Reading Radar

Yay for toilet bowls! I mean, PODCASTS!

Ep 35 of SL Under the Radar is up, finally.

This is part one of a two-parter. I just had too many good interviews to cram into one, and that’s even with the fact that there were a lot of people who I wound up not contacting.

It’s about a topic that hearkens way back to Crap Mariner’s comments in Ep 1, and indeed that underlies every episode of this podcast and probably almost every other podcast about Second Life.

No, not toilets. Well. Not SPECIFICALLY about them.

Arminasx Saiman and I were talking about SL related blogs and podcasts the other day, not particular ones, but just the fact that audiences for both are by default, limited in number.

I’ll grant you that there are a number of popular SL related blogs (this not really being one of them) but the fact still holds true that only a limited group of people is going to have interest in subscribing to an SL blog compared to the number of people that might want to subscribe to something like Lifehacker or The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Bearing in mind that with a blog, web searches bring traffic in that might not otherwise find the blog, and that once there, the material is at least right in front of their faces and there is at least a small chance they might stay and read, and I have to think that blogs are much more likely to attract new random followers than podcasts are. People may randomly stumble across a podcast but then they have a barrier of deciding to listen, and that entails downloading it or subscribing unless they use the blog’s player control. But I doubt people will typically fire up an hour long audio file that they found by accident.

Given all this, I’m wondering, how do I grow my SL Under the Radar podcast? I don’t mean I want to have 40,000 downloads a week (that would be more than my hosting can handle) or that I want to rule the universe, but I’ve noticed the podcast has plateaued in terms of listeners. It just feels like things could be more active, and even so with my current listeners. Am I doing a good enough job of getting you involved and a part of the podcast? I don’t know. I’m not sure where people stand on that question. I think SLPN has some work to do in this area too, and it’s something I think we should start considering more heavily.

I don’t have time or inclination to just promote my podcast all over the web. Truth be told, I hate self-promotion. But among the SL podcasts, I think mine’s one of the good ones. I know that’s rare coming from me, the eternally self-effacing man with the mic, but I don’t say that vainly. I think I’ve had good guests who are genuinely interesting people and it makes me even enjoy listening to my own podcasts again after uploading them just to hear them, and get a sense of their thoughts and personalities.

I think I can say without being egotistical or having a overly inflated view of my work that this podcast should be at least one that gets thought of when thinking of SL related podcasts to subscribe to. So this leads me down the path of doing some thinking about how to be taken seriously without having to become overly serious about my material. And while recognizing I only have so much time to work on it. I think that’s the hard part of podcasting for me, being able to take advantage of limited opportunities for recording time.

For the moment, all I can ask is that if you enjoy any of the SL related podcasts, let your friends know. All of the podcasters I know in SL take their podcasts seriously and work hard on them. Feel free to drop them a line and let them know what’s working, and what’s not. You, the listeners, are the reason we do this in the first place. If you’re not enjoying it, we podcasters won’t be either.

Yeah, it’s the Live Show direct and live from the old SLPN headquarters on Nowhereville!!!!!!!! Umm. Three weeks after it happened. Oops.

Hey, sue me. Or wait, don’t. I spent all my money on a new boat, but it handles nice. I guess you could sue me for that, but it’s non-transferable. Sorry.

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.

Posted Ep 32 of SL Under the Radar today, it’s a long one too. 1:30:33. Yikes. It’s kind of a freewheeling discussion a few of us took part in inside the Destination Station on Podcast Island.

One of the other things I talked about was something I took part in thanks to ArminasX Saiman putting my name forward for. Teaser image below. I talked about it briefly here, and I plan to interview Mr. Unpronounceable himself about that and other topics soon.

Have a listen, and enjoy… if nothing else, it’s long enough to while away the time while you mow your lawn, and your neighbor’s lawn, then your other neighbor’s lawn, then the renter down the street who has a ford pinto hiding in his lawn, and then… and.. umm… “plonk”.

The SL Under the Radar podcast is getting a new home. You won’t notice by the URL’s as they won’t change. But the look and the rss feed will change. Hopefully itunes updates ok and nothing’s lost… meaning listeners.

It looks a LOT like this blog, actually! No coincidence there.. I’m using the Freshy2 wordpress theme for both. Actually the old RadarMasukami.com blog theme was Freshy (the original). The more things change, the more I stay up late at night moving stuff around… I mean, the more it stays the same! Yeah. Or something.

PS. The bad thing is I lost all the listener comments because libsyn, as far as I can tell, does not have a way to export the feed like any other real blog software ever used by mankind.

