Reading Radar

I know this would anger some bitter and slightly unstable people who think Windlight is the End of the Universe(tm), but I’m mentioning it anyway, because it’s cool. People like Nika can use this stuff as starting points for windlight settings for their SL photography.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, Torley’s got some Windlight sky and water presets available for download.

Since I have a Mac, I’m now going to detail the installation process for the OS X version of the SL client. You windows types can download the self-installer for windows or just wonder why I don’t like you. I do like you. I just don’t run windows if possible. See the difference?

Once you have the file (for the Mac, download the zip file), double-click the file and it will extract a folder called “torleys-windlight-settings” with folders called “skies” and “waters” inside. Open a new finder window and navigate to where your SL client app is located (probably in the Applications folder or a subfolder of that). Now right-click on the icon and choose “Show Package Contents.”

Double-click the Contents folder.

Double-click the Resources folder.

Double-click the app_settings folder.

Double-click the windlight folder.

And yay! Skies and Water folders appear.

Now just drag or copy the contents of the skies folder in the torleys-windlight-settings folder into the skies folder you just navigated to above, to add his presets to the existing ones. Don’t replace the skies folder with his, or you lose the existing settings.

Do the same with the water settings.

It’s that easy! Next, wander off to the RezzedNecks and wonder to yourself when the next episode will be out, and you’re done.

Disclaimer: not valid in all states, objects are larger than they appear, I didn’t create windlight so if you think windlight and/or Torley are the unholy abominations of Babylon then that’s your own problem, you paranoid delusional loser, contents may settle during shipping, etc.

I was reading plurk the other day, not having any real goals in life, and found a comment by one of the regulars about never having listened to any podcasts. This is the point where other people should have jumped in and said, “you need to give a few a try,” but no one did. I didn’t because I didn’t want to seem like I was pushing my own podcast. The truth is, the reason I podcast is primarily because I’m a huge podcast fan and listener.

Commercial radio has been out of touch content-wise for years. It also requires a.. umm, radio, or an uninterrupted internet connection. Podcasts can go with you in a portable player, requiring no airwaves and minimal battery use. Also, you can start/stop/resume them as your surroundings (::cough::work::cough::) dictate. There’s just no substitute, given the range of topics you can find podcasts on, and the quality of many of them. Bad podcasts usually don’t last forever.

Even if you’re just listening to music, the ipod and the personal library beats the shit out of the radio, hands down. Did I mention the radio sucks, and that radio stations and parent companies are primarily run by out of touch goobers who are beholden to both the RIAA and some superficial sense of what’s cool and what isn’t? But the beauty of personal media really shines when you start digging deep into podcast territory. Learning new things, being entertained by truly creative people who aren’t bound by conventional standards, these are the things that keep me coming back over and over every day whenever possible.

Avoid the so-called big names of podcasting and listen to as many others as you can before you make up your mind. Get opinions and suggestions from friends, again… avoiding the really big names for now. You can listen to those wankers later. Right now you want creativity and people doing it for the fun of it. Some of the big names ARE really good, but a lot of them will make you want to gouge your eardrums out, they’re no different than commercial radio in that respect.

But give it a shot. Podcasts. It’s what’s for breakfast.

PS. You don’t need an iPod.

Anyone who knows Keeme probably knows what a multifaceted kind of guy he is. He’s got talent like SL has women who are men - in spades, only in this case it’s a good thing. Keeme is not called “The Keeme” for nothing.

So when he told me about his new blog, Sim Crossing, I just added it to my blogroll without even thinking. I know it’s gonna be worth reading anytime he puts something out there.

You can catch Keeme in RezzedNecks, Diamonds and Rust, and so much more… he’s one of the funniest humans alive.

Episode 37 is up, and it’s got that particle guy…

Enjoy!

Know what’s interesting to me? I can write a detailed post on recording voice in SL, which I think is an interesting and useful topic, and while it gets a lot of views and mentions by others, a post about the psychology of avatar appearance blows it away in terms of numbers of people reading it.

It says to me that people really care about the social aspects of it more than anything, but sadly the metaverse or mirror world or trick universe, whatever you want to call it, is not going to be ubiquitous until you can make it as easy to use and navigate as playing tunes on an ipod. Then it will truly be what most people really focus on, a social platform that anyone (ok, anyone with a powerful computer) can access easily.

