Two destinations that delight this week. Grid addresses at the end of the post as usual. If you have not visited Avacon Grid yet, put it on your 'Must See' list.
Not only is Avacon closely associated with the organization and prep work that goes into the annual Opensim Community Convention (held over on OSCC Grid), it is also home to some interesting regions, including the Building Tutorial region Primland, you may remember it being originally on Fleep Grid; some nice work-in-progress Library regions belonging to Rockcliffe University, and of course Nebadon Izumi's regions bursting with interesting free stuff, called Oni Kenkon Creations.
After Neverworld, this week our next stop was on the other side of the planet. In these troubling times, I always find some comfort in being with Australians living, as they do, where Tomorrow has already safely arrived. This time, we were on U4Ria.
Uriah Heep: ok any of the teleporters can take you to a destination
Arrival on u4ria
Juliette SurrealDreaming: i made it! lol thanks Sunbeam Magic: and with your clothes on too Juliette Uriah Heep: covers my eyes Juliette SurrealDreaming: omg did i not have them earlier? Sunbeam Magic: you did not lol Juliette SurrealDreaming: giggles, free show!!! :-P
Australia was again our destination for the final stop this week. Our hostess Gen, lives in Australia where it's the middle of the night when we do Safari, so she asked if we'd mind showing ourselves around. As always, you'll find the HG Address at the end of the blog post.
This time Kitely grid, and the fabulous Australian Home Land, by the beautiful Genavieve Paige. The experience of this region is breathtaking, make sure you have sound on, and have your environment set to the region windlight to get the full effect.
Genavieve Paige
Thirza Ember: The Murray River is huge, more than 2500 km long, it is Australia's longest single river. It begins in the Australian Alps and winds its way out to the sea not far from Adelaide , so it has lots of environments, from the beaches to the wetlands, and she has tried to include it all on her region.
Our first stop of three this week on Safari - lil bit of lag, it can't be denied, but fun nonetheless. That's one of the advantages of multiple destinations each time. If one place has issues, or maybe isn't to your taste, another will be fine.
Plenty of tasteful stuff on Neverworld though...
Neverworld Welcome
Our first stop, however, was set to be on Neverworld grid, founded by Govega Sachertorte. We were invited by Locked Semaphore, and Pasha Theas was also there to welcome us to what was due to be a whistlestop tour of six different regions. Yes, I know what you're thinking, very ambitious...
Neverworld is a grid of about three hundred regions, with about 200 in traffic monthly, between residents and visitors (pretty nice numbers) and the six regions being showcased were well chosen t demonstrate the range of activities available, from the airport, Banning International (great name) to the dark labyrinth of Ludicus...
Ludicus
..... to the romance of Luster, and so on.
Here on Neverworld you will find fashion, freebies, rentals, sailing, and social events, as well as free parcels if you just want to try the grid out. My favorite part in all of it is the Greeter, with his corny Pirate jokes. Unmissable.
Neverworld Greeter
There was something happening with teleports however right when we all tried to go there (an hour later, of course, teleporting was fine, that's just the way opensim works out sometimes) so our tour didn't go quite as expected. Better luck for sure on our next visit.
Each Safari trip lasts about three hours. Sometimes, that's divided into three one-hour visits, and sometimes into two ninety minute encounters. This week was of the ninety-minute-times-two variety, and for good reason! Our destinations were on OSgrid, Metropolis and Mobius grids (huh? three grids for two destinations? You'll see.) and all the HG Addresses are at the end of the post, as usual.
The Absurdists were Post WWII writers, like Albert Camus, who you perhaps haven't heard of, or like the book Catch 22, which you have heard of. So now you've Googled that, you'll agree that nothing really fits the hypergrid paradigm better than 'you have to be crazy to work here'. Yesterday proved we're crazy like a fox, in this case, Foxx Bode.
The planned destination was on Foxx's Red Dragon Club X, built when Foxx first discovered opensim back in the year dot. Sadly, this didn't work out, so we decamped to the Safari clubhouse on Teravus Plaza. But do take the time to go and see Foxx's historic OSgrid build, HG Addresses are at the bottom of this post, as usual.
It's a small country with a lots of names, and loads of personality. Whether you like to call their home Holland, the Netherlands, or the Low Countries, the Dutch contingent in opensim is large, active, and innovative! The Safari group got to see three different aspects of Dutch culture this week, all the destinations are open to the public, and listed at the end of this post, if you want to experience them for yourself.
