I'm very pleased to report that we have been selected as this months winning entry in the Skullcandy desktop wallpaper design competition. You can see the winners here.
An extended range of sizes and an alternative version can be found on our website www.paleheretic.co.uk.
On a personal note, I love both the product and the brand from Skullcandy, so I'm particularly pleased to have won this. Thanks guys!
Monday, 23 February 2009
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Facebook does a Chrome
Is there something inherent in running large user bases that stops you thinking about users as individuals?
I'd hope not, but on the strength of recent events - Facebook most recently, Google Chrome a few months ago I'm not so sure.
In case you didn't notice at the time, Google published Chrome, thie new browser with a license agreement that gave them the right to reproduce anything that was created using their browser. That could potentially include a wide range of things from you email, to you images uploaded to Facebook(!?) to you bank details. Google quite rapidly responded that this of course was a mistake and that the license was just a stock item that should have been changed, which they duly did. The thing I did hear at the time was that they Google had previously tried to use the same agreement with their online word processor. The thing that I didn't hear was any reason why they would have such a clause in their license agreement.
To read of Facebook trying to take a similar approach, and doing so without consultation or warning gives great rise for concern and leads me (and a sizeable chunk of the blogsphere) to start asking some serious questions. The ones that spring immediately to my mind are:
1. How did an organisation that has at least some knowledge of managing large web based populations manage to decide that this change in terms and conditions was best managed by avoiding consultation and transparency?
2. Did they not expect a backlash when people found out?
3. Was this a way of measuring how big that backlash may be? (Hence the rapid u-turn)
4. I wonder how many people actually cancelled their Facebook accounts while the changed terms were in place and how the IP ownership of their photos and posts stands now?
I'm sure that the debate over this will rage for some time, but as many others have probably already done, I'd like to provide a little free consultancy on managing communities: be transparent and consultative in all elements that will directly effect the experience and rights of the community, and beyond that, let you community take a role in shaping you on-going service development. They'll feel positive about the shared ownership and development, and be more invested because of it.
I'd hope not, but on the strength of recent events - Facebook most recently, Google Chrome a few months ago I'm not so sure.
In case you didn't notice at the time, Google published Chrome, thie new browser with a license agreement that gave them the right to reproduce anything that was created using their browser. That could potentially include a wide range of things from you email, to you images uploaded to Facebook(!?) to you bank details. Google quite rapidly responded that this of course was a mistake and that the license was just a stock item that should have been changed, which they duly did. The thing I did hear at the time was that they Google had previously tried to use the same agreement with their online word processor. The thing that I didn't hear was any reason why they would have such a clause in their license agreement.
To read of Facebook trying to take a similar approach, and doing so without consultation or warning gives great rise for concern and leads me (and a sizeable chunk of the blogsphere) to start asking some serious questions. The ones that spring immediately to my mind are:
1. How did an organisation that has at least some knowledge of managing large web based populations manage to decide that this change in terms and conditions was best managed by avoiding consultation and transparency?
2. Did they not expect a backlash when people found out?
3. Was this a way of measuring how big that backlash may be? (Hence the rapid u-turn)
4. I wonder how many people actually cancelled their Facebook accounts while the changed terms were in place and how the IP ownership of their photos and posts stands now?
I'm sure that the debate over this will rage for some time, but as many others have probably already done, I'd like to provide a little free consultancy on managing communities: be transparent and consultative in all elements that will directly effect the experience and rights of the community, and beyond that, let you community take a role in shaping you on-going service development. They'll feel positive about the shared ownership and development, and be more invested because of it.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Mandriva Linux and my Asus EeePC 900 - A follow-up review
Having now run my EeePC 900 with Mandriva Linux for something like 4 months, I thought it was time to do a follow-up review and let you know how it was going as a long term choice.
And to get right down to the headline: nothing to report.
That's it, right there. It just works, to the level that its essentially transparent as an OS and so far the limit of my required administration has been to type in my password to install any updates.
Perfect.
My EeePC is a daily companion the provides email, web, graphic design (photoshop under wine, gimp, blender and inkscape), web development (dreamweaver and flash under wine) and remote desktop. So it isn't getting off lightly just because its a netbook.
Unlike with my experiences of Ubuntu and OpenSuse, in another few months and I am confident that I'll still have nothing to report.
And to get right down to the headline: nothing to report.
That's it, right there. It just works, to the level that its essentially transparent as an OS and so far the limit of my required administration has been to type in my password to install any updates.
Perfect.
My EeePC is a daily companion the provides email, web, graphic design (photoshop under wine, gimp, blender and inkscape), web development (dreamweaver and flash under wine) and remote desktop. So it isn't getting off lightly just because its a netbook.
Unlike with my experiences of Ubuntu and OpenSuse, in another few months and I am confident that I'll still have nothing to report.
Monday, 9 February 2009
Low prim, high fidelity architecture for Second Life - The Heretic Pixies store
This is the first in a series of posts about the design and contruction of our new Heretic Pixies store.
