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Dave Ambrose

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Everything posted by Dave Ambrose

  1. Yes, things have changed. Rather a lot. Now, most new modelers begin building as adults. They're also building different kinds of models. My daughter and I were at the SoCal Gundam contest. They had 283 paid admissions last year, and they keep outgrowing their venue. I was almost the oldest person in the room. They have women builders too. The old guard, IPMS and established model car clubs, have been very slow to catch on. It took a lot of convincing to open a specific category for Gundams at our local IPMS show. They showed up with a lot of high-quality models. Our judges were very impressed, and I haven't heard anything more about how someone thinks they don't belong in a plastic model contest. Entries at our local contest have stabilized; almost entirely due to an increasing number of Gundam entries. If we could open our eyes to some of the other modelers out there, plus alleviate the sexism and chauvinism, we'd probably start growing. My usual hobby shop has reduced the shelf space for armor and aircraft. They've drastically increased the shelf space for Gundams, and modestly increased shelf space for science fiction and real spacecraft. Model cars are stable, but they need to run a serious clearance sale, That said, when we do a model car display at a car show, the kids just love the cars we build. So do the adults. I find it heartwarming to see grandpa tell his grandchildren about the models he built as a kid. The problem is that their parents won't encourage their participation. That's probably our biggest problem. Model building will continue. It's just way too much fun not to. But there will be different subjects. In a lot of ways, younger people are doing the same thing we did. We built stuff we thought was cool when we were kids. So do they; just different things.
  2. I'll be working on this in a couple of weeks. There is a filter in our web server that is supposed to filter out malicious requests. Welcome to the post modern Internet. It doesn't work nearly as well as we'd like with this forum software, but I can't just disable them without getting the main MCM site attacked. We've been there, done that, and no thank you very much. I have some learning to do before I get this ironed out. You've all been incredibly patient so far, and I truly appreciate that. Please bear with me. It's us, not you.
  3. If it's not too much trouble, try a different browser. I haven't decoded that security rule, so I don't have a complete understanding of what it does. But, it does seem to be linked to the browser you're using. I recommend Chrome just because it's the most common, but Firefox should work fine too.
  4. You're tripping up on a different "security" rule. These things are driving me insane(r), but I can't pull them out just yet. What browser are you using?
  5. Very nice. I'm glad at least a few people remember and appreciate him. He was our gateway into NASCAR. We lived in Salinas at the time, and one of our friends went to high school with him. There was some exciting racing that sometimes crossed the line into terrifying.
  6. The two keywords are s e l e c t and f r o m (without spaces). Have both of them and get your very own 404 error.
  7. The Sci-fi model segment is growing. It might be the only one, but we'll see. The demographics for new modelers has shifted, and it's taking way to long for the hobby to respond to that.
  8. That's a new one on me. Do you have any javascript blockers, like NoScript installed?
  9. Well well well, I now understand what's going on with this problem. It's a stinker, but I may be able to figure out how to fix it. For the techies out there, sometimes comments look vaguely like a SQL injection attack. When that happens, you get the 404 error.
  10. Since people are curious, we do get revenue from people seeing the ads. You don't need to click on them, but if you find something interesting, we'd be delighted if you did click on it. We get paid extra for that. Scrolling down to the bottom of the page helps because we only get paid if you actually see the ad. We're lucky that we have enough readers to make this scheme work. Not many web sites can fund themselves solely with advertising.
  11. I don't blame you. We were having some problems earlier, and to the best of my knowledge, we have those rectified. Would you please try unblocking the ads and let me know what happens? Has anyone else blocked ads for the same reason?
  12. Yes, we do get revenue, even if you don't click on them. I've tried to make them non-obtrusive, but I have to say that Google makes some odd choices sometimes. I don't run an ad blocker, and have even found a couple of interesting ads. Putting us on the safe list definitely helps our income. Ideally, we'd have Revelle, Round 2, and Moebius falling all over themselves to bid up the ads here since it's such a focused audience. But, we don't directly sell ads.
  13. We use advertising income to pay the bills on the servers and for software maintenance. We've been seeing declining ad revenue, and I'm wondering if it's because more of our users have ad blockers on their browsers.
  14. There is still very much a market for print. I wandered (read was dragged) into a Barnes and Noble yesterday. It had a surprising number of print magazines. Realistically, I suspect that's how they get noticed by potential readers. I don't see the need for print going away soon. Eventually, yes, but not soon. This site is primarily supported by advertising. If you have an ad blocker, please whitelist us. That has been covering the bills for a long time, but we're now seeing income from that dropping. We don't know why yet. Overall traffic is still good. We're working on that problem, and will hopefully find some answers. I suppose if it came down to it, we'd ask for donations, but we haven't even thought about those discussions yet. This site has a big footprint, and we have limited hosting options. We've been on Liquid Web for a while, and I have to say that I like them a LOT. I appreciate all the support we've been getting lately. If this forum is great, it's because we have a wonderful community of builders and affectionados. That by itself makes this forum worth continuing.
  15. Welcome. I think paint is the one thing that gives us all problems. To the best of my knowledge, the only way to get better is practice. Fortunately, I have a couple of British cars that keep me in brake fluid so I can get a do-over.
  16. Been listening to these two lately:
  17. I'm not, but my father-in-law was. He was born in Big Bend, and lived in Redding for at least a while. My wife worked out of the Redding Forest Service office before we got married. Your story is a familiar one to a lot of us. I managed to maintain a low level of building when my kids were young. I even put my daughter to work detail painting for me. She did a great job too. Welcome back, and have fun in our virtual clubhouse.
  18. I meant to say that the upgrade put us into a sufficiently current version that I can get this type of support question answered. They actually came out with another update a few days ago.
  19. I can now that we're on the current version. Thanks!
  20. It's going to be a week or two before I get this theme thing fixed. Please let me know if you encounter any problems. I have one report of notifications getting turned off. Please check the settings in your user profile. I'm especially interested in the dreaded 404 error.
  21. My two dream cars MG MGA and an MG TF. Never should have sold my MGA.
  22. There are lots of ways to do this hobby. All of them are good. When I was a kid, my first couple of models were unpainted. They were fun to build. Did they look good? Not really, but still, they were fun to build. I've progressed a bit since then. One of the things I like about model cars versus armor and aircraft is the freedom to freelance the kind of car I might build for myself. That creative element is a lot of fun for me. Super detailing is interesting. It's hard for me to do, but I'm getting better at it. Done well, it adds a lot to a model. But, sometimes, I'm more interested in the design concept, so the detailing isn't so important. I've gotten much better at discerning these situations and building accordingly. That's a lot more fun. My skills are also evolving so something that used to be hard is now fun. I have to be conscious of not adding too many hard things to a build at once. This has gotten me frustrated and stalled on more than one occasion. I boxed up the model, only to come back to it later when my skills were a better match for my ambitions and have fun with it.
  23. That's a great reason to be stoked. Thanks for sharing it.
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