Thursday, April 16, 2015

This and That and a Welcome

I still haven't had time to think the thoughts that I'll have to think before writing the posts on what makes some small games look or feel like bigger ones, or to summarize my plans and goals or anything else, in part because I got an email that threw an energetic wrench into my slowly simmering medieval/fantasy plans. All hush hush right now but something  will show up on my Gathering of Hosts blog ere long.

In the meantime, while digging in the cupboard under the eaves I came across a stack of boxes of Armourfast kits that my friend Ron bought in our BKC phase several years ago. We don't use many vehicles,  or figures, these days and Ron has been investing in die cast and pre assembled models these days so there is little call for plastic kits of SU tank destroyers or T34/76's and there they sit. But I found a box of motorcycles and decided to have a go.
Rough and Ready, hasty job on Armourfast 1/72 figures.
Ron will base them once I hand them over.
If I had but one word for this set "crappy" would be it! Never mind the figures, the very soft plastic was loaded with flash which even a brand new blade would not cut without fraying and despite the PSR report that they took glue well, I had trouble getting the arms to go on and stay.

The plan was to do all 3 but after finally finding the lost arm for the 4th time, I just did one. Then, since the detail was so vague, I trimmed the helmet on a 2nd one and did it in green and khaki hoping to pass it off as in Russian service to let me mark at least one unit as what Memoir calls elite infantry who may move 2 and still attack  in those advance guard games. (Ron almost always lets me play the allies).

Speaking of which, I had a peek at stats esp where people are connecting from and see that Russia and the Ukraine are now amongst the top 10 in terms of page visits.  I also see a few visits from China. 

Welcome to you all!  And to all others from around the world, Marvelous thing, the internet.

I am afraid I don't speak any languages but English, (and some very rusty Quebecois French and less Gaelic) or read any of the scripts (might learn a little bit of Chinese if my sister-in-law moves closer) but please do not let that stop you from leaving a comment to say hi or talk a bit about your hobby.
Either let the computer do its best to translate or give it your best shot in English. Don't worry about being  perfect or even "correct", I am easy to get along with, if I don't understand, I'll ask or if I appear to misunderstand I do not mind being corrected.

OK, based on hints, I think I'm off to Tunisia tomorrow to command some Yanks in a sticky situation, 1/72 on Hexon terrain using modified Memoir. Will I remember to take pictures or get caught up in the game again?



8 comments:

  1. Russia is number 3 for me; Ukrine is 10th. Have had Chinese visits in the past.

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  2. Russia has been my number 1 for a few weeks now, USA is 2 and Ukraine 3. Perhaps the Great Bear has awoken from cyber slumber or maybe "moscow" is watching us. Brrrrrrrrrr.............

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    1. I'm more worried about our own secret police now that so many oversight rules have been removed.

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  3. Sadly, most of the Russian hits will be robots sniffing the Google servers and leaving referral spam - I don't think they do any actual damage, but it's a general problem for all of us, if problem is the right word. The Traffic Sources stats in Blogger list some weird looking sites, you think to yourself "I wonder what that is, I must click on it" and - bingo - you score some unintelligible Russian page some advertising revenue. That's why the hits take place - to trigger referral credits. I hope that you are not a paying customer of any of the advertisers involved, because their marketing must be jolly expensive.

    This is not to say, of course, that you do not have some genuine Russian fans who read your blog regularly...

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    1. Yes, have wondered off and on about bots etc, very few hits point to them but the identified sources onoy account for a low percentage of hits anyway. It did occur to me that even a single reader who decided to read the blog all the way through from the beginning could account for 90% of the hits.

      Pity though, 20 years ago I was excited to exchange emails with a Yugoslav gamer but the last I heard from him he was pissed at the intervention and was defying NATO bombs by going out to a friends for a 25mm ancients game. Never knew if he lived or died or if he was unwilling or unable to reply.

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    2. Recently, one of my occasional traffic sources on Blogger is a site called pornogig.com which - if you click on it (a friend tells me) - is a Russian language site which has surprisingly little to do with wargaming. Not easy to talk your way out of that one.

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