Happy new year

All the best for you and those you love in 2017 !

    click for your Chinese horoscope for the year of the Rooster

The last month of this year was both hectic and awesome. We had a great Christmas Party at event plaza, and welcomed a lot of new users in the grid. Next year OSgrid will bring you fresh DJ's, new events, new community classes, and more. Stay tuned.

Business as usual

Since i feel i can´t get away with posting only an add after not having updated here for so many weeks, here's a small update. I found and cleaned out a bunch of broken links and removed some blogs links which seemed dead. I haven't been building lately, so little progress on the Red Dragon past weeks.

OSG is currently at version  0.9.0.dev.f3e7603 which appears to run nicely. Just a reminder, support for megaregions was removed last august. (I know, who cares, but just so you know).
Last month the OSgrid suffered 2 minor outages, both were network related and resolved fairly swiftly. I cannot help noticing that more grids seem to suffer outages lately. 2 days ago metropolis was down for some hours. GCG and Digiworlds are currently offline as well, both have been taken out by hurricane Matthew, killing power in the region.

It seems overall activity in the various grids is growing, more events, art exhibits, hunts, games and other stuff going on.  A trip i can recommend is the ride on Fest AVi 2016 which is just awesome. You can find it on the Francogrid. And if you like to explore in groups, join the HG safari, that visits a different grid / region each week.

So what's going on in the OSgrid. Joao plays his ukulele on Tuesdays on the Almost Islands, DJ's Sirius & Aussie started a mid week Wednesday party on Event plaza, the date for the Halloween party is known, (see below). The Friday party still up & running weekly, we have Singergirl performing next Friday, every Saturday there is a community meeting at Wright plaza and a party at Mirrors, The Maritime club has it's great live performers singing and playing for you every Sunday. So no need to be bored when your not building, shopping, or browsing the various regions.

The OSCC is comping up on December 10th, preparations for that are in process. They are still looking for volunteers, so if you're interested in participating, click here, for general info, hit the homepage here : http://conference.opensimulator.org/2016/#top

When the days go shorter the party´s get bigger

Regions Updated

The quiet months are almost over. In summertime it´s always a little slower in the Metaverse, Less people attend the various party´s, and the general `online` population shrinks with about a third, as hanging at the beach in RL & having late barbecues has it´s charms as well.

Dan the Man

Looking back on this summer, loads of changes have been made in the grid´s back-end configuration, and this always brings glitches and tiny nuisances along. But at least there is progress. Due to careful monitoring of the grid by in particular Mr. Banner, potential catastrophic events have been prevented. This did result in the grid being `disabled` a couple of times, but this didn't spoil the fun. And again, for all you doomsday figures out there, the grid did not crash a single time. Monitoring indicated an issue, and the admin took preventive measures to ensure nothing exploded, and disabled assets,  inventory & logins to prevent any damage. Good job on that, as eventually after a long diagnostics run, a disk was replaced.

OSG9B was a success, despite the logins being disabled for some hours on the opening party. Hurray for the Hypergrid, as we still partied hard anyways. Various pictures and video's can be found on the OSG9B collection in my G+ Profile.  If you have more media to share, feel free to mail me a link, and i will add it to that page for historical reference.

Today all 20 Red Dragon Regions have been updated to the latest version released 7 august, and all are running as expected. Firestorm issued a new release of it's viewer, with some feature enhancements for VAR regions, audio and some other stuff. more info HERE.

You have 2 more weeks to visit the OSG9B regions, before they will be permanently archived and taken down. They are located around event plaza, and if you have not visited them yet, you're missing out. There is a lot of very nice free stuff available, and the builds there are definitely worth your time.

Every Saturday there is a Resident Meeting on Wright Plaza. If you have brilliant suggestions or questions on any OSG related subject, feel free too attend and share your thoughts / ask what you need to know. It's a good way to keep up to speed inworld, with all that's happening in the grid.

On a final note, a goodbye / Farewall to a friend, Mr Bill Windwalker, aka Xstorm Radek. Many years he visited Red Dragon in both SL and OSG, and being a mentor he helped out hundreds if not thousands of users inworld. He has left the metaverse, and I wish him all the best for the future. "You might not return, but will not be forgotten".  That's all for now.