Utrecht Citycenter is a region on OSGrid built by Avia Bonne. The region is on land owned by Mark aka Repudiator Quann, one of the smart and generous people who have regions attached to OSGrid and allow others to get a parcel or even a whole sim in exchange for small donations used to help cover expenses.
The new Safari house in SL will be holding the first in a series of events on March 25, at 12.00 SLT
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sistiana/106/81/25
Back in September 2014, The Safari was lucky enough to be given some space on sim Sisitiana, in SL.
The 2014 Safari Embassy on Sistiana
The beautiful sim is the home of John 'Pathfinder' Lester.
Safarina Wizard Gynoid immediately took in hand the space and put up a building, very much like an ancient church in the gothic style.
We held a party there in October 2014, with a crowd of bi-virtuals, or should that be multi-virtuals. It was a way to remind all of the symbiotic relationship between SL and the opensim worlds.
Inside there were some posters and information about opensim, including a link at the now famous video that shows the hypergrid jump by some of the Linden team to an IBM owned region in opensim... this video
Time went by, Wizard became busy with other projects and relinquished the land to me, and last November, I began rebuilding and rethinking the space.
As you can see, the classic look of the region has not changed, but the style of the new building is rather different. it's divided into 3 floors. The ground floor is all about general information on how to find people in opensim, how to get help, and some tips and tricks - from things like 'What is an .oar' to 'How come people friend me so fast in opensim'.
The middle floor is dedicated to specific information about grids. Click on the posters and get a notecard that tells you something about the size, location, prices, and ideology of each one. The central display gives you an idea of how the grids are distributed around the world, and shows - just for illustrative purposes - the names of about 200 grids that are hg friendly. Wow - 200, that's a lot!
A separate space called the 'school room' will house some information about educational builds - everything from university grids to privately run sims with a didactic twist, like Graham Mill's Micrographia.
The top floor is for social events. While it's not my intention to have a lot of events in SL, it's nice to think we have a place where experienced opensimmers can share their experiences with people a bit shy about taking the plunge. And dance a bit too. The events here will not be SL-bashing, but will hopefully dispel some of the myths and misinformation out there.
This build has a strong not-for-profit bias. It celebrates the generosity of opensim, not the people trying to make a fast buck out of it. The idea that we can all give something back to the opensim community is paramount - because those are the kind of people I hope will join us. Finding your way around opensim can be a huge challenge to new people. I say this - if someone showed you kindness in opensim, then please, pay it forward by helping someone new. And if you're not fond of newbies, just consider this, if you help them, it is also a way you can help put the rip-off merchants out of business.
It makes no absurdly self-aggrandizing claim to being the official home of Opensim in SL - nobody can speak for the massive variety of worlds, with all their fiercely individual ideas and aims. However, I'm proud to say that people from some 50 different grids have contributed to the build.
Many have provided posters and notecards, advice, moral and practical support, and some have given a few Lindens to help with the upload costs. Thank you all!
Two stops this week, on Francogrid and then on OSGrid. Find the HG Addresses at the end of the post, and add your photos of the destinations to our groups in G+ and Facebook, if you'd like! HG Addresses as aways at the end of the post.
First, to Parcdesarts, a region of Francogrid. Paintings and other 2D art is surprisingly difficult to show well in virtual worlds. But Katia Parcdesarts has achieved something special here.
The landscape suggests an airy oceanside estate, without too many trees or water features to distract from the principal attraction, the galleries, which, even though each represents a very different style of architecture, all come together in a harmonious patchwork.
Yesterday, we answered two questions about Opensim with one big party. Firstly, what is the most popular publication in the Hyperverse? and secondly, is opensim really 'empty'? The answers are 1. HG Visionz magazine, and 2, Opensim empty? No way!!
There are quite a few competing events on Wednesday evening, European time . There's a DJ dance party at Event Plaza, OSGrid, there's the traditional-back-to-the-dawn-of-opensim party hosted by Samira Samtanko on DeReOs, there's the midweek meeting on Metropolis, and a bunch of other music and social events, you need look no further than the Events Tab on opensimworld.com or go to hypevents.net to see what's going on. Why mention all these 'rivals' to the weekly Safari trip? Because an astounding 43 avatars gathered on 3rdlifegrid to wish HG Visionz a happy second anniversary.
Stop me if you've heard this one. Person A tells Person B about a great deal, or scheme, they're working on. Person B gets excited, and tells their friend, Person C, all about it. Person C invests.
The second destination for this week's Safari tour was Escape! on Digiworldz. This is a region dedicated to the teaching of Spanish in an immersive 3D environment. Our guide was Eugenia Calderon, a language teacher living in Mexico, and the region's creator, James 'El Profesor' Abraham was also there. Here's the website.And here's theirEscape Facebook pageand here's the page for'Spanish with Eugenia'.
