Happy Holidays

The last week of 2015 is due. Time to gather with friends and family, eat have fun and good times. Tomorrows Friday party will be live as always, and DJ'd by Halriasa Aeon, Dan Banner, and LadyJo Martin. Your's truly will try to attend as well, but it will be later than usual.

If however, you don't see a lot of me next week(s), it's due to Steams Winter Sale !  Also here, here and here you can grab loads of cool games for very little money.

OSG released 0.9.37 which can be downloaded here. Overall 2015 was a great year for the metaverse, with a record amount of new users  listed.

If you don't have social obligations, and like to spend time online, there are a ton of events next week, check the opensimworld event calendar for more details.

That's all for now. Merry Christmas to you and all those you love & happy holidays.

Board meeting & Community conference

OSgrids Secretary Albertlr Landar has announced a board meeting on OSG Forums.

The board of OSgrid, Inc. has scheduled its annual meeting of the membership on Sunday, December 13th, 2015 at 11 am Grid time. The meeting will be held at Event Plaza. As you might have read a major & mandatory update is being scheduled, and OSG is making an effort on informing everyone prior to this update being released.

OpenSimulator community conference is held on 5th of December. The website is offline for some reason, but you can "reserve" your seat, or sponsor the event via this link. (eventbrite). An event schedule is found here. For further information you can contact avacon, who organizes this event.

Opensimulator passed the 71.000 regions mark. The Hypergrid is still growing. More and more grids emerge. For all the people that worry the metaverse is dying, ask yourselves who maintains these 70.000 regions. Also try and hop in on one of the great events the grids offer. You can party non stop nearly all weekend. An event calendar is found here.  

Last but not least, I should not forgot too mention that next 2 weeks are very good weeks to make OAR and IAR exports. Make sure you get copies before the 9.0 upgrade arrives  Better safe than sorry.  Have a Maintenance day !

Over 128 dead 180 injured in Paris terrorist attacks.

"All it will take for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing."

R.I.P.

Playing around

Last week i have not been online much,as i have been playing some games on my television with my Steam controller and Steam Link. I pre-ordered a kit in Juli, and last week DHL delivered. Since i have a rather large collection of games on steam, i'm having a blast. Just need to get used to play with controllers, as in my world "Joysticks are for n00bs". (I don't play consoles, as i am an oldschool PC gamer). However, playing any game in your living room, on widescreen is pretty nice.

Obviously i had to try some "non steam" games with the link, and as you can see in the picture, this works just fine. (I just need to still screen adjust for the viewer, and map some buttons on the controller to fly). For the rest, the steam controller lets you operate the basics pretty much "out the box". It has a trackpad with haptic feedback that operates as a mouse, and the other pad and joystick act as WASD.

I did hook a wireless keyboard to the Steam link, as chatting on a controller will not become a hobby. (although it works a hell of a lot better than on a TV or mobile, still the keyboard is my preferred tool for it). Since the link has a bunch of USB ports, i only need to find a wireless headset, and i can become a couch potato

But there you have it. OSGrid on TV Via Steamlink. Very workable, and with a proper controller configuration, a great new way to explore the metaverse. In the next week(s) i will try and see if its possible to upload alternative controller configurations for non-steam games (for steam games this is already possible) so you can download a "working out of the box" viewer config.

Last but not least, a mandatory update of opensimulator is about to be released. Keep up to speed by clicking HERE.

October 1st "The 274th day"

Since the last month this Blog looks more like a party advertisement wall than a blog, i will not put up a giant poster today for tomorrows "Friday Event".  All i will say about it is that a "mystery DJ" from the hypergrid will come spin some tunes.
To keep track of events all over the metaverse, you can try this link which does not have all events listed, but sufficient for you to be ability to party every day, should you desire to do so.

Soooo, whats this weeks news. Nothing much really. Red Dragon Regions have all been updated to the latest and greatest build, and i still need to check where i borked with the new implementation of search, as it does not seem to work for me yet. (i tend to recycle my .ini files, so manually have to add in any changes). If you run the same version, and think WTH is he ranting about, read this link to get up to speed with the implemented changes.

Later this month, i will add the above INI changes in the help document. It's somewhat a chaotic long-read, but it can be extremely useful. This as i troubleshoot user setups on a near to weekly basis, and keep seeing the same mistakes / configuration problems. Hence i keep adding them to the document, so i don't forget, and others can benefit. Mind the document doesn't list install procedures ( there giant wiki's forums and video's for those) nor bugs (which should be filed in Mantis for Opensimulator). It's a pure, "what if my OSgrid installation on windows doesn't work" text and a list of caveats and errors. Add-ons, corrections or additional hints / tips always welcome.

