20 Year Hobby Blogging Anniversary

While collecting my list of recommended hobby blogs, I noticed a number did year in review and anniversary posts. I did a year in the blogosphere retrospective but I don’t think I’ve ever done a blog anniversary post for Musk’s Miniatures.

Musk’s Miniatures started as a spinoff from the original Muskblog, so I could join the From the Warp blog network if memory serves me correct. But even before Muskblog there was Muschamp.ca and before even that I had a homepage, in fact it was because UVic were going to take down my old content that I finally registered and paid for my own domain. And despite everything I’ve kept too much content online, which has to give me one of the oldest continually maintained Warhammer 40,000 fan pages.

So inspired by Rob Hawkins and others I decided since my hobby blogging exploits have hit the big two oh, even if every post isn’t in one single blog, most are in WordPress or on a webpage I’ve carefully maintained and coded, I’m declaring victory over the Internet and the haters and took the time to type up a retrospective of my time spent in the hobby.

Back in the Day

In the beginning, there was no blogosphere, no Twitterverse and certainly no Facebook. There was however email, eventually the world wide web and in between that the usenet. I remember rec.miniatures but what really took up a lot of my time online in the 90s was the 40K mailing list, the Primarchs themselves were even subscribed. It was there that the Diseased Sons started to take off. Originally I was known more as an ork player, because I was forced to be by Owen, Paul, Thor etc.

One piece of content that was typed up while a UVic student was an origin story for the Diseased Sons. I should probably give it a fresh edit as it has changed little since the 1990s even if the rest of the Warhammer 40,000 lore and fluff has. Search engines however reward new content, but every now and then something old will become popular again.

Also played during the 90s was Necromunda in Yellowknife no less. I actually played in Duncan, Victoria and maybe even Ottawa. I used to be reasonably good at Necromunda and Bloodbowl. I like the skirmish scale games.

While running a campaign in Yellowknife I started a “Necromunda Times”. I also wrote some house rules which were ultimately published in the Citadel Journal. They never even fixed the typos. I never did get my promised free copy, so Owen gave me one, after he spotted my name in print. It must be at my mom’s place somewhere.

I looked through an archive of Citadel Journals I found online, but couldn’t find my name, saw some other familiar names from the mailing list like Dave “Squid Brain” Handy and Tim Huckleberry, but Owen spotted my name so it had to be an issue in 1998 or 1999.

Update: I may have been published in Gang War

Sometime after publishing this post I decided to spend money on a new laptop, partially so it would play my favourite computer game series better, Sid Meier’s Civilization. I took some ribbing from the gaming group, right up until I pointed out they spend $1000s of dollars to play Warhammer 40,000, but of course that is different. Anyway this morning when I fired up Mail, it imported messages I thought were long lost, including one from Warwick Kinrade:

Hello

I'm the current compiler/ editor of Games Workshops irregular Necromunda magazine Gang War. I was surfing for interesting Necromunda articles when I came across your scenario on Gary James Necromunda website. 

Would it be Ok for us to us the scenario in a future issue of Gang War? 

For this you'd get a freebie copy of the magazine. 

I realise this is old stuff, but we still like it, and Necromunda seems to be still going strong with players, so Fanatic Press are looking to continue supporting the game.

Thanks a lot

So I may have not been published in the Citadel Journal, instead I was published in a different magazine put out by Fanatic Press. And I never did get a free copy from them, but Owen did find it and give it to me, and they did leave in the typos and the physical copy should be in my mom’s storage room, I’ll try to dig it out next time I visit.

Here is an excerpt from my version of the Necromunda Times which used to be online, I still haven’t finished painting my Escher gang, but I have painted at least one test model.

Gargantuan Gwenivere Captured

The leader of the D-Cup Debutantes along with two of the gangs best fighters, turned up missing after the fight for the Archeotech horde. A juve named Mammoth Mary swore she saw the unconscious forms of the three Eschers being dragged from the battlefield by an Orrus Spryer! The girls have vowed revenge and are now hiring underhive scum to mount a rescue attempt.

The Necromunda Times

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a powerful force in the miniature wargaming hobby, why else keep re-fighting the Battle of Agincourt or Gettysburg? Older hobbiest are perhaps trying to recover their lost youth or they finally have time and money to afford a large army of painted miniatures. I was actually in and out of the hobby several times due to school and work but also other stuff. However I always kept my content online, so after double checking that it had actually been twenty years I started planning this post.

