Horse Play

Je suis posey, avec mon poney, je kiffe ma journey

OK... Feelings of calm - a pleasurable journey - at the Apocalypse?   And surely those aren't ponies. Yikes! You know how it is with horseplay, it's all fun and games, until someone gets hurt. Or the world ends.

Terra... and Terra!

Well no, of course they aren't ponies, they are the famous 4 Horses - in this case, Domination, War, Famine/Disease, and Death - the brainchild of Terra Merhyem in her latest build, 'The 4 Horseriders of the Apocalypse'  which is part of the ongoing and very lively Pangea Festival of Art and Culture. 

A Tale of Two Cities

       Opportunity City and Gotham City... or Metropolis, the choice is yours, the tour this week took us to two of OpenSim's most respected grids, TanGle ad Craft, HG Addresses at the end of the post        
Aime Socrates: coool party Leslie !!!
          It's all in the eye of the beholder. We arrived on TanGle grid somewhat late and in disarray thanks to ... well that is a long boring story you did not come to this blog to read about. 

          The lovely Leslie Kling had invited us over to Tangle's Expo Isle, which for today let's call Opportunity City, because you could use it as a way to get yourself and your creations known all across the hyperverse, This was not the Safari's first visit, we've been here to see the lingerie show, the Steam Fair and the Winter expos over the past two years, so it was nice to be back, enjoying the icy dance floor hidden away in one corner of the vast Expo region.

Zafari with a Zee

If there is one thing worse than being mauled to death by a zombie, it's when the zombie that mauls you is a clone of yourself. It's bad for you, but it's super fun for those who see it happen. 
This is not a B move, it's an A+ immersive experience available on OSGrid thanks to the creative gorgeousness of Total Sorbet and Michelle Theiss.

Left to right: me in awe of script genius Total Sorbet and builder Michelle Theiss

This game is open 24/7 on sim Outbreak, OSGrid. HG addresses as always at the bottom of the post.

Relax in the main square, and cam out to watch other players - a great layout

The game has a straightforward shoot 'em up format, but to make this work in OpenSim, when you've got about 25 avies all running on the same region, is a tour de force. 

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

Safari Spanks the Vortex

Bolle Zijde: I need to warn you, no spanking on my butt.

Yeah good luck with that Bolle. There are times when open sim is so unstable it drives you crazy, and then there are times when it is so efficient it's shocking. Have you noticed that quite often both things happen in the same five minutes?
Many new faces joined us this week on Safari. We started out in Francogrid on the new HG Safari base. The sim is called hgsafari so it's easy to find. This week the Lingerie shop on Nara's Nook sort of took all my time so there aren't as many poses and places to sit as there ought to be in the new clubhouse. By next week that should be fixed. 

Lingerie store on Nara's Nook

          Speaking of lingerie, the 'let's fix up your open sim avatar' service, Safari Confidential, got started this week with Betty Tureaud. The idea is that you help someone to go hypergrid shopping. Anyone can do it, it's your civic duty, kind of. Think about it. It is so frustrating when you've had a smart sophisticated avie in Second Life for years and years, and suddenly you're in Open Sim and are a cloud, or walking like a duck, and don't know how or where to go to sort yourself out. 

So, those of us with a little more experience can reach out by taking a friend shopping, hold their hand while they fix  their Ruth hair, and help them get the necessaries. 

If you don't know where to go, there are some appearance oriented Freebie LMs in a dispenser at the Clubhouses on sim hgsafari, Franco and Outlands, on Metropolis. And if someone helps you - Pay it Forward! help someone else!

Taarna Wells' shoes on La Baronnie (Metropolis)

The many weird and wonderful mesh avies on offer are lovely, but they aren't Betty's style, so we sought out some more orthodox attachments. We visited Taarna Wells' legendary shoe store on la Baronnie, and then jumped over to Craft to take a look at their many Free shops. Hydra, the arrival sim on Craft, is undergoing a massive overhaul and it is great, much easier to jump straight to the sim you want. 

The new look Hydra, on Craft grid

 SL has loads of consumer blogs. The Hyperzette is excellent for outlining destinations, and of course there are many fine OpenSim traveler's blogs, but we need someone who's a consumer, not a producer to step in and hunt down the hair, clothes and skins and let us know where the best stuff is.  

