I have a selection of beautiful new mesh wicker and wrought iron patio dining sets (also matching seating sets but that’s for another blog post). Here are some pics:
Find them on the Marketplace HERE.
La Galleria EXCLUSIVE Mesh Library
The La Galleria library set includes two copper leather wingchairs with reading animations (and book to read), octagonal pedestal table, marble fireplace, mahogany bookcase, lamp, and everything else in the picture!
The chairs go with just about everything and can easily be tinted a darker color. Everything in the room is sold separately as well as in a discounted boxed set.
All mesh and only 43 prims total!
| Come by the landing point at La Galleria to pick up the FREE marquetry box and open book pictured above. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
EXCLUSIVE LA GALLERIA MESH BEDROOM
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You will not see this content anywhere else, because it is all original La Galleria content (not made from a full perm kit)!
The mesh linens now include a sleeping bedspread position with two sleeping sits in the pillows! Both the linens and bed frame can be bought separately.
Includes extras like fireplace, armoire, scarf tables, ginger jar lamps, rose print pictures and more! Only 73 prims!
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| Pale amber marble fireplace. Touch to turn on/off |
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| Gold and peach bedside table with ginger jar lamp. |
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| Mesh Armoire |
See it on the Marketplace HERE!
Videos
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Christmas!
Placing My Bet
It has poisoned everything. Everything I see, even everything I dream. I feels like I have a stone in my chest. No appetite.
I remind myself that a lot worse things could happen. It’s just a job, after all, not a life. But when your job requires creativity, you really need to feel some creativity, and for the time being, I don’t. At all.
“Oh then you don’t love creating just for the sake of creating.” the copy leftists will say. “You are just greedy!”
Imagine that you have a garden — you had to dig up rocks and bring in a load of soil and build frames for it — and you plant the seeds and fertilize using your homemade compost and you water and you weed and you pick off the bugs. All fun!
Then comes time for harvest, and you look forward to feeding your family the delicious food you have grown. And then your neighbor comes in with a wheelbarrow and cleans you out. Not only that but he dumps all the harvest into a big fire and burns it up.
How motivated would you be to plant another seed?
(Yes, I know, the analogy is not perfect — no analogy is. Maybe the neighbor just takes half. Whatever.
Or change it to cooking a big Christmas dinner for your family — assuming you enjoy cooking for your family — the list making, the shopping, the chopping, the cooking.)
I create not just for myself, but for my family, and for my customers, many of whom have become friends. It is not about me creating things in a vacuum for fun and never has been.
I just don’t feel like finishing this kitchen I am in the middle of working on when I know that as soon as I am done with it, someone will come along and take it and pass it around as a freebie. I do enjoy making freebies for my customers — but I want to decide what to give and whom to give to. It is hard to imagine at the moment wanting to spend weeks making something for someone else to copy and give as a freebie at the same time I have it up for sale.
I know other creators, some of them among the best in Second Life, who got tired of swimming against the tide. They got tired of preparing and faxing DMCAs. They stopped creating. Some left Second Life. Quietly, because there was no fight left in them.
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But there is one hope, and only one: The honest people in Second Life, who will delete any stolen content delivered to them rather than passing it along, and will support creators whose content they enjoy using. They are the one and only defense against those who want to destroy Second Life completely.
Together, creators and honest customers keep Second Life alive, because they are investing either work or money or both into it. Together they keep SL living and vibrant with creativity while the copiers try to drain it of its creative lifeblood. The copiers are the cancer of Second Life.
And writing those words, I come to a decision: I am placing my bet on those who support life and creativity.
The end of a miracle?
A little over three years ago, I found myself in a difficult situation. My mother had fallen down a flight of stairs and shattered her arm, so we moved her to our town where we could look after her — “we” being my disabled husband and I. As a teacher, I had the summer off to move her and get her settled — but as the new school year approached, I wondered how I could go off to school each day and leave only my husband to look after my mother. Sometimes he was up to it, but sometimes he was not.
So I took a big risk and resigned my position and began creating and running my store full time. And by full time, since I am a very slow creator, I mean 10-12 hours a day most days. A house can take me months. But it worked out, and I was able to just about replace my teaching income with my store income. I am able to work from home and be on hand to help with caretaking tasks.
Never a day goes by that I do not recognize what a miracle this is.
And now I discover that most of my store, including houses and furniture, has been copied and is being handed out free.
And I wonder what I ever did to make someone want to destroy my livihood. But I know this kind of maliciousness is simply beyond my comprehension. I cannot imagine inflicting such an injury on another human being. I have some idea that they justify their attacks by asserting that 3D artists (or musicians) should not be able to make a living, but I am not clear why that is. It doesn’t matter; everyone who does evil has some justification for it.
I don’t know what the effect of this attack will be long term. But there is nothing for me to do except this: Be grateful to those who do think the work of 3D creators has value and that we do deserve some compensation for the goods and services we devote so much work to providing.
To all honest customers, let me just say “Thank you for making a miracle possible!”
It remains to be seen whether the attackers have put an end to it or not. I know I cannot spend 60 hours a week working to provide free content for others to distribute. However much I enjoy creating, I have to make a living.
The NEW La Galleria Mesh Kitchen is here!
