Butch Safari

This week, the Safari was in the business of raising Male Avatar Awareness. 

Even with the latest shopping survey on Hypergrid Business, finding what you need to create a look in OpenSim is always a challenge, and menswear is the toughest category of all to locate. 

Skins, shapes and clothes are all tricky. Shapes often give that gorilla look, shoes have traditionally been way too big and clunky, and hair varies wildly from super effeminate to frankly monstrous. If you don't believe me girls, then just go out there and try putting together a look you can live with. No wonder many men give up and go girly, or furry, or simply wear the same tee shirt and jeans for about ten years... I found this Shrek skin and shape at Lani Mall in Jorink Devin's shop... definitely a boy thing.
This week, the Safari goers were challenged to wear a male avatar and walk a mile in those moccasins (or steel toed boots, whatever) and we went out across the HG to sample the state of Male shoppingness for ourselves.

Schreck Thirza

Our first stop was on Bubblesz Grid, which is the small hg enabled grid of mesh enthusiast Taarna Welles. 

       

If you arrive at the Welcome sim on bubblesz.nl.8002 you'll see the portal that will take you direct to the shops. Taarna's personal brand is called ReMake Fashion.

Safari Sees the Blues

We went for a blues concert, and a visit to Wolem Wobbit''s home on Metropolis. 
 Wolem is best known for his music - you can follow him on Youtube to hear some epic covers, and also a lot of really lovely original songs. He's a romantic! The Safari first came across Wolem playing on German Grid right at the start of our adventures in 2014, and he has been a firm favorite with us all ever since then. You might recall his epic set at Justin CC's farewell party last year.So yes, as well as playing music, Wolem has branched out into building. And we were invited to come take a look! Visiting Metropolis Grid is always a pleasure, although more recently, lag has been a bit of an issue. 

Le Safari

             This week's Safari was a trip to the little known French province of Lagetaine. The emphasis on Lag...

Eyewatering buckets of slowness, crashing and general frustration seemed to dog our every step, from the starting point at HGSafari sim on Francogrid, through to Virtual Dreams, on to the Louvre sim on OSGrid. Only the very last stop worked perfectly, by which time a mere handful of bold and tenacious Safaristas were still on board.

           

Getting Seen in Open Sim

 You like to build things, but Second Life has become too expensive or dramatic or stale or commercial for your taste, so you decide to move to open sim.
 You've overcome the hurdle of being a noob again, you've found a region on a sympathetic and cheap grid, or set up your own minigrid and hooked it up to hypergridding. You've gone through an intense period of creating, facing the challenges of sourcing material away from the SL Marketplace, dealing with the maddening glitches that open sim likes to throw at builders, and kaboom - now you have a bunch of beautiful stuff on your sim. 
You look up from your work and suddenly realize that Hey, this is not like SL where you can send out a notice in some spammy art or building group, pay a musician 6 or 7k Lindens, and throw a vernissage or housewarming party with 40 hot bodies to pat you on the back.

Is this scenario familiar to you?

SL Artist Livio Korobase has made a brilliant transition into the open sim art world

          So how can you get the positive feedback that forms an essential part of the creative process? How does it work in Open Sim? What can you do?

Game On

Games. Who doesn't love them?
But what kind of games work best in open sim? 
We sat around the fire in the Safari Clubhouse and talked about it this week. Some don't like games in opensim at all, they think it is really better used for building and experimenting. The instability of the code, others mentioned, is a challenge when it comes to group activities and complicated scripts. Selby Evans mentioned an interesting solution to lag or reliability woes; in Second Life some of his friends organize a weekly version of Hollywood Squares on Thursdays, in which case the only scripts you have to worry about are the contestant's. 

Inside the FrancoGrid clubhouse

When it comes to playing games in the hyperverse, builders are faced with the unenviable task of dealing with the competition of other dedicated and commercially perfect video games. How can you get people to play at racing or shoot 'em up  in opensim when they could be having a go at Need for Speed or Call of Duty. Well, perhaps for the company?  Something the wide open spaces of the hypergrid is always a bit short of. 

JOG Grid

Pleasure Craft

          Congratulations to Craft, and all who sail in her, the grid turns 6 years old on Wednesday January 27 and celebrates with a party in the evening, European time, and the announcement of the results of the Annual Building Contest.
          Craft styles itself 'The Friendly Grid' and that title is well deserved. Few opensim grids can boast such a long and successful life, and the secret is assuredly the community spirit. 
          But how do you create this kind of enduring family? It starts at the top. 

Tao and Licu, taken at the 2014 anniversary party

          In 2009 Licu Rau founded Craft, along with his partner Tao Quan. Tosha Tyran and her partner, the celebrated and much missed Lumiere Noir, made up the original four members. They were soon joined by friends who had been in Second Life, or in Cyberlandia, an early Italian language opensim grid. Managing a grid, with all the hundreds of little things that can go wrong technically, socially, financially, is not work for the fainthearted, and Tao and Licu have been tireless in their pursuit of other people's happiness. 

Safari Goes Boldly

          The word maze means to be confused or bewildered, and may be related to Scandinavian words like mas - 'exhausting labor' and masa, a Swedish word meaning 'to be slow or sluggish'. Clearly a natural fit for any Safari.