Destiny at the Movies

 It's finally here, Loru Destiny's fabulous Opensim Film festival. Months in the making, this unique event pitted the wits and witticism of all of Opensim's filmmakers, representing people from many different grids, languages, and parts of the world, all sharing their visions of the virtual world with us.

The sim has that 'somewhere way out West' look to it, with ruddy bluffs and a bit of a canyon, the ideal space in which to have a vast Drive In with all your favorite muscle cars and rusty trucks.

Getting International on AMV

Once again AMV grid is having their special International Diversity concert - indeed, maybe it's still going on! The idea, just like in 2024, is to have a bunch of singers from all over the planet to come in and do a 30 minute set, each one with a personalized backdrop reflecting their cultural roots, creating a feeling of vitality and world-trotting wonder from the comfort of our own desks, or, if we're honest, from a nice comfy chair.

Hypergridding has been a lagfest for the past few weeks, so I was expecting low framerates and a bit of a struggle but with over 30 people on the sim, once all the mesh boobs and brains shrunk back to their respective places, the whole sim was popping! 

Mr Mikie was singing when I arrived, followed by Cataplexia, who stepped in when Joao Frazao had an electrical outage. 

A Bayou Bye Bye

The final part of the final Safari of the season took us over to the brightly colored N'awlins build on Wyldwood Bayou Grid. It's a great combination of historical recreations, party venue, freebie mall (definitely worth exploring the sim for some unusual, useful, and beautiful finds) , and landscape with both swamp and street plan, a complete delight - HG address at the end of the post, of course! 

On hand to greet us, two Wyldwood stalwarts, Fitheach Eun and Kith Whitehawk. They held over the their traditional Carnival celebrations for us, so that the Safari could go out in style with a Louisiana spring in our step.

Kith Whitehawk: Now that's Mardi Gras brother!!!!

Luna Lunaria: These guys love playing rock blues :-)

Safari Boosts its Brains

Our first stop of the week was on Virtual Learning Village, usually this grid is mostly closed to Hypergrid tourists because it is a place of learning and meditation, for improving your brain health. What better place to end a hectic 10 weeks of HG travel. The sim has a European feel, like an elegant suburb in a historic city.

Lisenna welcomes the HG Safari group - arriving a little bit at a time, and in grey.

Lissena Wisdomseeker: Welcome to Virtual Learning Village!  VLV was created in 2018, but I have been active in Opensim since the first OSCC. I volunteer at the conference every year.  I had a region on Avacon first, then Max and I talked about developing our own grid. Our vision was to have a place outside of Second Life where we could offer our programs for organizations and groups who would benefit from a more private, controlled environment where they can design their own regions. Max's team has given this grid a very special ambiance and I am very proud of what we have built. Many thanks to Max and Buildwerk.

Lissena Wisdomseeker: whispers: Sunny has a place here, and Fran has helped us too

Maximillian Merlin: We are now in the Hypergrid region of Virtual Learning Village. The Virtual Learning Village is a non profit virtual 3D platform. The grid was developed by Lynne Berrett (Lissena Wisdomseeker) and Maximillian Merlin with his volunteer Buildwerk  team. Our umbrella nonprofit organization is the Ageless Mind Project. Our purpose is to provide lifelong learning of many kinds, all based on best practices for promoting brain health and total well-being.  The VLV grid offers limited access to and from the hypergrid, to protect our students. We have devoted much time and thought to making this virtual world more user-friendly and sheltered than SL can be. 

Dismayland, Undismayed!

Dismayland is one of the most unusual regions in Opensim, for its 'ban' on attachments, for its insulting NPCs and many scripted rides, and for the risk to life and limb! For the HG Safari visit this week, which was also Cornflakes Week, Spax Orion, the grid owner and the magician behind all these rides, lifted the no Mesh no Attachment rule, and allowed HG Safari to come and visit. 

