The Review and You

Another Wednesday, another Safari. Each time, the group is different. Sometimes there are loads of us, sometimes there are people trying the tour for the first time, sometimes it's a more intimate group of regulars - and what you might define as the 'regulars' has also morphed and evolved over the years, with familiar faces disappearing and new ones taking their place, a bit like the constant ebb and flow of opensim itself. It's not an exclusive group, anyone's welcome, for as often as you choose to join us.
Our plans changed at the very very last minute this week, because, you know, stuff happens, which is why it's so handy to meet ahead of time at the Clubhouse so you don't miss anything or get lost. Here's what we got up to...

Ayla Alvarez: hi gang

Thirza Ember: hello lovelies

Taarna Welles: Heya

Alex Salamander: Hello Thirza :-)

Thirza Ember: it looks like the first destination may have some big last minute problems

Taarna Welles: O dear,  Can we switch to the second?

Ayla Alvarez: the second hour is having problems too?

Thirza Ember: no, the second will be fine, but I'd like to do something different with this first hour

Jupiter Rowland: Hi everyone!

Ayla Alvarez: here comes the bunny again...

The Inworld...

 Inworld Review is a talk show on Youtube about Openism. The show started over a decade ago, and was the brainchild of Mal Burns who produced and presented the program right up to his death in July of last year. His idea was to bring together interesting people from around the metaverse and have them tell their stories, share their experiences, and explain their latest projects. The show began in SL and eventually came to Opensim, and if you go to Mal's Metaworld Youtube channel you will find dozens of  episodes featuring famous names from both platforms, as well as less well-known but equally interesting and creative  people talking about tech, about their grids, about music and art.

When Mal unexpectedly passed away, his co-hosts Tosha Tyran and James Atlloud naturally suspended the show, not only out of respect, but because Mal was, as James likes to say, the 'wind in the sails' of the production. 

Inworld Review has moved from Mal's Youtube channel  to the new Inworld Review channel

However, Inworld Review was one of those rare assets in Opensim - a point of contact for everyone in the hyperverse, a central point for conversation and news, in an environment that is by its very nature decentralized and complicated to navigate. The show was never political, or terribly technical, and had at its heart the hypergrid, never trying to promote one grid over all the others. 

 After Mal died, James and Tosha teamed up with Petlove Petshop, who had been cameraperson in the early days of Inworld Review, and me, Thirza, a previous Inworld Review co-host, to revive the show.

Inworld Review Returns

 As many of you know, this summer we lost Mal Burns, the creator and host of Inworld Review, the talk show on his Metaworld Youtube channel. His death was a blow to his friends and to the many people who knew and admired him through his projects, all aimed at helping Opensim to be better known and appreciated.

Mal explaining something technical on Inworld Review

For the past months, Inworld Review has been offline, and this was a decision by the team who helped Mal keep the show on the road over many years. This was out of respect for Mal and his family, and also to give some time for reflection to those who had helped Mal make the show over the years. 

Interviewing Lampi, Marlon and Tutz from Pangea Grid

In the end, the team felt that the real way to respect Mal's legacy is by continuing to let people know about all creators and innovators who call Opensim home, and the great places and projects they have brought to life here.

A Life in Review

 Earlier this summer, the virtual world community was saddened to learn that Mal Burns had died. News aggregator, creator and presenter of Inworld Review, co-founder of the Hypergrid International Expo and extraordinary contributor to the Opensim Community Conference, Mal was a well known face and voice around Opensim and in Second Life too. 

He was also a much loved member of the HG Safari tour group so we wanted to celebrate his virtual life with a gathering of the kind he would have approved of - an opportunity to dance, hear some Jazz, and also hear the comments of a few of those who knew him well, whether they had been guests on his show, fellow tourists on Safari, or colleagues from other projects.
About 40 of us gathered - some were friends who rarely get into Opensim these days , like Fuschia Nightfire and Wizardoz Chrome, names anyone who knows the Safari from way back will recognize immediately, just to mention two out of a really exceptional list of attendees. Good thing James filmed it!

