Bloom, and the Cat's Meow

Bloom Peters has made a major breakthrough with her ongoing project to make it possible to use MIDI  (the Musical Instrument Digital Interface that lets you connect electronic instruments to computers) to musically animate objects inworld. If you have ever read this blog or been on Safari, you'll have been blown away by Bloom's region Crescent Melody, with its fabulously crazy orchestra - here's us all enjoying a concert for Cornflakes Week 2024.

Looking at this gif, are you thinking what I'm thinking? How cool would it be to have the possibility of making your own musically inspired animated scenes - even a whole region - of objects all playing along to a tune. Well, that opportunity is just around the corner...

Before we get into the nitty gritty, I had to ask about the cats.

Thirza Ember: you'll keep the same look, the same animal orchestra?

Bloom Peters: nope it's getting a much more professional design so that on release date people can use it right away to create music or use it to control regions and things. There is a major breakthrough with the machine. I created a program in python. It's called "Midi to Opensim"

Dismayland, Undismayed!

Dismayland is one of the most unusual regions in Opensim, for its 'ban' on attachments, for its insulting NPCs and many scripted rides, and for the risk to life and limb! For the HG Safari visit this week, which was also Cornflakes Week, Spax Orion, the grid owner and the magician behind all these rides, lifted the no Mesh no Attachment rule, and allowed HG Safari to come and visit. 

Spax Orion

Spax had also prepared a special flying saucer ship toshow off the rides from the air, with the idea that people will get a good glimpse at the park and return to the rides on other occasions. It's one of those places where you can spend hours enjoying the variety or imaginative machines, but also the funny NPCs chatting and arguing with each other. Here's the lovely Siwas, resplendent in her many Biker attachments, enjoying the Nuclear Haste ride, as the rest of us rode around in the sky.

This week Opensim has been acting weird (well it has been doing so for several weeks, as many have noted) and lots of people are getting kicked or banned messages from places for no discernable reason. Poor James Atlloud managed to get refused entry on avatars from 3 different grids! And similar problems were found by many others. These are almost all not intentional messages by the grid owners.

There is, I'm afraid, nothing that I or the grid owners can do about that except to invite you to try again at another time, and say we're sorry we didn't have your company... and invite you not to make a drama out of a technical glitch, if at all possible.

Cornflakes 2025 NW Style

It's Cornflakes Week in Opensim, and the HG Safari crew landed on Neverworld for the second hour of our tour, guests of Govega and all the NVW friends, on the brightly colored Cornflakes stage at Never Plaza, just as we did last year.  

Nexus Storm: Welcome to everyone from the Hypergrid Worlds !!!!

Before we get on to the Corny events of the day, just a quick word about hypergridding. If you have recently gotten the 'Avatars from your gird are not allowed' message on a bunch of grids, please don't assume that there is some sort of massive war going on. These are mostly mistakes - the opensim ecology appears to be suffering quite a lot recently, and often the system is messing up, and sending out false 'Not Allowed' messages. Please try again, or try a different avatar, or above all don't assume the worst  ...chances are, it's not the grid owner trying to offend or exclude you, it's just the intertubes getting stuffed up. 

For those who may not remember, Cornflakes Week (the last seven days in February each year) is a festival unique to opensim, not linked to any real world festival, nor a holdover from SL, but a reminder of simpler times in opensim when we were all much younger and so were our prims. Not every grid does it, and no two grids celebrate the same way; Osgrid has traditionally done a big party although with the current rush to save .oars and .iars, likely they will have other things on their minds. 

Neverworld's house band the King Trio were spinning the tunes for Cornflakes Week

Entertainment supplied by the King Trio who gave us a selection of Country music. 

For a lot of people, the name 'Cornflakes' probably only means the breakfast cereal, but it has much deeper roots in the history of opensim. Virtual platforms like Opensim are more and more being recognized as places with a population and its own particular customs, a sort of virtual civilization, and having our own traditions and legends that unite us, well, that is part of what makes our archipelago of grids unique. 

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.

