Thursday, October 30, 2014

C'est Safari

What's the difference between SL and OpenSim? If a guy in SL asks you to touch his trunk, he's probably a pervert. In Open Sim, the trunk is a chest of Pirate Treasure, and it's a nice little freebie souvenir de France. Make a note of that for later.
This week, there was already considerable confusion over the end of Daylight Savings Time, and we ramped it up further by offering two possible start points for the Safari, the classic Outlands on Metropolis, and a new base, on Francogrid, donated by Gill Beaumont. The sim there is easy to find, it's called hgsafari. With Metro straining at the seams, a backup to out backup seemed wise. There are now three HG Safari groups, 4 if you count the unreachable OSGrid, join them all, we don't have group limits in open sim, and this way you can use Group Chat if you're on Francogrid, Metropolis, or Craft. The weekly Landmark notecard is also sent out as an announcement via the groups, so that may help you find us.


We talk a lot, on Safari. It must be really annoying for the grid owners who are eager to make their presentation, but it's so much fun to read Local Chat and get a feel for all the people coming from different grids. The big question of the week was - What is the National Dish of France? - and it seems that choucroute won, mostly because Strannik Zipper was handing out samples, but also because our first destination was the University of Strasbourg, and the fantastic virtual Campus (URIs at the end of the post). Unistra manager Anne Cordonnier welcomed us, and Cheops Forlife translated her introduction into English. Cheops has her own group of virtual researchers, the i3DM, their stamping ground was OSGrid, so when that's back up and running, we plan to go visit her there too. But back to the University of Strasbourg, and the choucroute...
Anne.Cordonnier @ever.unistra.fr:8002: Alors le projet de la grille a commencé en 2012 avec l'Atrium....
Cheops Forlife: Let me translate: This project here started in 2012, with the build of one building of the campus called l'ATRIUM, When all the university saw it, they wanted the full university reproduced, so Anne made it with some strudents, slowly but surely, so now all around this megaregion, are individual projects of researchers for or by the students. The grid is dedicated to research projects.
Anne.Cordonnier @ever.unistra.fr:8002: je crois que je vais vous laisser découvrir maintenant
        Yay we like to decouvrir. Cheops took us to the model of the digital center, where there is a laptop running the opensim project of the university.
strannik.zipper: nothing like a reality mashup!
Cheops Forlife: so you can imagine they see themselves not yet connected but they can see Anne, and their environnement, and some of their classrooms, exactly the same as they are in RL
Cheops Forlife: so you are welcome to come back when you want to see more of this campus
jnix.fallon: cute RL pix on the wall too
strannik.zipper: wow!
Roxy.Gellar: Wonderful school!
Roxy.Gellar: Too bad I maxed out my student loans
snowbody Cortes: hello, do you study here ?
Fuschia Nightfire: no, i sneaked in
Cheops Forlife: if you have any question for Anne?


Alizarin Goldflake: what scale did you use to build the buildings?
Cheops Forlife: Anne quelle échelle as-tu utilisé pour reproduire les salles?
Anne.Cordonnier @ever.unistra.fr:8002: j'ai utilisé 150M
Cheops Forlife: 150%
Alizarin Goldflake: aha!
Jessica.Pixel: I'm impressed by this server. There's over 20 avatars here and it's not even flinching.
Fuschia Nightfire: i love the reflections in the windows of the real buildings
Cheops Forlife: so now if every body is ready we can visit one of the projects that are surrounding the campus.
We made it over to MBN which is a Bibliotheque Numerique or digital library.

The style is very different to the realism of the University buildings, and despite there being about twenty of us, the whole grid was performing perfectly.

My little bit of lag was mostly because of trying to run two viewers with graphics set to High, on the same wireless laptop. Shoes and hair don't appreciate a lot of gridjumping in High graphics, either. But we all appreciated the welcome we got from the University, and their warm helpful attitude. Strannik was particularly intrigued by their setup, and it was hard to drag him away from Strasbourg to our next stop, Francogrid, where we were invited to a special Live Concert by Scofi Robson. about 40 avatars made it there, and we had particles, crazy dancing, and amazing music. Fuschia (irl Nina Camplin) captured it on this video - go like it on Youtube!

