Reading Radar

Life’s just getting weirder all the time. Somehow Podcast Island got designated as a community service hub. What’s that all about?

I’ll give these guys one month and if they don’t shape up, I’m orbiting them AND their trailer. No exceptions, no apologies. Hey, got any raccoon tamales left?

Alright, I ADMIT IT!!!!!! It’s not original. But I finally put 7Seas fishing equipment on Podcast Island and Podcaster Island. Dedric asked if I wanted to go over to Woodbridge and fish, so I joined a huge crowd of people there… unfortunately I was lagged out, as you can tell by the green clouds where avatars should have been.

But the net result was, I found out how fun the 7Seas thing is so I bought the vendor kit and put a copy on Podcaster Island on the SW corner. There are servers on the shore and in the “floating hut” as well.

Then I flew over to Podcast Island and put in a vendor and some fishing servers there too. Hey, we have a dock, just sitting there….

Yay, unoriginal fun! Come catch something! Wait, I heard that at a party once. But this time I mean it in a good way!

Dedric Mauriac, the original guy with blue hair, took time out of his busy schedule tonight to come help me get set up with what I need for running a php script on my server for converting rss feeds to SSS. I was looking for a way to get rss parsing onto my own server and have flexibility on how to implement the LSL scripts in-world to call that, so that we could create video players for the SLPN headquarters and the Destination Station on PI for video podcast viewing which are fully copiable so that they can be rezzed from a variant of Itazura’s RezzHud.

This kind of help goes above and beyond the call of duty and it shows the really giving side of community in SL. Huge thanks to Dedric for setting me up.

You can find his store on his Woodbridge sim next to Edloe, or check out his products on SLExchange. And finally, here’s a video from an SLCN tv interview with Yxes Delacroix.

One thing I almost forgot to mention, there is another scripter in SL with a free podcast player who states on his slexchange page that he’ll help people get set up if they want to run the php scripts on their own servers. I contacted him via IM and notecard (which he accepted) but never got a response. Even a simple “I don’t have time for this nonsense” would have been fine, because that’s an answer I can completely understand. The moral of the story is to support people who have a history of collaboration with others. Dedric’s always been really involved in helping others find answers to their problems.

One of the things I love about being a podcaster in SL is that people have access to you, if they want it, in a way that being a “normal” podcaster will never get you.

Tonight, I was up in the sky working on some typically unskilled build ideas for the new SLPN building on Podcast Island, when I got an IM from Mathaios Brandenburg. Yes, he has a name that will have Keeme Brown ranting about names again. Anyway, he’s a listener and he wanted to come by and say hi. I tp’d him over and we talked in voice for a little bit. He’s got some interesting ideas and some of his thoughts about doing things in SL that aren’t possible in RL fit in with what I’m working on for episode 35 of the podcast. What about 34? That’s going to be the recording from the SLPN meetup. If I edit it and podpress fixes their little Wordpress plug-in.

Sorry for the bad picture, it’s the one saved by SL from when I logged off. I didn’t think to get a picture before I logged off. I really wasn’t thinking about blogging about a random conversation, but it really illustrated the coolness of meeting people who listen to the podcast and understand that I’m just some dude and I’m every bit as excited to meet them as they could ever be to meet me. I’ve met too many cool people this way to count… I’d forget someone and that would suck, but you know who you are and it’s been fun each time. Tonight it was especially nice as it, along with a conversation and blog post from Crap Mariner, turned my mood about podcasting in SL for the positive again.

Podcast Island has taken its share of shots by people in the past. Sometimes it’s about the fact that Gary’s not around much (and he’s not at the moment, he’s dealing with RL work), sometimes it’s about the fact that it’s often empty (which it is to a large degree, atm).  The funny thing is that a lot of the people who say it’s empty are the same ones who didn’t want to stick around and help make it not empty.  I heard on another podcast this week that we are boring and stuffy there. My immediate mental response was “how would you know?”

Recently I was told by someone that they didn’t want to live on podcaster island because of all the weirdos. What weirdos? That’s either me, Arri, Rob, Itazura, or Chug, and now Stuart, a lot of times. There is no one else there, remember?  Sure, there are some shops and some presences set up, but I rarely see any of those people.  I’m paying rent on the SW corner and I’ve never been bothered by anyone.  Then again, I’m personally not looking for privacy and seclusion. So maybe I just don’t care if people blunder in. That’s part of the fun.

I guess where I’m going with this is that I stand by my answer to Crap on his “Podcasting in SL” series of interviews.  My answer to the question of is there a podcasting community in SL is no. There are several communities, and people move between them, collaboration takes place between them, sometimes verbal potshots and comments are issued towards the other communities in them, but they are definitely distinct and (for the most part) fairly fluid.

Everyone has their ideas on how things should be run. I have mine. Certainly if I wanted to I could lob a few cheap shots back at people without even having to strain, but I’d rather not. I know people are all limited on time and energy, and I don’t mind if people aren’t coming running offering to help build community on podcast and podcaster islands. Certainly there’s areas where those of us who are there could do a lot better. So that doesn’t bother me. But you’ll have to forgive me if my enthusiasm for helping your communities sometimes dampens for a little while after another snarky remark or a stupid statement. I’m only human.