Tip of the day: Open your installation folder of OSGrid. Apart from a BIN folder, there is also a folder called Optional. Open it and copy OpenSim.exe.config into your BIN folder. Overwrite file. Restart region. Less console spew, nice "chopped" logs and other instant handiness. (Obviously only do this after you verified your region is installed properly and works as intended). The optimized opensim.ini will likely need some editing to get it working as desired in your particular environment.

Last but no least. This post is one i wrote almost 6 months ago.When did you make your last OAR / IAR ? Just mentioning.

Party at Event Plaza

Thirza Ember of HG safari is organizing a Goodbye party for parting lead developer  Justin Clark Casey tomorrow at Event Plaza, OSgrid. If you want to thank him in person for enabling you to exist in a less buggy world, feel free to pop by and give him your regards directly. Mind this party starts at 12.00 and not 1 PM as this poster states. Entertainment is provided by LadyJo, Trulie, and Wolem.

OSgrid Rocks

It's always somewhat exciting launching a "new" event. Did we generate enough "buzz" to make people aware of it, will people pick up on it, and will they like it. You never know in advance.

I don't know the exact number of visitors we welcomed yesterday, but it was a heartwarming amount of avatars, especially for OSG standards. The first OSG Friday party appeared to be successful.

I'd like to thank Dorothea and JayMaze for their continued support, our great host team Mattie, Ni, Alya, and Jazzy for tending to all visitors and friends, Lani for making the great posters, and especially LadyJo and Dan who did an incredible amount of work "behind the scenes" to get this event launched and make it a success. And thank you as well. Without you, visitors, friends, and friends to be, we would not be able to share all the fun.

As it is the first in a weekly series of parties, things will change over time. We have a lot of fun idea's for the future, and will gradually implement those in the next weeks/ months. As of next week, our hosts will invite visitors into the OSG Friday Party group, Mind there is no obligation to join, but if you want to know "whats cooking", joining the group is the best move to stay informed.

So far for yesterdays news. Wednesday the 23rd of September a goodbye party organised by Tirza Ember of Hypergrid Safari will be held for parting lead developer Justin Clark Casey. It's held on Event plaza 1-3 PM grid time. You can find a poster on Event plaza Landing zone. If you want to thank him in person for enabling you to exist in here, feel free to join.

The day after

I woke up this morning. 7 hours after one of the biggest parties I have attended in OSG. I grabbed my morning coffee, logged into OSgrid. Checked the Map for Close Encounter Region. It's really gone...

Doro & Jay "went out with a bang" yesterday. The region was loaded & full for several hours, and Jay pulled out an 8 hour set of awesome music. We partied so hard one of their servers burnt to a crisp. (literally, hence D&J had a minor outage at the end of the party). A series of pictures of this epic party. shot by Malon can be found here. A machinima by konilanzius is found here .

Now i can post about my gratitude for JayMaze, Dorothea, Akira, Freaky, Aine, Ladyjo and all others that brought all this fun & joy for such a long time, but i will not. All needed has been said, and now we need to try to keep the "spirit" they put into our world alive, as a tribute to their legacy. So with help of many friends, we will attempt to keep the Friday party going as the OSgrid Friday Party. Every Friday it will be launched at Event Plaza. Hope to see you there in the future.

D&J's last "Friday Party"

The "Grand Finale". Dress code : Man in Black, Woman in White. Don't miss out on this one. Let's make it memorable.

Friday party's stay in OSgrid

I think i have good news for a lot of people that enjoyed the weekly Friday party at Close Encounters in OSgrid. I've seen a lot of initiatives from users willing to proceed this party on their own grid / region. Which is great. There needs to be a party on Fridays. I have been asked several times if I could not use Red Dragon and start party's there. But despite it being a great region, its too bloated to party upon with more than 15 people. The machine on which it is hosted just wont hack it.

However, a lot of people strongly feel this party belongs in OSgrid. No offence to all the sincere intentions of the people wanting to try and continue the "tradition" elsewhere.
I feel the same way. The Friday party belongs in OSgrid.

So i have talked to some friends, and to OSgrid administration. OSgrid has allowed us to use the Event Plaza (gridserver) on a weekly basis, and host a Friday event there. That machine has sufficient capacity to handle the load of groups as big as the ones visiting D&J every Friday.

A new group has been setup for it by OSgrid. The "OSgrid Friday Party"group. This group will be used to announce events, as the format of the Friday party's will be slightly different. The event will be held every Friday. And the plan is to have at least 3 performers scheduled for every party. And here's where YOU come in.

