Hypergrid Adventurers Club

I finally made it! And it was worth it. Not without quite a few bumps along the way, but I was able to use my ReactionGrid account to get there.

The end destination is a recreation of a Carthusian monastery. Very cool! You can find the chat logs and the instructional notecard at Pathfinder Lester’s blog, “Be Cunning and Full of Tricks.”

Some of the bumps (for those who are interested in trying it):

  • There are two versions of Open Sim in current, wide use, and they have different versions of the hypergrid teleport. So if you are on OSgrid, you can’t (at this time) do a hypergrid teleport to Reaction Grid or Jokaydia (or any of the places Pathfinder is finding and leading people to). Most of the people in the group today seemed to be using accounts at Jokaydia, but at least two of us were using ReactionGrid accounts. You can create an account in either grid.
  • ReactionGrid Help Island has some instant-teleport arches. One of them goes to Jokaydia, but having taken that teleport, I couldn’t search for Pathlandia or see it on the map. I had to go to Scooter, which was just south of the Jokaydia sim I was in, via double-clicking on the map. Once I was on Scooter, I was able to fly one grid north and one west to Pathlandia. Teleporting via the map from Scooter to Pathlandia crashed me.
  • I couldn’t use the instant gate on Pathlandia, but was able to use the hypergrid coordinates Pathfinder provided to teleport via the map to our intermediate destination. Once there, I was still getting the local chat from Pathlandia. I was also alternating between night and day every few seconds (which the others there were not seeing).

Madcow’s tarot

Madcow Cosmos has another high-prim temporary installation! This time it’s his 3D interpretations of tarot cards. Check it out! It will be up for a few weeks.

AM Radio installation finale

By pure chance, on Thursday evening I was half-way paying attention to the Caledon state channel when people started chatting about fireworks. As luck would have it, the weekly Unitarian Universalist worship service had just ended, so I decided to TP over. The fireworks in question were on a sim that was displaying an installation by the artist AM Radio (he of David’s Marat and The Far Away), and it was the final night of the installation. What luck! Here are a few of my photos, which cannot do justice to the work.

Amazing map sims

I visited an absolutely amazing set of sims devoted to the map collection of David Rumsey. These photos can’t begin to do it justice, and I simply must go back to explore more fully.

Here you can see the topographic maps of Yosemite used on a 3D topography of Yosemite (to scale), which fills four sims. I am standing on the observation deck just to the left of center in the photo, which is situated at the intersection of the sims. In the distance you can see two globes, which have orreries inside them. (Click on the photo for a larger version.)

Sitting on the orrery inside the celestial globe. You can see me to the left of the sign.

Another shot inside the celestial globe. Although it has rotated, you can still find me sitting on the orrery.

(A tip of the hat to NPIRL.)

Elle visits Wyre

I had the great pleasure of giving my friend Elle a carriage ride around Wyre. We sat for a while on the bluffs in the northeast of the island and had a good talk. For once, I remembered to take a few pictures!

Winterfell-Caledon Ball

Tonight it was my pleasure to serve as the Radio Riel host at the Winterfell-Caledon Solstice Ball, organized by Serra Anansi, Seneschal of Winterfell, and Her Grace, Gabrielle Riel, Duchess of Caledon. The ball started out in Winterfell Castle in Winterfell, but the sheer fabulousness of the crowds crashed the sim. In the resultant confusion, we regrouped in Caledon Cape Wrath, a brand-new and mostly empty sim that newly connects Caledon and Winterfell. At times we had more than seventy avatars at the ball. Her Grace was the musical presenter and, if such a thing is possible, outdid herself with the loveliness of the music. It was a triumph, and my congratulations to the ladies who planned it.

After my duties for the formal ball were done, I managed to take a few photos without moving from my place (oh, the wonders of no camera constraint and very high draw distance!).

View of Winterfell Absinthe from Caledon Cape Wrath.

Caledon Cape Wrath fresh from the sea.

Victorian decorative arts

Mr Expedition Offcourse and Miss Persephone Gallindo were kind enough to give a presentation Saturday evening on the Victorian decorative arts. It was held in the Gaiety Theatre in Caledon Penzance, which was designed and built by Miss Gallindo. The event was held in voice, occasioning a bit of technical difficulty at first, quickly overcome. (It is clear to me that practicing with the voice function of the client should be on my list of tasks.) Mr Offcourse had a series of technical misfortunes, but he skillfully covered in such a way that participants were not inconvenienced.

Mr Offcourse outlined the broad artistic movements affecting Victorian decorative arts, showing an example from each movement and explicating some of the distinctive elements of each. Miss Gallindo then spoke about the process of building in SL, encouraging her listeners to be constantly looking, both in SL and in FL. Mr Offcourse then gave a short practicum on creating custom textures and sculpties. 

Harvest festivals and mazes

The Caledon/Steelhead Harvest Festival began today. I opened Murdann to tree-felling. I have no way of tracking who took trees, but several of my friends have told me they took trees, and the island is definitely a bit clearer now.

Steelhead hosted a horse race, and I now have a saddle horse, Fróði (“Peace”). No photos yet. There are prize pumpkins hidden all around Steelhead, and it’s great fun looking for them. There’s also a corn maze:

Miss Lumina Elvehjem then gave me a landmark to Falln’s Corn Maze, which is very extensive and quite wonderful. (This maze is in the sky above a fantasy RP sim that uses a telehub. You’ll need a flight assist to fly up. Try not to peek at the maze as you navigate to the beacon.)