Steamy Safari

 The summer of Safari this year has continued to bring fun and interesting destinations, and this week we had our passports ready !

First up,Vbinnia Radek invited us back to her region Steam to see if we could break it. We had tried to visit in the past but the lag monsters had rendered the grid almost totally invisible to most of us, and then eventually it crashed. 

This happens quite often when a huge number of us descend on a very complex grid. It's just too much for the server. 

This time Vbinnia wanted to load test it again to see if improvements had made a difference, and they had! We were all forewarned that this was a load test, and were ready to crash, maybe that's why opensim decided to cooperate for a change. It's ornery that way.

There are some lovely quiet corners, like this one, with a skilfully made statue

and of course all the exuberant airships and mills, make it feel like a trip through time (though hard to tell whether you're going backward or forward!

Vbinnia Radek is an opensim oldbie with a penchant for complicated constructions, industrial heritage, proudly grungy buildings and lots of vehicles and gadgets that she makes available not only on this sim but also on Lani Mall. Each invention has a gloriously Victorian feel to it, and they're usually complex and mesmerizing.

Any kind of shop, with dozens of textures and scripts all in a small space, can be laggy in a way one might not expect (big objects often 'weigh' far less than small, in our experience) but to visit here as a group, is so fun that it is definitely worth it.

Praia Brasil our next stop, it's a new grid located in Brazil, just in case the name hadn't given it away, with its golden beaches made for nudists (glad I managed to snap a shot when nobody was around)...

There are plenty of people on Virtual Brazil and they welcomed us with a great musical set. This is a community that knows how to party. They did their best to communicate, although Portuguese is naturally the dominant language and they're not used to having a lot of strangers drop by.  That made our visit even more interesting really, like RL travel, you go with the flow and try to sample the local culture... often good to bring a friend or relative with you, just in case you need backup...

Just kidding, they're friendly and harmless and very musical. Afterwards, time to explore the glorious waterways and architecture. The perfect place for a summer R&R

Finally a party on Phaandoria grid, on the epic Der Krater nightclub.

This grid is home to Arielle and Phaandor,  and features many other regions beyond this epic volcano build. Good music, good building skills, and good company.

The best way to bat the summer heat - keep moving!

HG Addresses

Vbinnia Radek's steampunk region                 hg.osgrid.org:80:Steam

A New Brasilian grid                                       mundo.virtualbrasil3d.com.br:8002

Phaandoria dancing region                             phaandoria.de:8002:der krater

White Paper, Wizard's, and OSGrid Art

 This week, three stops on Safari, with plenty of art to show for it!

CapCat Ragu met us on Craft Grid, where she has a region dedicated to art experiments and education, called IPVerso.

The sim exists because CapCat (In RL Catarina Carniero de Sousa) uses it to work with her students on digital art at a college in Viseu, Portugal, where she lives. 

IPVerso is a long term project, giving artists a chance to try out their wings (sometimes more literally than others) in virtual worlds, and exploring the possibilities that offers now - it's an ever expanding possibility for creators, and so it's exciting to know that mainstream schools recognize the usefulness of opensim as a means of promulgating this branch of the arts.

Capcat works in collaboration with a number of other artists, and their collective, Delicatessen, has been known in Second Life for years as a place of excellence.

Safari turns Blue

BlueWall Slade: Friending is a mystery

               Hypergridding has changed the face of OpenSim. It has opened doors and forged friendships across grids. As much as it's still a work in progress, the possibility to visit 'foreign countries' is one of the most intriguing, challenging, and fascinating aspects of OpenSim. Once considered the denizen of curmudgeonly geeks, OpenSim has blossomed into a cross pollination of creativity, and created in many a sense of belonging to the whole hyperverse, rather than just one niche.

               All this liberality fosters a sense of love and tolerance, the precious values at the heart of the first destination visited this week, Pepperland in Littlefield Grid built by Mudpuddle Cleanslate and Chelsea Louloudi. (Addresses for the destinations are, as always, at the end of the post.)

Fest'Avi II

Last year, Francogrid's Fest'Avi was a blast, a fun family gathering.
The idea of the event is to get people - including those who don't think of themselves as 'artists' - to express themselves by creating an avatar. It was a way to get the Francogrid community together, and it worked. A bunch of local people participated, helping set up the sim as well as contributing to the fashion show. They included Cherry Manga, Erasme Beck, and Archael Magic, and several designers from beyond the FGrid frontier, like Alpha Auer, CapCat Ragu and Meilo Mintaur. 

