SL Homestyle

Love is in the Air

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:10:00 +0000

With Valentines day slowly approaching and feeling the need to make something brand new, it is with great pleasure we proudly present our new Lovers Picnic Set.

Unlike most picnic sets in SL this one is completely sculpted and only 44 prims!!. Dine the night away with your loved one under the stars and watch the sky with the beautiful "Star Gaze" animation. Or cuddle up close and kiss, choose from 9 animations in the xpose menu.

Eight of the animations in this set are brand new and completely unique to Instinct!

So if you are looking for a bit of romance or want to impress that someone special this Valentines day head on over to Instinct and give this picnic a try. TAXI TO INSTINCT

Instinct Handcuffs

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 07:41:00 +0000

Many people asked whether we sell our handcuffs in our store. It is terrible to keep having to say no, but we don't really like selling things that don't do anything, so we've decided to actually make it work!

The Cuff comes with 4 animations that you can cycle through by clicking on them. As well, we have included both a male and female version for that perfect fit. Whats more?! We have also included a bonus pair of cuffs with pink fluff!!

Looking forward to bringing more cool stuff to you guys, thank you for all your support :DD

New Animations Store

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:39:00 +0000

Since launching our store Instinct we have been inundated with kind comments from customers and bloggers regarding the quality of our work. It seems that most people were really impressed with the quality and type of animation we provided in the beds at Instinct.

To that end we thought it necessary to make these animations, and others we are creating, available to purchase as just that, animations LOL. So it is with great pleasure we bring to you, Instinct Animations!!!

The animations section can be found at our Instinct store in Kisping, after tping in walk to the bottom of the store and take a left...hey presto!!

Here is a little taster of the animations you can find there...

We have lots more animations to choose from including some full perm animations, great for builders! You can purchase mod/trans of each animation for a mere 250L or alternatively get a copy/mod version for 650L!!

So watch this space as we will be updating these pages with our new animations from time to time, but in the meantime get yourself down to Instinct and check em out!!!!!!

XstreetSL's hands off approach to unauthorized resellers

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:43:00 +0000

So, since we are on a ranting spree, might as well keep going! Following up on the unfortunate event of people reselling our freebies, we wanted to talk to the people at Xstreet SL as well as Apez, where the unauthorized resellers are using as a primary channel to distribute our products. However, the experience has been disappointing on both occasions.

For XstreetSL, they wouldn't even bother to look at your complaint - I thought I was getting an automatic response by some robot because I keep getting the same reply. If you file a complaint, their employees must have been trained to give out this default template of copyright policy.

Now the policy doesn't fit my situation and I don't want to file a DMCA, nor do I know if it will even work in the country I live in. Upon asking for more help and information, we only got fed with the same template again. Eventually we got to one person and she insisted that they are not going to bother until we provide the information they need - which is your RL identity and your RL address.

WTF, you say?

Yes thats right, when someone is screwing with you, XstreetSL's solution is to obtain your RL identity. But heres the real kicker - upon further request to look at our situation, they replied that

"As standard policy we send the complaint to the person the complaint is against. They would need the real life information to be able to properly contest if the complaint is false"

Translation:
Not only will we refuse to listen to you, we are going to give YOUR RL information to the person who might be doing harm to you and potentially, your family.

There goes some great policy. You might ask "BUT BUT BUT, what about MY needs to contest properly...?". Well, they stopped replying after that... I believe the robot on the XstreetSL offices went "does not compute, does not compute..." and proceeded to explode.

Now, what about Apez? I've actually managed to talk to Cenji of Apez about the issue involved and I really respect his perspective and his right to do so, as well as taking the length to help us out. But at the end, the people who are reselling our products are running free... Correction - not free, they are actually selling our free give away and making a profit. They are being rewarded, or even encouraged to do the same to other people as well.

Now the justification for Cenji's resolution is that he follows the first sale doctrine in RL, which dictates that items people obtained either free or purchased can be resold without any permissions from the original creator. He further proposed that it is his responsibility to be balanced and not abuse the rights of the creators as well as the resellers, as it would be an abuse of power on his part.

