Sunday, December 30, 2012

Gaming & Happy 2013

Here is a late merry christmas, as (un)fortunately i've spent all Christmas eating and gaming. Steam kicked off it's yearly Holiday-Sale and it has many beautiful games on sale for peanuts really. So it looks like i'm not going to be building again soon, as i'm fairly busy ruling various worlds, sea's and battlefields. (or getting my ass owned by 13 year old kids with Skill level "Asian").

Last week i enjoyed the Christmas party at D&J's, for which the interior at Close encounters region was very nicely retextured. Party's there are always well visited, and good fun. Unfortunately I missed the Doomsday rez-party at cyberbohemia, but galen mentions it was fun (click for more), so i will try to be there at the next rez-party. I will post when i find out a date.

Apart from the Google+ group for opensim, you can get a constant stream of opensim related news and info by joining the group  "Opensim Virtual". Despite it being new, it maintains daily update's regarding a variety of topics.

Well. So much for 2012 the year of the Dragon. here comes 2013, the year of the Snake. The Watersnake to be exact, as described in chinese astrology.

'Time is like a flowing river, no water passes beneath your feet twice.
Much like the river, moments never pass you by again, so cherish every moment that life gives you'.

On behalf of Red Dragon Nite club, I wish you and all those you love a prosperous and happy new year and all the best for 2013.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

New Message from the TechnoShaman

We Survived .... 

Realeased by CyberBohemia 12-09-2012

Dear Friends,

At 22.12.2012, starting 20:00 UTC (21:00 GMT, 12:00 SLT), we plan to celebrate our survival of the 21.12. apocalypse with a great dance- and sandbox party on Cyberbohemia. DJ Galen will stream a very special mix of progressive trance, his personal collection of his absolute favourite songs of the last years.

Maybe with this party we can establish a new kind of virtual world parties, the "sandbox party". Cyberbohemia will be open to build for everybody during this night, so please bring all your favourite party toys and gadgets, and lets have a crazy night full of joy together, under the motto "We survived" :)

The party will take place on region Cyberbohemia in the Metropolis grid, hypergrid url: hypergrid.org:8002:Cyberbohemia

We are looking forward to celebrate this special event with you.

Love,
Galen

P.S. The event will be cancelled in case of the apocalypse on 21.12.2012.



Google +


Osgrid has a large community. Users are scattered around the grid, often   building on their own local sims and projects. Apart for the Plaza's which typically harbour "live" residents, you either have to look at the "People inworld" list when logged into OSgrid's webpage, scroll the map, or search off-grid to get in touch with people from it's community. Here's some links to get you started if you like meeting other OSG residents :



OSgrid on Google+  This page has been suspended by google, but recently i got an invite, so  it looks like its no longer suspended and running again.

http://www.osgrid.org  Homepage :
Offers downloads, forums, and links to get in touch with admins via mail, IRC or twitter. Also when you login to the site, you get options like empty trash, reset avatar, look who's inworld and where your friends are etc.

OSgrid on Twitter.  This is also visible when you login to OSG in the viewer splash-screen. Handy for quick updates on whats new.

OSgrid News Important details on the simulator releases and config changes. If you host your own regions, you want to keep track of this page.

For more links, blogs, tools, scripts, generators, OAR's and other OSG - opensim related information, scroll down on this page, to the links section. It's just below all the rants and pictures. There are many nice goodies to be found there, and tons of interesting material from many OSG residents and creators. Enjoy !

* Broken links ? Feedback ? Submit your own Blog / Link(s) ? Get in touch. -> Mind we publish  Opensim / OSGrid related material only. We don't sell viagra's, real estate casino's and loans. 

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Seven Seas regions


Sometimes i hop around the grid, and visit old LM's from inventory, just to see if the sims are still up and alive, and what is there now. Last week i dropped by at an old friend, SynthFreak Universe. His "Seven Seas" regions are filled with very nice visual effects existing of a combination of all media OSG can offer. Scriptd textures and particles, video, all remotely controlled to display an array of stunning effects. A shopping mall, and plenty of nice builds are around to explore.


