Sunday, December 13, 2020

Leaping towards the Furture

We just finished OSgrids 2020 Annual community meeting. In case you missed it, visit the OSgrid forums / Wiki to read back. In a nutshell, last few years of raising funds have enabled OSgrid to move forward, and migrate and replace the ever growing asset cluster.  This means it eventually will reside on newer servers, with more bandwidth. more power, less cost, and a new system.This should prove more stable and most importantly,  allow for flexible scalability.  Replacing assets has always been inevitable, the current cluster can't grow indefinitely. But as it means running " double servers" for a while, (transferring gigabytes of assets simply takes time), it was not always a feasible option.  

Currently, funding has been sufficient to start this process, and although it might sound "just logical", taking this step technically reassures OSgrid has a solid future. It will be able to cope with growth, without it running "stuck" somewhere in the future. So it's pretty great news, all made possible by OSgrids residents and the people that donated to it during the auctions or just on the webpage !   

All is already "ongoing", servers are hired, and the whole project is rolling, it is estimated to take 3-4 months. It will result in some days of downtime after assets has been transferred. Notifications of that will be sent on twitter / social media by that time. So in the end of this strange year, we at least can look forward to a bright future, full of options and possibilities for the next decade. 

You also want to check out the new "Script Magic" region, which is OSgrids latest and greatest inworld script library, maintained by Wiz and Caro. More news is to follow before 2021 arrives.

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Whats happening ?

Well, quite a lot actually, just not here on this Blog. I have this tendency to write large epistles of text, and then keep them as draft, review them, rewrite them, and still never post them. Hence nothing has been posted here lately. This doesn't mean this Blog is dead, nor are my adventures in OSgrid.  

Let's see, the OSgrid Map has been cleaned up, we have had some universities educate and graduate their students inworld due to Covid-19, we celebrated OSG's 13th Birthday, we had a successful western themed fundraiser event with great stuff on auction, and we had a day of downtime this week. This is due to our Asset servers having moved to a different rack in the datacenter, and as murphy's law states, this never goes without additional little quirks making life harder than you'd like. The good news is that these issues are resolved, and regular maintenance has been performed.

Up next is the Halloween Event, ( keep and eye on facebook / mewe or the forums ), and another day to put in your calendar is 13 december 2020, as than there is a OSgrid Membership Meeting. These are annual meetings, in which your feedback, along with those of the weekly meetings is made subject matter for the next board meetings, in which the direction and operations of the grid are determined. You're all invited.

Since 2016 OSgrid has taken loads of efforts to "entertain" it's community with regular weekly events, and here's a shout-out to the ever and omni-present Aussie Envee and all the wonderful DJ's and performers that entertain our community. The level of commitment these people put in every week is admirable. Another special thank you to Caro, who is the powerhouse driving the organization behind the OSgrid auctions. These are vital for OSgrids long term financial status. I can't put a full list of " thank you's" here, but thank you. For your efforts, your continued support, your time, and your passion for OSgrid.

We also had a talk to the owner of the "Asteria" region. For you that never heard of it, its more or less OSgrid's graveyard and it exists for many years already. Many friends that permanently logged out have a memorial on that region. As most of the data in there is irreplaceable, OSgrid has formally requested to provide in a backup and use permit, in case the owner ever decides to stop hosting that specific region. The owner agreed, but will continue hosting it for as long as he can. This is normally stuff that happens in the background without people being aware other than the ones involved, but as it is pretty unique for the grid to request a backup of a user built region, i figured i'd put it in here.  (now see if it makes it through the draft...).

So far for now, earlier drafts might still appear later, or they might not. But the show goes on.

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Happy new year !

Well, that's a tad overdue, but still.Happy 2020 to you and all those dear to you. With that out of the way, lets see whats new.  OSgrid Recreation Plaza is running full-pull. Odd weeks run Primwords on Thursdays, even weeks have Speedbuild. After the contests, greedy is hosted. Monday evenings is greedy night and every Tuesday there is a photo-contest. So if you like gaming, or just socializing and don't want to "just hang around", Recreation plaza is a fun place to spend time, if not at some Party. Next week will be Valentines Party at OSgrid Event Plaza !

Opensim developments follow up rapidly, OSgrid is currently at Yeti released at 18-12.  Red Dragon Regions run these since release, without any notable issues. We have seen an increase of people moving over from GcG, as their grid is still not returned in a working state. It's being worked on though, and is expected to pop back in business in the near future.

Lately i have seen several people reporting " strange" issues with their regions. Most disappear when people update their machine. Normal maintenance for your PC, whether on Linux or windows is advisable, if you want to run a stable environment for your regions. Also sticking on some silly old build WILL land you into problems eventually. The rest of the world moves along. Update your OS and software regularly.  (Also when is the last time you saved an OAR of your regions ? )

OSgrid released some new rules for the Plaza's, to keep them hospitable. Apparently requesting people to "just behave civilized" is too much for certain individuals, that seem to thrive on needless drama, pointless discussions, or overuse of sounds, gestures, particles and/or spankers. One considers it great fun, another get's annoyed by the same. But there is a difference between playing a funny sound/ gesture, and just being annoying. (Use that same funny sound/gesture 30 times in a row).
This generates complaints, thus we get more rules.

Mind these rules are not made to restrict you in your freedom, you can still do whatever you like.
If your middle name is "excessive" however, consider doing that on your own region. If you simply can't have fun whilst acting like an adult human being practicing common decency, any public plaza's might just not be the place for you to hang out. It's not patronizing, its just OSgrid trying to keep things hospitable and accessible for everyone. For 98% of people these rules won't change or do anything.

Last but not least, Singularity seems unstable and have loads of glitches lately (to the point of just being unusable), and the latest Firestorm DOES NOT WORK with Opensimulator. Bugs with sound, graphics crashing, and other misery can occur if you run a flaky viewer. So if you seem to have a constant fight with rezzing, sound, loading, teleports, or your windows crashing altogether at shutdown of a viewer, you might want to try an older /different version of viewer.