3/12/2010

MSS Podcast #18 - Good Luck Now


I recorded this 25-minute eighteenth episode of the Meet Scottlo Scorbal podcast a bit differently than with recent episode. In so doing, I found myself unable to upload it to any of the micropodcasting services I've been talking about of late. It is therefore being hosted on blip.tv under the old Tokyo Calling account.

All of this is to say that I'm going to need to come up with a more reliable work flow in the near future.

Topics covered include:

3/08/2010

An Upcoming Segment

As my third year in Second Life begins, I've finally come to accept that there is no rule book to be found and that the game really has no objective. How it is played and experienced is to be determined by each user. I can finally stop worrying about whether or not I'm doing it right. I suppose this is a liberating realization.

Looking back on my two initial attempts at getting started in Second Life, I'm embarrassed by the over-inflated sense of self-importance I assumed in feeling the need to chronicle the experience in blog and audio form. Fortunately I'm well aware of my limitations at written expression. This awareness had the governing effect of limiting blog entries to announcing and describing the various bits of audio put on offer as podcast. For better or for worse, there is no such controlling mechanism once the microphone is hot and the tape is rolling. The net result of this unregulated need to spray my thoughts, impressions and ideas as digital utterances has been a podcast currently called Meet Scottlo Scorbal.

I continue to wonder how or why anyone can endure programming so devoid of a premise. I've repeatedly offered the excuse that I'm doing this as a self-reflective exercise solely for myself. If that were a genuine sentiment, why then the need to distribute it in a podcast mechanism? That's just it, it's not a genuine sentiment. At heart, I am a ham (or a hack, perhaps). Whether or not anyone ever listens really doesn't matter. What matters is that this is how I choose to do it and it keeps me from roaming the saloons.

And this perhaps brings us to the point of this post. In an effort to produce audio that is somewhat more compelling than the droning monologue that has heretofore characterized MSS, I'm in the process of developing a new segment for the podcast. The segment will share the same name as the parcel I've just begun renting on Corona Cay that appears in the snapshot above: Sound Off.

Sound Off, the segment, will feature a co-host with computer-generated voice and me reading aloud selected holy scriptures from the world's great religions before a studio audience. The readings will be followed by musical renditions of the selected readings by various SL musicians with interpretative dance routines performed by multiple avatars in period costumes from the studio audience that have been scripted and choreographed by Aubie Audion.

Sound Off, the parcel, will feature consciousness experiments, poetry slams, barbershop quartets and AV petting booths that are intended to stimulate both the mind and the economy.

I don't know if the tenant association at Corona Cay will permit such dubious public performances on the sim. There is after all a certain standard that must be maintained. I'll probably have to appear before the CoronaVerse Star Chamber to humbly request permission to chase this dream.

While the specific details for the Sound Off segment are getting sorted out, the droning monologue that is the Meet Scottlo Scorbal Podcast will continue. Also continuing, will be my efforts to figure out how best to inhabit the Sound Off parcel. Feel free to drop by and tell me how I'm doing on either score.

3/02/2010

MSS Podcast # 17 - Three Birds, One Stone


The three birds referred to in title of this 22 minute seventeenth installment of the Meet Scottlo Scorbal podcast are the topics I set out to cover. The stone is the recorded monologue. Whether or not the three birds were sufficiently struck by the stone is such a tedious question that it calls in to question your host's choice of metaphor.

But there is no turning back, the audio is there for those with the time or inclination to listen.

Here are the three talking points:

  1. An update on items previously mentioned on the podcast:
  2. A few words about CinchCast for participants in the IATEFL LTSIG Virtual Pre-Conference Event
  3. Cypris Village: English Learning Community in Second Life - SLURL


Thank you for listening.

2/23/2010

MSS Podcast #16 - Game On


This sixteenth episode of the Meet Scottlo Scorbal podcast is 18 minutes long and features a bit of reflection on an upcoming class. I'm hoping to make use of a newly discovered web application called Our Story with students in a computer studies class. Please get in touch if you're using or intend to use the service in a collaborative capacity.

2/18/2010

Meet Scottlo Scorbal Podcast #15 - Floating Ideas

This 20 minute fifteenth episode of the Meet Scottlo Scorbal podcast features early and rough thoughts on a couple of ideas that were born while listening to a recent story telling event in Crap Mariner's tree house.

Perhaps it was the psychedelic liquid goo that flowed from the ceiling onto the floor and over the sofa down toward the sewer drain that got the mind a sparking. Or it could have been the effervescent wit and mirth displayed by the host, or the cheerful and good-willed banter among the small assembled "audience" that jump-started a previously stalled thinking cap.

My own hunch is that a magical bit of LSL code from the big book on the pedestal under the window cast a spell on the scottlo Scorbal avatar. This spell worked its way through the tubes of the internet into my finger tips via a wireless keyboard all the way to the core of the sack of mush between my ears causing me to shout aloud, "Where's my plate of shrimp?"

Regardless of the reason, a decision was made to record and release these errant thoughts as a podcast titled, "Floating Ideas." Please, enjoy.

2/16/2010

MSS Podcast #14 - Take a Number


Just a quick bit of reflection from the kitchen before heading to class make up this 11 minute fourteenth episode of Meet Scottlo Scorbal. Perhaps the only item of note is that my various micropodcasting "projects" will be brought under the Google Buzz tent of this Google Profile.

2/04/2010

MSS Podcast #13 - Be Careful What You Wish For

The follow up to the Chinese proverb in the title of this is post is, "because you just might get it." That seems to be the case.

Lot's of exciting stuff went down in tonight's radio class. Two items related to SL and one related to micropodcasting and locative media are discussed in this 12 minute episode.