Blogging Stats: An Outlier

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.

Modem vs IOS

When I finally knuckled down and dedicated a couple of hours to the problem, I learnt that the trouble was the ever-renewing IOS, macOS Sonoma 14.1.1 in this case, that was refusing to shake hands with the now five year old modem. How is that good for the world to come, Apple.com? We need tech that is compatible to old as well as new.

Let me tell you this image is 20! years! old! I think I made it using one of the first versions of the ProCreate design program installed on an early iPad I had a taste-test of. It represents a techie, of course. How we imagined techies in those far gone days.

First the wait for contact on the help-line. Twenty minutes. Then the wait for my turn with a technician. 45 minutes. By about half an hour of waiting, I settled in, having already spent/used/wasted too much time to want to do it all again at a later date. Nothing has changed in 20 years in that respect.

I don’t know how many people have got an Archer VRI 1600, Version 2 modem but if it was a popular one, there’ll be a lot of people like me out there with modems stunned into silence, even hibernation, by new and brashy operating systems. Hence the long wait. Which is how I comforted myself.

I told the technician helping me reset the system, it is almost as if new operating systems are sweeping the old out to make room for the new.

Madam, she said, we don’t recommend our customers to just update their systems willy nilly.

I wanted to tell her I just do as I’m told, and my technical equipment the same. We upgrade to stay in the game. I don’t know what’s in an upgrade. Who out there is going to explain?

Yeah yeah. I could go to a forum and find out there. But tell me … do you do that?

But anyway the point is moot. Rion gave me a task that needed my attention. Find the xyz in System Settings and tell me what it says.

She is good, knows her stuff, and she’s patient. Took me through the process step by step. Even tested my mobile while we were at it. There, she said at the end, no new modem needed.

Her name is Rion and she works at the TPG call centre, if you need help retreading your modem.

Lego: MILS Again

I’m sure Lego fans will get sick of me posting about MILS plates. They’re great but I don’t have the dollars to make eight or twelve of them and only then add landscaping.

So when I decided to raise my town to above so-called sealevel, I built a Duplo + Lego foundation plate in the MILS format.

Tomorrow another one …

Lego, Puzzle One

It’s harder to set up than it looks, even for me, and I invented it.

There’s one piece missing … it’ll be in the post as soon as I have my computer back and can get to my favourite Bricklink store … but I want to get begun on my next project.

I started it as an experimental thing seeing how these slopes could work together. One thing led to another.

Lego Rest Breaks

Every so often while packing up my house, I’ve been taking breaks reading, writing, painting, Lego building breaks and far too many hours scrolling through social media feeds. But, probably my brick collection will be the last thing I pack.

It’s Thursday 29 December 2022, the middle of the Christmas/New Year break. The apartment complex where I live is almost silent with no soundtrack in the background of kids in the pool or kids racing around role-playing their version of cops and robbers.

To cut the quiet, I’m piping Geneva by Russian Circles (post-rock band) into my ears, by way of the Blue Tooth connection between my modem and my hearing aids. Philos is the last ‘song’ and my favorite. Coming up. Still seems funny calling them songs when there are is generally no singing. Better than the superseded tech of ‘tracks’ I suppose.

So, although I’m still building, I’ve put the village aside and am concentrating on ‘furniture’ the elements that will liven up the various scenes. This week I’m looking at how the brick experts build trees. Tips & Bricks has some really good posts. Brick Crafts too. And then it’s up to me adapting.

I’m never going to have as vast a collection as brick-professionals or extreme hobbyists, or their large scale set-ups. My 4-seater dining tabletop is it. Space enough for seven 🙂 whole MILS plates, and maybe 6 to 8 half plates. When the table is needed—like for eating on—the village has to be moved to the shelves adjacent.

This tree is still experimental. As most of my green leaf pieces are in the Christmas Wreath build above, this tree must make do with lavender leaves. The dark green part is a piece of seaweed made-over. The tree trunk? Not much to look at yet. It’s a work in progress.

Lego: MILS Base-plate

The minute I saw a Lego base-plate, I knew I’d have to find an alternative.

Underside of Lego base plate in green, my version of a MILS plate in blue etc

Most of the building I’m doing is on my smallish round dinner table. When I have guests stuff has to be able to be moved easily to shelves. Just how weak and bendy the original base-plates are was amply illustrated to me by Darryl of Bevin’s Bricks on Youtube cutting one up with a box cutter.

I already searched through possibilities like glueing base plates on cardboard and building on ordinary plates and joining those with other ordinary plates. Neither of which attracted me. The first because it’s hard to stay accurate. The second because of heavy and awkward builds springing apart when you least expect it. I’ve read about builds grievously falling apart while being transported from one table to the next. Not ideal, in other words.

Then, on one of the FB groups I joined, I saw mentioned the MILS plate as the next development in the search for a strong base plate. Following that up, I saw a good explanation on Bevin’s Bricks. [Though I have again forgotten what ‘MILS’ means. I have a life-long memory glitch in relation to acronyms.]

Me constructing a ‘proper’ MILS base plate right now would’ve meant ordering the required parts, and weeks of waiting on covid-struck postal services in several countries. Even getting supplies by post from my local brick resales outlet a few suburbs away, usually takes a couple of weeks.

Not helped this week that I’m house-bound again, waiting to be told whether I have covid or another lurgy. Well, I know I have a lurgy. Ten days of coughing.

But … I have six alternate-lego base plates, lots of blue 2×2 bricks and red 2×2 bricks that I have no idea where to use, a few 30-year-old Technic 1×6 bricks, and a bunch of blue sun-damaged plates of all sizes. Can I achieve something with them?

I could. Very likely the ordered honeycomb of professionally built MILS base plates is not present in the internals of my sandwich base plate (below) because I spaced the reds and blues according to need, not design. I’m very happy with it and am aiming to put another one together tonight.

Learning Lego

Yesterday I was reminded that Bosley & Co need at least 2 more hard hats to be able to pass building inspections. Off went another order to BrickResales.com.au for hard hats, a few other building site necessities, and a trio of frying pans for the new outdoor dining setup. LBT’s (Australian delicacy: lettuce bacon and tomato sandwiches) coming up.

While most of the structures I build are MOCs, aka My Own Creations–for the ongoing story– every so often I buy a set for what I can learn from them.

This week, I tackled the (shown above) Campervan Model #Lego60283. Took me a couple of thoroughly enjoyable hours to put it together at the same time learning two techniques that’ll help me keep the interiors of my own models accessible.

First there is the camper’s easily lifted off roof. This has made access to the vehicle’s roof spaces so easy, I’m planning to use the technique for some of the apartments in Bosley & Co’s proposed multi-storey build.

Starting with the ground-floor cabins, I discovered that once you put a roof on a place, the windows and doors are too small for adult fingers to access the interior. Furniture, for example, that needs to be installed inside, has to be done during the build, or the build carefully dismantled and done again with extras included.

In that mode, there are cabins on the site that have been built three times. Jackie and Jed Cranedriver’s now very fancy hut is a case in point. Version One looked like a grey box. Version Two had some color in it.

Third time, this time, it has a swing-open wall similar to the one in the camper-van. I love it. Though it will take further study to get the colors matching where they are meant to. I can foresee a fourth rebuild.