Translation:
"You guys sort it out, I don't care whos doing the right thing or not, I wont be sued so as long as I get paid, I don't care. You guys work out who will survive, its unfortunate but you are on your own mate"

All fair enough, but you know what? Lets ask us this question, if this is the just thing to do, if this is the right thing to do, will either of these parties be proud enough to announce to the public, and state their policies right in front of everyone, to tell everyone unapologetically that this is their policy? Are these guys willing to take it to the public and tell all their legitimate customers that this is what they are in for? That is content creator's rights (or the lack of) when something like this happens to them? That they are going to turn the other way and say "sorry buddy, you are on your own, but we are happy to take your money anyway". If there is any hesitation or doubt when you ask yourself that question, you know that your honest self is telling you - hey, maybe I AM wrong!

What is there to gain from rewarding resellers of freebie items? What is so balanced about equal rights between creators who actually spend the time and money and love to give vs those who just leech off others? Does it really take a genius to work this out? This is not a symbiotic relationship, it is a parasitic relationship, even predatory. Do you want parasites? or do you like being preyed upon? Are we going to throw our hands in the air and adopt a hands off approach - oh hey its not illegal, therefore we should not do anything to reward the givers and discourage the takers who don't give?

The lesson is -
If I am a community menace, it will totally be my right, and perfectly legal and fair, to take freebies and resell them. If I want to force someone I don't like to reveal their RL information, all I have to do is to infringe on their copyright, and screw with their business, and they will be screwed anyway, unless they give me their RL information, which means I can screw with them even more in RL too!

Hmmm, some great protection we have here, and some real balanced power we have with these services we are using. Lets all turn a blind eye on it and not let anyone know, let it go quiet and have a few casualties. Oh BTW, better YOU be the casualty than us they say!

A Short Ramble...Lucky Chairs

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:45:00 +0000

We implemented a lucky chair in our Instinct store some months ago now. Over recent weeks it has become apparent however, that a lot of people are merely coming to the store to wait for their letter to come up. That is perfectly fine, after all what is a lucky chair for if not to attract people to your store and share some of your goodies with the SL community.

Yesterday it was brought to our attention that a group has been formed telling people about what letter has been called on the chair at Instinct. I do worry sometimes that people are scamming our good nature and there is some kind of rip off going on. I wonder if it does more harm than good to our store to have this lucky chair. You know I don't want to ramble here but lately it just feels like you try to do something nice and people take take take or just throw it back in your face....why? Ghost hunts, lucky chairs etc we don't mind doing nice things for the community, but at the end of the day does it do us any good or are we just being naive?

No Good deed goes unpunished!

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:26:00 +0000

I am always being reminded the ol'wisdom that no good deed ever goes unpunished. Oh yes, sometimes I wonder if it pays to do good at all and often, the answer is - you WILL PAY for doing good!

Recently we remembered the time when we were noobs, where we have received so much from the established SLers in the form of freebies, free lindens and lucky chairs. So we thought we ought to carry the torch and give back to the community like those before us. Man, did we get reminded how - no good deed every goes unpunished.

So the first thing we did was we had a lucky chair which gave away a random amount of money. It took less than a week before someone came in with a drone of avatars with names covering the whole alphabet, they didn't even bother to use a different surname! So this person came in with 26 avatars, grabbing one price after another. When I noticed it thousands of lindens was already taken - Ouch.

Then a few weeks ago at Halloween, we participated in a grid wide ghost buster's hunt organized by Vain mag. In this special event, we get to give away a special prize and we thought right, people are going to get a whole lot of stuff like pumpkins, bats, failed or old crap that didnt make it to the shelves and those god awful Tee shirts. So why not be generous and give out something nice? - Big mistake!!

So, instead of just doing what a normal person would do, some asshole(s) just stood there and took 50, 60 copies of our items and started reselling them!!! It was terribly annoying because we couldn't punish those other people who were legitimate and terminate our special prize... while at the same time, if we continue, you are totally opened up for people to screw with you! Yes, thats right I said "YOU", the SL resident. These guys actually managed to sell some of our beds while those people could have gotten them for free from us directly!

This is just terribly frustrating, and its turning me into one of those cynics.

It's such a shame that people feel the need to do such things because in the long run all they are doing is totally ruining it for other residents. We want to be able to provide cool prizes and freebies, but why should we when people totally take advantage and try to make a profit off the back of it?

Although I see nothing wrong with someone legitimately purchasing something from one of our stores, using it, getting bored of it, and then reselling it in a yard sale lets say. I totally DO see something wrong with someone taking something free and then charging other people for it!!!!!!

