I am taking up the hobby of designing scripted objects for Second Life. This is the page where I'll be documenting more detailed information than will conveniently fit on a single SL Notecard.
If the preceding paragraph makes no sense at all to you, then you are missing out on a super teriffic place to meet friends, have fun and just hang out. In that case I commend you to visit this link: Second Life
Introduction
It is assumed you came to this page as an SL resident already in possession of an item I've made You will have found this page from either a link on an SL notecard or by clicking on a link written into local chat by said object.
Everything described on this page is something that I give away for free in SL. Do whatever you want with those. I don't care. The scripts inside them I will have hidden as no modify however because in there is where I will have hidden my shameless pandering for a donation.
Donationsdonations
If I gave you something personally, know that it is a gift, pure and simple. And if you said thank you then I am more than gratified. That alone suffices. I'm not really in it for the money, not at all. Nor am I in it (well, hardly so, anyhow) in persuit of virutal fame. It's just fun to give things away. This has been my policy for many a year in RL with respect to Perl scripts I have written, one of which even made it into a (rather obscure) distribution of the NetBSD operating system. Having thus bragged, however faintly, know that I must own to being vain enough that I thrill to the sight of any smallest creation of mine being enjoyed out in the world. Yes, even if it be only virtually so.
Everyone agrees however that it is nice when one's labors are rewarded. I therefor employ a double standard. The first is as described above, where I might have gifted you with one of my trinkets. I am not quite so shameless a panderer as all that. Even I would be embarassed to take your coin after saying, "Here is a gift". Even shameless panderers need to employ a few minimal standards.
If you received it from a 3rd party howerver, that is entirely different. In such case my fame has reached you from afar in the form of glorious and awe inspiring works of wonder shared through unstinting magnanimity extended by whole legions of intermediate benefactors. In that case consider... How can I bathe in the sunlight of self-congratulatory glee unless you volunteer some feedback on how wonderful I am? So do enjoy, in that case, but please be so kind as to toss perhaps a sheckle or two my way. Or lacking that, at least IM me with a gushing effusion of your undying gratitude. Best of all would be if you could manage to prostrate your avatar at my feet in front of hundreds of mostly female witnesses. If you don't happen to have a prostration anim presently in your SL inventory, just say the word and I'll find one for you someplace. Thanks in advance. LOL
WinAmp SHOUTcast on Vistawinamp_vista
Yes, you can stream with WinAmp/SHOUTcast on Vista and not give up voice. But you need some extra hardware do it because WinAmp's own built in mixer doesn't work at all on Vista.
Aplonis Ember's Setup
Some people get around this with a second computer. Others use an outboard sound card. I do it instead by using an outboard audio mixer. Here's how you too can replicate my method.
Starting Second Life
Open SL first, like so...
- On Vista, open Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Manage audio devices
- Set Bluetooth audio renderer as default.
- So that SL starts up connected to wireless headphones.
- Start up Second Life
- CTRL-P to set preferences inside SL.
- Select the Voice Chat tab.
- Set Blue Snowball mic as input.
- Set bluetooth renderer as output.
- Toggle music play arrow to off.
- So as not to hear my own voice delayed by 10 seconds.
Starting WinAmp/SHOUTcast
Open SHOUTcast second, like so...
- On Vista, open Control Panel → Harware and Sound → Manage audio devices
- Set speakers/headphones as default.
- So WinAmp/Shoutcast can use the PC in/out sound jacks.
- Start WinAmp/SHOUTcast.
- Select mixers to see them all.
- Set the SHOUTcast slider to 1 or 2 (out of 100).
- Prevents the external mixer from being swamped out.
Notes
Things work out easier when you do like so...
- Adjust up-stream volume with Main Mix dial on mixer.
- Adjust up-stream monitor volume via Phones/Ctrl Room dial on mixer.
- Adjust DJ mic volume with Trim and Level dials on mixer.
- Set Level to max initially.
- Dial down Trim till 0 dB is avoided while talking.
- Dail Level up to talk as DJ, down otherwise.
- Use SL Talk button to Voice chat.
- For WinAmp to keep your settings session-to-session...
- Open WinAmp by right-clicking it's icon and selecting Run as administrator.
- Manually enter all your stream settings.
- Close WinAmp without streaming.
- Re-open in the regular way.
- Create a shortcut for Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Manage audio devices on Vista's quick-launch bar.
The Blue Noteblue_note
Second Life allows property owners to select the blue menu item at top-center in their SL GUI and get a window with several tabs. One of these tabs is labled Media. And within the Media tab is a text-entry widget labled Music URL. By default, it is blank. But if said property owner should enter into that widget the URL web address of an Ogg or MP3 file from someplace on the Internet then that parcel of SL land will play music from out of the air. Any avatars who have enabled audio in their own SL GUI will be able to hear this music. Pretty cool.
The URL of any streaming audio server can also be entered. But it just isn't the same as when you can pick and choose your own songs. Alas, there is only room for one song when you do that. And most of us have a list of favorites. How then, to play that list?
The Blue Note is a scripted object which automates entry of audio URL's into that widget on behalf of the property owner. It gets this info from a notecard which the owner of the Blue Note can very easily configure in just a few moments.
Where do you get this music? There are any number of places. You can get links from friends or else search them out on Google. How I prefer to do is upload my own. You can easily do likewise. I'll tell you how.
Your own music
You have an Internet connection else you could not reside in SL. Said ISP almost certainly also gives you on-line storage space to put up your very own web page. Storage space on the Internet is just a hard drive on some company's computer someplace. Your ISP should let you put there whatever you want: home pages, pictures, your resume, even music.