Fest'Avi 2014

By the end of the event, OpenSim had more than a dozen original avies that newbies and oldbies alike could grab. They ranged from  Cyberwolf to Hibou, from Akiko to the Arbre, figures that have become synonymous with OpenSim. Fantastic avatars a world away from the humdrum human skins and shapes.

Akiko avie on the road (worn by Wizardoz Chrome)

This year, Fest'Avi exploded with an amazing light show and a new batch of avatars, eighteen in all, by Fuschia Nightfire, Cherry Manga, Imperator Janus, Dora Twinklens, Archael Magic, Zany Foxtrot, Cendres Magic, Capcat Ragu and Meilo Minotaur. 

Safari Watches Witches and Work in Progress

          There were two official destinations this week, but the hard-core Safaristas ended up on a third, and there was a lot more tail by the end of the adventure than we started out with. Addresses at the end of the post.
          First, off to Kitely, to get an idea about their regular WIP (pronounced whip) event, where builders and inventors can show off their latest Work In Progress.

 Serene.Jewell: So welcome to the Hypergrid Safari! So it's simple - you stand, you rez something and you talk about it.  It is one hour long only! Everyone will get 5 minutes today, I call the time when your time is up. We don't have many presenters so you will be able to jump in at the end. Nara Nook [aka Malone] is First!
Nara.Nook: I'm using Aine Caoimhe's PMAC system to make the cafe in the Greyville Writer's colony more interactive.

          Nara explained how the cat keeps writers company, and can be easily modded with poses and animations. It looks complete, but is a work in progress because she is still looking for animal animations, rather than the human ones she is currently using (although they looked great to us). The audience loved it.

A Crash Dancing, Scope Riding, Anvil Dumping Safari

Jessica.Pixel: I decided to be human today so lets hope all of my hair makes it
Thirza Ember: I feel like hair like that deserves its own greeting
Wizard Gynoid: at least it's not up her bum

Ms Pixel and her remarkable hair

          There was loose talk at the 54th HGSafari about gorean virgins and Mal Burns, most of which I can't divulge.
Fuschia Nightfire: when I was a noob, me and a friend once did a parachute jump from a sky platform and landed in a Gorean village, where she was taken as a slave, and this is the absolute truth, I never saw her again

The Supremacy of Twinity

There is nothing, nothing at all, like an urgent deadline to make time wasting seem like a good idea. Of course, we are spoiled for choice when it comes to time wasting, between all the many online and RL activities available here in the Western world. But it seems likely that if you're looking for the Supreme waste of time in virtual worlds, Twinity is it. It's hard to say which was more surprising, to notice that my first visit to Twinity was back in 2011, or to discover it still exists. The fact that little has changed is no big shock, for while someone who's been away from SL for a couple of years might be amazed by the advent of mesh, Twinity was always that way.

Putting a map on the wall just makes it even more obvious (and sad)
that these guys never did get around to recreating 3D cities.

It always takes a bit to remember how stuff works, and sheesh what is going on with that nose??! becomes your number one obsession whenever you dig out an old avie. Luckily most places are empty, so nobody's going to notice your body overhaul. 

You can check out any time you like, but ...

Moving around on this grid makes the Kitely Waitaminutesighwhileweturnonthelightsare yousureyourealllyneedtogotothatsim? room seem positively supersonic. Wherever you go, you never feel like you're properly 'outside', not even when you get to the ghetto. The oversize buildings here make you about the dimensions of a cat which, in turn, makes the animated cats about the size of rats, I suppose. And surely that's a CGTexture texture there, isn't it? Maybe not.

AAA Little Nightfire

          Flashing can be bad for people. But if you don't have a photosensitive health issue, then animated attached art - let's call it Triple A ! - is probably the best thing out there, especially when combined with live music. Fuschia Nightfire put on a cracking display for the HG Safari First Anniversary party this week, and it was interesting to hear a bit about what went into it. 

          First off, where did the inspiration for all the bright colors and attachments come from?
Fuschia Nightfire: I think it was Wizzy's idea actually. We were chatting about the party and said it would be good if we could get SaveMe to come, but realised that probably wouldn't happen, so we joked about making a NOT SaveMe performance, and I realised that with the dancing cat animation and the avatar starter kit, I probably already had some items that we could use. I also have some of her pieces on SL, so it was not difficult to look at those and make my own versions here, like the personal ban lines.

Thirza Ember: technically, did you find it a challenge?

