Kellie's Hero

Opensim, like life, can sometimes throw a curved ball and this week our planned first destination had to be postponed at short notice. But it worked out great, because Spax Orion said we could come and preview the big changes he's been making at his funfair, Dismayland. 

Spax will be our guest on Inworld Review this Sunday - a Live show about OpenSim on YouTube, so if you watch at 11am SLT, you can also comment and ask questions! Just recently, he's worked hard to give a typically bright and busy tribute to one of Opensim's most memorable creators, the great Linda Kellie. The HG Address is at the end of the post, as always.

Dismayland is diabolically clever

Spax Orion: Dismayland is starting to look like one of the "Sierra: Roberta Williams" Point and Click Adventure games (we had tons of games like those around the turn of the millennium) - Return visitors will notice the world with more interactivity. Plenty of little distractions to wade through before passing the gate...

Tosha Tyran: giggles

It's true. When you arrive on Dismayland you find yourself in a sky box organized like the entrance to a theme park with security personnel (the terrible Wanda and poor, mistreated George are legendary.) There are lots of signs and NPCs talking, and for some of us, it feels overwhelming and the first reaction is to get out of the crowd and hurry down to the rides, but if you take your time here, you'll discover that there is more going on in this one skybox than there is on many a 4x4 region!

Three Pieces of Karima

Karima Hoisan provides a little life lesson in the midst of an impressive career of creativity on Kitely, in the form of her YouTube channel. Memory is important. You probably already know that Karima shares poems, personal reflections, and anecdotes on her website the Digital Rabbit Hole, but perhaps the most enduring and accessible record of her work on almost two dozen regions - called rather grandiloquently 'worlds' on Kitely -  is Karima's YouTube channel.
It's fair to say that Karima Hoisan has always posted wonderful content on Youtube over the past 12 years, as it's an ideal locus for her multimedia presence, in intimate collaboration over the years with Dale Innis, and, before her untimely death, Natascha Randt. Recently, she has begun expanding her video repertoire. Here are three pieces of it.

Karima and Nat

Much of Kitely is inaccessible to the general visitor, making it a bit of a black hole of creativity from the point of view of the hypergrid explorer - there's probably good stuff happening but it's too difficult to get to, so one just shrugs, and moves on. Karima is one of a handful of residents who have consistently made out-of-town  tourists like the Safari group welcome. Our first visit to one of her builds -Vector's Vortex - was nine years ago today, in November 2014. Yet despite repeated Safaris to builds by Dale, Nat and Karima, - with contributions by other pals, from time to time - we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the range of imaginative chapters they have put together in the past decade or so.

Cherry Manga 2: FrancoGrid and More

Katia Venegas: Cherry Manga artiste futuriste aux talents multiples lorsqu’il s’agit de se dépasser ou de nous surprendre. La poésie est dans chacune de ses réalisations, la beauté également, aussi, le réalisme d’un monde décadent que ses créations soulignent pour mieux y échapper en s’envolant, gracieuses et dansantes, créatures étincelantes, immatérielles, uniques... Architectures de cristal aux formes inédites, l’art renouveau du futur… Un style marqué reconnaissable entre tous, une évolution constante de ses techniques et de son imaginaire, font d’elle l’artiste visionnaire de notre futur.

You don't have to know much French to see that Katia Vanegas is a fan of Cherry's art. She was the first gallery owner to exhibit Cherry's work in Second Life, and moved to FrancoGrid shortly before her. Katia's region Parc des Arts (now to be found on Craft Grid) soon had a spectacular build that the Safari visited in 2014, on FrancoGrid, a moving and powerful installation on the theme of AIDS.

FrancoGrid was founded in 2009 and had, as the name implies, an almost entirely francophone population. It was already a vibrant, art-centric community when Yann Minh introduced  Cherry and her partner Archael Magic, a nifty builder himself, whose Alpha Base is a fantastic scifi playground, to opensim in general and FrancoGrid in particular.

The Sponsors' Tale

 Organizing a big festival is always a huge headache, and you really have to take your hat off to anyone with the nerve to do it. They often end up making a significant financial contribution too, because the setting up of a temporary grid costs rl money. 

This year, the total cost of running the festival is $1040, and a little more than half that has been pledged.  One way that you can help out with it all is by becoming a Sponsor. 

For as little as three bucks you can get kudos and publicity, and brownie points with the higher power, so why not consider helping out? OK I may be lying about the higher power, let's call it the HG power.

There are lots of levels at which you can contribute, and each one brings a bigger slice of land, publicity and warm glowy feeling, although the last might just be the wine, so don't quote me on that. 

