SLim Pickings

I just downloaded the new SLim Second Life client released by Linden Lab. So far I like what it does but theres a few things that I don’t like about it…

Pros

• I like that I can contact friends in IM or be IMed by people when I am not logged in without using a webapp or other third party programs.
• Voice is enabled

Cons

• You need to download a first look client to be able to download your friends list.
• If you want to IM someone in the SLim client, they need to have the actual SLim beta.
• Unable to chat in public chat like you can with AjaxLife or similar programs.

/me understands that this is a beta and hopes it will be better. I’m sure as time progresses more functionality will be added to the SLim client. But so far I am enjoying it even if one person on my friends list only has the SLim client right now.

If theres one feature that needs to be added, I want a little popup that says X X is online at the bottom right side of the screen like some other applications do.

The Greenies Problem

I know this is old news but I feel like I had to write about this. A while ago on Podmafia we explored the Greenies sim which is an amazing build that all newbies and oldies should see. However they are now charging for entry into the sim, which in my opinion sucks.

OK L$99 doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but to a newbie that’s like L$1,000,000. When a newbie joins Second Life it can be a daunting experience and I think it is important to let them know about the good stuff quick so they can understand what is cool and possible about the virtual world.

What I’m trying to say is that Second Life builds when its a public place that you want people to visit should not be blocked off at all. The only times something should really be blocked off is a residential area or if someone has been banned.

When you think about the Internet  you get websites that need to be paid to gain entries to certain areas, most of which never really work out well. Second Life is entirely the same, people expect to visit somewhere and be able to explore it for free. Sure there’s a cost attached to it for the service provider but they can make money other ways like Donation kiosks that can help facilitate the venue or merchandise.

I’m sure that Rezzable is making some money from the Greenies but to be honest I think they are already successful enough to not need to offer a charge for admission. I’m sure events like the Hair Fair make them money and the Greenies has always seemed to me like a good promotion of what Rezzable does.

Basically, charging for admission in my mind is a stupid idea and if people start copying the idea then it will negatively impact Second Life.

I am sure most of what I said has been said before but I don’t care because this is my opinion that has been badly written. Also thanks to Dakota Blackmountain for pointing out a typo

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?

Not long now…

… I hope …

In case you aren’t aware, for about 10 weeks my main machine which could handle Windlight well went out of action. At first we thought it was the Motherboard that was bricked so we sent it off with the warranty and then found out that it was not the case. So then we discovered it was really the graphics card that was to blame for the problems. Assuming that everything else is fine I should have the machine back very soon and enjoying Second Life like I should have. It’s annoyed me to no end because I wanted to fully experience things like SL5B and the Relay for Life.

So while I was in the downtime I managed to get my old computer up and running again. During the downtime some things went wrong with the machine. But it gave me a chance to experience Second Life from the older hardwares perspective. It intrested me because I always hear people with low end machines complaining that their machines are unbearably slow and get 1fps. It makes me think, what exactly are they putting the Settings at with the viewer. Case and Point this screen capture of my settings, hardware and frames per second.

This machine right here is about 4 or 5 years old now. Yet I seem to be getting 17fps on this low hardware. The only problems I get sometimes is that the machine will hang for a few seconds. But that is down to the machine having 512 MB of memory. Now I understand that some people having laptops and they really do suck for Second Life if they are cheap laptops but the fact is if you buy one of those cheap laptops you are shooting yourself in the foot for any 3D application. I know because I got one for the laptop and yes it sucks big time. I wonder what other people with older hardware get when they are on Second Life. If you read this blog let me know in the comments.

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!

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…

Downtime Sucks

OK so Stuart Warf has not been in Second Life a lot recently…

So, in this blog entry I am going to be clearing things up with reasons (or excuses) to my disappearance.

• XBox 360 + GTA 4…
  It is a good game and it is quite addictive…apart from the annoying 12 year olds who use voice and scream down your earhole and grief the games…
• My PC is Broke’d
  Well…this really is the main reason why the disappearance of Warf happened.

  So, on Friday 9th of May 2008 my motherboard (after some other difficulties) practically died. After days of trying to diagnose the problem I pretty much figured out that it was a brick. But just in case, I contacted the MSI technical support via my laptop. It took them 6 days to reply… and the advice was pretty much useless.

  So…where do I stand now?

  Well I am looking for the reciept so the motherboard can be returned and I am hopefully going to be back online with my awesome machine by the end of the week.

So… While I wait for the conclusion to this chapter in my PC’s life, I will probably be doing some blogging and get some SLPN stuff sorted out.

SecondLie?

Anyone suddenly notice this new twitterer called SecondLie?

As far as I can tell it started on Thursday this week and has since made about 300 tweets (as of the time of writing) and has almost 200 followers.

So far the twitterer (whoever it is) has entertained me quite a lot.

Check it out, Whoever it is…

Strike Time?

OK, I am going to discuss this whole SL Blogger strike thing. I myself a blogger am blogging about a blogging strike. Yay Oxymoron’s!

So, Gwyneth is leading a protest about the whole copyright and licensing thing about the lack of a clarification. Even though there was a clarification.

Linden Lab’s clarification

Why didn’t the linden’s address the bloggers?

Pretty much because they aren’t going to go after the frickin bloggers. The bloggers help promote Second Life so why the hell would they go after the bloggers?

It’s like saying that Apple sues all the blogs for talking about the iPhone. It’s crazy. They didn’t even take down Fake Steve. So why the hell would Linden Lab even take them down.

The copyright thing goes after people who are profiting by infringing on the Second Life copyrights. SLPN was sorta affected in a sense because we may in the future recieve cash sponsorship to help out the costs of running the network. Hence why I did some changes like just branding it as SLPN, Podcasts for the Metaverse

My blog will not change UNLESS Linden Lab says, you gotta change this. Because lets be honest, they will only give you a written warning about the content if its deemed to violate in a way they don’t like it.

And just remember…theres only 49 days left if your super-paranoid that the Lab’s is out to get you