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

Finally Declared Dead…to iTunes

A long time ago in the summer of 2006 I tried to start a weekly podcast called "The Weekly Warf Show" but it was kinda…really…boring. So it went into my archive of Podfade.

It was of course submitted to iTunes, but I deleted the show and its feed last year. However iTunes has only just caught up with this revelation

Dear Podcast Owner
The podcast located at the URL shown below has been blocked or removed from the iTunes directory as a result of technical problems with the feed.
Name: The Weekly Warf Show
Feed URL: http://www.podshow.com/feeds/warf.xml

I wonder how many dead podcast feeds still lie on the surface of the iTunes store…

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.

SLPN takes over the grid?

YAY, i found a bug. Earlier in the day I was configuring the SLPN plot over at Podcaster Island and decided to put in some HTML on a prim things. After some bugging around and getting it to work i noticed an odd bug pop up. All my usually grey unrezzed textures were suddenly partly black had the SLPN website showing.

And this has happened to me before but it was just black…so it seemingly is a recurring bug. Maybe I should submit this bug to JIRA later.

SLPN’s next phase!

OK. Live Podcasts. I have already talked about this on the SLPN’s blog about us moving to live podcasts. Well as of this week we shall move to the live podcasting aspect that I have been intrested in doing.

So how is this going to work?

Well certainly not with video, at least for now. My approach is to do it with audio in a radio enviroment because it is easier to stream for some people who have lower bandwith. Also it’s what I know best. And as much as I like a challenge I prefer doing it in audio for now. It’s live because we will record it in front a live audience and as we move on, we will get the video in the mix as well.

So the week begins most likely on Tuesday with a new show called “The Warf Show” which I will be doing on KONA radio which will replace the Podmafia Re-Broadcast. With Podmafia being a podcast, there isn’t much sense to rebroadcast it I think. It might be this week or next week though. But I will be recording it for podcast purposes.

Then there is MetaNews Weekly which WILL happen this Wednesday at Nowhereville at 9AM SLT. 9AM SLT is 5PM for all the UK folks so that will be a fun little challenge. The hosts of that show are Malburns Writer and Tara Yeats in-world.

There is a SLPN Live group that I have set up for people who want updates for when shows are happening and such like. The group is not the only solution. We also have a Subscribe-o-Matic board for all those updates as well so if you DON’T want to waste one of your precious groups, well your not left behind.

Who needs to login anyway?

OK, We all know it. The logins were broked for an extensive period of time and yes it did indeed suck. However it wasn’t a problem too much for me (personally). A lot of my friends will know that I am indeed a Dr Who fanatic. Infact my avatar is not of Human based origin BUT a Time Lord (but that doesn’t really matter).

The point is that last night, Dr Who returned and with other things like YouTube the grid downtime did not affect me. However I shall now write some of my top tips for downtime.

1. Download Podcasts!
You don’t need an iPod to listen to any podcasts. All you need is something that plays .mp3 files and IF you don’t have one of those then you don’t have a computer that can run Second Life’s client. A lot of great audio podcasts can be found at http://slpodcast.net and no that is not just a plug. I’ve had people come up to me and say they listen to the shows at work/in-world/car etc. The point is there is some great discussions there for everyone. However if you like the idea of TV there is all those great video shows over at SLCN such as Tonight Live (which i am watching streamed live right now as I right this).

2. Read…
Another thing I was meaning to do was get through all my RSS feeds and stuff. If you like to read internet content but don’t like the hassle of entering in all those URLs there is a better way. Use a webapp called Google Reader. I use it personally and love it. What I do is tag all the blogs into certain categories like say “Second Life” or “Tech News” and as soon as a new entry is up it displays on my window to read. This helps me get up to date on all the news so I can find all the good content about things. That’s one of the things I do with podcasts. Go through all the junk and podcast it in a entertaining way if possible.

3. Get Away from that computer…seriously
Sure you need your SL fix but just step away from that monitor and get some of that good ol’ fresh air. I personally try to do a hell of a lot more these days because even though I am young…I really need to start getting out more. A lot of the time when nothings happening in the feeds or in SL for me, I just sit around. One thing I have been trying to commit more to is walking around. The area I live in is a village so theres some good scenery. What I do is A) Get my podcasts synced… B) Grab my dogs leash C) Go Walking…

I read somewhere that we as humans are naturally lazy and being the climate today we just become victims to it…

Theres a few things for some avatars to do while the grid is down and being broken. Also I mentioned in section 1 that I was watching Paisley Beebe. Well as i still write this the show hasn’t really started yet because of all those SL problems. If Linden Lab™ is wanting to make sure that it’s product is to succeed in the future they need to tackle the problems now. I predicted earlier this year (i’m sure I said this on The Podmafia Podcast) that this year was going to be the year when the Linden Lab™ was going to try and sort out all of the problems with lag such by rolling out things like Havok4 and Mono. Right now they are at the deployment phase. The next task is refining those tools in the real enviroment of the grid and getting to all work. At least thats what I think they are doing

The Rosedale Discussion

So, alot of you have probably heard that Mr God, Phillip Linden (Rosedale) is stepping down as the CEO of Linden Lab. Well this called for a super special edition of Podmafia Podcast Live on Talkshoe for today. The show may last 2 hours so I have arranged it to be a 2 hour show.

If you are not on Talkshoe, please sign up so you can enter the chat and even talk about it.

Details
Time = 7PM SLT / 10PM EST / 2AM GMT
Location = http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=73500

KONA Radio may also stream the show in world, we have to work on that though…

Rich performs to those Lonely Yaks

After spending most of today waiting for pure pwnage episode 16 to rez itself onto the Internet and then finally getting to watch it. I logged myself into Nowhereville and then flew my ass over to BlaksleeWorld for some moozic by Rich Desoto. He claimed he was working on his album all day…I am excited about getting that new album fyi.

PS. RICH DESOTO can you please perform “I’m in love with Video Utterz” next time I am at one of your shows

Paisley at Hot Sax Jazz Club

Last night I listened to an hour of music with Jazz Singer Paisley Beebe. I don’t visit a lot of her concerts but when I do go, they are always great. I am a big fan of her music after all she is a fan-dabby-dastic singer (yes she is that good). She was joined by Ray Forder and Crayg Allen for the show.

The sim was packed to about 75 people…instead of dancing I just sit down. I’m boring in that sense I guess…