The new cathedral at Seven Sea's contains a lot of Mesh elements, so when you visit, its handy to not visit on an ancient viewer that doesn't have any support for Meshes *.  Also, don't get lost in the cellars and  dungeons there. They are a maze.
10 fresh regions for you to explore, much to see, addres HERE


* Osgrid posted the link to the latest Firestorm for Opensim on their twitter. It also mentions fixes on the search in the next OSG release. More info on : http://www.osgrid.org/

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Recreation Plaza


Yesterday i spent some hours with 6 beautiful ladies in bikini's. (Quite unexpected,  for a late novermber evening).  After slapping on a pair of decent swimming trunks ( thnx Claudia!) we were enjoying the waterslide at Recreation Plaza. The attractions are built by Cuteulala Artis, and on behalf of  (no doubt) many happy members of the community. Thanks ! This was just what was missing in OSG.

So now Osgrid has a fully operating amusement park, where (next to the speedbuild, primwords and other games OSG has to offer) you can  enjoy massive waterslides, and a working roller coaster and ferris wheel.

Go check these rides yourself, just find some swimmingtrunks, and sit in the Tube. Whooooooeeeiiiiii. Great fun, and the teleporter at the slide exit takes you back instantly for another ride. Today there is a new fast slide, and as it is a work in progress, i think this plaza will soon be a very populair hangout.

You can reach Recreation Plaza through the North gate teleporter in LBSA plaza. Definetely a must see, and real fun to do. (Did i mention all the nice ladies in bikini's ?) Don't forget to try the roller coaster too, and when you do, try mouselook. (scroll in with mousewheel) for a nice virtual experience. A HD video of the coaster can be found below, but i advise to just visit and try for yourself.  Enjoy !



At 30-11 i revisited the sim Cuteulala Park, next to recreation plaza, and it now has multiple slides and Coasters, and a lounge to chill. More to come soon, for what i've heared. 
At 6-12 an OAR is released you can the download in Osgrids forums.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Friday Party at Close Encounter

Many people that wander around in OSgrid  spend a lot of time "on their own" building, scripting, creating. So they like to party and meet up every once and a while.

Every friday around 18.00 UTC Dorothea & Jay  host a party where  you can enjoy a wide a variety of music styles and meet with a large group of OSG residents.

Also if your "new" to the grid,  this is a great place outside the plaza's to relax, party and meet new people. Home-DJ JayMaze presents a very broad selection of music in a variety of styles and takes requests, so you can listen to your personal favorite, or enjoy a romantic tune when on the couple dance system.

As this party is beeing held every friday for a couple years now, there's no doubt D&J is the most visited club in OSgrid, and place you should visit if you explore this grid. Likely you find me hanging out enjoying the tunes & partying there.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Kliederaar region opens


Today we attended the opening party of Kliederaar region, by the dutch artist Ruben Haan. Welcome to weird wonderland.Your about to run into a true virtual world within a virtual world.



Prepare to enter a very surreal 3d cartoonish abstract environment, with various pieces of abstract art forming a strange world around you. You can walk around on the cartoon hills to get a closer look at details of the works. Feels strange!

It's an amazing and unique surrounding unlike anything you have seen before. Quoting one of the attendee's of the opening : "I am always impressed, how far the edges of opensim creation can be pushed". Come and amaze yourself at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kliederaar/125/128/26 Tickle your mind.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

 Red Dragon Club
Nice outside 

         Boardwalk with club view                                                       
Piano concerta's

  Conference room 100+ seats
 A nice pool to chill 

 Hotelrooms. Plenty of them
Loads of strangebuildings

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Party time @ Speakeasy Club

Every saturdaynight ( sundaymorning for the EU earlybirds ) you can dance and party at Speakeasy club at speakeasy region near littlefield. Your host & DJ Walter Balazic spins tunes, in weekly themed party's. For details on what specific party you run into, check OSgrids 'Forums.   ( I teleported and found myself in a "Devo party" full of people in yellow outfits with red caps.... )

The club is a classic club build, and worth a visit. Has a great lightning & particle system in place, an animated dancefloor and an inline dance system,  so you don't need to worry about your default OSG "breakdance" animations.

If you are a real party-animal, great host, awesome DJ,sexy dancer, blazing event manager, or otherwise, and would like to participate actively, feel free to contact Walter Balazic, Dirk Mathers, or Toy McBride. Ofcourse if you just like to party, hit speakeasy on Saturdaynight.

