Tag: Home Life

Yep…another day, another move!

Well, actually, this happened about two weeks or so ago, but I’ve neglected posting on it until now. Blame it on my toes, shoulder or the stinking rotten cold that refuses the eviction notices I keep sending it in the form of vitamin C pills and Lemsip….

I’ve not actually moved that far, to be honest: just from the north side of QE over to the West. The move was prompted by a number of things:

• I adore sunsets in SL – and having an uninterrupted view over water of them
• Two adjoining parcels became available on the west side of the sim
• I got somewhat fed up with the number of visitors to the skyborne “club” a couple of parcels over who would invariably fall off / out of the club and pancake themselves on the roof of the house….then get booted home by the security system (an event that occurred around 3 times a night on the twice-weekly “party nights”)
• I adore sunsets in SL – and having an uninterrupted view over water of them.

As a part of the move, I played around with the house itself and was somewhat pleased with the results of my tinkering: recouping over 100 prims without losing any of the capabilities the house has (internal lighting system, curtains, etc.). Part of this is down to the new LSL commands allowing me to do things a little more efficiently, and it is something I now plan to carry over to the commercial versions of the house and incorporate into several other builds.

So here we are…and I’ve finally been able to make good on my promise to Kelly, long-time friend and “little sister” in SL and build her a home down on the ground once more (she’s been stuck up in the air ever since I sold Scorpius Myth).

Kelly’s house is a slightly customised version of my Tahoma beach house – a design I’m rather partial to, if I say so myself. More importantly, Kelly likes it, and she’s now got a great ocean-front view alongside of us.

Who could ask for more?

Those who regularly read this blog…assuming they exist….know that for getting on for 2 years, we’ve lived in-world in a house inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater”. True, there was a period after the OpenSpace sim debacle when we switched to an i-Squared skysphere, but we went back to the ground and FW pretty quickly.

Well….all good things come to an end…at least for a time….at some point. so it is that today, Fallingwater vanished from our current land, to be replaced by a house from the i-Squared range: the Caprican Ultimate.

There are many reasons for making the change and packing FW away for now. One of them is simply to get a change in home style. Another is because I’d very much like to bring back the i-Squared showroom and, frankly, I do not trust LL sufficiently to invest in a large parcel of land at  this point in time.

So it is that today I entertained myself making the change. I have to say that, while FW will always remain my favourite house (and will be subject to a complete top-to-bottom rebuild in the New Year), I am very pleased with the way the Caprican houses came out, and the fact that the style of the house fits the theme of our home sim pretty nicely.

Installing the new house required extensive changes to the land itself….FW is designed to overlook water, so I’ve sculpted a large north-facing bay, while Ina had installed a river and one set of falls (in keeping with the house’s name). For the Caprican to fit, the bay and falls had to go, although the size of the parcel means I could sculpt another bay to the immediate west of the house, and so break-up the land into a more natural form.

With a 50x30m footprint, the Caprican is actually bigger than FW in terms of ground space – again, with the front terrace and part of the lounge overhanging water, FW has a surprisingly small footprint, (dry) land-wise, this makes the norther frontage of the property a little more bland compared to how it was, but the installation of a waterfront deck hopefully overcame at least some of this.

One of the things I like about the Caprican (if I say so myself) is the lounge with the sunken seating area. Beyond this is a raised area, which is now the the home to my grand piano, supplied by Persephone Milk, who produces – frankly – the FINEST musical instruments in the whole of SL.

The grand accurately reflects my genuine loves of both the piano and classical music (it has a marvellous selection of loaded pieces). Seriously, if you have any interest in music at all, and wish to have a fabulous concert grand in your home, you should make a point of visiting Musical Alchemy, Persephone’s store.

As well as the grand, the lounge is home to our various business accoutrements, with the added benefit that they are so much more unobtrusive than with FW.

While the Caprican comes with a kitchen, I’ve opted to remove it, and leave the central kitchen area as an entrance hall, featuring one of my all-time favourite SL “paintings”, Kay’s Lair, by the fabulously-talented Rena Sakai.

It’s going to be quite a change living in the new house. Doubtless, FW will return in the future, but for now as 2009 draws to a close, it seems appropriate to mark the start of 2010 with something new in our lives.

Those who read this blog regularly (assuming people do!), can’t help but notice how proud I’ve been about my home – Ohiopehhla.

Yes, it’s a little egotistical talking about something one has largely made oneself, but the fact remains I am proud of the place, all those we’ve shared it with seem to have been equally happy.

But now it is all at an end. If this had come about through personal circumstances, then letting go would be somewhat easier. However, while we would have been content to continue on the island indefinitely, matters have been taken out of our hands.

Ohiopehhla is an OpenSpace sim. That means that from Jan 5th next year Linden Lab expects us to either a) continue to pay $75 USD a month and see the sim reduced to a 750-prim limit, zero scripts and a “10 avatar” limit, or b) have to pay an initial $95 a month to maintain the sim at the current prim count, but with as-yet unspecified script and use limits imposed upon it, with this amount rising to $125 USD from July 1st 2009.

Neither of these options is either practical or acceptable. I’m not going to rake over the whole OpenSpace sim argument;suffice it to say that Ohiopehhla is now to be abandoned.

Did we “abuse” the sim? In Kingdon’s and Jack Linden’s eyes, the answer is probably “yes”, despite the fact prim usage was kept to between 50-60% of the allowable maximum on an OpenSpace sim and – more importantly – I worked hard to manage scripts and keep the sim performance within the (vague) parameters set for it by using the (primitive) tools Linden Lab provide for managing estates.

We’ll no longer invest in land in SecondLife beyond renting. True, this still means Linden Lab gets tier from us (via our Estate Owner) – so Kingdon’s bottom line is protected and he’ll not lose any sleep. But for us it means creativity has now gone from SL – and we’re not alone in this; many feel that trying to create anything worthwhile in world is now wasted effort, as sooner or later Linden Lab will manage to find a way of knocking it down.

And that is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the entire OpenSpace fiasco.

Well, it’s finally happened. We have our own sim.

This marks the end of an interesting journey for us. Since we’ve been together, we’ve had to roam SL a little, living on several sims (one of which was the 2nd sim I’d managed on behalf of others in SL). While we’ve enjoyed the places we’ve lived – especially those owned by Lizard and Hottie – we’ve always known we’d never really be happy without the security of our own sim. What’s more, truth be told I miss fiddling with sims and landscaping them. But cost was always the big issue. Private islands are not cheap in terms of purchase price or tier; and the last thing we wanted was to get bogged down is running a sim as a business, rather than a place of fun.

So when LL launched their Enhanced OpenSpace sims, it was clear we’d found our niche, and (again thanks to Lizard and Hottie), we managed to secure one of these excellent small-holding (prim-wise) sims for our personal use, finally moving in last week.