The sad thing to me is that a lot of people don’t really get that it’s the best platform ever for content creation with as little learning as possible. Yeah, they understand that, but not on a personal level. IOW, they haven’t taken that fact and made it their own by doing it themselves. Although the technologies behind this are limited (LSL, sculpties, etc, don’t really match up to non-SL equivalent technologies), the combination of relatively small learning curve in building and programming and breadth of scope presented by the types of content and the in-world tools used are probably second to none.

I don’t know what it means, but I do know this… as fascinating as whatever psychological mysteries an inner 3d world presents are, they can’t really beat the fun of making stuff. Because content creation presents an endless opportunity for learning, while worrying excessively about what it all means is fun, but in the end, it’s all psychobabble about how we relate to 1’s and 0’s arrayed in the form of a new world. And while philosophy is fun, accomplishing stuff is more fun.

Arminasx has some interesting thoughts on the SL economy… both of them, actually.

It’s a good post that underscores how hard it is for people to make a RL living from a micro-economy like SL where the going rates for things are pennies or low dollar amounts.

For those who make money in SL, is it as my perception tells me, that it’s mainly the really popular content creators who make items for sale in-world? I don’t believe any of the marketing/builders/consultants are still making livings from SL activities alone, are they?

Seems to me like right now it’s going to continue to be padding for now, rather than a way to put your kids through school. Whether or not that’s the ultimate fate of the mirror world remains to be seen.

I work in a company that’s intelligence and data driven. New technologies and processes are being created and they need to be done right. So a premium is placed on brain power. If you look good, great, but really, who the hell cares. What can you DO? The standouts who are more looks and socially driven are in marketing, and umm. Yeah. Marketing. Those are the people who talk for a living, and to be quite honest, I don’t think have a fucking clue about technology. Sure, they have the buzzwords down, but not true, deep, make it happen kind of knowledge. Not like the people pulling engineering solutions out of their hats on a daily basis. But hey, the majority of them sure look good.

Now contrast that to Second Life, where, regardless if you talk for a living or are an extremely knowledgeable content creator, chances are you have an avatar that’s (in a cartoon way, of course) beautiful or good looking, or idealized in some, if not most, regards. Let’s not beat around the bush, in SL if you don’t have an ideally shaped avatar, people wonder what you’re trying to prove or say or do. Right? When’s the last time you saw more than a couple of non-white or asian looking avatars in a month (furries, robots, and martians don’t count)? When’s the last time you saw a chunky avatar, aside from the boobs and bootie sliders to 100 club?

In Pattern Recognition, William Gibson used the term “Mirror World” to explain how Cayce felt about the differences between England and the US… worlds that looked deceptively the same, but in many ways were not. I think the term “Mirror World” works as a description of Second Life, not only on that level, but also on the level that it’s revealing about what humans expect from themselves, and others. If you think not looking great in RL relegates you to a lower caste, try that in second life… in many circles, you’ll practically be a non-entity, and might even be labeled as a griefer if you look weird enough. The assumption will be that you’re there to throw a monkey in the wrench.

If the outer world progresses en masse into the inner world, rather than breaking down barriers, I’d say we’re buying into the very things that we should be running away from as fast as both our atomic and our pixelated legs can take us. Pressures to be this. Pressures to be that. Equating beauty with value of personality or worth of soul. Are we rushing headlong into a mode of thinking in which no one even considers anymore the rightness of being able to peer past the surface and ascertain the truth of something, or is it all a bunch of pixels anyway, and no one’s really fooled or concerned about it? I think the seriousness with which people apply RL norms of beauty and trappings of social status to their avatars says it’s more the former than the latter.

That’s why the Crap Mariners and Keeme Browns and Razzap Snookums of the world with their robot, dinosaur, and martian avatars get my vote. And, oh yeah, the Rezzednecks too. They realize the absurdity of accepting the Mirror World as more than what it is, and they say so by refusing to accept the conventional wisdom that, having been presented with the opportunity for pixelated perfection, one has no choice but to accept it.

By the way, speaking of all the aforementioned characters… keep an eye out on the Rezzednecks rss feed in the next week or so.

I’m starting to sell a line of products, primarily prefabs for smaller plots that fit in with beach themes, under the brand name Tiny Beach Prims.

