Maria on Safari

 The third season of the year kicked off in style with two very different destinations... yeah, yeah, I always say that, but this time it's true. First hour, chatting around the campfire with Maria Korolov -  then off into the Canadian paradise, Creanovale, with its amazing countryside and hilarious underwater and overwater activities. The Creanovale trip will be in a separate post, because the gifs alone deserve their honored space. Not to mention Dabici's goldfish. Right now, we have other business. Hypergrid Business.

Maria Korolov

Most opensim residents have heard of Maria. Journalist, novelist, creator of websites and collector of grid statistics, you probably have consulted, maybe even contributed to, her Hypergrid Business website, which she started in... well, let's let her tell us all about it.

Metrodämmerung

 It started with Maria Korolov, during one of her OSCC presentations, when she was talking about grid statistics.

Anyone who knows me knows that I spend most of the OpenSim Community Conference gossiping and flirting with whoever will put up with me, especially during the more arty or bookish parts. But I sat still and attended during Maria's bit (and also that brilliant Graham Mills lecture, with the ship. That was awesome.) 

Graham Mills' Liverpool history project is on Kitely

Anyway, Maria was talking grid stats and there was a slide showing traffic on the hg and so on, and somehow Metropolis got mentioned, and a voice from the audience, in what I can only describe as a contemptuous font, said something along the lines of 'Oh you can't hg to Metropolis.' 

Safarigate

Wizard Gynoid: I've got Stangens up the yazoo

         Well, we all did by the end.  'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the club, we were getting ready to visit some Hypergate hubs. Jump stations have always been an important part of any grid, and now increasingly grid owners are looking for ways to make their grid hyperfriendly.  

Above and beyond that, there are those who've made Hypergrid Hubs central to their virtual life. Are they all equal? We put together a very short list: Hyperica, the venerable mother of all hgstations, the splendid stones of Sanctuary, The great red Weltraumbahnhof most associated with Metropolis, although it runs in fact on a home server, and two smaller collections, the brand new Hydra sim on Craft, and Selea Core's pristine windows on worlds. The great Thinkerer, Selby Evans was there at the start, but we lost him. Not on purpose. Here's hoping he gives us another shot next time.

          Here are the URIs

Trippin'

Hats off the Pathfinder, once again we have evidence of his greatness.
To take someone hypergridding for the first time doesn't sound like much of a big deal, especially these days. Yet, once you've volunteered to accompany a group, suddenly the enormity of the situation dawns. Urk!
The IMAB  group, who are currently working on a new multi-grid art festival, wanted some pointers on how to jump. Did you click on the link, and find, by way of an introduction to the project, a paragraph that is Byzantine at best, and probably copy/pasted from elsewhere, possibly from a notecard of some sort? Yeah, so did I.
It's never easy to establish a good time for teaching events, when you have people from all over the US and Europe who supposedly want to take part. I was secretly kind of glad when in fact only Alizarin Goldflake and Medora Chevalier showed up for our mini lesson.

The problem with hypergridding with newbies is that jumping is rarely instantaneous. Lag, or hesitation happens, and you spend a lot of time wondering if they are lost, or crashed, or slow, or what. Should you go back to look for them, or will that just make it worse? Are they not answering in IM because they are too far away? Should you mention the fact that they are now wearing only lingerie, or have no hair, or (blushes) boobage showing? I don't know how Path does it!
On this trip, I was a cloud for a long time, but the reason was obvious. My shoes. It was either the Invisiprims, or the fact that I had been editing linked parts while they were attached to me. Either way, simple solution - go barefoot.
There is no shortage of destinations. Maria Korolov's website Hyperica.com showcases both classic destinations, and newer ones, and Pathfinder's excellent blog hooks you up with new, or newly emerging places of interest, and lots of other people are blogging about their adventures too. Having missed out on going on HGAC trips in recent weeks, this trip with Medora and Alizarin re-kindled the desire to get back into the routine. Pathfinder helpfully sends out emails regarding upcoming trips, and often chronicles the event afterwards - it's all on his blog.

Void Pipe's Hypergates, Alba, Osgrid

So - where to go? It seemed appropriate to show them a beautiful 'old fashioned' blamgate, and your common or garden hypergate. We checked out the two examples on Void Pipe's beautiful sim in osgrid. Ali saw how clicking on the green hypergate opens a window suggesting destinations (the same kind of stuff found, obviously, on the Hyperica website.) Bear in mind that not all destinations are online, or still currently at that address. Grids move!
At this point, you want a nice, up-to-the minute 2D map of where all the grids are, to get it clear in your mind, don't ? Yeah.
I don't have one.