Spax Orion

Spax had also prepared a special flying saucer ship toshow off the rides from the air, with the idea that people will get a good glimpse at the park and return to the rides on other occasions. It's one of those places where you can spend hours enjoying the variety or imaginative machines, but also the funny NPCs chatting and arguing with each other. Here's the lovely Siwas, resplendent in her many Biker attachments, enjoying the Nuclear Haste ride, as the rest of us rode around in the sky.

This week Opensim has been acting weird (well it has been doing so for several weeks, as many have noted) and lots of people are getting kicked or banned messages from places for no discernable reason. Poor James Atlloud managed to get refused entry on avatars from 3 different grids! And similar problems were found by many others. These are almost all not intentional messages by the grid owners.

There is, I'm afraid, nothing that I or the grid owners can do about that except to invite you to try again at another time, and say we're sorry we didn't have your company... and invite you not to make a drama out of a technical glitch, if at all possible.

Cornflakes 2025 NW Style

It's Cornflakes Week in Opensim, and the HG Safari crew landed on Neverworld for the second hour of our tour, guests of Govega and all the NVW friends, on the brightly colored Cornflakes stage at Never Plaza, just as we did last year.  

Nexus Storm: Welcome to everyone from the Hypergrid Worlds !!!!

Before we get on to the Corny events of the day, just a quick word about hypergridding. If you have recently gotten the 'Avatars from your gird are not allowed' message on a bunch of grids, please don't assume that there is some sort of massive war going on. These are mostly mistakes - the opensim ecology appears to be suffering quite a lot recently, and often the system is messing up, and sending out false 'Not Allowed' messages. Please try again, or try a different avatar, or above all don't assume the worst  ...chances are, it's not the grid owner trying to offend or exclude you, it's just the intertubes getting stuffed up. 

For those who may not remember, Cornflakes Week (the last seven days in February each year) is a festival unique to opensim, not linked to any real world festival, nor a holdover from SL, but a reminder of simpler times in opensim when we were all much younger and so were our prims. Not every grid does it, and no two grids celebrate the same way; Osgrid has traditionally done a big party although with the current rush to save .oars and .iars, likely they will have other things on their minds. 

Neverworld's house band the King Trio were spinning the tunes for Cornflakes Week

Entertainment supplied by the King Trio who gave us a selection of Country music. 

For a lot of people, the name 'Cornflakes' probably only means the breakfast cereal, but it has much deeper roots in the history of opensim. Virtual platforms like Opensim are more and more being recognized as places with a population and its own particular customs, a sort of virtual civilization, and having our own traditions and legends that unite us, well, that is part of what makes our archipelago of grids unique. 

Going Stag

Our second stop on Safari this week was on a roleplay grid, where Lavia Lavine has made a pastiche of life in the days of the 'wild  west' where she reinterprets what has often been overplayed in movies, the less savory side of life. 

The sim is the setting for play but at its heart are some serious observations, making it interesting for any visitor as a cultural commentary on a famous part of US history. We arrived in the sumptuously glazed railroad station, close to the ticket office.

Lavia Lavine: Stag Hollow is located in the Oklahoma territory in the late 1850s. They were just getting the Trains and Telegraph in.  

Lavia Lavine: Stag  Hollow isn't just for RP though that is my hope but it is also for historical value. The western cities and towns were not the dustbowls that Hollywood portrays.: Most of them were actually like this with dirt and gravel roads.

Tosha's Timbuktu

Timbuktu is a thousand year old frontier town, the southern gateway to the Sahara. A slightly newer, slightly more accessible version of the city was our first destination on Safari this week, the sim of Timbuktu... HG address, as tradition demands, at the end of the post, where it belongs.

The name of the city has been synonymous with the utter limits of the world, an unknowable place in the middle of nowhere, and it's a reputation earned through the centuries, through the writings of people like Ibn Battuta in the 1300s and Leo Africanus two hundred years later. Timbuktu is protected by the port town of Kabara twelve miles to the south, on the Niger River, the chief communications route in this part of the world. Many a disappointed traveler in both ancient and modern times has been turned back at Kabara, adding to the mystique of the city of learning that few outsiders have ever had a chance to see firsthand.