So the question is do we stop giving out prizes and free stuff and let these asshole(s) win, or do we just turn a blind eye to it and accept it as what people do? I suppose the lesson to be learnt is never give out a freebie with transfer perms on!

Right now I'm so angry about it I want to scream!!

What a treat for today

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:08:00 +0000

So everyone anticipated that Apple was going to release new laptops a month or so ago for its special event. Turns out it was new iPods, which was exciting but not as exciting as new notebooks. Well today, Apple announced their new lines of notebooks and they look awesome. The specs indicates that the new MBP's are even more powerful than my G5 with way more capabilities. Since my G5 is aged, had gone through a few surgeries, have a tendency to overheat and simply getting a little sluggish... I needed a new computer, and a mobile one to top that. So this is perfect.

The new LED monitor makes it a perfect match too as that is the current display set up I have - A 24" main and a 15" second monitor. Of course, all with the benefit of less chunky stuff floating around. It is a little unfortunate about the clockspeed. I have a thing for whole numbers and Apple is shipping 3GHz iMacs and MacPros. For some reason the MBP is capped at 2.8GHz atm. Maybe the next generation...

Oh guess what is out?

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:00:00 +0000

Just as I was writing and relearning Blender, a new one came out! This time with some really awesome features! The sun/environment, shrink-wrap, coloured shadows, standard simple deformations. WOOT. Got to love blender. I don't think I have came across a piece of software that is being upgraded as fast with awesome new features as blender. It is very stable, very userfriendly. The documentation and community support is excellent.

Definitely very happy with it

Modeling existing stuff vs imaginary stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:41:00 +0000

Art comes in all different flavours. Whether you like sweetness or sourness, or bitterness is not a matter of right or wrong. It is a matter of differences, you may have a preference at any moment at any time. I remember when I was young, it was my bestest most favourite thing to rush to the local model shop, to look at model railroads, battleships, cartoon characters etc. I'd press my face against the glass in absolute amazement, wondering how on earth is it possible that people can do such things.

Much like some painting, fine scale modeling sometimes are meant to be "realistic". Think about it, by the very nature of their existence, they are meant to be fake, perhaps virtual. Much like the word "moon" in a novel is not the actual moon. They emulate, they simulate and if you pay attention to your own thoughts and feelings you are probably astonished by how "real" they look. I.e., how similar they are to the real thing. Or more accurately - how much of the same emotional and mental responses are stimulated from an entirely different medium.

There is no exception in CG. In fact, 3D Graphics is at least partly intended for such purposes. There have been people trying to imitate real life since the cavemen era and we are just more advanced. There has to be something of human nature to capture and express his/her interpretation of the world around them. What it meant to them, and to share that interpretation by means of expression and communication to others.

Making things from the imaginary is pretty much designing. You create something purely out of the imaginative. This is very different from people who model and express their interpretation of the world around them. It is a different mode of function and yes a very important one as it tends to bring more new stuff into the world than to imitate something that already exist.

Design and creation from the imaginary often have a reference or a basis in the Real World too. Your design of a new table is probably built upon existing ideas of a table at least, no matter how different it is from existing tables. There is always a source of reference -

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" - Albert Einstein.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal" - Pablo Picasso.

Perhaps both these great minds were referring to the nature of creativity being sourcing references. In fact, both these men suggest (rather directly) that creative people are more deceptive in nature by "stealing" and "hiding". Of course, this also suggest that those who are less skillful in this deception will result in being caught and hence be branded as less of a creative person.

Nonetheless sometimes we just want to outright advertise our sourcing just like a fine scale modeler would do. In this case it is about realism, it is about capturing, it is about interpreting and expressing that very personal interpretation. It is also about skills and knowledge about your tools, as well as your medium.

How do you make it real?
WHAT makes something the way they are?
Why is it that it is meaningful to you?
How is your interpretation different from that of the others?
WHat is the technology that enable you to create realism that has not been done before?
Can you push the technology further to create a new level of realism?
Can you use the exiting but limiting constraints of the medium to create effects that is beyond the imagination?

Think about it - When you are purely creating something from your imagination, you might not necessarily subjected to the same amount of vigorous and intensive assessments a modeler goes through. Why? Because you have hidden the reference! there is nothing to compare to but what is in your mind.

