New Items flood MHS Store!!!

I strongly suggest my past customers to take one more look at the store this week as I have released tens of new items and several variations on older items as well as several of the old items as mod enabled.

Some of the new items Include:

• The Metaverse Collection -- low prim glamor for all (available as a set or separately)
• The Alien Empire Collection -- If Lady Gaga was in SL, she would live on furniture this exquisite (available as a set or separately)
• The FLW Museum Furniture set -- created exclusively for the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum in SL
• The Prairie Spindle Set -- More spindles than you can shake a prim at
• A Growing Office Collection with Chairs, Stationary, Desk Supplies, Lighting

I have been reorganizing and cataloging the store in the last four weeks. The effort is by no means complete but most of the items you find in the store with a MHS # prefix have been cataloged and identified as a unique version. The numbering scheme is not random. It is actually loosely based on Dewey Decimal System. I know it's funny but I had to make sense of the chaos of items that surrounded me.

Mission Home Store Catalogue

• 000s Decorations, Rugs, Decor, Curtains etc.
• 100s Living Room Furniture
• 200s Dining Room Furniture
• 300s Bedroom Furniture
• 400s Kitchen Cabinetry, Appliances & Furniture
• 500s Lighting
• 600s Office / Home Office Furniture
• 700s Outdoor Furniture
• 800s Bathroom Fixtures, Cabinetry
• 900s Prefab Buildings

I am still going through setting permissions and cataloging some of the older items, and some items that need some version control (read many slightly different versions in my inventory as well as inworld with possible multiple names etc). This is a very tedious project and it takes a long time.

Once items are cataloged, they are photographed and the final stage is upload to XSTREET. I would like to have EVERYTHING I ever created and sold as well as new items I am creating cataloged and uploaded to XSTREET by Christmas. We shall see if I complete that effort on time or not.

I think this effort however will make shopping at the MHS store very convenient as the user will be able to look up products by codes on XSTREET, view them in world and buy them either from the in world store or from the Xstreet website.

I am open to any suggestions, comments you may have, and this is the perfect time to send them to me. Please do not hesitate to contact me with suggestions / thoughts.

FLW Museum: Craftsman Build Off Winners announced

This was quite an exciting weekend. Pro and novice builders duked it out on the Usonia sim building their best interpretations of craftsman homes competing for the first place.

There was also a staff category that was not considered for prizes but added great visual interest as well as camaraderie to the weekend's flair.

Each of the pro and novice categories had 10 contestants. I think everyone did a great job overall and put in a bunch of honest hours and hard work into their creations. I take my hat off to all the contestants for participating in this tough contest.

Here are the results of the competition from Barbara Collazo's report:

For the Peoples' Choice awards, I'm pleased to say that every builder got some votes. I wish you all could have seen some of the comments that came with the votes while you were building; there were a lot of encouraging words along with the voting. We had at least two builders for whom this was their first house.

Among the novices, there was nearly a three-way tie, but Sierra MacIntyre turned out to be the favorite.
Among the pros, some of you seem to have fan clubs. Apollo Reinard was the clear winner.

The judges scored contestants in five categories. Each judge had a maximum of 100 points to award, so a perfect score would be 400. They also provided a written critique that will be given to each contestant.

The objective judging categories were:

• Theme match
• Wise use of prims
• Texturing
• Cleanliness of build
• Overall aesthetics

Overall, the novices scored a bit higher than the pros!

In the novice category, the winners are: (400 total points possible)

• 3rd place, with 268 points, Novice Entry #5: Sandi Glas


• 2nd place, with 273 points, Novice Entry #1: Deshar Au


• 1st place, with 325 points, Novice Entry #4: Jadyn Firehawk

In the pro category:

• 3rd place, with 301 points, Pro Entry #4: Levi Ewing


• 2nd place, with 311 points, Pro Entry #8: Granelda Oh


• 1st place, 319 points, Pro Entry #3: Corri Dawodu

In the staff category my favorite was Terra Tepper's house, Staff Entry #3.

Below are some pictures I took of the winners:

Pro Builder Winner: Corri Dawodu's Craftsman House

Novice Builder Winner: Jaydn Firehawk

Terra Tepper's Delicious Staff Buildoff Entry

To see the rest of the entries please teleport to:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Usonia/110/82/22

Metaverse Collection Released: Low Prim Low Price MHS Lifestyle

I have re-released my Metaverse Collection at the MHS store. It is prominently displayed at the entrance of the store. The collection is marked by good design combined with low prim building style, and incredible low prices on each item: 50 lindens each.

The collection is meant as a welcoming gift for all new members of Second Life. However I am not enforcing this rule, so anyone young or old in SL can buy these items and use them in their homes and offices. I think you will find the style to be attractive as well as versatile.