Odd's Playground, Metropolis

Speaking of stuff, Safari went to Oddball Otoole's region on Metro this week. Odd's Playground is a dark, mysterious cityscape with a guitar museum, a free spanker, and so much more. At first, it seemed like the group was frozen, but in reality they were camming and picking up all the ...odds and ends.
Han Held: Log in to metropolis they said! It'll be easier to teleport they said! :P~~~~~
Miso Susanowa: hlo Wizzy. Are you getting the same winds as Patti?
Nara Nook: I found a candy machine
Nara Nook: by a Christmas tree.
Miso Susanowa: hi Han
Art Blue: guitar?
Art Blue: where?
Thirza.Ember: OK I may have lied. It is hardly the first time, Han.
Wizard Gynoid: winds?
PatriciaAnne Daviau: at home wizzy
Wizard Gynoid: oh . it was 26 degrees F last night
PatriciaAnne Daviau: we had gusts up to 60 miles an hour
Wizard Gynoid: i don't have the winds
Wizard Gynoid: just the usually passing kind

Truelie Telling: I see Art found the script library
strannik.zipper: script library?
Equus.Staedler: Really weird... had no trouble what so ever an hour ago HG tp'ing all over
Miso Susanowa: It's the safari, Equus; we are load testers
Tina Bey shouts: freebies..!
Equus.Staedler: Must be... I am new here :)
Wizard Gynoid: oh my goodness there's a dead body under a rug over here
Isolde Caron: trying to get the spanker working lol
PatriciaAnne Daviau: wow I cam around and all sorts of peeps show up
Pathfinder.Lester: lots of nice freebies around here
Equus.Staedler: Hi Thirza, glad I made it here... at loooong last
Pathfinder.Lester: and everything's frozen here. I feel at home.

Fuschia models Odd's battery powered facelight

Pathfinder.Lester: i hear spanking
Isolde Caron: ah good, it works
Fuschia.Nightfire: i love Odd's facelight, it's very subtle, you hardly even notice it
Pathfinder.Lester: OMG
Betty Tureaud: ops
strannik.zipper: Fuschia, that is quite the personal facelight!
Fuschia.Nightfire: i think the facelight is the only thing that comes with battery included
Isolde Caron: cant figure out how to spank someone yet. I'll figure it out another time, then I'll spank everyone all the time
Pathfinder.Lester: for those of you who like scripts, there's a whole tutorial area here with tons of scripts available for free... really nice

Alle Zeb and me at the Vector's Vortex arrival point

 It was difficult to get people to leave this wonderful sim and everyone is sure to go back because we all missed something, there was so much to see. 

Next up, Karima Hoisan's Vector's Vortex on Kitely. It's a space journey, complete with poem and flying book. You really have to go yourself to experience the Vortex, or get a video of it maybe; the sounds, the movement - it's all an exquisite journey. After vortexing, dancing. Oddball's freebies were everywhere.
  There were 28 of us at one point, we maxed out the dance ball. Equus Staedler did a great job of taking snapshots and sharing them with the group

Cosmic Safari Kitty in Kitely! Photo by Equus Staedler

Karima.Hoisan: wow cosmic salsa dance
Alle Zeb: Incredible here
Karima.Hoisan: ohh great photo
Nara Nook: love the cat picture
Thirza Ember: what a lovely safari
Alle Zeb: Yes Thirza!
strannik zipper: hahaha

Let's draw a veil over my wardrobe malfunction.

Karima.Hoisan: Thank you all for coming
PatriciaAnne Daviau: it was soo fun!!
Nara Nook: Thank you Karima
Karima.Hoisan: I am so honored to have had you all here
Thirza.Ember: 28 avies, impressive Karima!
Miso Susanowa: ty Karima, thanks for having us!
Lucy.Afarensis: Really great Karima
Isolde Caron: yes ty
Fuschia.Nightfire: really love this experience Karima
Pathfinder.Lester: yes, ty Karima!
Nara Nook: such a lovely sim
Karima.Hoisan: My pleasure

Our final destination was PMGrid, where safari has a sim, currently full of excellent Fuschia Nightfire art. The piece de resistance is Ghost Castle, an avatar interactive installation. About 16 avatars arrived almost all together, and once again the voodoo of open sim kicked in. 
While some people could see everything, others - even using local avatars - saw only an approximation. Although the Art gallery textures all showed up fine. 

