Best Practices in Jumping

 Anyone can leap about in opensim, exploring regions by themselves or maybe with a friend. We've all done it, often finding pleasure in the big empty spaces of the hypergrid. But it is also fun to grid jump  with a crowd, to meet the grid owner, or sim builder, and spend some time laughing and dancing and learning more about the infinite variety of opensim. 

But traveling in a pack can create its own unique problems. So what makes for a successful hypergrid trip en masse? Our group is called Safari, because there's a good chance you won't survive to the end, and there are dangers lurking! I asked a bunch of Safari regulars who have joined our trips many times to give their advice for a successful and enjoyable trip around the metaverse.

Safari has a Ball

        Well, two balls this week, really.
        We got the answers to some important questions like - is 'Ball' the 51st state? How important are jars to education in virtual worlds? Is guinguette a made up word? Does Pathfinder own any shoes? What is VIBE? and... How many avatars does it take to crash a sim on Ignis Fatuus Grid?
         First stop this week, a long overdue chat with Professor Stephen Gasior, who showed us around REDgrid, the OpenSim home of Ball State University. 
Jessica Pixel: right clicking my head made it show up, so we're good
Wizard Gynoid: We are now in Indiana
Lucy Afarensis: oh my
LuAnn.Phillips: sounds like Alice in wonderland dialogue

Wizard Gynoid: why is it called Ball State?

Stephen Xootfly: It's named after the Ball Family who gave a lot of $ - ever heard of Ball Glass? 
Jessica Pixel: wait, the Ball family that gave a lot of money is the jar family?  cause that's awesome, i love those jars.
Selby Evans: My family canned with Ball jars. And made preserves.
         REDgrid is small, sturdy and has several very different sims, featuring some beautiful and accurate reconstructions of the campus buildings, and we started out by the pixel version of Shafer Tower. 
Stephen Xootfly: The grid and the original builds here are run by the IDIA lab. IDIA's work has been used for History Channel shows but, also they tend to partner with students and faculty for intersecting projects.
Serene  Jewell: It's really great that you opened up to the hypergrid. So many educational builds are hidden away where we can't see them.
          When it comes to Educational grids and regions in OpenSim, it can get a bit confusing, between the all the names of the various institutions and projects. Stephen is busy here with REDgrid, which is part of IDIA, but he's also very much a part of VIBE.  So how did he get started with teaching and virtual worlds?

Stephen Xootfly: I got my start teaching in Second Life at U of New Orleans. They used to have a big SL presence and many classes, and I'm a technophile. HG safari has visited my VIBE projects in the past, that's a collaborative working group with Clowey Greenwood, Max Chatnoir, and several others. I happened to come work for Ball State and got involved with IDIA Lab.  REDgrid predates my being at BSU. IDIA lab is well equipped with lots of good computers. So they just set up one to be a dedicated Opensim server. Working with BSU IT to get it setup for hypergrid was difficult, but we have an outside line now. I've recently started a community here at BSU for using REDgrid. Very recent, but we've already had a class use it for a gender identity project, and I have a build I"m going to make this summer. 

C'est Safari

What's the difference between SL and OpenSim? If a guy in SL asks you to touch his trunk, he's probably a pervert. In Open Sim, the trunk is a chest of Pirate Treasure, and it's a nice little freebie souvenir de France. Make a note of that for later.
This week, there was already considerable confusion over the end of Daylight Savings Time, and we ramped it up further by offering two possible start points for the Safari, the classic Outlands on Metropolis, and a new base, on Francogrid, donated by Gill Beaumont. The sim there is easy to find, it's called hgsafari. With Metro straining at the seams, a backup to out backup seemed wise. There are now three HG Safari groups, 4 if you count the unreachable OSGrid, join them all, we don't have group limits in open sim, and this way you can use Group Chat if you're on Francogrid, Metropolis, or Craft. The weekly Landmark notecard is also sent out as an announcement via the groups, so that may help you find us.

We talk a lot, on Safari. It must be really annoying for the grid owners who are eager to make their presentation, but it's so much fun to read Local Chat and get a feel for all the people coming from different grids. The big question of the week was - What is the National Dish of France? - and it seems that choucroute won, mostly because Strannik Zipper was handing out samples, but also because our first destination was the University of Strasbourg, and the fantastic virtual Campus (URIs at the end of the post). Unistra manager Anne Cordonnier welcomed us, and Cheops Forlife translated her introduction into English. Cheops has her own group of virtual researchers, the i3DM, their stamping ground was OSGrid, so when that's back up and running, we plan to go visit her there too. But back to the University of Strasbourg, and the choucroute...