The event was organized by Cendres Magic. If you're a musician and want to get into performing in open sim, he is a great resource and the Francogrid crowd are extremely supportive of their music evenings.  More photos are on Flickr, and elsewhere. 
Again, hard to leave one grid for another but the appointment on Ignis Fatuus was the icing on the cake. 
Another absolutely spectacular grid, with thirty sims of top notch creations. The Ignis crowd were there to welcome us, I think we were still about 25 people by this point, and all fully clothed! Harthelie, Max, Jeff, Aime were all on sim Eden to welcome us. 



French grids have a characteristic, they all seem to favor the use of Voice over written chat. We tend to stick with the written word in Safari, mainly so that people whose second language is English don't feel excluded from the chat, but it is a nice feature of Francogrid and Ignis Fatuus that, if you turn up your sound, you've got this lovely singsong French soundtrack going on, as the group chats away.
I forgot to tell Truelie Telling that she looked absolutely gorgeous all evening, this is her, all in white. 
There are numerous fantasy builds, as well as some didactic installations, and some that are almost a blend of both. Aime Socrates uses the grid for his school, for example, the Paris Opera house on Tremplin that Safari visited a few months back. At that time, we all arrived with no hair and could barely rez. 
What a difference now. With new servers and 24/7 accessibility, Ignis Fatuus is going to be a premier destination for anyone looking for cool new places to explore, make machinima, or get inspired to set up their own grid. Look out for the free gifts, including this wonderful castle, all boxed up and ready to go. 

These guys had worked so hard to have the Arrival Area ready for us and it was extremely impressive. We had been told there is a dragon on the grid, but being slow in every sense of the word, I had not found it. Then Aime showed how to get to the cave where it lurks. That's where the trunk of Pirate's treasure is, by the way. 
Feel free to touch it.


Grid Addresses (URIs)
University of Strasbourg campus: ever.unistra.fr:8002:unistra10
Cheops Forlife's Digital library:    ever.unistra.fr:8002:MDN
Francogrid, the new clubhouse   hg.francogrid.org:80:hgsafari
Francogrid music venue              hg.francogrid.org:80:Archipel_Evenement
Ignis Fatuus Arrival Center          91.121.159:Eden    then choose your destination from the interactive map

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Beach Safari

And if you said, "This life ain't good enough"
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood...
Santana, Smooth

Ahoy mateys, this week Safari went from the sublime beachfront of Strannik Zipper's Pirates Atoll into the apocalypto landscape as The Mayans Knew It, according to Wordfromthe Wise, and finally washed up in the spookiest of Party Islands on Kai and Seya Devin's Insula Aeternum. (URIs at the end of the post.) Ask anyone who was there, this was the most people with the most hair to survive right though to the final hour of Safari so far. And that's not a phrase you hear very often.
Strannik Zipper is a real pirate and his grid is a gem.
There's loads to do, from dancing on the beach to dancing in the Irish pub, to taking a water taxi or taking a dip in the lagoon, or visiting the lovely Pirate Museum on a brigantine. There are some informative pictures outlining the history of pirating, and a chance to walk the plank and meet the mermaid. Jessica Pixel, shown here, wisely chose to stay on board. I'm not sure her springs would react well in salt water.
About sixteen of us made the jump from Metropolis which, considering the drama and lag that had plagued us all in the first few minutes of the meet, was very impressive.
by Fuschia 'I gots no lag' Nightfire

We were joined for the first time by ChapTer Kronfeld here is a snamp of him dancing, courtesy of Fuschia, who had no lag at all - so if you want someone to blame for your hg woes this week, blame her! She must have sucked all the good karma out of the entire body of united safaristas. That's my scientific conclusion. Anyway, the Atoll will be the venue for the closing party of this years OSCC which is a very good reason for you to be there. Not to mention Strannik's Betty bot, whose wit and charm so captivated Pathfinder, he friended her.
From Tortuga to Mexico in a single bound, and from beach to a wild landscape of fear and doom. What did the Mayans know? were they really wrong? I'll be honest with you, I don't think any of us found out, although plenty of us tried to negotiate the mysterious mixture of pyramid and jungle, giant bones and bizarre statues.