NB: Possibly the URL of this Blog will change in the near future, as i plan to hook it to it's "own" domain name. You will be redirected when it happens. (first need to fix some certificate stuff for it).

Ups & downs & preparing to Party

Every year when summertime kicks in, party's & events start later and draw less people, logins slow down slightly, and less new people enter the grids. It's not that the Metaverse grinds to a halt though, as loads of activities are also available throughout summer.
One of the major events being OSgrids 9th birthday party.  Over 60 creators are building / have built displays on the OSG9B regions surrounding Event Plaza in OSgrid. Make sure to visit, stroll around and feast your eyes on the creative ingenuity of the people dwelling our world.  

Last week OSgrid had an outage, first the logins were disabled, and eventually the grid was taken offline. One of the asset servers was locked, and as a security precaution things were taken offline until the engineer that built the cluster could have a look & fix it. Nothing exploded. 

Now when the grid goes off, this is "uncommon" and always causes some strange panic. When the loginpage sais "Logins disabled" you can be sure maintenance of some form is happening, there patching, or investigating some issue. Typically this doesn't take extremely long.

When the loginpage sais the grid is down, you can (when due) expect a message at twitter in the sidebar on that same page, and a notification on http://news.osgrid.org which will also email you, if subscribed.
Mind this happens only after there is a "formal response", preferably with an ETA on a fix. This generally will happen between 8 and 24 hours, if it's expected to be down longer. Before that time, you can be sure all social media channels & the OSG forums already have something posted, as "bad" news tends to travel fast.

Well than how do they know ?  If you need to know about it every time the grid burps immediately, IRC is the place to be. Within minutes after the logins being disabled you can expect activity there. Possibly even hear a reason for the logins being disabled, or talk to people that know. For rest it's unfortunately the same, you act like all of us. You wait until the green "online" thingy appears back on the webby. Not much more you can do anyways, they don't shut it down for shits & gigglez.
Due to careful attention & monitoring, and acting in best interest of the grid and its residents potential catastrophic events are avoided which should be applauded. And since apparently finding info can be a challenge, if you like to keep up to speed on OSGrid and all things Metaverse related, try this : http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/osgrid  and you have most relevant stuff  & info available in a click.

Busy month

Well, it's been quite some weeks since i posted here, so let's see what happened in the OSgrid. There is a steady influx of new people, and apparently more activity on social media lately, which is great. You (would probably not be reading this if you didn't) already know about open sim, but 95% of the rest of the world never heard of it, or doesn't half understand how awesome it actually is. So more attention on FB, twitter, G+, youtube, Flickr, and other mediums is great. Like us here !

OSG9B preparations were started, and all plots were "gone in a week", indicating there is a lot of interest in the celebrations for OSgrids 9th Birthday. I took a sneak peek already, and it has awesome freebies & display builds, so be sure to check out the OSG9B  regions, there placed around Event Plaza. Progress & the event planning is discussed weekly at the Saturday Q&A on Wright plaza. (In case you do not care about meetings at all, there is also a party starting at 10.00 every Saturday on Mirrrorland, with DJ Aussie, and hosts Mirror & Linda !).

Last weekend all OSgrid code was updated to version 0.9 in the backend. This should improve daily use a lot. Better TP's, and no more crashing VAR regions if you place them against each other. (also meaning you now can easily make very large regions).  If you're running old code, this might be a good moment to bring your simulators up to speed.

New community classes have started, the current sessions are on "Scripting" and given by Fu Barr on Sandbox plaza. (These classes are "hands on" so you get to rez stuff and play around with actual scripts). They will reoccur weekly until finished. Every Saturday, Sandbox Plaza 12.00 PST (grid time). straight after the Saturday Q&A.  You only missed the basic class for now, so can still enter next week, attend, and get smarter. Chatlogs will be placed on the OSG Wiki.

The Friday event has seen a lot of new performers, DJ Jay-Lo, DJ Prinz, DJ Strannick, Joao, MadMax, Singergirl, Cecilia & Hafxex, and more. We even had the Phaandoriagrid flash-mobbing over to co-host the Friday party, which was a blast. It's awesome when you meet people from other grids, party together and have a great time.

