Gunpla Inochi Hits 2,000,000

Now that I think about it, I actually don’t understand why it is a “milestone” when a blog reaches x number of hits (provided everything else still stays the same) but it seems to be an obligatory thing in the blogosphere so here’s mine. Yay 2 Million hits! Anyway… moving along… I got something to offer to you starting today. Do you have a blog and are on my blog roll? If so, this little change in my links might help route traffic better from here to your site. I like how some blogs use “banners” for links and that looks more sincere than a plain text links so thought I do the same from now on.

Gunpla Inochi Year 2

Just like that and another year has already gone by. Today marks the 2nd anniversary of this blog and I still can’t fathom how it has developed into what it is today ^^;. While there might have been some minor changes here and there, I think this blog has relatively stayed more or less the same… and I want to be able to keep it that way. Over the year, I think I’ve found the style I’d like to blog, the way I like to create my reviews, the tone of my voice and set the atmosphere I’d like to have for this place. Other than that, I really haven’t focused much on improving my (lack of) modeling skills so I’ll make that a goal for Year 3 ^^;.

New Layout… Part 2

Since the actual new layout didn’t go so well for plenty good reasons, then might as go back to what’s been tried and true ^^;. But with a little refinement. The results from the poll was actually very close to 50/50 between the results (minus “It can stay” XD).  Anyway… so what you do think of the new font for the headers/titles? There are two variations I’m debating on actually. The one you see above has more of an apparent change in which the headers, title, and links are all converted. A strange side effect is that comment replies are also effected. Links are easy to read but the converted comments aren’t. Now here’s the more subtle version…

Only header and titles are in the new font. Nothing more to it. Which one looks better to you?

Thanks again for your feedback ^^.

New Blog Theme

As you can all see, I’ve switched to a new theme for the blog ^^;. From what I can tell, the reactions are very mixed. It’s not final yet since I just want to play around and maybe do some house cleaning here, trying to find ways to improve the experience here if possible. Unfortunately there’s only oh so much I can do without any css/web-building knowledge (which I’m learning at the moment) >_<. Here are a few tweaks so far:

– The ever so-unpopular “Super Robot Wars” page and popular-for-whatever-reason “Future Projects” page has been moved into the “Random” page

– “Display Stands” page moved into “My tools” page… figured it makes sense.

– Removed the “about” page for now… until I find the time to actually update it >_>

– Added a rating thingy for the review pages so you can now rate how useful you find the review or whether you like what you read and whatnot… though I know some might mistaken it for rating the actual model which is fine too. Just testing it out.

Personally, I’m about 50% sure about keeping it since I like the presentation and style. The other 50% of myself is telling me to change it back since I do find it a bit narrow (fixed width) for the photo dumps that I like to do around here. If I do keep it, then I’ll have to modify the way I lay out my reivews (photos) just a bit (mainly using different image size… nothing more drastic). I’ll probably have to make a dummy review and see some reactions before I decide. Now… what do you all think?

Time for a Change…

Couldn’t find a proper pic for this post ^^;. Anyway, as all of you can see… this blog now has a new layout and a new name. I can’t remember the original but this is the third time I changed names but this one will be for good. I just think “A ‘home  look’ on Gunpla and GFF” was too mouthful. “Gunpla Inochi” covers a bit more meaning; the title shows that this blog is for the Gundam model lovers… and if you read it literally, it means “Gunpla Life” so it works really well here ^^. The “Home Look” is replaced by “Real” in the title to shorten things up. I am giving a “real” look on Gunplas… as in, how the the Gunpla looks out of the box as opposed to Bandai’s studio models. Essentially, this is still “home look” ^^. Lastly, I’ve always been looking for a better shorter name to call this blog  xD. I’m not stopping with just a new theme and title though… I’ll try to update all the page layouts and “refurbish” some older reviews as well… and eventually, I’ll open up my own site.

Now on to the next subject…

FIVE + FIVE ZEROS!

Okay I’m very late on this and I haven’t been paying attention but this blog has hit its half-milestone of 500k hits ^^;. Never thought I would reach this in just a little over a year.

Don’t know how it happened but views to this blog averages 2k daily and 3k when I get reviews out ^^. It would be awesome to know if half of those numbers are unique visitors. I don’t worry about the stats anymore since people somehow just find this blog from all over the place ^^;.