 Wordfromthe Wise has delved into the depths of his witty and fantastic imagination to create a region that completely swallows up visitors. Only the very brave survive here.
Alizarin Goldflake: dont touch the poison plant!
Serene.Jewell @grid.kitely.com:8002 <-- Big fan of weird stuff.
Fuschia Nightfire: i like it, but it's made my eyes go funny
Alizarin Goldflake: right, it put a hud on you. You have to find it and detach it
Fuschia Nightfire: yeah, then it told me how to take it off
Fuschia Nightfire: but i think i will leave it on
Pathfinder.Lester: I'm tripping now
Pathfinder.Lester touched the plant
Wordfromthe Wise: the HG safari is a gòód stress test for regions ..
Neo Cortex: i could almost move
Neo Cortex: seems this region is a little busy handling us all
Wordfromthe Wise: it is one sim but 30+ on the server itself

 ~ the mayans say :: -The placement of a donkey's eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet at all times.
~ the mayans say :: -Three Mile Island is only 2 1/2 miles long.
 ~ the mayans say ::  Searching ancients records for your Avatar name Mal.Burns
Wordfromthe Wise: hell lag, never experienced this,not even when we had the fireworxxs show
strannik.zipper: that is what the Mayan's were saying in the calendar - after 2012 there will be lots of lag
Nara.Nook: It's just the strange new world of 20 or so avatars trying to visit a sim at once
Jessica.Pixel: UH OH
Fairy Constantine: hehehe, now I am stuck -  is pretty wow out here:)  love the sky
Remember, Fuschia Nightfire was experiencing NO LAG during all this. how wrong that is, I leave to you to decide. It helped to tp to one of the adjoining sims, and walk back in, but finally our time was up and we headed to our Final Destination which was a sneak preview of the party island on Insula Aeternum.


They are having a big party week to celebrate Halloween this weekend. Even if like me you're not a big fan of that particular festival, you will love what Seya and Kai Devin have done.


Thirza Ember: guys, Spike arranged this special visit at the last moment
 Wizardoz Chrome: hi to all :)
Pathfinder.Lester: thank you Spike!
Unadecal.Arado: really spooky
snowbody Cortes: hi wizzina
Pathfinder.Lester: Spike, this place is super spooky!
snowbody Cortes: hey Tina !
Spike.Sol: yes, but Seya and Kai, the builder are in Bed. tomorrow is the night a 4 oclock to end 
Spike.Sol: both created the Sim in 2 weeks, I think
strannik.zipper: I need to eat some pumpkin seeds now!
Neo Cortex: Great place to visit, for sure!
Wordfromthe Wise: yes really amazing here
Nara.Nook: I love the light effects
Thirza Ember: hehe well we didn't crash the sim, 16 avies I am glad
Neo Cortex: ...not yet, Thirza ^^


Alizarin Goldflake: thank you strannik and word and spike
Siobhan.Muir: Great time
Thirza Ember: .Anyone got a crowbar cuz that is the only way you're going to get nara off this sim
Jessica.Pixel: all right i'm here :3 i keep alt+tabbing to RL to do stuff lol
Nara.Nook: just got an interesting pic of that look

Thirza Ember: this is my halloween look
Nara.Nook: can I post the live gif?
Thirza Ember: gosh i hope so -  idk Mal has a reputation to lose. He is the only one
Nara.Nook: I hope that hope so was for me, I posted on FB
Thirza Ember: omg safari goes viral
Nara.Nook: it might...that was hot
Mal.Burns: what reputation? np
Wordfromthe Wise: i have t leave now as well , checking the server logs what happened and watching "Person of interest" .. it was nice having you folks .. and this place is also amazing ..
From the spooky green bridge to the mysterious forest and the pumpkins, it's one of the most gorgeous horror spots you'll find in OpenSim.  The dancing wan't bad either. And all I can say in my defense is, I was very drunk at the time.
URIs:  Strannik Zipper's Pirate's Atoll is at piratesatoll.com:9032:pirates atoll
            Wordfromthe Wise's Mayan world on Metropolis is at  hypergrid.org:8002:Mayans knew it
            Seya and Kai Devin's Spooky party build is at  insula-aeternum.de:8002:partyinsel

Safari How-to.