Hyperica Central

Anyway, then off we went to the Hyperica Central. As you know, the three Hyperica islands have pavilions on them, each containing about 30 or so hyperpools (direct links to specific destinations on other grids). The Pavilions make it easier to choose where to go - destinations are divided into 'Shopping', 'Activities', 'Education', and 'Main Grids'. You step over the hyperpool linked with your chosen destination - take a breath - and suddenly, you're elsewhere! However, if you don't fall through, well, choose another destination is my advice - that'a a much quicker route to fun and relaxation than trying to figure out why it didn't work. Alizarin fancied going to Pathlandia, but it seemed to be down. We ended up going to FrancoGrid. Once there, Ali got frozen. It was quite a surprise that she hadn't crashed really. My own first forays were full of horrendous crashing. Things have improved since then! We moved on to  New World Grid. It was Medora's choice, as she wanted to go somewhere educational. We found ourselves looking at Graham Mill's molecules on BioZone. Nice!

Biozone by Graham Mills

Lastly, off to VirtuYou, via the Map, to see the lovely Asterix sim (which needs more interactive scripts!). There were a couple of moments there when I thought I'd lost my companions, but no - we all managed to stick together, and it was a surprisingly smooth ride.
If you've already got half an idea where you want to go, say from this page of Landmarks, you can just  jump by using your Map. Here are the steps.
1. Open the Map, put the hypergrid address (it's going to have a number in it, like 8000 or 9000)
2. Hit Search, wait and see if the map can find it. If the destination is too far away, you'll need to find a stopover grid, somewhere in the middle.
3. Hit Teleport.
I've found that the Map will sometimes throw a wobbly, denying the existence of a specific sim or even a whole grid with the annoying message 'Invalid location'. But if it can't find the precise address, it will often find the grid's Main or Welcome sim, simply remove the name of the Landing area from the end of the address. Then you can refine your search once you arrive.

NIFLAR Asterix village, VirtYou

Seeing it through the eyes of my two friends, it was striking to realize how very different Open Sim is to SL. 

The loneliness, the freedom, the wildness of strange lands. 

Let's hope the IMAB project is able to capture that and share it with a wider audience.

Virt-Me

Maria Korolov rocks, but you knew that already, of course. If you've never been to her grid Hyperica, you've missed out. 

It's not a place of soaring original architecture, or outstanding natural beauty, but it has a poetry of its own, as a train station or an airport. The poetry of possibilities. 

The hyper pools are handily organized in 'Activities, Education, Shopping and Major Grids', but don't feel overwhelmed, many destinations are duplicated in each pavilion. This in fact one of three jumping nodes, Lower, middle and Upper, helping hyper grid travellers hop up and down, bridging the gap from one part of opensim to another. Just for spritz and giggles, we dived into the pool marked virtyou grid, to see what would happen.

virtyou is a caps-off, polyglot haven for noobs, human-interfaced by Nick Zwart and Torrid Luna. Nick has a black beard (vintage '06, by the look of it) which shouldn't be held against anyone. Least of all me. Anyway they were both offline today, though I think I touched something to summon them, but since nobody showed, no harm done, right? 

virtyou has a number of attractions, and where better to start than Asterix Village. It's as cute as can be, with a huge fat statue of Obelix just outside those Gallic gates. 

Where was his diminutive friend? Nowhere to be seen, but maybe it's a work in progress. Or we may have missed him in the fog.

If you have any kind of Poser or QAvimator skillz, and are a fan of Asterix, you might want to approach Master Niflar, a few cute poses would bring this place to life. As it was, Goldilocks decided to risk it with the only pose at hand. There didn't seem to be any bears about.

Still, can't spend all day laying around. Dawn was rising, and so was the damp. You could almost smell the castrum over the horizon, and there was an uneasy feeling that the tribe might be back at any moment, and not be all that glad to see us.

 Shoppppping! Couldn't resist the opportunity to check out the Mall. Not a lot on sale, as yet, at the Plaza, but the architecture was very classy. This is where making and importing your own clothes comes in handy, people. I won't even say the word pigtails.

The architecture is great, but I must confess to not being crazy about the furniture, or the noob avatars, available all over the grid, which are straight out of Scaryville. I guess that beard was a bit of a clue. What's a little disconcerting is that virtyou opened in 2009, and from the looks of things, time has stood still.

 Much more stylish, the little flower shop. You may not be able to buy anything but it's kind of fun to play shop assistant. Gosh is that the time.

Jaynine Scarborough,  SL oldbie and Berlin-based vocalist, is the source of all this elegance, her store just a few doors down from the flower shop offered a freebie dress, and some other interesting packages that wouldn't open, but that's OK. 

Probably they wouldn't have made the trip back to Jokaydia anyway. It's a mad world.

The wall art, mannequins and poses, it's a great place. And oh, that voice.

The Devil's Island Mystery sim was a bit of a letdown, but the French newbie area is touted as the smallest virtual village, but has full size recycling bins.

I know you're supposed to make newcomers feel at home with lots of familiar references, but this seemed a bit much.

In Chatterdale, 'the world's smallest hamlet', (huh, that's where he ended up) I found myself in the back of a cop car within seconds. Guess the Thought Police were onto me. The village, which had overdosed on half-timbering, had a snakes and ladders game in an open area which, I'm sure, breaks some health and safety rules. 

Finally and bizarrely, a pile of rocks where you'd expect to find a house, camming inside it seemed solid. Very odd. What is it? Virtually no idea.