We try to make en effort to offer you a varied scala of performers, so you get a diverse offering of music and live acts at the Friday party's. After OSG9B you can expect some "themed events" to occur, more on that later. Mind that if you're a performer or DJ, regardless of what grid you live in, you're more than welcome to participate in this event and come over to play/ sing/ run a set, with your crew. Great way to promote your venue, share your music / skills / lyrics,  and make new friends.

My fundraising project for OSG is not exploding, only 4 members sofar, but all bits help. (And these "sizable" bits help a lot). Many other initiatives have started, and all these efforts hopefully will result in a stable basis to bring the OSgrid in the next phase of it's life cycle.  OSG also made a quicklink on paypal, with which you can easily do paypal to paypal micro transfers. Find it on : https://www.paypal.me/OSgrid  Mind that for US residents, any donations to OSgrid are tax deductible.

HG safari had its 100th Trip, and celebrated it on Event Plaza. Great fun. If you like to explore & party, they leave from Francogrid every Wednesday to various destinations.
At Red Dragon not a single prim was rezzed past few weeks, it will be updated to latest code this weekend. Lastly i worked on a simple page with buttons linking to any "relevant" OSgrid & Metaverse related pages. Find it here :  http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/osgrid

Crowdfunding the Osgrid.

Since a couple of weeks i have been assisting the Osgrid Administrator team. I was already organizing the Friday party’s since D&J went “off”, and with a lot of Developers and old time OSG icons like Nebadon shifting focus elsewhere, OSG really needed “extra hands”.  This as the current admins were truly loaded with their tasks, and like you and me, also have a “real life” to address.

So with a fresh team (Dan / Sarah / Jim / Albertlr  / Foxx) of admins we now try to improve those area’s that need some love and attention. The first thing on my "personal" agenda was “knowledge”.

When you ever installed your first simulator, you probably found it a real PITA , to get up to date and relevant into on how to achieve a working setup.  There are hunderds of guides, mostly very outdated, and often with contradicting info in them. So we setup a 7 week class, and documented all there is to learn on getting connected to Osgrid in the OSG wikipages. All of the info posted there, is double checked & verified by OSG administration.  The classes and writing of them took me around 36 hours, and i know of at least 8 residents that have been able to get their regions up and running without needing much further assistance other than the above documentation. I will make an effort to keep the info in the wiki up to speed and relevant. 

What we could really use help with is a team of people able and willing to translate this into their native language. If you’re interested in such (unpaid and fully voluntary) job, please feel free to contact me via FoxxBode at Osgrid.org

Now last meetings there has been a lot of talk about funding for Osgrid. As you might or might not know the whole grid solitary runs on donations. Many people contribute a monthly small amount, but the majority of our residents apparently does not, as OSG has little reserves. ( Read it this way : If donations would stop completely as of today, the grid would be down & gone within 3 months). 

Now Osgrid wants to remain “free of charge”. (I strongly believe in that formula too). However, we need to find ways to raise more funding, as currently we cannot expand nor survive a disaster like the one that happened last year. Now many people came up with all kinds of idea’s for funding, and so did I.

Red Dragon's  goal is to raise  $ 10.000 US$ with a personal crowd funding project. And yes, this is not a peanuts amount, but i like to think big and set high goals. Mind that with an active userbase of several thousands of people, this should really not be impossible. So, how do i plan to go about ?

A Group will be created in OSGrid. For example RDD (Red Dragon Donators). Or something. I will try to make a more catchy / sexy name, but mind I do this on a “Personal note”. As in, this whole idea, has nothing to do with Osgrid management, or my involvement as admin or whatever.
I’m just a user like you, that lives in this grid. My contributions to it, be it in time, know-how, music, or money, are voluntarily. All of it. So I did not ask nor get permission for this "project", and my goal for this is solitary focused on raising extra funds for improving / facilitating  the community & infrastructure in this grid.

So, if  you want to be part of this Group, you will have to donate  $100,- to Osgrid, and send me the paypal transaction ID. No RL names, no emails, just the paypal ID number of your transaction. The only thing i will do with it, is have the OSG secretary validate that this transaction ID was worth  $ 100,-. The name of the avatar dropping me the transaction ID, will be added to the Group. I will not see / receive/ get any of the payment details or info. I will only receive a yes or no answer to this question :  Did this transaction number raise the OSgrid funds with 100 $ or not  ?