The region where this party was held was built by Mal to be his new home for Inworld Review, but also a park and place for him to experiment with the various treasures that he found when out and about on the hypergrid. 

Remembering Mal Burns

Mal Burns died a few days ago, and if that comes as a bit of a shock, you're not alone. 

The news of his passing has with much dismay and sadness rippled across Opensim, where he had his home, and in Second Life, where he got his start in virtual worlds in February 2007. A vital piece of our virtual network is now missing. 

From his earliest days in virtual worlds,
Mal always loved to see a beautifully landscaped sim.

News aggregator, videographer, talk show host, critic, builder, intrepid traveler, and all round communicator, in Mal's eyes virtual worlds were an opportunity to discover one another, to be better, more creative, and to stay in touch with the people who matter to us, despite the challenges of our far flung real lives. 

In a world where most people's pronouncements on social media are all about themselves, Mal kept the focus on others, on the places and projects that he found fascinating. He probably would be a bit embarrassed to think that people were reading and talking about him, rather than some cool new sim or innovative development in virtual worlds.

Mal will no doubt be memorialized in Second Life and of course RL. As you know, this blog is about Opensim, so the focus of this article is to share comments by a few Opensim friends of Mal, their words represent hundreds of voices from all over the hyperverse. 

Let's start with James Atlloud and Tosha Tyran, Mal's current co-hosts on his talk show Inworld Review. It's worth pointing out that the original 'Inworld Review' - an offshoot of other talk shows Mal produced and presented - first aired on January 13, 2013 in SL, with Tara Yates and Petlove Petshop.  The show was revived in Opensim in 2016 with Maria Korolov as co-host beside Mal and James, at Mal's studio on the Great Canadian Grid.

James and Mal on Inworld Review, 2025

James Atlloud: My relationship with Mal was a unique and amazing journey.  In YouTube production there were times I became so irritated with him! I’m also sure he had those moments with me, and even so we made it all work - just like so many of us do in virtual worlds.  I will miss him more than I can say and I know I’m in a huge community of people who will never forget his influence on our lives.

The Stars of Exupery

 There is a kind of law of the shortest distance to the image, 

a psychological law by which the event  to which one is subjected 

is visualized in a  symbol that represents its swiftest summing up.

                                        Wind Sand and Stars, A. de Saint-Exupéry

He fell out of the sky in 1935. 

Antoine de Saint Exupéry was born into a noble but impoverished family of Lyon, France in 1900. He became a pilot in the years between the world wars, transporting people, mail, and goods around North Africa and the Med, frequently flying over the Sahara. That desert, and its peoples, were so far from the modern hazards of life in Europe in the 1930's, that they captured his imagination and, along with his other adventures in far flung places, gave life to a series of books, rich with limpid prose, exquisite descriptions, and timeless reflections on life and love. 

It was in the Egyptian part of the Sahara that De Exupéry crashed, during a race from Paris to Saigon, in 1935. Of his many plane crashes, this one - and the 4 days that it took him and his copilot to be found - were the most influential on the rest of his life. Hope and fear, mechanics, mirages, and hallucinations, coffee and oranges, and a passing Bedouin got him out of the situation, and no doubt led to Saint Exupèry's career as a writer. 

The best loved and most widely distributed of his works is The Little Prince. It's one of those books that everyone should have read, and once read, you will probably decide to read it again. It's a short read, most people can get through the whole book in about an hour.

The planets

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.

Happy Birthday Neverworld!

 Neverworld Grid is celebrating eight years of fun and creativity this week. on a platform famous for the ephemeral nature of so many virtual places, what a milestone that is!

If you missed all the parties, you are still in time to check out the excellent Birthday Build on the nattily-named NWBB8.

Notes on a Safari

 This week two great musical guests, Joao Frazao and Moses Rae. Dang, even their names are musical. As usual HG addresses are at the end of the post.

Starting with destination two in this post, just to mess with your head.