What better way to celebrate my birthday month by brining you topics ranging from ocean + aviation disasters, miniature art projects and even more Japanese urbex? Sit down and grab a slice of cake, we have much to discuss.

Every year I get older, I try my best to remind everyone around me the great fortune we all have of being alive. These are not empty words since I’ve lost friends and family over the years due to natural and unnatural causes. I’m more contemplative now since my youth because I’ve been humbled by death around me and being near death myself a few times. These experiences you only get from father time adding another notch to your belt, as I remember being a young man in college feeling invincible with (almost) nothing being able to stand in my way. And as I’ve developed over time a fascination with accidents and tragedies related to aviation and maritime archaeology; I hope I can invite some of you to be interested in the topics as well.

It’s astounds me to this day the level of detail people put into dioramas. For those who are interested in classic movies up until the 90’s, you’ll know well for a fact that Hollywood put a lot of money into professional miniature model makers for shots. Outside of big budget box office films however, hobby people from around the globe honed their skills in the comfort of their own homes for entertainment. As time and technology progressed, the advent of laser etching printers (and now 3D printing) caused a resurgence of interest in this highly specialized hobby. If I ever find the time in the later years of my life to pursue a new hobby outside of video games, this is definitely on the top 3 list for sure.

This is a really rare (and beautifully done) video depicting the changes of time to a cityscape over 50 years. I 95% of the time feature urbex videos that depict ruin and decay, but this is one of the rare instances that it is not the case. There’s not really much to say about it since the content is purely visual in its story telling, so all I will add is that if any of you know of similar content for any other cities in the world; please let me know right away.

My recent adventures playing mobile games made me stop and pause for a moment in reflection on how much people spend in-game. I understand the nature of “fomo” and how it aggressively affects people glued to their phones in the modern era, but us old time nerds have a different version of it back in the day I was growing up. You see we had hobbies that involved model kits and action figures. Along the way, someone thought up the bright idea of modeling extremely awesome (and lewd) looking figures and sold them at quite the premium. Thankfully this hobby hasn’t changed, even if the prices have quadrupled when I was serious in it. Extremely limited space in my house ended my “career” in collecting them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like window shopping from time to time. There’s a very useful site that details the entire process of starting this ambitious hobby. Feel free to give it a detailed read should you wish to part with your hard earned cash. Beats gambling on gacha any day in my opinion.

This month’s featured artist is TailzKim - a lover of all things plump and cute. As always feel free to click the image that leads to the artist’s portfolio or funding page to access their library of work. That wraps up March of this year! I’m off to take a jog to burn off that birthday cake.