I posted an AAVSO VSX TDF some time ago, that works with the downloaded from CDS b/vsx version.

Not sure how many are using it, but one feature is the linking out to the online AAVSO VSX summary page for latest details held there, in full.

Unfortunately AAVSO has decided that they don't like me reading their webpages anymore, so have been blocking my IP. This of course also includes AAVSO VSX hosted at their domain.

This is no great problem except my IP is a dynamic one from a major UK telecom, and consequently changes a lot (sufficient that if I really want to read their webpages for any reason I only have to log on and off a few times). The consequence of this is that other users will also have this IP from time to time, and although the coincidence of them also wanting to look at AAVSO VSX is unlikely, it does seem as though they have blocked not just one or two IPs, but whole ranges, which is more likely to affect others. Simple re-login in or readily available webproxies can bypass this, but i) not all webproxies are safe to use and ii) this doesn't solve outlinking from Guide 8 which is direct and would need a system proxy to be set up locally.

So accordingly for anyone suffering from this problem of cosmic censorship I've redirected the TDF outlink to the relevant VizieR entry. If blocked the OID link from their will fail too, but you'll have access to the latest full VizieR listing. I've made VizieR and the CDS aware of this closed access aspect of this open access database, so the problem may be short lived, but just in case, you can use the following tdf instead.

Download the VSX.dat file from B/VSX at VizieR ftp site, ungzip into your guide directory, then cut and paste the following into an ascii editor and save as vsx.tdf in your Guide directory :-

-------tdf starts next line---------
file vsx.dat
title VSX
RA H 42 9
units0 -2
de d 52 9
text 9 30
~b 9 30 %s\n\n
~b 40 0 0 Variable\n
~b 40 0 1 Suspect\n
~b 40 0 2 Nonvariable\n
~b 62 30 Type %s\n
~r 42 9 \nRA [2000] %R\n
~r 52 9 Dec[2000] %D\n\n
~b 94 11 Max mag %s\n
~b109 0 Min mag %[110,11]\n
~b109 0 ( Amplitude %[110,11]\n
~r125 13 \nEpoch HJD %s
~b139 20 \nPeriod %s days
~b 45 1 \n\n
~r 1 7 ^VSX//xhttp://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=B/vsx/vsx&OID=%s^\n

epoch 2000
sort 1
type sCaeaeff;x16
label spaces
goto spaces
goto case
field 0.00 20.00
shown 0
end
-------tdf ended previous line---------

which'll be a work around until aavso realise scientific peer review means not blocking people able of critiquing your results and science from actually seeing your work just in case you've got it wrong and thus puts their public information services on a separate domain route to the inhouse aavso stuff they don't want others to see and feel a need to have IP blocks upon.

Cheers

John