Any extra money generated by the sponsors will be shared out among the performers - there will be about 90 over the 17 day event. 
Here are some stories from people who chose to go ahead and put their hand in their pocket for OpensimFest. How hard is it to sponsor? why did they want to do it? What do they hope to see at the event?

Closing at Crista's

             For the second part of our final Safari of the season, we decided to "fechar com a flor" and so the Safari group came to UCI Mondego to meet up with a true Diva, Opensim's own Diva Canto, aka Crista Lopes. These occasions always produce a lot of questions and interesting answers, and on this occasion, Crista was quick to get in the first question, where were we all from?

Still Standing

The dance floor at HG safari clubhouse

Kelso Uxlay: Good idea to warm up safari goers before going.

          Dancing really does do it. This week, two animated destinations, a big crowd of avatars, and a roaring success for our hosts, Dorena Verne and Anachron Young on Dorena's World, and Karima Hoisan and the scriptastic Dale Innes on Kitely. 

Addresses of the destinations, as always, at the end of the post. 

It really helps if you come to the clubhouse on HG Safari, OSGrid and get the LMs before we depart at the top of the hour, and thanks to everyone who showed up, including Lux, Dabici and Kelso who entertained us by dancing so well. A good omen...

Safari Repels All Borders

Borders, not boarders... this wasn't a Pirate event (another one of those is coming up in the New Year, though) but rather, two 'border' events, as you'll see... First up, a trip to 3rd Rock Grid, then, a load test on HIE. The HG Addresses are at the end as usual.

            Alpine, on 3rdRock Grid, is full of winter sports. You can ski, skate,  try the sled race, and throw snowballs here. We met up with the 3rd Rock crew, including Michel Farrell, whose real world radio show 'The Music Cafe' is a great feature the grid, and well worth a listen, even if you're not inworld!.

Safari Double Parks

              This week, once again, two destinations with a lot going on! We started on Kroatan Grid, and then went to explore 3rd Life grid (as usual, addresses at the end of the post)  where, once again, we got to meet the locals and get some of the backstory of the places we were seeing. 
               There's nothing better for appreciating your surroundings than to have a bit of context, don't you agree? So here's what we found out, hopefully you will take a trip to see these lovely places, and make some new friends.

              First up, Kroatan, a park-like grid, where the opensimworld Beacon registered our arrival and bumped us up to the top of the webpage... you could tell that, because suddenly some people from a Brazilian grid, and from  partydestinationgrid showed up, rather bemused to come across a crowd, it seemed. We invited them to join us, but it appeared that the concept of a tour group in hg was beyond their ken... maybe next time...

Safari Does Stuff

          This week was a whistle-stop tour through three smallish grids, each one uniquely beautiful and interesting.  This is the first post, please do check out all three. The grid addresses at the end of each post, so you can go and take a look for yourself... they're all well worth a visit! First up Phaandoria.

We landed in the shadow of a Linda Kellie creation, the Autumn Castle, a symbol in a way of the share-alike mentality this grid is famous for. Then we moved over to Nerdpol region, distinctly different in design... time for some fireworks!

The 'is' and 'isn'ts' of Virtual Money

We love what you do when you do it with heart

Truelie Telling, the Safari song

It may have been Pathfinder who brought it up, at this week's Safari, the subject of some sort of hypergrid friendly virtual currency. His comment was to the effect that it would give him the opportunity to support content creators. There followed a little polite but determined chorus of 'hypergrid currency?? thanks but no thanks' from many of the other attendees. Why is it that? What is it that makes people like me feel so passionately that the predominantly no money culture in open sim is the better way?

Safari does Booths, Beaches and Butterflies

          Yay Safari. It's been one of those weeks. 
First up this Wednesday, Great Canadian Grid. HG Safari has a new embassy and outreach center there. Taking advantage of a special price deal for long-time residents, Mal Burns that been developing his dozen or so regions into a living space poised to welcome new residents, collaborators, and friends... maybe you're looking for somewhere to be creative? If you're interested in sharing your creativity via storytelling, design, film, tv or music, then read on...

         

Safari starts at a fest and ends up in Jail

It was highly inappropriate, to be on a cathedral sized art installation doing a girl gangnam style dance but that's how we roll.
      Two trips, and a shorter safari than usual, yet it felt like we encompassed the universe in this our 79th outing. First up, a visit to AvatarFest. This four day festival, part show and tell, part concert, was a huge success both socially and technically.

