Safari Out Loud

A cloudy start in Metropolis this week, things did not look too promising, to be honest with you, and not just Apmel's funky Metrosexual hairdo. We are still meeting on Outlands sim in Metopolis, and no, nobody has fixed that elephant yet, but this time tomorrow, you will find a few freebies and a list of clothing, shoes and hair landmarks, not as fancy as the one Wizardoz Chrome has made in OSGrid, but a start, anyway. 

Outlands : I don't advise sitting on the barrels

It is a strange sensation to hear voices in Open Sim. One gets so used to having a smart mouth without actually opening it, that this week, when Safari went to the Seanchai Library in Kitely, it was a delightful shakeup of our usual routine.

Apmel and I ponder what could possibly have happened to Mal Burn's signature top hat.

  The Seanchai Library in SL has been delighting audiences (and helping real life good causes) for many years, and now they have branched out to Kitely, it means they have a vast number of prims for a fraction of the price. 

Seanchai Portals at the welcome area

That translates into more creative environments, places of wonder and inspiration for you to explore with twelve storytelling venues and eight themed worlds, you could spend days here. And before you start biting your keyboard and shouting 'Yeah, but where is the hg address" they are all at the end of the post, with the assumption that you have some inkling of how to gridjump.

For Safari, Seanchai (Irish for 'storyteller') meant Caledonia Skytower and Shandon Loring taking time out of their daytime to read for us two great stories that left us quivering with fear and clinging to our neighbors (or in my case crashing at the very end... I blame Apmel). The story reading corner is appropriately sized for such a large gathering but you really have to go check out their Fallingwater build, why not pop over there this weekend for their regular scheduled readings at 9 am SLT Saturday and Sunday.

 There is so much to see I am not sure everyone got to visit Fallingwater this time but we'll be back - who can resist these talented actors who have participated in on a whole raft of quality productions that bridge the gap between virtual worlds, including such classics as The African Queen and The Dickens Project. You can catch up with them on their website, and find them on FB, Google+ etc.  where upcoming performances are announced.

The beautiful Caledonia Skytower, during her reading of Frank Stockton's The Lady or the Tiger?

They have so many great ideas for using virtual spaces to put on plays and readings, this is a huge resource for anyone who loves literature and hypergridding, so be sure to join their group at the main welcome area, so you will get all their updates, and don't forget if you're in SL, you can also join StoryFest and perhaps be an even more active part of the fun. Voice is not for everyone, but it adds a delicious level of intimacy and animation to the virtual experience and we plan to come back again soon to hear some more of their stories, so please join us if you can.

Love the red plane on TanGle Grid!

Few things are more excruciating in a virtual world than when your viewer freezes just as you hear someone ask you a question in front of a large group of people, but at least the inevitable crash is a merciful release... and with crashing on the menu, it seemed appropriate that our second destination was the Air and Space show at TanGle Grid. Their Welcome sim is one of my favorites, it is easy to use, bright and busy, but not so full of info you are overloaded and can't figure out where to go.  Just follow the arrows!

Peter Veliz and the team made us very welcome, although once again it seems a good number of safarians could not see the fantastic vehicles on the sim, while the neighboring fun fair rezzed perfectly for them. It is your classic HG Voodoo, a huge shame though because the vintage and futuristic vehicular variety on show was amazing. For a long time the only thing I could see was Miso Susanowa wearing her new Meeroo HG Hairguard (too late, Philip. I believe it is already Patent Pending)

But then Boom! All the ships came into view. 
I went up to see the Star Trek models, shame my dire computer situation *breaks down and weeps before the shattered hull of her alienware laptop* could not really do the place justice.

This may be illegal.

We bethought ourselves to go over and check out the Ghost Castle Installation that Fuschia has put up on PM Grid. There's a special post all about that, Usually by the time we get to our third destination we are quite thin on the ground, but this week more seemed to have survived the many missteps that makes up jumping. One such misstep, losing your clothes, seems to be easily fixable, according to the Nook's very own Nara Malone who advises - put all the things you are wearing into your inventory's Suitcase, so that grids with HG restrictions will not bork your lovely look (huh- must remember to do that, also not try to grid jump when my viewer is set to High Graphics.)

For quite a few of us, it took loads of jump attempts and the use of sneaky back ways to get over to PMGrid; Pathfinder managed to get there before any of us. We found him riding around on an animal that looked distinctly HG traumatized, and when the grid finally spat us all out, we headed back to Metropolis, landing up in Art Blue's zoo on sim Futurelab. It is nice to close each chaotic safari this way, the hard core safarians drifts back to our grid of origin and we all end up sitting around being silly. For the second time in a week I have been a party to lap-sitting mishaps, and since I have been plagiarized twice this week also, Karma says it's OK to steal this photo from Phacebook. 

It belongs to  Apmel who made it right to the end of the Safari this time, a personal best for him, I think his magic hair must be the secret behind his new-found stickability. Lucy came and went, but what kept Nara with us down to the wire? Writerly genius, of course! Fuschia has Pink Power, while Wiz and Miso swear by Meeroo meat, which has become the number one snack for all Safaris, for its high fiber and levels of vitamins H and G.  I am not sure what Patricia Anne's superpower is... yet. Art has some bizarrely oversized animals in his collection, I leave it to others to decide what that means. Maybe Siobhan and Nara can write a story about it. 

