Reading Radar

It’s about to become 2009. Most of you are already there. So, what’s it like? I know everyone is supposed to make resolutions and all that, but instead of doing that, maybe the resolutions I should list are on the part of an island. An island formerly known as Podcast island. An island that resolves to have a new name, a new look, a new owner, a new sense of community to move on with the changes.

I’ll let Itazura announce the new name when he wants, or let it just show up on the map after the transfer goes through, but the new look is already pretty much complete. The Destination Station was and continues to be a highly popular drop-in spot for explorers looking for cool locations and builds in SL, so Itazura dropped it in the center of the island. Then he partitioned off the plots into mini-islands and re-united them with a road encircling the outer island. It’s both separate and joined, peacefully isolating and yet more uniting than the previous layout. It’s nice.

Gary will have a place to record video for his fastpitch softball stuff in the SE corner, which you can see in the picture above (the big round yellow softball) so he’ll still be around. Right now I think the list of people with rented parcels is Gary, Gomem Desoto, Keeme and Nika, Danny Dwyer, Arri Gaffer, Stuart Warf, me, SLPN headquarters, and umm. Some Rezzednecks.

Some more views:

As for me, I’m floating a little prefab near the start/finish line of the racetrack so I can hang my feet over the edge and look out at the water.

Oh, yeah… if you’re driving by, and you can’t find a rest stop… feel free to help yourself. I guess maybe this is what I think of all the negativity on the SL blogs at the moment, and the people projecting it.

Itazura took the change in circumstances and handled them in his usual thinking manner. He did a great job. I think it’s going to be a fun place with a sense of community again.

Christmas cannot be complete without a little unsolicited media, so here’s some for ya. Daphne and I did a little special about Christmas stuff in SL, and she has a version of the audio on her podcast feed, I have one on my podcast feed, and then there’s this video:

If you’re subscribed to the SLPN Video feed, you’ll get that as a little stocking stuffer for your ipod.

… should you choose to accept it…

For ep 42 of the podcast, please submit to me a 1 to 2 minute maximum recording of yourself stating your name, the name of your favorite role-playing sim, and a very short comment as to why you like it. Please note that you do not have to roleplay there, or be a roleplayer, or into any kind of period or other interest community. You just have to have seen it and liked it.

I’m looking for stuff like Caledon, Samurai Edo, Babbage, Avilion, Isle of Wyrms, etc, etc. Things where average adults (or people who didn’t do age verification) can go to act out historical or other interests without getting all freaky and bizzaro. I’m really not looking for anything gorean or otherwise dubiously inclined, but hey.. submit what you got, and if I use it, I use it! No prizes, cash money, or prim attachments shall be rewarded. The joy of knowing that you’re part of the digital record of the metaversion known as SL will warm your soul and tarnish your reputation at work.

Deadline is Friday, Dec 12th. Record in mp3 preferably. If you want to use utterli or some other online recording service, that’s fine, just make sure I get the right link and the sound quality is usable in my podcast. If it’s close to the crappy sound I generate every episode, it should be fine.

Email to Radar dot Masukami at that gmail.com thingy.

Avatars, start your recorders!

I subscribed to a new podcast this week after seeing it mentioned on twitter. Voices in the Machine, a podcast by Caledon residents. Their self-description:

Voices in the Machine is a podcast by, for, and about Steampunk explorers in the virtual world of Second Life®, published biweekly by Radio Riel: Real Radio, Your Reality.

I listened to episode one partly last night and finished it up on the way to work today. I like it. They did a good job of explaining some of their basic background as relates to Caledon, and did some discussion of the Openspace nonsense. They were professional and well spoken on the matter. They’d done some testing on Openspaces themselves and they put forth their assertion that LL is definitely not lying about seeing performance issues with heavily loaded openspaces. FINALLY, SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THIS!! I’d recommend them for that alone!!

Fortunately, that’s not the only reason to recommend them. I still have a couple episodes to go to get caught up. The only noticeable need for improvement was on audio quality, but it wasn’t that bad. All new podcasts start off needing a little work there, and look, I’m still messing with mine. A couple sections had me struggling to hear Gabrielle Riel compared to the others, otherwise it was an immaterial fact.

Really looking forward to getting caught up and hearing new episodes come out. It may be a fairly targeted podcast, but I think even non-residents of Caledon and those who don’t particularly get into Victorian era roleplay will find it interesting. I really like new podcasts in and about SL that have something to say, and not just a need to speak.