Edinburgh born explorer, scholar, and soldier Alexander Laing is thought to have been the first European to see Timbuktu, hoping to win the 9,000 Franc prize offered by the Société de Géographie to the first non muslim to visit the city and come back with information about it. After a traumatic crossing of the Sahara, he arrived in town in the summer of 1826 and spent some time in the legendary libraries. Weeks later, as he departed the city, he was killed by the men he had paid to protect him, just a few months shy of his thirty-second birthday. 

Less than a year later, Frenchman René Caillié won the prize, bringing back a firsthand account of this almost mythical city of learning and culture. Today, travelers face very similar risks as those first journeyers did. The city has been on the edge of a war zone since about 2012, with the usual mix of tribal interests, global politics, poverty, historic resentment, opportunism, way too many weapons floating about, testosterone and religion all causing havoc to the fabric of the fragile treasures of the town.

For that reason, we're lucky to be able to visit the city virtually, on Craft Grid, thanks to builder Tosha Tyran's sim Timbuktu. It comes alive with NPCs and interpretive boards, making the experience one of the richest in opensim, if you like learning about exotic places. The biggest obstacle for anyone who hasn't teleported to Craft before, is a few clickies to authenticate your avatar. It can be a bit confusing, but no firearms are involved in the process! 

Fair Test

 Today was the OSWF test  and about a dozen or so showed up to see how the gigantic sim - the equivalent of 64 normal size sims, and now pretty much complete with all the exhibits, stages, and decorations -  was able to handle the heat.

If you're wondering why you don't see the sim listed on opensimworld, or find the address pasted all over the place, well there's a good reason for that. The team want to try to keep early bird visitors to a minimum. 

Their idea is that the crowd should get the full impact of the place on opening day, which is Saturday March 1, when they'll be having a vibrant range of 4 musical guests - DJs and a live singer -  doing 30 minute sets on different, themed stages, with a repeat show later, just to get energy levels buzzing. 

For full details of the Fair's schedule, which features at least one party or other gathering on every day of the thirty day duration, go to the OSWF website  and connect with their calendar. And once the event is about to begin, you'll get plenty of publicity about when and where to visit!

Expo-Sure!

 HIE stands for Hypergrid International Expo and the main event, a conference in different languages, with talks about scripting, everyday opensim life stories, tales of the history of our platform, and art shows - 4 amazing performances! - is not until the first week of April. But the 'Expo' part of the event comes together long before that.

Mal Burns had the idea for the little booths back in 2017 for the first Hypergrid International Expo, as a fun and  crowd-friendly way for people to participate. Around the auditorium, the market-stall style creations brighten and enliven the place, but it's a trade-off between community and sim efficiency.... So... Many...Textures.
Yesterday we did a little load test to see if all this hard work has turned into a lagfest or not. It was a good day to choose, because the whole of opensim is in a state of trembles, with the ongoing OSGrid asset -cleaning event.

Mal Burns: this venue looks familiar!

 LadyKa 007: hello, everyone is good ?

snowbody Cortes: hello LadyKa, hey Minord:)

SoA BAD: hello all

Forest Azure: /me regrets it her horse did not travel with her

Taarna Welles: Put the horse in your Suitcase Forest. Just in case :D

Thirza.Ember: Welcome back to HG Safari Grid, this is our 3x3 sim called HIE. It is set up for the annual Hypergrid International Expo, which in 2025 will be held on the weekend from Friday 4 April (when there's an opening concert) and then the conference and art performances on Saturday and Sunday. The purpose of this conference is to give a chance to people whose first language isn't English to give a talk about their interests, their philosophy, or technical inventions or developments.