This shows the fundamental difference between the two approaches in artistic expression. And I would not argue either one over the other in terms of its value in existence. As a matter of fact, I know many people who actually lack the skills and patience required to make something realistic. As much as they try they simply cannot make things look right. And they give up. Sometimes these people find it easier to actually create things that doesn't have to look real - i.e., from the imaginary. I personally think there are intrinsic value in this as well and I think the world needs both type of expression

SNAP!

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:25:00 +0000

Hate alignment? Sure we all do. You want to get rid of those horrible seams and have everything lined up neatly - but isn't it a pain in the butt to do so? People pay lots of money for things like Prim-align, PrimDocker and Skidz Primz. People also pay a lot of money for autoCAD's ability to align things accurately and fast.

Well finally, us blenderers have it - the snap tools in 2.47! It is still pretty immature and nowhere near as powerful as other packages but hey, if you hate doing the maths and converting units or the eye-straining process of manual alignment? It helps.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Snap_to_Mesh

Blender 2.47

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:01:00 +0000

We started off using Blender when it was 2.43. Man have things changed since then. While the basic functions are still the same, it felt like a distant past and the way we work with blender is just totally different now.

Blender 2.44 was when we first got the hang of blender. I remember getting excited over the gecko on the splash screen lol. It was strange - almost like suddenly it all made sense and we could start using it to model properly. Man it took us a long time.
Then it was 2.45, by now we are pretty competent in using Blender with SL but we were kinda stuck at this stage since then. We have not progressed much since here. There are still lots to learn

Now we are at 2.47. So many things are different and I have to relearn Blender again. Right from the start. Looking back at the Noob to pro! wikibook, it is as if its entirely different. The interface has changed so that I don't even know how to unwrap anymore lol. Well anyway, got to start learning again.

Even more Bathtubs!

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:20:00 +0000

So I have been having so much fun I couldn't stop. Here we go, another bathtub with 11 different colours! This time, green, orange and my favourite - Hot pink!

Once again, comes with lots of animations and FX's! Have fun!

Right next to the other one at CORN :D

New Bath tubs @ CORN!

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:37:00 +0000

G'day everyone! Turns out this blog thing is pretty fun and I prefer this to group notices in world :D A bit of a product update. This week, we are presenting our new bath tubs, featuring 10 different colours. All working like the previous tub - 7 animations, water animations and sounds! I am excited about it and now I really must get one of these for my RL home ^^. And here are some more detailed shots! We hope to bring something new for everyone as regular as possible but you know... RL gets in the way.

Come check these out at CORN, they are near the entrance, a bit to the south

What it means to be creative?

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:14:00 +0000

“To be creative means to be in love with life.
You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to
enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it,
a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” –Osho

It makes me think how many of us are in love with our secondlife, knowing all the beauty and wonder residents bring into it. Much of SL is more or less unnecessary, afterall we have a RL already right? This goes to show that much of the wonders we find in our little virtual world is full of love!

SL interior designs

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:35:00 +0000

The reason why SL interior design has not been popularized is because there is a lack of content that inspires wonder and astonishment in people. A RL interior designer take pride in their work and will demand and expect the same level of respect as the fashion people. However, the content available to support this is largely limited, if not downright non-existent. Lets face it, who wants to spend days, weeks and end up with a chair when you so disparately want that vision of your room to materialize RIGHT NOW?

The fashion people in SL have got it right. Not only are there lots of stunning designs of the clothing itself, the skills and techniques employed in the fabric & textile production are nothing short of professionalism. The technical know-how alone shines and shadows that of furniture builders. This is obvious when you walk down the street and find an impeccably dressed avatar and go wow and zoomed in. That is what you can do with fashion, you can make people go WOW

Can I say that this is the same for SL furniture pieces? No.

As much as I can say that there are many pieces I love, that people are doing some very interesting work. The levels of design, craftmanship and artistry are no where near that of the fashion crowd. I am no exception, the availability for people to achieve the same "wow" with furniture is largely impossible! You simply cannot do that at the same level of ease as fashion! Just try this yourself, start building a room and see how difficult for your idea to come true. Do the same with fashion and see the relative ease.

But why? I do not know.

Perhaps it is a reflection of RL? What is the ratio of fashion stores vs furniture store in RL? How often do you buy new furniture compared to clothes? What are the images you see mostly on TV, magazines and billboards? I think the answer is clear. Should we be surprised at the same thing in SL? Of course not.

