Queen of the Paths

 Tutz Zabelin is, frankly, Queen of the paths. This week for our second destination, we visited one of her many beautiful landscape regions, this one called The Waterfall Swamp, on Pangea grid... HG Address is at the end of the post... but you knew that already. 

Tutz Zabelin

Our visit of the swamp was originally scheduled for later in the year but due to a last minute cancellation, so we were very happy that Tutz and grid owner Marlon Wayne were able to lay on our tour with very little notice. Shout out to grid gal Kitty Sarrasine also for making sure we had everything optimal! And yeah, the Fall Safari calendar is already beginning to fill up, so if you're interested in having us come visit in September - October - November, it's not too soon to get in touch. Read this page first though. Points 3 and 5 at the end of the page are pretty much a deal breaker.

 Pangea is of course one of Opensim's premiere art grids, with an embarras de richesses - so much to choose from! - this however was a brand new sim to everyone on the tour, and as usual Tutz quickly gave us the lowdown on the origins of her creation. 

Arriving on The Waterfall Swamp

Dings Digital: this place looks awesome

Star Ravenhurst: There are a lot of us today.

Tutz Zabelin: welcome to Pangea grid and sim Waterfall Swamp. Most of you know my background, but in short I started in SL in 2006 and have been in Open sim most of the time since 2014.

Lily Willow: all these places are super amazing  :-)

Karneval Is Koming!

Will your grid participate?

Pangea grid is gaining a reputation for art events, and also for its 'hands across the hypergrid' approach to social events, like RL festivals. Why do it? Grid owner Marlon says it nicely.

Marlon Wayne: carnival is a good thing to bring grids and people together.

In a big way, Pangea goes in for Carnival Cologne style ...or as they call it  Köln or, if you don't do umlauts, Koeln. It's a city that does a straight week of crazy days - a sort of teutonic Rio or New Orleans - with the highlight being Rose Monday, March 3 this year. Costumes, a lot of drinking, candy, more drinking, a parade and dancing, and some more drinking, are the main features of the day.

Pangea's Birthday

 This weekend there will be a big party event to mark the 4 years of Pangea grid.

There's a parade, a ballet, a party, on 12 October from 11.00 am SLT on region Koeln not to mention en exciting GoKart competition. Marlon Wayne and his merry band of builders, scripters, and artists are celebrating a big milestone. Here's an in depth interview with the man himself.

Marlon Wayne: My virtual life began in 2006 in Second Life. Back then, I was fascinated by the limitless possibilities of this virtual world, where one could build their own projects and immerse in communities. I was especially drawn to virtual Cologne, partly because of my real-life proximity to the city. I quickly became part of a special family in the virtual city and was passionately involved in the carnival, as well as in music and show projects.

When Second Life changed its terms of service (TOS) in 2011, I decided to move to Avination. I was allowed to take my virtual version of Cologne with me, which remains an integral part of Pangea today. In Avination, I met many new people who accompanied me on my virtual journey, and some of them are now part of Pangea.

After Avination closed in 2015, I began looking for a new, stable grid that could be a reliable home for my vision and the virtual communities we had already built. However, the search proved difficult because many grids at the time were struggling with technical issues and unstable servers. Although I didn’t have the technical expertise to run my own grid, I was determined to try. I rented a server, but I knew I would need support.

sim Koeln as it looks today on Pangea

Luckily, I had already met Kitty Sarrassine in 2010, an extremely talented server administrator and programmer. Thanks to her technical knowledge and tireless effort, I was able to bring my vision and long-held dream to life: creating my own grid. Kitty supported me from the beginning and played a crucial role in making this project a reality.

On August 31, 2020, the first avatar of our new grid was born—Kitty Sarrassine herself. She worked meticulously to ensure that every detail was set up correctly and that the grid ran smoothly and reliably. After weeks of hard work, it was finally ready, and on September 27, 2020, the second avatar, Marlon Wayne, was born.

Bink's Ballet

 The bees and the flowers, what's not to love. They are pretty to look at and essential for life on this planet as we know it. Why not bring that spirit into Opensim, where cross pollination between builders, artists, tech people and of course the public create a veritable ecosystem of fun and fecundity. 

Bink met me on sim Koeln on Pangea to talk about her upcoming show. It's going to be on 12 October, at 11 am SLT so save the date, this is going to be a great opportunity to see something extravagant and also catch up with so many friends, and friends of the grid.  The HG Address is at the end of the post, but if you're a regular reader, you know that already.

Bink Draconia: I always wanted to create a men's ballet..Men's ballet is different... it's a funny kind of dancing. i don't know why, but just karsten Runningbear wanted to dance in a tutu for me... so i needed to create npcs for it.... (ok, that's a joke, i wanted npcs from the beginning^^)

Bink Draconia

Thirza Ember: hahaha well that is a funny idea, but Karsten is class so anything he is an inspiration for, will be very good. So your show will be part of the Pangea Birthday celebrations on October 12?

Bink Draconia: yes.... first Lampithalers rainbow parade will start at 19.00 CET, then the ballet and after that an art show by Lampi.

Thirza Ember: oh that's great, a nice mix of entertainment... tell me, what is the biggest challenge with the NPCs?

Safari Fall

It's September, so it's time for a new season of the Safari! We also have a new base for meeting up, on a dedicated grid, the address is at the end of the post. As usual, the event began at 12.00 SLT and as always, Safari trips are on Wednesdays. This post describes our first destination, you can read about our second destination in the post called Tierra de Marpil.