A few posts back I used an old photo as a header image. That was the true impetus for this post. The digital photograph was taken over twenty years ago, the models and paint jobs in the picture were even older. Before 2002 I didn’t have a digital camera so what you had to do was take a photo on film and scan it or even just scan your miniatures directly on the flatbed scanner. The other option was to get someone who did have a digital camera to take pictures of your miniatures. I think Dean took some for me while I was living in Ottawa in 1997.

I still have most of my old models, such at the Rat Ogre pictured to the right. I think my snotlings disappeared in the 90s under mysterious circumstances and I may have lost models during various moves, perhaps some orks or other old unpainted models, plus my INWO cards seem to be missing. I can’t rule out someone walking off with something, I know I’ve lent people things only to never have them returned. Maybe some things will turn up when I finally get all my stuff out of my mom’s house, I know my collection of old White Dwarfs and other old gaming books and magazines is in her attic.

Having convinced someone at UVic to let me login one last time, I have my entire old webpage including the old miniature photos I posted online, such as the one to the right. Since 2002 I probably have every photo of a miniature I’ve ever taken and every now and then I dig back through Apple Photos for an image, such as the Escher ganger above. I also have a better photography setup now for taking photos of miniatures, though critics still criticize, despite that I’ve posted lots of old miniatures to Instagram for #ThrowbackThursday.

So with a final hat tip to Rob Hawkins I’ll try to find a single post and picture from 2002 until 2022 to highlight for all the new readers and old. Unlike George Santos I actually dug up proof that 2002 was when I started to take hobby blogging more seriously, so look on my works ye mighty and despair!

2002: Calgary Grand Tournament

The big focus of 2002 and likely the reason I finally started posting more hobby content online was I registered and attended my first Grand Tournament in Calgary of all places. Previously I’d attended local 40K tournaments in Victoria and even one in Ottawa, but I’d never done a diary or a journal for a Warhammer 40,000 campaign until 2002.

You can read how I did and I should have pictures from that event and of the army I took. First time I ever flew with a miniature case, previously I shipped my army across Canada on a Greyhound bus in a gun case as seen in the header image.

2003: Vancouver Grand Tournament

The next year Games Workshop expanded their tournament circuit even further and they came to where I was actually living at the time, Vancity. There was a new Chaos Codex with entirely new options so I painted a lot trying to improve my painting and overall score from the previous year.

Once again I journaled or blogged as the kids would say now-a-days, so you can read both how I did and all about the models I converted and built. I believe I finished third in painting losing to Bryce and Kelly Kim if memory serves me. A picture of my army commander appeared on the Games Workshop webpage. I saved the exact photo, but I don’t remember Dirty Steve taking it but it should have vintage 2003 metadata.

2004: Japanese Plague Marines

In 2004 I actually lived in Japan. I was invited to play Warhammer 40,000 on a US Military Base but I never did. There was a Yahoo group that I joined and when I came home for Christmas I took back some unpainted miniatures and a limited palette of paint back to Japan. I did a really good job painting some blue plaguebearers and the most infamous of purple plague marines.

I remember going to web cafes to update my website. I didn’t have a computer with me in Japan. The Wayback machine remembers what my webpage looked like back then, it has not changed much. When I got back to my mom’s house I put up a gallery of Plague Marines.

Also when I got back from Japan is when I started playing games against Rob as apparently the 40K mailing list was still going in 2004. He apparently has a blog too now, maybe more than one. It was also while in Japan that I joined Flickr and I’ve been posting pictures including of my miniatures to that website since.

2005: Maceo the Maligned

In 2005 I went back to school to do my ill-fated MBA. I did not end up playing in Conflict Vancouver but I did attend, Bill played in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle tournament I believe. I was living in a dorm at UBC and I think I may have painted two models alone in my room, including the now infamous Maceo the Maligned.

It was also in 2005 that I first installed WordPress and officially started Muskblog. It was encouraged by my MBA program to do so. But I was still mainly posting about my hobby stuff on my hand coded webpage. It appears I painted a couple notable models while at my mom’s house over the Christmas break or I started painting them. Metadata don’t lie.