Go Westeros

First stop of the day, and after an exhausting week, inworld and out, this was one of those absolutely perfect tours that we dream of on Safari. New hosts for us, but hopefully they will let us come and bother them again, on Wolf Territories. The sim is called Westeros Medieval RP and as always the HG Address can be found at the end of the post.

Thirza Ember: with all the osgrid thing happening we may be fewer than usual

Steve Zodi: yes, i was  expecting that a bit, but word of mouth is always the best way to let people know, so if a few people show up, even if only one, its good to spread the word

Thirza Ember: lol they can be chatty and rowdy like a bunch of tourists when first arriving... well... they ARE  a bunch of tourists

Steve Zodi: its ok, the important is that they have fun and yes they are

Steve Sodl on hand to welcome the merry band of Safari tourists

Thirza Ember: here they come

Tosha Tyran: all naked again...

Steve Zodi: Greetings to all, welcome

Taarna Welles: Hello Steve

Steve Zodi: yes losing our clothes when teleporting is part of the fun... chuckles

Mal Burns: hi all

Tosha Tyran: hahaha, Forest, I see I am not the only one with the lipstick wrapped around the thigh

Forest Azure: lol... if that was all!

Taarna Welles: why are the woman always naked after TP??? Well....?? *Grins

Tosh Tyran: howdy Mal... why don't we ever get to see YOU naked?

Forest Azure: do we want that, Tosha?

Mina and King Max

Safaristas. You can't take them anywhere. 

Spring Clean

 I'm kind of looking forward to the great OSGrid asset reset. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work going back over the 13 and a half years of precious things and junk. Hold on though... scanning through Inventory it quickly becomes clear that although there are 18,000 items in there, maybe half of that is duplicates / slightly modified versions of the same thing. Eliminate those, and the things worth keeping probably boil down to ten maybe 20 percent of what's left. Decluttering - yes please! 

By the way, if you know anyone who only occasionally shows up in OSGrid, or who doesn't follow the news much, then be a friend, and remind them that the OSGrid Reset will take place around March 21 - so now's the time to act!

This is definitely the moment to make sure any scripts you care about, any creations, anything that you have that's unique to your OSGrid avatar is in a safe place.
A big shout out to all the other grid owners who are helping out with the situation and offering places for people to go/put their stuff!

Safari in the Clouds

 Neverworld Grid was our second stop this week, we were there to experience the grid's unusual and exciting weekly event, the Never Riders Club, on Cloudburst Roads. 'Club' in the widest sense of the word - locals and hg visitors are all very welcome, the only qualifications are an ability to ride a bike, and the desire to have fun.

Meanwhile, the Safaristas had their own challenges...

Taarna Welles: Am I headless still?

Thirza Ember: I see white people

Taarna Welles: I see James.... with clothes! :)

James Atlloud: OH? I see fewer clothes here than Risa!  lol

Lynnestra Parker: ღ¸.•* LoL *•.¸ღ

Best Resort

Our first stop this 6th week of the season was on sim Lothlorien, by Stormy Scorpio. We were there to see a piece of Star Trek paradise....

Moses and Stormy

Stormy Scorpio: welcome to Risa Forest... this is the ruins

Thirza Ember: the spaceship in the sky is so startling!

Stormy Scorpio: it is hovering over the planet,  hehe, a lot of shore leave right now

Star Ravenhurst: It looks fabulous up there! Beam me up Scotty!

Stormy Scorpio: I hope you all enjoy exploring risa there is a lot to see

Ankh Senaton: the pleasure planet ;)

Loru Destiny[de→en]: I like the story from Star Trek as a Picard on Risa vacation, very much

Lavia Lavine : Spock was my favorite character.

Loru Destiny: live long and prosper Lavia :-)

James Atlloud: Spock was a breath of fresh air to my young self.

Forest Azure: you have a young self, James?

James Atlloud: I do, really I do.

Karneval Is Koming!

Will your grid participate?

Pangea grid is gaining a reputation for art events, and also for its 'hands across the hypergrid' approach to social events, like RL festivals. Why do it? Grid owner Marlon says it nicely.

