Used to do my own research mostly but hey, what’s the use of having friends and contacts if you can’t’ badger them every time you need to know something, amirite?

So, are there better older avatars in OpenSim for gents these days? Asking for a friend, of course. I’m thinking one that looks like about 64 or so. Why 64, you ask? Well, mind you’re own damned business, would you? I’m asking a question here, can a person get some help? Now yes, of course, I’ll be checking Kitely Market but guidance is helpful there too, Probably been three years since I was there, I has me some Kitely$ or whatever they are called, I don’t remember! I do have an older av in a Danko inventory, I’ll have to find him. I liked him but wasn’t sure if he quite “fit.” He looked a little too much like Charlton…

Sansar, the new virtual world from Linden Lab, opened it’s beta period to the public yesterday. Last night, after reading Ciaran, Inara and Daniel’s alerts and advice about getting started, I created a Sansar account – ten years and ten days after creating my Second Life account.

But the symmetry ended there as I waited until this morning to log in. First, I had to dust off the headset I finally bought last year after logging into High Fidelity for the first time and discovering that if I ever did figure out how to move or go anywhere, I was going to need a headset to communicate. I haven’t felt the urge to go back to High Fidelity since I bought the headset but now that I’ve used it to login to Sansar, that return visit to HiFi is likely to happen soon.

I’m talking about an audio headset…

Another in our series, “Using OpenSim” (i just made that up)

Question: How do I save one section of a Varregion?

Short answer: You can’t.

Longer Answer: You can’t but here’s how to do it anyway…

I’ve been working on a project in a 768 var. Usually I work on each section in a standard region and then load it to the var. This gives me complete flexibility in arranging or re-arranging the var and in loading the latest updates without having to reload the entire var.

The other night inspiration hit while I was inworld on the var and i made a bunch of changes to one section. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” a little voice in my head said. “I’ll just have to keep working on the var as a whole, I won’t use the single region production system anymore,” I replied. “You’ll be sorry,” said that voice…

Empires come, empires go. Especially virtual empires.

A couple months back, I posted here that my first music stream, Radio Danko, would not be closing as I’d thought, that in fact I was adding two new music streams, part of a burgeoning virtual broadcasting empire.

I guess I wasn’t cut out to be an emperor.

In the last few days it has leaked out that the platform that hosts two of my music streams will be doubling the amount of commercials it requires us to air from four minutes an hour to eight. It’s not a ridiculous amount, I could live with it under other circumstances,
but it’s enough that these music streams no longer work for my own purpose, the reason I created them in the first place – to serve as the soundtrack of my virtual world places. When the music fits the place, it helps with…

Dankoville is my OpenSim home.

Dankoville is open to all visitors to explore, write, roleplay or just hang out. It’s online 24/7, give or take the odd glitch. Located on Naras Nook grid, Dankoville is accesible via Hypergrid: world.narasnook.com:8900:dankoville

If I’m in town or the surrounding area, I might be working or just hanging out. If you’re visiting, don’t hesitate to say hello or ask a question. It’s best to use IM as I might not notice local chat.

The sim is the setting for some of my story writing. In story, Dankoville is a small town in a farming area somewhere in the Corn Belt of the United States.

We are a long-term project and therefore always in some state of disarray, under construction, pardon our appearance, etc.

For more info, visit the Official Dankoville website: http://dankoville.weebly.com/

In our last episode, our hero (me!) announced he was getting ready to close his little faux radio station due to circumstances beyond his control. Since then, circumstances have changed, however, things are still beyond my control and have taken on a life of their own. I’m just hanging on tight and enjoying the ride.

Radio Danko will not be closing. I hesitate to make such a definitive statement but for now and likely the foreseeable future, it’s business as usual for my radio station/music stream.

The change in circumstance that allows Radio Danko to continue is that we can now be heard in Canada again. Our host platform has geo-blocked a number of countries, most likely for financial reasons, and while I’m still not happy about that, the blocking of Canada was the deal-breaker for me as Radio Danko has a number of loyal listeners there. The vast majority…

My music stream, Radio Danko, is hosted on the platform, Radionomy. That company appears to be instituting policy changes that I can’t live with. The result is, I’m expecting to have to shutdown Radio Danko for good in the very near future.

At the heart of the matter is the issue of music rights fees. It’s a very long and complicated story but the most important part of it is that in January 2016, new policies went into effect in the U.S. that dramatically increased the fees for small webcasters. Radionomy pays those fees for us, in exchange for that and for providing the platform, we broadcast their commercials twice an hour.

From what I’m gathering from various sources, Radionomy has decided to geo-block our streams to countries where they have no advertising revenue. I guess this allows them to only pay rights fees in the countries they are continuing…