Right now the products are primarily on SLExchange, but I will have an in-world store on Podcaster Island soon.

I’ve tried to keep the prices reasonable, and there’s lots more to come over the upcoming months.

Until I get the in-world store with demo rezzer set up, please feel free to IM me and ask to see one of the prefabs if you are interested. And do check out the product videos page as well.

Here’s a sample of one of the videos:

Here’s a secret: the reason I’m spending so much time lately on this whole recording SL voice thing is that I still get a lot people clicking on links to a post I used to have on the topic that somehow got lost when I migrated my blog from wordpress.com to my own host. I’m not really sure I’ve reproduced the information I had in that post.

Because of that, and because I’ve posted some stuff that doesn’t really neatly wrap up the options, this will be my last and most summarizing post on the topic. Without further ado, if you’re a Mac owner and you want to record voice conversations from within second life, here are some of the options that I’ve used in the past or present, and possibly the future.

1. Ubercaster.

This application is really intended as a podcasting app, and it’s brilliant at it. Sure, guys like Sigler will poo-poo it’s sound quality, but I don’t think he’s used it lately (it’s greatly improved since 1.0 days) and he’s also probably making the mistake of using the built-in mp3 converter. I don’t know WHY, but apps that use the LAME converter are always readily apparent to my ears. I export as AAC and convert to mp3 in iTunes. Why that sounds better, I don’t know. It does.

With Ubercaster, it’s really simple. Add a Mic panel for your mic. Add an audiochat panel. Now open the Second Life Voice Chat prefs, open the device settings, and set the input device to Ubercaster Out, set the output device to Ubercaster In, and you’re done. Click record in Ubercaster and head off to Ahern to record hours of yammering idiots with no purpose in life and way too many recreational pharmaceuticals in their medicine cabinets.

2. Wiretap Studio.

In the case of Wiretap Studio, you’re just going to let it grab your mic input and all system audio output, and record that. Unfortunately you’ll find that it’s mixed it all into one nice lovely track, which makes editing a bitch if you need to cut out yourself talking over your guest or whatever, or if you simply need to adjust levels easily.

But it’s easy, and it works. Just configure it as shown below, with Mac Audio and whatever your mic is called as inputs to the recording. Then record. Really. Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.

3. Audio Hijack Pro.

I include AHP because it is a good program, and mainly because I used to use it. But there’s one thing I don’t like about how it captures system audio. It requires installation of another program called Soundflower. In theory, soundflower is a cool, free app that lets you route sounds all over the place from one source into whatever target you want. In practice I’ve found it somewhat flaky, and in fact some programs like iShowU that use it have been known to not reset the system audio routing back to the way it was before the app was run, or they don’t capture the system audio in the recording, or whatever. Personally, I advise other options instead of anything that relies on soundflower.

Anyway, you’ll have to do the same as with Wiretap Studio, just set the device to capture to system audio.

As for capturing your mic along with that, I know it’s easy to do if you’re hijacking an app, but I can’t remember how easy it is if you’re capturing all system audio because I didn’t want to install the soundflower kernel extension just to take a picture of how the setup looks. Sorry. Again, if you already have this product, then experiment, and I’ll be happy to update this post with your findings, and if you don’t have it, get Wiretap Studio instead. Or keep reading for my final option.

4. Wiretap Anywhere plus your favorite recording application.

This option is really cool because if you like to edit stuff in Garageband, let’s say, but you’re frustrated with its inability to capture skype conversations or SL voice chats, anger no more. Now you can. Or you can use this with Ubercaster to capture all SL sounds and voice by routing all Mac Audio into ubercaster, OR you can use the voice chat panel in ubercaster to get the voice chat, as described in option 1, and then use this to route SL sounds (everything besides voice) onto a separate track in Ubercaster. Nice, huh?

To use this with Garageband, you’d set up a device in WTA for all system audio.

Then you’d open up Garageband, and in preferences, on the Audio/Midi tab, set up the Audio Input to use the WTA device you created for system audio.

Finally, add a new track, choose “Real Instrument,” and then in the track info pane, set the input source to your WTA device that’s set up to capture system audio. Then record. Yay.

To use with Ubercaster, add another mic panel, and set its audio source as the WTA device that’s set to capture system audio.

