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Becoming DJ in SL

January 23, 2010 | Author: sfreq

Inspired by a question on Plurk, I thought I might explain what separates the “DJs” (quotes on purpose) from the DJs.

First of all, let me welcome you to the year 2010, which is far beyond the early 2000’s where 128 kbit or less were acceptable due to slower internet connections. Nowadays, 128 kbit MP3 is a bag of shite. Decent audio quality starts at 192 kbit (OGG) or more (MP3). We are talking about music here, enjoyed with high-quality home entertainment equipment and/or great headphones. I’m not talking about cheap desktop speakers, plugged into poor-quality sound cards. If you haven’t got decent equipment yourself, or can’t afford to buy it, forget about the whole DJ’ing idea! A cheap in-world stream offer, WinAMP plus broadcasting plug-in, a cheap head set, and questionable music downloads are not suitable.

Read more »

Posted in DJ, Second Life | Leave a Comment

Snowglobe:Frequency discontinued

January 21, 2010 | Author: sfreq

About 4 weeks ago, I posted that I was not sure where the journey would go. Well, it ends here.

The fact that the Windows maintainer doesn’t seem active any more makes the decision a bit easier (but wasn’t the reason). Personally, I’m considerably fed up with ironing out bugs and dealing with the many very demanding requests and error reports (most of them actually in-game, and not in the issue tracker). I haven’t got time for that. From all the people who promised to contribute, Alex was actually the only one who did (cheers mate, you did a brilliant job!).

Linden Lab’s policies are not very supportive, either. Bottom line: “Yes, you can have the code, but no, we don’t give a shit what you do there. And no, of course you can’t bundle voice either. Oh but yeah, you can submit patches, which we then declare as our own intellectual property.” (not a quote, but the general attitude). In other words, it is “GPL, Linden Lab style”, and bends the original intention of the GNU Foundation’s GPL a lot.

I will probably continue fiddling with my very own viewer, when I’ve got time for it. Maybe I share it. We’ll see. But there won’t be any support whatsoever. And it will only be for MacOS 10.5+ (Intel).

Considering that we had only developed for a few weeks, didn’t have a big team (it was only Alex and me), and didn’t make a big fuzz about the viewer, almost 7,000 downloads isn’t too bad. It’s a shame that so few people are willing to actually do something without commercial interests. Anyways. No rant. No offence. ;-)

I declare Snowglobe:Frequency discontinued. Thanks everyone!

Enjoy your Second Life! (I will do the same, and ignore all viewer related requests in-world.)

Posted in SL Viewers, Second Life | 4 Comments

Future of Snowglobe:FE

December 26, 2009 | Author: sfreq

Over the last two months, I was a bit unfortunate. First I was extremely busy, because the New Year will turn my professional life (the real life that is) upside down. So I had to get many things done to be prepared for the changes. That’s still ongoing, and will be for at least another month. (Not going to bore you with details here.)

And mid-December I got struck by the Swine Flu. In the end I won, but it was rather critical (first time in my life that I’ve been in Emergency Room). Anyway, no feeling sorry, please! I’m fit again. :-) Just before I went down with the flu, Alex asked me about the future plans for Snowglobe:FE. Well. To be honest, time is and will be an issue for quite a while. Haven’t heard from Alex since, so he’s probably very busy, too. Or he was upset, because I haven’t touched the source code for quite a while now.

That leaves Snowglobe:FE with two passive maintainers/developers and according to Google Analytics about 200 unique SL residents per week, who log in with Snowglobe:FE. Other viewer makers will fall off their chairs and laugh reading these figures. :-) But for a viewer, which originally was intended to be only for me, and hasn’t seen any progress within the last two months, it’s not too bad, is it? Anyway, I do appreciate that we have a few faithful fans out there!

However, the Swine Flu was a bit of an eye-opener and re-adjusted my focus. It may sound dramatical, but my lesson learned is: You can have as many second lives as you want, but you have only got a single real life, which may end any time and all of a sudden! Now, unlike many others, I’m not an SL addict (any more), and am fully aware of RL’s existence. However, the recent events will set my focus even more on RL, and less on SL. I’m sure that those of you, who haven’t forgotten what RL is like, will understand.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I can’t answer where Snowglobe:FE is going. There may be times, when I spend more time in SL, and when I feel like improving the viewer. Then you may see new releases. But there may also be times, where I don’t care about SL — and obviously won’t touch the source code at all. I also can’t answer if there are any Windows people out there (I’m on a Mac), who are interested in compiling the source and providing binaries.

Sooner or later, other viewer developers will spend more time with the Snowglobe engine, too. I’ve been asked a few times, if features of Snowglobe:FE can be used elsewhere. Of course they can! It’s open source. And the project home page, this blog, and the Mercurial source repositories will of course stay online for the fans of Snowglobe:FE, and for those who want to use our code elsewhere. Chances are that some of Snowglobe:FE’s features will appear in other viewers. (And as you know, we have implemented other viewers’ features as well. To be fair, all the viewers out there have got more than just a couple of common denominators.)