A year of Safari

whirli placebo: i made it back!! hahaha can i navigate these hypergrids or what     

   

Wizzy on Week 1 of the Safari

A year ago today, Wizard Gynoid showed up for the first HG Safari. It was just the two of us.
        We left from Craft Grid, because that's where she had an account in open sim. Wizard was no OpenSim noob, she was one of the first to have her fantastic geometric art shown on Reaction Grid, and spent many happy years commuting between SL and Inworldz. But the idea of just jumping about, bouncing off servers and leaping into the unknown, well, that seemed like something that might be more fun to do as a group, where nobody laughed too loud if you were a cloud or had your hair stuck... elsewhere.

Early Safaris were often cloudy. This is week 4, in our first clubhouse on Ilha Magica

          It's called a Safari because

Safari Lets Go

          Teravus Plaza on OSGrid is where the Safari meets these days, and if you haven't seen the clubhouse yet, please drop by. Southwest corner of the sim, next to the waterfall. There are freebies, posters with info about the group and now also the trail head of the OSST, the OpenSim Scripting Showcase Trail. This week's Safari seemed a good opportunity to talk about what the trail is, and how everyone can contribute, before we headed off into the blue.

Thirza Ember: You can obviously visit the destinations by yourselves, but also we hope that you will bring people you know (in SL especially) who think that OpenSim doesn't have particularly good scripting. We do. It's unstable, but it's amazing. As you probably know, some of the grids on the trail are quite small and can't handle large groups, that's why the OSST is a self guided tour. Many of the scripting destinations are part of a much bigger build. For example, Gimisa's little grid is jam packed with scripting ideas, and Kayaker has that fantastic water sim, to name but two. If you'd like to 'give back'... it would be great if you can spread the word in social media, let the scripters feel the love! There is a group in G+ where you can post your thoughts and photos, where you can give them a sense of your appreciation.
Selby.Evans: and get to know the scripters and their work
PatriciaAnne.Daviau: I have visited a few of the scripting places and think they did a wonderful job on them
Thirza Ember: a special thanks to Fuschia for her fantastic machinima
Stephen.Xootfly: yay, Fuschia
Fuschia Nightfire: i've gone all pink now
Thirza Ember: and don't miss the gifts as you tour around. Gimisa has an inworld search engine, Ferd has cheetahs and elephants, and Kayaker has a flyer - that's a lot of fun.
Fuschia Nightfire: Ferd has the bee too
Stephen.Xootfly: hmm, the cheetah. one of the world's most dishonest animals
Stephen.Xootfly: the other one is the lion
Thirza Ember: note, the scripting trail does not go to Inworldz. But I am sure they contributed something to it.

Safarezzing

Wizard.Gynoid: oic. this is like a pink floyd concert without the marijuana

The fifty-first Safari departed with everyone playing with an Englisch-German translator, so you kinda knew from the first that there was going to be trouble.

First stop, Metropolis grid, and this sims of Art Blue. It's a place where we feel at home, after many presentations and evenings spent in the zoo. Art's impressive collection is worth a visit any time, but this show is something a little special, don't miss the elevator, which is my favorite bit.
Addresses at the end of the post, as always.

A visit to Futurelab means you start out in the hand, which is fair enough.
          Art Blue: please activate voice if possible I will later speak in voice about the moon
Art Blue's Moonrezzer is a bewildering but ultimately thought-provoking show.  Or is it Soulrezzer? Or are there both here in this build? See how this is getting all confusing?
Art spans the virtual world barrier with this latest performance, which occupies a sim at the LEA in SL but is also in the process of being perfected for the OpenSim public on his Futurelab sim in Metropolis. That raises a few challenges as they mod scripts to work in the alternative environment. Cue the booze.

