Ipso-Fari

Our second stop this week was on BloodMoon Pack grid, to meet up with the French painter and videographer Prodyck Theas. We were there to see Ipsofacto, a sim with deep connections to Prodck's RL artistry, and also his many eyars of activity in opensim. Prodyck often streams inworld events on his Twitch account, though today he was busy showing us around - so here's the words and pictures part; if you'd like to see more pictures, why not join our Facebook group where photographer extraordinaire Roff Kisses has posted a few.

Prodyck Theas: bonjour

Vlad Helsing: Please click on the ball on Prodyck's head and choose your language.

Cherry Manga: hello bonsoir

Forest Azure: more desert!

Dings Digital: bonsoir

Tina Bey: que bueno!! llego el traductor!

Prodyck Theas: Has everyone arrived? Welcome to all It's been a long time since I've made any visits. The last time was on Craft  A thank you to Vlad for hosting regions. The theme of this region is after global warming. Man had to make little artificial paradises

Tosha Tyran: Oh my god, that is why it seemed so familiar - like looking out of my window in RL

Cherry Manga: global warming made clouds bloom as flowers , how sweet

Prodyck Theas: Follow me. Here a nod to the spirit of the times

Monica's Venice

 It sometimes happens on Safari that there's a last minute emergency. It's a tribute to the platform and its people that this is a very rare event, but it happened this week when just about twenty minutes before go time, our lovely host Monica Chanel discovered her internet wasn't working so she would not be able to join us to show us around her build, on Bloodmoon Grid, called Venice.

Monica Chanel, on her region VENICE

Thirza Ember: Here we are in VENICE on Bloodmoon grid

SoA BAD: Don't forget to give me the 10 EURO entrance fee

Star Ravenhurst: Loaded fast for me too

Dings Digital: ooo nice, that is where the good books are

Thirza Ember: Sadly just a few moments ago, our host Monica discovered she could not get inworld, she has problems with her internet, she is very sad about that

Lavia Lavine: Awww that stinks, I would be pretty upset too

Thirza Ember: but we can take a bit of a tour in company with Pierre here Pierre is co owner of the grid, so he can tell us a little bit about Bloodmoon grid as we walk around

Lavia Lavine: The internet is unpredictable

Pierre Segrov: Welcome everyone

Ipsofacto, in Fact

In Opensim, the name Ipsofacto is always closely associated with Prodyck Theas. For many years, Prodyck's been an explorer, experimenter, and videographer, best known for his Twitch channel where he has filmed and archived events, particularly in the Francophone community - weddings, inaugurations, even Safari trips! As a sim, Ipsofacto like so many places in the hyperverse has undergone lots of adventures - going offline, and finding a new home, and a new iteration, all the time expressing the solidarity of the francophone community. 

Prodyck in a surreal moonlight on his sim Ipsofacto, when it was on Osgrid.

The meaning of names is always so important... 'Iposofacto' comes from the Latin for 'by the fact itself' in other words, something that needs no explanation, is obvious. But there's more at play here; the Latin word we translate as 'fact' also means a deed - something done, a creation or action. And what is Opensim all about if not actions, creations, and deeds?

If you ever get a chance to talk to Prodyck, ask him about the French-speakers of the early days of Opensim - he has many memories of those early times, when assets were scarce, but on the other hand, experimenters and explorers were everywhere. This is a good moment to mention Francogrid, a lost treasure of Opensim, which, after a long decline, went offline  in 2022 due to a tech failure at the place where the grid was hosted. If you're curious about FG, or about opensim history in general, why not take a look at this post where 8 years ago (my how time flies!)  the Safari gang met up with a bunch of Francogridiens.

Safari Visits Vulcano

Our first stop this week was on Bloodmoon grid, run by Vlad and Vanessa Van Helsing, previously owners of Virtual Dreams grid, and before that, the beautiful Les Carpathes grid, among other iterations. Largely a francophone grid, today on Bloodmoon we met up with the Spanish-speaking  Arponera Vulcano  together with her beautiful and creative family - Jaina and Desiree Vulcano. 

Lots of people showed up in solidarity with the Vulcanos, so there were already about 12 people at the arrival point before the Safari group headed over there at exactly 12 noon SLT - yeah, we try to be good guests and not show up early when the hostess is still putting on her lipstick and setting out the canapes!

Jaina, Arponera, and Desiree Vulcano [l to r] wait on the castle steps for their guests

A big group inevitably leads to some arrival lag but we did pretty well this time. A lot of that is thanks to the fact that Safari goers try not to wear super complex avies (in other words, less than 300k complexity) and they also mostly try to keep their MySuitcase as empty as possible, just to give the grid a chance to absorb our arrival. Keeping draw distance down to something around half the maximum possible setting is also a good move. Why? Your Viewer, when you arrive in a new place, communicates with the new sim (and 'child' or adjacent sims) and grabs info on every object, script, texture etc within draw distance. Exhausting! But we did really well and soon Arpo was able to begin her introduction.