Hello…

Wow, has been a while since I last posted.  The usual stuff happened, in the struggle with work-life balance, work has taken an upper hand and with less personal time available, I’ve simply re-prioritised where I want to/can spend my time on. So LEGO blogging now takes a back seat to actually trawling for latest news, playing with LEGO, or visiting LEGOLAND for the matter.

Some other changes to my LEGO habits since I realised that simply no longer have time to spare… I only buy those sets that I really like (and I try not to buy too many multiples, tho I still do), which still adds up to a heck of a lot of sets (what, like just all the Super Heroes sets, Lone Rangers, Monster Fighters, Modulars, UCS, etc, plus whichever SW, City, Creators & Friends sets that I fancy). As some of the local AFOLs have mentioned on the local forums (hey, I still read some of the forums now and then, and I can definitely track  links to my websites…), I can probably be termed as “semi-retired”. But I suspect that this semi-retired AFOL probably still spends a heck more on LEGO sets every month than most of the active AFOLs.

Anyway, I’ve started a few Pinterest boards and just thought to share. See, while I think I won’t have time with wordy posts, and blogging really needs a bit of time for prepping, Pinterest really takes the pain away. I just click “pin” and choose which board I want to add the pin to. Half the time (ok, more like 90%) I don’t even bother to edit the original comments. And with the Pinterest app being available on my iPhone (and iPad & Android), I can even add pins while queueing for my takeaway economy rice and kopi (local coffee) to eat at my desk (yes, work has been THAT busy).

So I now have 7 Pinterest boards, some with some LEGO-related pins but you can decide which ones you wanna browse thru. Flickr and the usual AFOL sites still have way more cool creations and latest news regarding LEGO so didn’t see the point of creating a Pinterest board just for LEGO. If you are a long-time Pinterest user, can you tell me why I can hardly find any of the latest jaw dropping creations on Pinterest?

My Pinterest boards are:

1. Dreamy homes I can live in… (think of it as a mood board for my future IDs, and includes some LEGO related ideas for my next home)
2. Random beauty (stuff that touch my soul… errr… really? Just whatever takes my fancy lar)
3. Useless info graphics you never knew you needed (those nuggets of info, all packaged in a nice info graphic…)
4. Random home stuff (anything else that’s home related but can’t fit in the ‘mood board’, and includes some LEGO related products)
5. Stupid funny stuff (can be stupid, or funny, or both)
6. Christmas decor ideas (never too early to start planning, ha)
7. So true quotes (yeah, that sort of quotes. Words of wisdom)

Some of them are quite sparsely pinned, but hey considering that I just started Pinterest and managed to accumulate over 400 pins so far, the overall stats is pretty darn impressive, if I say so myself.

So yeah, if you are interested do head on over to Pinterest to have a look. Click on the links or find me by searching under “People”, and type “amodularlife”. Simple ya? 🙂

Preview of my boards:

What I’ve been up to…

A mini-crisis of sorts.  My harddisk crashed, which is pretty devastating… and I am still busy preparing for my new apartment as you can see from my other renovation blog.  But even that blog will be on hiatus while I recover from the loss.  Not a very good week. 😦

A Modular Life turns One!

I struggled a bit with what to include in an anniversary post, and figured that I probably can’t go wrong with some numbers.  So here we go:

• All-time views: 656,254
• Posts: 522 (523 with this post)
• Comments: 1,717
• Categories: 111
• Site Subscriptions: 74
• Spam comments: 4,656 (no kidding!!)

If we look at the views by month, you can see the growth in views:

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And that is true if we look at the average views per day too: 🙂

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And since I started using Flagcounter in Jan 2011, visitors from 165 countries have visited my blog. 