From 2006 until 2010 I would post erratically before starting this dedicated miniature painting blog.

2006: The Phantom of the Rock Opera

In 2006 I apparently resumed painting goblins, it’s a lifetime commitment. It was also apparently Paul Taylor’s fault. I also painted a number of models that would eventually be fielded in a major tournament but that was still a year away. So although it rarely sees the tabletop, it is still in my possession, so I’ll go with a famous Noisemarine conversion I did in 2006.

2007: West Coast Mayhem

This was the event that replaced Conflict Vancouver after GW decided to stop running the Conflict events. I knew some of the organizers so of course I attended. This was where my third grand tournament army ended up. Bryce was there, I think he took home some prizes. Of course I typed up an event summary and I have plenty of photos to choose from, so here is a shot of my army in a portable display I make from an Ikea breakfast tray.

2008: Astronomi-con Vancouver

That is right in 2008, several old 40K mailing list members brought their event to Vancouver. It started in Winnipeg then expanded to Toronto and I think it was even run in Austin Texas at one point, so of course I attended the first one in Vancouver. There is of course another campaign journal and an event summary.

Rob was there, so was Malcolm, so was some of my terrain. I think Rob might still have some of my terrain. The trend continued of me finishing in the top three in painting but not winning. I didn’t have time to paint that many new models, but I did find a shot of my army. I never managed to finish a squad I dubbed the Longed Four, this would be the first of several Astonomi-con Vancouvers I attended.

2009: The Diseased Sons are Finished?

In 2009 I went to both Astronomi-con and West Coast Mayhem. I don’t remember winning much, but I did win a door price at Astronomi-con one year. This year I seem to have painted quite a few plague marines but also some Chaos Space Marine Havocs and Chaos Chosen as I must have thought I was finally done painting Nurgle models.

I was wrong. But here is my non-Nurgle Chaos paint scheme, which I have dubbed the Nefarious Fire. It is the same scheme I use on my Night Goblins because purple flames are cool.

2010: A new beginning

As mentioned many paragraphs ago, I must have been pretty serious in 2010 as I spun off my miniature painting exploits from my own domain to this dedicated blog. So now I can do things more in the style of Rob Hawkins, but I kept maintaining my other webpage and I of course posted to social media occasionally.

2010 also marked the last major tournament I attended. I remember staying up very late the night before painting. Maybe that resulted in my best painting score maybe it didn’t, but some people may remember that I posted a 2AM painting update.

Now I should be able to look through the old photos on this blog instead of my computer, but I think things are organized better on my computer than on WordPress dot com. In 2010 if you won first overall at Astronomi-con you got to go to Las Vegas for the championship, I think a lot of people on the West Coast tried extra hard to win tournaments that year. I chose to field a Khorne Terminator Lord I converted from a Forgeworld model to lead my army.

2011: Lead Painters League

In 2011, I entered the Lead Painters League or LPL. I didn’t win. I’m just not a fast or efficient painter. But I did try, and I admire more efficient painters than me. I also attended Trumpeter Salute in Burnaby, running a game of Silent Death as well as playing in a one day Warhammer 40,000 tournament.

So I was still trying to do hobby stuff even if it wasn’t the most successful year for me. I was also using a wet palette some during this period and possibly still working on my modular trench table. But the best thing I may have painted and timely in February 2022 was some OOP Khorne Bezerkers.

2012: Miniature Painting News

I was unemployed and Ron from FTW seemed to want one so I built a miniature painting news aggregator. It has since stopped working, but I can probably fix it if I ever have more time and energy. I didn’t paint or blog much in fact a lengthy hiatus from painting and gaming was soon to commence. It wasn’t until I moved to Calgary in 2019 that I got my paints out of storage.

I did however take and post the picture below.

2013: Nothing was painted

It was obviously a dark few years. I kept everything online but it wasn’t until the next year that I found time and energy for hobby content. Maintenance counts for a lot though if you’re going to keep a hobby website online for twenty years, especially one with custom PHP and JavaScript which I’ll have to update someday.

I built a lot of stuff with PHP while unemployed but it never made me any money, now all I seem to code in is SQL.