Marlon Wayne: carnival is a good thing to bring grids and people together.

In a big way, Pangea goes in for Carnival Cologne style ...or as they call it  Köln or, if you don't do umlauts, Koeln. It's a city that does a straight week of crazy days - a sort of teutonic Rio or New Orleans - with the highlight being Rose Monday, March 3 this year. Costumes, a lot of drinking, candy, more drinking, a parade and dancing, and some more drinking, are the main features of the day.

Fish Love Money

For our second stop this week, another take on the Japanese theme. Our host wasn't able to join us on the Isle of Nara, so the crew had to put up with some factoids from me, much like the time when we went to Yana Dakota's Tahiti sim and she had a power outage. The Safarians bore the burden with great stoicism.

Thirza Ember: This is a Japanese style GOR region owned by Shinji Takahashi. We are on CounterEarth grid. This is a Gorean community that moved to Opensim in the very early days, and was first located on OSGrid. Some may remember the sim Sardar Fair which was still exists, back in the day it was one of the few good shopping places in opensim. Some of the founding members of CounterEarth are content creators and offer their stuff for free in opensim, while selling it in  Second Life. We thank them for their generosity over the years!

Star Ravenhurst: I have been excited to visit! I am sorry they're not here though.

Yana's Samsara

 The circle of life - birth and death, and rebirth - that's Samsara, a process that leads over time and many repetitions, to the state of nirvana. Samsara is the name of Yana Dakota's var region on AMV, a region that's undergoing renewal and growth. HG Address at the end of the post, as always.

It was a pretty quick rez as the hordes of Safarians arrived - we've been having slow textures for a few weeks, but this time, they all arrived in the little dock house with seconds of lag only. It's a big region, so everyone tried to keep their draw distances and other bells and whistles to a minimum, of course.

Yana Dakota: Namaste to Samsara. Creating the Samsara region in the Alternate Metaverse has been a labor of love. My goal was to design a space that encourages introspection and spiritual growth. Every detail, from the high-detailed builds to the serene environment, was crafted to provide a peaceful and immersive experience. The music and viewer settings are optimized to enhance the overall atmosphere, making it feel more engaging and calming.

Elegant and lagbusting the ladies of the Safari are unbeatable!

If the name of this sim is familiar to you it's because there was an interview with Yana on this blog a few weeks back. This was an opportunity for Yana to show off her favorite pieces and also to explain so much about this belief system that is so close to her heart. 

Crystal Craft

 Craft Grid is celebrating its Crystal Anniversary - fifteen years of community, international friendship, big art, lovely residences, educational projects, and a warm sociability that has kept its residents amused and absorbed all these years. It's a tightly knit community, with people from all over the world, though it's fair to say, a nice slice of Italians who will make you feel welcome in the grid's general Chat group whenever you log in. 

It's a grid that has always been generous - for example, for many years, Licu Rau, the owner of Craft, donated the regions for the Hypergrid International Expo. Licu has also invited the HG Safari group more than once to celebrate Cornflakes Week with him - here he is, dressed for the event, back in 2016. 

I asked Licu  what is planned for this birthday party on Monday 27 January starting at 12:30pm SLT on Jubilee sim.

Licu Rau: We will have a musical evening in an environment inspired by crystals. Being a moment of transition in which various technical changes and specific needs overlapped, we were not able to organize special events as done on some other occasions.

Thirza Ember:  What kind of changes? Tell us more.

Khiron's Voice

If you know Opensim, you've almost certainly heard the beautiful mezzo soprano voice of Khiron Ametza at one venue or another. And yes, you're right, I did have to restrain myself from calling this blog post Ametza Soprano, and no, it wasn't easy, you know me so well. Anyway. The very talented Khiron (check out her SoundCloud page!) started her career as a vocalist back in in 1986, singing with lounge bands, in bars, dance halls and parties in general. Then about 15 years ago, she made a change. 