This party will be one of OSgrid, by OSgrid. And with OSgrid I mean you. If you live in OSgrid, and if you care about our community, if you're a DJ,  Host, Live performer, club owner, event master, please get in touch. We need you, and we need all your friends to keep this legacy alive. Dorothea and Jay carried this community for a long time, and as nobody can equal their diversity in music, or replace either of them, we will need to make it a joint effort.

Also if you're not in OSgrid, but love the Opensim community, and like to party, perform or DJ, please get in touch. We have a lot of Fridays ahead, and cannot have "too much" variety.

So the Friday party Saga continues. Dan Banner, Sarah Kline, Foxx Bode, LadyJo Martin, Aine Coaimhe have already offered their assistance, and will coordinate the events. The plan is to have as much OSgrid's DJ's and performers as our grid is home to, to drop by and fill a slot. This will relieve the burden of "having to be there and perform every week" and will keep the event fresh and diverse. As you also get to listen to your favorite DJ, or be the one picking the music yourself.

More info will follow when we work out our plans.If you have questions, have great idea's or want to join our combined effort, please get in touch with any of the above people. The show must go on !
Meantime, keep Friday the 4th of September free in your agenda, as it will be the "Grand Finale" of D&J's  Close Encounters. Don't miss it !

Red Dragon 7,5 years Anniverssary

In September of this year, The Red Dragon Nite Club celebrates its 7,5 years anniversary. The club was founded by JamesHenry Palen in Secondlife, and bought by it's DJ, Foxx Bode a couple of months later. Awesome years of party's followed, every weekend for 3 years in a row, in 7 incarnations of the clubs build. It had over 4500 members when Foxx retired from SL and built Red Dragon VIII in OSgrid.

The 9 region VIII build including backups was lost in a disk-crash, but i managed to get it recovered 2,5 years later by Seagate.  In the meantime Red Dragon IX and Red Dragon X were built, and both of those builds still exist on the OSgrid today. With almost 50.000 prims and over 2500 scripts on its main sim, Red Dragon is (one of) the biggest club builds in the metaverse. Unfortunately the regions are not very suitable to have wild party's with loads of avatars, due to the excessive load on the machine on which it is hosted, and the stress it put's on the average users viewer and connection.

Since we cannot let a 7,5 year anniversary pass quietly, we contacted OSGrid administration and got permission to run an anniversary party on Event Plaza. (Hehe, the irony. Having the biggest club around and not being able to use it for which it was built). Anyhow. Party is party, and the show must go on. Feel welcome, and bring your party gear.  

This event will take place on :

Date : Friday  11-9-2015 
Where : Event Plaza - OSgrid. 
Start Time : 11.00 PST ( 19.00 if you're in Europe) 

Music this evening will be supplied by Foxx Bode & LadyJo Martin.

D&J's closing down its weekly party's

I was planning to write a topic of  Red Dragon existing for 7,5 years when i read a notice D&J's closing down its weekly Friday party's in OSgrid. DJ Jaymaze and host Dorothea will leave a legacy of 7 years of awesome party's every weekend.  Being the biggest social community hub in Opensim based worlds this will surely have an impact on OSgrids community.

I know from experience that running an active club for some years starts to feel like a job, a responsibility towards your friends. Maintaining this for 7 years is just amazing. People underestimate what devotion it takes to entertain others on a weekly basis, especially in an environment like Opensim. I know it's extremely difficult to "quit" when you run a weekly event for multiple years. (feels like giving up on your friends). Since i have had the privilege to have them as friends, and meet them both in RL, I also know they have taken a very long time to come to this decision.

Unfortunately, i don't believe in "sabbaticals". I know D&J will miss their event even more than us visitors will.  But after being "out of it" a while, it's very hard to restart. It's that moment, you realize how much energy and effort you have put into the community, the commitment it took, and how difficult a decision it was to stop. It's extremely hard to "devote" to that again. 7 years is a lot of Fridays.

So i'd like to thank Doro and Jay for all the countless hours of fun, the great times, the party's, the awesome music, the great conversation, all the friends they enabled us to make, and being the cement in the Metaverse community. You will be sorely missed. You might feel to will be forgotten, but I can assure you both, you became part of the many hearts you've touched, will linger in many peoples memories, and bring a smile to people's face when thinking back.  

If you have ever attended D&J's party's and had a good time, come say goodbye at the 4th of September, when they throw their "Grand Finale". Make it Epic.

The last D&J Friday party.... The world doesn't stop, but it is the end of an Era. Or at least will feel that way. There will still be a Friday party somewhere, as there can't be a gap when the weekend starts, people need to relax, socialize and party. But without being in the UFO on Close Encounters, with our trusted host and favorite DJ it is going to be different.