One thing for sure, Interior design is part of humanity, it is a thriving pursuit in RL and it should not be any different in SL. SL is about us as humans, it is not just a technology so as long as we are brining people into SL, interior design will grow with it

Second Life Art

noreply@blogger.com (Cornelius Sloat) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:01:00 +0000

My first few days in Second Life, taken near the Waterhead welcome area. Archille is in the background

Yes, thats me walking around with a Demo skin, default cowboy boot and sitting randomly. I can't quite remember where that was I think it was near some animation store.

I love SL art and amongst them Starax Statoski is my personal favourite. He was able to twist, cut, and tortour prims like no one could and on top of that, a general all rounder in texturing, particles, scripting. Not to mention sheer brilliance in formulating ideas for his art.

Many times when I have a builder's block, I'd look at his sculptures. These sculptures always reminds you that it is possible, you can do it, that in secondlife, you can build whatever you want, express yourself the way you want it to be. And more importantly, the sheer beauty, emotion and humour distilled in the sculptures always brings a smile to my face.

One interesting thing was that I was just looking back at my old photos from the first week I was in Second Life and guess what? Without knowing it I was already taking photos with Starax sculptures! Man wouldn't it be nice to have my own collection of Starax, to have a piece from THE ARTIST, NO! MORE than an artist, Starax is a HERO!

A Brand New Red Hot Sexy Furniture store!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:16:00 +0000

After many months of slaving away in front of the computer, our new store, Instinct is finally ready...WOOOT!!!

Instinct furniture is the result of trying to buy functional furniture for our home in Secondlife, and failing. To be honest we simply couldn't find anything that fit the bill so we decided to make our own. How many times have you seen a nice looking animated bed only to be disappointed by the animations in it?

Our beds have been lovingly crafted in every single way, not just looks, but functionality too.

There are 36 totally brand new, never before seen, pairs of animations in each beds. From chilling out with friends, to the most intimate moments with your loved one, these beds have an animation for every occassion!!!

And we didnt stop at beds......we got a bit carried away and decided, hell why not make the whole room, and so we did.

Most items in the rooms are totally interactive, lights switch on and off, baths run hot and cold water, toilets, showers are fully working. Oh yes you heard me right.......we made BATHROOMS too!!

Every bath, shower and toilet contains multiple animations. You can read your daily newspaper sitting on the loo if you so desire, or just relax in a nice hot bath.

Of course pictures dont really tell the full story, you really need to come and VISIT us and see for yourself.

Our doors open to the secondlife community on Friday 22nd August at 5am SLT.

Come and pay us a VISIT we think you will be pleasantly surprised :-)
We hope to see you very soon.

Cornelius & Devon

CALLING ALL PAPARAZZI

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:46:00 +0000

For several months now we have been working away in a secret location on a new project. After much sweat and many tears we are finally nearing a stage were we are ready to reveal all to the Secondlife community, much to our delight :-)) However, before we do reveal all, we want to give some of you the chance to take a look for yourselves and see just what all the excitement is about.

If you have a blog about secondlife creations or write for a magazine, we would love to hear from you. We will be hosting a pre-opening (sneak preview) event to the media and bloggers, if you are interested in attending then please email us HERE.

We hope to hear from you all very soon.

Best

Cornelius & Devon

Show Us Your CORN

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:18:00 +0000

So many of you tell us how much you love our furniture and so we have opened a flickr group to enable all you lovely people to show us your CORN. If you have furnished your home, office, shop with any of our furniture we want to hear from YOU! Click HERE to upload your snapshots and show us your design flair using our furniture.

Watch this space for upcoming information about photo competitions!!!!

CORN on Rykerized Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:02:00 +0000

Ryker Beck recently featured some of our furniture on her lovely blog "Rykerized:One Girls Opinion" which you can read here .

Thanks for the mention Ryker we are really pleased you liked our products enough to give them a mention.

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Devon Fischer) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:46:00 +0000

SL-Homestyle is a blog tracking the Second Lives of Devon Fischer and Cornelius Sloat.

We have been in Secondlife since Autumn 2006 and met each other in our first week in world. Since then we have collaborated on many projects and hope to collaborate on many more.

This blog will follow our adventures in Secondlife as well as document any new creations we might make along the way.

So if you are interested in surrounding yourself with beautiful furniture keep checking back, we can promise you some very exciting new products in the very near future, WATCH THIS SPACE!