Crystal Craft

 Craft Grid is celebrating its Crystal Anniversary - fifteen years of community, international friendship, big art, lovely residences, educational projects, and a warm sociability that has kept its residents amused and absorbed all these years. It's a tightly knit community, with people from all over the world, though it's fair to say, a nice slice of Italians who will make you feel welcome in the grid's general Chat group whenever you log in. 

It's a grid that has always been generous - for example, for many years, Licu Rau, the owner of Craft, donated the regions for the Hypergrid International Expo. Licu has also invited the HG Safari group more than once to celebrate Cornflakes Week with him - here he is, dressed for the event, back in 2016. 

I asked Licu  what is planned for this birthday party on Monday 27 January starting at 12:30pm SLT on Jubilee sim.

Licu Rau: We will have a musical evening in an environment inspired by crystals. Being a moment of transition in which various technical changes and specific needs overlapped, we were not able to organize special events as done on some other occasions.

Thirza Ember:  What kind of changes? Tell us more.

For the Love of Lucy

Lucy was always there for me inworld with a word of encouragement, a joke or a useful observation. Always the same, generous, funny, creative.

In virtual worlds, when you don't see someone around for a while, it is easy to assume that they're simply busy elsewhere, or perhaps not feeling up to sitting in front of a computer. That happened with me and Lucy. This summer came along, the Safari trips took a break, and so did I, from virtual worlds... life got busy, and I totally missed seeing the news on Facebook that Lucy (in RL Peter Jones) had passed away. Only today, going to check his Facebook profile to see how he was doing, did I find out what happened.

Lucy Afarensis

That's part of the paradox of the modern world where in theory everyone is in touch with everyone else and we all know everything. In reality, we only know what we know, follow what we follow. Information we need and care about doesn't always get through.

Lucy was key to the HG Safari tours around Opensim throughout the years. More than either of us ever put into words, whenever we got the opportunity to chat - I wish told him more often what our friendship meant to me. Lucy was in SL from 2007 and in Opensim not long after that (Lucy's regions faced onto the OSGrid Moat, close to LBSA),  and the choice of the name name 'Lucy Afarensis' was a humorous reference to age - by a person who was never a fossil by any means.

We had a memorable visit to Lucy's region, including the Grove Gallery, in May 2018. We visited her place on Francogrid back in 2016 also, enjoying a concert by Nazira Avro - Lucy was always a canny opensimmer, spreading the wealth of builds over different grids, so as not to risk losing all if one of them should fail. That's not a lot of Safari visits, you may say, considering how interesting these places were, but Lucy was always the first to give up a spot in the HG Safari calendar, in favor of some other builder or artist, so to finally get to bring the whole group over to experience the horseback trip across this vast landscape was an absolute privilege.

Close Encounters

Encounters - of any kind - it's not a word we always associate with Opensim. It's a whole lotta space! 

If you think that opensim's kind of empty today, then you should have seen it ten, fifteen years ago. The small population of pioneers was pretty sparse, and you'd be forgiven for describing it as a place of rare encounters, maybe even zero! 

Close Encounters - the space ship

Yet, for seven years from 2008, there was one fixed appointment on OSGrid where you'd find a regular band of happy dancers, some good tunes, the latest gossip - of a friendly kind, nothing hostile - and the chance to finally see someone after a week of building and experimenting in this brave new world.

The place was Close Encounters, a spaceship dance club on a region that was home to Dorothea Lundquist and Jay Maze. 

Twirling time!

A Change of Venue

Bit of a different trip this week on Safari as our first destination was at home, in a way. We went over to a brand new grid called HG Safari and visited the place that will be (starting next season, in September) the permanent base for Safari trips. HG Address is at the end of the post, as always!

Thirza Ember: welcome This is the new Safari clubhouse on HG Safari grid

Francisco Koolhoven: nice new area

Thirza Ember: will take a moment to rez, when you do, please come find me at the new Clubhouse seating area

Tosha Tyran: oh, poor little alpaca arrived also...

Ayla Alvarez: this looks strangely familiar

lifted pixel: it's an elephant!