Khiron Ametza: I decided to focus on the virtual world in 2009 and stopped performing in RL. 

She's a seasoned and busy performer (you can find her calendar here) so I was curious to know what she feels are the most significant differences for a singer between these very different realities.

Khiron Ametza: The difference between RL and Virtual Worlds is that in VW I can sing what I like to sing, while in RL I had to sing all kinds of rhythms and songs that were bad for my ears and used to make me sick, and what's more, singing with playbacks gives me the pleasure of listening to the music the way it is, without musicians inventing different melodies for the songs.

Ana's Paris

 Our second destination for Safari this week was in Paris! What a fantastic venue on NewLifeItaly grid which despite the name s home to people from many parts of the world and different languages. HG Address at the end of the post, as always. 

In case you don't know, you can find out about upcoming Safari trips by joining our group in Facebook, or by checking the Events calendar in Opensimworld, where it clearly tells you which will be our first and second destinations each time. 

I generally send out a reminder in the OSgird group for HG Safari about an hour before our trips, but since the event attracts interest from many grids, not just that one, social media is a much better way to stay informed. The glamorous and versatile sim owner AnaMari Maggi met us at the sim's starting point, and we also had the company of a big group of locals, including the sim builders, Nadir and Max.

AnaMari Maggi, the region owner

Anamari Maggi[it→en]: good evening everyone

Nadir Rae[fr→en]: Welcome to all of you,  remember to accept the translator and put your native language there please

Angel Dark[it→en]: hi welcome everyone to Paris

Thirza Ember: Nadir you look so cute, very Parisienne- nice baguette!

Nadir Rae: yes I am a Parisian and I have a newsboy near me

It took us a little while to rez, because we came into a large crowd of welcoming NewLifeItalians, there to join the tour. While the region is owned by AnaMari Maggi, the tour was conducted by Nadir Rae, who together with Max Well of Ignis Fatuus Grid, brought the sim into being. We met outside the sim's reconstruction of Notre Dame.

Nadir Rae, our guide - easy to see in the crowd

Nadir Rae: Friends tonight I'm going to be your tour guide we will discover this place together, Welcome to all of you on the New life Italy grid.  We thank Thirza for choosing this place for which Max and I have a particular attachment. Thanks also to Adry, the owner of the Grid. This evening we offer you a unique tour of the memories of Ana who, born in another country, lived her childhood there. This sim is an interpretation of our capital and not an exhaustive restitution. I insist on this point

Nadir Rae: Ah Paris… French capital of gastronomy and love,  Paris enjoys an incomparable historical and cultural heritage. This is what the millions of tourists who come to visit Paris each year appreciate.  But it is not enough to be a foreigner to love Paris, because even if you live in the capital,  it is not uncommon to be surprised by discovering or rediscovering one of the wonders that the city has to offer.  With so much to see and do in Paris, it's difficult to put together a list that gets to the essentials while still having a realistic experience of everything Ana's sim has to offer. 

Domadun Fun

Thirza Ember: here they come!

Within a few seconds, the population of  Bubblesz Grid, which is a small personal grid belonging to mesh maven Taarna Welles, went from two to fourteen. You could positively feel the nerves - Would the grid be able to take the strain? Would we all be standing frozen in a pool of lag? Worst of all, would Locat Chat fail us? You know how we love our banter.

Taarna Welles on a quidditch teleporter

You may have read about this grid in an earlier post on this blog - this was a chance for the whole group to take a look, and the sim is open any time, if you want to explore it.

Bubblesz Grid Welcome Region

People kept on coming, - we met on the grid's Welcome sim, the HG Address is of course at the end of the post -  and for once, everybody brought their clothes with them! Each week, Safari goers are encouraged to dress in a lag-friendly way, keeping complexity as low as fashion and good taste will allow. You can do that in a lot of ways - use the original body, not mesh, check you haven't got one of those Hairs with an insane complexity (those may look good to you, but they're best binned, if they exceed 100k complexity, because chances are everyone else only sees a tornado of bits flying around your head), if you have mesh clothes that contain a lot of texture changing scripts, make a reference copy for safekeeping, and then delete all the scripts from the clothes you wear... there are lots of other common sense ways you can help the group. If you have a favorite strategy, put it in the comments.