But that's safari for you. Every day is different!

This week's URIs:
Odd's Playground, by Oddball Otoole:  hypergrid.org:8002:ossd playground
Karima Hoisan's Vector's Vortex:  grid.kitely.com:8002:vectors vortex
Fuschia Nightfire's Ghost Castle and gallery: pmgrid.org:8002:san22

Monorail Travels, and The Meeroo Massacre.

Allellia Zebberman: sat on a bunny :-/

Riven Homewood: Did it hop away, Alle?

Allellia Zebberman: no and its not flat

Nara Mistwood: hypergrid bunnies are tough

We were roasting meeroos around an open fire in the heart of Pathlandia, at the end of another hair raising Safari. We were an intimate group of just twenty - yeah, twenty avies on a regular mini grid. Admittedly not the same twenty as set out; some took off early, some showed up late. 

          Hair is still an issue. But when you've already managed to tp a ram on board a moving train earlier in the day, the smaller hardships like a ghostly head of hair following you around the hyperverse is not a big deal.  Plus we had Pathfinder all to ourselves, on lovely Pathlandia, in the firelight. So we asked him questions. 

Safari Lite

Peace and Freedom

Lumiere Noir

           It was a funky day of DSKCHK and bluescreen warnings about kernels, and Singularity crashing after sixty seconds. The only sane solution seemed to be to get Firestorm, and deal with all the hassle an unfamiliar viewer might add to the chaos which is Safari Night. I never thought I'd even get to Ilha Magica, and when eight-thirty came around (11:30 SLT), the  sim was funky too, as the Safarinas began to arrive, Fuschia Nightfire, Wizard Gynoid, and Wizardoz Chrome. On top of that, I'd had some really sad news, but that's for another time. Grr. Ilha Magica wasn't going to work as a meeting point - and boo hoo! There were even special new posters in the little house!

          You're thinking, 'shame you didn't research the Firestorm built-in a/o - shame you swear by Singularity'. I was thinking the same thing, believe me, as I struggled with the Firestorm UI. 

          Since Ilha Magica was acting weird, Fuschia Wizardoz,and Wiz tp'd over to our first  destination, Cuteulala Park (OSGrid) along with  snow, Avia and gradually all the others - Nara, Serene, Alex, Mercalia, Han Held, and the lovely Sarah Kline. 

            Endora came too, just for a bit - she has an art show coming up soon, and was busy with that. So twelve took the tube ride, and visited the haunted house. 

          Here's the thing. Obviously it's easier to travel alone in open sim; you can do everything in your own time, and grid jumping is comparatively stress free. But it's nothing to the feeling of good companionship. It was especially nice to have Sarah with us, she kindly pointed out my mistake at attributing the haunted house Cuteulala Artis, who instead is the mastermind - or should that be mistressmind? - behind the rollercoasters, along with the scriptalicious Takni Miklos. I think the Haunted house is by Eryn Galen. Sigh - so much easier to tell who made a prim object - you just click on Edit and voila! But it's a groaning, laughing, brilliant horrorfest on Recreation Plaza, home of the OSGrid Speedbuild, the smaller green sim south of Cuteulala Park, and a perfect foil to the exhilaration of the Big Wheel and the flume. 

          Check out the map - the Park is huge.There is fun to be had for hours here, but we had an appointment not to be missed, with Lumiere Noir, on sim Glow, part of Sean Emerald's Sanctuary Grid. 

          Famed for his Ivory Tower of Primitives in SL, Lumiere's been in open sim for many years. I first met him when we were both on Craft grid, and I'm kind of proud and humiliated to say that he taught me to use the 'Select Texture' button in Edit. I'd been in vws for 3 years by then, and had never noticed it.

           Lumiere and his partner Tosha Tyran are getting into mesh, watching Blender tutorials together and figuring it out, gradually, The buildings on the sims we visited were all by Tosha, but Lumiere, whose color changing avie was made up of about 5 or 6 different mesh shapes, also shared some of his own recent creations with us. 