Nara Nook: Everything looks great Thirza

Sunshine Szavanna: looks very familiar for sure

Cornflakes in Bloom

The second half of an uproarious, imaginative, and musical Cornflakes Week party was on Winxtropia! A big shout out to everyone who makes the effort (and it's not always easy, as we're all busy people) to honor the event with their great costumes, and by showing up and being part of the fun! But most of all, of course, to our hosts who do so much work behind the scenes, it's crazy. Here we are arriving on Crescent Melody, Winxtropia, among the incredible instruments that play such a vital part to the event.

Jupiter Rowland: Finally I get to see this sim on a decently powered machine.

Bloom Peters:  hehe i love all the cool new avatars to see

Lavia Lavine: ...she said I reminded her of a bag of Wonder Bread

Bloom Peters: Angelic with a cool avatar too, very unique

Lavia Lavine: So I guess I'll just loaf around.

Farstar Enoch: hehe

Star Ravenhurst: Angel always looks amazing

Cornflakes on Neverworld

Cornflakes Week comes round once a year, and it's a great opportunity to show off your imaginative side in a uniquely Opensim way. This year, as usual, the Safari celebrated the week long event with our Wednesday tour split into two halves, with our first party destination on Neverworld Grid. 

Never Plaza... the calm before the storm.

Be ready to be amazed by what the Neverworldians pulled out of their corny inventories...

But first, a shout out to everyone who dressed up! Lots of cornflake hats, plus Angelic Kisses rocking an Alpha Tribe outfit by Felix Ringtail, Lavia Lavine and four-legged friend sporting spots, Roff clowning it,  James in a vintage carpetman avie with lit-up face, Forest ant-itified, while a colorfully ringed lifted pixel took to the corny dancefloor, as she prepared to livestream the event. 

Cornflakes Week

'Tis the season... but wait, no real world seasonal atmospherics involved, this is all virtual. Cornflakes Week is coming!
Always held during the final 7 days of February, this year's Cornflakes Week is 22-29 February. It's a festival just for opensim, and for everyone... not linked to any religious or national festivals, making it an all-inclusive addition to the many fun real-world oriented events that happen inworld. 

The first Cornflakes Week event was celebrated in 2015, and HG Safari always celebrates it

In the Abyss

 James Atlloud: i am mes-mer-ized

Imagine a drowned city, old as time.  Here creatures of the sea play among the ruins, while above the water a series of monumental bridges link land masses, no more than islands now, where a scatter of fine buildings, architecture ancient and modern, can be visited - even danced in and shopped in.

Mr Smokes and Nexus Storm

 From a landing point among coral and shoals of fish, Nexus led the intrepid group who made it to Aqua Abyss through the main points of interest at quite a speed. 

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? 

Scripted Artwork

 If you've been around Opensim for a while, you'll recognize this familiar face: Wordfromthe Wise. Yes, back in the days of Metropolis you may have experienced his fireworks region, or perhaps you remember dropping in on his Cornflakes Tribute sim during Cornflakes Week.

Word and Cornflakes were good friends, which is why  he has still owns that treasure-trove of early opensim original content.

But there's more to Word than this.

He and his scriptilliscious colleague Sixtus have a small grid where you can find some delightful creations. Called scripted artwork, it's exactly that. Everything in movement, interactive, moving, flashing and generally immersive.

Nyx's Art for Space

Every grid in Opensim has its niche, its look, its personality, and with few exceptions they're all growing or evolving one way or another. It is a treat to explore each one! 

Creating a brand new region as a public venue can take a lot of time and talent, and maybe you've thought once or twice - "Argh... I wish I could just get a really top notch builder to come in and make a really unusual venue sim."

Jazzland, on Pangea

Here is an option that might appeal! 

Nyx Breen

Nyx Breen has been making  Virtual Art creations for nearly 18 years. 

He started in SL where he was the top monthly winner in the SL-UWA Build and Art contest.  

Here in opensim, he's been busy building both on Alternate Metaverse Grid, and at the Pangea Art and Culture Festival. A hypergridder at heart, Nyx has over the past few years also participated in the OSCC (Opensim Community Conference), OSgrid's  Anniversary, the Hypergrid International Expo, and more. 