Signs and Visions on Osgrid

 Constelacion de Orion 2 on Osgrid is one of the regions that Geo Perez calls home. Geo's been around opensim for many years now, and these regions, inspired by his writings and built by Tina Bey, will be the subject of one of the upcoming talks at the Hypergrid INternational Expo on HG Safari grid, in the first weekend of April.

Here he is in the avatar that is itself part of the story of his books, and these regions - veery white, with flowing locks and a strange electricity flowing around his body.

Geo Perez:  Welcome to Constelacion Orion geo portal. 

Geo Perez: This is my sim Alinijena 2... Next month I'm going to make a grid of my own, so all my lands will be moving. This is the entrance if you see behind you there are the dimensional portals

Geo Perez: Here are my promotional books...  I have like 17 but 33 if you count the translations in English and Spanish. My story is captured here, this place designed by Tina Bey, everything passed on my book and she created it all.

Love to Verna

DJ, builder, landscape creator, loyal friend, photographer, and welcoming hostess at so many events, Verna Avril has been a valued friend and a familiar face in Opensim for a decade. Her long career of creativity in virtual worlds, going back to the days of Second Life.

 Here's a shot of her handiwork from 2012, on a sky platform on a SL sim called Sharks Cove. The environment she made here was called ' Dragon and Angel Palace' and Verna's love of fantasy comes through, all these years later... 

Verna's Dragon and Angel Palace

... but of course, SL could never be big enough for such a passionate builder! 

Verna landed in Osgrid back in 2012. She has accounts on several different grids, but Osgrid is home to most of her building projects. In 2022 she told me she had ten 4x4 regions, many of them rich environments, and several under construction. She's always been a big thinker - whether it's landscapes, roleplay, or having fun.

Right now, Verna is battling health issues, but even if she's not inworld, she is definitely not forgotten.

Lots of friends all send the same message - prayers, good wishes, and a reminder to stay strong! They include Jaime Wright, Mystic Moonlight, Ozzmosis Ozzy, DJ Purr, Hyacinth, Destiny, Dan, Quaesar Agnomen, Unadecal Masala, and Kylie Brimmer.

Event Plaza

Victoria Logan: Dear Verna, in each of your sessions as a DJ, I have been able to travel through my memories and enjoy your music. Excellent person always willing to help, I know this from my own experience. My hug is with you.

Super Scuba

 Safine Mahoe is an Opensim goddess, but you knew that already, this week for our second destination we visited her tour de force, an underwater build on Friends Grid,  called Aquamica.

We were delighted that Zazu Bahro and Tonykasjohny Resident were also present to welcome us to their fabulous grid, and join us on a walk through the water and help out with information, and when some of us got lost and needed a tp. 

Tony and Zuzu 

Safine outlined the plan for the day, and also reminded us of an important teleport requirement.

The Mysteries of Atlas Island

Our first destination of the day was on Dorena's World, a German-language grid with a long history here in Opensim, and always a treat to visit. Dorena and Anachron, the grid owners, were on hand to greet us, along with friend of the Safari Jupiter Rowland and his sister Juno.

We've visited lots of sims over the years, including the Beatles themed Strawberry Fields, the art sim More than Lights, and the social destination GridTalk and so on, or und so weiter, as they say here. This time our visit was to Atlas-Insel.

Dorena Verne: So, this region created Anachron single-handedly :-)

Luna Lunaria: great to see everyone

SoA BAD: hallo Dorena, hello all

Thirza Ember: takes me a minute to see colors... But we are all here

Dorena Verne

Luna Lunaria: You forgot to switch out your eyeballs again Thirza?

