End of the Decade!

Well here it is another year over and another decade as well. It has been interesting for sure. I have been doing a great deal of reflection on things so this may be very word filled.

One of the main things that happened this year was the birth of little Riley.

She is now 5 months old and I have been watching her every weekday for 4 of those months. This gives me very little large blocks of time to deeply focus on many tasks. It has created lots of little blocks of time and it is important that I make good use of those little blocks.

Over the past few years thinking about how I think- (if that makes any sense) has been very good. I now realize that I have a variant of ADHD. I do very poorly at multi tasking and jumping from one thing to the next. I think the lead pile of shame is a shining example of that. But it goes way beyond that. When trying to focus on a task to finish a project it is so easy to become distracted. In the end I have giga bytes of data of half finished designs on the PC.

And this helped me to discover why I have slowly dropped gaming as a hobby. The volume of rules and products was described to me as drinking from a fire hose. And when you have trouble focusing this becomes a problem. I found myself confusing rules from multiple systems, or even worse wanting to take the best parts out of something I knew and try to fit it in to something else.

The real hobby killer was reading Age of Sigmar.

Combined with ever escalating prices this pushed me over the edge and out of the hobby.

For a while.

Instead my creative energy was directed in to slot cars and in particular custom built digital slot cars.

But with lots of time spent in front of the TV with a sleeping grand baby laying upon me it was inevitable that I would watch a lot of You tube. And I found several interesting game related channels.

Perhaps the most impacting one was Geek Gamers. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLnDxuZE6qWwWxZCN9y8JQA

I found this person playing Divine Right solo. And discovered she plays role play games solo. A little more research and joining some Face book groups and suddenly it became apparent there are a lot of displaced gamers out there. Finding a way to do something they love but not being harvested by these mega corporations for endless “game of the month” churn.

And suddenly the slot car racing kind of stalled out. But I am very determined to focus on an extremely narrow selection of genres and game systems.

And something else happened. If I could not find the youtube content I want, I decided to make it. Just like if I can not find the slot car I want I will make that, or the game products I want. So yes, I have a Mercury Cyclone in 1/32 scale, and a 15mm Ultramarines army. And now a youtube channel to make videos.

Here is a link to my channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4-OYSiRLuGuJGIxcZysKA

It has 6 videos at this time. The plan is to roughly make an equal amount of maker space videos and game or slot car racing videos. You can see the Heroes of Black Reach game finally completed and played out. Solo!

So it has been an awesome year for tinkering in the workshop. (when I get the time)

Business side of things is still a bit challenging. Watching an infant for 45 hours per week really reduces time to work. It is a factor I have to work around for about the next 20 months.

Ebay has really become difficult. They forced me in to managed payments, which I do not like and costs more in fees than pay-pal. And they are also doing the same crap as Amazon. They want more money to “promote” listings.

Amazon is insane. They have 150 full time employees in China signing up new sellers. They are working to totally eliminate the retails stores in your area and be the only stop in the path from the Chinese manufacturer and the buyer. They are also capping sales unless you pay them for “sponsored” listings. The horror stories on the seller forums are funny and deeply disturbing. The back stabbing that goes on there is epic.

The post office losses last year were up 125% as they continue to ship Chinese imports for free. There will be another shipping increase for me and other domestic sellers in January. I guess I will eat this one also.

The tariff issue is also annoying. A few weeks ago I shipped a $70 order to Spain. In addition to paying a LOT for shipping the customer had to pay an extra $40 in “duties” to get his item from the post office. Ridiculous. I find it annoying that Games Workshop is protected by high tariffs from one old guy in a barn selling in to the UK. While they get to sell here for free.

Not surprisingly, revenue continues to dwindle because I refuse to pay the ridiculous fees Amazon and Ebay are asking for. They are both getting crazy as merchants fight for exposure and are willing to pay more and more of a percentage to sell.

So, yeah it sometimes seems like it is kind of stupid to keep doing this. But the equipment is paid for and I am having fun. Why not spend my golden years tinkering like a mad scientist alone in a workshop?

So let’s look ahead for the next year and see what we can work on.

Obviously I need Mr. Petty to race against Mr. Pearson. So this needs done.

The 15mm Warhammer 40K project has gotten to the point of having enough painted to play. Now to 3D print and expand both forces. I am looking forward to the new Eldar vs. Tyranids expansion. I think i will purchase the Tyranids from Vanguard and 3D print the Eldar. Devil Pig has never answered my emails about making plastic 15mm game tokens. remember my old saying- if you get “no” answer the answer is “no”. I would like to make some sort of modular junk vehicle to bash up for the orks. Nothing official but close enough to proxy.

I have an infinite number of Amazons to print now. Artisan’s Guild was the best kick starter I ever saw. They delivered everything in record time. I wish she would sculpt some for plastic injection but they never answered my emails. (see above)

The next battle report will be for Warhammer. And an old version for sure. Not Amazons, but it will inspire me to paint them.

And I am also looking in to expanding my Heroes boardgame to minis project. I have some 15mm WW2 figures and also some Cthulu stuff to print. I may take this on the road and hit a convention to put on a demo game this winter.

And I want to build a 4th and 5th generation die design. One of the ideas is to create a method for people with the Anycubic Photon to print a mold and it will fit in to a die to injection mold it. Generation 5 will be if I decide to purchase the Phrozen Transform. It will be similar to generation 4 but larger.

The maker space will be used to make some T-jet bodies for HO slot car racing soon. And my daughter is thinking about using the equipment to make something at some point. I have some ideas but most likely she has other plans.

Updates are now mostly on Facebook but also now going to be posting more on Youtube. I am not sure if anyone still reads this blog but I must do better posting here also. I apologize to readers for the lack of updates here.

So there it is. All of the plans I will most likely not get finished next year. But good to have goals.

Thanks so much for all of the support and emails over the past year.

Have a Great New Year everyone.