          As usual, not all our attachments made it from OSGrid; since snowbody's whole outfit was made of attachments, he made quite an impression. Clothes were provided: his idea of 'traveling light' was a wee bit too light! Serene has the very sensible idea of not wearing a bald base, to avoid the 'just out of chemo' look that I was sporting, on everyone else's viewers. Fuschia has a robot look going on, so she's always elegant, and Wizzy's hair must be superglued on or something, it follows her everywhere.

           Lumiere talked to us about his choice to come to open sim, about the Ivory Tower, and its griefing problems in SL, (who knew anyone would grief a place like that? Apparently they do, and in quite sophisticated and horrible ways) about the joys and headaches of coming to grips with Blender in its complexity, and in terms of the loneliness that builders experience when using off world programs. Serene made a great suggestion, to combat the isolation of blending, she listens in to inworld Spoken Word performances.

Lumiere showed us some of his blends, some buildings, a table, and this pencil. That's when the trouble began. Somebody moaned about this blog being slow to load because of all the photos, so I have put the worst of them on Flickr; let's just say ...

          ...it was all Wizzy's fault, and Avia survived suffocation, but only just. 

          Lumiere's answer to the question - why open sim? - was succinct. The peace and the freedom of open sim. Freedom to create things not possible in SL, due to size and prim number restrictions, and the peace and quiet essential to getting on with your work. 
          Speaking of work, Tosha Tyran's builds here are amazing! One short visit is not enough. The quality textures loaded instantly, even in Ultra graphics. A little bit of sim-to-sim tp trouble, but we got around that by using our Map. 

          The Taj Mahal is just one piece by Tosha that we admired on Sanctuary Grid. I'm not saying that anyone peed in the pool, but the water did get warm at one point, and Fuschia looked a little pink... nuff said. 

          By the time we were ready to set off on our last stop (Wizzy's right, the 3 hour safari is a little too long) we were down to about six travelers. The destination was PM Grid. The LM everyone got worked just fine for Wizard and Serene, and eventually snow and I got there, but it was late and laggy, and Bob Wellman's PMGrid deserves a more thorough visit, a dedicated safari.That'll be upcoming - will you be joining us? I hope so!

Star Struck Safari

Thirza Ember: Hypergridding is about weird shit. 

Our main purpose is to experience the weird shit together.

Fuschia Nightfire: weird shit is good

Wizard Gynoid: i love drinking my recycled urine. ;-)

Miso Susanowa: THE SPICE MUST FLOW

Ten of us, there were, this week on the Safari. We 'assembled' for about half an hour, at Ilha Magica on OSGrid, just to try to make sure we didn't miss anyone. Of course, I bet we did, but as you probably know, if you IM us in Facebook, we will wait for you, or send you our hg address, and help you figure out how to use the address to hypergrid, if you're a novice. The key thing is to say beforehand you are thinking of coming.

Romenna on PM Grid

Mercalia Beck, who has a Travel Centre at Wright Plaza, and Kosmos Unlimited and Alex Zed were among the newcomers to the group, though not to hg in general. When there are such different time zones represented, from Australia to America to Europe, it's impossible to find a time that suits everyone, but we appreciate so many people fitting in with the current arrangements. First off, we all try to friend each other so that if hypergridding hoodoo fails us we have the option of attempting a personal TP. 

Opensim is full of people, it's just that most of them are busy. However, there are socials and meetups happening, like the one Lani Global organizes. We also heard Arcadia Asylum was on the grid, *starstruck!!* but it didn't seem right to bug her while she was building. So we left her alone. Or most of us did. Wizzy attempted to TP to her location but the sheer quantity of sims in the sandbox where Arcadia was working seems to have ejected Wiz right back to Ilha Magica. 