  

There is room for 100 people max.  in this Group (And  If we would make it too 100 people, It's raised funds can keep the grid online for a whole extra year / buy hardware / advertise and make the grid more “known / or even “rent a dev” to get the unfixxable fixxed. etc. etc. )

Now i see you think $ 100,- WTF Foxx ? You think i grow money trees in my backyard ?

It’s not about the $ 100,-.  In fact, OSG is way more happy when you donate it 5$ every month. If  only 5 to 10% of the userbase would do this, this grid could run forever.  But i can’t start begging 110.000 individual users for a buck, so figured my above idea could be a "fast way" to bump-push funding. All crowdfund ideas i know of have some form of limitations, cost money, or require a huge organisation. The way i tried to set this up is 100% relevant for the grid, and the grid only.  There is nothing or nobody between you as donator, and the grid itself. And i appreciate   $100,- is a lot of money in, and especially in 1 time, but when i think back of my SL times, in which i shifted over € 300 Euro’s a month to LindenLabs & co, a 1 time $ 100,- donation to the place you live now, and being in this is feasible IMO. 

So $ 100,- it is.  We have 4 members already, so 96 to go. Mind that i will only add people that made a one time minimum $ 100, - donation. If you already donate 10$  every month, this is great ! Thank you. But you will no be in this Group. I want it to be “special”, and try to reach the target of 100 people, which would equal  $ 10.000,- in donations. Also i hope to reach the "i never donated in past 5 year people". You regular donators are already the core & heart of this grid, and no group would justify the gratefullness all of us should have because of your actions. 

Mind there is no personal gain whatshowever, no money being  transferred to my person or accounts.
You sponsor the grid, and all its users directly.  Your donation is also made to Osgrid directly, so it’s Tax deductable if your a US resident.  Even if you don't like me, you can still donate, the 100's of friends you have here will appreciate it, i'm sure. 

Now i see you think sooooo, what is the benefit of being in this Group ?

Well, for now, there is none yet. I still need to figure of an additional incentive to get you to pull the wallet.   And since you already can enjoy free parties, free land, free courses, free prims, & free techsupport, it’s likely going to be difficult to convince you of the need for donations, since you  already get all the stuff for free. I still need to further think about this. In any case there will be held an exclusive  VIP event for these members, for the rest no promises as yet.  

Don’t like the idea ?  More than your willing to spend in 1 go?  This is all fine, nobody is obliged to take part in this idea.  If you’re just willing to consider a donation of any kind, I will be already happy. As your donation, even if it is only a one time 5 $ as you simply cannot spend more, also keeps MY regions up and running. 

In an ideal World, above Group should not even need existence,  but it’s the best brainfart I could come up with on a personal title to help contribute & support the place we like to spend so much time in.
NB if you donate 100 $, but don't want your name listed in this group, don't send me the transaction ID. Just know we are thankful, and i'm quite sure i can state this on behalf of a great community of people.

Class of 16

Yesterday we started Project "Class of '16" in OSgrid. This as lots of users have troubles setting up regions, and it is hard to get "background information" on how things work. Currently you have to wade through a gazillion of good / bad / outdated webpages to get a clue on how to operate things.

We try to centralize data for our classes on the OSgrid Wiki.
Each weeks class preparation will be posted in the tutorials, and on the "discussion page" of it, a cleaned exempt of the given class will be posted. (This is edited text, corrected on factual details, spelling errors, and all names / login spam etc. are removed).

Since things barely go according to plan, and this being the 1st "class" i have given since long, it was not completely as i imagined.(as i'm a bit chaotic by nature). It's very hard to determine "where to start" and what the "basic level" of available knowledge is, and there is so much to tell. Staying "within the relevant scope" is difficult.
For instance i saw someone mention subnetting during the course, but this is too elaborate to hop into. (same as binary, differences between transport control protocol and user datagram packets, switching & routing), all very relevant, but not directly required for a user running a basic region on OSgrid. Our goal is to enable people to find relevant and understandable up to date tutorials on how to setup, configure & maintain a region on OSGrid. And if your an egineer, you likely don't need it. You can figure out the puzzle with whats already out there. But if you're not some expert, we want to give you a good place to start, and not to scare you with stuff that just takes some education. You learnt how to drive, now learn to run a simulator.

