Cornflakes in Bloom

The second half of an uproarious, imaginative, and musical Cornflakes Week party was on Winxtropia! A big shout out to everyone who makes the effort (and it's not always easy, as we're all busy people) to honor the event with their great costumes, and by showing up and being part of the fun! But most of all, of course, to our hosts who do so much work behind the scenes, it's crazy. Here we are arriving on Crescent Melody, Winxtropia, among the incredible instruments that play such a vital part to the event.

Jupiter Rowland: Finally I get to see this sim on a decently powered machine.

Bloom Peters:  hehe i love all the cool new avatars to see

Lavia Lavine: ...she said I reminded her of a bag of Wonder Bread

Bloom Peters: Angelic with a cool avatar too, very unique

Lavia Lavine: So I guess I'll just loaf around.

Farstar Enoch: hehe

Star Ravenhurst: Angel always looks amazing

Cornflakes on Neverworld

Cornflakes Week comes round once a year, and it's a great opportunity to show off your imaginative side in a uniquely Opensim way. This year, as usual, the Safari celebrated the week long event with our Wednesday tour split into two halves, with our first party destination on Neverworld Grid. 

Never Plaza... the calm before the storm.

Be ready to be amazed by what the Neverworldians pulled out of their corny inventories...

But first, a shout out to everyone who dressed up! Lots of cornflake hats, plus Angelic Kisses rocking an Alpha Tribe outfit by Felix Ringtail, Lavia Lavine and four-legged friend sporting spots, Roff clowning it,  James in a vintage carpetman avie with lit-up face, Forest ant-itified, while a colorfully ringed lifted pixel took to the corny dancefloor, as she prepared to livestream the event. 

Atlas TV

We arrived, all of  group, on a wintry welcome region of the Francophone grid, Atlas. It was our second destination for this week, and the tech talk portion of our adventure. Home to Harthelie, Chip and Jeff, it's a grid where ancient architecture hints at supernatural powers...

Cherry Manga: wow both are working, inworld Voice and Mumble, my brain explodes :)

LadyKa 007: lol, Cherry, ou alors, tu entends des voix

Cherry Manga: that's magic! wizardry

Jeff Kelley: Welcome back to Atlas, the grid with technology. Harth, Chip and Jeff are your hosts. We have two topics tonight: A hot one : Mumble (15 minutes). A visit to our new TV studio (40 minutes).

Star Ravenhurst: *-* YeSS! *-*

James Atlloud: ! very nice

Jeff Kelley: There is an extensive coverage of Mumble by Snowbody Cortes here I, at some point, mentioned online that we had a fallback Mumble solution in case Vivox pulls the plug or suffers an outage, which happened weeks ago. Thirza popped and asked me to talk about it. It is a minimalistic Mumble integration. A two-step process : First, click the panel and proceed to the web page. Then click the offered link.  If the Mumble client is installed on your computer, you are now connected to the Mumble channel for this region with your avatar's name.

Jeff Kelley: I see many of you has joined This is not a replacement for a fully-integrated solution which, by the way, had existed in the past (2011) but broke thanks to the smart concept of hardware/OSes/APIs/libraries/everything-obsolete next year. See here Ange Menges' blog from 2011

Akata Ocean: Bonsoir tlm

Jeff Kelley: I shut up for now to give you a chance to try / ask questions.

thirza ember: was it simple to convince atlas people to join Mumble Jeff?

Jeff Kelley: they love it

LadyKa 007: Not only Atlas people ! lol, I have it too

Once in a Blue Moon

The Blue Wave Club is an old soul in opensim, and it carries its memories lightly, with long friendships.  The club is located under a pyramid that gives the sim its name, and under the sim water, that gives an unearthly light to the dancefloor. 

Unlike so many clubs which are as huge as aircraft hangars, making the dancing public seem like ants, this is an intimate, primmy, colorful space, with that warm, lived-in feel to it. Full HG Address at the end of the post, as always.

Cherry Manga: hello!