Thirza and James sitting on the Safari elephant

But first some elephant action. And Teravus Plaza chit chat. Last week, James was accused of 'never sitting on the elephant' so this week, he made sure he got on board. Can't have Safari's premiere sitter accused of not starting the Safari as he means to go on!
Thirza Ember: I'm so glad we get to celebrate your Fest tonight
Han Held: I am too! I'm glad y'all are coming and that Truelie is performing for us. I'm really proud of everyone and the way we all came together.
Thirza Ember: this time, I plan to actually go look at the exhibits on avatarfest, not just dance
Han Held: I think a lot of people are, and I hope that they come by before the end of the month
Sunbeam Magic: it's such a nice small town feeling , easy to walk paths and not too many exhibits to overwhelm you. and Tom had his DJ debut there, he is great bluesy jazzy guy lol
Tom Frost: now that the Metro stammtisch [grid meeting] is only once every month I will have much more opportunity to be with the safari !

     

Paying Thanks

Thanks to everyone who came to see my knickers this week on Paradise sim in Nara's Nook. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and this is a mediation on why none of the things I make are for sale. Anywhere.
OpenSim  freebies have a reputation (fostered by people who want YOU to pay for THEIR Content) for not being very good. When someone says to me, as they did this week, "Oh yes, I put out some crap - I mean basic items - as freebies", that makes me sad.  My content is free because I want to crush that 'free=Crap' nonsense out of existence. There are a growing army of creators providing amazing avatars, houses, mesh items, and so on without charging anything.  I want to be a part of that. In the olden days in SL, it was a village where people shared and worked together. There are still many pockets of generosity in SL, but in many ways it has sunk into the same grasping, money-oriented economy you can find in the real world. Let's not permit OpenSim to fall into that trap.

Coming to Grief

Wandering from grid to grid has become such a piece of cake. 

Anyone can do it, jumping from Upper to Lower (with some stop offs in the super-convenient Hyperica stations) using a single avatar. 
Backwaters, in other words apparently private or obscure grids, are now within anyone's reach, and that may not be such a great thing, since the population of 'Anyone' seems to include a fair number of jerks.

Look what they did to EUITOP, a tiny Spanish Polytechnic grid, with a little Linda Kellie downtown area. The place is overrun by raw spheres spewing, in a sinister, almost Lovecraftesque manner, from the lagoon. 

The spheres bear the name of a lady from Francogrid, I won't name 'her', but it's easy to see who it is. Euitop is a relatively new world, it only joined the Hyperica database in March of this year, and still has Build open to anyone. We've all experienced the

Toast

"It was a willingness of the heart."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crackup

If you want free land, here's where to be - Les Carpathes. 

At the heart of this new grid you'll find some stunning sims, easily rivalling many builds you will find in Second Life.

vladimir Djannovic and his lovely RL wife Miranda left their wealthy vampire life in SL in favour of another way of life. Here, they can be in virtual worlds, and have a safe place to bring their older children, too.
Miranda Djannovic: Ici, tout est gratuit pas de fric et pas de debauche.
Well said.
It's early days yet, just 40 residents on the books, spread out over a

In and out of the box

Going to another grid is hard work. No wonder people stay put! It's all sitting in front of the screen, but man, this is exhausting, I'm getting square eyes!  Reaction Grid Thirza  came into existence  in '10, back when Caerleon had some art here. She's languished somewhat since then. It's Jokaydia Thirza who goes Hypergridding, occasionally passing through RG on the way to more exciting places. Seems unfair - maybe there are exciting places in RG, right? 

Erm... RG Thirza had a default noob skin best described as 'Woman vs. Eyeshadow' and the usual Walmart combo of jeans and tee favoured by the makers of basic outfits, and some random black hair. For sanity's sake, basics are a must. Only as I brought them into RG did it occur to me how much work all this is! But the alternative is trawling through endless boxes of drek from the Freebie shop, which is an unsatisfying and long job. The following are essentials:

Shape. Got a shop-bought shape in SL? you're going to want to get a piece of paper and note down all the names and numbers on all the sliders. Then, in your inventory, go to 'Create' and make a new shape, painstakingly copying the numbers. It's a lot of work, but then the shape belongs to you and you can export it onto your computer and import it to any grid you want.  OK I've lost some of you already...

Skin and eyes. Eyes are not too hard, either draw or paint; otherwise, google 'eye iris' and see if you can find something you like, to put on a white background. For personal use only, obviously. Another source (and not just of eyes) is Opensim Creations. For the skin, that's a little harder - but much less than it was a year ago. Several people have made their skins available to download, share, and modify for free. Eloh Eliot's skins from 2007 are still the best place to start, even if you're not a photoshop wizard, but simply want to play about with lip color. Ina Centaur's skins are detail rich, but have two disadvantages, they're saved in a weird type of file (not simple non-paranoiac psd or png), and the women are all homely. Some manly men there, though, so give it a glance, if that's how you roll.