Star Ravenhurst: Region rezzed fast, but avatars are slow to rez for me

Dorena Verne[de→en]: See you all in color and completely, nice :-)

Anachron Young[de→en]: As Bruce Lee once said: Look at your eyes!

James Atlloud: wait, do I have eyeballs? oh  I do.

Luna Lunaria: lol James

Anachron Young

Leonitas Lionheart: nice to see you again Dorena :)

Dorena Verne[de→en]: I'm very happy too, thank you :-)

A Var Var Better Thing

Govega Sachertorte

We met on Little Willow Bay region, redolent of Jerry Garcia, whose art plays a pivotal role on  Neverworld Grid, famed for its many huge themed builds, often the destination of HG Safari trips, invoking everything from history to fantasy to TV shows and films, to the wide open spaces of the American continent. Govega, owner of Neverworld, explained a little of the background to the recent changes on the grid.

Govega Sachertorte: so you know last year we developed the roads sims, starting with cloudburst and shadowlands.. we were simply having so much fun that we decided to expand. We were having crashing issues and, turns out, all our var regions were different sizes, so Una said his OCD was crazy over that, and said we MUST have the SAME sizes for all var regions if they are attached

Thirza Ember:  he is one of many ocd people that can save your bacon

Govega Sachertorte: Yes! and that solved our problems. So once we started fixing the sizes, they all had to be 4x4s

French Respects

A beautiful buddhist bell was tolling in the wide and serene plaza on Francopholie grid, where a new build was inaugurated on Saturday.

Among those present were Edenette Catherinette, Ladyka 007, Minord Loup, Prodyck Theas, Pierre Segrov, Max Well, Nadir Rae, Sweety2 Jefferson, Vanessa and Vlad Vanhelsing, Athena Fira, Baal and Hina Starfall. Tristan Dehaie was the master of ceremonies.

Tristan, Nadir and Minord, among the first to arrive

People arrived gradually from about nine pm Paris time, beginning with Tristan, Nadir, who was in charge of the streamed  music for the event, and Minord Loup, owner of Francopholie which is a tiny grid aimed at helping French language users of Opensim to connect with each other, find resources, answers to technical queries, and the community generally. Gradually, the group grew. Here they all are, the lady with the wings is Edenette, more of her later.

Going to the Goddess

Our second destination of the week was over on Alternate Metaverse Grid, with the lovely Lynnestra Parker showing us around. We were sorry to learn that Maldrul Smith, a good friend of Lynnesta who DJs regular music events on Lynn's region, wasn't able to be with us due to RL. We were able to learn a lot about the sim from these informative boards when we arrived... this is a place of spirituality, myth and healing... with a fair dose of humor and fun thrown into the mix.

Thirza Ember: Thanks for agreeing to show us Airmid, Lynnestra!

Star Ravenhurst: I am excited to see it!

Lavia Lavine: It's positively gorgeous here. It's very relaxing

Lynnestra Parker: In Irish mythology, the goddess Airmed (also given as Airmid) was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. With her father Dian Cecht and brother Miach, she healed those injured in the Second Battle of Magh Tuiredh. I created this Armid to give people a place to relax and possibly heal.

Safari Does Anarchy

So what's new, I hear you say... anarchy on Safari is our default position. But this is another genius build by SoA BAD who, together with his partner in - crime? no, creativity - SIWAS S, met us on the Sons of Anarchy sim on their grid CCI. HG Address at the end of the post as always.

SoA BAD: First of all, welcome to California, in Charming, the fictional hometown of the Sons of Anarchy. We are here at the original Sons clubhouse.

SoA BAD: Famous people of the series will find everything here on this sim that was important in the series and where the most important scenes took place, such as the Sons' weapons depot in the mountains, police station, hospital, horse farm,

SoA BAD: ...as well as the "Casa Casa" in the red light district and the cafe and hairdresser in the center of town.

Star Ravenhurst: I love SOA! This looks awesome!