Also Opensim lead developer Justin CC announced in a Blogpost his interests shifted away from virtual worlds and thus more or less resigned. Various sources assured me there are still plenty of very capable people committing to the code, and despite it being a huge loss, it will not "end our world".

All the above are true losses for Opensim & OSgrid, which to me personally are more significant than "missing assets". On a personal level, i'm happy for all of the involved. On an avatar level, it feels like the world is crumbling, as it are all extremely devoted people "leaving", and those cannot be "replaced".

OSG8B Party

The OSgrid Birthday party kicked off yesterday with a short speech and tunes by Dan Banner. After 2 random crashes and nice fireworks, the region behaved, and with 52 avatars on the region we had good fun.
DJ's  LadyJo and Jazzy were followed by Live performances of Joaquin Gustav and Whirly Placebo, but under the sound of awesome guitar tunes i must have slipped off into a weird dream. ( I was dancing with a girl with horns wings and bunny slippers, in a psychedelic world full of bright colors and rotating mushrooms and pretty lights). Anyhow. I woke up in bed instead of like this, and no headaches, so all apparently went well.

If you like to see the pictures and video's of yesterday's party, check here, here, here and especially here.  In case you missed it, there's another party tonight starting at 19.00 (GMT +1). The lineup for tonight includes yours truly, JayMaze of D&J's and the Maritime club on the road with live performances and DJ Stiofain.

Last but not least, check the OSG8B birthday displays. They include very nice builds. My personal favorite this year is built by my "online neighbors" Jim and Izzy. Go check it yourself to see why.
Red Dragon wishes a Happy Birthday to OSgrid and all connected friends and residents.

OSGrid Formalities & Party

All regions of Red Dragon have been updated to the latest version, and we have enjoyed our annual holidays this year. Whilst relaxing under the sun in Croatia, on wifi reading the OSG forums on the meeting last week, I can best quote Mr. Albertlr Landar of OSGrid Inc. :

""The main announcement that was made at our annual meeting held on July 5th was that OS grid, Inc. is now a Non-Profit Tax Deductible (In the United States) Corporation as the Internal Revenue Service has made that designation as of May 15, 2015.
Also any contributions or donations to OSgrid back to Feb 19, 2013 will be considered deductible. If you made a contribution or donation in those prior years of 2013 or 2014 and would like a receipt please let us know. You will have to file an amended tax return to have those funds refunded to you.
I will be making a summary of the chat, and answering a few questions that were over looked during the meeting on July 5th. In the meantime you can read the raw chat provided by Lani Global here: http://forums.osgrid.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5495. ""

OSGrid took good steps forward by becoming it's own legal entity. This opens many pathways to the future, and if you're involved in the grid any way, i suggest you read all about it yourself in the above link.

Next weekend OSGrid will celebrate it's 8th year birthday, and a nice lineup of DJ's committed to come play some tunes at the event. This includes JayMaze, Foxx, LadyJo, SnakeDance and Stiofain, and various liver performances by various artists. If your an OSG DJ or would also like to contribute to the event, please check this topic.

OSG8B regions online

This year, the OSgrid will turn 8 years old. A bronze anniversary. The OSG8B regions have been booted, which means OSG residents can fire up the creative engines, and and start working on a nice display for their cause /venue / region. The festivities are planned for 25th and 26th of July 2015. To obtain a plot for your display, and inform how you can participate in making this the best birthday party yet, you can contact any of the OSG admins inworld.

For the various inworld activities the event calendar will likely appear in the OSG forums. I suspect the annual "Celebration party", with long speeches about the good, the bad, and the ugly, and various DJ's & performances of the OSG residents, which typically makes for a great event. More news on it later, hopefully with a sneak preview of a build at the displays.

Meanwhile, if your a Gamer, you are in sale heaven this week. Steam, Humblebundle, Indiegala, bundlestars, G2A, they all have awesome discounts and offers, which include some very nice titles, for very few $.

OSgrid Finances

An urgent message from Nebadon Izumi, regarding OSgrid funding, to all it may concern;


Greetings Everyone,

It has been a very rough past 12 months for Osgrid. We have experienced many ups and downs but have managed to keep the doors open and see our community flourish and do many really wonderful things. We really do appreciate all of the wonderful things that our community has created and developed over the past years. It truly is amazing to see what OSgrid and OpenSimulator have become! However OSgrid does not come without a lot of costs. Many hours, days and weeks spent by the hard working administrators to keep the servers updated, testing code, helping our users, reporting bugs and working directly with the Core Development team to make sure that we can try to knock out bugs as fast as we possibly can. These costs add up, for instance the Asset RAID failure many months ago. It was a very stressful time for all of us and of course it really put a big dent in to our yearly budget. 