Elamanu Pastorelli: hi all

Samira Samtanko: hello all  welcome to the  Midweek Party

Cornflakes Week

'Tis the season... but wait, no real world seasonal atmospherics involved, this is all virtual. Cornflakes Week is coming!
Always held during the final 7 days of February, this year's Cornflakes Week is 22-29 February. It's a festival just for opensim, and for everyone... not linked to any religious or national festivals, making it an all-inclusive addition to the many fun real-world oriented events that happen inworld. 

The first Cornflakes Week event was celebrated in 2015, and HG Safari always celebrates it

Here Be Dragons

After our first, super romantic hour on Soul Grid, our second stop has its own romance, with a big dose or art and adventure thrown in. This was a return trip to Barefoot Dreamers grid, on the invitation of DJAlex, and the first impressions of the build were ..awesome in the true sense of the word.

Home Sweet Home - dragons arrival point

Tosha Tyran: oh, this looks dangerous

DJAlex Harper: welcome to all

Secret Fantasys: Thank You all for coming

Huga Bug: welcome everyone

Star Ravenhurst: Hey Lavia! You made it!

Forest Azure: hi alex :)

Nara Nook: Neo is the redshirt guy ...dragon bait

Lavia Lavine: Yes I finally made it.  I was at the first one as well... Hail hail the gang's all here!

Secret Fantasys: everyone looks so awesome

DJ Alex

DJAlex Harper: OK plz follow me we will start at starting point, you get the best view from up here to start

Tosha Tyran: wow, but it is also a little dangerous

DJAlex Harper: yes a bit, plz be careful

Hearts on Soul

Tosca sim has been described as the heart of Soul Grid, the German-speaking world belonging to Nasti Backerly who invited the Safari to come over and enjoy part of their Valentine's day celebration. This mediterranean-looking sim is full of flowers and romance, and is the perfect place to celebrate February 14 in a beautifully lit and very popular sky build.

Bu first, of course, the Safari crew (and that means you too, any time you are able to join us) convened on OSgrid at the Safari clubhouse.

lifted pixel: hello internet friends :3

snowbody Cortes: hello

Thirza Ember: internet friends are the best lol you can ghost them and they don't even mind

lifted pixel: honestly yeah, we understand RL happens and we'll catch up later :3

Priory Accommodation

The Science Circle grid was our first destination this week and it is something quite out of the way in terms of our usual visits - this one is a piece of opensim history and a piece of RL history, combined. It's the build by Christi Maeterlinck, Mount Grace.
This is a first class build! If you read this blog, you may recall an article about it some time ago - this week, finally, was our opportunity to do a group visit. Not the full tour which offers a deep dive into the documented past of both the construction and rl history of the place, but a quick look, in anticipation of other visits.

Once again, Jessica 'lifted' Pixel was on hand to film the whole shenanigans, giving a real time pixel-eye view of what it's like to come on these trips. 

Lawrence of Serenity

 Tosha Tyran: Hiya Lawrence, thanks for the invite

Thirza Ember: the bravery of this man is incredible

Lawrence Pierce

Lawrence Pierce: My pleasure

Forest Azure: are we dangerous?

Luna Lunaria: we iz

Tosha Tyran: lol, yes, we nibble

Lawrence Pierce: Well, just a brief introduction...I started using and building in Second Life while working on a master's in education, and then discovered Open Simulator and Kitely.

James Atlloud: Hey Lawrence, I did pretty much the same thing.

Lawrence Pierce: Yes, SL and education are regular portals to virtual living! Serenity Island was born August 29, 2011. I came here every day to create as a calming activity while going through a loss. It represents a variety of my interests through time.  After all this time, visiting Serenity Island now is like visiting a lifelong friend.

Tosha Tyran: how sweet

Dates with Destiny... and more

Opensim is such a great multi media and multi reality place and here are a few items that prove that statement. It's a great way to learn about other cultures and languages and ideas, so be sure to get out there and explore!

First of all congrats to Art Destiny radio which is 2 years old this month! 

It's a radio station with commentary by three opensim friends, Richi, Genie Fegte, and Loru - plenty of great music, great chat if you know German or want to practice listening to German and improve your accent, and either way a great choice for the soundtrack to your sim, perhaps. It's a fun way to bring together the diaspora of small grids with a people who know opensim inside out.

Give it a try! Here is their latest promo, which you can also watch on Youtube of course - and if you watch it there you can Like, Comment and of course subscribe to the channel.