Update: I appreciated Crap’s response to this post.

Seems like a lot of people I know are taking their land and shutting stuff in and making everything private. I’d rather see people making use of stuff. The SW corner of podcaster island may not be spectacular, but it’s open, and meant to be used by people.

I’m still messing around with the main buildings, and there will be a deck again to replace the one I tore out.. when it’s there, use it. It’ll have a dj area again, granted no one can change the stream atm, but I’ll put in something for setting the stream that anyone can make use of. The merry go round and the bouncy animal rides that Chug set up are still in place.

Look, I even put in a laptop for you to gaze in wonder at my podcast site on. It’s got high speed wireless too…. as far as you know.

Once I get the building figured out and find something likeable in those prims, it’ll have a lounging area for video podcast viewing for SLPN and Torley videos.

There’s a fire and benches on the boomerang boardwalk if you want to sit and talk and hope I don’t pop in and start asking lots of personal questions.

It’d be fun to have a whole sim full of residents who put up things they like and then open them up to anyone. But that’s not really how podcaster island is set up and it’s not really what people want to do in general, I guess. I understand wanting your own “stuff” but let’s face it.. in SL, if someone wants in, they’re coming in. Besides, you meet the coolest people and have a lot more fun encountering those people than you do hiding inside a closed up building. Rocky and Jane have been long time practitioners of making stuff that others can wander in and make use of on Edloe. And here on Podcaster Island, Rob’s place has long been open and accessible to anyone.

Come around and see who’s around sometime.. or just hang out and use whatever’s there.

Hopefully people will come around more with the SLPN building moving to Podcast island, and a couple friendly accessible spots on podcaster island, and people will realize that, despite pronouncement on a recent SL podcast that we’re stuffy and boring on PI, that’s never been the case with the people I know here. You just haven’t been around.

I’m just one little avatar, and I’m not really trying to change the world. All I’m saying is, come use the stuff on these islands. Respect those residents who aren’t so open, but come play on the SW corner of podcaster island and hit the Destination Station on the south end of Podcast Island (west of center on the south end). Or stay locked up playing house and be stuffy and boring yourselves. Either way’s fine with me.

If you’re thinking of voting robot in this upcoming election, you might want to watch this video first. Clearly they are planning something. I’m not sure exactly what.. I think the Wright brothers got further on their first attempt. And his driving? I mean, you’d think robots and machines would be like cops and donuts, but… not so much.

On the other hand, I haven’t seen much of the martian lately, so is it better to vote incompetent, or absentee? Not sure… I think I’ll just vote for Donald Duck again.

We met someone at the Destination Station, or someone IMd me… I don’t really remember… but they mentioned they found it because it turned up as the top search result in an SL search for “meet new people.” Hmmm. I wish I could remember who told me that, maybe I could get some insight into what they were actually hoping to find?

Oh, well. I’m sure they were only looking for someone to play bingo with. But they got something better - a place with links to some great builds to explore.

Ok, I lied… it’s not that tiny but it is attached to Tiny House on Podcaster Island. I decided to add a deck there where people could hang out, watch video podcasts, listen to music, dance if they feel like it, sit in the pool, and generally have something to do while they wait for the next beachball to come along (Mac owners know what I mean). Note: this is a work in progress.

There’s an upper deck area that I want to make into kind of a DJ platform.

It has a pool on the opposite end of the deck.

It’s pretty much going to be bigger than Tiny House.

There should always be a couple friends hanging around to talk to.

It’s obviously not done yet and I’m debating making it fixed, or rezzable as needed. Either way, adding that to the playground toys in the NW corner of the plot, there should be something to keep wanderers interested for a second or two.

Previously, I blogged about how Itazura Radio came up with the concept of the Destination Station on Podcast Island, and how he planned for it to be a home base for the “homeless” to set their Home to, after they’ve joined the group so SL will let them do so. And of course, I mentioned the fact that it would be filled with destination boards to click on to go to a variety of fun and interesting sims and builds to explore. Tonight we started getting some of those boards operational with a few of our recent explorations.

True, there’s only a handful now, but we’ll keep plugging away and adding more. Instead of putting Chug’s explorations for the SL Under the Radar podcast in the podcast suite, we’ll put them on destination boards here instead. It will make it easier and more fun to find and click on something to go to.

When someone clicks on one of the boards, two things happen. First, the map opens with the destination on it, ready for them to TP to should they desire. Secondly, they are asked if they’d like to receive a notecard with information on the destination. If so, they get a notecard explaining more about the location (and typically an embedded LM for future use as well).

Hopefully this will be a fun place to hang out and watch video podcasts upstairs or find places to explore downstairs, and maybe set as home for those who don’t have a real place they call home or feel comfortable using to rez in or rez out.