The Fruit and Flowers Anniversary

 My calendar informed me that March 8 was the anniversary of the blog.  I've now been doing this since 2017, so this is our 4th anniversary.  According to the anniversary sites I've looked at, the traditional gift in the US are flowers and fruit.  This is because they are symbols of renewal, and sticking together.  If you're in the UK, apparently the traditional gifts are linen and silk.  In lieu of sending me gifts, go out and buy something for yourself; I'm just generous that way. 😁 If you prefer more modern anniversary traditions, apparently the appropriate gift is an electrical appliance of some sort.  So maybe I'll buy an electric paint shaker this month. 

Gifting jokes aside, it has been an interesting four years.  In that time, I've made 73 posts (not counting this one, of course) that have 45,323 views and have generated 426 comments as of March 7.  That is an average of 1.5 posts, 8.8 comments and 944.2 views a month.  On average, I almost sound like a responsible blog owner.  Loyal readers will know that those average statistics mask a multitude of sins, though. 😬  

One thing that is interesting is the sailing ship count.  On 3/8/2017 there were 97 completed sailing ships in the collection.  As of 3/6/2021, there are 111 completed sailing ships.  In four years I've completed 14 ships, or one every 3.42 months.  Hmmmm.  OK, that number is not as interesting as I first thought it was going to be. 😞 Back then, there were 5 ships under construction. They were USS Pennsylvania, USS North Carolina, a Russian 50, a Russian 46 and a Spanish 74.  Currently, there are 6 ships under construction.  They are USS Pennsylvania, a Russian 46, a Spanish 74 (not the same one!), a French 74, USS Franklin, and a French 80.  Doesn't look like a lot of progress there either, at first. . . . 

Several of those under construction ships will be joining the fleet shortly, though.  Take a look at this picture of the workbench:

That's pretty well organized for my painting desk.

All six sailing ships are in this photo
(along with some other projects too).

The Canberra seen in the background is going to be converted to her Falklands troopship appearance for my Falklands air games that I mentioned in another post. (https://mymodelsailingships.blogspot.com/2020/05/love-in-time-of-coronavirus-part-2.html) She was in Bomb Alley for a couple of days while she offloaded troops, so had the potential to be a target.  It will also be a fun conversion, and one that isn't seen very often in the model ship world.

One good thing about these anniversary posts is that they make me go back through the Blogger log, and see which posts I started but never finished.  That's how I discovered that I have never taken any pictures of my unrated ships to put on the blog.  Expect those in the near future.

There has been one gift to myself that is useful, but I am still less than enthused about.  What is that, you ask?  Well, it's this:

Yep, an Optivisor.  Or the cheap Harbor Freight version of one, anyway.  My wife bought me a good one about 15 years ago or so, but I didn't need any such thing back then.  Wellllll, apparently I do now, and when I went looking for mine I couldn't find it.  So now I have this one.  Actually, it's not that bad. It has a fixed lens of 1.8X, and an inside fold-down lens that makes it 2.3X.  The loupe folds out of the way, and will increase magnification to either 3.7X or 4.8X when the inside lens is in place.  Of course, when using the loupe you have to get so close that it's impossible to work, but it might be useful sometime.  Best of all, it was only $4.99 at the local store.  Even if I weren't happy with it (and I am), it costs less than a set of sails from Langton.  It's definitely a reminder that anniversaries mark the passage of time though. 

In case you should go looking for them, there are no posts for the second and third anniversaries of the blog.  No good reason, other than I just didn't do them.  I promise to try and be better going forward.

The Paper Anniversary

One year ago today,  I uploaded the first post to this blog.  Hard to believe that it's been a year since I first welcomed people aboard this little bragfest about my hobby.  It's perhaps even harder to believe that people keep coming back, and some have even signed on to follow my ramblings about toy sailing ships.  A tip of the bicorne  to all of you who come by, even if you don't leave comments.  I assure you, all of your visits are appreciated.

There have been a few visitors, to be sure.  As of 3/06/2018, there have been 8,483 visitors to the blog.  Unfortunately, the Blogger statistics do not separate out my views from everyone else, so I know some of those are mine but not how many.  What the Blogger stats do tell me is where the visitors come from, and that is quite interesting.  Most pageviews come from the US, as you might expect, followed by the UK and Belgium respectively, with Australia coming in fourth place and Ireland at fifth.  Interestingly enough, the audience is evenly split between English speaking countries and other ones.  Poland is sixth on overall pageviews, Spain is seventh, Germany is eighth and France comes in at tenth place.  If you look at the monthly or weekly breakdowns, then things get really interesting.  For the month of February 5 to March 6 2018,  I had 20 pageviews from Switzerland.  That is probably the one I least expected, as even the 19 visits from Russia could be because I posted photos of my Russian ships.

Another thing the stats let me see is which posts are the most popular for a given period. As of 3/06/2018, the most popular post contains the photos of my French fleet, with 245 views.  What's interesting though, is that the second most popular post are my thoughts about getting into ACW ironclads.  That one has 220 views.  Of the other posts in the top 10, 4 of them are from the "What Is My Time Worth?" series that I did about how long it takes to build a ship.  In terms of popularity, those are ranked below:

  4) Part 7: Final Thoughts
  5) Part 5: Standing Rigging
  9) Part 4: Painting and Installing the Masts
10) Part 2: Fitting and Filing

I'm not too sure why those entries out of the seven made the top ten, and so will just leave it right there.  I'd certainly appreciate any opinions in the comments.

While I appreciate everyone who visits the blog (as I said earlier), there are some people out there that I owe an extra thanks to.  At the time of this posting, I have a total of 5 followers.  Now, I know that's not a lot compared to other people.  However, I'm impressed that there are 5 people out there who enjoy my scribbling enough to actually sign up for them, as opposed to just dropping by now and again.  I would name them, but I think there might be 1 or 2 that wouldn't appreciate it.  So, let me raise a toast to my 5 followers:   .  You really are appreciated more than you can imagine.

For this coming year, I will be adding a page with reviews of books that I think are useful for Age of Sail gamers.  There will also be a page on how squadrons maneuver, using the Post Captain rules as a basis.  I also need to finally get pictures of the British fleet up, while playing more games and taking photos of them.  Of course, pictures of my new ships as they are built are just a given.

I hope that everyone has enjoyed this brief peek under the hood of how the blog has done this last year.  If anyone has questions that I didn't answer or touch on, feel free to ask me in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.