland on CopyKat grid

Safari's third and final season of the year began in September with a meet-up with Maria Korolov who told us a bit about her novels and her ideas about the future of virtual worlds.

We celebrated the 55th anniversary of the Lord of the Rings on Ferd's Hobbiton region