Torley Lives

Ever heard of "declaring email bankruptcy"? When I first did, it sounded like a joke, but I've since learned from its practicioners that if anything, it's a serious method to start anew during stressful times.

I get too much email, and spend 1-2 hours a day on it. That's better than the 2-3 hours I was saddled with nearer to the beginning of this year. If I were to break it down, 6/10 of that time is spent replying, with 3/10 of it allocated to reading, and the final 1/10 is sorting (and related organizational tasks). If a couple an hours a day doesn't sound like a lot, consider that in addition to email, there are a number of other major communication areas which I have to hit up and read & reply to, such as the Issue Tracker arising, and inworld itself.

To paraphrase one wiser than I:

"Context is king, context is queen, and convenience… is the kingdom."

Speaking of that — I get many IMs, an unhappy proportion of which are incomplete ("hi are you there") or incomprehensible. I've noticed a sharp rise in direct IMs ever since Help Request went away. Since I generally can't reply to them, I continue to make the first line of my profile a reminder to see my Web tab for very good reason.

What gets priority when I do reply? Obviously, project-critical things sent by fellow Lindens, and really juicy info — like solid bug reports and kewl places to visit inworld — from Residents. I also highly rank personal correspondence only I can answer, like inquiries 'bout my video tutorials and Torley textures. Eclectic ideas which aren't your everyday dinner topics, such as more effective ways to use Second Life postcards, are also welcomed. In short, if it's:

1. well thought out
2. directly relates to my job focuses (also listed in my profile)
3. not already answered somewhere like the Knowledge Base, and
4. affects/will affect a lot of Residents

it's much more likely to get a response.

I generally don't forward emails to other Lindens upon request anymore. Unfortunately, that and other "it'll only take a few secs x 100s" became too time-consuming. I do believe, however, that we should have a public "Who Does What" list to better communicate exactly that. Until then, read Lindens' profiles so you can distinguish between an xtreme bug hunter and a marketing guru, and see the Wiki's Office Hours page.

I also can't do much with account-specific issues. These are best within the care of Support. Related:

• "Project Open Letter" by Robin Linden
• "Support Update" by Cyn Linden

There was a time when the Grid was much smaller and I liked to jump in and assist where possible, but we're continuing to hire good people who are better-equipped to assist than I, and I'm already backlogged on a long tail of issues to keep up with. Also keeping in mind that when I help someone, their friends and friends of friends hear about it and all contact me to request help — it's very flattering and of course I WUV TO MAKE YOU SMILE, but… not scalable. So again, the "if you want more of me, find superior cloning technology" mandate holds true.

I've started to read David Allen's Getting Things Done, which I just received in the mail from my  terrifitastic Mentor, Robin Harper (Linden). This week, I'm also doing spring cleaning on my computer and reorg'ing for efficiency. Yoz Linden let me know about a desktop JIRA Client designed to save time, and I'm giving Copernic Desktop Search a go too.

It's an ongoing challenge, keeping pace with growth while connecting personally! This is just my take on it, but I wanted to share to give you a clearer idea of what I deal with daily @ Linden Lab.

Got productivity tips 'n' tricks? Please let me know in the comments, thanxies.

To get better, you gotta get ill…

Obsessions in isolation are a weakness. Sharing your gladdictions together = strength! (Otaku an' ramen.) There is almost always greater context to what I say — throughout my lives, I have chronopoints, "time anchors" I can revisit in my memory palace. You don't see it, but my left hand scrunches up like I'm knitting, and I can so very lucidly super-clearly ahhh-h-h-h-h recall clips of existence I've experienced before.

Two fave video games: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Deus Ex: Invisible War. Colons aside, what these have in common is evocative, rich atmospheres which I could basely say "great level design" to! HURR. The lighting in both is pretty gorgeous — hello bloom! — and I'm pleased as punch that with RenderGlow, la, we're seeing Second Life unflat and look more like games on the market.

This isn't confined to me; Mullers on Flickr even noticed:

It's amazing to see the grid looking this good!
It reminds me a bit of the game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

Heck yeah! GMTA and all that.

So then I went forth and used RenderGlow on the dense neon city of Midian:

Opportunity gets knocked up again!

Thus, the following is a mixture — some uses RenderGlow, some doesn't.

Macaroni Kidd told me about his Video Clip Arcade, which led me to a few observations…

• I'd never looked at all the video tutorials I made lined up in a matrix. That's nice!
   
• This makes me crave playing Flash in SL even more, so you don't have to go to an external website to play YouTube videos or whatever. I remember an arcade (of the game sort) awhile back where it sent you to a webpage with an emulator to play classic titles, and to have the actual gameplay framed within SL would've been a lot nicer (if arguably slower).
   
• Macaroni has a lot of newsboxes. Anyone have a bigger collection? This is a fun overview of publications cross tha Grid. (I've been so meta lately, compiling resources in single easy spots.)

What's right about this picture?

Must be the smallest L$ disparity I've ever seen between a demo and the real deal. This HUD functions as a simple back button: teleport to a location and it'll store it, and you can click the red arrows, then the name of the place to TP and retrace your steps.

OHHHH MY EYES!

Sun is bigger in 1.15. Ctrl-Alt-M then go into Mouselook and have it dance around for you.

This is supposed to be "Texas State Technical College", but I kept thinking what the aftermath would look like, aka future NYC in Heroes. (BTW, I just watched my first ep of the show, and it's great. I hardly have any time to watch TV, but Masi Oka rulez.)

Last one there is glowy. This city has a video arcade and, again, I can't help think thoughts of a city that's grungy and bombed-out on one side but pristine on the other, authoritan peacekeepers clad in uniform beating down the poor and defenseless. Kinda like the Seattle divide in DX: IW or even The Longest Journey's Stark/Arcadia split. Huzzah for parallels!