The Safari has been to visit many of his builds, so if you're a long time reader of this blog his name will be familiar to you, and our experience has always been very positive with little lag and some amazing immersive experiences. 

Crescent Roll

 Winxtropia Grid has so much going for it, it's almost a crime for us to do a double dip this season by returning there, and going to the same region - but who could resist, when it's for the purpose of enjoying more Sound music by Cutuelala Artis. HG Address, as always, at the end of the post.

Cuteulala Artis, photo by C Calhoun

Our second destination to celebrate Cornflakes Week 2023, was therefore back at the great Organ of Sound, in company with Boujee Gamergirl, Farstar Enoch and the aforementioned Cute, under a dome designed by YumYum Komani.

Cuteulala Artis: hi all! I will need to preload the sounds before i play full songs... for the best sound try to be near the circle or turn your volume quite up. This is a live in world musical experience no media is needed

Star Ravenhurst: We have been here before. This is awesome!

Key of C

If you're not familiar with the concept of Cornflakes Week, a totally Opensim event started in 2015 and unconnected with any national, religious, or otherwise real-world-based festival, and not limited to any one grid, or particular style of celebrating, then you can read about its Corny origins here and  here, and about the man who inspired the whole thing here and  here. 

Waiting at the Clubhouse before Go Time

Our first destination for our festivities was a new build, purpose made, by Nyx Breen, over on Pangea grid, HG Address as ever, at the end of the post. 

Nyx called the build 'Key of C' which works on enough levels that you can spend the next half hour enjoying the poetics of the name. A vivacious paradox of complex simplicity, the size and detail and laglessness of Nyx's work is always a treat, and met the 'standard' - if there is one - of a Corny venue. None better. 

Whirli Placebo agreed to sing for us which was so good on so many levels. If you don't know his music, or know it and want a wider window on his originals and covers, check out his Youtube Channel  and look for him at music venues in SL and Opensim and more.  You can even download yesterday's show here, if you like! Catch him in SL every Wednesday at 10 am SLT at Cafe Musique Whirli's mercurial masculinity always takes the long view of life with subtle sensitivity and chronicles its fragility and foolishness through a blend of his original songs and originally rendered covers. It was a perfect fit for this build

Ta ta, 22

It's that time of year when there are retrospectives everywhere... so here's one about Opensim. 

Plenty more things happened than the few that are listed here, so if you have a special memory of an Opensim milestone from 2022 that is not mentioned here, go ahead and drop it in the comments.

Time flies - or does it? over on Sauce, Aire Mille Flux

Opensim has continued to grow in 2022, in every way.

A Safari Year

 What a year it's been! The Safari started up in January, in the usual timeslot, Wednesdays from 12 noon SLT, but with a new sim on OSGrid courtesy of Ange Menges. The immediate response by old fans and new of the weekly group hypergridding concept was great - thank you all. 

Prodyck, Lux, Frank and Truelie

The more familiar clubhouse on Francogrid had become unworkable - just teleporting to the grid had become difficult, and regions would often be unavailable for days. The heart of the problem was an issue with server hosts, and as much as Francogrid was the home of the Safari, it seemed unlikely to have a future there.

For that reason, I got busy immediately with porting most of the Safari's Francogrid assets over to other grids. 

Aphra, Cherry, Lifted Pixel, and Mal

It was a time consuming process, with permissions and scripts playing up a lot of the time due to

Outgoing and Upcoming

 After 60 destinations - well 62, if you count the two special Safari trips to the seasonal Hunt builds of Ange Menges and Nani Ferguson - over three seasons in 2022, the Safari is taking a break for a bit. 

Mandjelia on OSGrid was our first destination this year

In 2022 we went to 36 different grids, from Kitely to CopyKat and back. At last count, somewhere between 60 to 70 people joined us in person as Safari tourists, forming part of the group that gathers at the Clubhouse before setting out on the adventure - plus many more who came along to support their friends, our Hosts, at each destination. 

Safari trips begin at the Clubhouse -  last minute information, gossip and jokes