So if you should put some MP3 or Ogg files up, then SL can play them through its music channel. All that the Blue Note does is feed to your SL parcel the URLs of these songs so that visitors to your parcel can hear them.
Obtaining songshttp://audacity.sourceforge.net/
A good variety of free music may be obtained from archive.com. And you surely know where to buy some. Sadly it sometimes happens that a favorite tune of yours may not be gotten from anywhere except to rip it from CDROM. If that is your only option, check out these:
Now long are they?
Once you have some songs ripped, you'll also need to know how long they are in minutes and seconds. Sometimes the ripper will tell you. But if it does not, don't worry that you need hunt for a stopwatch. Try this free audio editor. It is really a wonderful tool for recording your own tracks. But for purposes of the Blue Note, it happens to be the easiest way I know to find out exactly how long a song is. And it's free:
Uploading
Personally, I just use FPT on the command line from WinXP. There are more elegant ways, however. Your ISP can tell you how to upload files to your own space on their webserver. If they don't give you space for a home page, know that they suck as an ISP. Tell them that in no uncertain terms and find yourself a right and proper ISP. It shouldn't cost you a penny more.
Then, unless like me you don't mind typing command line instructions into a generic DOS window, you may want an FTP client. Here are some free ones...
- Google — Keywords:
ftp +client +free
Configuration
The Blue Note gets this music URL info from a notecard. It comes with a default notecard listing a few songs which I found freely available from http://archive.com. Probably you will want to replace it with an alternate selection in a notecard you write yourself. Notecards are easy enough to write. The Blue Note will only read a single notecard. That notecard must be named playlist. Any other notecards will be ignored even if they might have playlist as part of their name. Clear enough?
Music files
A notecard to configure the Blue Note for discrete MP3s somewhere on the Interenet would look like this...
http://your_isp.com/your_dir/
thirty_second_song.mp3, 0:30
forty_five_second_song.mp3, 0:45
one_minute_song.mp3, 1:00
fifteen_minute_song.mp3, 15:00
one_hour_song.mp3, 60:00
two_hour_song.mp3, 120:00
If your songs were from three different web URL's, then your notecard should look like this...
http://your_isp.com/your_dir/
thirty_second_song.mp3, 0:30
forty_five_second_song.mp3, 0:45
http://some_other.net/dir/
one_minute_song.mp3, 1:00
fifteen_minute_song.mp3, 15:00
http://yet_another.org/dir/subdir/
one_hour_song.mp3, 60:00
two_hour_song.mp3, 120:00
On that notecard don't forget the comma between song's filename and the song's length in colon-delimited minutes and seconds. Also don't forget the final slash of the URL.
Music Streams
Suppose that instead of songs from discrete MP3 files you wanted to schedule streaming musice from three Internet radio stations in succession. Even though there is not a song and hence no filename, you still need a comma to delimt the filename that isn't there. Followning that you still need a time-span in colon-delimited minutes and seconds. Like so...
http://87.117.202.31:8036
, 60:00
http://streamer2.ipartyradio.com:7200
, 90:00
http://s3.secondstreams.com:8332
, 120:00
Note as how it is just like for MP3s but the MP3 itself is missing. Really they are just one system with different kinds of information.
Mixed up sets
And yes, since how the script parses notecards is really just a single system, you can of course mix and match the two kinds of information, like so...
http://your_isp.com/your_dir/
thirty_second_song.mp3, 0:30
forty_five_second_song.mp3, 0:45
http://streamer2.ipartyradio.com:7200
, 90:00
http://s3.secondstreams.com:8332
, 120:00
http://yet_another.org/dir/subdir/
one_hour_song.mp3, 60:00
two_hour_song.mp3, 120:00
Alternate playlists
Here's an idea. How about I make available, right here, in this section of the doc a menu of user-contributed playlists? Say you have compiled either a medley or genre-specific notecard of free, legal, on-line tunes. You have said notecard presently working in your very own Blue Note. Want to share it with other users? Drop it in my inventory and I will post it in a list to appear below.
Do make sure it's legal though. Don't make me have to go pandering in SL for contributions to my legal defense from the IIRA. That said, just drop your playlist notecard into my inventory. I am Aplonis Ember in SL.
Aesthetics
So why is the Blue Note so big? Feel free to resize it if you want. It's only four prims and won't be difficult to do. But first I suggest you try sinking it half way into a wall as decoration. Give it a really long playlist notecard and run your own private club for just your friends in your own SL home. That, mainly, is what it's for.
Motivation
And if you were wondering what bands are on my personal playlist (not included in the distro), they're mostly early 80's Old School Goth and late 60's Hard Rock Psych. Lots of Siouxsie, of course. And that's why I needed one of these for myself. Have you ever heard of Bauhaus or Flower Travellin' Band? Neither have any of the DJ's I've yet to meet in SL.
I bought a very nice jukebox object from SL resident Bones Writer. It is super deluxe. I still have that and like it a lot. But neither I nor very many of my friends enjoy a place to aesthetically display the bright, neon Mighty Wurlitzer look-alike from the 1950's. Somehow it fails to blend with everybody's home decor. That and most of the default stations it comes pre-scripted with are not at all to my taste. It's a piece of art, I must agree. But I found myself keeping it mostly in my inventory rather than out on display.
That and I'd been wanting to learn LSL scripting anyway. Being a modest Perl monger in RL, it was embarassing that I had yet to do anything meaningful with LSL. So I bought some scripting books from Amazon and set myself to study the on-line LSL tutorials. The result is something I made for me which I happily share for free. So please enjoy. As for possible donations, they are accepted, but do refer to the section above beforehand: LINK