Hairy's Style

He is a bit of a rock star for his amazing work maintaining a beautiful and diverse grid, Bridgemere. The stylish Hairy Thor - one of the coolest guys in opensim - kindly agreed to meet with the Safari band and tell us a bit about the Dreamgrid experience. 
For anyone unfamiliar with DreamGrid, the invention of Fred Beckhusen aka Ferd Frederix, you can't do better than to check out the information available on Fred's website Outworldz.com .  

We met Hairy at the Welcome region of Bridgemere - HG Address as always at the end of the post. It's a 30+ region grid, where you can walk or sail from place to place, giving a strong sensation of connectedness, as befits the name of the grid.

Mal Burns with our host Hairy Thor

Hairy Thor: Welcome everyone to Bridgemere

Mal Burns: hiya hairy one

Luna Lunaria: Hi Hairy!

Hairy Thor: Some of you may have visited Amara's Atlantis earlier this year. 

Atlantis, the region by Amaranthim Talon  on Bridgemere

Hairy Thor: Thirza thought maybe everyone would be interested in how a Dreamgrid installation works

lifted pixel: Dreamgrid is pretty cool :D

Forest Azure: i have no idea what it is

Hairy Thor: As you can see, Bridgemere is just like any other grid. Ferd Frederix created software, to make getting a grid up and running pretty much fool proof. Only difference from a Dreamgrid and any other grid, is we use Fred's free dns, in turn, he collects metrics to know who and where his software is being used in the world

Luna Lunaria: nice

Thirza Ember: did it take a lot of learning about code to set it up?

Hairy Thor: That is what makes it nice for anyone; you don't need any experience to get started. Once up and running, it's a great way to learn how a grid works

Luna Lunaria: Are there any security challenges?

Hairy Thor: hmm, yes. This is what you learn as you go. Dreamgrid comes to you as an out of the box installation. It's up to the grid owner to put those security issues to rest. I'm also part of the NGC group and Bridgemere at this time, is the only Dreamgrid grid that is part of the Trusted Grid group

Thirza Ember: what is NGC ?

Hairy Thor: Mike Chase heads up NGC and the Trusted Grid group, but unfortunately can't be here today. NGC is the New Generation Code. We ensure that visitors from semi closed walled grids can visit here and not be subjected to copy botted material. The code is much the same, and yes, you can tp from and to each other's grids. We've decided to stay with Fred's software, so that we can better educate new Dreamgrid users about IP rights

Hairy Thor with Whirli Placebo and Nara nook in the background, with flamingos

lifted pixel: how do you deal with copy botted content? do you have a black list or manually approve assets?

Hairy Thor: We investigate and remove when necessary

Thirza Ember: I have heard people say, which is clearly wrong, that Dreamgrid is good for small grids or personal grids only. your gid isn't small or limited to yourself - how many people do you have here?

Hairy Thor: I think we are up to about 70 users. We are on hosted vps' at Contabo presently. We are a semi commercial grid.

Neo CortexHG: The Dreamgrid actually uses the same setup like medium grids use: robust setup and a mysql database

Luna Lunaria: Are there other Dreamgrid installations that are not on home systems?

Hairy Thor: There are a small handful that are hosted in data centers

Luna Lunaria: So you have server costs like a standard grid would

Hairy Thor: Yes, we have server costs, but being vps', they are low. That savings goes to our paying residents. I also look at load issues, so I don't overload a server, hence why we are on two now

Lavia Lavine: That is really the only way to do it.

Thirza Ember: you also have the big advantage of having access to the many oars that Fred has made available exclusively for Dreamgrid users

Hairy Thor: True Thirza, and though we have a couple, Amara and I love to create regions from the ground up

Lavia Lavine: Yus, especially original builds.

Bridgemere scenery

Thirza Ember: You mentioned being a commercial grid, does that mean you have a shopping center here?

Hairy Thor: Majority of items are free, but a resident can sell on this grid. The prospect is there for any resident

Jupiter Rowland: /me takes a mental note to come back for some shopping.

Hairy Thor: Now mind you, what you find here for free, is legit content, you're not going to find illegal mesh bodies or the clothing for it

Jupiter Rowland: That makes this grid actually even more interesting.

Hairy Thor: As for black listing, yes, the obvious grids, but some other grids that we know partake of illegal content, we welcome them so that we can better educate them on the content they might have in their inventories

Some of the legit content present on Bridgemere

Thirza Ember: so if things go wrong, how do you contact Fred for help? or do you have other ways of networking with dreamgrid users?