2014: A brief return to painting and gaming

I have some friends who have worked for GW on and off over the years. I also know some people who have opened their own gaming shops. It was while visiting some old friends that I was talked into painting a model or two in-store to prove I could still paint. I even played a game of Warhammer 40,000 this year, taking part in a megabattle at GW Highgate, I believe that is the only time my Khorne Bezerkers have ever been fielded, I let some kids run a lot of my army, very few things were broken. Fun was had by all, I think Warhammer stores have become more like daycares as I’ve gotten older.

2015: Moved back to China

That is correct, I moved to China for a second time! I didn’t take my models or my paints, but it turns out there are Games Workshop or Warhammer stores now in Shanghai. There was even less hobby content produced by me than in 2013. However it was the ten year anniversary of Muskblog, so I wrote a blogiversary post. I can’t say I particularly recommend reading it, but over the years I have given some thought to what is important when self publishing and creating content online, in a word, passion.

2016: A little Hobby Blogging

I was still living in China so I blogged mostly about that. I also blogged about studying, I spent a lot of time studying while in China and I can’t even speak much Chinese, but I did write one post highlighting all the Nurgle content I’d posted over the years.

2017: Shanghai Comic Con

In 2017, I still had little time for hobbies, but I managed to fit in a visit to the third ever Comic Con in Shanghai. There was actually quite a few painted miniatures at this convention. So I did take some pictures of miniatures, just not ones I personally painted.

2018: Another year devoid of hobbies

I was still in China, but I’d basically been convinced to leave as I just wasn’t getting anywhere no matter how many exams I took. I did keep everything online and still produced content as the kids say, for instance if you ever want to know where to go for beer in Shanghai.

2019: Back to Calgary, Back to the Hobby

I’d actually lived in Calgary twice before during the 90s. So I had painted models here while a co-op student. I was familiar with the Sentry Box, I had even flown to Calgary to participate in a Warhammer 40,000 tournament. But in 2019 I again moved for work and it turns out I knew someone who painted miniatures and played games.

So in order to give Bill fresh victims and to once again prove I retained some modicum of skill I returned to the hobby. Bill was also big on me producing content, I think he even wanted me to do a podcast and video tutorials, but I stuck with blogging though I also post pictures to Instagram and sometimes even Twitter.

During all the time I was away from participating fully in the hobby I still likely followed some other people who were active in the hobby. I bought books, I had the first Death Guard Codex when I moved to Calgary having bought it in Shanghai. I had hoped we’d play Kill Team but Bill wanted to play Warcry, so it was back to painting goblins for me.

A new edition of Kill Team has since come out which I bought but haven’t played, also purchased but not played the latest version of Necromunda.

2020: Warcry Campaign

My biggest hobby accomplishment of the year was finishing a Gloomspite Gitz Warcry gang. It was almost all vintage goblins and night goblins I had unpainted since Warhammer 4th Edition. I think I bought one box of new goblins and have since bought another but our Warcry campaign ended due to Covid.

2021: A return to Warhammer 40,000

In 2021, I finally got to play another game of Warhammer 40,000. This might have been between Covid lockdowns in Calgary. It was against Bill and his Ultramarines, Bill also once played orks, he’s never fully kicked the habit apparently.

2022: The Siege of Vanithros’s Bastion

This was a big year in the hobby with perhaps the most ever words typed by me about the hobby in a single year. 2022 was probably not the most models painted in a single year, I don’t have a perfect record of such things and I didn’t always photograph and post everything I painted like kids do now-a-days. I did paint a lot of models and rebased even more. Bill and I, plus eventually others started a narrative campaign of 9th edition Warhammer 40,000. Many games were played and over twenty battle reports were typed up by me. I also summarized the entire year long campaign of the Diseased Sons.

The Future

The start of this year has been very busy, but not necessarily with the hobby, but the narrative campaign continues, now with even more orks. I will try and get in a game this weekend or at least paint. I spent the last three months rebasing and touching up three models that I originally painted back in the 1990s. I even found an old picture of Sluggie before he was spruced up.

Games Workshop is running the Arks of Omen campaign right now so we’ll probably take part. The rumour is 10th edition will also be released this year so we’ll likely switch to that, probably restarting our campaign, rumour has it there will be simple rules and more complicated rules, given my memory and time available to the hobby, I may lobby for the simple rules. I’ve been too busy to keep up with all the rumours but hopefully there is time in 2023 for the hobby. I have more unpainted models than I’ll ever paint but I hope to paint a few more yet.