Top Pages of All Time. These are the pages that have the most views. No surprises here except the MG WZC… wonder why that review is so popular…

Once again… I thank all of you, lurkers and active readers, for coming here. A great part of this blog’s success comes from you. I’ll do my best to ensure more great times to continue and make this blog worth your time and visit. I also want to greatly thank anyone and everyone for referring others here either through blogrolls or linking from forums.  No doubt it does make me feel a bit proud of my effort or at least I know I’m doing something right ^^;. Ultimately, I now know that I’m much closer to this blog’s goal…

If you want to do a link exchange, please feel free to drop a line in the comments. I’ll happily trade with you :D

Ahh… I got more to say but I gotta bounce to work xD

Now on to the Gundam Fight later tonight…

200k Hits! New Year’s Giveaway!

Blah. Couldn’t find any appropriate “200k hits! Thank you” photo! so here’s a groupshot of all the Gundam models as celebration. ^^; anyway, yea… This humble blog have just reached 200,000 hits today ^^. I remember when I used to get 5-8 hits per day on my xanga page and I thought that was incredibly high ^^;.  It feels a bit sudden and I’m like “what? really? O_O”. I’m a bit surprised… I’ve just started blogging this June as a way for myself to keep track of what I’ve built and gradually, with increasing readers and feedbacks from all of you,  it managed to end up the way it is today. Never actually thought such a niche blog could become so big ^^;. I’ve also improved my Gunpla modeling skills as a result. I thank all of you who comes here daily and occasionally, providing feedbacks about my contents, and allowing me to improve and fix things over time. I’m also thankful to people who linked to me through their blogrolls or referring to my reviews as references. It feels like I’m one step closer to my goal of becoming a “well-known gunpla blog in the otakusphere” *sheds a tear of joy* Thank you, everyone!

Now, to celebrate the coming new year and the 200k hits… It’s time for another contest!!! I’ve asked for ideas in a previous post for ideas and picked up bits here and there. Now, this time the name of the game issss….. *drum rolls*

GUNDAM MOTIVATIONAL!

Yup. That’s right. Create your own motivational poster with your Gundam models or figures.

– The main goal is to give THE BEST LOLZ. This is parody after all ^^.

– The sky is the limit: Do whatever you want. Use as many Gundams as you see fit. Do action poses. Battles. Photoshop. Speech bubbles. Anything. All up to you.

– Best half of all entries will go to final competition so number of final contestants will vary. Readers will do the final judgement (Poll).

– You have until next wednesday to submit an entry. One entry per person. Hope this is enough time for all of you.

– Email to zyuan3618[at]hotmail[dot]com

– Will share all the entries after this is over.

– Easy enough?

Now the prize:

In the event you won and already have this, we can work something else out. This is all for now and I’ll update if I need to make any changes or clarification. So Gundamu Contesuto… READY! GOOOOO!!!

Lastly, HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!

Tare Danny Button

First the shirt and now the button ^^;. Received this yesterday from Zazzle courtesy of Chun for winning first runner up to a “Guess that DC member!” contest. Thank you Chun! ^^

As you can see… I still suck at using my SLR. Nonetheless, this is a cute button but I’m not sure how to sport it though ^^;. (Haruhi is still holding it)

On an unrelated subject, one thing I didn’t realize when I started the Photo Hunt was that it made my blog view “artificially” skyrocketed ^^;.

I’m like… “Wow…” xD. Guess I should be happy about it but not really when I know most of the hits come from the few participants going through all my pages over and over again ^^;. I’m a bit of a stat addict but I won’t deliberately do things (unrelated to blog’s content) solely for the sake of racking up hits (like requiring you to click through links after links after links)… nor am I fond of others blatantly doing it *coughautoblogandyahoocough*. Something about that just isn’t right (it’s damn cheap); I think people will read your blog naturally if they find it worthwhile. I’m VERY happy with my 1k+ hits average per day right now compared with 1-200 I used to get a couple of months back xD. It looked very good on the graph until that giant spike came along ^^;. As always, I appreciate all of you for coming here and reading this blog. Thank you :D

For those who are wondering whatever happened to me and building the GN Arms…

That’s all I got done so far. It’s been a hectic week ^^;. Will try to put in the effort to complete most of it by the end of tomorrow.

Blog Overhaul

So I’m about a good 65% done with reorganizing this blog. The majority of the pages are done anyway like the Master Grade and GFF reviews are under the “Master Grade” and “Fix Figurations” page respectively. What pisses me off is that wordpress has such crappy themes to play around with; none of the themes really works for me at the moment. The images in my reviews get cut off and cramped left and right. It just doesn’t work! Light’s expression above describes me best. Too bad I don’t have any CSS skills to do a thing about it. I’ll try to find something that works when I wake up tomorrow…

Whatever you see now is just temporary. If any of you have suggestions, please do share ^^;.