I hope you enjoy these items as much as I enjoyed building them for you.

Alien Empire Strikes Back!

If you're a member of the Mission Home Store group in Second Life then you must have gotten one of my latest status updates that informed the community that I am moving onto other styles. I may, in a future post, go into the details of why, and how etc of this decision. But in the meantime I think it is worth celebrating all the refreshing new ideas that have inundated my to-do list.

I have been diligently creating one to two pieces a day for the week and a half; Trying new styles and just letting my mind wander and create without boundaries. I am happy to share the first batch of things that came to me during this first phase of exploration. Though the items are no longer explicitly mission style, you will find that the workmanship on the items is consistent with my previous work if not even better than before.

The first cohesive collection I have created is called Alien Empire. It draws its inspiration from French Empire style and takes it one step further by using non-conventional materials, textures and shapes giving the set an eerie hint of touch of Aliens. This collection is currently on display at the entrance of my store.

I hope you will visit my store and take a look at my creations and give me some feedback. Purchases also do not hurt. *hint* *hint*

Thanks for your continued interest in the Mission Home Store.

Craftsman 101 Presentation at the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum Today!

My presentation for introduction Craftsman Style for builders participating in next week's build off content is today Sunday the 25th at 1PM SLT at the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum in Second Life.

Here's the SLURL for the event:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/DiLemma%20City/224/151/22


Here's a copy of my presentation for those who can not make it and/or have slow internet connections:

Craftsman 101

View more presentations from Troy Vogel.

End of Buy One Get One Free Fridays

I wanted to let everyone know that while it's been fun hosting the Buy One Get One Free Fridays I realized that every good thing has to stop at some point.

Last Friday was the last of these events. I will make sure that everyone got their second copies of everything they purchased that's no copy.

Also things are changing at the Mission Home Store. I am moving a significant part of the collection to XSTREETSL so that most of these items will be available in XSTREETSL exclusively and will no longer be featured in world.

This is an attempt to reduce prim usage on my island and avoid doubling up all the furniture I already display in the prefab homes I sell.

Following is my latest comment post to the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum announcement blog entry on the Linden Blogs -- the one that got irrevocably trolled by Porokofy Neva -- everyone's favorite hypocrite and grinch. I wanted to set the record straight one last time -- not that it will change anything for Prok but I had neglected to look at this thread since the early days because it infuriated me so much when it first started to unfold. Now that some time has passed by, I find it easier to talk about it in a calm manner:

Here's the original Frank Lloyd Wright Post on the Linden Blog

Not that this will stop anything but I refused to read this thread in full until today because it is just so off kilter, so twisted, so upsetting and so inaccurate one does not know where to begin.

But since we have more than heard Prok's point of view in what seems like Homer's Iliad, I find it is necessary for me to spend the time and the extra paragraphs and put my view in full:

I am five years old in SL. Since day one I wanted to build, I wanted to create. I have rezzed my heart out since 2005. I have built things that reminded me of home as I live away from home. I built houses in the style of those in my home town, I built replicas of a few pieces I own in RL and changed them for SL and made the design my own. I built hundreds of pieces of furniture that simply do not exist in RL. Most of what I sell in my store not only represents one of the best set of resident created furniture in SL but it's a set of all original items that simply do not exist in any shape or form in RL. With this said, none of us can claim to have invented the chair, the table, the spindle bed or the sleigh bed, the console table, the bedside stand. These pieces have been in their skeletal forms been with us for centuries if not thousands of years.

Most of my seating items such as the bow arm chairs, the couches, the prairie chairs and couches have each taken up to 8 hours of rezzing and texturing time plus countless hours for the upholstery scripts, hunting for the right animations, the right sit script, research development and later testing and customer support. I sell each of these seating items for a little over 1 US dollar each at my store -- hardly a compensation for my work. Many other pieces have taken several hours. Some of my prefabs take up to a couple of months to build. All of my prefabs are original designs, their look and feel and interior plan and textures used etc are all original and my own. If you can find my prefabs in RL please let me know I have an award with your name on it.

I am a humble individual who would bury himself first before taking credit for his work. All of my customers and friends know this about me. I spend most of my time in SL hiding from people and working silently in my corner of the world, the Mission Home Store island. I love rezzing things, I love that people like my work and from time to time buy a few items.

I do not make any money from SL. I give Lindens full authorization in this post to make my finances in SL public for all to see. I have nothing to hide. I pay for my only island out of pocket most months and if I am lucky I make half my island fees -- roughly 150 US dollars per month which is taken away from me by LL and I get charged an additional 150 dollars on my card.

My participation in the FLW Museum projects was a jest of friendship and support. Everyone on the staff of this museum knows that while the style of my builds are mistaken for FLW often, I actually am building in the style of Ottoman Residential Architecture. I am more than thankful for the fans and friends I made from the FLW community. It is such a compliment to be even remotely compared to FLW.

