Telling Tales on Nara's Nook

We began the 30th and final Safari of 2023 on Nara's Nook grid - although to many it looked awfully like another place - the Opensim Community conference keynote regions, and for good reason. We were there to help the Next Dimension group to road test their OSCC presentation. Siobhan Muir, Dorena Bree, and Nara 'Nara Nook' Malone, have been developing their unique storytelling system where you become a 3D component in the plot. They plan to show off their progress so far at the December conference.

The usual mulitlingial crowd assembled on Nara's Nook grid!

The set for New Dimension Tales presentation

Yara Eild: Hello @  all

Victoria Logan: abrazos

Safari Fiction

This week, the Safari trip had a single destination, to the literary grid Nara's Nook, celebrating three years of writerly pixels. 

Nara's Nook is the brainchild of Nara Malone, and styles itself as a colony for people who would like to explore their literary creativity online. Whether you're an author in need of moral support, or trying to revive a stalled novel-in-the-works, or looking for inspiration to come up with a new storyline, or curious about using new 3D methods to convey your narrative, Nara's Nook can help. Here's the Nara's Nook website.
       Scroll to the end of the post for them list of the places visited this week.

NPC-fari

          Just two stops this week but boy were they both detail rich. It was NPC week on Safari, so of course our first stop had to be the spiritual home of the non player character, Nara's Nook, a grid that has storytelling at its heart. HG Addresses, as always at the end of the post. The arrival sim on the Nook is Greyville, and it has a new look. 

Safarezzing

Wizard.Gynoid: oic. this is like a pink floyd concert without the marijuana

The fifty-first Safari departed with everyone playing with an Englisch-German translator, so you kinda knew from the first that there was going to be trouble.

First stop, Metropolis grid, and this sims of Art Blue. It's a place where we feel at home, after many presentations and evenings spent in the zoo. Art's impressive collection is worth a visit any time, but this show is something a little special, don't miss the elevator, which is my favorite bit.
Addresses at the end of the post, as always.

A visit to Futurelab means you start out in the hand, which is fair enough.
          Art Blue: please activate voice if possible I will later speak in voice about the moon
Art Blue's Moonrezzer is a bewildering but ultimately thought-provoking show.  Or is it Soulrezzer? Or are there both here in this build? See how this is getting all confusing?
Art spans the virtual world barrier with this latest performance, which occupies a sim at the LEA in SL but is also in the process of being perfected for the OpenSim public on his Futurelab sim in Metropolis. That raises a few challenges as they mod scripts to work in the alternative environment. Cue the booze.

Safari Afield

It has been 44 days since OSGrid went down, and today on Facebook [via Ron Brown] came the good news: " The array was not able to be rebuilt from the cloned drives due to logical partition errors so the recovery service has performed a full recovery, restoring everything to a single 6 tb drive that the engineer said should boot and that all the files are intact. The additional costs, less the $2302.56 we have already paid them, comes to $2510. We currently have $3432.88 which would make our budget very tight (we still have hosting costs, etc).
Thank you very much for your patience and support! ~ Dan Banner "
if you would like to help by donating you can follow the link below 
http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/donate
Saying 'No news is good news' has not been great news for OSGrid's image in open sim, but they saved all our stuff, which is wonderful, and going on about the PR disconnect between management and users is pointless and anyway, has already been done.

Last night's Safari went to Metroberfest, but it wasn't all cakes and ale. This is the landing point of the fabulous four sectioned sim, but last night there was water and bare earth where there should have been buildings and free stuff, and I spent a significant amount of time up to my neck (thanks Miso).

License to Jump

Hypergrid jumping is a bit like driving. Learning the basics and getting experienced requires a good amount of will power and humility, but the freedom it gives you makes it so worth while.

There are four ways to grid jump. The simplest, someone can just tp you - a 'personal chauffeur'; you can use a Landmark - a 'taxi', you can find a hypergate, which is a scripted portal to another grid - 'public transport' or you can use your Map, which is the equivalent of driving stick. You ought to learn how to do the last one, even if you rarely use the skill, because dude, you're not a noob, you ought to know how to read and write addresses, and it will help you grasp the overall sense of the hypergrid. Plus it's excellent practice to get your spelling and copy/paste skills up to scratch, which is good for your soul.

