Whats your Second Life?

I am currently listening to SL Under the Radar’s part 2 of The Toilet Bowl and it got me thinking, what on earth is Second Life to people. What is it that they do?

Me?

I am an evil tyrant who wants to wage nuclear war on Nowhereville who is secretly an evil timelord.

Why?

I love Doctor Who and thats why I am an evil timelord. The nuclear war thing is because I am scared of Nuclear War.  I used to have regular nightmares about Nuclear War but for some reason, since I started playing around with nukes in Second Life it sort of eased my fears and I haven’t had a nightmare about it in a long freaking time.

Thats a sort of insight to why Warf is Warf. What about you? Do you do anything wacky that you wouldn’t do in Real Life that you do in your Second Life? Is this post entirely pointless to you?

Biography

Currently…
I am Stuart Warf. An avatar who was born on the 2nd of May 2006 in Second Life. My avatar is an evil timelord who’s TARDIS was left stranded in this world remaining in the current timeline until I can escape this virtual world (In case you don’t know, Heres a Doctor Who Wikipedia Page). My hobbies include Physical Prim tricks, building and podcasting. I currently live at Podcast Island where the SLPN Studios lie.

A Brief History of Stuart Warf
I originally joined Second Life in 2006 when alot of the podcasting community discovered Second Life and thought that it had amazing potential, which they were correct but failed to see it and left when the eighties has-been left. During 2006 I, along with Gomem Desoto, formed a group called The Podmafia (the actual group name is The Pod Mafia), which later in August - September had 5 episodes of a podcast called The Podmafia Podcast, which originally was aimed at going around places in Second Life and teaching the masses about podcasting.

Then came 2007. In the early beginning I was partnered but that soon ended. So became my life of living. For a month I resided in SoHo, but for some reason I just didn’t like renting there. So I left but still hung out to see the crazy and wacky stuff going on there. It was around this time when I temporarily brought back The Podmafia Podcast for 3 episodes. Then came Life, Living in Nowhereville. From around March until August I rented land under Madison Carnot while hosting the Take it or Leave it at Nowhereville. This however stopped for me when Take it or Leave it ended. But that was short lived when Crap Mariner injected new life into Nowhereville shortly after the Second Life Woodstock event that took place in the Five Islands. During August Podmafia Podcast came back after troubled times and stayed strong with Yxes Delacroix as host. I re-rented at Nowhereville under Crap Mariner and continued to live there.

So in comes 2008, When I launched SLPN, a network dedicated to podcasts for the metaverse. During the year I continued to work on SLPN by bringing in new shows and new challenges such as live podcasting in Second Life. Up until July 2008 I had continued to live at Nowhereville. However after some thinking and a polite request I decided to leave Nowhereville and move to Podcast Island…

That’s the story so far…

Last Updated on the 18th of July 2008

What the Plurk?

Since Yxes wrote a post about Plurk…I will too.

Plurk is a Twitter-like webapp that in my opinion is brilliant. Why do I like Plurk so much that I have mentioned it on Podmafia two times and blogging about it now? It’s because Plurk is simply better than Twitter.

To me Twitter is a chaotic mess that you can’t really catchup on without going through pages and pages of tweets and adding people more and more to see what was replied to and by who. Not to mention that it is intertwined with the Fail Whale.

Plurk makes it easier for me to catchup on what’s been happening with people and also to read the threads of conversations. It also seems to be a good way of getting traffic fast. Case and Point, Yesterday I was flying around Second Life when I got an IM asking if I wanted to try out the PlurkHUD. Since I am a sucker for BETA I tried it out and gave my location away with the tool. Then GoSpeed turned up and GoSpeed told people where she was. After a while a whole crowd of people came and was just having fun and while Plurk is currently small in size of community it is seemingly quicker to get traffic.

Am I a plurk fanboy? Yes. Do I think people should leave Twitter. Yes. Will it happen. I don’t know.

But if you want to add me…well add me!

How do you solve a problem like Podmafia 50?

Hey Guys

I am currently in the process of uploading Podmafia Podcast Episode 49 and I have just started to think…

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE ACTUALLY GONNA DO FOR EPISODE 50?

So… I decided to throw something up on the blog and see if anything comes of it…

Here are a couple of ideas for shows we could do…

1. Top 5 Moments of Podmafia 1-50
2. A show where we reminisce on the past
3. Same old show

I am quite drawn to the whole Top 5 moments…but what exactly are the top 5 moments of the podcast.

