DJ Tober's Rain of Ruin for September 30, 2008

Here's my dj set for KAOS radio in Midian City from last Tuesday. It's an entire set of only cover songs, and the recording is about 2 hours and 15 minutes long. Songlist is below. Download link is in the post title or here.

Artist: Title (Original Artist)
1. Harry Roche Constellation: Pinball Wizard (The Who)
2. KAOS Promo
3. Sex Pistols: Johnny B. Goode/Road Runner (Chuck Berry/The Modern Lovers)
4. Mudhoney: Hate the Police (The Dicks)
5. R.E.M: First We Take Manhattan (Leonard Cohen)
6. Tom Waits: The Return of Jackie and Judy (Ramones)
7. Ramones: I Don't Want to Grow Up (Tom Waits)
8. Dead Kennedys: I Fought the Law (Sonny Curtis & The Crickets, arguably made famous by The Clash)
9. Suicide: 96 Tears (? and The Mysterions)
10. Animal Collective: I'm on a Plain (Nirvana)
11. Pixies: In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song) (David Lynch, from the film Eraserhead)
12. Black Flag: Louie Louie (Richard Berry, made famous by The Kingsmen)
13. Black Flag: Louie Louie (Richard Berry, made famous by The Kingsmen)
14. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: All Tomorrow's Parties (The Velvet Underground)
15. Bauhaus: Third Uncle (Brian Eno)
16. Dinosaur Jr.: Just Like Heaven (The Cure)
17. Lords of Acid: Lady Marmalade (Labelle)
18. Rammstein: Stripped (Depeche Mode)
19. KAOS Promo
20. Nirvana: The Man Who Sold The World (David Bowie)
21. Ministry: Radar Love (Golden Earring)
22. Placebo: Running up That Hill (Kate Bush)
23. Tricky: The Lovecats (The Cure)
24. Lovage: Sex (I'm a) (Berlin)
25. Senor Coconut: Showroom Dummies (Kraftwerk)
26. Buck 65: Singapore (Tom Waits)
27. Joy Division: Sister Ray (The Velvet Underground)
28. 1000 Homo DJs: Supernaut (Black Sabbath)
29. Soil: Black Betty (Traditional, first recorded by the blues artist Ledbelly)
30. Bauhaus: Telegram Sam (T-Rex)
31. The 145's: That Ain't No Rock (originally titled "409" by The Beach Boys)
32. Scratch Massive: Three Imaginary Boys (The Cure)
33. Angry Samoans: Time Has Come Today (The Chambers Brothers)
34. The Fall: White Lightning (George Jones)
35. Chicks on Speed: Warm Leatherette (The Normal)
36. Coil: Tainted Love (Gloria Jones, also made famous by Soft Cell)
37. Gustavo Santolalla (with Benicio DelToro): Shake Rattle and Roll (Big Joe Turner)
38. Rasputina: Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
39. Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules: Mad World (Tears For Fears)

DJ Tober's Rain of Ruin for September 16, 2008

Here's my Midian City DJ set from last Tuesday evening on KAOS Radio. The recording is a little over two hours long.

Artist:Title
1. Intro & KAOS Promo
2. 999: Out of Reach
3. The Fall: Frightened
4. Gang of Four: At Home He's a Tourist
5. 23 Skidoo: Last Words
6. The Cramps: Sheena's in a Goth Gang
7. The Alley Cats: Nightmare City
8. X: We're Desperate
9. The Wolfgang Press: Bottom Drawer
10. Joy Division: The Sound of Music
11. The Gun Club: Good By Johnny
12. The Germs: Media Blitz
13. The Dead Milkmen: Bitchin' Camaro
14. Crystal Stilts: Bright Night Nursery
15. Dead Kennedys: Chemical Warfare
16. The Plugz: Hombre Secreto (Secret Agent Man)
17. The Dirtbombs: It's Not Fun Until They See You Cry
18. The Dickies: Attack of The Molemen
19. KAOS Promo
20. Mudhoney: Shoot The Moon
21. Minor Threat: In My Eyes
22. Mission of Burma: That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate
23. Nobunny: I am a Girlfriend
24. Devo: Mongoloid
25. Ramones: Beat on The Brat
26. Pop Will Eat Itself: Sick Little Girl
27. Public Image Ltd.: Annalisa
28. The Rezillos: Mystery Action
29. Sham 69: If The Kids Are United
30. Sleater-Kinney: Turn it On
31. Jim Carroll: People Who Died
32. Stiff Little Fingers: Law and Order
33. Suicidal Tendencies: Institutionalized
34. Wire: I am The Fly
35. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Kiss Kiss
36. The Birthday Party: Zoo-Music Girl
37. Black Flag: Six Pack
38. Buzzcocks: Boredom
39. The Clash: Tommy Gun
40. The Clutters: 9999 (Ways to Hate Us)
41. Chelsea: Right to Work
42. Johnny Cash: Highway Patrolmen

