Crow Castle

At one time there were over 500 castles in Japan, but after the age of the shogun, the long series of civil wars came to an end and the country eventually unified under the ruling power of the Emperor. Most of the old feudal fortifications were either demolished or allowed to decay. Only 12 authentic Japanese castles survive to this day. 

This one is accessible without passport or jet lag... it's on Wolf Territories Grid.

The Daqtheion Empire

By light, we see light

It's a little bit Alice Through the Looking Glass, a touch Whovian, a smidgen Minecraft, and plenty Mobian; it will find worlds unique to your mind and echo them back to you, with interesting sidelights. But of course, whatever allusions fly, this is  the Daqtheion Empire, and the mindworm of Knight Knox, the creator of Phos, a region of crystals and cubes, space and sounds, towers and tunnels and teleports and trees.

If you want to fall in love all over again with Opensim, then take a trip to Mobius and visit this region; this is no game, it's an expression of art, on an imperial scale, in the magnificent opensim style of immense space coupled with total freedom of movement. HG Address, as always, at the end of the post... You make your own adventure.

Zoree's Season

  A popular myth suggests that Charles Dickens invented the classic English Christmas when, in 1843, his book 'A Christmas Carol' was published and became an instant bestseller. (Just as well, for Dickens at the time was in deep trouble financially, and gave himself just 6 weeks to write the book and get it out there to resolve his money woes!) While his book didn't really kickstart the festivities, it did crystallize many English traditions, and while Dickens is often condemned by writers as being the 'Commercializer of Christmas' in reality he wanted to promote the idea of helping those in need, without expecting to receive in return. The Victorian age was a time of wealth and technological breakthroughs, social upheaval and international unrest... anything sound familiar? 

The season is almost upon us, but before you begin to see palm trees laden with snow popping up on all the beaches of opensim, take a trip around one of the best made Christmas builds on the hyperverse, Victorian Christmas on OSGrid, by Zoree Jupiter - a great builder, although more famous perhaps for her wonderful singing voice.

Zoree is going to be a guest on the Mal Burns talk show Inworld Review on December 3 at 12 noon Grid time. You can watch the show online and add your comments and questions in the Live Chat, or watch anytime afterwards, to learn more about her story in music making, as well as her participation in the OSCC festivities during the weekend of December 9 and 10 this year.

Zoree with a snowman friend

The virtual offers so many possible iterations of the Xmas spirit - anything is possible here - the question has to be, why choose to represent Victorian Christmas?

Master of Art: Gianni Spada

Lu sule, lu mare, lu ientu 

'The sun, the sea and the wind' have shaped Apulia, the 'heel' of boot-shaped Italy. It's a peninsula of a peninsula, reaching out across the Adriatic towards Albania, a land of olive groves, rocky beaches, with mountains in the north and vast tracts of fertile farmland, timeless villages, and busy ports.  It's the home of Gianni Spadavecchia. His last name means 'old sword' in English but inworld, he shortens it to just Spada - way easier to type.  

Gianni Spada at the HIE conference in October.
Apulia is called 'Puglia' in Italian - don't let that g fool you, it's pronounced Pull-ya

Italy has the most UNESCO sites in the world, and there are 1.5k museums in the country. So much history! There are about 300 recognized archeological sites, but you'd have to add several zeroes to that figure if you were to count all the places with notable archeology. With so much out there, it would be completely impractical to make them all accessible. There just aren't the resources to preserve, protect, excavate and investigate every single one of them, so many of these treasures remain buried, or otherwise undeveloped in terms of a visitor friendly  destination. And of course, not all of us can take a day trip to Italy to check out these fascinating treasures.

The Breath of Shenn Tao

གཏོང་ལེན་

It is a place born out of balance, it is a home to harmony. In a world full of bitterness and so much focus on the self, to the detriment of others, it is a haven for the mind.

Shenn Tao's region on Virtual Worlds Zone takes its name from Tonglen, a Tibetan word meaning more or less 'give and take'. The sending and receiving in Tonglen meditation practice is exactly the opposite to the way most business is transacted. It's all about breathing, and the idea is that instead of trying to take in pleasure and stay away from pain, you aim to receive other's pain by breathing it in, and on each breath you exhale, you're trying to send out goodness and wellbeing to others. Imagine if everyone gave that a go for a little while.

Nyx by the Numbers

 You have to admire a man who's bold enough to wear short shorts and if his shorts are short, that's the only thing he's short of. Space, time, energy and talent - Nyx Breen has got a lot of all of it.

This is Zahlensymbolik, on one of the Immersive VAR regions of Pangea grid, one of 6 grids where Nyx has a presence in opensim. Zahlensymbolik is a German word that suggests a lot of ideas - numerology, the symbolism of numbers or aspects of mathematics, the magic in counting. Deep stuff! However, never fear, this is not a superstitious sim, more a place where numbers are made to dance and delight.

Nyx Breen: The name sounded fun after I had used google translate English to German, more of play on the sound of it than the meaning. I'm a numbers person, yes - but more on the math side than the numerology side.

Nyx Breen

 Zahlensymbolik (let's just call it 'Z')  started as a sim months ago, and then the effects took on a life of their own, with fewer prim and more effects. There are 8 sections here, each different. 

Three Pieces of Karima

Karima Hoisan provides a little life lesson in the midst of an impressive career of creativity on Kitely, in the form of her YouTube channel. Memory is important. You probably already know that Karima shares poems, personal reflections, and anecdotes on her website the Digital Rabbit Hole, but perhaps the most enduring and accessible record of her work on almost two dozen regions - called rather grandiloquently 'worlds' on Kitely -  is Karima's YouTube channel.
It's fair to say that Karima Hoisan has always posted wonderful content on Youtube over the past 12 years, as it's an ideal locus for her multimedia presence, in intimate collaboration over the years with Dale Innis, and, before her untimely death, Natascha Randt. Recently, she has begun expanding her video repertoire. Here are three pieces of it.

Karima and Nat

Much of Kitely is inaccessible to the general visitor, making it a bit of a black hole of creativity from the point of view of the hypergrid explorer - there's probably good stuff happening but it's too difficult to get to, so one just shrugs, and moves on. Karima is one of a handful of residents who have consistently made out-of-town  tourists like the Safari group welcome. Our first visit to one of her builds -Vector's Vortex - was nine years ago today, in November 2014. Yet despite repeated Safaris to builds by Dale, Nat and Karima, - with contributions by other pals, from time to time - we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the range of imaginative chapters they have put together in the past decade or so.