Littlefield is very active in the OSG community and has created a Halloween Region for everyone to enjoy. You can find it on map by looking for Stonehaven Party Isle. It contains a haunted house, haunted hayride, balloon ride, graveyard, corn maze and several other "toys" around the region. There organising a Halloween party on the region on Friday Nov. 2 and Saturday Nov. 3 from 8PM SLT on.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Grid Downtime & Lost friends

Osgrid had an outage. Not too much details are known to us, but for what we understand we've read on twitter, there was an issue in the datacenter. After last time's PSU failure, and Neb playing with Databases, the 3rd outage this year. Yeah thats news, as it's pretty amazing that a 10.000 sim 60K+ user grid, hosted around the world through a gazillion networks is as stable as it is. Chapeau for the hard work of the admins and not to forget the dev's making this possible.

by avelinademoray
A couple of weeks back the creator of Port Azure, Tasha Violet, passed away. She was a great builder, and  the community lost a very creative mind. Some of her sims, and much of her work are still around for you to enjoy.

Last week i found on OSG forums also Hans Hausermann passed away. He was a cheerfull and very friendly and funny OSG regular, that i met in LBSA quite often. Some close friends have built him a nice memorial. It makes you realise the infinity of the pixels, the spirit people put into their builds, and the friendships that can evolve between the people behind the avatars  in virtual worlds.
These people will be missed, but their memorials and builds will hopefully last forever.

Not the most cheerful topics for in a Blog on virtual worlds, but unfortunately death is inevitable. We can only be grateful to live lives rich with filled with good friends to enjoy them with, and hope our legacy and heritage outlasts the time we have been given. Rest in Peace.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Off and On

As usual in summertime, Foxx spends less time on OSgrid, and more time elsewhere. As a fanatic gamer I've spent quite some time in LOTRO ( The lord of the rings Online ) which you can play for free. (also available via Steam btw).
Red Dragon now also exists as a kinship in LOTRO, located on withylwindle server. You can find our kinship webpage here :  http://red-dragon.theonekinship.net/ Since Riders of  Rohan will be released in 3 weeks, my summer abcense might be a bit longer than usual. ( Mounted combat and fresh Trolls to whack).

In case your dutch, and like to be in a dutch kinship, try http://dutchberzerkers.guildportal.com in which my "main" character (a level 75 champion) is officer and webmaster. Next to LOTRO we also play Battelfield ( Still BC2 ), Skyrim (cool), Civilisation (for old times sake), the GTA series, World of Tanks (gotta love Tanks! )  and some other games (days seriously need more hours....).  So far for the heads up on my "Missing Avatar".

In the few hours i am online in OSG (mainly weekends) you can likely find me hanging at LBSA, D&J's friday party on close encounters region, or building on Red Dragon club. (still 3 floors to fill).

OSG is almost back at 10.000 sims, of which you can be sure they were online in the past 3 weeks. (else they would have been purged from the map). Make sure to checkout the machinima Vid of OSG5B by Cyberbohemia in case you missed all the party's. Also grab a copy of the latest OSgazet which reports on the OSG5b celebrations. You can still join the weekly town hall meetings for the latest news, or compete in the speed building contest or primwords. Info on those events can be found at LBSA plaza, or by talking to one of the admins. Fresh updates on OSG related stuff will follow soon.




Saturday, July 21, 2012

OSG5B

Happy B-day OSG !
Its the OSGrids 5th brithday, which means clelebrations and Partytime !

Here's the full Party - schedule :

FRIDAY, 20 JULY 2012

Fri 20th at 4.00 pm PDT: ‘monologues’ – Em Jannings: Call me Ishmael – on the north side at region OSG5B Northeast - a live-voice performance by Avatar Repertory Theater
Fri 20th at 11.30 pm PDT: D&J OSG5B Party at region Close Encounter with DJ JayMaze – all different styles of music.

SATURDAY, 21 JULY 2012

Sat 21st at noon PDT: Opening and welcome speech by Osgrid president Nebadon Izumi at region OSG5B Central
Sat 21st immediately after the speech: Live music with Greybeard Thinker and friends with guest stars “Just Us” at region OSG5B Central
Sat 21st 2.30 pm PDT: Live-voice performances by Avatar Repertory Theater – Mr. Nakamura (Corwyn), a scene from Zoo Story (Thunder and Em) and a dramatization of The Child a story (Pip) – on the north side at region OSG5B Northeast
Sat 21st 3.00 pm to 4.00 pm PDT: Live music with fritz clawtooth at region OSG5B Central
Sat 21st 9.00 pm PDT to late: Saturday Night Dance Party with music mix from the 60’s to the 00’s and live performances by Walter Balazic / Littlefield Authority (and possibly Hiro Protaganist) at Speakeasy Club at region Speakeasy.

