G-dog goes virtual

There comes a time in every analogue dude's life when he needs to cowboy up, overcome his tech-aversion, and get a little bit digital...So I registered for HiveFest the other day taking advantage of the free until 7 December offer.

_{Thank you @roelandp for that opportunity, it is much appreciated sir.}

I'll be honest, I'm both nervous and a little excited at the same time as it'll be my first Hive Fest. I'm not the most peoply person in the world when it comes to social interactions with strangers, not aloof and standoffish, just shy. I'm also not very tech-savvy with computer stuff which brings me some degree of uncertainty. Still, I am pretty well ingrained with hive, emotionally committed, so why not jump in and have a go? I'll accept the potential embarrassment at not being able to work things out, and hope it won't negatively affect my account.

I acquired a headset/mic thing, a cheap $79 set by Corsair called the HS35 Stereo one as I can't afford VR goggles, downloaded the 2D version of AltspaceVR and set to trying to work it out. Yesterday afternoon I found myself in an AltspaceVR Event and just stood there listening, trying to get familiar with the surroundings and what was going on. I clicked a few buttons finding that one in particular was fun...Every time I clicked it a little yellow hand shot up on the screen. Like this ✋

This was cool, until the guy down at the lectern giving the lecture about where humanity is going in the future paused and said, "Yes Galen, you have a question?"

What the fuck dude? I froze...Said nothing. He repeated the question and most in the room turned to look at me...I was still frozen and said nothing. And then he moved on saying something about me maybe having mic troubles. Yeah, that was it. "mic troubles". 😉

OK, time to leave that environment I think, and out I went. I guess I didn't know what I didn't know...And that sort of deer in the crosshairs thing is unfamiliar to me...I'm usually the one operating the rifle with the crosshairs.

Fortunately @santigs and I had set up a session where we would try it out and he could teach me a thing or two. I had hoped to come along to that meeting with a clue, but did not. Sorry santigs.

Virtual handsome dudes just hanging out talking tech shit. Why does my head look like a coconut?

We hooked up on Discord chat and after a little bit of strife with my microphone we got it working. I think AltspaceVR doesn't recognise the external mic-device as my computer defaults to the internal mic...I think we got to the bottom of it though and when I'm at HiveFest I'll have Discord turned off so it doesn't happen.

Above you can see a selfie santigs took of us in his space, his VR home I guess it's called - Every user has their own and people can pop in and out at will when they see people on their friends list; One can see which environment their friends are in and pop right in to join them. This is cool because say I come online and after checking my friends list see that my brother or another friend is in an environment in which someone discourses on an interesting topic I can teleport in. Or maybe a few are hanging around in someone's space, I can drop by and chat.

Santigs is the handsome chap on the left and that's me in the green shirt; I know, handsome! Ladies, no swooning please. Oh FYI, we have no arms because we were both involved in a lamentable shark attack incident only moments before this selfie was taken.

We navigated around and whilst it was a little challenging as he uses Mac and I use PC which makes the controls and interface a little different he managed to teach me a thing or two so I'm hoping not to look like a complete idiot at Hive Fest.

I plan to do a little more exploring as on AltspaceVR one can find public places like the one below, this was called campfire or some such thing. It's probably better in 3D with VR goggles on but it's a place I can wander about and get familiar with things.

I know a few people I interact with all the time on hive are going to HiveFest also and are getting themselves set up so I'm hoping that they do some test-runs like I did as it will help them get more from their HiveFest experience I think. It's not super-complicated, but is different enough, for me at least, that it takes some effort to navigate but I think once a small amount of comfort is gained a lot of enjoyment could come of it.

Thank you to @santigs who took some time out of his working day to give me a helping hand last night, I really appreciated it, you're a champ mate. And for any who may be jumping into AltspaceVR feel free to look me up, my username is CleoMerlin and my display name is galenkp. You need to search my username.

Get virtual and join the G-dog in the modern era, come on people, it's not 1995 anymore! Also, get your ass to HiveFest. Take your ass there!

Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.

Be well
Discord: galenkp#9209