What dreams may come: FrancoGrid

         Pixel for pixel, Francogrid is probably the most beautiful grid in the metaverse. If you enjoy art or are involved in education, or heck, just want to be somewhere with a gallic flavor as deliciously diverse as baguettes, Chanel number 5 and Veuve Clicquot, then this may be the grid for you.
          Praline Barjowski is an artist, researcher and curator. She works with African artists, getting them involved in digital creativity, and was based in Dakar when she first learned about SL via an artist she met at a conference in Marseilles. That was in 2009. The jump from SL to Francogrid was a natural one... for a researcher.
Praline B: I realized that the most resources were in English and I'm in a French zone, and my students are French speaking, and also I'm involved in open source system, so I did a research and I found OpenSimulator and FrancoGrid. I came here for the first time in 2010 and at the same time I discovered hypergrid. Open simulator is a very different way to move but very interesting. I feel me more free here to create, it's also more experimental and that adds something more pepsy !  and yes, I feel more at home too. And I have this mad dream, lolol, that Linden Labs decides to go to open source, to liberate their code and to be a part of the huge metaverse.

         Dream on.
         It's very attractive, this businesslike approach to art.  Everything above board, designed for low levels of pointless drama and high levels of real world exposure, with a strong sense of respect for creator's rights. The goal, one guesses instantly, is to be taken seriously in a world where playing about online is still often viewed with derision and suspicion. The whole grid is that way, and it came as no surprise to find that Praline is a bit of a tech person, as well as an art person.
 Praline B: Well, here I'm studying code, I'm learning how to manage a Linux server. It's funny but not so easy for someone who is always dreaming! The first time i got a pc, I de-constructed it immediately. I think I'm very curious, I love to know how things are inside, so naturally now I want to know how is the backstage of a virtual world. For now here, I don't have artwork, I have an archipelago of regions.

        The regions are going to be home to a number of virtual artists, principally coming from West Africa, via her MetaTrame project. Diversity, and a different 'look' are the hallmarks of Francogrid, and that's obvious from your first arrival at Accueil sim, seen above, recently re-worked by Cherry Manga and the wonderful, beautiful DJ Phil who you can see in the last picture as a very adorable white bunny!
         The the big blue blob is a cave that contains TP machines and a 'Guide to the regions' that owners can update  with their latest developments. It also shows if a region is offline, which in opensim, is a handy tool, since teleporting is a little bit hit and miss.
         So, which is better, SL or FG?
Praline B: I think both are good. Diversity is a very great thing  disadvantage is definitely the closed side. Its like a frontier. Also the fact that your art , your objects are not yours. that is a mistake from LL. You have to let people improve new system, new territories and they will learn how to be nice and ethic. I always think that we have to be trusty there will be always bad people but SL is always a very amazing place for artists, creators, because they can have a feedback quickly they have a public in opensim, this is the disadvantage, population is less you may feel sometimes alone but you may experiment more things here, you may push the limits Here at FrancoGrid, this is a community very newcomer friendly and people help participate to your projects you don't have to be good in script or all the stuff.

This is monsieur le president, ssm2017 Binder (no, I'm too shy. You ask him!)  He was on his way to the weekly grid get-together on LeVillage sim, which if you're planning on coming to check out the lie of the land, would be a good thing to attend. It's every Wednesday evening, French time - that's 9 pm in Europe and midday in California - I leave you to do your own math. And it's village life, but not a grey concrete arena or hopelessly huge theater that dwarfs rather than embraces the group. It's another Cherry Manga build.

          OK it is grey, and it is huge. But in good ways. No rows of samey cinema seats. No stale poses.  That alien is the lovely Gill. Wave! No, not the giant figure below, on the box, which is actually a building. LeVillage in its various incarnations has inspired machinima by people you've heard of like Morlita Quan and WizardOz Chrome. Sounds like a cleaning product, actually a film maker.  Which raises the question - where does Francogrid stand in relation to the SLuggernaut?

ssm2017 Binder: in FrancoGrid, there are some people from the art, from education, from research etc... actual FrancoGrid residents are in a sharing point of view instead of mercantile.
         Which is the sexiest way ever of saying they're not in it for the moolah.
         Now, you may be thinking, sheesh Cherry Manga is all over that grid like a rash. Is there room there of other artists? Or has she kind of bagged the big stuff? Well, she knows you might think that, so - let's ask her - " Hey Cherry, is there room for other voices on Francogrid?"
Cherry Manga: Of course there is, see, I just gave the opportunity to JadeYu Fhang to try opensim by giving her my region, childhood, and there are other projects like Praline's, Metatrame which will involve African artists. I personally think that artists bring something important to any grids- candies for the eyes. They make us think about how combine visual effect with ideas. I am not here to be THE ONE Thirza, you know, if I was looking for art lovers recognition, I would stay in SL. Here most people don't care about my art :)
         So there. Speaking of other art, Praline was keen for Katia from Parc des Arts to show her stuff, and immensely impressive it is too. The organization is based in real life Bordeaux, France, and it is all about real working artists showing their stuff both in virtual and physical environments. Katia is a stunner in palest blue. 