Many of our Citizens came together in conjunction with many other wonderful OpenSimulator grids and we were able to raise enough funds to enact a full recover of the data and bring the grid back online with very minimal loss to data. Unfortunately even with these funds that were raised, the cost was high, not only for our Administration teams time but for the 4350.00$ USD we spent to pay for recovery services through Flashback Data recovery services.

Maintenance Day

This is what maintenance "day" ( takes me about an hour ) looks like. There are ways to automate most of this process (see OSG forums for that) but i prefer to to it manually, so i can keep good track of what i'm doing. Mind that pulling a OAR and backups of everyting is pretty useless if you do not copy the files and safely store those elsewhere. ( I learned this by Diskcrash ! )


OAR's generated of all regions - check
change region regionname
save oar somename.oar
Rinse and repeat for each region, upload copy OAR files to clouddrive.
(For convenience, save a copy of every instance's gridcommon.ini / regions.ini / opensim.ini along with the OAR's).

MySQL database dumped to file - check
Open MySQL command line and login :
mysqldump -uMyusername -p NameofMyDatabase > OSgriddata.sql
Upload copy of file to clouddrive

OSgrid software up to date for all regions - check
Download Here

Inventory cleaned & trash wiped- check
Delete stuff that generates errors or shows up missing
empty trash
login to OSgrid website, and in profile, empty trash
wait 15 minutes, relog.

IAR generated ( save iar user name /* password filename.iar )- check. Upload a copy to clouddrive.

That completes the maintenance cycle, and ensures that i have all my shit, even if things bork, explode or go missing.

Wireframe

Some of the Red Dragon regions in a snapshot from the Wireframe of the viewer. (Ctrl Shift R).

Also get tired of the Bullshit ?

After reading some comments on various forums and metaverse related webpages, i would like to put down my 5 ct's about OSG loosing some assets. Since i don't want to feed trolls or generate flame wars on other peoples pages, here is my opinion on the people that love stir up things and generate drama on anything they can be "offended" about. I always wonder why such people never own a grid, since they are so awesome and great.

OSG needs better and faster PR, as i only found whats failing on some random page on the internet:  

http://news.osgrid.org and the OSG twitter feed have never been so actively used than since the outage, so  OSgrid is communicating more to its users than it ever did in the past. That people rather find their news on 3rd party pages is not something any OSG admin can do anything about. It's there on their homepage, it's posted timely and it is informative. If you subscribe to the news-feed, you  even get notified via email. Ignorance is simply not a excuse. (or at the least a very lame one).

This bug has been known for weeks : 

The bug they found / resolved was present for some weeks, but they only discovered it on the 16th of April, during patching of the asset server. On 17th and 18th there are public updates on the news page informing everyone, but that unfortunately doesn't change the result. Stuff got lost. But making drama about lack of communications ? Mehh.

Now i can post here about OSG being a "test grid", alpha software, regular backups, and a using a tiny bit of common sense, but that would make me a "Fanboy" or "OSG pet" wouldn't it ? (Trolls always need to "put you down" in their posts preferably before you even reply, for not sharing their view on things).

I am just a user, but by all means, call me fanboy. I'm an OSG resident for about 5 years now, and apart from some broken assets, textures, and about 6,5 months of downtime in these 5 years, OSG provides me with a better (and much cheaper) service & experience than any other grid i have tried. And also i have lost some prims, textures, pictures etc. due to this bug. Too bad. Apart from time, it doesn't cost me anything to recreate /upload. Inconvenient and not funny, but so are the IRS bills i find in my mailbox every month. Shit happens. No amount of drama will return my stuff. So why bother whining, can better put that energy to use to recreate what you lost / need.

OSgrid should ...  (fill in any desire. :) 

You might want to read this story. I am aware i run alpha software. I know it can have bugs. I know I can loose everything, since its not all on stored my machine. I was already very happy that 99% of my stuff was still there after the outage.
But what I still do not understand that people which don't want to be in a test grid, don't want to run "alpha" releases, and who create "vital" pixels (lol), are on a public grid, creating drama and shitstorms throughout every medium they can find, every time something doesn't go like they expect it to. And especially right after a major outage. Like that will change things. (Venting your opinion is fine, but mind people can disagree, especially when one apparently has very wrong expectations).

