Anyway, I'm hoping to get back into dota and if at all possible mainly lod (although I imagine quite a lot has changed since I last played) since I had eventually got bored of everything but -ardm dota and then only lod was fun, normal dota just became unfun for me

Well, judging by recent activity this clan/community seems at least fairly active and I'm really hoping you guys have some LoD playerbase!
I'd love to hear any and all comments/updates with regards to "state of dota1 community" and such; basically I'm trying to get a feel for where things are at nowadays and the objective for me is to figure out where I can get the best ratio of enjoyment:grief when playing, and hopefully mainly some LoD.
As for "personal introduction" it'd be quite a long story and most of it might as well be ancient history by now, and at any rate there's no point to bringing up "i was shaman of xxx and yyy" and "i hosted bots for zzz" but in essence I played LoD since early days (Bob's OMG --> LoD) and DotA since RoC (AoS of course but that's truly ancient history).
That said, hello to all.