If instead you’d like to capture the SL voice as in option 1, with the voicechat panel, and then also capture the other SL sounds to a separate track, then just set up ubercaster as per option 1, then create a device in WTA that captures SL audio, and then back in ubercaster add another mic panel that uses that WTA device as the audio source.

Isn’t all this amazing?! Aren’t you glad you came back for MORE TALKING ABOUT RECORDING VOICE IN SL!?! DON’T YOU WONDER HOW MUCH A FLAMETHROWER COSTS, HUH?!!!!?

Ok, well, that’s it on this topic. This goose is cooked, this train is derailed and down the mountainside, and this bomb’s been dropped in the Nevada desert. Now it’s time for you to enjoy how easy my little pretty pictures will make your life when it’s time for YOU to record voice in SL.

Doitashimashite, avatar-san.

Other posts on this topic by me:

More SL Voice Recording Fun on the Mac

SL Voice the Ubercaster Way

Recording Voice in SL - Repub

Tonight I got to play with a piece of software that increases recording options for Second Life voice and sounds. I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s called WireTap Anywhere.

Wiretap Anywhere lets you create audio devices comprised of one or more sound sources.

In the picture above, I’ve created a device I named Second Life Sounds + iTunes. As you can see on the right side of the pane, this device has Second Life and iTunes wired into it. What happens is that you now have a mix of whatever’s playing in iTunes and Second Life sounds. Note that I didn’t say SL voice, as SL voice runs in its own process and isn’t captured this way.

Since I do my podcast recording with Ubercaster, I opened Ubercaster, added a second mic panel, and then set the audio input source for that mic not to a physical mic, but to the WireTap Anywhere device I created.

I then logged into SL, hit record on Ubercaster, and started making sound effects and playing SL sounds in-world, while listening to Mitch Kapor’s SL5B speech in iTunes. The net result was a track in ubercaster that had all the sounds from these two sources recorded in it.

Ok, there’s no voice in there, so who cares, right? Well. I do. SL issues aside, I record the podcaster meetups on podcast island in SL. I had two choices before WireTap Anywhere, use WireTap Studio (not the same as WireTap Anywhere as it can capture data from apps but not re-route it to other apps) and grab all system audio and also my mic if I wanted, or use Ubercaster and record SL Voice only (no other SL sounds) with my Mic on a separate track. Disadvantage of option 1 - it wouldn’t record directly into ubercaster so then I’d have to take that track and dump it in, plus if I recorded my mic with it, it was all on one track. Disadvantage of option 2 - it only gets the voice and doesn’t get the sounds like the typing sounds of people typing questions which help the listener understand, “ok, something is going on there,” for example.

With WireTap anywhere, using the method shown above, I can now record all the SL sounds such as typing, etc, if I want to, and then use the traditional Ubercaster Voice Chat Panel plus setting the SL Voice Chat Device Settings to get input from Ubercaster output and send output to Ubercaster input, and now have all the audio I want directly into Ubercaster with nothing else to do afterwords. And in a way that lets my mic, SL sounds, and SL voice each have their own channel which makes editing and adjusting levels so much easier.

Granted, WireTap Anywhere provides audiophiles or anyone doing wacky stuff with audio on their macs a LOT more interesting capabilities than this, but relating it to SL voice and sound recording, this is cool. If you like Garageband, guess what? You can now use this to record skype audio directly into Garageband and keep their audio and your mic audio separate for great editing results. You can also do with SL audio and voice what I detail above, except that you’d have to capture system audio instead and route that into Garageband, since it lacks the voice chat panel necessary to directly capture the SL voice. But still, if you can live with having SL voice and SL sounds on one track, you can now record them directly into garageband that way.

It’s not cheap, it’s a $120 program. But if you’re a podcaster or a person who needs to route audio all over the place to make cool things happen, it might be well worth it for you.

One disclaimer here, if you do have Ubercaster you should be able to drop on a voice chat panel and select your system audio output to go to Ubercaster Input using a simple menubar application like SoundSource. But you’ll still wind up with sounds and voice on one channel, which you might be just fine with.

Oh, and just one other comment. It amazes me daily that I can do this kind of stuff so easily in OS X and my friends with Vista say they are unable to record both their Mic AND system audio at the same time. That kills machinima, podcasting in-world, etc. Why we let any OS vendor get away with that with something as basic as audio in 2008 is beyond me.