Caution, this post contains some serious information. Look away now if you can't handle the truth.
Here are the bare facts of how Safari works.
We meet on Outlands sim, Metropolis Grid. When there are problems tp'ing to Outlands, our Fallback meeting area is Futurelab sim, also on Metropolis grid. Thanks to Art Blue for the fallback option, and Nara Malone  who donated Outlands, and the people at Zetamex who donate the server space.
          We meet at 12.00pm SLT, that's 9.00pm in Europe. The Safari lasts three hours. We usually have 3 destinations, the first we head for at about 9.15, the second at around 10 and the third an hour or so after that. The times are approximate, but that is when the grid or region owners are expecting us. It can freak them out when Safari people show up much earlier than expected, by the way, especially if they have some sort of presentation planned.
          There is a notecard dispenser on the verandah at Outlands, containing the LMs for our destinations. The notecard is often only placed there just before Safari takeoff time, since our watchword is *chaos*. Make sure you have joined the HG Safari group inworld, so you can see the group chat. We also put the notecard in the Announcements, so you can access it from anywhere on Metropolis.
          Do you want to come on Safari but are likely to be late and need assistance with grid jumping? Before the Safari begins - well before time - send Thirza Ember or Wizzy Gynoid a message in Google+ or on Facebook, or an inworld message in Metropolis. We'll organize a limo.
          Want to help the Safari? Open an IM with the other people in the group when Safari starts. That way you can tell if someone disappears off radar. Friend everyone. If you or they manage to jump to the destination, you can tp the other party. No creepy behavior with the friending or the IMs please, or Wizzy will stomp on you. Unless you're into that. Also, notecards with suggestions of grids we might visit are always welcome.
          How to gridjump with the Safari
 The sim -any sim - can only handle so many Teleport requests at a time. Please be patient. Here are some strategies (probably snake oil) to get around the problem of freezing or Failed TP issues.
1. Make sure your graphics are set to Low and minimize the number of programs you're running that are using bandwidth.
2. Have the LM ready and jump immediately we announce we're on the move. Drag the LMs off the Notecard into your inventory before trying to use them.
3. Alternatively, wait until most of the people around you are gone before trying to jump. (I'm always last, so don't mind me.) Let us know in Local Chat what strategy you're using, so others can help you if something goes awry.
4. Still can't jump? Make a quick tp hop to another sim on the same grid - the Default sim of the grid is often the best, on Metro that's Startregion - and then try again from there.
5. Use the HG address instead of the landmark. That means opening your Map, pasting the HG Address (also called URI, you'll find one on the Notecard for each Destination) into the Search box, press Search, WAIT till the Map finds the region, then - wait some more! and some more! - and then hit Teleport. If the map says "Region not Found" or "Not Authorized" or any of the other bs messages it often throws up, double check the address you put in Search, or move your avie to another part of the sim, or a different sim, and try again. It sometimes helps to take the sim name off the end of the HG Address (Example: instead of hypergrid.org:8002:Outlands  just put hypergrid.org:8002 and you'll arrive at Startregion. From there, just type Outlands into the Map.)

