If you're an Opensim Oldbie, and still have your marbles, the name GiMiSa will stir some memories of adventurous scripting, and a small wonderland of a grid with lots of toys on it. Gimisa quit Opensim a couple of years ago to dedicate more time to rl pursuits and family. He leaves behind many traces of his life in Opensim, for example, on his user profile on the Opensimulator site, there's a neat glossary of OS terminology, which turns into a set of how-to's, explanations, scripts and a touchingly autobiographical survey of dozens of aspects of inworld creativity. On his website called profil.gimisa.ca you will find a whole bunch of step by step tutorials covering subjects as diverse as removing megaregions, making mesh from a picture, and making a solar panel that tracks the movement of the sun in your EEP. Despite having left the platforms in 2023, Gimisa was kind enough to respond to my request for an interview; here's what he said.
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| Gimisa |
Gimisa Cerise: I will draw a parallel to real life: when times are difficult, people either give up or band together. The OpenSim community was incredibly vibrant precisely because it was challenging. For me, it was a wonderful community of people who were always ready to help.
Thirza Ember: Can you give us a little bit of your 'origin story' ?
Gimisa Cerise: My initiation began with Second Life, like many early adopters. My first language is French and in those early phases, a fellow Frenchman spent nearly 16 hours teaching me how to handle a "cube"—the fundamental building block. We spent the day in a sandbox rezzing, twisting, coloring, and shaping using the in-world tools. He was a very patient teacher.
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| Gimisa on GiMiSaOS |
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| Visiting Gimisa's OSgrid region G Spot |
Thirza Ember: Oh yes I remember a device like that, I think I lost it in the great OSGrid asset wipe - it was a bit of history! And here is a picture of the Safari crew visiting your region on OSGrid (now gone, of course) at the end of one of the first Safari trips, back in 2014. We found a cloning device and had some fun with it. That brings me to my next question. Thinking back, what is the most memorable scripting project you worked on?
Gimisa Cerise: To pick just one is impossible, Thirza. Each project moved me to the next level. Many were requested by users as challenges because the functionality didn't exist yet. The challenge was continuou. Imagine I was their when the introduced MESH. So learning C#, apply physics, mastering sultpty,and mesh, texturing and armatures. My archives at profile.gimisa.ca is a testimony to that. Even the search bot on that page was an early AI experiment using AIML, connected in-world and out to help visitors. In many instance I took advantage of diva, metavers.ink search tool and extended it to find things around our vast universe.
The Jetpack: This started as a way to show my grid to visitors. The challenge was moving across regions, which was not easy back then. It became functional enough to be presented at OSG7B, where it would "jump" from the OSgrid region to the GiMiSaOS grid, tour four regions original region ( Diva Distro) , and return. The return trip wasn't always successful, but I learned a lot!
Thirza Ember: I don't have a picture of Gimisa's jetpack, but here are a few pictures of that memorable 7th OSgrid birthday How fun to remember those days! What other of your many projects stick in your mind?
Gimisa Cerise: I can name three others that were particularly memorable.
The OAR Panel: I was a big fan of Justin CC’s OpenSimulator Archive (OAR) format. I installed a large panel in the GiMiSaOS welcome area featuring photos of about 30 regions from wonderful creators. If you clicked a picture, the OAR would rez that region in my grid, and a few minutes later, you would be teleported into that world. Some grid owner were inspired by this idea to extend their world without impacting their resources.
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| An image from the 'Rex the dog' tutorial, available on Gimisa's profile |
Rex the Dog: This was my experiment with armatures. Rex could be leashed to follow you or released to play fetch with a ball via a menu. He could dance, wag his tail, and had a variety of sounds. A great experience in armature with menu control.
The Astreria Memorial: This was perhaps the most important project, requested made by Zia Frimon. She asked me to help script a memorial region in OSgrid. I first created precision 1mm rezzing tools. People that know Zia know she was a very meticulous creator. And for the memorial she needed a large presentation screen, and "Urns" where families could leave photos and notes. When touched, the memories would appear on the large screen. It was a place for remembrance. I was told that OSgrid would try to keep it online. At least it still was when I left in 2023.
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| Zia Frimon |
Thirza Ember: Sadly when I checked, the region seems to be gone now. Maybe it's still in somebody's hard drive. Speaking of Zia Frimon, she hosted a very memorable Safari on her region Melodies Garden back in 2017, if you'd like to wander down memory lane, and she was always a kind and generous friend. Due to the idiosyncrasies of our inworld connections, it's easy to lose touch as people's lives take different directions. Personal circumstances and interests change, or maybe the person even pass away - one always hopes that they have simply moved to other activities, but it's sometimes a bittersweet thought. It's been a very long time since I saw Zia online, an this is the only photo I could find of her, although I must have had dozens, because she was something of a fashion icon, but in the absence of more than this little thumbnail pic, our memories of her creativity go on, and I'm sure her stuff is still in the inventories of many an Opensimmer. I miss her! Gimisa likewise made dozens of connections in his pursuit of knowledge and his efforts to beat the weirdness of Opensim voodoo.
Gimisa: I am in debt to so many wonderful people that it wouldn’t be fair to list only a few. The community was at its best when things were hard. I got the Diva Distro running on an old Linux box thanks to the many anonymous people who answered my questions in welcome of OSgrid. . Without them, my grid GiMiSaOS would never have existed. And that was so through my virtual life.
Thirza Ember: Speaking of GimisaOS, what was the attraction of having a personal grid?
Gimisa: This was actually featured in the video your "Safari" team made during the scripting trail—I highly recommend you checking that out for my early motivation and the full visual tour of the grid.
Thirza Ember: Wow I confess I had forgotten all about this series of videos, made for the Opensim Scripting Showcase by the legendary filmmaker and artist Fuschia Nightfire aka Nina Camplin. Gimisa, looking back over your remarkable career, what lessons did you learn from your time in OpenSim?
Gimisa: OpenSim was an incredible journey that lasted over 10 years. It was certainly frustrating at times and challenging at others. The best part was meeting and learning from so many great people from across the real world.
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| A very young Thirza Ember visiting with Gimisa on his grid about 2015. I wish I still had those shoes they were so comfortable. |
Gimisa: I am from the French-speaking part of Canada, and though I have traveled to the USA and Europe in real life, I never had the kind of contact I experienced with the push of a button in OpenSim. I was able to exchange ideas with Chinese, Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish people. I had friends in Brazil and Columbia and even New Zealand! I got to learn about other religions and cultures in what was the best learning environment I could ever imagine.
Thirza Ember: All in all, a good time to look back on?
Gimisa: You know how when you are a kid, everything you see is new and magic? For me, OpenSim has that magic. It made the impossible feel reachable.
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