For most people starting out with a building in Second Life, prim limits (the number of building blocks you can permanently place on a piece of land) are probably one of the most limiting factors. With an unlimited number of prims it would be easy to create an attrctive building, but when you may only have 30 or so, your options are fairly limited. Contents is always a factor in this - you want to have enough prims left to be able to put something inside your building.
At Pale Heretic we use a process that allows us to produce high fidelity buildings by pre-rendering things like complex shadows into the textures themselves. One of our products is a single room that has less than 30 prims, but the interior conveys a sense of light and space you wouldn't normally find in a small environemnt (the box measures 10m x 20m). You can see another example of this that we are constructing at the moment - our new Heretic Pixies store.
The Heretic Pixies store is constructed from 16 prims (for the floor, ceiling and walls) and measures 20m x 15m. It's going to be our store for a new character based range of products and we want to make it look as plush as possible on a low prim budget. The first part of this is making the interior itself look as good as possible and to do that we are using baked interior textures. Doing this allows us to both get realistic graduated lighting and shadows on the interior walls, but also allows us to put murals on the walls and for them to look like they are on the wall, rather than floating in front of it.
To do this we build a replica prim-for-prim in an opensource 3D application called Blender (www.blender.org). We then pick the faces that we wish to bake textures for and they are individually textured. The textures we use for these surfaces are sourced from photographs. The key is to avoid obvious tiling of textures. Seeing a regular repeated pattern in a wall or floor will break the illusion of reality. For example, the concrete texture for the walls in the Heretic Pixies store is created from a number of unique photos, layered and mixed to create a 2048 x 1024 texture that can be used to span the longest single wall with out any repeats. Onto this we add logos and other graphic elements, then bake out the textures, so that the local lighting and shadows are precomputed into the textures and we do this so that we get a good match with the lighting that we add in Second Life.
Generally, we will create a single 1024 x 1024 pixel texture for each 10m x 10m face. This increases your texture upload costs because you need a unique texture for every face (16 for the interior of the store) but then, that's still less than one US dollar. Using high resolution textures like this, while having some impact on older graphics cards, does allow the use of text and graphics directly into the wall texture without the need for additional prims and textures for signage.
The design and build for the Heretic Pixies store has so-far taken about 5 hours, since we already had the images and photographs that were used to create the textures. Over the next few days we'll be adding more to the store interior and exterior. If you would like to take a look, you can get there from http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dangun/176/77/143/ or by searching for 'Heretic Pixies'.
For most people starting out with a building in Second Life, prim limits (the number of building blocks you can permanently place on a piece of land) are probably one of the most limiting factors. With an unlimited number of prims it would be easy to create an attrctive building, but when you may only have 30 or so, your options are fairly limited. Contents is always a factor in this - you want to have enough prims left to be able to put something inside your building.
At Pale Heretic we use a process that allows us to produce high fidelity buildings by pre-rendering things like complex shadows into the textures themselves. One of our products is a single room that has less than 30 prims, but the interior conveys a sense of light and space you wouldn't normally find in a small environemnt (the box measures 10m x 20m). You can see another example of this that we are constructing at the moment - our new Heretic Pixies store.
The Heretic Pixies store is constructed from 16 prims (for the floor, ceiling and walls) and measures 20m x 15m. It's going to be our store for a new character based range of products and we want to make it look as plush as possible on a low prim budget. The first part of this is making the interior itself look as good as possible and to do that we are using baked interior textures. Doing this allows us to both get realistic graduated lighting and shadows on the interior walls, but also allows us to put murals on the walls and for them to look like they are on the wall, rather than floating in front of it.
To do this we build a replica prim-for-prim in an opensource 3D application called Blender (www.blender.org). We then pick the faces that we wish to bake textures for and they are individually textured. The textures we use for these surfaces are sourced from photographs. The key is to avoid obvious tiling of textures. Seeing a regular repeated pattern in a wall or floor will break the illusion of reality. For example, the concrete texture for the walls in the Heretic Pixies store is created from a number of unique photos, layered and mixed to create a 2048 x 1024 texture that can be used to span the longest single wall with out any repeats. Onto this we add logos and other graphic elements, then bake out the textures, so that the local lighting and shadows are precomputed into the textures and we do this so that we get a good match with the lighting that we add in Second Life.
Generally, we will create a single 1024 x 1024 pixel texture for each 10m x 10m face. This increases your texture upload costs because you need a unique texture for every face (16 for the interior of the store) but then, that's still less than one US dollar. Using high resolution textures like this, while having some impact on older graphics cards, does allow the use of text and graphics directly into the wall texture without the need for additional prims and textures for signage.
The design and build for the Heretic Pixies store has so-far taken about 5 hours, since we already had the images and photographs that were used to create the textures. Over the next few days we'll be adding more to the store interior and exterior. If you would like to take a look, you can get there from http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dangun/176/77/143/ or by searching for 'Heretic Pixies'.
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