Safari Fiction

This week, the Safari trip had a single destination, to the literary grid Nara's Nook, celebrating three years of writerly pixels. 

Nara's Nook is the brainchild of Nara Malone, and styles itself as a colony for people who would like to explore their literary creativity online. Whether you're an author in need of moral support, or trying to revive a stalled novel-in-the-works, or looking for inspiration to come up with a new storyline, or curious about using new 3D methods to convey your narrative, Nara's Nook can help. Here's the Nara's Nook website.
       Scroll to the end of the post for them list of the places visited this week.

Safari Takes a Cure

          The adventure begins each week with a gathering on Francogrid, sitting around on the deck outside the clubhouse. Some strange reason, in all four incarnations of the clubhouse, the group always seems to prefer to be outside. Perhaps it's the adventurous spirit of those brave souls who show up each week to boldly go. 

Aime Socrates, Pathfinder Lester and Snowbody Cortes, waiting for the fun to begin

It's almost Halloween and so that means it's time to go spookily into that dark night... courtesy of the gang over on Kroatan Grid.   The exact HG Address you will find, of course, at the end of this post.       

OSCC Safari!

On Sunday, 11 December we will be holding a special OSCC Safari.

The event will start at 11am Pacific Time - one hour earlier than our usual time.
The starting point will be on OSCC Grid, at the Safari Expo,
here's the hg address  cc.opensimulator.org:8002:expo zone 2
As usual there will be 3 destinations, each lasting about an hour.
But this time, there's a new twist... to cope with the large number of visitors, we will be running two different trails at the same time.


Safari Trail A and Safari Trail B will both include places of artistic, educational, and practical interest and the two groups will meet up at the end in a very entertaining place!

Being on a Sunday, we hope that many who can't attend the regular Wednesday events will be able to come along and sample the simple pleasure of grid-jumping.
So please, mark the day on your calendar, and invite your friends.

If you have experience at grid-jumping, especially in a group, we can use your help as tour guides!
Send an IM to Thirza Ember in OSGrid, or email me at thirza.in.sl@gmail.com to get more information.

Freebies!

A few new items at the HG Safari Market, next to the Clubhouse on Francogrid, that may interest you.

Sunshine Szavanna has donated a lovely delicate nosering, and there's also a mesh witches hat that may fill your seasonal needs. Neevo Geesink, after our recent Safari visit, very kindly sent us this Teleport device, which you can program to fit your needs.

Safari goes to Generositania

Generositania isn't a real place... it's loads of places, where the spirit of generosity is the fundamental working principle. Here are three fun places in opensim, with an emphasis on altruism, that you should definitely go and see. 
HG Addresses at the end of the post as usual. First stop, the Dune Project on Metropolis.
Neovo Geesink: Welcome at Dune-1
Wizardoz Chrome (it>en): Like film Dune? ... or ...
Truelie Telling: there is no resemblance to the world of the film Dune, or the books
Neovo Geesink: I don't know why they are Called Dune. Lena Vanilli is the "boss" and has made this Project of 5 4x4 var regions possible.
James AtLLOUD something gigantic just rezzed in my camera view.

Chat !

A little bit of HG help from opensimworld.com
It happens every week, on Safari..

The group meets at the clubhouse, at 12 noon Pacific time 9pm CET.
Everyone grabs the Notecard with the landmarks and details about the trip, and at the appointed time, we all set off...

...well, most of us do. But glitches happen.
Maybe your avie freezes.
Maybe you get stuck in tp limbo, neither here nor there, and have to log out.

Perhaps you click on the wrong landmark, or can't find the notecard.
Maybe you're waiting at the Clubhouse on Teravus Plaza, OSGrid, not realizing that our main meeting point these days is on Francogrid! (There's a portal)

The Teravus Plaza clubhouse

Maybe your clothes fail to rez, so you rush home to fix the problem, and when you come back the group is gone.

Or, you show up late, and it's hard to figure out where people have gone.

Of course, you can just go fishing, like Aime Socrates. But if not, what can you do?

The obvious solution is to have a way to communicate with the group outside the Viewer. That way, even if you get logged out, or are on a region that refuses to let you send IMs to people on other grids, you can still find out where we all are.

There are lots of different ways to chat outside the Viewer. Skype, Facebook, G+ hangouts, even Twitter come to mind.
The problem with all of these is that there is no consensus among OpenSim people about which is good to use. Some people find certain websites difficult to use while they have their Viewer open. Some people don't like one or more of these chat providers, other people like them, but use an account name they don't want to share inworld.

The solution may be at hand. Satyr Gator has just introduced a Chat feature on his website OpenSimWorld.com. It is still in Beta, so we will be testing its robustness!
OpenSimWorld is free, and you do not have to have a region to be part of the website.
There is an HG Safari group in OpenSimWorld, which you can join also.
The chat feature on this site is not for the exclusive use of HG Safari, and we'll be using it mostly as an SOS resource. Both people who are hypergridding pros, and those new to HG are encouraged to join soon, so we can see how useful this will be when the hg gremlins make life hard for us!

Safari goes Past, Present, and Future

           Virtual worlds are ephemeral, we all know that, a hiccup on a server and all your stuff can be gone. Of course, a housefire can do the same thing in the real world, but it's a lot easier to lose, or lose touch with, things and people dear to us in our online existence.
HG ADDRESSES AT THE END OF THE POST

Tina Bey

           Tina Bey posted this video on Facebook recently,  telling the story of Arcauana, her region (hosted by the great Ken Savage) on OSGrid. How could we resist?

        In a lot of sci-fi films, we are presented with a universe full of different life forms all living together in (dis)harmony. Now, imagine if all the life forms in the the universe of sci-fi films were able to interact? The characters from Star Wars, Star Gate, Star Trek, and more. This is Tina Bey's premise. It is also an exploration in lighting and audio effects, so be sure to turn on Sound and read the instructions on windlight, for the best effect.