More on the Dazzle

OK, so a previous post of mine about Dazzle got some traffic and I was informed that the idea of Dazzle is that it can indeed be skinned. Thats great. Infact Itazura Radio even linked me to some skins that are already being shown on the Second Life wiki.

After some prodding around on what it can do I’ve come to some conclusions and formed an opinion.

The current methodology of skinning is far too complicated for newbies and people who aren’t fans of editing code. I personally don’t mind getting around the code and copying & pasting stuff but some people just may not want to touch it.

Secondly, there appears to be no menu in the preferences that allows the changing of skins on the fly.

Also, there are no tools currently that could help people create and customise their own skins.

So here is my proposal on what I think needs to happen. Firstly, the Linden’s need to get their act together and bring in an easier system of importing GUI skins. They should do this by adding a new tab on the preferences called “Interface” or “Skins” (or anything else that describes it. Calling it just a Skin could confuse some people because of the avatar skins).

Next they need to implement a new structure on how skins can be stored. IE. SecondLife\Skins\* (* being the name of the interface)

Then the lindens should make a program that makes it easy for people to create GUI’s as easily as possible. If the lindens don’t do this then it should be fairly easy for someone to make a GUI application in something like Visual Basic .NET or whatever the tools are for the Macintosh. Preferably an open source tool since then its free for all and people can contribute and improve the code and stuff.

Thats my opinions for the designing. I personally don’t mind editing code but I would trade it any day for a simple little tool that can help me easily make a GUI for the new Dazzle interface.

n00b meets Warf

I just signed myself up for a new service called BitStrips and so far I love it. So much so that I have decided to try and do a 5 times a week comic strip about Second Life. This first one is loosely based on a true story of when I met a newbie. Expect n00b to come into play more often in the strip along with people we all know.

The BitStrip service is a little low on current customization but i’m pretty sure that it will change a lot in the future…

The Monday Meetup

Better late than never I guess…

Last Monday at Podcast Island the monthly Podcasters Meetup happened. Now I never really go to the meetup but I felt compelled to this time round because Cali Lewis was scheduled to appear…

But due to a scheduling cock-up that didn’t happen. I still ended up going though and we had a different topic come up.

During the discussion a big issue we discussed was how content is enjoyed in the new media age. For some reason I personally prefer using audio based podcasts to video. Why?

For the same reason as Crap Mariner

It takes up less space on my iPod touch and I can listen to it wherever I go. The only thing that really annoys me about the SLCN shows is that I feel like I have to watch it. I would prefer it if a lot of those shows were in audio. The only things that video seemingly works on SLCN is for the sports like “Sail On” and “SLascar Racing”. I should note that I am not really attacking SLCN’s method because after all…I am the “Chief Architect” of the Second Life PODCAST Network which is all about Audio.

Alot of the discussion was about SLPN (mostly cos all of the SLPNcasters were there)

Sure Video killed the Radio Star but does the same apply to podcasts that can be taken anywhere.

Anyway, it’s time for some PHOTOS

Remind me to go to more of the meetups because I really enjoyed this meetup.

AND a final note… the StuartWarf.com site is currently going under a change, just like the Podmafia site. I want to finish off and fine tune all of my website first though, because it will be the easiest to do.  However, I want to eventually tag every one of my 450+ blog entries… that will take probably a year

Podcasting History

When I joined Second Life in May 2006, a large factor of my life revolved around the podcasting community. Along my journey in Second Life, I have had the pleasure of doing many podcasts. Alot of them went podfade (that means the podcast just shut down and died). Others continue to live on….for now. This page will document every podcast I have done with a brief description of those shows.

Current Podcasts

The Podmafia Podcast
The Podmafia Podcast is a weekly audio adventure with myself, Gomem Desoto and Yxes Delacroix. With varying topics such at the latest stuff coming to Second Life, shopping and many many other topics. Each week I record a show with these awesome co-hosts is amazing and makes me feel all happy and stuff.

Link to the Podcast

Building with Warf
This is the first ever video podcast that I have ever done! Building with Warf takes a unusual change to the way I do podcasts. I am for once teaching people something. In this podcast I teach people how to build in Second Life so that hopefully they can avoid the mishaps that many builds can be produced in Second Life and maybe, one day, people can start making a living in Second Life from skills they have learnt from me.

Link to the Podcast

Podfaded Podcast History

The Weekly Warf Show
A short lived attempt at a podcast about my virtual life. I quickly figured out that The Weekly Warf show would not work because who wants to know about some guy’s life. One thing that I have learnt about Second Life podcasts is that most of them are hard to do without a gang to do the show like Podmafia or Going Broke with Daphne and Tamara.