Thursday, October 16, 2014

SLafari

Two firsts this week. We met in Second Life for the Inaugural Ball at the new Safari Embassy (pop by and see it on sim Sistiana any time) and Apmel fell in love.
Not the first time he fell in love probably but the first time he's done so on Safari.
The purpose of our group, and our trips, is to make it easier and more fun for anyone from SL to make the transition to open sim. Confusion yes, drama no. Open sim is not a smooth operation, but it offers such a lot of possibilities that well, frankly you'd be foolish not to at least dip a toe in the water.
 The Embassy, built on land donated by Pathfinder Lester and constructed in what can only be described as religious lines by Wizard Gynoid, is meant to help Sl residents to grasp just what OpenSim is, and how to get in there. Turns out, Pathfinder has got some moves.
OpenSim is not one place but many, and everyone has their favorite, and (perhaps more importantly) their less-than-favorite grids in open sim, so we're here to lift the curtain and reveal it in general terms, rather than promote one world in particular. That's harder than it may seem but it's an essential part of the game we're playing here. Th great thing about there being lots of grids is that there is something for everyone. If you end up in a place you don't like, or that doesn't work for you, there's plenty more grids in the hyperverse.

SaveMe Oh did a sweet light show in a skybox on the roof of the Embassy. She's not the churchgoing type.
When OSGrid went offline, we were very kindly offered a region attached to Metropolis, hosted by Zetamex. It is a budget sim, and you might say (and people - always men, for some reason - often do ) "why don't you come to my super dooper fast single dedicated server and meet there?" and in the middle of the lag spike that hit us when we landed there after the party, there was no 'might' about it. Yet in a way, the freezing and crashing are helpful. They make one realize what it means to be on an unstable platform, to be ready to relog, to figure out strategies for getting by. It's a sort of endurance test.

Apart from the obvious addition of cloudiness, most of us appear a bit different in SL, but Jessica Pixel takes the prize for Altered Look, with her bouncy blue and white springs.   We were due on Craft Grid at 2pm so a little bit of time in Metropolis gave the newbies a chance to acclimate a bit. And where better to get a sense of self than Wunderland. It's such a great showcase of what kind of art and imagination is alive and well, well outside the borders of SL.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times we visit, there's always another bit I had not noticed before. This time, for me, it was the wool. Apparently there is a matchbox that Roxy Geller found her way into. Tina Bey joined us and experienced some feline magnetism.

Lastly we were on Craft Grid, in sort of two waves. Classic Safari confusion. Our appointment was with Michelle Tech, an Italian school teacher who uses virtual world technology to teach kids Math and Chemistry. Craft has a long tradition of educational regions and events of all kinds, not to mention art, and of course everyone is happy to learn that Roxelo Babenco's Museo del Metaverso is coming back there and will be open soon.
Apmel Metropolison: great I'm here :)
Michelle Tech: this is mathland, dedicated to geometry. Student can walk around and click, objects move and give information, or I explain in classroom
Apmel Metropolison: you and wizzy should have a lot to talk about..she is nuts about math and geometry Michelle Tech: students make presentations and put the presentations in slider -see the pytagora theorem
Apmel Metropolison: yes
Thirza Ember: they have avatars?

Michelle Tech: sure, in a private world, because they are underage.  I have the authorization written from parents. I have been using this method for 5 years.  Now I changed schools, so i have to start again.
Serene DiPiDiTy: yes that is not easy to explain to them.....their children play with quaternions
Jessica.Pixel : You're old school :]
Thirza Ember: you could not do this in SL
Michelle Tech: no
Jessica.Pixel: Cost alone omg
Michelle Tech: i showed mathland ad the European Festival of Science in 2013, Science on Stage in Poland
Apmel Metropolison: wow Michelle
Thirza Ember: you click on the containers and they unfold to show you how to calculate their area... it is really neat!
Michelle Tech: you can see the site www.virtualscience.it -  there is an english version
Jessica.Pixel: Bookmarking!
Apmel Metropolison: good italian is pure math to me
Thirza Ember: i'm going to click on everything
Michelle Tech: lol
Roxy.Gellar: giggle right there with you! Click Monsters!!!!
      Don't get me wrong, virtual art is great, but seeing a living working classroom, made by one woman not for the plaudits of an inworld group but to touch the practical, day to day lives of students - that is something special. Wander around open sim, and you'll see a billion boring auditoriums that may come alive an hour a week perhaps. This place is the perfect balance of pragmatism and whimsy, interesting for the passing tourist and classroom inmate alike. And Michelle isn't resting on her laurels either, but has plans to create a quiz area for students, and actively uses the feedback she has received from past students to improve and refine the learning experience. It takes a lot of grit to accomplish all this, remember, she does it all on her own, with no support from a University or even much financial help from the school where she teaches.
 Jessica.Pixel: The coolest school ever
Apmel Metropolison: I've been camming around..this place is truly awesome
 Lucy Afarensis: wow
Thirza Ember: you must really love your students and your subject
Michelle Tech: mathland and statland were completely built by me, just few sculpts are not mine.
Art Blue: do you start with prim building and you add scripting then?
PatriciaAnne Daviau: excellent!
 Michelle Tech: yes I learned a bit of scripting necessary
Apmel Metropolison: hehe..a math teacher can learn anything
Michelle Tech: in craft i have just the copy of few sim, but I have a my own metaverse, Techland,  about 10 islands