It's not like you have to pay $300,- a month for all the awesomeness Opensim offers. Maybe we should, so OSG can recruit a "communications officer" to pamper all  "special" users, and explain about every bit they change every release. Or maybe do what OSgrid is meant for. Build your own grid, (enabled by the great work they do voluntarily), and see how well you go by yourself.

Beggars cannot be choosers.  ( it's apparently the best translation for a very old dutch saying "Do not look a given horse in the mouth" ).  Mind i'm not trying to start some flame-war here. Just tired of reading the same BS of the same individuals every time OSG burps or farts. It has done it before, and it will likely do it again. and if you can't stand the heat...... you can always cry on the Internets.....

On Updates & blank textures

OSgrid's newspage has busy times lately. It has more posts than the whole of last 2 years in 1 month. Fist off, a new ini file was added (this moves the OSSL part from the opensim.ini to the config-include folder if I understood correctly). Handy for when you want to run NPC's or one of the awesome Danceballs / other scripted NPC products produced by Aine.

Also there was a pretty serious bork in the asset server. Apparently it has not been writing it's assets to database in the past 3 weeks or so. Caching prevented this issue from being spotted earlier, and the bottom line is, that all the stuff made / uploaded / textured in the last couple of weeks, is now either gone missing or blank. The bug was found on the 16th of April, when emergency patching shutdown the grids login for some hours. The bug has been fixed, but if you clear cache, stuff might look a bit different than when you put it there. Details are in the News page, fist link in this article.

Luckily, its just prims & pixels, and unless you have been creating a world from scratch in the past weeks, it likely boils down to applying a filter (on days) in inventory, delete the blank stuff, and empty trash on website. Smart thing to do afterwards is make sure you grab a IAR copy of your inventory, so you can sleep relaxed knowing all your precious prims are backed up. (If you live in a testgrid, this is a smart idea anyways). If you have been creating new prims on your regions, and need to clean up; you can find all available asset commands on this page.

A new release was issued after the outage, but according to twitter this one is bugged. So do not install this, be patient, and wait until the next release is issued. ( It's there now, you can grab it at the OSG downloadpage )
Did someone already explain you that making your own regular backups makes you a more balanced person ?

Regions upgraded

All Red Dragon regions (including the currently offline v8 Build) have been upgraded to the latest & greatest version of Opensimulator.  The old builds will remain offline, as i simply don't have enough RAM to keep all up & running.  The server runs triple channel RAM, which is ridiculously expensive compared to normal RAM, so upgrading is not really an option. I will have to save up some cash for a new Main-board / CPU / RAM ). Mean whilst i do keep all regions "up to speed" so i can boot them at my leisure.

This morning i attended a party in Littlefield Grid, which had it's 2nd anniversary. They have a small but lively community of friends, and occasionally i try to pop in. (only when they go to bed real late, and i get up real early. ( Most of LFG's inhabitants are US residents, whereas i am in Europe. Meaning they generally sleep when i'm awake and vice versa). If you want to peek around,  LFgrid is reachable via hypergrid through the region "Littlefield Gateway" in OSgrid.

Loads of stuff is happening again, since OSgrid is back alive. Apart from a whole range of "lost friends" that found their way back, a lot of new regions came live. You can find many of them in the Wright Plaza Travel Centre if you like to visit any, and if you happen to be a sim host, you can submit your own regions there as well.

Also the splash screens of OSgrid changed, and they display an array of nice locations now for you to visit. (Hurrah, we made it to the front page too !).  To all people running an older version of opensimulator ( anything below verion 0.8 ) i urgently suggest you read this article. And upgrade ASAP.

(* sorry for the shabby images, when exporting them they get crooked dimensions, and I didn't feel like snapping the pictures again. Looks better "live" anyways, so feel free to visit us in the OSgrid.). 

Region restarts & Opensimworld

Since the lines here got upgraded a while ago, Red Dragon had a small "spontaneous" party with some friends from LBSA plaza. The regions performed surprisingly well, no lag, no crashes, which is remarkable for a region as "stuffed" as RD.

This weekend Red Dragons regions have been restarted several times due to maintenance on the network its hosted in. The internal network has now been switched to gigabit, as it's upstream router was replaced. For region performance it doesn't make a whole bunch of difference, but downloads have improved a factor 5 in speed, and WiFi is performing much better which is nice for all the phones and tablets. Was bit of a bummer finding out the latest firmware on it didn't have NAT loopback support (WTF !) but loading a different firmware fixed the issue and so all is up and running fine.

There is a new advertising system for hypergrid connected  simulators on opensimworld. It also lists events in any of the 323 known worlds straight on their homepage. Sim owners can create an account there, place a marker at their place, and add their region. Find their FAQ here to find out how the system works, and what the service has to offer. In case you'd like to show your support, Red Dragon is listed under this profile.

