A whole world of people out there reading this blog … I was amazed to find that I had readers from 46! countries.
Forty-four now unfortunately, with readers from the Ukraine and Palestinian Territories falling from the list.
I thank you all for your interest! I know several of you have been reading my work for more than just this blog when we clubbed together with a U-turn from a previous platform, and landed on Google+.
I usually do an annual assessment of this blog where I have a look at what is working and what’s not. This year I have an ‘outlier’ to consider. This is a post that does so well that it outstrips every other post with Views. Even now, eighteen months since it was posted, search engines are still finding it, and still gets between 1-5 Views per week, with so far, over 150 Views in total.
If it was one of my usual non-fiction posts I would be over the moon! Ecstatic, even, to think that so many people appreciate my writing. I would definitely then analyze its every word, tag and category, to see whether I could replicate its success.
Instead I will analyze it for the elements that allowed it to cross over into ‘Lego-technical-expertise-country’. I think what is actually happening is that Lego enthusiasts are hitting on it in the belief that it is one of the xyz posts they’ve heard about explaining a particularly nitty-gritty technique by way of a technicolor video or some such.
When they discover it isn’t what they expected, they just as quickly click away. Giving me a bunch of ‘false-positives’ in the blog’s stats. Lol, I won’t be posting the title of the offending post in this article! I’m not after more ‘false-positives’!
But seriously, when by now more that a hundred and fifty people click away with their expectations unfulfilled, that can start to have repercussions for a blog. Time to do something about it. I’m thinking of combining the information in all three posts pertaining to that subject, and deleting the originals. That way I still have the information available.
A while ago, when I thought I had plenty of energy, I started a second blog to be dedicated to Lego. Then followed a couple of months that had to be dedicated to me keeping my health on the positive side of the baseline. Which were followed by another couple of months …ya dee ya dee … you’ve heard it all before.
The upshot is that I don’t have enough energy to maintain two blogs. This one is it.
So. Now. I’m transferring stuff.
The most economical way to post up the Brick Stories–in time and effort–is to turn them into PDFs, too. But they’ll be posted on their own page, “Brick Stories”, up there in the menu. Though I do plan to ‘signpost’ whenever I put up a new one on this page.
As here … click on the heading and you’ll get to it. OR go to the menu in the usual way.
Wendy, Boss and Drew at their second planning meeting.
My new not-yet-totally-complete robot posing against the experimental terra-forming.
The robot is from the Dreamzz series, set 71454. He’s called Z-Blob but I will be thinking up a name appropriate to the role he’ll be playing in the the ongoing storying.
The terra-forming needs over-painting in places, and a way to attach the long sides to each other that will allow changing the pieces around. Maybe.
In the story, there’s a city in the background on the other side of the mud-flats and river channel, that I’m still cogitating how to make. Paint and draw? Collage? A 2D Lego build? What do you think?
One of my favourite meditative activities is working on the decorated margins in my dream journal.
They are always different and often suggest living creatures, such as here a beaked being on the right, and a fox-like entity in the centre.
The process is simple. I use my water colour paints and a 0.4 Artline 200 pen. Today I used Quinacridone Gold and Scarlet.
Since this book is new and the paper is an unknown quantity, I’m starting with primary colour mixes. I’ve already noticed there’s a vast amount of spotting on this paper. Don’t yet know why.
I painted patches and streaks of the first colour round the margins surrounding the blocks to be saved for writing, and waited till moderately dry.
Sloppily over-painted with second colour, leaving some of the gold patches and streaks, and making new patches and streaks over the first, and any unused areas.
It doesn’t pay to be too exact. Wait until thoroughly dry. Some people use hairdryers to speed the process.
In my next session I use the outliner—I prefer black—to make lines wherever the colours change including in areas of shading, though it’s easy to go too far.
It pays to keep checking how the work looks, and whether any recognizable entities are cropping up, and then to give them an eye or ear.
The Star Wars chronology has been my go-to viewing for the past few weeks. The Mandalorian has just said auf wiedersein to his small charge and will be at a loose end.
The Mandalorian series got me thinking about novels, such as The Crystal Planet by Vonda McIntyre, set in the Starwars universe.
[All Star Wars related media produced pre 2014 are now referred to as Legends, while for post 2014 material and the original series, Disney+ claims the ‘Canon’ label.]
While they all have only a tenuous position on the original timeline, TV series and books have expanded the Star Wars universe.
The original timeline of the Lodestar universe has always involved timetravel. Not sideways to expand the size of the universe yet, to give more options where to set stories, as in the Star Wars universe.
The Lodestar universe began in the future … I even set a date for its beginning when I was still new at the business of writing a universe. But it turns out that in a story that involves a time travelling, forward falling, octohedrenal spaceship such as the Lodestar, there is no beginning or end.
Because that’s what happened …
Colors have improved! In this photo of a sunset during rain looking into the center of the complex where I live, lights are whiter, the pink clouds aren’t as pink as I remember them, but the greens are definitely greener. And there’s a difference now between the greens of the shrubbery and the green of the lawn. The palms at the back look grey-green. Being able to see more colors has also improved my depth vision.
Now to wait for four weeks of healing and having my brain adapt to my eyes’ new lenses, and adapt to how they can now work together before being prescribed new spectacles for reading … maybe.
An additional plus for me is that the original reason that I started wearing spectacles is gone too. When I was 17, I was diagnosed with astigmatism, and my new intra ocular lenses take care of that. I’m sitting here typing without any spectacles. Almost unbelievable after wearing them for nearly sixty years! That, below, was me about twenty years ago.
This, the second day after having my second eye done, I can already clearly see what I’m typing on my laptop, on my lap … a distance of 60 cms … that previously I wouldn’t have had a hope of seeing clearly.
One of the amazing things is how the quality of light has changed to a lighter and brighter tone. The sky is now sky-blue. Clouds are both whiter and greyer, and don’t look like thunderheads rightaway. I’ve had to trust my phone weather app for a couple of years already to figure out what to wear, or whether to take a brolly with me, to go out. I should now be able to learn again, to gauge the weather by looking at the sky, as I used to.
Previously I thought the walls of the complex where I live were a gold-cream tint. I discovered when I had my left eye done that the color is a more neutral-cream tint. The carpet in the unit I rent is grayish, not brownish. Still a “tenant-grey”, according to my son. It’s easier to tell close shades apart.
Another ability I have got again is peripheral vision. Anyone first getting used to multi-focals will know that feeling, of the world suddenly narrowing. I hated that, not being able to see out of the corner of my eyes.
I could go on and on. Colors of anything and everything have always played an important part in my life. I’m happy!
Rita de Heer 