Apmel Metropolison: OMG..wowowowow
Michelle Tech: dedicated to math biology chemistry and earth science. I teach science too.
Wizardoz Chrome: beautiful :)
Apmel Metropolison: I'm old and married..good thing .,.or I would already be madly in love :)

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Safari Afield

It has been 44 days since OSGrid went down, and today on Facebook [via Ron Brown] came the good news: " The array was not able to be rebuilt from the cloned drives due to logical partition errors so the recovery service has performed a full recovery, restoring everything to a single 6 tb drive that the engineer said should boot and that all the files are intact. The additional costs, less the $2302.56 we have already paid them, comes to $2510. We currently have $3432.88 which would make our budget very tight (we still have hosting costs, etc).
Thank you very much for your patience and support! ~ Dan Banner "
if you would like to help by donating you can follow the link below 
http://www.osgrid.org/index.php/donate
So guess what happened next

Because saying 'No news is good news' has not been good news for OSGrid's image in open sim.
But whatever, they saved all our stuff, which is wonderful, and going on about the PR disconnect between management and users is pointless and anyway, has already been done.

Last night's Safari went to Metroberfest, but it wasn't all cakes and ale. This is the landing point of the fabulous four sectioned sim, but last night there was water and bare earth where there should have been buildings and free stuff, and I spent a significant amount of time up to my neck (thanks Miso). 

Considering the strain all of us have put on Metropolis grid recently, re-uploading all our OSGrid stuff onto their asset server, it is a miracle they were even able to run the event at all. Anyway, there is a Safari stand, if you can drag yourself away from the art show and the beer pavilion. Jessica Pixel put a load of really lovely photos in real time on her Ello feed, so if you have that, go and follow her!

It wasn't only Metroberfest having issues; Outlands sim was not cooperating, and so we met at Safari's second home, the zoo on Art Blue's Futurelab sim, home to The Annoying Light. That giraffe has growth hormone issues. The complication of the festival not rezzing was bound to make our jump to destination number two a bit rough around the edges, and it took a record 25 tp attempts to get the lovely Tina Bey across to Littlefields grid where we met up with her fellow South American Aaack Aardvark. I am not entirely sure all Tina's clothes made the trip, but luckily she has Lady Godiva hair. there was a nice beating heart sound in the big room at OBA, which is the Opensim Builder's Alliance, a group started in OSGrid and carried over to Littlefield when they became an independent grid a year, or is it two years, ago. Aaack generally uses voice, which is great for his tutorials, but text chat works best with us. After all, we have people among us whose first language is Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German, Dutch, French, and whatever it is that Fuschia speaks. Oh right. Winegarian.
Aaack Aardvark: I can't remember seeing so many people at OBA before lol
Jessica.Pixel: Art, I think I hear you heart beating.