Colleagues Eugenia Calderon IRL Martha Eugenia Lino, and James 'El Profesor' Abraham
El Profesor: Hola! I'm in a RL class, but I have my students working on an activity so I'm kinda here and kinda not....did you hear them?
This is the first half of this week's Safari which was split into two 90 minute destinations. First up, OMG... HG Address at the end of the post, as usual.
snik snoodle: welcome all to OMG! it's short for One More Grid. We have sailing at the docks where you can rezz a boat and go for a sail, rain and i thought we could either split the group into two, one group sail one explore and then say swap over in 30 mins or so. Do feel free to dance while you wait, if you wish or feel free to ask rain or I anything - should you have any questions. Thirza Ember: Why did you decide to make your own grid rather than join a larger grid?
Cornflakes Week, a seven day festival of silliness unique to OpenSim, began yesterday with a 3-stop party on Safari. If you missed the party, you can still go visit all 3 destinations, addresses at the end of this post.
We started on HGSafari region on Francogrid, with a concert by Torben Asp.
His particle show and original music was a wonderfully smooth way to get us started on our - let's be honest - difficult trip around the Hyperverse.
A very musical Safari this week, with a trip to 3rd Rock Grid for the first two hours, to hear two musicians, and learn about the No Borders Festival, a two-day concert for charity, which happened last weekend. Want to visit the places mentioned in this post? The HG addresses are at the end. Copy paste them into the Map feature of your viewer.
Truelie Telling, photo by Wizardoz Chrome
First up, though, Truelie Telling warmed up the crowd at the Lodi Ballroom with some avatar-centric songs, in her inimitable style. She soon had the room hopping!
This week, Canada! Opensim is a great way to explore cultures and places in the real world, and also see how people express their world view through pixels. Our three destinations were on Pathlandia, GreatCanadianGrid, and Creanovale, all three with strong Canadian connections, although that might not be obvious from first impressions, and about 23 avies joined in the fun. HG Addresses at the end, as usual.
Nobody say 'I'd tap that'.
I was all ready to go - I'd even made mesh moose rack, and a Maple Syrup dress. But then disaster struck - I came down with the flu about 3 hours before the Safari and couldn't to join the group. So, how cool that John 'Pathfinder' Lester decided to Livestream the first hour!
Goodwill. Stop and think about it. Why? Because that one word holds the key to the survival of the human race, and to your personal health and happiness. It's also the world's greatest time-saving gadget. Find a way to slip it into all those nasty sharp bits of your life. You'll be glad you did. Two builds that speak to the good in all of us this week, one is a celebration of pixel power, the other a meditation on what it means to lose your home in the real world. HG Addresses, as always at the end of the post.
First, a crowd of us went over to Littlefield to see the new region, Goodwill. Shopping galore!
Every Wednesday we meet on the HGSafari region on FrancoGrid. About 15-20 people join each week, trips are organized in advance so we can meet grid and region owners. We go to two or three different grids each week, spending about an hour on each. The entire event lasts about three hours, some people stay for the whole thing, some people come and go, depending on other commitments.
To make it easier for people to join us partway through the Safari, event details are posted on opensimworld.com, G+ and Facebook. To keep it interesting for all, there's a mix of destinations, from social to sporty, from arty to educational, from technical to theatrical. No one grid is promoted above all others, though we tend to spend a lot more time with people who are not in virtual worlds for the money. Cuz if we were into that, we would just have stayed in Second Life. You will find the HG Addresses for this week's three destinations at the end of the post, should you wish to visit them yourself. You put the address in your Viewer's Map, hit Search, and then teleport. It's a simple low tech way of discovering opensim for yourself.
Building competition entry by XsiberiaX Ilfreddopurifica
Craft Grid turns 7 on Friday, and there will be a big party from around 1pm Pacific time, which is ten o'clock in the evening in Europe. They will be awarding the prizes for the annual Build
George Equus: as far as Safari goes, pretty successful one today ;}
Two destinations this week. HG Addresses at the end of the post as usual.
First up a Welsh Paradise, devised by Susannah Avonside.
Susannah Avonside
Views of welsh scenery, and views about the future of opensim were on the menu this week. Although it almost seemed like we were going nowhere, at first. Seemed like none of us were entirely present from the very beginning, some of us foggy, George's trousers had gone walkabout again, and a new friend Spax Orion was just hair and a sword, leading us to wonder if he had remembered to put his mesh avie in his My Suitcase folder.
