Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Shelving Wars (not actually to do with any wars)

A few weeks ago I completed the overhaul of my miniatures area and office/games storage room, both to reduce clutter and prepare for the day when I have more completed miniatures to store. So 7 new wall shelves went up, plus a new workshop-style standing shelf (those flimsy steel things for garages and the like) and one more respectable looking bookshelf (with classy new antique bookends).

So here's what I got now:
The main painting area's down at the end, under the Fokker Triplane photo. To the upper right are plastic animals and creatures for 28mm VSF, pulp, etc., to their right are a billion GHQ 6mm mini's waiting for some love.

To the left are shelves for works-in-progress, and some materials storage (Fimo clay for example). The paint rack is hopefully self-evident.

This is the most significant outcome - my big cutting board is essentially clear again, no more works-in-progress on top of it. The white shelving unit is mainly a bits box - have lotsa bits.

The office, reduced down to a desk now really, and most of the shelves, as the room becomes a storage unit for stuff waiting its turn, or has been completed. The curtain hides a big ass old window, that no set of shades would cover without engineering or expense. I don't have the patience for the former and too many goodies to buy for the latter, so it's kinda jury-rigged.

Otherwise I've been finishing last month's to-do's on the table - wrapping up the cleaning of miniatures so I can devote 2011 to painting. Alright, so now it'll end up as the 11 months of 2011, but the shelves made me miss my December target!

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Statistics and Damn Statistics

Following my great planning pronouncements, I've promptly spent almost no time working on actual miniatures, other than wrapping up my 2010 cleaning of figures. I have, however, now got a great shelving system that has freed up workspace for actual work. Not only that, but I've trashed stuff that was filling up desk drawers, giving me even more space. I'll try to take a picture of the new Storeroom 2000 when I get a chance. I've even protected the room from the sun, so I can leave stuff out without sweating over fading paint.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd start 2011 with a survey of the neat new stats I found this blog provider offers. I'd perused it last month, but made some notes this time. One thing I found is that I was probably influencing the stats with my own visits, so I've changed the settings so that won't happen again. In my review I've tried to account for myself.

Most popular posts:
Microform Models Review
One of my Vietnam posts
And another Vietnam post
My very first "real" post
My take on the Thurian Age (and most relevantly, maps)

Where are people coming from? The US and UK are #1 and 2, then Canada, but that's probably me, then Germany and France. Australia, Spain, and Brazil are also the homes of my visitors.

How do people get here from Google? Besides TMP posts and others' blogs, searches for Pat and Walt's Spaceship Emporium, Oddzial Osmy, and "Thurian Age Maps" are bringing people here. The latter explains the popularity of my Thurian Age post, since there are only a few maps of Thuria online. This reminds me I need to get back to my review of Thurian Age nations (as well as my neglected Imagi-Nation blog).

How many people visit? Well, I don't know. But there are 750-1,000 pageviews a month, I'm probably half of those, so at least I now some people do visit.