Back when I was a wee newblet (the second time around), Secondcast was the Second Life podcast to listen to. Since that time, almost two years ago, they've recorded 63 total episodes, of which only about 13 of them were in the last nine months. One fifth of the cast, Lordfly Digeridoo, recently pronounced Secondcast dead, after months of inactivity.

While I can't speak for them, I can speak as someone who has been on the show four or five times, with the latest being an episode that never aired in July. I heard the tone of the program change before me. What was once a fun project ended up taking a backseat to their own personal projects. Walker Spaight wrote a book, Johnny Ming and Torrid Midnight went to work for the Electric Sheep Company, Lordfly Digeridoo for Millions of Us, among others, and Cristiano Midnight busy as ever with SL Universe.

Instead of focusing on the fact that it's gone, though, I'd rather relate a happy memory I have from the show. After having been on a couple of times, Johnny asked me to make an episode into a Machinima. It turned into a total disaster. The rest of the cast was really bored and did not hide that fact. They goofed off when I needed screenshots, then got cranky before they were to watch all the Machinima.

Read on for the rest of the story ...

The premise of the Machinima was simple. We'd chat for a few minutes about what the Ed Wood Festival in Second Life was about, and then we'd MST3K SL Machinima. Positioning everyone was an absolute nightmare, and it was one of my first times doing Machinima for someone else, so I was really nervous. In the end, it was so late, that Cristiano fell asleep and Lordfly had to leave to be able to get up for school the next day. Johnny seemed to be the only one enthusiastic about it.

The Machinima itself was pretty challenging for my dinosaur of a machine (at the time). I listened to the entire podcast and then cut it into individual sections, line by line, for each cast member, for roughly 10 minutes of audio. After that, I rendered each piece through Crazy Talk, a third party program by Reallusion, designed to animate pictures. In the end, I spent many hours on it, and my computer wouldn't render it into one piece. I had to run five rendered pieces through Windows Movie Maker, because Sony Vegas wouldn't do it.

That was about a year ago, and the episode was titled, "Let's Skate!" I've learned so much since then, upgraded my computer, and done plenty of contract work. I'll never forget my big break, though. Thank you for the memories, Secondcast!

Did you have any special memories of Secondcast? Leave a comment!