Thursday, July 19, 2007

Death of BrickShelf....

Its been a sad week for adult Lego fans that are involved with the online communities. With the pending demise of Brickshelf, there has been plenty of speculation, none of which I am going to even touch on. I have nothing but words of thanks to anyone that has provided services to any Lego fan that has increased our ability to share our own work, and learn from others.

Of course, that doesnt change that facts, which is, Brickshelf is close to being closed down (end of the month... just enough time to collect pictures that you want to have on your own drive) and sadly many of the pics here as well as on many Lego websites and forums are going to become broken images. Since I do not personally own many of the images I have "featured" here, these links will not be fixed.

There are a number of alternatives, (some existing and some in development), personally I guess I will "play/surf" on Flickr a bit more, as well as MOC pages, but only so I can still remain being an active member of the community by sharing a few of my builds and see what some of my favourite builders are up to.

Added to this news of Brickshelf closing, there is a long history of fan sites disappearing into thin air. Just to mention a few... there was Legofan which never touched on its potential, the on and off fears of Lugnet self imploding, the "loss" of my own forum site recently due to a server crash and technical glitches, and other sites that had pictures or links that I would have liked to be able to access, such as rtl.

I am really thinking about just hosting all my pics on my own site and just leaving it like that, therefore eliminating the need to be dependent on other ppls generosity, or being subject to their whims of support, or lack there of.

My own sites, both Bricks and Blocks and the Tebag has out lived its usefulness. By all standards they are beyond outdated, with too many now defunct picture links, not to mention fairly juvenile looking, and a pita to maintain due to pathetic hmtl skillz on my part. They basically out lived any of its potential (about a day after it was posted) . As well, bmts, the company that hosts it, sucks, even though years ago, they did serve their purpose, time and technology has long surpassed anything they can provide. I would like to get them completely off my billing list. Therefore long story short, its time for a new domain, new host, new pages, etc. Hopefully in the near future I will post a link to all things Janey and ABS.

While I truly appreciate all the work anyone does to provide info (such as links, photos, files, etc) free of charge for the community, you truly get what you pay for. My goal is to be a bit more self reliant and have one place, paid in full, for all my "stuff".

Basically 4 times bitten, 5 times shy, giggle, yeah Im slow!

I am at a bit of a loss of what shall happen to the Tebag, but since community support for that project was limited to the few wonderful ppl that continued to send me work to add to the gallery, it too may have seen its time.

Fav icons Mosaic....