Hair. Thirza's took 15 versions and about 3 months of on-again off-again frustration. Simple sculpty shoes plus foot alphas are also frustrating - but nobody in opensim seems to mind seeing bare feet. Clothes are way easier, but still time-consuming. Craft Grid's elegant shop is full of Josina Burgess and Nicola Reinerman creations, while osgrid has the Fabulous Ada Wong. Most grids are pretty dire, though. Come prepared. Linda Kellie's enormous collection of free and modifiable clothes will give you a jump start at making your own fashion, with wrinkle layers, cuffs, lacy bits and clothing textures. It's impossible to overstate what a star Linda is, in making all her clothing available and modifiable this way. Use Robin Wood or Chip Midnight's clothing templates in Photoshop or Gimp and get creative! It's way more relaxing than trying to follow the plot of NCIS.

Frillies A loop rezzer lets you build prim skirts. To export them from the grid where you make them, you'll need to be the creator of all the prims.  Imprudence Viewer has Export in the pie menu: rezz your object, then click through till you see it. 
If Export isn't lit up, it means you don't own all the prims. Importing is done via File at the top of your screen-  if you created all the textures that were on the original object, they too will be saved with the prims in your computer. 
Here's me importing a skirt into Reaction Grid, together with hair and texture. Of course, all uploads are FREEE !!!
Whoa that feels better ! it's time to take a turn about Reaction Grid!  It's still home to the excellent World's Fair, featured in an earlier post. What else is here?

Some great RL paintings in the gallery on sim Arte, the Catholic University of Peru stronghold. 

 The Grid HQ is a fancy piece of modern architecture, too, and there's this Drive In, high in the sky.

It's early morning in the US, so it's no surprise that there are few people around. OK - make that nobody. For anyone used to SL on a weekly basis, all of opensim has that make-do-and-mend feel, but ReactionGrid feels more than most like a backwater where the shark has most definitely jumped. A cardboard world. These posters aren't helping...

At last I found some life. Six avatars hard at work on the Bedfordia sim. What I took to be a noob was getting to grips with a door script, hiding behind a hill. 

On the other side of the hills, the other five avatars beavered away at what seemed to be a Science Fair, but since none of them would give me the time of day, I can't be sure. No amount of standing around provoked them into comment.  

Torley's textures were all over the place like a rash. The workers walked, rather than working from cam, from one boxy build to the next. Be fair, it's a work in progress, but this is a long way from Second Life. Iron sharpens iron, and while it's true many parts of SL are prosaic and even badly built, the good bits, the innovative exuberance, the preconcept-defying adventurous bits, inspire creative flight. Which you need, if you're going to do science right, don't you agree?

The Bedfordia is a brave attempt at building by newcomers. But I hope these Bedfordians also take time to go and see what's out there. If they like straight lines and, lord know, i'm a fan, then they could start with Oberon Onmura's new build at the LEA, where 15,000 pointy prims are set on a month-long collision course.

He's definitely outside the box.

Linda Kellie's FreeLife

This is Linda Kellie, previously known as Ayla Holt in SL and Inworldz, where she spent over 5 years making stuff - clothes, furniture, skins, buildings, sculpties, and more. She's gradually putting all her goodies on her website, to be exported, modified, re-used any way you want, as she explains in her personal note. 
It's an extraordinary move, and so far there's over 250MB of material available, all set out in nicely categorized sections. 
Yes, that's right - FREE, FULL PERM/MOD/TRANS.
 On your computer. Good for any grid.
Linda Kellie: Not all of my stuff is on my webpage yet, a lot's here on OSGrid, and I am still adding to it, I haven't been here long! Making things has made virtual worlds more fun for me. I loved both SL and InWorldz, I just worked really hard in SL, and then played hard in IW. I quit for awhile, and decided I needed to do something with all my inventory, backed up on my hard drive. A friend told me about the OpenSimCreations.com site - it was amazing to me that someone would give away files for export to any grid. I didn't know I could even back up to xml. I think you just have to get to a point where you don't care about people stealing your ideas and stuff. I love having my stuff with no rules and giving people the freedom they need. I hope Vanish doesn't think I stole his idea. I kinda did, I guess! But it just made sense to put it on a website that I wasn't using anyway, and he has made a few positive comments.

What could be better? If you like to make stuff, but