Came back to Midian City to find the sky was a blood red (one big prim overlayed), like many spirits were going to come out of the heavens and wreak havoc. A genuine Ghostbusters moment. Midian's good to take pictures of because there's so much variation in texturing and geometry.

In some of the lonelier parts, you can almost imagine, "We're almost at the gas station! Honey, get the bow and arrows, we've got some zombie ass to kick!" Another thing to look out for in SL cities is how they do their trash cans, dumpsters, and garbage bags. Trust me on this one.

Sun exposed to massive doses of RenderGlow:

(Some sense of narrative; maybe that's why Midian's sky went crimson? All this reminds me of that.)

Setting RenderGlow to other extreme settings (RenderGlowSize = 0 makes for a trippy frozen overlay) will get you far:

Wild.

More fun office hours, during the week I dart in and out of world so unpredictably, so it's nice to commit to scheduled times where Resis can come and meet me. IN AVATAR, more personal than IMs. :p So if you're interested, this week they're again gonna be @ 6 AM & 2 PM PDT on Friday. And Exaemo Dmytryk's shoes rock.

Bridie Linden came to visit me too. We're working together on corraling hot bugs, and she just made her Linden Bear! Go Bridie!

I think this is the first transparent texture she's made too. She's got quite a knack for cartooning, so I hope we see more of her art inworld.

Lindens bears are collectible and fun, to get one, just ask a Linden! That includes me (altho please email me, torley at lindenlab dot com, rather than IM so it won't get lost, I can tag and prioritize my emails better).

Remember what I said about junk in cities a few paragraphs up?

Tee hee hee. Seagel Neville let me know about the regions of KABUKI and sick, and they've even got a YouTube promo. In-transit, I had to share the good news on Jamlet's New World Notes! More pictures of what these Japanese have been up to, like pimpin' out trucks — that's by SAZAE Yoshikawa!

It's really cool, because I remember when I got a lot of questions about "Where are all the cities in Second Life?" and on the mainland, they're still relatively rare. You're more likely to find a chaotic morass of… stuff. But on estates (private islands), where there's more control over your environment, this emerges.

So uh that was sick, here's KABUKI:

Chock-full of superfabulousness. I even like the Casshern-like soldier d00ds:

That dead one either got shot, or tripped and isn't gonna wake up.

Let me talk about Casshern for a bit: the movie features the reanimation of the dead. I didn't see the anime it's based on, but this flick is so highly stylized. I might even say it has its own RenderGlow on most of the time! WATCH THE TRAILER OMG. On a budget of ~$6 million, the special effects are kickass, and while the complex story makes sense up to near the end, it's a dang shame it hasn't seen a domestic release Stateside yet. Lots of robot-slaying, deep philosophical questions, grand architecture that can't be pinned to any one period of Earth's history — what more could you ask for? So for anyone looking for inspiration to create the next great SL city, I recommend watching Casshern. And headbangin' to the soundtrack. (For smiling out loud, there's a collab between Satoshi Tomie + Shiro Sagisu on it!)

COMPUTER WORLD / IT'S MORE FUN TO COMPUTE

You know you can get in my good graces by talkin' Kraftwerk! My wife's working on this project, and a lot of what you can see here is by Shukran Fahid and Stella Costello. Again, this is a scene I'd like to see 100 years later, after the brilliant students have attained such a degree of intelligence (not through formal education but self-discovery) that they've been taken by aliens, back to their homeworld, and the school stands fallow. With no one to take care of it, things wear and decay, and then a stranger in a dark, flowing coat walks in…

Like San Francisco, but not, bridge by Saeya Nyanda and houses by Menno Ophelia:

Someone should: (1) fly the U.S.S. Voyager through the former and (2) reenact this commercial with the latter.

SAMPLES & DOWNLOAD
01 - brkl

04 - eilp

11 - qzzl

15 - zrzr

» Download play while answering email
(click-through, then right-click the MP3s and save the music!)
 

COVER ART

 

STORY BEHIND THE SONGS
This is my latest set of solo piano improvisations that'd I'd like to share with you! I've literally titled it play while answering email. The story behind this is: while engaging my inbox during the week, I found a connection between two of my recent gladdictions, pandas and the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto. It turns out that they were both mentioned in an article about healing in a time of hectic urban stress, some 7 years ago. While not old enough to cycle back into fashion, I think relaxation is universal to just about all cultures, especially when we have so much technology and gadgets that continually ping and beep us. (It's for this reason I wish I could shut down my Second Life IMs like a cellphone, so I could focus on my immediate surroundings!)

Without any great plan, but feeling an urge to make something that would calm me while going through my email, I sat down and performed these 15 compositions. They're simple, for the most part slow-tempo'ed, and a little Impressionistic in their flavor. Jazzy interludes and broad chords are in attendance. This group isn't tied to any one time period, but another visual which inspired me was sitting in a grand hotel lobby with a coffee and the newspaper, watching lives go by. Or even playing a piano in that hotel for all to hear, mellowing the workers who sat down to chill out, have a snack (or even a full meal), and suches.

Should they appear too enigmatic, no, the 4-character titles aren't acronyms. They're literally characters for characters' sake, pseudo-like typos you might make while writing email. Composing a letter, composing a song, therein is another parallel!

As the music itself reaches outward and helps you feel a new sense of space, it soothes you if you're tense. At least that is my hope. I also used some additional reverberation effecting — meaning each of these piano pieces is placed in a different type of "room". Some are bigger than others, but in all, there's a common theme of space that runs through, tranquility admist the rushes.

If I may suggest: be more with loved ones. Even if it's on a computer.

May this add to the peace you feel.