          The lovely little house on Ilha Magica is getting too small for our group - we were a whopping 15 yesterday, including such luminaries as Ferd Frederix (aka Fred Beckhusen), Pathfinder (aka John Lester), and Mal Burns. That's Mal with the top hat. There seems no logic to why some OSGrid avies were clouds - could it have been that some people had tp'd from regions using the new 0.8 release?
         Our destination was Nara's Nook, belonging to Nara Malone, Tina Glasneck, and Siobhan Muir. It's a classy, stable grid, a place for authors, poets, and people who love writing and imagination in general. They had put a lot of work into preparing for our visit, and we all appreciated it very much, a lagless, gorgeous group of sims full of interesting spaces and inspirational scenes.
When we arrived, I overheard John'Pathfinder' Lester asking Nara what a selkie was.
Nara.Nook: A selkie shifts shape between human and seal. When you wear the avatar you turn into a seal under water.
Prax.Maryjasz @grid.kitely.com:8002: wants to grow up to be a selkie
Nara.Nook: thanks to the scripting magic of Fred Beckhusen. There are other shapeshifter avatars in our swamp. Those change when they fly - a Tardis, a turkey, and a butterfly.
Fuschia Nightfire's attachments survived the jump this time; she has a new strategy, don't bother wearing attachments when you jump, just wait and put them on when you arrive!

Nara's open sim experience has been a voyage of discovery.
Thirza Ember: When you started in SL did you ever imagine something like this would happen? a grid of your own?
Nara Nook: No, I didn't even want to know how to build, now I'm scripting. Open sim forced that.      

            You'll find a lot of NPCs on the grid, the writers use them to make the characters in their books come alive. It's one of many tools used to pollinate creativity. The Nook is a place where people with no previous virtual life can get inspired at a 3D level without being mocked. This non-mocking of noobs is against my religion, so I kept pretty quiet while the group murmured noob-supportive remarks.
 Nara.Nook: I started this grid so I could help other authors learn to use the metaverse in a safe place, something set up just for newbies, where no one makes fun when you get a box stuck on your head
Siobhan.Muir: Or hair to your hand
Miso Susanowa: *looks at Wizzy & giggles*
Nara.Nook: or a guy can comfortable ask why he suddenly has boobs
Mal Burns: ha - like earlier lol!

Nara.Nook: 99 percent of these members had never been in the metaverse before here. We bring them in and teach one on one.
Tuna Oddfellow: that's really cool
Pathfinder.Lester: So you really have to focus on having a good new user experience.
Talla.Slade: you've done a wonderful job Nara. You done yourself proud girl
Nara.Nook: I find the only way to do is is personally, it is too complicated to be automated. We meet here weekdays to encourage each other because writing is a tough and the support helps
Siobhan.Muir: Most people have their own project, Serene, but sometimes we get together for group projects like the interactive fiction we did a few months ago

Mal Burns: we were all noob once!
Prax.Maryjasz @grid.kitely.com:8002: I like noobs, and if you take time with them, they become permanent residents
Nara.Nook: and even our SL transplants have a noob stage here.  If we want to grow, noobs have to realize we appreciate them and how hard this is
Mal Burns: metaverse needs noobs to continue to grow - fact!

Pathfinder.Lester: Here's a research paper from a while ago that I love. It basically proves that new user retention is critically dependent on getting them connected to people as soon as possible.
Nara.Nook: I was trying to teach someone to add our adress to the viewer the other night and it was not sinking in, and within a day they are hypergridding and making NPC - it took me a couple years to learn all that on my own.
Siobhan.Muir: It also helps that people feel comfortable asking question
Nara.Nook: Right, no question is unreasonable here
Prax.Maryjasz @grid.kitely.com:8002: ty, Nara, this is a wonderful place.......and I love what you are doing.
PatriciaAnne Daviau: this place is really awesome
Pathfinder.Lester: Thank you again Nara. Not only is this place so creative, it sounds like you're giving folks a wonderful new user experience too. That's fantastic.
          It really is.