Psichonico’s Daily Podcast
This podcast was supposedly daily but it was more of a twice a week thing. A lot of it was a sort of secret parody of Daily Source Code (and eventually The Gomem Show). Most music-casters listen to the music and choose something good. I mostly would choose something randomly and very rarely would stop the madness. It was a bit like The Weekly Warf show where I quickly lost the will to do it but Gomem and his “podfade” comments somehow spurred me to do about 30 more episodes than I wanted to.

It had a very stubborn death…

Inside the Boxes
This is the first ever podcast that I ever decided to do. It started up in March 2006 when I first got a microphone and wanted to do a podcast. The show was based on the TV game show Deal or no Deal. Sadly the community I was creating it to had no clue about what podcasting is or was. So such a podcast was bound to tank.

The Ten Cast
The Ten Cast was a weekly technology news podcast in which I discuss the latest techology news in the world. Since I am a big geek I love technology and all the stuff that it creates. You can still listen to the show at PodcasterNews.com if you want to listen to the show.

No Longer Contributing To

MetaNews Weekly
In it’s short history MetaNews Weekly is a podcast revolved around the news of the metaverse. Originally hosted by myself and Gomem Desoto. After 3 episodes we decided to hand over the keys to Mal Burns and Tara Yeats. The show is currently on Hiatus until my machine returns and will then return in a Live Streaming format

Link to the Podcast

Appearances

Night Guy Episode 45
Guy David, host of the Night Guy podcast, invited me on to his show for the first of three episodes called “The Podmafia Chronicles”. We talked about some of the stuff that I was doing and also was the final podcast that I used a headset on since it pretty much died in the recording.

Link to the Episode

SL Under the Radar Episode 24
In this episode of SL Under the Radar, Radar invited me to talk about SLPN. I decided to do reverse psychology on the listeners to trick them in to thinking why the network was bad and make them visit in order to wonder why it was so bad…

I think it worked…

Link to the Episode

SL Under the Radar Episode 33
It was a week of change for me, I was working on moving SLPN to a new server and moving SLPN’s HQ from Nowhereville to Podcast Island and stuff. In the week I was asked by Radar if I wanted to be in a short interview and I accepted. I gave views on the SL podcasting scene but mostly the story of my Second Life.

Link to the Episode

The Black Tie Martini Club - A Cleveland Yankee in King Razzaps Court Over The Rainbow
In this episode of The Black Tie Martini Club Oddcast Caleb invited me to play a few roles. OK so i butchered it all up and could have done better but…I tried to make myself sound clear…and I think I was ill at the time…It was December after all…

Link to the Episode

Crap Mariner’s marathon of many many chats…
For some reason, Crap Mariner/Laurence Simon invited many people to chill and have a chat with him in the time limit of 15 minutes. I was first up in the episode and pretty much everyone was better than me but ah well. I advise you go listen to it if you want to have 5 hours of torture. It has an important message at the end i thought…

Link to the Episode

iPodjacker Episode Seven - Stuart Warf
Crap Mariner launched a new podcast called iPodjacker. It was launched when SL5B came around and he wanted a chance to talk to podcasters who have been involved with Second Life. I was glad to participate in this podcast. The series also features interviews with people like Wiz Nordberg, Rich Desoto and other great SL talents.

Link to the Episode

Second Life Live!???

I am currently developing another site on this StuartWarf.com domain name… its http://live.stuartwarf.com/ . Currently its a cross between RL and SL using UStream. Hopefully in the future (Once everything is setup) I will start getting a community and make some videos of my SL while answering questions and stuff.

One cool thing that I noticed with UStream is that you can set up “Partner Shows” which will somehow pop up on your shows page… So I guess a discussion could be made with more than one UStream at a time… I’m still kinda new in getting things set up but hopefully it should all work out in the end.

Perhaps we could somehow magically stream the recordings of Podmafia Podcast for DIE-HARD fans…

….waits for Yxes to Screaming “WE WILL NEVER DO THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!“

Inventory Cleaning

Since Friday I have been gradually cleaning up my inventory because I am fed up of having to go through folder after folder trying to find what I am just looking for….this is what My inventory currently looks like…

One of the things that I used to have was a Take it or Leave it folder where I would have props and suits for hosting the show…however I don’t host Take it or Leave it anymore so…DELETE