Punk, Post-Punk and related. And Johnny Cash at the end there (it was a request). Download link is here and in the post title.

DJ Tober's Rain of Ruin, September 9, 2008

Hi everyone! I've decided to post my Midian City DJ sets online. Kind of like a podcast, but manual. Here's the tracklist for this set:

Artist: Track Name
1. Woven Hand: Horsetail
2. Beck: Rowboat
3. Myssouri: Muscle Car on a Dead End Road
4. Alejandro Escovedo: Sex Beat (cover of The Gun Club)
5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Stagger Lee
6. Angels of Light: Star Chaser
7. Elliot Smith: Needle in the Hay
8. Neil Young: The Needle and the Damage Done
9. The Black Heart Procession: The Letter
10. Trailer Bride: Ghost on the Highway
11. KAOS PROMO
12. Animal Collective: Happy Singing Band
13. Tom Waits: Bottom of the World
14. A Silver Mt. Zion: 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons
15. 16 Horsepower: Shametown
16. Elliott Brood: Twill
17. Blackgrass: Station 18
18. Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots: River Forktine Tippecanoe
19. Old 97's: Four Leaf Clover (Featuring X)
20. Micah P. Hinson: You Will Find Me
21. Djali Zwan: Number of the Beast (cover of Iron Maiden)
22. Hrsta: Holiday
23. Elliott Brood: Write it All Down for You
24. The Handsome Family: Passenger Pigeons

Download link is here or in this post's title. The recording is a little over two hours long. Enjoy!

Interfacing Your Human to Your Avatar, Part 2

Many months ago, I posted an article on how to use a Saitek game controller to control your avatar in SL. Well, toss out recycle that P2900, because very soon (ie: this month) you'll be able to go one step better and use a 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator with SL...not just for controlling the joystick flycam, but for moving your avatar around as well! I don't know about you, but I'm placing my order for one of these now =)

(Story reported in Massively.com, title link takes you to the article, with video.)

New Feature: Music Playlist!

If you scroll to the bottom of my blog (it's the only place I could put it where it fit), you'll find my own personal playlist full of a bunch of artists I'm rather fond of (I'm still adding songs to the list). I hope you enjoy it, but in case you don't, autoplay is disabled ;-)

Thanks to Chloe for giving me the idea to do this.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is special only to people who are in love...otherwise it's usually hated. Depending on my relationship status, I fall into either category. Guess which one I fall in this year? ;-)

In case you were wondering, here's the Valentine's Day card I sent to Chloe:



Yes, it's Charles Darwin. Yes, I'm a dork.

And for those of you who are significant otherless this Valentine's Day, don't fret...there's always next year!

New NON-Linden SL Grid Opening!!!

I don't know about you guys, but I find this very, very exciting! Especially considering the improvements they've made to the avatars and object system...it's all mesh-based!

Read about it here on Massively:

http://www.massively.com/2008/02/10/new-non-linden-grid-opening/

and check out the offical Openlife Grid blog here:

http://openlifegrid.com/

Woohoo!!!

An Interesting Meme...

Yeah, I don't normally do these, but I was inspired by Raul Crimson's post. The interesting thing is that you guys get to decide if this daemon is right for me! Remember, if you don't participate in this meme, an angel will lose its wings every time you sneeze for the next 30 days. Nobody wants that to happen.



PS: You have to click the brown blob in the lower right corner to advance to the next question. Must be a bug in the code...

8 Things Meme

Ok, by now you know how I am...I don't do memes, really. But...I was tagged by Codebastard Redgrave, so here goes:

Here are the rules:
(1) Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
(2) People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
(3) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
(4) Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Perhaps I'll follow Vint's lead and have some facts about me-in-SL and me-in-RL...

