Daily archives: July 6, 2006


Spinneyhead's short tail

I mentioned my long tail plans for Spinneyhead in an earlier post. If you look in the right hand column you’ll see links to all the places that sell my products, but I think a quick rundown here is in order.

There’s the shop, of course, though it doesn’t list everything.

Small Scale Customs sells products for modellers, particularly of vehicles in 1:72nd/1:76th scale.

Discontinuous Infill is an e-zine I did a couple of years ago.

The Spinneyhead store at Cafe Press stocks the infamous “Must not mention sheep” T-shirt and more. The Home Roasting Cafe Press store makes fun of Starbucks and all the anti piracy hysteria from the record and movie industries.

My Renderosity store stocks stuff I’ve made for 3d and 2d computer art. At present the only product is a set of backgrounds for renders. At 1600×1200 pixels I’m sure some of the pictures would make good desktops. You’ll need to be a member (free) to buy.

The Deviantart store sells prints, mousemats and postcards of some of my art.

And of course, I’m producing new stuff all the time. There’s another set of backgrounds waiting to be zipped up and uploaded to Renderosity and more products planned for Small Scale Customs.

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Heavensent 6.13

There were maps showing the disposition of troops across the plains. Rey had taken these for later study. Kess had found more ammunition for his baby long and some sights that promised to be better than his current set. There had been provision lockers in the back of the passenger cars that rendered up cured meats, fruit and spices. They had used up all the stonk rounds they had brought, so they spiked the weapon and took a number of the one shot rockets they had found in with the scuttlers instead.

Umat’s men had acquired medalry and pieces of uniform to go with the guns they had plundered. They lit the pyres, and the train, with spare fuel and the still red coals from the locomotive. By this time it was dark, so the smoke pillar probably wouldn’t be seen, but they left with haste anyhow.

“How long do you think they will last?” Rey asked.

“About as long as it takes for the Air Army to put some patrols up.” Mov answered, “Those vehicles will give them away.”

“Best of luck to them anyway.”

“Oh, aye, but they will need the full blessing of the tower to live any comfortable time.”

Heavensent 6.14
Heavensent 6.12
Heavensent 1.1

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Spinneyhead is dead. Long live Spinneyhead.

You can’t read this.
As I sit here, thumbing this message into my phone, Jay, the server on which Spinneyhead resides, is comatose. It succumbed to heat stroke on Monday and awaits ministration, and probably a new fan, in a dark corner of a room.
I’m in limbo as well. We’re moving to Crewe next month for Clare’s new job. My job hunting is hampered by this. A month’s temping would be good, but unlikely, and my search for Crewe based jobs has been fruitless so far.
I’m working on growing Spinneyhead’s long tail (currently docked) with small products that sell occasionally. However, the empire’s main income is still from advertising. Thankfully Jay’s affliction hasn’t affected how to save the world for free, but it has hit Scale, the surprise top performer in terms of dollars per thousand visitors. Spinneyhead itself earns me practically nothing, but it remains the heart of the empire.
Which has led me to consider a few changes around here. Funded by my next Adsense payment Scale, as Small Scale Customs, will find itself a new home. It will take its anorak’d sibling Steam Geek with it. Spinneyhead will probably get a higher proportion of original material and fewer posts that are just links, fewer updates but hopefully more content. I’m going to trim my RSS feeds and restrict my news searches to Green and modelling subjects. All of which should hopefully garner me more time to stretch the tail and more money so I can get closer to the dream of working for myself.