Love & Peace on ArtDestiny

 Coming soon - get out your diary - a musical treat where you can show your true spirit as a lover of peace. 

Saturday, July 27 from 10am to 7pm Pacific time 

at artdestiny.de:8002:Lothlorian

When you arrive on the sim you'll find this convenient teleport board tht will take you to the concert venue in the sky.
These days, it's all too easy to get sucked into the latest round of name-calling and outrage, which doesn't help anyone. As a global community, let's stand side by side with our fellow residents of all nations, in a spirit of tolerance and love. 

Four Bits By Bink

Anyone who is well familiar with the Safari is familiar with the name Bink Draconia. I think the first time we had a proper group visit with her was back in 2016 on her grid Kroatan. 

That's a classy name for a grid, Kroatan. Grid names should be catchy, short, and imaginative, don't you think? 

In fact, that name was our first clue to the level of talent we were going to come into contact with, on her Halloween build, made in collaboration with the wonderful Kiki Bailey and with a storyline by Malon Wyngard - you can read about it here. 

Flash forward eight years, and Bink continues to deliver fabulous builds, now on Marlon Wayne's Pangea grid. 

You may remember seeing in 2023 Bink's The Good Place build, which is not just a triumph of landscaping, but a full-on game that shadows the plot of the television series. It's a brilliant synthesis of the story, with a decor so close to the real thing at times that you feel like you're inside your TV. 

But Bink has other fab regions on Pangea to visit, and this post highlights four of them, conveniently set close together in the Great Pangea Ocean. The region names are: Eternal Ice, North Pole, Koburk, and Needful Things. The addresses are, of course, at the end of the post - but what can you expect to see if you go there?

How Not to be Lonely in Opensim

Ever heard someone say 'there's no-one in Opensim'? Or maybe that was you, talking to yourself - hey nothing wrong with that!

Opensim can often feel like a wide open, empty place. Quite intimidating after, say, the bustling sims of SL. That's not surprising when you compare its size to that of Second Life. 

SL in 2024 by primerib1 aka Claire Morgenthau

SL is not small. This picture shows the main continents at the center of a galaxy of private regions, but if you think that's huge, Opensim is waaaay bigger - if fact, if you're wondering why there's no map of opensim here, that's because it's impossible to say how big the connected hypergrid universe is. 

A few people try to give statistics about it, but they do not, and indeed cannot, know the full extent of opensim, since it is a completely decentralized and unregulated meta-place where anyone at any time and for any duration can have a grid without reporting to any higher authority. 

That means there's no central control, nobody keeping complete records of all the comings and goings of our hyperverse - it just can't be done in a meaningful way. 

Creanovale: Tout Doux

 If you're in need of some R&R, far away from the draining drama of world events, and the vociferous, but luckily not too many, angst-mongers inworld, why not take a little time to enjoy the season on Creanovale.

This grid is built by Dabici Straulino and Kelso Uxlay. They live in the French-speaking area of Canada, and their grid is based on the beautiful countryside, traditions, products and history of their part of the world.

Each year, they modify their VAR region to reflect the passing seasons, so you can experience everything from surfing to skating here, depending on when you come to visit. The sim is a resort, a wilderness and a fine collection of perfectly assembled tableaux, complete with appropriate sounds that bring the sights to life, and here and there animesh...

In the Mix

You won't find Abyssinia on a modern map, unless it's a map of Zetaworlds of course! After some time on the Science Circle Grid, Skip Dahlgren , known as Aba Brukh inworld, has moved his build to a new grid, and a new start. 

'Abyssinia' as a geographical place is more or less the current land territory of Ethiopia and Eritrea. 

A term used in the West from around the 1600's, in the 1970s Haile Selassie nixed the name 'Abyssinia' because it has unflattering roots in an arabic word meaning mixture. 

Politics and deliberate slurs aside, this rich tapestry of an area, sometimes called the Horn of Africa, was undoubtedly enriched by the miscellaneous trade in goods, cultures, religious and philosophical influences, and DNA from three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, all passing through the area of the Red Sea. Not to mention a very mixed fortune over the centuries as powerful people came and went, leaving their mark on the landscape.

Lost Summer

 It was the year when we had a huge party to wish Bon Voyage to Justin when he left to go back to RL, Total Sorbet's Outbreak was the breakout pastime of  OSGrid,  and Opensimworld was in its infancy - before the highs and lows of Traffic Classification, and the Box with its merry band of prolix commentators. 

There was AvatarFest, and the gloriously Cherrified Fest'Avi. Inworldz and Twinity were still places you could go (hard to believe that Twinity didn't shut down until 2021), Blue Mars and Cloudparty were already gone. 

The idea that these were real options for the grid-trotter seems a little crazy nowadays, when hypergridding is so easy and facilitated with all kinds of directories and events calendars but back then, they were serious options. OSCC unveiled its treasure hunt, a super way to motivate people to visit all the expo sims, and there was much dancing during the event.... 

The year - in case you didn't remember it, was 2015. We were all so young and energetic! HG Safari trips had become a common event,  and somehow, not sure why,  for about two months this blog went silent.

Summer-palooza on AMV

 A long weekend of summer fun on AMV and it all begins on Thursday 11 July! 

Alternate Metaverse Grid is famous for its many festivals and special events, and this happening is bound to be a great one, with five VAR regions dedicated to getting your summer started with a swing. If the great outdoors has been nothing but heatwaves and downpours, why not stay inworld, where the best weather is always guaranteed?

HG Addresses, as usual, at the end of this post, and of course if you look here you'll find the calendar of events on the grid's website

Cat on The Arts

Cataplexia Numbers: OpenSim and its community are blessed with so much art and creativity! This is our way on Alternate Metaverse to celebrate that, and encourage more arts in every genre! We open our festival to all who wish to be a part of it! Join us on July 11th through July 14th - Help us celebrate and enjoy the arts!

Community Art exhibition

You've probably visited this festival in previous years, and will remember the names of the sims - The Arts, In Tribute, OpenMic Arts, AMV Special Events, and Festival of Arts. Having 5 regions allows for plenty of space for exhibits, fancy stages and unique venues for all the performers and presentations.

What kind of summer fun? It's fair to say there's something for everyone, from burlesque to community art exhibits you can tour by boat.