Update on Yesterday's Rant

I received an email from the site yesterday.  They removed the content and were very respectful in the email.

Stolen Content

So I'm poking around the stats for this blog and come across a source site "tutofig.com." I hover over the link and see "how-painting-shieldgenerator-powerplant" as part of the URL.  I recognize this as being suspiciously similar to my shield generator/power plant post from last year.  Curious, I follow the link to tutofig and see a picture of my piece with the text of the post...surrounded by advertisement.  Now, I'm all for sharing my experiences, techniques, painting tips, scratchbuilds, and so on. That's part of the reason I started this blog in the first place.  What upsets me is that nobody asked for my permission to repost the content and that who ever owns tutofig.com is using my content in conjuction with advertisements that generate income for them.  Granted, per click ad schemes don't generate a lot of money, but it's the principle.  This person is making money using my content without my consent. This person is using my work to generate income.  Sarge mad.

I've sent them an email nicely explaining that the content was reposted without my consent and that I'd like it removed soonest with a response when they have pulled the content.  I did a quick search in Google on "painting a shield generator power plant" and tutofig was the first result with my (original) content second, so it's not like the content won't be available if they pull it.  It's about the fact that my work was stolen.

For those of you who have your own blogs, you may want to see if any of your content has been similarly taken without your consent.

I'm Not Dead Yet

Things have been busy around here of late, unfortunately not all hobby related.  I have however in the past week managed to finish the Rebel MIniatures Merka V and tried my hand at making some rows of bushes with lichen.  I'll eventually post pictures of them.

In an unrelated note, over on The Angry Lurker they propose that in honor of Old Stuff Day (not sure where this one originates from) we bloggers link to our older post that we're proud of etc.

So in the spirit of Old Stuff Day, I will post to the series of posts I made for my Biker Chick Sophie, still my favorite miniature accomplishment to date.

http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-really-shouldnt-be-doing-this.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/05/progress-on-biker-chick-sophie.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/08/shes-primed-and-ready-to-roll.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/08/alrighty-then.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/08/bike-is-almost-done.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/08/get-your-motor-runnin.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/08/and-were-off.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-crappy-wip-shots.html
http://scsminimadness.blogspot.com/2008/09/shes-done.html

Nifty Fifty

Been a while since I posted. Nothing major going on, just haven't been doing much hobby stuff lately. Not being able to reliably take decent photos has been keeping me from wanting to post here because I like to give yall some eyecandy unless I'm going off on a rant.

Anyway, what inspired my muse this morning is that at some point recently this blog has hit 50 followers. Thanks to the long time followers and greetings to the new ones! That's not a lot considering how long I've had this blog, but let's face it, my posting habits are...intermittent...at best.  Hopefully with recent changes at work I'll be able to spend a little more time on my hobbies and that includes painting and playing more. Now if I could get a camera with a decent macro mode without dropping a few hundred bucks...

I have gotten a few things done hobby related though.  I've taken some paper boxes from Hobby Lobby and  glued the lid upside down to the bottom to make buildings. I want to detail and paint them, but then I'd end up locking them into a specific scale. I suppose I could always get more seeing as how they're cheap, but I'm cheap and lazy. I've also purchased some vinyl tiles and laid them out on a 2x2 piece of plywood to create a quick desert board, mostly for use with 15mm infantry games and maybe 6mm if I ever decide to go that route again, though I'm still debating just selling those. Here's a picture of the board and the box buildings taken with my cell phone, a couple of CAV Emperors (1/160th scale) for reference. The smaller boxes are from 50-round boxes of .22 long rifle ammunition turned upside down. They are just large enough to be cargo containers in 15mm and smaller.

I've also finished the Car Shop model railroad building to be used as a generic factory building. I've finished one of the two Krakens, but the second has sat stalled on my table for a few months now. I also finished up the Armored Heavy Mortar Team stands for CAV after playtesting my ideas for streamlining indirect fire in that game.

In my recent affinity for board games, I've received my copy of Mantic Games' Dreadball. I didn't get in on the Kickstarter, just pre-ordered the game through The War Store. So far I've got the Human team, 40% of the Orc/Goblin team, the Referee, and balls ready for primer and paint. I think I may want to switch back to white primer for these guys though, so the colors come out brighter. Still waiting on that copy of OGRE: Designer's Edition though.

So, that's what has been going on with me lately, now to figure out which tags to put on this post...

Stupid 'Bots

Anyone know a way to have Blogger disregard hits from a specific URL? Stupid bots are throwing my stats off. For a few moments I thought a whole bunch of people were interested in my whining about losing two games of Warmachine.

Achievement Unlocked!