Hopefully you enjoyed this trip back in time, I have one last gallery of miniatures to recommend, both before and after I repainted them which seems an apt link to conclude with. If you have thoughts on the various miniatures I’ve painted and repainted over the years or hobby blogging in general you can leave a comment below.

More Recommended Hobby Blogs

During the dark days, I lost touch with the hobby and the blogosphere and I think my RSS feed reader stopped working and being supported, so I had to dust off some computer science skills and parse some weird format to get the list of blogs I used to follow. I had previously cleaned up my sidebar on Musk’s Miniatures but I never shared the blogs I was digging on like I did before.

Some blogs went dormant longer than mine and then came back like mine, others were started while I was basically out of the hobby. I was always going to do a post like this, but now that I got the feeds into Reader I wasn’t sure how I’d get them out, then I fell behind reading the feeds and I have a pretty good set of unread hobby blogs that I like so I thought I’d share it.

The header may be the 39th digital photo I took with my Nikon Coolpix 2500 back on June 9th 2002, so over twenty years ago. The models in the picture were painted even before that and I note a distinct lack of tiny lines, so I suspect some were painted in the late 90s, there is one RBT01 that I rescued before rescuing models from other hobbyists was cool. They all have bolt pistols so they were painted back when that was an option for Plague Marines. There are no campaign badges so this is before the Calgary Grand Tournament.

Plague Gardening is the other major all Death Guard all the time blog on WordPress. I reserve the right to stop painting Death Guard or Nurgle at some point but it looks like the first half of 2023 will again be all Death Guard all the time. We both seem to be typing up a lot of battle reports.

Realms of Chaos is old school, there ain’t no school like the old school and I follow a lot of Oldhammer or Rogue Trader afficiando blogs. This blogger paints a lot of old school World Eaters of which I have a small collection thanks to Jim Bell that I’ll get back to someday.

Oldenhammer in Toronto should also be mentioned. They seem to have been a GW fanboy in the colonies longer than most. They stopped updating for a while, but that is the way it is with the blogosphere and RSS, you have to subscribe and wait for the spice to flow.

Leadplague has also been keeping it old school. Sometimes I forget the name of the blogs as they go silent for months or years like mine, but with a name like Leadplague I can remember that.

Magpie and Old Lead, is also about old and most likely metal aka lead miniatures. Maybe all blogs with lead in the title are inherently good. There is something satisfying about my old heavy metal dreadnoughts. I’ve been running mine in our narrative campaign.

The Old School Workshop sometimes paints new models just like me, but he definitely keeps it old school on the regular. I tend to prefer the more niche and personal blogs rather than the big loud ad filled monstrosities.

Warphammer is trying to be the Chaos blog or the blog for being good at playing Chaos rather than being bad at playing Chaos like me. I just don’t want to run special characters and flavour of the month armies, plus it takes me months to finish a single model and I try to keep the vow of only painted models hit the table, but I like to support my faction and someday I will enter a Grand Tournament and/or attend a major convention again.

The Corvus Cluster has been running a Warhammer 40,000 narrative campaign longer than Bill and I. They do battle reports and tutorials and I’ve tried to follow along to see if I could learn anything, alas I still am nowhere near the 40K player I used to be, I just have limited time, but I did play a lot of games in 2022, maybe my most ever in a single year.

The Sentry Box’s blog gets a shoutout as we are playing most of our games there. I think some staff talked about playing in our campaign and some actually are, but I don’t think we are an official campaign unlike their Necromunda one. Maybe I’ll play in the next Necromunda one, but one campaign is enough for me at a time and this is what Bill wanted to do after Warcry came to an end due to Covid.

Sprocket’s Small World is just another miniature painting blog which often seems to feature Nurgle miniatures and oh yeah he’s won FIVE Slayer Swords!

A Tabletop Gamer’s Diary has lots and lots of painted and converted models. I’m not sure how he finds all the time and energy but since I’m giving out shoutouts to start the year, this blog definitely deserves one.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever met any of the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts, but I do know a number of Warhammer 40,000 players in Winnipeg even though I’ve never been there from back in the 40K list days and of course Astronomi-con which I last participated in back in 2010 in Vancouver.