Yay, Episode 4 of SLPN in your Face is up, and it’s on an exploration jaunt over to “the Far Away” (blogged about recently here).

The best news is that starting with this episode, the podcasts will be ipod formatted. I tested it out on my iPod Touch and it worked and looked great. Thanks to Gomem DeSoto for pushing me to get with the program and make that happen. It just makes sense and it’s actually a lot of fun viewing these on the iPod.

Ok, I know you’ve all heard of the Privateer Space sim. What’s that? No, you have. No, really. YES, YOU HAVE, NOW ZIP IT, BUSTER!!

Ok, calm… calming down now. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Privateer Space. You’ve heard of it, maybe even been there. It’s been blogged about endlessly, and Chug and I went there early on in its development process, even shot a little video. But the sheer amount of stuff to see is worth multiple trips. And that’s what we did last night again, shooting video for the first exploration cast for the upcoming “SLPN In Your Face” video podcast. Most likely this will be a serious multi-parter.

The SLPN In Your Face video podcast is going to have content from several members of the Second Life Podcast Network, and will have a variety of stuff from explorations, tutorials, bits of musical events, explosions, and a lot more. Expect at least 4 10 minute or so videos per month between the lot of us.

Ok, so in the meantime, until the podcast is ready, check out the following pictures of us exploring the sim and having a great time doing so. It’s a packed place, from top to bottom. Get in there… see it… pee in the truckstop toilets. Whatever suits your space fancy.

The fun starts at the Galactic Truck Stop.

It really is a truck stop, complete with a store with sci-fi toys and trucker caps.

The Agriculture Station. I was told by the sim owner/creator that there would be NO produce isle, no, never.

Staring into space and thinking… “do avatar sheep dream of”… no, nm. I’m not gonna ask. I’m sure certain Robots already think everyone’s dreaming of them as is.

Wow, what kind of funky Windlight first look is running on THIS computer?!

History is fascinating… really. I’m telling you, there’s a whole channel developed around history!! (But not on SLCN, so don’t check)

I have a bunch more pics in the Privateer Sim set in my Flickr Account.

Some blog posts get archived eventually, while others go directly there. In episode 24 of SL Under the Radar, Chug took you to Archive on Lucusolus, the art exhibit sim where you are the art and all the world’s a prop.

I wanted to wait until some of you’d had a chance to go be mangled by enjoy this exhibit before I posted incriminating pictures. Also I have some video footage of the place that we shot while there, which I will post eventually. I’m so far behind in my various project editing. I give.. you win!! Wait. You lose! I mean, if you’re waiting on ME for something…

Anyway, below are just some of the lucusolus images, the rest of which can be found on flickr in the explore set. There’s a bunch of ‘em.

You start off outside, looking at the hyperactive bilge pump that keeps sucking spare prims out of the sea and dumping them on land, to bounce around until they wind up in the sea again. Very cyclic.

I hope that cow’s got some good water filters installed. Cause I know where it’s gonna be going…

We sat on a crate and waited to see if we’d get knocked into the water.

Okay, enough of that… let’s go ’splore some more.

Where you wanna go first? What? No ideas?

Ok, fine… this room looks… padded? Is this Cee Rap’s room?? And if so… what’s with the naked skins hanging everywhere. Ewww, I always knew she was some kind of “Silence of the Lambs” type… even robots like to dress up pretty, I guess. “It puts the lotion in the basket…”

Okay, escaping from cuckooville makes me hungry. Soup, anyone?

No? Maybe some pizza?

15 minutes or less, or your pizza’s free, right? While we wait, how about we google “SL Mentor Zone” and see if they’re still going undercover to expose the dark side of life as a newbie. Go ahead.. you use the ‘puter first. I’ll just purge my brain of the “Cee Rap Skin Collection” images.

Ok, well, umm. Let’s sit and ponder our next step, and… Chug? Chug.. you don’t look so well… (after effect images not shown so that you’ll GO EXPLORE THE DAMN PLACE ON YOUR OWN!!)

Go check it out. And sit in the chairs. And click on things. And say things. Video yourself in action and post them on YouTube or something. Sure, I’ll pimp your links. Just do it!

Looks like some friends of Maximillion Kleene were having fun at his expense tonight, and some friends of mine caught it on virtual polaroid.

I just finally got around to releasing episode 24 of SL Under the Radar, and guess what? Maximillion Kleene’s the guest. I think you’ll find him to be laid back, friendly, and with a sense of humor. I’m saying all this to convince myself he’s not gonna be too upset with me for posting this picture which the photographer themselves refused to do. He’ll LOVE it! Yeah, that’s it!