I spend an inordinate amount of time looking at the stats page for this blog. Don't know why, probably the analyst in me showing. Anyway, in May 2010 this blog got a shade over 2,300 hit. I found this odd seeing as how I wasn't very active at the time what with getting ready to deploy to southern Iraq and all. Did a little research and I think it was bots artificially driving up the hit count. I'm proud to say that two years later, May 2010 the blog has received over 2,400 hits from what I can only assume have been naturally generated by my content (and a bit of shameless plugging on a select few message boards). If I had anything to give away I'd consider doing a give away for what I consider a milestone for my corner of the World Wide Web (does anyone still call it that?). However, all I have is the Shelf of Shame and even unpainted they are My Precious.

Warmachine and 200 Posts

First, this is my 200th post. and earlier I had 10,000 hits. This blog has been around since January 2008, so almost four years now. Not bad in my mind since I didn't really announce the existence of the blog other than as a link in my forum signature blocks until late last year and earlier this year. Thanks to all my readers out there!

So, remember earlier how I was thinking about getting back into 40k in order to play with a co-worker? This has transformed into Warmachine. Warmachine (WM for brevity's sake) is a game that I've been dancing around for some time. The 'jacks look cool, the mechanics interesting, but being a fantasy game and not knowing anyone local to me that played was always what kept me from jumping. Turns out my co-worker has been infected with some kind of WM fever. I'm more inclined to try out WM rather than 40k, even if it doesn't involve anything remotely sci-fi, the big stompy Warjacks make up for that. So, on Thursday I ordered a Cygnar battlebox from Amazon (saved a lot on that, $38 instead of the listed retail of almost $50).

For the 15mm, starship, and CAV readers don't be dismayed. I'm not abandoning those, just looking for a game that will actually get played with somebody besides my kids.

Now With Gallery Pages

Thought I'd play around with the site design layout a bit and added some page tabs across the top. Each tab is a collection of photos of miniatures related to the title of the table. So 15mm has....wait for it....pictures of 15mm figures.  I'll just need to take some time and link all the pictures from my Photobucket account.

What Now?

Sometimes after actually finishing a project I feel at a bit of a loss as to what to work on next. As you can tell by the "To Do List" in the sidebar I have no shortage of things to work on. So I thought I'd run a poll to see what my dear readers thought. I'm going to leave it up through next Friday (26 August) and go from there. Heck, I might even to a bit of a step by step journal of it if there's interest.

Speaking of readers, Monday saw the second largest spike in page views (74) that I can recall (though I think the first had some bots involved). I'm sure that it's nothing compared to the more popular blogs out there, but it made me happy. I suppose that if I posted more regularly I'd get more hits, but on the other hand I'm still amazed that people actually Google my little corner of the WWW.

Interesting...

So, a couple weeks ago I was curious as to how many hits this little blog o' mine was getting and I went to the stats tab.  Something that I hadn't done up to that point.  What a mistake.  You can't give a page with four tabs of stats to analyst.  It doesn't end well.

Anyway, one of the interesting things I've been noticing is that I get a lot hits on the post I made about a year or so about an idea I had for a cyberpunk genre miniatures game. About once a day I get a hit or two on that post, and seemingly from a Google search on "cyberpunk game." Maybe I'm on to something with that, or there's one guy out there somewhere who's really interested in my idea and looking to see if there's been any progress.

Layout Changes

I've made some changes to the ol' blog today.  First off, I've had it added to the Tabletop Gaming News Blog Network.  You'll see the image in the sidebar, it's also a link to the TGN Blog Network page itself. TGN is a great resource for what's up in the world of miniature gaming.

I've rearranged some of the content widgets to something that makes a little more sense to me. The RSS feed subscription buttons are now in the side bar so new readers don't have to scroll all the way to the bottom of 10 (sometimes lengthy) posts to find the subscription buttons.  My profile pic and description is now at the top, and some shuffling of other items.

And what I hope proves to be most useful is the addition of buttons to each post for sharing my mini madness with your friends on your favorite social networking site.

I'm debating putting ads in the blog, but it's not like it's costing me anything to put this up other than my time. So no ads for now.

A Question For My Loyal Followers

First, thanks for following along and your comments. For a while there I felt like I was screaming into the void. While that can be therapeutic, it does make you wonder why you're blogging. Would it be helpful to yall (all 8 of you :) ) if I took a little more time and provided links to things I mention in my post? Like a link to the manufacturer of the mini I'm working on or such. I know yall are capable of using Google to find things on your own, but sometimes I'll click on a link if I'm mildly interested, but not interested to search for it myself (although with Firefox it's only a matter of highlighting and a right click).