Hairy Thor: I test his latest versions on the home pc and file a Mantis on his site

James Atlloud: Fred's hosting manual looks pretty thorough - pdf link: https://www.outworldz.com/outworldz_installer/Grid/Dreamgrid%20Manual.pdf

Hairy Thor: Since Fred removed his MeWe account, we have two main MeWe groups that offer support

Thirza Ember: nice! so people help each other as well as getting help from the top guy

Nara Nook: The My Dreamgrid group is really useful

Hairy Thor: Yes, Nara, that is one of them. Fred has just become too busy to deal with everyone all the time, so now just beta testers give him feedback. Dreamgrid is as reliable as any other opensimulator grid.  It gets down to the owner knowing what they are doing to maintain it

whirli placebo: i didn't know what the Dreamgrids were before today...and now i am quite positively impressed with them.

lifted pixel: it's very easy to get running

Hairy Thor: I have Fred's software that handles much of the load, as well as my own bat files to handle other things

Nara Nook: I have both Dreamgrid and Linux grids and Dreamgrid takes far less work to maintain. But my Dreamgrid isn't public so that makes a difference

Hairy Thor: Dreamgrid is just the software to help you get up and running and do some of the maintenance... I could get into the matrix of opensimulator , but won't bore you all

Nara Nook: I would like to know how the Matrix work

Thirza Ember: What is the best bit of advice you can think of for someone just about to start out with a Dreamgrid world of their own?

Hairy Thor:  patient and ask many questions.

Thirza Ember: can you tell us how the grid got started?

Hairy Thor: Well... long story  lol... We started out as a continent on the Great Canadian Grid, to help Roddie garner more residents. 

Mal Burns: Hairy was my next door neighbour on GCG way back when

Hairy Thor: We then moved to a venture with an old InWorldz founder, but that failed. So I decided to take a second look at Fred's Dreamgrid, and Bridgemere was once again

Thirza Ember: so everyone, just to let you know, Hairy didn't think we would have much to talk about... how wrong was that???

Francisco Koolhoven: haha

lifted pixel: there's always so much to say when it comes to the workings of opensim

Forest Azure: lol

Nara Nook: many layers

Thirza Ember: so many different approaches - that is the fun of it all

Hairy Thor: basically, this is just opensim, but has Fred's software to run it, just as any other grid owner would create software to run their grid

Thirza Ember: and Bridgemere is 3 years old is that right?

Hairy Thor: or four maybe... think it was November of 2019... or was it 2018

James Atlloud: prepandemic!

Hairy Thor: I'm the wrong person to ask Being retired, all the days/years blend

Thirza Ember: it's a blur - but that is a good thing, means it's been steady for so long you forgot to notice time passing!

Hairy Thor: sorry, phone

Thirza Ember: ok guys, while Hairy takes that call, can you stand round him for a group photo? whirli come closer

Tosha Tyran: oh gosh... since when am I so tall?

Forest Azure: /me only now notices thirza's farao headpiece on someone else's head

James Atlloud: Where are we looking?

Jupiter Rowland: This belt and its stupid LODs...

Safari trips began in 2014, and they still never all face the same way for a group photo 

Mal Burns: if you had unlimited memory and bandwidth (!!!) would you run a dreamworld server locally or still use hosted solution?

Hairy Thor: I would still use hosting, running on your own pc, puts wear and tear on your equipment. Hosting, it's their responsibility. Plus hosting companies provide security against ddos attacks

Mal Burns: true - but i always enjoyed the idea and my assets (homespace and inventory) were there offline for me if ever needed

Hairy Thor: true

Mal Burns: swings and roundabouts, but security with hosting is better of course

Hairy Thor: We do daily backups, and move them offline to cloud storage. We don't supply iars, due to ip rights, but oars are available, but filtered

Thirza Ember: Can people sign up for Bridgemere or is the group pretty much fixed in its current form?

Hairy Thor: Bridgemere is open to the public. Any new resident is told of our stance, and asked if they still want to be a part of our family. The Trusted Grid group of grids, is to eventually create an Opensim that can be respectful of IP rights.

Mal Burns: next stop beckons

Thirza Ember: anyone need the LM to Luxor?

Forest Azure: I'll tp through your headpiece

Thirza Ember: ok Hairy, we will get out of your... hair... thank you for explaining so much to us... your hard work is really amazing, and I know your grid members all appreciate you very much

Hairy Thor: thank you everyone, for joining me today. Be sure to grab an LM and visit all our regions

lifted pixel: thanks for having us!

Francisco Koolhoven: very interesting, thanks Hairy!

Hairy Thor: Enjoy your next hop folks and be sure to visit us anytime

Forest Azure: ty hairy :) 

whirli placebo: thank you so much Hairy

Hairy Thor: most welcome

HG Address: bridgemere.outworldz.net:8002:Bridgemere Welcome/

hop://bridgemere.outworldz.net:8002/Bridgemere%20Welcome/122/137/22