Thursday, February 12, 2015

Blueprint of a Safari

           Plans are like eggs, sometimes they get beaten.
           Sometimes the internet fades or folds in on itself, separating us from each other on this gossamer gauze we call the metaverse. Sometimes you lose your password.  
           Sometimes you lose the group.
          But then like a souffle, it all comes out golden and delicious.
          This week on Safari we started where we should have ended up last week, on Adrean's World. (URIs at the end of the post, as usual.)  Adrean Flux is a lovely person, and her grid is friendly and eclectic. The group's quest was to visit the pyramids and count them. It's an impossible task really, because what constitutes a pyramid, and what is a ziggurat... Right?
          Impossible for some of us to TP as we'd like to (or even log in) but everyone knows, if the first destination fails, head to the second. And if a Landmark fails, then use the HG address, which will take you to the Welcome Sim of the grid, and from there you can

Friday, February 6, 2015

Diary of a Newbie

When it comes to blogs, few stylistic crimes are more appalling than those of the pernicious self-referencer. An entry that begins: "In my last post, I think I told you of my love of castles" for example, is about the naked egoism of the writer and not about castles, at a ratio of  4:1. 
But to heck with that, here's a post about Thirza, a newbie Thirza, number 33 or 34; the tally is complicated by the fact that some grids (and their relative Embers) are dead and gone. 

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Safari: Art and Craft

[12:23]  -:  How to please the public – that’s the test,
[12:23]  -:  But nowadays I find I’m in a fix;
[12:23]  -:  I know they’re not accustomed to the best,
[12:23]  -:  But they’ve all read so much they know the tricks.
[12:23]  -:  How can we give then something fresh and new
[12:23]  -:  That’s serious, but entertaining too?
Goethe, Faust, Part I: Prelude On The Stage; 
first performed 1808 translation by John R. Williams (1999)

          Wait a minute, that's the beginning. Let's start where we ended. Two of us on a tower, in a bijou grid called Bearly, home of Marcus Llewellyn.

           It was this week's final, poetic stop.
           Poetic because a) that wasn't the plan and b) there were just two of us, Wizard Gynoid and me, exactly like week one.  Next week, there will be a piano concert on

Friday, January 30, 2015

Safari Regulars

It's official. Sitting down does reduce lag.even if you sit on a geometric shape and find yourself upside down. Also, lowering your graphics really does improve your chances of jumping.

Mass grid-jumping is the triumph of hope over experience, the before and after photos prove it.
Examine the evidence.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Safari Collection

Stephen.Xootfly: yeah, sounds like a good strategy.
Stephen.Xootfly: which I think is also what Custer said as well.
The instinct to collect and share, that's what this week's Safari was all about. Accumulation, classification, and determination. But we're always all about being determined. We are also about not minding if our faces suddenly disappear.
If you classify writers, you end up with a sort of fractal mental image. Not in the Dewey Decimal sense; something more philosophical. Good writers and bad, there's your first division, followed by famous/unknown, ancient and modern, fact and fiction, drunk/sober, read and unread, short-works/long-works, prolific and writers-blocked, reclusive and sociable. It forms a sort of lopsided flowing tree of all the people who, whether they ought to or not, put pen to paper, fingertip to key.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

The Maybes of TPs

          Never, ever, ever, ever say these words:  "Oh this week there's nothing to worry about. All three destinations are confirmed and guaranteed."
           Just don't. The God of Small Things (and let's face it, hypergridding is a very small thing if you look at what else is going on in the world) will make you pay for your hubris.
What does the God of Small Things look like? It'd be nice if he was something like Thor from Marvel's The Avengers, but he's probably more like your balding brother in law, the one who says he'll help you take that old couch to the dump on Saturday, to make room for the new one, and then never shows up. Why not? Well, his story changes every time you ask him what went wrong.
          He probably has visible butt cleavage too.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Janufari

            Pathfinder.Lester: hear circus music and feel a sudden crushing weight? that's just the Hypergrid Safari. we come in peace.

      Rome wasn't built in a day. It took Joe Builder about a month, if you add up all the time he spent on the magnificent region on Lost World Grid. The Coliseum, a Theater of monumental proportions, an exquisite bathhouse, and a shipyard.As always, the Safari took just the briefest look around. Another place to return to!