SUNDAY, 22 JULY 2012

Sun 22nd 1.00 pm PDT to late: The Belfast Maritime Club "on the road" featuring Truelie Ellen, Casias Faltas, Kitzie Lane, and special guests at region OSG5B Central
Sun 22nd 5.00 pm PDT: Avatar Repertory Theater – Affairs of the Smart - a short play by Kayden Oconnell (Rowan & Em), a Two Person Conversation from the Short Play Buffet (Em & Kayden) – on the north side at region OSG5B Northeast

MONDAY, 23 JULY 2012

Mon 23rd from 1.00 pm PDT: Techno Music with DJ Tommy Jonas at region OSG5B Central
Mon 23rd 6.00 pm PDT: Live-voice performances by Avatar Repertory Theater – No Exit revisited – on the north side at region OSG5B Northeast

Also make sure to visit the OSG5B regions, that have many displays of various sims & builders on the grid. Loads of cool new stuff there, in wide varieties. Also an excellent moment to harvest landmarks so you can  do some sightseeing and hopping & shopping later. You can reach the sims via LBSA plaza which has a sign setup to teleport there. For more info, hit the Forums


Sunday, May 20, 2012

Photo Studio's

Today we had our Picture taken at Marty's Art Gallery. You can find the sim right next to wright plaza. Make sure to go check it out, and find pictures of all the (Famoush) OSG residents in it's gallery's.

To have your own portrait taken, you can visit martin's studios, and IM him to have your pictures taken. (Martin Spiritor). You can also request your picca's to be snapped at your sim of preference.

For more  photostudio's, check wright plaza, Red Dragons Studios at FBI AR, or any of the OSG sweetspots that make excellent background for photoshoots. You can easily find such spots allover the grid. (Check pictures from eralier articles to find some quickly, else try hitting one of the Travel centres ).

Monday, May 14, 2012

Red Dragon Regions on Voice

Hi all

OSG voice from Vivox is available for a while now, and they greatly simplyfied the voice application procedure. So as of today all Red Dragon regions run voice by vivox. If you want voice on your region aswell, you can try follow the information below :



3 simple steps (this whole procedure took us less than 10 minutes) :

1. Apply for Voice from Vivox with the form below :
http://support.vivox.com/opensim/
Mind it requires you to use Real life credentials. After filing the form, you will get a verification email. Click the link, and wait for the next mail which contains the data you need to edit in your opensim.ini to arrive.

2. Edit your opensim.ini, and enter the code snippet you recieved via Email into opensim.ini
If unsure where to put it, find "Freeswitch" and place the snippet directly above it. Save file and boot / restart the simulator.

3. Once started, login to your sim, and enable voice in your estate(s) and sim(s). To do so, click the menu - world -region/estate - estate tab & enable  the tickbox to allow voice chat. You have to do this for every region you want to use voice on. Also on each region open the about land (world / about land / Audio tab)
and tick the checkbox from disabled to either parcel or estate channel.
A step by step guide by Kitely on can be found on the link below (includes screenshots):
http://blog.kitely.com/2011/12/23/happy-holidays-kitely-supports-vivox-voice/

4. restart sims and test. If it doesnt work immediately, possibly your router / firewall needs some ports opened up. You can find the various ports below.

# Port 80 and 443 - TCP - for Web server (HTTP/HTTPS)
# Ports 5060 and 5062 - UDP - for voice control signals (SIP)
# Ports 3478 and 3479 - UDP - to aid in setting up voice with NAT (STUN)

If it still fails after opening all required ports, and restarting everything, try the hints on this link :
http://www.vivox.com/troubleshooting.php

If you need further assistance, you can usually find all the OSG guru's on good old IRC (find direct access to it at the bottom of this page), the OSG forums, and LBSA plaza when inworld. The excellent community on OSG is generally helpful, patient and friendly.

In the rare case that all of the above if that doesn't provide "joy", you either need to hire a voodoo man, or ask KJ from Vivox if he can assist you. (You can get in touch with him by replying to the mail you recieved, with your Vivox credentials).

 Do mind Vivox offers this as a temporary free service at the moment, so please be understanding if you cant get "immediate assistance". If you have high demands, you can also always consider purchasing the software, and get full support on it.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Scoping the surroundings


Today we visited Zweet ZurroundingZ, a sim by Amsterdam Bingyi. Its a build in progress, but already has a great forest, with an awesome and overwhelming "atmosphere". Waterfalls, sunrays falling through the dense deck of the forest above you. Its a nice build to linger around. A big castle is built on the peek on the cliff above the forest. 

The Pic's are made with various default windlight settings, and it has many great "Photospots" and stunning views, as you can see.  