My store in the FLW sim has not made any sales that I am aware of, it is there as a showcase and favor to Frey -- who personally invited me despite my own reservations. The art glass items in the store are my own hand drawn art in the spirit of FLW but not exact copies of any of his art glass. Each panel took about 4-8 hours of vector drawing in Flash and later compression in Photoshop for SL.

I love being a part of the FLW Museum project and see its potential value for SL residents. I would like to continue being a part of this project. And no amount of speculation or accusatory statements from marginal self-claimed experts in SL is going to stop us from what we love doing.

How many content creators have to leave SL before LL stops these parties who sabotage our fickle, financially cash negative businesses into complete oblivion? And oh BTW, I am not going anywhere. I can pay my island fees until kingdom come. So don't get excited.

Where does it stop? What is the price of freedom of expression?

I suggest LL think long and hard on this point.

Finally it is astounding to me that anyone in SL, save the Lindens, could have the audacity to adopt a tone that demands information from anyone else like they're under investigation for a crime. I love that SL is so many things to so many people but apparently it also gives a sense of worth that's much higher than what's warranted to some. This is troubling I find.

Thanks for listening

Troy Vogel

Petit Trianon Revisited Prefab Almost Ready!

I have been secretly working on a new prefab. Well actually it was no secret, it was set right there out in the open on my sim. I do not believe in working on something non-stop and finishing it in one sitting. The process of creation is a very intermittent and interrupted process for me that requires much patience for any client that dares to get attached to anything I am building before it's finished. This is why I usually hide my new projects because I never know when they will be done.

Well Petit Trianon is almost a year old. I have set it aside for quite some time because I was somewhat disappointed with the french doors for which I had to use sculpted maps. Level of Detail settings in SL still leave much to be desired when it comes to how they handle sculpties from a distance. It is one thing to remove vertices from a bligtard's 255 prim hair piece, it is completely something else to have melting french windows on a French mansion. I wish SL could know the difference...

The house looks very close to the original on the outside though I have made several modernizations in finishing and details. The style comes across more as a neoclassical or perhaps even post modern architecture. This is intentional. I did not want to create a verbatim replica, I wanted to add some of myself into it.

The interior starts off with the basic floor plan on the lower level that is quite close to the original and then rapidly departs in another direction by placing the staircase in the middle and joining some rooms together. Small rooms in SL are useless. There's no two ways about it. When you create a replica of a building in SL, you have to enlarge the rooms.

A Petit Trianon in SL does not need extra bathrooms, guest rooms, servant staircases and quarters etc. Most prefabs in SL need, a living area, a second living area, a bathroom, and a bedroom. If you ask me, the list would even be shorter -- one living area -- hernce my Belletris Prefab. But a traditional looking structure requires a more traditional layout on the interior as well. So I played along and made the interior of Petit Trianon Revisited as traditional as possible: Entry hallway, library, kitchen, service entrance, downstairs living room, upstairs game room, upstairs bathroom, master bedroom, and the central staircase.

I am still working on the prefab finalizing details, fixing textures, ironing out wrinkles but I must say I am very close to being done with it. I wanted to share this story with you all and post some pictures before the big announcement goes out in a couple of weeks.

Hope you like it.

Video from Troy's Rez Day Party

Video Credits: Juana Manuel


My heart felt thanks to go all my friends who could show up and spend some time celebrating my 5th year in SL. It was also a pleasure to see some new faces.

We had fun. It was an informal music packed evening.

Thank you all :-)

New Second Life Bug Prevents Sit Scripts from Running

As you may have read on my blog earlier this week, there's a new bug in town. This bug is in the release client of SL and may not be present in the alternate viewers.

The link to the bug in JIRA is: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3806

Also a duplicate entry of the bug report with further information can be found at: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3811

The Summary of the Bug States:

Sit is disabled on prims (without a sit target) that are inside a sculpted prim's bounding box, and it can be much bigger than the visible sculpt: see attached image.
The same happens on prims that are inside another phantom prim.
This can inhibit sit on large areas, with content break and security (sitting shields you from many attacks, immediately) implications.

Unfortunately there's little I can do to fix this bug as it has nothing to do with my furniture.

DON'T PANIC. At the present time any items I have with sit scripts for only one avatar are FINE. The items that are affected are the new beds with multi avatar multi sit scripts v.1.1 and the bow arm couch version 1.6.

If you have these items in your home that's close to say a huge prim volcanic rock from Heart Botanicals you may notice that in the current release version of the SL client, you are no longer able to sit / lay in these items.

I think patience will prevail, we have to give Linden Lab enough time to fix the bug.

Thanks for your patience.