Cry Wolf

It was going to be a bit of a strange Safari, that was obvious right from the start. For one thing, owing to a radiation accident last week, Fuschia Nightfire has aged about 50 years, and has to ride around in a magic rocking chair.

Karma catches up with Nightfire

In a bid to silence the voices accusing us all of 'copying', I donned this totally original look, and Apmel turned up cloudy, then naked, because that has never been done before in Hypergridding.

Safari Animals

W. Gynoid in "Hippo dreams"

It was a beast of a Safari this time, and not just because it was 'bring your your own sheep' week. 

          Outlands was awash (make that handwash only - do not dry clean) with  pure new wool, much of it in particle form. FYI if you are in need of a good sheep particle, one is available at the clubhouse on Outlands sim, Metropolis. No questions asked.

Big Cat Safari

         First off, the nudity was all Nara Malone's fault.
        This week Safari (which meets every Wednesday at 12 noon PDT on sim Outlands, Metropolis Grid) was accused of being a bunch of cat ladies by SLave Me Oh (the sister of the famous SL artist and provocateur).

          Of course, those who doesn't follow Safari on Facebook had no idea why we were all kitted out this way, but this being Safari, they didn't bother to ask. If you are curious, well, go look here.
          We have been adding stuff to the sim this week, including hypergrid LMs to freebie shops .and a number of giveaways, so drop in at Outlands if you'd like, even if you can't make the event.
          And it was an event, this week, a Big Art day in every sense. In terms of the combination of art destinations, probably the most mindblowing safari yet. This was the lineup. 

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

Ghost Castle on PM Grid

This week we had the opportunity to visit Fuschia Nightfire's build on PM Grid.

Bob Wellman the grid owner has generously donated a number of sims to artists, and they've done some amazing work here, like the regions of Romenna, with its port and huge rambling cityscape and walkable underground sewer system. Other artists have brought works that first saw light of day in SL, like sosor nishi's trees. 

Safari goes Metro

          Uncertainty in the metaverse - think that's gonna stop us? No Way! Nara Malone and Zetamex's Timothy Rogers have very kindly made us a temporary home in Metropolis while the OSGrid Raid problems continue.

But there is no reason to be fainthearted... I even found a replacement top hat for Mal Burns, when he joins us next. How long will it take to get OSGrid back? Nara pointed out that when Metropolis had some technical unpleasantness some time ago, they were offline for a month. OSGrid is well into its second week, but it will be back. And Han Held reminded us, in the safari after party, that one should always make a backup.
Han Held: You should make an IAR of your region.
Fuschia Nightfire: What's that?

Safari goes to Inworldz

As many of you already know, earlier this week OSGrid has gone offline due to a failure of the RAID drives in the asset system. This is a big deal, because although everyone's assets on OSGrid are backed up, they will now have to be restored - billions of bits and bobs, and it's going to take a while. Fun fact, while you weep for your missing shoes and sculpties, I'm told that RAID stands for Redundant Arrays of Independent Drives. Did that help? I was afraid not.

Fortunately, Opensim isn't just one grid, we are many! so while we're all sorry to lose our homes/stuff in OSGrid, and hope very much to get it back, if possible, many of us have options, even duplicates, on other worlds, and can carry on without missing a beat. Always wise to diversify! So this week's Safari trip is on track.

 The Safari trips are aimed, as you know, at getting more acquainted with the grid-jumping process, and in learning more about the great galaxy of hypergrid connected worlds. This week, while Thirza is away, something slightly different happened.

Fuschia in black and white (Photo by Praline B)

This week's trip HG Safari Week 14 was organized by Fuschia Nightfire, who wanted to show the group her gallery on Inworldz, with a follow-up trip to Sendalonde, a region for literature and art, by Alexina Procter and Prax Maryjasz.