Head in the clouds

       Businessfurry. Yes, it's a word.
       So let's break this Cloud stuff down to distracted non-geek levels.
       Think of an Ikea wardrobe. Now, think of a tub full of bathwater.
       The intertubes are not that big. So when you need to pass something down the tubes, it can't all go at once. It takes time. When it comes to something like water, one bit is very much like another, and it's all moving too quickly for you to notice specific water drops as they flow down the plughole. Doors are small too, and to get a giant wardrobe into your bedroom, it will have to be broken down into pieces and then assembled in situ. But while water is much of a muchness, to construct a wardrobe you need every single one of those panels, screws and packets. Otherwise - well, you know. Screaming, bloodshed, divorce.
        Not everybody knows this, but when you arrive on a sim, your Viewer says to the server where the sim is located: "I'll have one of EVERYTHING!" Not a picture of the stuff on the sim, an actual copy of it. Normal people can't access the items, but it's all in your Viewer's cache - this is how copybots work.
        Why does the Viewer do that? Because ours is not a 'Shoot 'em up, Hunt 'em down' kind of  a platform. The beauty of our virtual worlds lies in the fact that average joes can make, copy and edit things. It's that picaresque, open ended quality to SL and OpenSim that appeals to us and keeps us coming back, despite the instability. But obviously your Viewer hoovering up a copy of every single item - be it a prim, a texture, animation or whatever - makes for lag, and creates all that permissions paranoia.
       But going back to the wardrobe.
       There are many ways that computers can pass stuff between them, but there are really two ways that matter to this post.  One is called Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the other is User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
        Think of them as two brothers, the Brothers Protocol. Each on a mission to provide you with an Ikea wardrobe.
       TCP is the careful one, he gets all the bits, makes sure they all travel safely across town and into the bedroom where they will be assembled, checking them off against his little list. He only consigns the piece of furniture once it's complete, doorknobs and all.
       UDP is a great guy, but he's not the type to worry if some of the wardrobe packages fall off the back of his truck or get crushed in transit. "Hex tool? What hex tool?"
        So, my question to you - in SL and related worlds, which of these two protocols do you think is moving your virtual wardrobes? Yeah, you guessed it, good ole UDP. Which makes sense, because  UDP is great for things that don't have to travel far or by circuitous routes and when the Lindens set up SL they probably didn't envision a network of independent virtual worlds based on their system dotted all around the planet.  
          That, my friend, is why your hair is up your bum.
           Hypergridding. Or even visiting a place on your home grid. Imagine the scene. A group of people arrive on a sim, all asking for everything and then getting multiple updates every time something changes on the sim, a dance, a gesture, a moving prim. That's a strain on the system. UDP is throwing packages at everyone, and while most of them are okay, there's a lot that can and does go wrong.
          OK then, for all of us who haven't really been paying attention to what the geeks have been talking about for the past year(s), let's just come out and ask: How might all this strain on resources and lousy delivery go away?

Safari has a Ball

        Well, two balls this week, really.
        We got the answers to some important questions like - is 'Ball' the 51st state? How important are jars to education in virtual worlds? Is guinguette a made up word? Does Pathfinder own any shoes? What is VIBE? and... How many avatars does it take to crash a sim on Ignis Fatuus Grid?
         First stop this week, a long overdue chat with Professor Stephen Gasior, who showed us around REDgrid, the OpenSim home of Ball State University. 
Jessica Pixel: right clicking my head made it show up, so we're good
Wizard Gynoid: We are now in Indiana
Lucy Afarensis: oh my
LuAnn.Phillips: sounds like Alice in wonderland dialogue

Wizard Gynoid: why is it called Ball State?

Stephen Xootfly: It's named after the Ball Family who gave a lot of $ - ever heard of Ball Glass? 
Jessica Pixel: wait, the Ball family that gave a lot of money is the jar family?  cause that's awesome, i love those jars.
Selby Evans: My family canned with Ball jars. And made preserves.
         REDgrid is small, sturdy and has several very different sims, featuring some beautiful and accurate reconstructions of the campus buildings, and we started out by the pixel version of Shafer Tower. 
Stephen Xootfly: The grid and the original builds here are run by the IDIA lab. IDIA's work has been used for History Channel shows but, also they tend to partner with students and faculty for intersecting projects.
Serene  Jewell: It's really great that you opened up to the hypergrid. So many educational builds are hidden away where we can't see them.
          When it comes to Educational grids and regions in OpenSim, it can get a bit confusing, between the all the names of the various institutions and projects. Stephen is busy here with REDgrid, which is part of IDIA, but he's also very much a part of VIBE.  So how did he get started with teaching and virtual worlds?

Stephen Xootfly: I got my start teaching in Second Life at U of New Orleans. They used to have a big SL presence and many classes, and I'm a technophile. HG safari has visited my VIBE projects in the past, that's a collaborative working group with Clowey Greenwood, Max Chatnoir, and several others. I happened to come work for Ball State and got involved with IDIA Lab.  REDgrid predates my being at BSU. IDIA lab is well equipped with lots of good computers. So they just set up one to be a dedicated Opensim server. Working with BSU IT to get it setup for hypergrid was difficult, but we have an outside line now. I've recently started a community here at BSU for using REDgrid. Very recent, but we've already had a class use it for a gender identity project, and I have a build I"m going to make this summer. 

Safari hops for the best

Meet Tosha Tyran, builder, benefactor and all round bella donna. How did a nice girl like her end up in a place like this?