So once you log into your grid of choice, here are the hg addresses of the places we went to. Put the address in the Search box in your Map, hit Search, wait, and then jump.

Seanchai Library grid.kitely.com:8002/Seanchai Library
TanGle Grid tanglegrid.net:8032 and then follow the big arrow to Expo Isle (the Air and Space Expo is nearly over, so hurry!) 

Art Blue's zoo and more  hg.hypergrid.org:80:Futurelab

Safari Park

Alizarine Goldflake: what does it take to get a sim here?

Wizard Gynoid: a very big ship

We still do not know what Mal Burns was doing in that garden, and perhaps it's just as well. I'm certainly not going to be the one to ask him, he is a TV personality and we all know what they are like...

Mal Burns

           It was a tough night for safarying; we lost Pathfinder Lester before we'd even begun. But Ferd Fredrix showed up in this amazing avatar, apparently an Autocad freebie, which we all loved. And thanks to Mercalia Beck, we have a new Clubhouse friend, a chatty crocodile, who you are welcome to go and feed. He's on the patio.

          Our first destination, the Jurrasic Park of Sarah Kline and Ada Massenberg, should have been a walk in the park since it's right here on OSGrid and is on a Var region, which theoretically should have been able to take the strain of a mere 20 avatars, and they were expecting our visit. Strangely, the lag was palpable, the brilliant and funny builds failed to load, people were frozen or found themselves at 1,1,1 coordinates. Tp'ing to other parts of the region helped a bit, but for many it was just too eye-watering.

          Some struggled even to jump at all.
Cherry Manga: trying trying
Cherry Manga: ok doesn't work
Cherry Manga: don't lose time with me and enjoy the safari
Thirza Ember: this is not wasted time. This is the point of the safari. to help people make hypergridding work for them
          She went to LBSA Plaza. Landmarks are great, sure, but your Map is your bestest friend. Everyone wants to make hypergridding better with a script, or a HUD, or a gate, but in the end it's about you and your map, being aware of your surroundings, and figuring out strategies to get from A to B, like jumping to the Default region of a grid when the all else fails.
Thirza Ember: put this in your map so you can see the region in your map: "Ada and Sarahs Jurrasic Park" then hit Search - it helps sometimes
Cherry Manga: I'm there after a crash, landed on a brontausaurus
          Hypergridding is voodoo. Your juju is your perseverence, and maybe helping someone else stick with it is the best fun of all. People go quiet and we can't always tell if they are struggling, or just busy having fun. Not everyone experienced Jurassic Lag. Look at Fuschia, who found King Kong and is guaranteed a week of charmed life.

It's like the Via Francigena.
          After the collapse of the Roman Empire, much of Europe was engulfed in a hungry, muddy, fighty period called the Dark Ages. They weren't cavemen or anything, there was still life and intellectual thought going on in Europe, and people who had the traveling bug still went exploring. The pilgrimage was your best excuse for leaving home and seeing the world, but getting to Rome was a tough proposition; the old Roman roads and cities were worn out or gone. Pilgrims got lost in marshes, on freezing mountain passes, killed or enslaved by brigands, or completely lost in the long journey South from places like Denmark and Cumbria, and back again. But gradually, the random trackways consolidated into a much more reliable route, and hospitality and security (even ancient credit cards!) trade and communication eased the traveler's lot, as documented by Sigeric the Serious in the 900s and in this pretty cool blog  in 2011.
         Medieval meanderings seem an appropriate metaphor for Safari. We sally out hopeful into the semi-unknown. Not all of us make it back. Anyone who wants help has only to ask. We have Sara fari back at the clubhouse always ready to get you back in touch with the group, so there's no reason to miss out even at a later stage in the event.
            There are so many opportunities in Open Sim, and the period of being a hypergridding noob is really quite short, if you give it a chance. This platform is growing larger, more stable, with more lovely free content every day. Can you really afford to be an SL stay-at-home?

          Speaking of opportunities, our last official destination of the trip was TanGLe grid, that rare thing, a commercial grid with its own currency but open to hypergridding, where Isambard Kingdom Brunel (no relation) organizes excellent Expos on - you've guessed it - Expo Island. Look for him in InWorldz and SL and OSGrid as Peter Veliz, if you would like to get involved with a show. About half the original group was still with us at this point, and probably 80% had crashed and had to re-make the trip from OSGrid back to TanGLe, but nobody seemed to mind too much, it's all experience. 

We were there for the last night of the Fashion Expo, (next up is Air and Space!) and everyone took the opportunity to admire the underwear. Although some of us might not need it.

Serene Jewell

Walking was not an option, for some reason, but the Haunted House was excellent. 

Tangle Grid funfair 

The rides were fast and furious especially the little planes where I nearly up-chucked all over Alizarine Goldflake (too much popcorn!)

Some of us were not wearing undies. Nuff said.

... and the shooting gallery where I discovered Serene is a very good shot, so better keep all my bark-related quips to myself.
Fun? I should say so.

Serene Jewell, armed and dangerous