I mentioned earlier that I invited RightAsRain Rimbaud of Rezzable and Catherine Linden of…. well, Linden Lab, to come on the podcast and talk to me basically about openspaces.

UPDATE: RightAsRain got back to me and is willing to come on the podcast. Awesome. He’s got a wealth of interesting information from his experiences with Rezzable, I have no doubt it will be a fun one.

Catherine I still haven’t heard from.

I pulled my post because I wanted to rethink exactly what I want to ask RightAsRain about, and how, etc.

I do want to ask him about Rezzable’s business plan, how much of what a lot of business owners in SL see as a downturn is due to LL and how much is just due to the economy, RL worries, and the fact that making money in the metaverse is currently just very hard with a limited pool of people willing to spend much on virtual goods.

I put out a note to Jack Linden asking if he’d be willing to appear on SL Under the Radar so I could get his side of the openspaces. After all, well known companies like Rezzable are publicly questioning LL over the Openspace policy changes. Jack promptly responded to me and directed me to Catherine. I just now sent her a request so she hasn’t really had time to respond yet. I’m hoping to find out some of the technical issues involved and why supporting loaded OS sims at the current price levels wasn’t making sense, and maybe some reasoning behind the original prim count increase on the OSes that people use as their excuse for believing that LL wanted them to use them as normal sims.

I also invited Rightasrain Rimbaud of said Rezzables to find out why they insinuate on their post that the reason they’re getting rid of 6 full sims by the end of Nov has anything to do with Openspaces - if in fact I’m correct and that’s what they are insinuating. After all, the price of full sims hasn’t changed, and if they aren’t making money on them, that’s hardly LL’s fault. I honestly suspect something else, which is that making money in anyone’s metaverse right now is just damn difficult. Oh, well… Rightasrain got my notecard, but no response. I’ll do the episode either way, with or without official response. I can speculate on them the same way they speculate on the Lindens “evil” motives.

I guess what it boils down to is that after watching Rezzables at work since they first appeared in-world, it doesn’t seem to me they’ve ever had a solid way of generating consistent, bill-paying type revenue, and now it also appears that they’re kind of thanking LL for that fact. Which, if I’m correct on both those points, seems both disingenuous and a little silly, frankly.

Yay, it’s back!

That was the easiest episode ever, I let Itazura Radio and Stuart Warf do all the talking. So thanks! And umm. Where’s the clips for next time? Anyone?

Ok, the next episode of the podcast already has a theme, but Bettina Tizzy’s post on the Openspace price hike and the comments on options for metaverse party time got me thinking. How about a future episode on the various metaversions, as investigated/reported by some of the SL types I know?

Who wants in? IM me, email me, send up smoke signals. Windows, Mac, and Linux users all welcome. I’ll for sure need some windows types to help out as a few of the metaversional sons of bitches only offer windows clients and access. Guess how I’ll personally rate those bastards? Openlife Grid will be one of the ones we’ll test, since they’ve been making such a huge pitch for SL’ers unhappy with SL at the moment.

Lemme know. Only requirements are you can record your voice in decent quality and export to mp3 or aac or something similar. And use email. Once I get some volunteers we’ll make a list of metaversions and divide and conquer. And pull no punches.

Let’s see if there really will be designers, etc, pouring out of SL in droves anytime soon for alternative worlds.

The way I waffled over quitting the podcast and then decided to keep it going, but open it up to other content creators who didn’t necessarily want to have their own podcast got me thinking…

Is it really burnout when you only have so much time and a lot of things you want to do, learn, and accomplish? Or is it just being a normal, non-boring adult who wants to build on skills and learn new ones? I know it was taken as burnout that I wanted to quit the podcast, but it was really more about the fact I only have finite time, and a lot of stuff I want to do. Instead of getting upset about it, people should be able to empathize with it. People who don’t have more interests than time need to learn to look around more (I had to offend someone, or I wouldn’t feel right about this blog post).

Anyway, #40 is in the works with the call out to a few people on a specific theme, if you can record yourself in decent quality and are so inclined, contact me and let me know if you’re interested and I haven’t dropped a notecard on you yet. I’ll send the details and you can read Dr. Seuss into a microphone, and we’ll call it good.