Friday, January 01, 2010

Four, not out.

4The new year brings another birthday to the workbench blog. It's 397 posts since the last one. Once a day plus a few extras for the really keen, or just bored at work !

It's gratifying to see people are reading this stuff - currently there are an average of 97 visits a day with visitors reading 167 pages. 8 of you are even following this drivel through Blogger. Google tells me that there is hardly a country in the world, and certainly none in Europe, where someone hasn't stumbled across my ramblings.

The most popular posts to date are:
Badger mini sandblaster
Building the Flying Scotsman
Garratt stuff
Airfix Beam Engine kit
and coming up fast, Repairing the indicator stalk on a Peugeot 206

Apart from my own website and search engine traffic, the biggest referring site is Fairlight Works with 2084 visitors coming from there.

Now all of this is interesting to Interweb geeks like me but obviously this isn't a blog about blogging, it's about model making (and repairing things). Normal service will be resumed tomorrow. Promise.

It's been interesting to see how things have evolved this year. Wednesday has become the day I write up furniture making stuff I do at college, Saturday is historic model making when I can find something and Sunday is developments on the layout in a box. This isn't deliberate, or a hard and fast rule, it's just the way things have worked out.

One area I do intended to look at in 2010 is book reviewing. To date I've done one but I'm going to feed a few more through. For one thing it will make me get on and read some of those books I've bought and done little more than skim through. More practically, the links to Amazon bring in a bit of income through the affiliate programme if I inspire anyone to want their own copy. I warn you now that strict quality control will be applied - if I don't like a book, it's not going to appear on the blog. Don't think I'll restrict myself to new books either, there are some very old yet very useful volumes out there. You'll need to scavenge second hand stall for them though !

One of my resolutions in 2010 will be to take on less new projects and get some of the old ones finished. My Brede Lifeboat was supposed to appear at the Model Engineering show a couple of years ago and yet is still a hull and pile of bits. A chat with a fellow modeller about vac-forming reminded me that the Chinese Speedboat hasn't progressed either. Mind you if he manages to get his hulls made, perhaps it will give me a guide.

On the railway front there is still my own Garratt to finish. Trevor has kindly supplied some of the improved chassis etches for it too. Mind you he's probably avoiding me 'cos I keep saying it would make a fantastic Gauge 1 kit too !

Oh well, I suppose life would be dull if I didn't have a hobby. That is one change. At the moment this is a hobby, well apart from a few kits people are happy to wait for, and that is a good thing. While I am often too keen to jump from one project to the next before finishing things, at least I now can without feeling guilty about it. Well, except for the magazine stuff anyway and on that point I have a deadline looming so I better go at work on it...

Thanks for reading. I hope I can continue to entertain and amuse in 2010.

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