Many thank-yous to Jason Wright of J Wright Design for his fresh and inspired help in filling a much-needed gap: he pointed out that Torley Textures would be more useful with preview sheets so someone can see what all the textures look like at-a-glance.
This is especially applicable in Second Life, where texture browsing can be a chore. Not just talking about it but doing something, Jason surprise-presented me with his initial designs! After some rounds of iterating and me noticing after all of this time, some of the Flickr sets were backwards alphabetically, he sent me the final revisions, and they're splendid. For example, for Volume IX:
Now when you get Torley Textures @ Here island, you'll notice a preview (aka "contact sheet") in every series' folder. As I mentioned, I've included them on the web too as well as the ultra-download of all texture packs IN ONE CLICK — but note that there is an inconsistency: "DREAMS" and "PLACEHOLDER" in the megapack do not have contact sheets as they fall out of the "regular" continuity. "DREAMS" is an inworld rarity and "PLACEHOLDER" is easy enough to discern — its distro kiosk is currently to the left of the regular Torley Textures, as shown here:
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Dancing with Matt Harding, of course! (Keep reading for the video!)
Serendipity has a funny way of teaching us life lessons: just days before on vacation, I was at the beach with my wife, dancing (like Matt) on the tidal pools. Not knowing what was yet to transpire.
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I was impressed by the earlier Photosynth demos, which showed how 100s, even 1,000s of 2D pictures could be mapped for 3D navigation, with the process of doing so resembling wandering through an electronic dream: shards of imagery appearing all around, points of light denoting matches between pictures.
After Chaos Mohr let me know about his experiment following Photosynth's public unveiling, I gave it a go for myself with the same pictures used for the Here panorama. Alas, results are mixed: as you can see from the grid view above, it didn't recognize 15 images out of a set of 50, and thus, only 35 are part of a cohesive, 3D set. That's awkward and annoying, considering my panoramic software stitched those together just fine.
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One of the best ways to learn how to not just talk to, but passionately care about your customers is to repeatedly be on the receiving end of customer service — or lack thereof — from other companies. I've got 2 shining stars:
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