Summer on Novale

 Novale, the Canadian landscape region, is up and ready for summer visitors. The islands have largely retained the form and features we've all come to love, with additions and tweaks both to the decor and the scripts, just as you'd expect.

Dabici Straulino  and Kelso Uxlay  are the imaginative inventors of this wonderland. They reccommend you use 'Shared Environment' which, just in case you don't know, is quickly achieved by clicking on the 'Quick Preferences' button at the bottom ov the viewer, and then clicking on the X next to Personal Lighting - that will remove any custom settings that may still be hanging around your sky. It's always interesting to see in what light the builder intended their world to be seen.

Patty Paranoid and the Failed TP

 It's an inconvenience that we have all experienced. 

G. de Digulleville: Pèlerinage de vie humaine, Pèlerinage de l'âme
National Library of France

You're all ready to hypergrid out of a place, ready to jump from here to there, and a little window shows up saying 'Teleport Failed' and asking you to go to the website of the destination grid, and the simple one click gesture suddenly takes on a positively Medieval flavor. 

Here's an example of the pop-up you'll see when trying to go to Kitely. You only have to do this once, on your first visit to each of the grids with this system set up. 
You may have heard people deride this event as a sort of authoritarian 'douane' or Checkpoint Charlie. Some may tell you it's an invasion of privacy, as you're asked to authenticate your avatar.

Before you - no, not you ! because you're not nuts ! - before your pal Patty Paranoia starts screaming conspiracies, let's answer a couple of questions: 

Arts and Friends - Coming Soon

 Victoria Logan's art collective on OSGrid is opening at the beginning of July, and it's not one to miss. The build is on a region named Arts & Friends which couldn't be more appropriate. 

The landing point at Zona de Arte, a small black and gold skybox just above a mountain-ringed lagoon, is immediately enchanting, but also a huge contrast to the gallery you are about to visit. The theme of this show is 'Mujeres que ispiran...' - women who inspire, for their courage and talent. Time to TP down and see who's being feted below...

From the black and gold, to the greenery and rainbow colors of the region below. Landing on a central island, you'll find tps to all the exhibits, plus the dance zone and a cafeteria. Art appreciation is hungry work.

Osgrid Auction

The OSGrid Auction is coming ! 

This year, the  grand sales event will be from 25 September - 1st October. 

That means, if you're a creator, builder, scripter or texture maker,  now is a good time for you to create something original to contribute to the mix. The items are gathered now, put on an exhibition region where everyone can take a good look, and then auctioned off for real money to support the costs of keeping the Test grid of opensimulator on the rails.

Auction organizer Caro Fayray was on the sky platform on Echo 1. The platform is empty as of now - so - is it too soon for people to begin building, and contributing their creations to the Auction?

Caro Fayray: Not at all,  stuff can  be given anytime:)

Coordinating any big event can be a hassle, but Caro seems to take it all in her stride with unflappable good humor. Is it a complicated job?

Caro Fayray: getting  people  to  commit  and give  me stuff in  advance is a challenge,  I  have to   bug  a  lot, and  I  make over  100  textures  for all  the boards, then the Auction Lots that fit go  here, if  not, I  have  tps  to see the original  item. There is no limit on the size of the items put up for sale. From smallest  jewellery  to a complete oar  is fine:)  but  items  have to be  unique.

Bogus Curry's Grid Talk

 Bogus Curry's Opensim story is a long one. He's something of an opensim oldbie, and his avatar is pure Legacy, with warm brown eyes, and some interesting tattoos.  

We met on sim grid Talk, on Dorena's World. The region is a delightful assortment of elements, with everything from beach huts to menhirs to sea monsters and windmills, all put together by Anachron Young, the grid owner, along with the eponymous Dorena Verne.

Grid Talk region on Dorenas-world

Poppy Shoppe

Poppy Fields has only been in OSGrid for about four months. We met on her region, Mistburry, where there's a charming, toast colored deck, with a sparkling pool and Zee Lounge, a sleek nightclub. 

The rest of the region is dedicated to long, palm-fringed beaches, and modern buildings, including her interesting project, the Opensim Shopping Expo, or  OS Expo, a hub for shops all over the hyperverse.

The Expo, with its posters, samples, and Landmarks, is designed to take some of the sting out of shopping for assets in opensim, which has to be the biggest bugbear for most people.

Poppy Fields

Poppy Fields: But I was here many many years ago. have been in SL from the start. 19 years . Before hypergrid I travelled many grids. called myself a gridnaut lol. I am creative in many aspects and it seemed a natural choice to be in a place that has less restrictions on creativeness. I knew about other grids but not much about how it all functioned. seemed stable here maybe not technically stable. more... socially stable, more community... with so many of the small grids, it's kind of 'little empires'

Amazing Mount Grace

Mount Grace is an ancient treasure in all realities. It was a Charterhouse, or Carthusian monastery. That's a religious order of Catholic monks, founded in 1084 just outside Grenoble, France. From that original monastery, the Grande Chartreuse - yes, where the liqueur comes from - other houses (branch offices, if you like) were founded by powerful pious men across Europe. They were built over the following centuries, often in quite harsh environments, which fitted in with the ethos of this particular form of worship. The wealthy and royally-connected Thomas de Holland financed Mount Grace in the one of the wildest parts of England, the North Yorkshire moors. 

The year was 1398, the era of  The Canterbury Tales, the Peasant's Revolt,  and the Hundred Years War - great for fiction, but less fun if you want political stability, or to grow old in peace. Within two years of founding Mount Grace, Thomas and most of his allies were dead. The monastery survived this early setback, however, and thrived for several centuries until - well, the answer to that is on the sim.

Not only the real Mount Grace has had to face setbacks and changes. This build by Christi Maeterlinck has had iterations as grids and hosts come and go. This build first appears in the HG Safari blog back in 2011   after a time on NWG, it moved to OSGrid, and more recently found a home on Science Circle grid, where it's on a 4x4 VAR giving plenty of space to convey the wooded uplands of North Yorkshire, and the large land holdings - fields, fish ponds, and woods - that provided wealth and sustenance for the religious house. The current HG Address is, of course, at the end of the post.

Christii Maeterlinck: It's good to have a home for Mount Grace after years of wandering in different servers and grids. strictly speaking, I'm here because the person who runs this grid, has made it available to the Science Circle members; and I happen to have joined Science Circle; I suppose it'll attract the sort of people who belong to the Science Grid... and they're a very varied bunch.