More SGT

 SGT? That would be Self Guided Tours, or Trails, in Opensim.  But kind of fun a challenge too. Each of these self-guided tours is a collection of 6 HG addresses/LMs that will take you all over the hyperverse to see things linked  by a common theme like 'art destinations' (there are loads of separate tours for that, each one has the name of a color), or builds that are inspired by movies, or real places, and so on. It's not all of the builds that are out there, of course, just a sampling of the treats out there. 

Avacon portals

Lots of people set up HG hubs, a particularly good example was the one that late Rudy Backerly set up on Soul Grid some time ago, continuing the hard work of Spike Sols Weltraumbahnhof. 

HG Safari has a rather different approach. Instead of offering lots of portals to specific places, the idea is to make grid jumping even more portable - you can grab a pack of LMs and a notecard listing the destinations, use them at a later date, pass them to a friend and so on. 

Are You Ready to Mumble..?

Last week, on Inworld Review, we talked Murmur with two guests. Cyberglo Cyberstar, famous for his scripting prowess and many wonderful free items on his grid Cyberdatastorm, runs a Mumble server on his grid, and he told us a bit about it. Opensim veteran Snowbody Cortes shared some general information about how Mumble could revolutionize opensim, and here are the slides he showed us during the program.

Inworld Review Studio

Snowbody Cortes:  I first got interested in Mumble in 2009 but at the time I didn't really think about it in terms of an overall service for virtual worlds. Back then, Mumble was less evolved than it is today. I did some standalone experiments, and I created a Murmur server that I shared with some SL friends, just to be able to have a communication channel that didn't use the usual things like Skype or WhatsApp.

For a long time, it seemed like the voice element in opensim was covered by Vivox, so I didn't really dedicate any time to thinking about Mumble. I was aware that there were various projects that were aimed at integrating Mumble into opensim use, and of course over recent years, it is becoming clear that the vivox solution for opensim voice is not a long term and reliable thing, it could go away any time; and of course we are grateful to them that they have provided this service to us for free for so many years.

Snowbody Cortes: When I heard there was going to be an edition of Inworld Review talking about Mumble for Opensim, I began thinking about strategies for bringing Mumble into Opensim in a way that would be low tech and easy for users to figure out, maybe just as an independent tool to be used in parallel with the virtual world, which was the way I had used it all those years ago. The best solution would be if Mumble was integrated into the Viewer, of course, so that the user doesn't have to do anything. That seemed a big ask... 

Snowbody Cortes: So, going from what would be the most simple way right up to the most sophisticated way to bring Mumble into opensim, I came up with 4 possibilities. That is what these slides illustrate, just to demonstrate the possibilities and to invite people to think about ways it might be made to work.
I'm not saying these are the only solutions, but more like a set of ideas that can be useful. Opensim is not a monolith. the people have lots of different needs and their own ideas about how they want to run their grids. and for sure, people with more detailed knowledge of opensimulator code may have a lot to contribute in terms of coming up with a module... but let me explain the basics first.

In the Abyss

 James Atlloud: i am mes-mer-ized

Imagine a drowned city, old as time.  Here creatures of the sea play among the ruins, while above the water a series of monumental bridges link land masses, no more than islands now, where a scatter of fine buildings, architecture ancient and modern, can be visited - even danced in and shopped in.

Mr Smokes and Nexus Storm

 From a landing point among coral and shoals of fish, Nexus led the intrepid group who made it to Aqua Abyss through the main points of interest at quite a speed. 

The Virtue of Paragon

Tosha Tyran: lately we seem to have full house a lot

Star Ravenhurst: Because this is FUN!

Forest Azure: yay!

Thirza Ember: OK time to go... see you at PARAGON PARK

Gabe Collingwood and Huga Bug

Huga Bug: Welcome all.   Paragon Park opened to the public on Saturday, June 10, 1905, transforming Nantasket for the better part of the 20th century. This park was built from photos of child hood & off the web. It is a wonderful Place to have spent summer fun. 

Star Ravenhurst: I am so excited!! I love theme parks, carnivals, fairs...anything with rides!

Paragon Park

Nara Nook: me too