1. October, Tober, Tobie...they're all me. And by me, I mean she's the RL me as can only be perceived through the SL interface. Tobie is my soul incarnate, my avatar. In both worlds, I am honest, funny, kind, giving, bright, affectionate, curious, creative, sensitive, slightly shy, and quite a bit silly. If you like me in SL, you will most likely like me in RL too.

2. In RL and in SL, I own motorcycles. In RL, I have a 1970 Honda CB100 SS, and a 1972 Honda CL100. The CL100 isn't ready to ride right now; it's a project bike. The CB100 is my baby, and I ride her all the time. I've owned her for about 10 years now, purchased from the original owner. She is in great condition and I take very good care of her, doing all of the maintenance and repairs to her myself (it's a lot easier than you might think it would be, trust me) Here's a photo of her:

"Baby"
Click on it to see it full-size

In SL, I have a BMW R50 with removable sidecar, a Suzuki GSXR replica, and an SL-version of my Honda CL100 that my lovely Chloe had custom made for me. =)

3. I make electronic music. I do so sort of the "old fashioned way" by using hardware synths, drum machines, samplers and sequencers. I use the computer basically for recording what I make, and also for mucking around with audio files in Sound Forge. Somewhat ironically, I don't consider myself a musician...it's because I have no formal training. My method is purely by trial and error and a lot of messing around. The kind of music I make is acid techno, idm, electro, dark ambient, and experimental noisy stuff.

4. Not only do I make electronic music, but I also make some of the devices used to make the music! To date, I have built two Roland TB-303 clones, effects processors, noisemakers, and circuitbent items. I like making things because it puts me in a state of mindfulness, similar to what yoga does.

5. In other music-related factoids, I've also been DJing for Midian City's radio station, KAOS Radio, at least a couple of times a week for the past month or so. It's something I've wanted to do for a while now, and I'm really enjoying it a lot. And, I actually speak during my sets, just like a real radio dj! But, I get to swear ;-) I also make silly comments and play funny public service announcements. If anyone's interested in knowing when I'm playing my sets, let me know in the comments or IM me and I can give you the stream url so you can listen if you're not in Midian City.

6. I am an out-and-proud bisexual, both in RL and in SL. Unfortunately, I've been single in RL for a few years now. The last date I went on was about a year and a half ago. =(

7. I used to be a professional photographer. After college, I earned an associate's degree in a lifelong love (photography) and was a pro for a while. I owned my first fully manual 35mm camera when I was 6 years old, which I purchased from a yard sale. I still have it, and it still works. I left professional photography to do something very closely related: photoshop. I've been employed as a digital image specialist for an ivy league university for several years now. I enjoy my job, but I do miss being behind the camera, too. I guess this explains why my photos are usually well-composed and honest, if not particularly glamorous or glitzy.

8. Eight...eight...I forget what eight was for.

And I tag...nobody! Why? Because fuck that, that's why. If you want to do this, be my guest. Just leave a comment here saying you're doing it because you read it on my blog, ok?

Interfacing your human to your avatar with a game controller

Saitek P2900 Wireless

The gamepad pictured above just may be a godsend to those of you who are interested in controlling your av without having to use the arrow keys. I purchased my Saitek P2900 last week, after doing a lot of research on controllers that could possibly be useful in SL to control avatar movement. Every button, the two joysticks and the D-Pad are completely programmable and can be mapped to keyboard presses (even combos) or mouse controls. In fact, all of Saitek's "P-Series" controllers are fully programmable. I opted for the P2900 because I wanted the convenience of a wireless controller. That way, when I go to type in chat, the wire will not be in the way. Now, all of this sounds fantastic on paper, but how does it work in the real world (and more importantly, in SL)?

Well, I only just got around programming it yesterday, using the "FPS" setting as a template to start from. The D-pad is mapped to arrow keys, the left joystick works as the wasd keys, the right joystick acts as the mouse. I have set up various buttons for pgup, pgdown, left mouse click, right mouse click, esc, m (mouselook), and ctrl+r (running). Then, I decided to try it out in-world.