As its a 25 sim region, expect to find more zweet zurroundingz  in the future. 


Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Some clubs within the club

Yen-Yang stylish
 Just some random picca's of the various area's in the Red Dragon Nite Club. Currently our sims contain 7 area's / clubs, each with their own style and atmosphere. From stylish modern trendy dancehall to chillout bluerooms. Various podia and stages, 16 fully decorated hotelrooms, a 100+ seat conference room are available for your leisure.

Chillout area "BlueRoom"
Linedancing & ballroom area's are under construction. So are plans for a decent pool. After all, a good club needs a pool... Still 3 full sim floors to build on, so we will try to put that in someday. (Building is slow lately, were busy with a lot of other stuff).

Linedance area should arise here
aw

Were currently one version behind on the Latest OSG version, and likely to update next weekend.

We still could use some good (scripts for) linedances. Anyone ?





Were slowly buiding new area's in Red Dragons main building, on the upperfloors. Likely these will become only accessible by teleporters.
Where at a whopping 17K prims, so when TP-ing in, give the sim a minute to load.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Tourist offices & Dynamic DNS

This picca was made for the OSG Tourist offices. There really helpful if you are new in OSG, and want to know where the action / sweetspots are to be found on the grid.
You can find the OSG tourist offices at wright plaza, and at the SimSquare Metaverse astro shopping area.
They are maintained by respectively Mercalia Beck and Richardus Raymaker. Handy to know if you have built your very own beauty, and want to share it with the rest of the OSG visitors. Alos check back regularly, for fresh new updates.

I got some questions on how to create a free dyndns account. Here's the howto.
Register an account at https://account.dyn.com/entrance/ and do the email confirmation. It will open a page with all kinds of paid services, and an option for free trial. Dont click any of those ! Instead click my services in the top of the screen ( its a button ).

In there you can add a Host name. Choose yourpreferredname.dyndns.org or any other URL you like. Write it down. tick the box for wildcard to enable. Service type is Host with IP adress. Fill in the public IP adress (typically its already displayed ).  Add to cart. (it will require you to start a trial now, but mind it will ask for credit card details at the end. You can put those in, and immediately quit the trial after registering. You get to keep the 1 free domain name, and wont get billed.)  Done.
If you dont have a creditcard, or dont want to give those credentials, you can try http://www.no-ip.com or another free dynamic DNS service. Same service, no credit card requirements.

Typically most routers have an option for dyndns. You put in the username / password of your dyndns provider, and your chosen domain name, and hit update. Now the router will be reachable through the URL you made, and update automatically when  the IP adress changes. If you dont have this option in your router, you can download dyndns updater software from  This URL . Install, and follow instructions. Self explainatory.

Last step is to change your public IP adress in your regions.ini, to the DynDNS name, and restart your OSG server.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Red Dragon moved & Grid outage

Last week, after installing the latest version of the OSG software, we put the Red Dragon back to "old" map positions. Also the previous build that used to lag insanely, is now back up and running properly and as it used to.  When writing this the grid is Offline for over an hour already, although were still partying hard on D&J's friday party at close encounter sim.

The quote of the day in the category : "Things you don't want your sysadmin to say" :
<nebadon> I accidently whacked the inventoryitems database
<nebadon> gonna have to restore from backup
No stress Neb, we all know the feeling of computers not doing what we would like them to. You'll fix it.
 (put's reminder in to read "excuses.txt" in next version of OSG ;-).

It is a thing we rarely see. OSgrid being down. As a backup is being restored we expect this should not have much impact, other than some time. You can keep track here when the services are back up and running, or be patient and keep an eye on the twitters, or IRC ( scroll to the bottom of this page for that ) to keep updated on the status / news. In the meantime, we party on !

Update: Grid already up again. Downtime was limited to less than 6 hours, and only inventory of the last 12 hours prior to that can be missing.
Chapeau for OSG. We have suffered 0 impact from this whole database issue. Now that's disaster recovery management that deserves 2 thumbs up.

If you also like the OSgrid, and the awesome service they offer you, you might want to consider sending them a Donation . Bang for your bucks, and money well spent.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Maps cleaned, new version released, events

On the 19th of februari, the map purge in OS cleaned all the sims that have been off line for longer than 2 weeks.  5555 regions remained online, whilst now, two days later its almost back at 7000 online regions. According to the twitterfeed on OSgrid the 0.7.3 version that was released today no longer requires the use of opensim32bit.launcher.exe for 64 bits systems. It is still included with the download.