I know very little about Captain Cook’s Funky Wenis Rodeo. I only discovered it recently I think through a Facebook group of which we are both members. It has lots of painted OOP models from the Rogue Trader Era. Sometimes I find new blogs by looking at the blogroll of other blogs, so I think I’m checking out his blogroll right now. We seem to like a lot of the same blogs.

Another blogger I have followed for a long long time is Rob Hawkins. I believe he lives just up the road or used to live in Edmonton. I have been to Edmonton but not in a long long time. People have threatened to come down from Edmonton to play against me in Warhammer 40,000.

My final shoutout and link because I have yet another battle report to type up is for Brandon Palmer. You may know him from Grey Matter Musings or as GMM Studios. You’ve probably seen his work. He paints professionally and often does huge armies for Adepticon.

Update October 2023

So I’m extremely glad I wrote this blog post, because I updated my Mac’s operating system which broke my RSS feed reader. So I updated, a paid upgrade to my RSS feed reader and it didn’t auotmatically import my old feeds from the previous version, nor could I seem to get them out of the previous version, as it crashes on startup since I upgraded MacOS.

I had an old OPML file from 2018 when this last happened to me, yes RSS feed readers on MacOS seem to become abandonware so maybe paying for one will prevent this. Anyway not only have I gotten no support despite contacting the developer, version five couldn’t import the OPML feed filer version one could. So I’ve basically had to rebuild my RSS feed list from two blog posts I’ve written.

I do have the old OPML file, so I can add one feed at a time from that file but honestly a lot of blogs get abandoned, so I’ll likely add some more blogs, but basically I’m starting over from scratch so if you have a blog to recommend you can leave a comment below. I even remembered to add them from my blogroll, but that too contained some blogs that haven’t updated in years so they got pruned.

New Models, New Desk

I know this blog has few readers and subscribers, but perhaps that soon will change. I’ve been buying models again and I’ve gotten a new desk. I myself have not been gaming or painting, well we briefly did a little gaming before the covid restrictions were again increased.

As you may be able to guess by the image, I managed to track down a set of Deathguard Space Marine Heroes. I had my eye on them when they were only in Japan but was told they would come out in Canada again. I even was planning to go to Japan again, but then covid.

I’ve also lucked into another copy of my all time favourite plague marine. Considering all the new models that have been released over the years including the aforementioned Space Marine Heroes Series 3 maybe I need to reassess that. But when I saw a painted and complete version of the model in the used model shelf of the Sentry Box I didn’t hesitate to buy.

My New Desk

I’ve also been buying Necromunda models. I must have several gangs worth of models already, including several NIB OOP models, but the new models are also nice, the Forgeworld conversion kits and the regular GW conversion kits are also nice and I plan on using many of the them as chaos cultists. I plan to use them first in Kill Team but eventually I may use them in Warhammer 40,000 or even Necromunda.

Bill managed to get in a game of Necromunda without me. Bill even managed to remember to tell me his Instagram handle for his latest miniature painting exploits. I too plan to use Instagram more to share WIP model pictures. I still prefer Flickr to make galleries and I still intend to make greater use of this blog.

My personal blog I’ve made a few posts on, including more about my flat-pack furniture building exploits. Not very exciting but necessary to get a proper painting station, quite possibly the best painting station I’ve ever had. I used to paint at kitchen tables, on tiny desks, sitting on hard wooden chairs but I’ve gotten old and soft. I lost my will to paint for a while, but with the release of Kill Team and having bought about a dozen new models I plan to resume painting after Thanksgiving.

Miniature painting isn’t my top priority. I’ve been focussed on work for so long, I need to put more focus into balancing my life. I want to get back to exercising regularly as I’ve gotten fat. I want to read more real books and less tweets and crap online. I want to eventually take my guitar playing more seriously and I want to paint some of the great new and old models I’ve collected over the years.

I don’t have any grand ambitions. I will once again start with goblins. I have plenty of mostly painted goblins from Warhammer 4th Edition. I also have plenty of Orks and Gretchin from previous boxsets of 40K. I still want to paint more Nurlings even though as I pointed out to Bill they are apparently too elite for Kill Team. And of course I want to paint a variety of models to use in Kill Team and Necromunda both vintage ones and new exciting ones.