Tosha Tyran: I got kind of frustrated with all the commercial stuff in SL and I was sick and tired of having to pay for every upload and wanted to advance building then some Italian friends told me about OpenSim and now I think it is really great - I wouldn't want it different I came - and hell it was frustrating too - more crashes then anything but with time and patient it changed :) I started later with Tao and Licu and Lumiere in Craft and - well - now I am here in Sanctuary which is one of the best cared for grids I think it is just great and the owner very friendly and helpful :) and I can build all I want I am present in Craft as well, but my favourite place is Sanctuary.
Her latest build, a Hopi Indian village, is on a sky platform above her sim Fire, on Sanctuary grid. URIs as usual at the end of the post.

Talking Trash

Knickers. I love them. They are fun to make, because they are difficult to get right. When making underwear, a fraction of a pixel on the upper thigh can result in unsightly bleeding edges, and a single pair of panties may require half a dozen re-uploads before the desired look is achieved.

One of the first things that we all fall in love with in OpenSim is the free upload feature. Sweet - you can just keep trying over and over till you have the correct knickerosity. It's wonderful.
You have a similar story of multiple uploads to tell, for sure. But have you ever stopped to think about what your crazy uploading does to the Asset Server of your grid? 

Yeah. Billions of copies of those unsuccessful undies.

"But wait!  I regularly go through my Inventory and trash all the things that don't work or I don't need!" I hear you say. 
Of course you do. But then what happens? Ever noticed that your trash seems to just come back, like a sort of bin boomerang?

Divine Safari

          Just two destinations on this 48th consecutive Safari, but this was a week when less is more.  That's what we told ourselves, as we all kept losing our hair. What is up with that? For months, hair loss has been a rare event when grid jumping, and now it's back. What we need to do is sit down with a dev and.... well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

First stop, CrazyEaster.

Safari Lessons

          Yay it's nice to be meeting on OSGrid at the ole homeplace again. 

          But no time to feel homesick for Francogrid, because our first stop this week was on that very grid. Sim Avatar crashed - had to be an omen - but a second top secret alternative destination was immediately made available. 

           

Safari goes extramural

         This week Littlefield Grid celebrates two years of existence, and Walter Balazic and friends are celebrating with a gigantic fair on Littlefield Anniversary sim. In honor of the event they have put up a VAR region, and all kinds of residents have contributed stalls stands and exhibits showing the talent and wide range of interests of Littlefield folk.

Walter Balazic: it's a fairly large VAR, so there's a lot to see. I've been looking at it for 2 weeks now, so it looks small to me now! The users here love to build.  Mudpuddle put an interesting Yellow Submarine display up. The Germans put a village up, I put a little display up, I really never build, but it's the one behind you. People do things that are geared toward what they know, mine is all prim and minor scripting, cause that's all I know. Some people are really good at mesh and focus on mesh things.

Safari by the Numbers

          Tip Corbett in the real world Gregory Hall put on a wonderful concert for the Safari this week, inspired by conversations with Wizard Gynoid on the theme of "The Aesthetics of Advanced Musical Scales in Words and Music". 
          Originally the concert was due to be on the HG Safari sim on 3rdRockGrid, but the grid showed up as offline until just before the Safari was due to begin, so the event reverted to Francogrid. That meant we missed out on seeing most of Wizard's geometry. These are some highlights of what happened, and here is the link to the audio of the whole concert. 
          As ever, URIs for this week's destinations are at the end of the post, which alone cannot do justice to Tip's lovely voice on stream, let alone his magnificent music.

Tip Corbett:  And... Welcome to the sim! This is going to be lecures and playing, which is something I really like, and I like feedback, so if you want to give me feedback, that's a gift you can give me.
          (go ahead and do that, by finding and subscribing or liking his pages on Facebook, on Youtube, or on his website GregoryHall.org.)

Live Long and Gridjump

          This week's Safari event had plenty of competition, and that is a great thing. It's a tangible sign that OpenSim is far from a collection of empty grids. From the inauguration of the new Hypergrid sim on Francogrid, to the VWBPE Conference on Avacon to the weekly dance party on Metropolis to 3rdRockGrid's regular live music concert hosted by Zinnia Frenzy,  there was plenty to do. 
          But for the Safari, this week was Spockfari, a chance to honor and remember Leonard Nimoy, and to visit two extraordinary Star Trek builds in OpenSim, on 3rdRockGrid, and LostWorld. 
          URIs of each region are at the end of the post.

USS Davy Crockett

          First stop was on 3rdRockGrid, the home of the USS Davy Crockett, which is ... Fascinating.

Selenmoira: Ladies and Gentlemen Welcome aboard the USS Davy-Crockett. If you like, we have prepared a champagne bowl over there.
Truelie.Ellen: just a sip... must stay rational
Fuschia.Nightfire: champagne!  oh cool, it gives you the whole tray. That should keep me going for half an hour or so.