Red Dragon's old regions are removed, and we will go back to a 3x3 region soon, in which the current FB sims will be renamed and put back on their previous locations. Also we will start testing some small scale events in the weekends. Not your average midnight danceparty, but chillout sessions in the morning, with musical themes and maybe a guest DJ every once and a while. We will keep you posted.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Message from the Technoshaman

Dear friends,

Next Saturday, 18.02.2012  Cyberbohemia region will open its doors for the exhibition "Photography&Metaphysics" from the german artist H. J. Kaeppeler.

14:00 GMT - Vernissage of the exhibition with a live audio stream.
Mr. Kaeppeler will guide us through the exhibition, explain his pictures and answer questions.

20:00 GMT - Exhibition party "Art meets Psytrance" with a fine selection of actual psytrance music by DJ Galen.
                   
No dress code, and bring all your fancy party toys :)

All the events will take place on region "Cyberbohemia"  in OSgrid. We are looking forward to this unique event and to enjoy some fine art and dance music with all of you beautiful Avatars. Please spread the news.

Monday, February 6, 2012

OSgrid Map purges coming up

Some interesting news from the townhall meetings ( Read here ). The map is about to be cleaned.
Regions will be tested with a "ping" ( read : OSG will try and retrieve the maptile from your sim, which should work if the region is up and running).  If the region does not respond for over 2 weeks, it will get purged from the map. In total it tests about 28 times, and if not found in any of those tests, it will be removed from the map. You can just boot it up again, and unless someone took that specific map coordinates, you should not suffer any impact from this. Worst case scenario is to have to use different region coordinates.  Appearently, the 19th of february is "cleaning day". If you want to be sure not to be "wiped" off the map make sure your sims are up and running. ( A few posts down you can read how to enable the Warp3d module for cooler maptiles).

As this will improve the accuracy of the map greatly, its a welcome new feature (it was there, but broken). Now it's automated. No more TP's to sims that appear to exist, but are not there.

Osgrids homepage now displays their twitter feed, and Nebadon cooked up a new splash screen for the viewers,which includes the OSG newsfeed.
Voice is working fine on the Plaza's, only the "push to talk" button appears to have a mind of its's own. So if you use it, might want to check if your romantic intermezzo's are not blasted through open Mic connections.

Nice users on the OSG Forum pointed out a nice (temporarily) free 3d software suite. Havent played with it yet, but figured to share it anyways. If you drop in to LBSA plaza, grab a fresh copy of the OSgazette for more news.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Bluesky

Got bored last sunday so decided to make something new. It's a build called blueshift, found on sim FBI CC. Fourhundredsomewhat prims, full perms. 

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Blocked

Some pages that pop up if you live in the Netherlands and try to visit a foreign torrentsite. In a nutshell : Some private company called Brein won a legal process in which the accused ISP's in the netherlands are obliged to block "any IP or Domain linking to" that particular site, whenever this private company requests so... Now we don't feel like typing ellaborate ins and outs of this lawsuit, but, the result is, were facing blocked pages on request of a private organisation.  Which can demand to have IP adresses and domains names blocked, without any further form of legal control. They send a list, ISP has to oblige.
Both ISPs signed appeal against the verdict, and several other dutch ISP's refuse to comply to block requests until this appeal has served. In the meantime our internet is being filtered. Since we rarely use torrents we could care less, but the 1st thought is : What's next ?

Take a breath, and think what precedent the above has put out. And what the possible consequences are. And you likely think, well, its just the Netherlands. Thats at least as far away as China, or Syria, or Iran from where I live. But mind the Dutch are were once living in one of the most liberate country's in the world. What happens there can easily happen to all of you. Also currently there are some serious bills blasted through US and EU parliaments, that can have severe impact on the internet as you know it today.

Anyways.If your dutch and blocked: http://fuckcensuur.nl/ there's your torrents back, and Here some other workarounds. (more Proxy's but also TOR and VPN providers). Not because we want to promote any form of piracy, but we will fiercly protest to this form of censorship.

Now we are not planning on Blogging on RL politics and legal systems, or write long rants on for instance SOPA PIPA ACTA -> for when you lived under some rock, or dont have a clue what all the fuzz is about, here's an understandable explanation.

But as a member of an active open source community, Red Dragon likes to demonstrate against this "Censorship" thats actively taking place here, and possibly about to take place on the rest of our beloved "free" internetz. Without being "blocked". Whilst we still can.....