Bill and I were disappointed to have our gaming suddenly cut short right after we’d basically agreed we’d play Kill Team campaigns. Hopefully we get back to Warcry and even Necromunda as I do think the skirmish games are a much better fit for an apartment dweller during a pandemic. If you have games you’re looking forward to playing and models you’re looking forward to painting in the coming months you can leave a comment below.

The Finest Miniature Painting News

I’ve spent yet more time fine tuning my miniature painting news aggregator. Time I probably could have used more productively. I tend to put a lot of time and effort into ‘side projects’. Side projects that don’t earn income or help solve any of my problems.

The first week or so was spent wrestling with PHP, particularly with SimplePie and other related code. I still have an outstanding issue with that codebase that no one seems to want to acknowledge or suggest a solution for. I definitely did not want to become an expert in PHP, RSS, and Atom feeds.

I also spent way too much time gathering more RSS and Atom feeds. I originally just used the blogs I subscribed to, but FtW Ron had visions of 100s if not a thousand blog feeds being aggregated and merged together. It was while building that, that I discovered the issue with merging multiple blogspot feeds. I don’t know why people particularly in the miniature painting hobby have stuck with blogspot and continue to create more Blogger blogs when so many other free options exist.

The hobby is much more commercial than it was 15 years ago, back then everyone was a hobbyist except a few people who worked for one of a few miniature companies. Now there are many, many mini manufactures, many online stores, professional miniature painters, professional miniature sculptures, and numerous semi-pro hobbyists who supplement their income through their website and the hobby. I’ve always avoided going down that route, but I don’t really feel qualified to give career advice, given the mess I’ve made of mine. I’ve tried to keep the miniature painting news aggregator non-commercial, but maybe I’ll finally breakdown and put an ad on one of my ‘side projects’. I’ve also chosen to focus on miniature painting rather than a specific manufacture or game system, just like I tried to do with this blog. Focus can be difficult to maintain.

The miniature painting news aggregator looks and operates a lot like AllTop. That isn’t a coincidence. AllTop is one of the more successful news aggregation sites. My aggregator is much more specialized, even personalized. It is random, deterministic, algorithmic, chronological, and social. It sources information from Internet darlings like Twitter and Pinterest. You can pin, tweet, or like the featured story/photo. Information is pulled from major hobby sites like Tabletop Gaming News, Beasts of War, and Cool Mini Or Not. News is also pulled from an eclectic collection of smaller hobby blogs and websites. Information is also found by search agents, such as the YouTube painting tutorials, but other less mainstream search engines are used like Topsy. I even added Reddit’s miniature painting section.

I’ll try to continue to ensure it runs OK, I don’t think it’ll ever be fast unless I reduce the amount of content or do something else drastic. I’ll try out new feeds and I hope sites like Chest of Colors fixes one of their feeds, but mainly it should just be there for bored hobbyists who want to see cool stuff. Checking more than hourly will be futile, but hopefully it can become a useful tool for finding cool miniature painting news online.

Better Hobby Blogging

I’ve been spending too much time online. This isn’t news, but what I’ve been doing a lot of lately is scouring the Internet for RSS and Atom feeds to pass into the miniature painting news aggregator I made. I could mention again how I think Blogger is inferior to WordPress or how not all feeds are created equal and not all behave as you’d expect them to, but what I really thought I’d write about is how a lot of hobby blogs don’t produce very consistent or high quality content. 

Ron is relaunching the From the Warp blogger group, but he is still using the exact same technology that ultimately let him down. He’s trying to be more selective as to which blogs he includes. There are a lot of these ‘blog networks’ now. Many bloggers seem to be a member of them all and rely on them to send readers there way. I’ve been reading the headlines and opening paragraphs of a lot of blogs both on FtW but also from the TGN Blogging Network and I’ve noticed a lot of poorly named blogs, poorly chosen post tiles, and a lot of low quality content.