Appropriately, our very first destination for the Fall season was God Fall, by Tutz Zabelin, on Pangea grid, and Tutz was on hand to tell us all about it.

Tutz Zabelin: For those I haven't met before, a short history about me and Pangea. In reality I am a girl from Sweden. And i have a background from SL where i started 2007. Pangea started 4 years ago. Marlon Wayne is the man who came up with the idea.

 At Pangea, we are a blending of different skills and, like me, just a builder. There is much much  more to say about Pangea, there is some information about this on the Welcome sim. You will also find TP board to Pangea's various sims.

Thirza Ember: nice EEP

Tutz Zabelin: I was supposed to invent and write a story about God Fall but my imagination has been stuck in sim Construction.

Luna Lunaria: I get that way also

Tutz Zabelin: But briefly about the history of the God Fall is: It is at the beginning of the creation of the Earth. Good beings from space, gods and goddesses, come in a spaceship. They come to help create the Earth and protect it from evil forces that threaten to take over. On the way to Earth, the good gods spaceship is attacked by evil aliens The goddesses on the ship then stand around the ship and protect it. They succeed in using their powers to drive out the evil ones.

Racing in Pangea

Looking for somewhere new to put the pedal to the metal? Do you have the heart of a Marshal?

Whether you're an expert racer, or just a crazy driver, Pangea grid would love to have you come over and help test their new race track on a dedicated sim set up for an event set to be held in October, the Pangea Go-Kart Cup.

This competition will feature as part of the Pangea 4th birthday festival, they are planning a whole series of different activities. You will be seeing the details pop up in the socials, also don't overlook their website (worth bookmarking) called https://pangea-grid.com/ ...and right now, if you like your sport sitting down, you could be a huge help! 

What's the idea? Let's ask  Karsten Runningbear, the grid's script guru, what he and the Pangea Grid team, led by Grid Owner Marlon Wayne, have in mind.

Karsten Runningbear: you are welcome to try the track and give your feedback, so we can make the racing experience the best it can possibly be before the big day. In particular, there is an information evening tomorrow, Friday, 9 August between 11am and 1pm SLT (that's from 8-10pm, Berlin time). The focus of this evening is the planning and organization of our upcoming birthday go kart race. 

Four Bits By Bink

Anyone who is well familiar with the Safari is familiar with the name Bink Draconia. I think the first time we had a proper group visit with her was back in 2016 on her grid Kroatan. 

That's a classy name for a grid, Kroatan. Grid names should be catchy, short, and imaginative, don't you think? 

In fact, that name was our first clue to the level of talent we were going to come into contact with, on her Halloween build, made in collaboration with the wonderful Kiki Bailey and with a storyline by Malon Wyngard - you can read about it here. 

Flash forward eight years, and Bink continues to deliver fabulous builds, now on Marlon Wayne's Pangea grid. 

You may remember seeing in 2023 Bink's The Good Place build, which is not just a triumph of landscaping, but a full-on game that shadows the plot of the television series. It's a brilliant synthesis of the story, with a decor so close to the real thing at times that you feel like you're inside your TV. 

But Bink has other fab regions on Pangea to visit, and this post highlights four of them, conveniently set close together in the Great Pangea Ocean. The region names are: Eternal Ice, North Pole, Koburk, and Needful Things. The addresses are, of course, at the end of the post - but what can you expect to see if you go there?

Lampi's Legends

Lampithaler Artist's latest build Cloudshead Worldheart is an enchantment of pixels. To have a heart as big as the world, to have your head in the clouds, that describes the perfect intersection between childhood dreams and artistic inspiration.

The region is all islands, of improbable shapes, and the main party is inside the biggest, almost pumpkin like, but with a distinctly bark-like feel to the outer shell.

Inside, in the base, is the dance floor where we foregathered to enjoy dome tunes ably dished out by DJ Marlon Wayne. 

Tutz and Treasure

 Pangea Grid has a well deserved reputation for being home to some spectacular art, and this week's visit to Treasure Island, a region built by Tutz Zabelin, is no exception! 

After our visit to the Cherry Manga installation on Craft grid mentioned in the previous post, we were all ready for some more atmospheric environments, and jumping to this region to meet with some of the Pangeans - Tutz and Marlon, Lampi, Karsten, Mys, and Kitty.

Coming Up Roses

It's December and what better time to start thinking about ...Carnival Season... wait, what?  The Xmas tree still hasn't been decorated! But you know, it's never too soon to begin thinking about your creativity for the coming year. What better way to kick it off, and to kick away the winter blues, than by entering a nice float in the Carnival Parade.

Sim Koeln

Why on Pangea grid? 

Well, it's one of opensim's premier arts grids, with spectacular regions by Tutz Zabelin, Lampithaler Artist, Nyx Breen, Bink Draconia and more. 

The grid owner Marlon Wayne is based in Cologne, where Carnival gets started way earlier than it does in most countries.  Consider this -  Mardi Gras, which is the big Carnival date for most people will be February 13 next year, but for the people of Cologne - in German,  Köln - the carnival season begins on November 11 at 11 minutes past eleven. Pangea has a region called Koeln, which is how you spell Köln when you can't use an umlaut. It's a cityscape that the Pangeans use for all kinds of community art events and a visit at any time will reward you with one  collection or another.

Portugal by Tutz

Every musician likes a nice stage to perform on, but generally speaking, a visiting singer doesn't expect to have a whole sim built for them. 

That's what makes the region over on Pangea pretty and amazing, and all around pretty amazing. How did sim Portugal come to be?