The internet is aging again.  “All of this has happened before and it will all happen again.” (as heard in http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Information_Society:Seek_200) Some of the previous ages have been the shift from MySpace to Facebook or from custom web sites to blogs.

What I’m noticing in the last year or so is that sites I used to read regularly are slowly losing out. Some to larger aggregation sites, some to life. This week there were a pair of posts on FBTB.net from two of the authors about why they haven’t been posting lately. At least they aren’t quiting completely, like how reallifecomics.com or candyblog.net just went quiet a year or so ago.

I guess this sort of thing is normal, as life and especially families are more important than writing nicely structured posts or drawing comics for very little money.  Seems like there are still a lot of youTubers who can keep their revenue coming, though I still scratch my head over how that works.

For me, I love LEGO but have a hard time keeping up with the hobby.  One thing the internet did was increase the popularity of the hobby, and it seems to push creators to make bigger and more expensive builds all the time.  I just can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars on little bricks that sit on a shelf.  I still buy sets when they are on sale, but I have an embarrassingly large number of sets still unopened in boxes on a shelf. And I’m not alone, based on those FBTB.net posts.  It is easy to buy a set but then think, “this is more valuable in the box than opened and in pieces”, which justifies leaving it lying around for a while.

I buy sets for the kids, and some of them get played with, but many just end up on a shelf or in pieces in the multiple storage boxes in the boys rooms.  They rarely play with them, and maybe that is partly my fault because they don’t see me playing with them.  When they pick them up is when I go in their room to tinker with their loose pieces.

So as a result, I have had to limit myself to buying just sets that look really cool, aren’t just reproductions of something I already have, and I can get on sale.  I’ve also dabbled in other construction toys – nanoblocks and the LOZ/LNO knockoffs can be had pretty cheap from ebay.  and Star Wars Metal Earth kits are pretty cool and time consuming to build.  I also hack