Update & Aftermath

Whilst the OSgrid admins are chewing away at fixing broken assets, they also pushed out a new version of the simulator today. You can grab it Here. I have been online quite a bit last week, and seen a lot of faces in OSgrid. Some new, and many older friends popped in and found themselves at LBSA's spontaneous party's, and mostly everyone is happy to be "Back Home" as that's what OSgrid means to a lot of us.

Most users suffer very little problems from the recovery, their homes have been brought online again, 99% of inventor is still where they left it. The stress of "losing all your stuff" without having a decent backup must have been a headache for some. They didn't loose all though, due to a lot of time and effort of the admin/dev team, and OSG's ability to purchase specialized recovery services. Which in it's turn would not have been possible without its users.

So if you are an OSGrid resident, can afford it, and you appreciate having your stuff back, or you are extremely happy with the services as provided, consider a donation. Even if it's small, or maybe just enough to buy some hardworking dev a beer or pack of smokes, its appreciated. OSG is likely to be low on funding after the recovery bill, and especially now all is back and improv(ed/ing) again, they can use the extra love. 102902 OSG users (that 102903rd is you) will be grateful for your support.

Next Friday, Dorothea and Jaymaze will resume their weekly Friday party's at Close Encounter region in OSgrid.  This was announced last Friday at the "final" party in metropolis grid. I think i can speak on behalf of many, when i sincerely thank our friends in Metropolis (and all other grids providing refuge to me and many friends) for their hospitality and support in the "dark winter" of 2014. That's all for now, back to riding the waves of the "complete" Metaverse some more.

Regions upgraded

Since OSG came back after the short maintenance outage i have upgraded all the online regions to the latest OSG build of 21-02-2015.  I did use my previous INI files, instead of the recommended manual comparison, but will take a long hard look at them when i feel like it later this week.  For now, all appears to work ok, and i try to refrain from "fixing" stuff that isn't broken. The V8 build is down, as there is not enough RAM on my current machine to run all 20 regions. They all have successfully booted so i know they still work, but will remain offline until further notice.

The online regions all run smoothly on their good old MySQL instance, despite me reading somewhere on G+ that the MySQL part in open simulator is not longer maintained, as none of the OSG developers use it any longer. This could eventually affect peoples configurations, and since there are no "release notes" i can only recommend to keep a close look at your .ini files and use Postgre or possibly MariaDB should MySQL fail for whatever reason.

From a user point of view, i experience very little impact of the data crash. Sometimes a message that some texture / script in inventory cannot be found is pretty much the worst i have seen, which is amazing on itself after a disaster causing nearly 6 months of downtime.  Anyways, it's great to have OSgrid alive and kicking again. (And to see all you "oldies" at LBSA).

Tonight, it's party time in Metropolis. D&J's "Close Encounter" region in OSGrid  apparently still needs some love before it can re-open and we can party there, so they will stick to Metropolis for this weeks event.

Logins to OSG temporarily disabled

Yesterday, all Red Dragon X regions have been upgraded to the latest version. Today i was planning to do the V8 builds too, but somewhere between sleeping and waking up, OSG logins were disabled. news.osgrid.org has the following message : 

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we are temporarily shutting off logins for maintenance on the grid.We have a stuck asset server process and have shut off logins as a precaution to prevent any possible asset damage. Also, until we give the all clear, please do not load or save IAR or OARs. Check back with us Sunday March 1 for additional updates.

Some downtime was expected, and more outages will likely follow whilst the OSG team works hard squashing bugs and fixing errors. No stress, as there are no signs that this downtime will take weeks / months again. If the grids back, you are requested to NOT load IAR / OAR files until further notice. (I was kind of expecting that one this weekend, couple of 1000 people found out their home grid is live again, and start hammering the services simultaneously). Be patient. More news on this later today. 

Cornflakes week was a big success and we had a blast at D&J's "Mad Friday" party. Dorothea did an awesome job decorating Close Encounters, and loads of visitors in weird clothing turned up. You can find various pictures in the G+ community if you missed the party's. Better save some space in your agenda's next year, as CFW is intended as an annual event. 

Update : Logins restored news.osgrid.org

OSGrid back up & running !

IT'S BACK ! LOGINS ENABLED

Read all about it here. Off to LBSA now... :D

Quick update :
All of Red Dragons 20 regions successfully started nice and smooth without problems. Apart from some estate settings ( teleport "blocked" instead of "anywhere", some pictures, and media url's ) all looks exactly like i left it :). That means 20 regions dated from the last version installed in august, with over 150.000 prims and 3000 scripts just booted, without any hassle, loading OAR's, or re configuring anything.  I only cleaned my viewer cache, as some DNS names didn't resolve properly due to old cached names. All is as it was. Nothing broken.

