Saturday, May 19, 2018

Hunting and Racing: the Penultimate Safari

               Our last trip out and about took the intrepid Safari goers to two activity sims, one golden oldie, and one so brand new that it was still being tweaked a couple hours before our arrival.   
 
              Kodinpump is a twist on the word 'pumpkin', for this is a Halloween Hunt build from 2015, one of a long series of fantastic ephemeral builds in SL and opensim by nani Ferguson and Ange Menges, who put it back online especially for our visit.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Safari goes from Alexandria to Arizona

           Two horse riding opportunities this week, and two beautiful places to visit any time. The Safari group was honored to be the first visitors to the latest grand attraction on Outworldz, where 16 regions of ancient history, NPCs, architecture and drama awaited us (the good kind of drama, Shakespearean, naturally) and then an opportunity to meditate in the vast open spaces of the Rift Valley on Afar, OSGrid. HG Addresses at the end of the post as always.
Pharos of Alexandria
              Egypt is a collaborative build, bringing together the creative talents of Debbie Edwards aka Nyira Machabelli, Joe Builder and of course the legendary Ferd Frederix. Avia Bonne also did some of the artwork, she's a talented lady. Outworldz is a great grid with many themed activities - Dragons, Fairy Tales, and the African bush to mention just a few. The Outworldz website is undisputably Opensim's greatest treasure.

Friday, May 4, 2018

Zen and the art of Gridhopping

         For the final few Safari trips, I decided to indulge myself and just organize visits to some of my favorite places. This week, we went to TGrid, also known as ViewTwo, and to Kalasiddhi Grid. HG Addresses at the end of the post. These are two of the smaller grids on the hyperverse, and both have a distinctive look and purpose, that goes to the very heart of the owner operated HG friendly virtual homestead.
TG Lucan
     First up TGrid. It's small and built for testing the very heart of opensim. The Welcome region has a musical theme with clean lines and unscratched vinyl. For a long time, hg visitors would arrive on top of the satellite which was a sort of bug but a fun one. TG Lucan was there to meet the group, where we did some dancing before moving on to the massive 256 Var, so see (let's be honest) if we could break it.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Safari Regulars

The Safari trips have come to an end after four years. Thanks for all the kind comments and compliments - they are much appreciated. Organizing the weekly trips has been fun and fascinating and frenetic, but the purpose, and the success, isn't down to a single person, but a special group of strangers who have become friends, the Safari Regulars.
There are hundreds of posts on this blog about the builds and content creators we have visited, this is the only post dedicated to the Safari Regulars, who are also builders, scripters, coders, grid owners...
The calm before the storm - meeting at the clubhouse before the Safari starts
      

Monday, April 30, 2018

An Illuminated Safari

           This week we went to see the TanGLe grid Expo of Fashion with emphasis on the new Ruth mesh avatar, then over to Sanctuary Grid to tour the Ivory City complex,created by Tosha Tyran to celebrate the life of Lumiere Noir, of Ivory Tower of Learning fame. 
            HG Addresses, as always, at the end of the post.
Rusty and the TanGLe gang keep us entertained as we cam the Expo
           First up, a chance to see TanGLe grid's latest Expo, this time, fashion for the new Ruth Mesh avie, made by Shin Ingen to provide a totally home grown mesh avie for OSGrid, with, you know, moving hands and all those interesting attachment points. A good place to learn more about this interesting opensource piece of goodness is on G+ at the Ruth and Roth 2.0 Mesh Project.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

An Open Space Safari

           This week, we met two grid owners, and some happy residents, on Discovery Grid and on Kitely, and were treated to some very beautiful and interesting places to visit... addresses at the end of the post, as always. Kitely is one of the most long-established of all opensim's many grids, while Discovery is just about a year old. We were particularly grateful to our hosts for taking the time - for Angel Discovery, who's in Australia, it meant a very early morning meeting, for Kitely's Ilan Tochner, who's in Israel, it was a fairly late evening meet-up, and we were very glad he took the time, especially considering it was a big National Holiday in his country... rl comes first, as we all know.

          First up, Discovery Grid, and three very interesting regions reflecting the spirit and interests of the grid. This is a sporty, out-doorsy place, just packed with interesting scenery. We arrived on Spirit Rock Ranch.

Friday, April 13, 2018

Safari Town and Country

         This week's destinations reflect the best of opensim, the passion that underlie the creative urge. We visited Magnolia Mountain on OSGrid, and Keng City on Digiworldz, and the HG Addresses are at the end of the post.
          Magnolia Mountain is the project of CelticMaidenWarrior Lancaster. The talented singer still plays regular gigs in Second Life but she has discovered the joy of opensim, both as a builder and as a performer. She plays a 12 string Blue4u Nowicka, and offers a mix of tunes from the likes of the Eagles, Carol King, Carly Simon, and Van Morrison to mention just a few - her repertory is as wide as it is delightful. The region she's working on will soon host weekly events.