Aaack Aardvark: ok so were at OBA
Aaack Aardvark: This is the grid's sandbox and the resources for builders of LF. I do videos about blender specifically for metaverses & SL. Basically my plan is put here whatever we do on Sundays so other people can take it if it finds it useful
Thirza Ember: he has a youtube channel you need to subscribe to it!
Aaack Aardvark: this is one of the official sims of lf and my fav place to gather for the Sundays Q&As
Fuschia Nightfire: i already did that today
Aaack Aardvark: Aw Thanks Fuschia!
Wizardoz Chrome: quale è il nome del canale di Youtube? it/en What is the name of your Youtube channel?
Aaack Aardvark: https://www.youtube.com/user/AaackAardvark

          We sat on the patio where Aaack conducts his seminars.
Aaack Aardvark: it's a nice place the sim is super fast and we have enough room to rez crazy big thingies
          Littlefield grid owner Walter Balazic came over to meet the dozen of us who jumped.  
Walter Balazic: sorry most of you show as Loading at the moment.. :) so if I don't reply it's just that I don't see the names yet
Miso Susanowa: It's OK, Walter; usually we are all half-loaded anyway
Jessica Pixel and Miso Susanowa go shopping!
             Aaack has the only shop on Littlefield in which all the items are exportable; otherwise the goods are free, but restricted to the grid. The reason is, well, reasonable. 
strannik.zipper: How about the export permission, just for things created here that people are willing to give away?
Aaack Aardvark: also I do my stuff from scratch so yeah no licenses
Walter Balazic: but the Mall has a very strict policy. You can export your own stuff of course, but the creators here are a very tight knit group, this grid is very community oriented, so everyone kind of builds for the residents here
Jessica.Pixel: I don't think it's bad you don't let people take stuff out. It probably makes for a strong community by default.
Wizard Gynoid: and the reason is you are afraid others will sell your content on other grids?
Walter Balazic: well no, I don't care what people do, but the people who own the licenses do. For example people purchase licenses for Mesh content that is permitted here on this grid as we have a grid license, but it can't go off the grid or it would be a violation of the agreement we have. We have a lot of SL refugees here that don't want their content off this grid and back at SL for sale, we've had that happen already.
Aaack Aardvark: or in kitely marketplace, that happened too XD

We went to see Aaack's store, with its timeless romantic garden. The textures for the shop were all hand drawn, it took Aaack a month to do it. They all talked about Walter's impressive gigs and RAM, which basically translates into Littlefield being an extremely smooth, high-end and stable operation. Fuschia and Wizzy sat on Dr Who, and most of us sat on the Naughty Dinosaur. How is he naughty? Go and find out for yourself. 

Then we ran across the bridge to view enormous blimp. It's like 2 sims long! There was so much to do and so many things Walter and Aaack told us about on other sims, we could have stayed for ages - but no problem! We can see some more on our next Littlefield visit! 
As if that was not enough, our last stop was in Nara's Nook. The girls over there have been putting together a series of storytelling displays for the upcoming open sim conference. They are particularly interested in showing off the interactive narrative possibilities of virtual worlds.

strannik.zipper: Nara, you look good as a queen!
Nara.Nook @world.narasnook.com:8900: We call this geeked out fairy tales. We're demonstrating how to use NPC characters, story and gamification to engage visitor exploration of regions.
The exhibits include Siobhan's story telling tutorial, Shanna's Dragon Shifter riddle game, Courtney's firedancer NPCs, Dora's lizard marching band, Fuschia's granny fairytale, and Nara's falling tiles word game.
Nara.Nook: if you manage to figure out the phrase left when you knock all the tiles down and get the magic door open to free the hero.

          If that sounds like a lot of work, it is. 
Nara.Nook: the number of hurdles put in our path defies probability. it has been a massive effort by these folks. we ran into a new bug in the last opensim update, deleting a scripted NPC crashes the region. So every NPC is scripted and they all get rezzed and deleted when someone comes near. This started happening a week ago, took us most of that to find the problem. Fred figured it out, now we have to rebuild the NPCs to be without scripts.
Fuschia Nightfire: i think Nara has been working 24/7 for the past few weeks!
Nara.Nook: Not all elements are in place, so it won't be easy but it is doable. The drawer game there is still a work in progress, but have fun explore and come back and see the full thing at the conference!
And so our 20th Safari ended. With - what else? The Annoying Light.