Big compliments to all admins & people involved in getting my favorite grid back online !

Cornflakes Week

I know, i promised to not bother you with new posts until the OSgrid is booted up again, and it's not there yet. But this week is "Cornflakes Week" !  (No clue what that is ? You can read all about it HERE). More links to the various events that are organised can be found below.

Since i was also requested to organize an event, i asked my friends at D&J to do a "Mad Friday Party" at Close encounter. This as the Red Dragon is currently hosted on  my home server in Metro, and it just can't handle a lot of concurrent visitors, my viewer, and a decent stream at the same time.

D&J graciously accepted and thus the party will be held at Close encounter region in Metropolis grid on Friday 27th of February. We start at 19.00 GMT (1,5 hour earlier than the "normal" friday event). Your hostess for the evening will be Dorothea, and DJ's JayMaze, LadyJo and yours truly will form the lineup for the evening. It will be a themed party, with "Colorful / Silly" as your requested "dresscode". Also you are obliged to have Fun, and the last one leaving helps cleaning up....

Some links to an overview of all events this week :
G+ Event Listings
Event page on Facebook 

A CornFlakes Tribute Region is hosted on Metro; here's the HG link to it : hypergrid.org:8002:Cornflakes-Tribute , should you be interested in the works & creations of Cornflakes, or if you've never heard of that clown before. It's worth a visit. Special thanks go to Thirza Ember who took the initiative in organizing this week of madness and dedicating it to CW.

Latest News on OSgrid

I was secretly hoping the OSgrid would be booted up again after the update of today, or that at least an ETA would be posted. This as in 2 weeks the grid will have been down for 6 months. Read all about why this will not be the case on  : http://news.osgrid.org/

More patience. We will just have to wait a little longer, but as some famous hobbit once stated : “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” It pretty much nails the feeling i have with more patience.  Mind i'm happy with the updates, despite them not telling me what i'd like to hear. If these updates weren't posted weekly, i think for many hope would have been lost, and the less stubborn would have moved along. The good news is, that likely all our assets are still there when we get back.

--deleted long rant about waiting-- Well, now that's out of the way, I will only update this Blog again when either an ETA is known, or OSGrid is back.  Until than, Mr. Patience to the left in the pic here will have to keep you entertained.

Fingers crossed

Source : http://news.osgrid.org/

DRIVE RECOVERY STATUS
The recovered drive has been shipped from the recovery service to the data center.
No ETA yet on when the data center will receive the recovered drive or have it online for us.

ASSET SERVER STATUS
Both new asset servers have successfully passed the first tests hosting OSgrid regions.
Lbsa Plaza and Sandbox Plaza 2 successfully connected to the new asset servers.
OARs were loaded successfully, and assets replicated to both asset servers as expected.
Dan Banner and Allen Kerensky were both able to login to the regions, configure their basic avatars, then hypergrid out to other servers successfully and hypergrid from other servers into the new OSG regions successfully.

OSGRID RESTART
OSgrid restart is getting closer but there is still no specific date or ETA as we test this entirely new asset service. Once the current testing rounds of failover, failback, and backup/restore are complete to all admins’ satisfaction including finalized checklists and documentation, we may be able to offer a tentative ETA for restoring service.

Things are looking more positive, and hopefully we can soon go "home". Despite the no ETA this is positive news. Now it's fingers crossed, and hope the data on the drives is usable.

Status

Still not too much to report on OSgrid (it's still down), any hot news can be found on http://news.osgrid.org/ . The grid has been up briefly for testing of the new asset system, and some of the OSG plaza's ( LBSA / Wright ) are reachable though the hypergrid.

Whilst OSG is recovering, we still party every friday in Metropolis grid, and await OSG's return.

The OSG troubleshooting document found under Help in the menu has been revised slightly, and most of the services mentioned in the previous post on the madfoxx.net domain have been implemented.


As blogger , European resident and Human being, i also have to share this picture.

I will not post my opinion on the "religion of peace" causing all this grief, but feel free to make an educated guess.
( if you cant, try this list or these numbers or listen to this Imam and try to tell yourself again it has noting to do with a specific religion ). Just incidents, by lone wolf extremist lunatics. Right.

I hope the OSGrid is back soon, so i again can seek refuge in a nice world, without politics, religion, money, extremists or idiots that would kill you over your opinion.


Make love, not War.
Peace - Foxx-