Well, this is where Snowglobe:FE and I stand. Don’t want to retire, but can’t commit to spending too much time, either. Dilemma.

Posted in SL Viewers, Second Life | 4 Comments

XStreet SL Policy Changes

November 19, 2009 | Author: sfreq

The word is spreading quickly at the moment. Merchants will be charged for XStreet SL listings/sales, especially for offering freebies: See LL’s Blogs

Well, I don’t care much really, because I’m not a merchant. But I do understand to a certain extent that some merchants are upset and considering to pull their listings. However, from a customer point of view I do appreciate this change (yeah, shoot me folks). When I am on XStreet SL (rarely), I clearly want to find something which is relevant to my search terms. But that’s currently not the case. I can’t be bothered to browse through hundreds of items, most of them crap or free. So I usually don’t go to XStreet SL, unless I know the exact name of an item (because then the search still works reasonably well).

I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one. Seriously, why would I search on XStreet SL, if it produced results as irrelevant as the in-game search? There’s no benefit. Hence, none of the merchants on XStreet SL will earn my or anybody else’s money.

But if the XStreet SL search became more relevant again, and people weren’t forced to crawl through tons of crap, then XStreet SL would  gain more visitors, and more turnover for the merchants. It’s simple maths.

Anyway, pulling all listings right now will be a temporary solution for most merchants. A short boykot. Most will come back anyway, because alternative sale channels just don’t gain the same customer traffic.

At the end of the day it’s still better to pay a few fees and make money than not selling anything at all. (Despite the in-game sales, but they will probably not be affected at all.)

Sure, LL found a new way to gain profit. But hey, they are a business in the first place, not charity. And so far, even way more significant price increases have happened (does Homestead ring a bell?). People protested and yelled at LL. Did it change anything? SL is still there, and presumably most of the protesters as well. :P

I can’t stress often enough that running a SL-only business is pretty much suicide. You put your life into LL’s hands (the real one, not the virtual one), if you rely on a predictable SL income stream. (And for those who haven’t done any RL business before: Laws, taxes, regulations and all that stuff change all the time. You either plan for unexpected surprises in advance, or don’t call yourself business.)

Posted in Second Life | 1 Comment

Sean’s Mansion of Rock

November 7, 2009 | Author: sfreq

Currently I’m in state of finishing off building my own Rock club, called “Mansion of Rock”. In my opinion many clubs are just overloaded with Adboards or Vendors and cheap attractions to gain traffic. My idealistic (or naive) view is to have a club, which has a nice atmosphere, great lighting and music, and does not rely on freebies, camping and the other well-known nuisances in SL.

I’d like to hear your opinions on this:

Posted in DJ, Second Life | Leave a Comment

I strongly disapprove of NeilLife!

November 7, 2009 | Author: sfreq

By now, almost everyone in and around Second Life will have heard about the NeilLife viewer, which in a nutshell provides an enormous amount of tools for content theft activities. So far, I didn’t pay attention really, because that’s not the kind of viewer I’m interested in. Compliance with Linden Lab’s ToS is not optional. If you want to be in Second Life, then you have to play according to their rules. Period. And even if they didn’t have any rules regarding content theft, it should be obvious to anyone, who’s not utterly stupid, that copying other people’s content is very likely to conflict with copyrights and other laws protecting intellectual property. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you’ve got the legal rights to do so.

There are many discussions and arguments going on around the NeilLife viewer. Mainly between Neil himself and the majority of people who disapprove of his way to make use of his programming skills. I’m not going to chime in and throw mud. However, in this blog post, Neil forced me to react.

To avoid that content is being manipulated later, I’m quoting his blog post here (Nov 7th, 2009):

I am going to support this guy with a 1 man working team and open source

http://www.sfreq.org/wiki/snowglobe/Snowglobe

he has made 2 viewers, one for emerald and one for snowglobe

I would like to congradulate him for also being one of the people compiling on emerald too. I would also like to say he did a good job. I support him 100 percent.

Obviously I don’t want your support, Neil. I do think you may be a good C++ developer, but even more so you are using your knowledge in a way which I strongly disapprove of! (Plus, you haven’t even made an effort to read the latest news, where I also pointed out that Emerald:Frequency is discontinued. Our focus is exclusively on Snowglobe:Frequency.)

Snowglobe:Frequency is not and will not be affiliated by any means with Neil, his viewer, or people supporting him, ever. We all have read his point that he’s providing all the tools for personal backups, and to enable people to make copies of their own stuff, or shift it between their alt avatars. However, the folks who leave comments on his blog, show a different attitude. Neil knows exactly who he’s supporting there. And even if he didn’t, he can’t deny the conflict with the ToS. Linden Lab have reminded him at least once, blocking his account and logins with his viewer.