By map view:

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By country %:

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So thanks are in order to the various sites that have provided referrals, such as:

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And many many thanks to you readers, especially the regulars who have supported and interacted with me via comments, or by linking my blog to your site.  Didn’t imagine when I first started the blog that I’ll cross half a million views in a year.  More good years ahead! 🙂

Didn’t have time to build a commorative MOC, so I ‘borrowed’ this excellent cake from Chris McVeigh (aka powerpig)…

and here we go…

Happy birthday to blog

Happy birthday to blog

Happy birthday to blogggggggggy

Happy birthday toooooo meeeee! 😛

What I’ve been up to…

I finally feel ready to share why I’ve been so busy… there is a little bit of connection with LEGO too, but more on that later.

You see, I’m getting a new place and have been really busy preparing for renovations. 

For those who have gone through the process, guess you’ll understand the thousand and one things to do right?  Yep, so for me, the past couple of weeks has been hectic with meeting up with IDs, and reading decor mags, and doing window shopping, and going for sales, and…

… I’ve also just started a reno blog to chronicle my renovation experience.  If you are interested to have a read, here is the link: Reno blog LINK.

And the connection to LEGO?  In my new place, I will be having a toy room (it’s bedroom 3 in the floor plan on my reno blog).  Hurray!  😀  In land-scarce Singapore, it’s really a luxury tho I think it’s also a need for me since I’ve got mountains of MISB LEGO accumulating and waiting to be opened.  So you can expect some posts about LEGO rooms in the future.  😉

And this blog?  Expect less of my ‘random musings about LEGO’ (apart from LEGO rooms, ha) for the next couple of months as I’m afraid my attention is more focused on my future home.  This blog will still continue of course, just that I’m going to be a lot more selective about ‘news’ that gets blogged.  E.g. news about the 2011 modular/winter/UCS/girls sets?  Yep.  News about a record breaking LEGO tower in XX country? Probably not.

Taking a short break…

Due to a confluence of factors, I need more time to focus on my personal and work-life.  Unfortunately, that means  I need to take some time off from blogging… 😦

Don’t worry, I’m not entering into a 2nd dark ages or anything like that.  I will still have time to enjoy Flickr creations which I will bookmark to share with you on the right sidebar (pls scroll down!) or you can click on this link to see them in large format, much like how I used to present them: amodularlife’s Flickr favourites in large view.

Blogging resumes… in a few weeks?  Keep checking back cos I suspect I can’t entirely stay away for too long anyway… 😛 

If you have already subscribed you will receive an email notification when I have a new post, or you can make use of the RSS feed k? 

And here are some of the creations I’ve liked over the past week on Flickr:

My Flickr Favourites

I’m not sure  how many of you have been looking at my sidebar to check out the MOCs on Flickr that I’ve been bookmarking, so here’s a feature of all165 MOCs I like…

UPDATE: If you’ll like to see more, do click on this LINK that will bring you to my Flickr favourites to see the creations in large format. (^_^)

As for what I used to do… i.e. feature the MOCs I like weekly or so, after giving it some thought, I think I’ll continue bookmarking, supplemented by periodic posts.  Think I’m a lot more diligent in bookmarking compared to posting cos it’s really so effortless to bookmark compared to downloading and then attaching the pics to create a new post. 

Thoughts? Comments?

LEGO Themes that you like best?

UPDATE: Oh and almost forgot… City fans may be interested in the new train set reported over at EB: New train revealed, set 3677 – It’s a new cargo train.  Am not too psyched about it what with so many other sets and themes to get this year.

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I was looking at the number of clicks today and wondered if the clicks are reflective of the themes that you readers are interested in? If yes, then I guess City fans reign… tho I suppose there is also less interest in POTC sets since the hi-res pics were out some time back… hard to tell.

1. City gallery – 117
2. Creator gallery – 93
3. Pirates of the Caribbean gallery – 90
4. Kingdoms gallery – 88
5. Star Wars gallery – 86
6. Ninjago gallery – 69
7. Alien Conquest gallery – 66
8. Bricks and More gallery – 52
9. Pharaoh’s Quest gallery – 47
10. Technic gallery – 26
11. Atlantis gallery – 24
12. Racers gallery – 23
13. Hero Factory gallery – 14
14. Duplo gallery – 14

What do you think?