Anyhow. The feedback we received was mainly positive, people understood the things that were discussed and told, and the information provided was sufficient to have an basic idea on why the various network typologies can require different approaches for configuring them.

Next week we will cover the pre-requisites and installation. If your new and you want a region on OSgrid. This is your day! If you follow this course, you should be left with a working region on your own machine. ( If not, we will troubleshoot it the week after.).

Mind that each step in the course will assume you read and understood the terminology of the previous topics. The course will get considerably more technical each week. We try to keep things "simple" and translate the technical procedures to understandable English without them "loosing their meaning", but it's unavoidable we hit some more complex subjects, which will require some stuff "you will just need to learn". The wiki will be updated prior to the next class. It's handy if you take a sneak preview when you attend.

Also don't feel ashamed to ask questions. The learning curve is steep, but the reward is awesome.So if you have questions, feel free to ask.

Classy stuff

Were i've been ? Mainly been having kick-ass Party's in OSgrid, and troubleshooting /fixing user setups in the past weeks, so it's been a little slow on this Blog.

In the last 4 weeks i have setup 11 regions on the OSgrid. (Others regions). People still tend to run lost in the huge amount of contradicting & outdated information regarding how to setup and install a simulator. And if they manage to find a "working guide" it misses bits, and there still clueless on how to setup the forwarding in their specific brand of router. So they get to stare on the map to the region they can't access.
Or someone gave the great advice that "Your issue must be due to NAT loopback", and people setup loopback adapters. Whilst the problem was a firewall, or a double NAT. And when they fixed the firewall, things still failed, as a Loopback adapter was active, which now shoots them in the foot....
People claim teamviewer ports conflict with OSG. Are you just trolling, or really that ignorant ? In both cases it's not funny for the person that's been trying for hours/days/weeks to get to his region. Regardless the intention.

2 unfortunate souls "did" have a NAT Loopback issue. They got the advice to replace the upstream router for a device that does support it. All others are happily living on their regions now. Because they just suffered a misconfiguration, or a dynamic IP address changed, killing their port forwarding. When installing OSgrid software, and running your region, keep in mind thousands of  users did this before you, and succeeded.  Opensim has been around for many years now, and despite quirks and bugs, this software will work for the majority of its users. IF it is properly configured within the specific environment it resides in.

Now no 2 networks are the same. The basic principles of these networks however are. If your familiar with IP, subnetting, and networking in general, its relatively simple basic stuff. Many of you will have little to no need for additional help, as you do know what a DHCP server is, and also know why you want to run servers on static IP addresses.
For those of you that don't, it is tough to host your own regions. So we have decided to start classes in OSgrid, enabling the people that are interested to at least have a grasp of what you do, and why and how you do it. Classes will cover topics like Opensim architecture & infrastructure, terminology, setting up & troubleshooting your server, maintenance, logging, advanced settings/ set ups, bug tracking / bug reporting. Effectively we try to cover mostly "offline" work, (well, not offline, but outside a viewer).

So we've setup a little project for it, called Class of '16.  Classes will be given by Dan Banner,  Foxx Bode, and other subject matter experts in their respective fields. (For example you can expect Mr Gavin Hind explaining how to install OSgrid on a Mac, or Unix system).  We plan to document all the data used for these classes on OSgrids wikipages eventually, so hopefully we will end with a usable and extensive guide that is up to speed with current standards. So expect fewer updates here, as i will likely be writing other things for a while.

This Friday (18th)  "Singer Girl" will perform Live at OSgrid's Friday event. Don't miss out !

Promotions & Cornflakes week

Last week i've read an excellent article on Thirza Embers Blog, explaining all the ins and outs on promoting your grid / club / region / product / builds. If you are an Opensim user that feels your work could use more "attention" i urge you read this blog. Despite being in OSG for more than 5 years, some of the "tools" listed in the blog were completely unknown to me. (Bit like some of the brilliant builds where you only end up if someone shows you).

