Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous, here we all are again, ready for another grand adventure on the OpenSim , the software platform that hosts hundreds of independantly owned and operated grids/worlds. Lots of these grids are connected by the hypergrid, an amped up teleportation system that allows you to traverse these brave new worlds, having cool adventures, meeting other pixilated pioneers, and snagging freebies till you are just dizzy! If you don´t understand any of these terms, or don´t know how to get onto OpenSim, please read my very VERY easy to understand, totally simple to follow, OpenSim posts. Come join the fastest growing virtual experience on the planet! I´ll see you out there!
Recently, I had been posting about my own home world CRAFT-THE FRIENDLY GRID , a well developed,160 region, vibrant community of artists and builders, which is my personal recommendation for the OpenSim newbie; and the leviathen OS Grid, with it´s 11, 000+ strong, highly developed, independantly run regions of everything and anything. It got me itching to do a post on one of the small grids again. Finding interesting, quirky little hangouts is a thrill in any reality. A Virtual World was just the ticket. It has 30 regions , only six residents, and possibly the worst name in the metaverse; try telling someone you were in A Virtual World, you wind up looped in a “Who´s on first, what´s on second” conversation. Saying “Bob Solo´s Grid” is much smoother going. And because it is largely a reflection of one man´s enthusiasms, there is really no genre or theme outside of intelligent, unpretentious dude. So let´s just go and take a look around! Oh, one thing- I am still messing around alot with my windlight settings (the button at the bottom of your browser with the Phoenix or Imprudence logo), so the sky and water don´t necessarily reflect the region. Just how much wine I´ve consumed.
This is the Welcome teleport area. It is full of great free stuff- like my wearable Harley! See the horses to the left?
These are rideable horses, although I found the broad streets of the welcome area freebie square were a blast on the Harley.With the Hog as well as these noble steeds, you may have to use the edit setting to rotate and move until your ride is squarely under your butt. Now check this out.
The Owls heads turn and follow you. I thought I was delusional when I first saw it. Like most things in the teleport area, you are free to take one home. Now get your motor running, and let´s take a ride around the square.
I was here once a long time ago, but coming from a crappy urban environment, the grunge look put me off, and I left very quickly. Big mistake. Go in every door around the square; Bob has serious amounts of original, beautifully detailed freebies scattered in every building around the square. Or copy the buildings! Or the Caddy behind me.There´s a T bird around the corner. Hey , that bus look familiar!
Bob is the creator of the iconic Bus to Nowhere. It was part of the nearly mythical SL creator Arcadia Asylum´s Open Source Urban Blight Project. Arcadia is Bob´s friend, and they are both on OpenSim now. I am officially impressed. Let me just commune for a couple of minutes with Neal Cassidy; is Nowhere farther than Further? Are you and Jack finally an item? then we´ll head back to the teleport area.
These are teleport panels to some of Bob´s various builds. Let´s go from right to left. And don´t forget to landmark, so you have a way back.
The first panel goes to “Relax and Enjoy” in Pluto.This region seems to have been built with someone named Pluto Fairy, who I am assuming is one of the grids six residents. The gardens are lovely, so once I had stopped hissing and spitting from the realization that this Pluto doesn´t like his or her stuff copied willy nilly, I was indeed able to relax and enjoy.
The next panel is to, well, the browser says Teak Forest something or other, but obviously this is not a forest of any kind. It is a pretty impressive outer space experience thingie. Bob lets you copy entire planets. My kinda guy.
The next panel is my favorite, called Teak Garden . Still no Teak, but you really don´t miss it. This was a wonderful area to explore- I really began to see why Craft resident Thirza Ember referred to him as “the great Bob Solo”in her pings from the afterlife blog. The castle behind me is enormous.
And really well laid out. While not everything can be copied, alot of the cooler stuff can , so always give it a click. Come to mommy sweetie!
There are wonderful views, so keep climbing up! Bob has a fantastic eye for detail, the ships are moving, the tree branches are swaying. You can ride or copy that beautiful steampunk airship by the way.
Bob has made a beautiful garden on this this surrealistic mountaintop, and again, every thing is in motion;the giant cloud, the water, the animals…
Awwww! Baby can do a trick!
The next panel is Teak Forest. There are about 14 regions with the Teak Forest handle so you can just type it into your world map search engine, and take your own tour.They are not terribly developed, but nice enough to wander around. The non copyable(hiss) tigers were on the Allabim Teak Forest parcel.
The next panel is to Atlantis SG 1, the city/spaceship of the Ancients in the second incarnation of the cult Stargate series. No Wraith, or DeLouises, but still really impressive.
And the last panel is to Ranco Deluxe, time to break out the horses, and in Bob´s case, the spell checker. The ranch is big and pretty, with lots of room for a relaxing ride.
Bob´s profile says he likes to be left alone, so when he popped in I got kind of nervous; but he turned out to be super friendly. And interesting! We talked for a long time about everything and nothing; amazingly, he has only been a builder for 5 years. A modest man, he was really pleased and surprised I knew about his involvement in Virtual Belfast´s famous Titanic project. I informed him yes, it was a freaking miracle I knew anything, as he posts almost no information, ANYWHERE! I got on his case about the state of his BLOG which contains ONE LINE( I mean dear god, it´s a WordPress 3.1, like mine. If I can push the right buttons, so can a squirrel) and his A VIRTUAL WORLD WEBSITE which has an excellent short film about virtual expressions of love, and a riveting talk by Dr.Michio Kaku, but only two small posts and NO pictures or direct information about his really great grid.
I am pleased to have changed all that a little bit. here is the upper hypergrid address of the Welcome area : avirtualworld.dyndns.org:8002 . If that won´t work for you,there is a blam gate in the Sanctuary Eld, and a panel at Crafts Hydra Station, and I think a gate at Hyperica Upper.
And now my beloved readers, with my fonts once again gone all wonky, I will love you and leave you. Thank you all so much for joining me. Your company means more to me than I could possibly find words for. Until the next time, the sweetest of dreams, and the brightest of days to you all. Adieu!