I never set out to make a miniature painting news aggregator. I never set out to write PHP, but I have time on my hands so I try to do something with my education. I never wanted to curate yet more miniature painting information, but I’m disappointed with a few sites and the technology they use. I tried to find technology that would help me find quality content and feeds. I really don’t want to scrape content, so sites without valid feeds or an API will just not be part of what I continue to build, but for those hobbyists that do want more readers/followers there is a lot of things they could be doing that doesn’t involve switching from Blogger to WordPress.

First of all I understand people have limited time to devote to the hobby or to painting miniatures and people have their own favourite websites or forums that they frequent. My miniatures and paints are all in boxes in storage and I haven’t played a game of Warhammer 40,000 or anything that uses miniatures in about a year. However if you have time to blog, you have time to blog better. If you have time to post pictures to the Internet you have time to ensure those pictures are sorted, titled, and tagged intelligently. If you have time to comment on multiple blogs and forums and social networks, you have time to do something intelligent and useful with all that content and energy.

Cool Mini Or Not supposedly has the largest collection of painted miniatures online, but there is no way to subscribe to feeds of say the top minis submitted that week. There also is a lot unpainted or poorly painted miniatures so I don’t always find the coolest stuff by looking at random images on CMoN. I’m also interested in how things are done, not just seeing a high resolution picture of the final model. CMoN is definitely an online store now and I don’t find their site the best use of my limited hobby time. Dakka Dakka and Warseer both have galleries, Dakka Dakka had an RSS feed I thought would give me pictures of new and cool miniatures but it has proved erratic and disappointing. Warseer is not a personal favourite of mine, I’d prefer more hobbyists posted their completed miniatures to Flickr. I’ve also discovered that aggregation isn’t enough, a certain amount of curation and quality control is necessary to produce the best results.

Tumblr was a big disappointment as far as finding cool miniature painting content. Facebook is a mostly closed network, so Twitter particularly #miniaturemonday has proven much more useful. I’ve even decided to join Pinterest to see if I can use that site to build a better curated collection of cool minis. I asked several people for suggestions as to what feeds to include and basically no one could be bothered to make any useful suggestions so more and more of my own personal preferences and biases are being reflected in the miniature painting news aggregator. Other news aggregators of course exist, PopURLs is mentioned by Ryan, but I’m more familiar with AllTop due to being something of a Guy Kawasaki fan. There is an AllTop for board games and RPGs but not for wargaming or miniature painting.

Maybe my efforts will be all for not, but given the increasing emphasis on curation and all the time and effort I’ve invested into the hobby over the years and finding quality hobby content online I don’t think it is the easiest problem to solve, there isn’t one site right now that has all the coolest miniature painting stuff in one place, I guess that is what I’m building.

I tend to write long rambling posts with lots of information and links. However I am capable of writing high quality content that performs well in search engines or in social media. I started this blog so I could join the FtW blog network or just to de-complicate my original blog. Musk’s Miniatures definitely isn’t perfect or the best example of a high quality blog, however given that some people try to earn a living or augment their income from the hobby, I just know I’m going to get whiny emails someday asking why their blog isn’t included or featured, the short answer is “your blog sucks” or perhaps more eloquently your content just isn’t unique or interesting to me. Since I’m building and curating the website it definitely reflects my preferences but it is also incorporates algorithms and social media so other people’s preferences have influence. How Alltop works, is how my miniature painting news aggregator works.

I’ve written a lot of blog postings trying to pass on my experience and knowledge, here is advice on how to improve your hobby blog:

• What is really important when self publishing online?
• The Top 10 Takeaways from “Write On”

Others have written often conflicting advice to mine, but the goal is the same, if you want people to read what you write, whether it is about a hobby or some other interest, you have to work at it and you have to make a commitment to Quality. There are too many blogs and websites competing for our time and attention. Too many of them do not maintain a respectable wheat to chaff ratio. I’d rather read one awesome post a month, than 3 or 4 crappy posts a week. If you adopt the latter publishing strategy, I’m unlikely to subscribe to your RSS feed, I’m definitely not including your blog in my blog roll or the miniature painting news aggregator I just built, you won’t see many comments or hits, and long term your inferior content will not perform well in search engines or in social media. 100s of people a day still read hobby content I put online ten plus years ago, but I’ve also written content that no one reads, probably less than one person in a hundred days. Which do you think was a better investment of my time, which do you think was of higher quality as judged by search engines, my peers, and random websurfers?