In 10 days, the annual "Cornflakes week" will start. If you have no clue what it means, you can read up on it here. The G+ group is also the place where all events in this week will be listed.

The OSG Friday party of the 26th of February will be themed and renamed to "Mad Friday" for the occasion. Expect a long & Fun Party with our wonderful Friday team of Hosts & DJ's.


This weeks Friday Party has new Danceball, as the updated ClubMaster 2.0 by Aine Caoimhe will be serving you your favorite dances and NPC Dancers.

OSG was experiencing some technical difficulties and apparently logins were temporarily disabled. (resolved).The Friday party only stops if the grid would go offline, and thus you can still join us at Event Plaza if you teleport in via a hypergrid account. Copy past this in map on any grid, and pop over !  hg.osgrid.org:80:Event Plaza.

OSG Friday party Evolved

Every Friday we have a party in OSgrid at Event Plaza. This tradition was started by D&J on Close Encounters region 8 years ago, and continued  on Event Plaza, with the help of some great friends and an awesome community.

As of this week, the OSG Friday party expanded. We now have DJ's Foxx Bode running in the European / Emea timezone, LadyJo Martin takes care of the USA timezone and Aussie Envee continues in the Australian / Oceania timezone. This means that wherever you are in the world, there is a party going, every Friday, also when you are awake.

We have a solid and awesome team of hosts; Mattie McBride, Alya Vonz, Ni Lemon, Jazzy Chatterbox and Atticus Finch, and all of us are are backed up by the OSG admins Dan Banner & Sarah Kline. Special thanks to these people as they keep the party lively, accessible, and orderly. They also decorate the regions at special events, all to enable us to have a great time. I don't tell them enough how much there efforts help to make the event a success.
You people are wonderful !

The party's are very well attended (thank you for that, we really appreciate your company), Since we  received applications of live performers, we will start scheduling these between the DJ's, so expect an occasional singer / performer to play live. NB; If you really like live performances, you should check the events issued every Sunday in the Maritime Club.

We like diversity, and also this year, we will make an effort to get your favorite DJ / performer playing at a Friday event. If your a performer yourself, and are interested, please get in touch. Mind that we don't have "application rules". The only criteria is that it has to be a musical performance, as it is a party. Whatever grid you call home, whatever genre you like to play, you're welcome to apply and fill a 1, 2 or 4 hour slot depending on your act. It's fun, and also a great way to promote your Grid / Region / Club / Music and entertain your friends.

If you've never attended, you're missing out on the biggest party's in the Metaverse, Join us next week, and bring your friends ! Nice DJ's, a fun hosting team and a live singer will be making an effort to enable you to have a great time. The week after a Mystery Guest DJ is scheduled. So hope to see you next Friday. The calendar here will keep you posted.

So much games, so little time....

Finished Dishonored, Sniper Elite III, and on 60% through GTA V. In case you're wondering why there's still a happy new years message as last post. Steam winter sale happened, and i need to find a way to quit work and live at least 140 years after today, if i want to finish all games in my library now. 1st world problems.

So, lets see what happened in the meantime in the Metaverse. More and more of events are held in the various grids, many you can find posted here and in the various facebook and Google+ metaverse related groups.  Of course everyone is welcome on the OSgrid Friday party which is still held every Friday on Event Plaza. Get in touch if you like to DJ a set or run a performance there.  

In the OSgrid forums i read people are making good progress on running Opensimulator on Raspberry & Banana Pi's and other nifty little devices, and on hypergridbusiness you can read all about virtual worlds & virtual reality, and all the gadgets which are starting to flood this new market.
For people that like to visit and explore others builds in groups, find the Hypergrid Safari group. Mr. "Pathfinder" wrote a nice blog on it (was published last year, but has all the relevant links and info).

Furthermore, i like to say hi to all my Russian visitors.  Благодарим Вас за посещение ночного клуба Red Dragon . Найти нас "inworld" путем создания бесплатную учетную запись на www.osgrid.org и начать приключение Metaverse сегодня !

And last but not least, we miss some friends, of which i sincerely hope they visit soon.

2016 Happy New Year

2016. The year of the Red Fire Monkey.