The mesh kitchens I have made over the last year were a big step up from the regular kitchens, which were already the best in Second Life — but this newest one is another giant step forward. So much so that I made a whole page describing how everything works, here — it is actually the notecard that comes with the kitchen, with pics.
It has a more flexible layout (though still fits all of my houses), a refrigerator with mesh food, a new larger island, cabinets, a fireplace, a teacart that rezzes really cute things, and more things to rez from the bar. It also has new cutting edge scripting that allows owner and guests to attach utensils directly, without going into inventory. And lot more new things!
I will be updating the other mesh kitchens in the same way — owners will get an automatic update.
Come by and try it out! It’s right by the La Galleria central landing point.
Evolution of a Second Life Brand: La Galleria
Very few Second Life brands grow into large stores; those that do, offer something unique and of exceptional quality, combined with excellent service. This is an account of one reason La Galleria grew from a tiny parcel to four sims in less than four years.
I sold my first item on Christmas day 2007. It was not long after that that I began developing what were to become my signature products, the first of their kind, the dining sets for dinner parties.
2008 Easy Set Dining Sets
I admired those placemats I had seen in other stores, which would rez different meals from a menu — but what I wanted was something for a dinner party. I did not want my guests to all choose a different meal, with some eating hamburgers and some soup — I wanted to choose and serve the meal.
I knew nothing about scripting so I made dinners and desserts for different numbers of place settings which the hostess could drag to the table top already linked — nothing sculpted! — and the Easy Set brand was born — and with it the first true dinner party dining experience in Second Life.
2009 Dinner Party Dining Sets
In 2009 I found an amazing scripter who worked with me to design a system which would not only rez meals and desserts from a menu, but would allow for food to be added — and the Dinner Party Dining Sets were born, the first dining sets in Second Life to rez linked meals in different numbers of place settings.
2009 Dinner Party Food Add-Ons
I began making extra food sets to add to the tables; the first holiday dinners were created, and many people shared their first holidy meal with loved ones in Second Life.
2009 Dinner Party Kitchens
Designed to prepare and cook and clean up after the meals available for the Dinner Party dining sets, while entertaining guests.
2010-2011 More food items created; original food items upgraded with sculpts.
2011 High detail MESH versions of the Dinner Party Dining Sets
2012 High Detail MESH Dinner Party Kitchens
2012 New MESH Dinner Party Holiday Turkey Dinner!
The new mesh Dinner Party Holiday meal is the product of three people — my talented design partner Nacy Nightfire, my brilliant scriptor, Rolig Loon, and me — working a total of almost two months to make something unlike anything seen in Second Life before!
- High detail, realistic mesh with almost half the prims of sculpted dinners.
- Touch a fork, wine glass or roll and they leave the table and fly to your hand, and you begin eating. When done, click Detach from a menu. The items return to your placemat. No more digging through inventory!
- Seven different sets of china to choose from, including one for Christmas.
- Four different placemat and runner color combinations to choose from.
- Click the green bean casserole to turn it and the green beans on the plates into Brussels sprouts.
- Candles change colors to match holiday decor.
- Candles rez festive bows which can change colors to match holiday decor.
"That Spark" and the Second Life – Steam Connection
Linden Lab just announced that Second Life would henceforth be associated with Steam — some service through which millions can connect to different game platforms. I was reading a thread in the Second Life Merchant forum about Steam’s potential effect on SL business and came across this insightful post by Madeliefste Oh, which I thought bears repeating here (the bolding is mine):
Madeliefste Oh wrote:
It will help, maybe not enough for all merchants to survive the crisis, but anything LL does to promote their world is better then keeping silent.
I really don’t care that it might bring in people who have different expectations. When I first arrived in SL I came with a game mindset as well. And I had no clue where to start, trying to get stronger, trying to get money, getting to know the right people, finding a home, or learning how to make things.
But soon enough I met people, and I talked to them in my attempt to find out how to play ‘this world’. And they learned me everything what a newbie needs to know: how to travel around, how to use IM, where to go for freebies and how to make money by camping or dancing in a club.
But soon enough I met people, and I talked to them in my attempt to find out how to play ‘this world’. And they learned me everything what a newbie needs to know: how to travel around, how to use IM, where to go for freebies and how to make money by camping or dancing in a club.
In I simply forgot my expectations that came from gaming experience, because this whole concept where you set your own goals seemed much more interesting to me, then playing around in a preprogrammed world. Above that I was highly fascinated by the idea this world was completely made and owned by it’s residents. To me this seemed the place where the collective fantasy took place, all with all a place to be.
Virtual wolds will never appeal to the masses who are looking for easy amusement. Freedom is not the easiest toy to play around with. You must be willing to take initiative and make your own meaning. I’m convinced that there are still millions of people who will enjoy SL, and have the potental to become a loyal resident. Some of them will be hanging around in the gaming community, some of them will be playing farmville sort of games, some of them will have no gaming experience at all, and some of them have even never touch a computer for their fun.
But I see nowadays is the threshold to become a participant in the economy much higher then five, six years back when we had camping all around. When it was easy to get some startmoney by camping, almost every new resident did get involved in the economy. That stopped when LL banned camping.
There is less money coming in the economy, but the supply of goods continues to increase. The more goods available, the harder it will be to get your product seen by potential buyers. So the profit per product will decrease for every merchant.
We definitely need a lot of people with empty inventories around to keep this pyramid economy working.
La Galleria 