First, let me start by saying that it works...quite well, in fact! The left joystick works extremely well for controlling avatar movement and is much smoother than using the button keys, and this is coming from someone who always uses "advanced walking" (left mouse clicking on the av, using the up arrow and steering with the mouse). Using the buttons took some getting used to, as I had to remember which button did what, but obviously that would become second nature in time. Some tricky things: If I forget to get out of chat mode, it fills the chat with things like "wwwwwwdddddddddddsssssssss", so that will take some getting used to, and using mouselook is a bit more complicated than usual. While in mouselook, the left joystick will still control avatar movement, while the right joystick will control where your camera is looking. Coordinating the two can be very, very tricky, but this will probably be of concern only if you use mouselook a lot.

I think some of my settings need a little bit of tweaking, but in the meantime, I can honestly say that trying out one of these controllers is certainly worthwhile for someone sick of using arrow keys. When you also consider the low cost of these controllers (they start at around $7 US for the P220) they really become a tempting purchase.

I should mention that there's some other options available other than the Saitek controllers. Here's some links to either DIY projects or controllers that are known to work with SL, at least in some degree:

DIY Controller Box
Using a Wii Controller with SL
Making a SL Controller
3DConnexion's SpaceNavigator

If anyone knows of any other DIY solutions or commercially available products, please leave a comment and I'll add it to the list of links at the bottom of this post.

My baby's back!

I'm taking a short break from my slew of Midian City Diary posts to tell my dear readers that my sweet kitty Chloe is able to be in-world now, on dialup, on a limited basis. After her being off-world for over a month, I am quite obviously very, very happy to be able to see and talk to her again in SL. This comes just in time for our second-monthiversary, which is tomorrow! =)

slprofiles.com

Well, I made a SLProfiles.com profile, which you can find here. Feel free to add me if you already have a profile. There's not much on there right now, but I will add pics and stuff soon.

MySpaced

Don't ask me why, but I made a myspace page for myself here:

http://www.myspace.com/octoberhush

It's a band profile because I plan on uploading my music too. I already have a myspace page for my "other" music...but you don't get to know that one ;-) Heehee.

Feel free to add me if you also have a myspace page! RL avatars and SL avatars welcome!

I'll add photos, music, and info very soon, I promise.

This isn't supposed to happen

So yesterday I was working on some stuff at home, and then I took a break to go get a bite to eat. It was still light out and really nice out. While I was out driving, I saw two young women walking on the sidewalk and chatting, and one of them was the spitting image of my avatar. No kidding! If she had neko parts on, she would have been a clone. Um, and she was the tan me, not white. Her hair looked like Kin's Koda, which I wear all the time. Clearly she is copying my avatar's look, but irl.

Obviously, the only thing to do is to find this girl and eat her brains.

That is all.

The right tools

As most of you probably already know, I like to chronicle my SL experience with photography. It's a natural extension of my own photography skill and experience irl; I went to school for photography and worked as a professional photographer for a while, then moved to the graphics/printing industry with prepress production, graphic design, and most importantly, scanning and photo correction and retouching, which is my forté. At work, I have a very nice, top-of-the-line 22" Mitsubishi CRT to do color correction on, but at home I never had anything even remotely as nice. Until now, that is.

I recently purchased a very nice Acer 22" widescreen LCD, which was a huge improvement over my cheapie X2Gen 19" non-widescreen monitor. The only problem I've had is that LCDs seem to be more difficult to manually calibrate than the CRTs I'm used to. I got a reasonably good calibration out of it manually, but if I wanted to be serious about doing photoshop work at home and taking consistent SL photos, I had to bring in the professionals. So, I bought a Colorvision Spyder 2, which arrived on my doorstep yesterday.

For those of you who don't know, the Spyder 2 is a combination of software and hardware. The hardware portion is a sensor that mounts on your monitor and plugs into a USB port. The process takes about 5 minutes and is easy enough for even the most novice user and requires a minimum amount of input during the process. Once it's finished, it gives you example images that you can view "before and after" with your old settings and the new, calibrated settings. You can use the Spyder 2 on a CRT, LCD or even a LCD projector.

Let me tell you, after calibrating, the difference is striking. There's no way I would have been able to calibrate the monitor this accurately manually. I highly recommend this to anyone who is into SL photography, using photoshop, or regular photography or scanning. The model I bought was only $57.99 from Newegg.com (whom I highly recommend for computer parts). At that price, there's no need to struggle with inconsistent color. Just buy it, spend a few minutes calibrating once a month, and you're done. I might bring it into work to see what it can do on my "pro" monitor since it did so well on my reasonably high-end LCD at home.