Montreal Musician's Meetup

July 24/25 on the west end of Montreal.

I've set up a few information pages with maps and other useful items, but for those interested in coming to the rl event, registration forms and up-to-date notifications are distributed through a Subscribe-o-Matic group that has been set up for anyone who would like to be kept updated. You're welcome to join this group whether you plan to come or not; it will not take up one of your SL group slots.

You can find subscription kiosks inworld at Mocha Fey in Nitida , on the Nitida Ridge stage, at HIPS, and at some of the concerts given by attending musicians.

An explosive time

Take a few bricks and boards, shngles, panes of glass, beams, and a door - put them together painstakingly for a perfect little 5500-prim house - and what do people plan to do with it? Well, if they're a little crazy like me, Crap Mariner, Rush Gastel and SeanMcPherson Senior ...

Sean's video:

Crap has the "before" shots and the initial dropping of bricks and bits:

After a while it slowed down and stopped in a state of suspended animation - until Rush got the idea to pick up what was already on the ground - then the others started coming down.

More pics of Rush Gastel's house exploding

Pics in Crap's photostream

Last but not least - thanks to Rush for 1) building this!  and 2) being a great sport and participating in the destruction - and 3) building the lovely dancing waters that I placed in The Mists of Nitida quite a while ago.

The MusiCom

Toby and I have been working on a project together, called the MusiCom. I've been using it on the Ridge for a few weeks, and we've tested and tweaked it all along until we found it ready to demo to the world. I took it to the Show & Tell at Lummerland today, run by Barney Boomslang and Florenze Kerensky, and was delighted and surprised to snag 4th place with it - among some stunning builds our little tool did rather well. We're finding it quite useful; hopefully others will as well.

Happy Valentine's Day

Some silliness on the Ridge for this week -

And a photo that somehow turned out rather well:

MusiCom - Message display and stream manager

Today, Toby Lancaster posted on SLMC:

Inspired by an idea from Montian Gilruth, Bree Birke and I have designed and built MusiCom; a message display and stream management device for venue hosts and performers.
When a live music concert is put on in SL, there is a familar sequence of events where the performer seeks confirmation from the audience that they can be heard. If the audience is very talkative or using chat gestures in open chat, or if several IMs are coming in at once, messages may get missed. This is where the MusiCom comes in. Its primary function is to communicate with the musician, and provide necessary information in an easy-to-see and prominent manner.

There are three components to the MusiCom:

The main communications unit is intended to sit on the stage like a stage monitor. It has a pair of textured surfaces that face the musician. It is accompanied by a RELAY unit which is required for stream setting functions. Copies of the RELAY can be used in the case of multi-sim/parcel venues. There is also an optional musician HUD.

The MusiCom menu provides options to set streams or radio stations (stored on notecards). Appropriate messages are displayed on the MusiCom indicating to the performer whether the stream is "Off", "Stand By" (telling the performer to start streaming) or "On Air" informing the performer that they can be heard. There is also an option to display additional important messages to the performer, e.g. "Too Quiet", "Too Loud", "Some Distortion", "No Sound", "Check IM" etc.

The MusiCom can be purchased for 998L$ at our new shop TBC, near The Comfort Zone.

Partial screenshots above show Toby and Djai Skjellerup with the HUD onscreen, and the main unit on the ground - though I don't think I've ever heard Djai too quiet ;-) .

Speedbuild on Little Blue Island sandbox

Not easy for me to get to since it starts before I finish work - even when I *plan* to quit early by making up the time ahead of time ...




.... but always fun to watch!

Downtime

Actually, nobody was feeling down - just hadn't been inworld a whole lot for a few days because I had a late visit from Santa over the last part of the holiday.

It's always nice when your Second Life friends turn out to be pretty much the same in real life - or better :-)

Concerts on the Ridge tonight - it will be fun!