         This is their clubhouse and the photos behind her are the founding members. They have that whole 'this is serious stuff' down at the Parc des Arts (unlike artsparks, yeah yeah) and these two sims are just stuffed with things to see and spaces for performance and exhibition. 
         Don't be alarmed if your French isn't up to much. This is an International grid, and they are very accommodating; Katia's good at Italian as well as French, and of course many others like Praline and Cherry are perfectly fluent in English (and typonese).

          Again, everything is designed with panache. Here in this beach-grunge outdoor hangout, last year, they had an evening with a two-handed performance piece called La Planque (watch it here on youtube) by Arlette Fétat with Myriam Douhi. The playwright came into Francogrid to talk to the audience, how cool is that. Katia also showed us the work of engraver and painter Julien Schuster whose March 2014 art show in Honfleur Normandy will be echoed by a parallel exhibition in Francogrid. Tere's a neat little news stand on Parc des Arts where you can pick up more info about all the events here, and tp to regions in different parts of the metaverse where art rules supreme.

         Praline is right, it's this kind of organization with room for diversity that makes the difference. Katia actively encourages independent artists on the grid, and they make a point of showing up to see exhibitions, and offering landmark links to shows and installations, wherever they may be in opensim.
Praline B: What I love here is this mix between reality and new creative territories. Also, its very important , to feel you are not alone, to feel friends around you. You may stay alone and work and you may have them around you for all discussions around your doubts! I really enjoy the spirit around Frangogrid, people here knows what they want, be happy in their projects and share this happiness and in the build, you have always people to help you, to push you more further.

         Another aspect of Parc Des Arts is the big AIDS memorial. It's a reminder, as Katia said, of the people who haven't made it, love ones lost... but also a celebration of the ones still fighting, still fighting in elegant clouds of red. Extremely effective. On the other side, the 'protected' obelisk that reminds us all that this is a very French grid. I totally love it.

         Terra Mater is Cherry's home sim, scroll through in this blog and you'll find a post about it ages back. It's another great feature of Francogrid, well of open sim in general. You've got the space to keep up builds that in SL would have to come down for reasons of space. 

          Here, Cherry can maintain a big install like Red Riding Hood (built for SL in collaboration with soror Nishi and Fragile Fanou, as well as her Collection, and still have room for more. Cherry's latest venture is learning anough Blender to make all her own mesh and leave the full perm sculpties and mesh of the past behind her. But art breeds art, doesn't it? Perhaps more installs, and photography, or machinima?
Cherry Manga: I think la collection is one old work I like still thinking it's like wine, goes good with time lol.  I don't want to inspire art, but creativity, I want people imagine they can be free from reality here, physics, imagination, there's no limit. I wish people creative and dreamy, not specially arty.
Praline B: Cherry Manga absolutely has a great impact on the grid. She is very strong and her artwork talks for her.  I think that opensim and Francogrid  gave Cherry a new boost. Here she has the time to learn more technical stuff and with her talent is amazing. 

omg DJ Phil he is such a hot bunny

         So, what is the future for Francogrid? More art, more fun, more family! They also encourage all to make an avatar here, so you can enjoy Voice in all its splendor. There are some things hypergridding doesn't quite do right. 
Praline B: I think that is the magic side of this grid if someone is a true one a real creator, all the grid is under the charme. That gives to the community the desire to put the level more high and that is a very good thing, that is what i was expected here.  I think we will see the same phenomena in opensim now because of LL politic for one part and in another part because open simulator is now more efficient. ssm our President confirms that he would love that we have here at Francogrid one region for permanent exhibits and one devoted to the artist in residency; a season for exhibits and artists in residency here.
         So might that be you, the 'artist in residence?' Might be worth a thought.... and in the meantime, drop in on this exquisite grid and its happy denizens.   