To sum it up: Snowglobe:Frequency is and will be ToS compliant. NeilLife clearly isn’t. You’ll need to make friends elsewhere, Neil!

Posted in SL Viewers, Second Life | 1 Comment

Plurk rocks

November 3, 2009 | Author: sfreq

I think it’s definitely worth a short blog post. When I signed in for plurk a few days ago, I was kind of disappointed by the user interface and found it a bit childish that you have to earn karma to get new smileys and stuff. However, I needed to know what it was about, because quite a few people came to my viewer project’s web site through plurk.

Now, a few days later, I have to admit that it kinda rocks, really. Once you friend a couple of people, it’s becoming an unstoppable phenomenon. More and more people get connected, and all of a sudden you have a lot of friends, and more importantly: fun!

You definitely should check it out! So many people from Second Life there!

Posted in Second Life | Leave a Comment

Let’s Rock!

November 1, 2009 | Author: sfreq

Haha, this time it’s not at all related to the viewer. Hope you aren’t disappointed, but I also very much enjoy playing music, also known as DJ-ing. I’ve done that in RL quite a lot of times as a hobby. And finally I also managed to get the right equipment to do it online.

The title should give you an idea what kind of stuff I usually play: Rock, Metal, Crossover/Independent, Punk, or in a nutshell everything which contains at least an electric guitar, bass, and real drums (I do appreciate some exceptions though). Examples include, without any particular order:

  • Disturbed, Metallica, Linkin Park, Billy Talent, Manowar, H-Blockx, Slut
  • Bad Religion, Audioslave, Beck, The Kooks, Kaiser Chiefs, Subways
  • Evanescence, Sirenia, Nightwish, Queen, Scorpions, Nickelback
  • Smashing Pumpkins, The Prodigy
  • Green Day, Live, The Watchmen
  • and many many more

Who can book me, and how do we get the live stream into the club?

Absolutely anyone can book me! You don’t need to look like a hard rocker (nor do I), and tattoos aren’t required either. :P  Seriously, I am happy to play at any kind of clubs, events, or private parties equally.

You only need the necessary rights to change the music URL of the property I’m supposed to play at. Prior to your event, we can make a “soundcheck” (that is setting up the stream URL, talking about particular music preferences etc.). I will provide an URL to my own Shoutcast server, so you don’t need to worry about anything really. The server is located in a decent London based data centre (not my home broadband), and nothing else will be running on that machine, so I can easily serve high-quality audio to one or two SIMs full of people. I’m streaming at 256kbit, and all songs played have this bit rate or better (legally purchased iTunes songs, no dodgy downloads from dark sources).

During the performance, I’m not using voice, because I don’t like it (the burping, coughing, and waffle of people in crowded places is distracting). Moreover, people are there to listen to good music, not to hear my comments. :-)

So we get cool rock music, no blah blah, and great quality.
You cost a fortune, don’t ya?

Nah, I don’t think so. Let me be clear about one thing: I love to play music. It’s my hobby. I don’t share other people’s illusion of making a living in RL with money earned in a virtual world. So I’m not even trying that.

If you could pay me L$1,500 upfront for the first 90 minutes, and put a tip jar somewhere on my behalf, I’ll be fine. I may well play longer if I like the audience (and they me), and won’t charge you for extra time.

Fair deal, isn’t it?

Availability

My RL doesn’t permit long-term planning in SL. So I won’t be able to tell you, if I can play at your venue x-mas next year :-)

Just ask me in-game (Sean Frequency, obviously), on Twitter, Plurk, or — even better — use the contact form. I’ll get back to you ASAP. I might even be available on very short notice, as in: “Hey Sean, time to play in 30 minutes?” — “Sure thing. Let’s rock!!” :D

Posted in DJ, Second Life | Leave a Comment

1,000 Downloads of Snowglobe:Frequency

October 29, 2009 | Author: sfreq

I’d like to say thank you to the fans and supporters of Snowglobe:Frequency!

Since we released version 1.0.0 on October 7th (that is 3 weeks ago!), we have seen 1,000 downloads of our viewer! I decided to publish my own viewer more or less out of the blue, and with the help of Alex Fride and others, we were able to implement a lot of features in a short time.

The number of downloads and the feedback from forums and blogs shows us that you like it as much as we do :-)

For us that’s a clear sign to carry on! Thanks folks!

Posted in SL Viewers, Second Life | Leave a Comment

Version 1.2.0 out — since last Friday

October 21, 2009 | Author: sfreq

Sorry folks, was so busy in RL that I completely forgot to announce the 1.2.0 release here.
Many new features included. Check it out!

It’s available for OSX and Windows (as usual), and now also for Linux!

Posted in SL Viewers, Second Life | Leave a Comment
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