A Bunch of Stuff

Now, I’ve been thrilled with both the quantity and quality of my blog posts lately. I added the calendar on the sidebar so I can see how many days have posts. I’ve also been rewarded by a massive upsurge in hits. While I have been regularly pimping myself on The Miniatures Page lately the volume has fed my ego nicely. Sure, I expect when I make a post as deliberately contentious as alleging Black Powder is entirely filled with anti-Canadian hate propaganda I will get a little bump. It seems that I’ve crossed some threshold where I’m getting more repeat visits. Google analytics bear this up showing a nearly 7% increase in repeat visits so far this month compared to an equal amount of days at the end of October. Yes, I admit it. I am more concerned with my numbers than might be considered right. I am only slightly abashed by this.

The reason I bring this up is two-fold. I was considering doing a series of posts aimed at helping people who may want to want to get some traffic to their blog. Yes, it starts out as a great way to share and participate in the online hobby community, as well as an excellent journal that I’ve even used as a reminder of what I’ve done and what my priorities are. It would be easier, cheaper (in some cases) and less time consuming to just keep a journal, so eventually everybody hopes they aren’t wasting words on the darkness. That has come through strongly for me lately and it feels good. I don’t need to get some ad revenue to be compensated for this blog, because I’m happy to know people are reading and enjoying it.

The second reason, or fold I guess, is I’ve just now stopped myself from crossing the line where this stops being a blog and instead becomes a source of pressure to write interesting and educating posts. I know this way leads madness. Which is to say with far too many words, here is a post that’s just the kind of chatty catch-up blog post I enjoy reading, providing it isn’t too wordy.

You ever look forward to starting a certain step in a project only to be frustrated by the amount of prep-work yet remaining. Compound this with finding out a step has been missed and you are further away from the point where you want to be than you first thought. This was me tonight, with the added factors of trying to stick to a self-imposed deadline, having some distraction miniatures I also want to try to tackle, and starting later in the evening than I normally like.

So, instead of priming my next batch of WWII Canadians I realized I had to pop them all off their painting sticks and add the basework I forgot. I hate dealing with glue and sand and invariably end up with sand glued to the wrong places. This is why I do this step before priming. Not only does it allow me to scrape off stray grains of sand, but the primer will help keep the sand in place for painting.

However, I did clean the mold lines off the free Big Wullie miniature I received with Black Powder and washed both it and the Wargames Factory Viking I had assembled on Monday. Unfortunately I’m still working through an old stock of washers so had to fill the center hole before I could attach them to bases. Eventually I’ll get some fender washers and have smaller holes to deal with. Now, when it is time to prime the WWII Canadians I won’t be able to also prime these two miniatures I’m trying to shoe-horn into my painting process as I’ll have to glue them to their bases and then wait for the glue and sand to dry. A little frustrating but not the end of the world.

It shouldn’t be too long before I’ll have some images to share. For now I have to figure out what miniatures I have yet to order for my WWII Project, and decide if I will be good and order them, or relent and pre-order Republic to Empire.

Tyler