Dorena's World, and The Singing Sands

Depending on the day, hypergridding is five parts serendipity, four parts tenacious determination, and two parts swearing. There was no particular reason to hypergrid to Dorena's World yesterday, except that it's always easier to jump on a weeknight when the voodoo gods of internet provision are at their most beneficent, ie nobody's in the house sucking up my bandwidth watching videos of One Direction and Violetta. Don't even ask.
Dorena's World (URI:  dorenas-world.de:8002:Nihilon) has been around for a long time, in virtual terms. I've been through here before a few times, and always found it empty, so it was quite exciting to see three avatars were in world, among them the actual Dorena!

Dorena Verne and Anachron Young met in SL, and ended up getting together in RL. They built this grid about four years ago as a sort of hideaway, but now share it with over a hundred friends.
The grid took ages to load, then sim-to-sim tp'ing wouldn't work, then there was some freezing, then some crashing and having to re-start my journey from my home grid, jumping through Hyperica Lower (I don't know why they insist they've fixed that 4095 bug, because the latest Kokua and Singularity viewers both still show me the 'No go' message). When I got back to Dorena's World for maybe the third time, I was in the presence of Dorena  and  Anachron. They could see me, but all I could see was deep endless blue sea water, although when I'd seen them for a millisecond on my first arrival, they were in a fairly conventional living room. Knowing I'd probably crash again, I got some quick questions in about the grid, this way in the 7-8 minutes it would take me to come back, they could think of some really good answers. Stuff like: had they found it hard to make their own grid, and what's the greatest satisfaction it gives them? Anachron answered as his English appeared to be the best.
Anachron Young: It took a while to get into making our own grid, but some experience in computers and network technology proved helpful. The best thing is we don't depend on other commercially interested companies. We are a big family, and care for each other.
Well, that's about all I found out. I did ask what I know you're wondering, 'what's up with the people wanting to live at the bottom of the sea?' Apparently, they don't know.

When it comes to events, this week is a good time to visit, because they're celebrating their 4th anniversary and in fact tonight at 10pm they'll be holding a guided tour. They have a bi-weekly dance night on Tuesdays, from 8pm European time, and I would have liked to know more in general about their philosophy regarding community events, because as you're aware that Hypergridding is a slow, serendipitous, open-ended activity. Anachron dismissed me with a link (I hate when people do that) http://www.gridtalk.de which you'll not be surprised is all in German. It would also have been cool to get a picture because by now I'd finally rezzed on dry land, at a spot of high ground overlooking the town. Fearing that a point-to-point TP would once again screw things up, I asked if they could kindly come up on the hill for a 2 minute photo-shoot. They couldn't. They were off to SL. So that's all folks.
Here's the thing with hypergridding. It's all about patience. After those four or five false starts, the problems melted away. It may also have been that the three avies on the grid had taken off by then; that sometimes helps. Time to sight-see; there were some rough patches when crossing sim borders, but no more freezing and the crashing.
The grid has an old-world SL feel in many ways, primmy, not meshy, so if you have to fall back on Imprudence Viewer (my ancient but remarkably stable HG viewer of choice) you'll not miss out on much. One of the oldest things to see is a picture-show of, let's call it 'Big builds in the real world' (real, and a bit legendary) on sim Anachronia.

Then Vanish appeared.
Vanish Seriath (sometimes Vanish Sands) has been playing music since he was 6, and started playing the guitar at 15. he had a band, the name of which has followed him into virtual worlds: TGIB which is The Grey In Between, but also The Good In Bad and a host of other things. He did a show here in Dorena's World a few days ago, performing on this stage. I missed it, but he has several more coming up, notably in OSGrid (on Events Plaza) on February 16th, and in Metropolis on March 7th.
Apparently all the cool kids of open sim are in Google+ nowadays with explains eloquently why I know jack squat about what is going on; if you'd like to have Vanish come perform his music on your grid, you should look for him there.
Vanish.Sands: I've been writing my own stuff since 1999, so far about 60 songs or so. Much of that predates Virtual Worlds, and I'm really pretty embarrassed about many of them.   Since I've been in Virtual Worlds, I've been writing some poems, and lots of musings and stuff about VW, but no songs so far.  But honestly, the cool thing is that here I can play for audiences from all over the world, which is really the best part of being a musician.

With his partner El Firecaster, Vanish inhabits a fairy-tale grid called TGIB (of course) This is the terrace on The Loom. All the sims have poetic names; the grid is semi-private, but if you get the chance to go over there, I highly recommend it. It is a magnificent confection of light and space. It's one of the first places I visited back in the good old days of Pathfinder and the Hypergrid Adventurer's Club. So many grids fall into the trap of replicating the boring concrete boxes of the real world - actually a lot of them are worse than RL architecture, let's be honest - but this place is a fluid fantasy, a symphony of sinuous curves at twilight.

Vanish came to open sim after two years in SL, where he had been a fee-paying sim owner. Out of curiosity, he experimented with an early copybot, to understand how it worked, and got banned. The adventure had begun.
Vanish Sands: That was back in 2009. The biggest differences I've seen in open sim since then are the thousands of bugfixes that make it as stable as it is today. I don't want to sound like I'm talking about how things were back in the war, but man... it was rough. Other than that, I really like the way the hypergrid works now.
As you know Vanish runs OpenSim Creations, an excellent online resource for free content.
Vanish Seriath: We've grown roughly double the last year, both in terms of items, as well as in terms of users. Right now, we get about 5000 visits per day, which puts us in the upper spots of OpenSim related sites. There's about 1500 items and they've been downloaded about 250.000 times.
I wondered how he deals with the age-old problem of provenance on his site. You know, people in SL claiming their stuff has been ripped off and is 'selling' in open sim.
Vanish Sands: Hm. As a provider, I don't check. There's several reasons for that:
          1. I can't possibly know every single item in SL and whether or not someone has the right to upload it to OSC. 
         2. Even if I did, it's really not my job to police the site. That's the police's job.
         And 3. I would put myself in harm's way if I did so, because it could be held against me when someone does something wrong. Like: "Why didn't you remove this item when you say you're checking them; it's clearly infringing." There were a few court cases that went terribly wrong because someone gave the impression that they were actively policing items and then something slipped through. I'm kinda professionally interested in copyright law, so I keep track of all manner of stuff like that.
So what is available on the website?
Vanish Sands: We definitely have a lot of buildings, like houses and such. And all manner of oddities. Avatar accessories and clothes not so much, so those are always needed. The most popular item is a butterfly generator, which is basically just a scripted box that emits butterfly particles, but people seem to love it.  I made a small shop for myself, which is going better than I thought it would, so that's a plus. What I want to do more is make OpenSim items more attractive to merchants, i.e. creators who try to make some sort of income off them. I've started a site where you can click yourself a shop to sell your items online, but so far it didn't get a whole lot of attention. I guess the Kitely Market will be the place to go.
Having your own grid is a bit like having your own tardis. You can keep all kinds of stuff in there.
Vanish Sands: Mmmh, want me to show you something?
Thirza.Ember @tunderbird.dyndns-ip.com: sure
Vanish Sands: You remember AM Radio from SL?
Thirza.Ember @tunderbird.dyndns-ip.com: i do
Vanish Sands: WEll, hold on.Let's go to a region called "surface".
Vanish Sands: When he announced he would leave SL, it broke my heart to think that his artwork would just be gone, so I made a backup for myself.
Thirza.Ember @tunderbird.dyndns-ip.com: just lovely. This is the beauty of having your own place
Vanish Sands: I know. I loved his items so much.
Thirza.Ember @tunderbird.dyndns-ip.com: it makes me laugh when you hear in SL the artists squabbling about one poxy sim in the LEA
Vanish Sands: Haha, yeah. I've got about 6 sims full of his stuff. And with the power of OARs I can load them whenever I want.
Thirza.Ember @tunderbird.dyndns-ip.com: "with the power or oar". I like it.
If you'd like to read more, go to TGIB is the blog of Vanish and El, with lots of musings, fashion thoughts, philosophical ramblings networking and techie advice, and/or follow him on Twitter. There is a nice article by Johnny Waugh about Vanish here  - hey! that's my photo of Vanish, John you picture bandit! I tell you, these open sim people.... shocking.