Re: GZG Email?

FWIW,

 Bill's theminiaturespage.com used to list (editorial to follow)
miniatures and rules (separately of course) by the "Big Three" initial
break down (Historical, SF, and Fantasy)  then (speaking here of
miniatures) historical by period (some overlap (18th Century and
American
- as in AWI, etc. - for example); SF by 'function' (my term - space,
land, urban, and a few more); and fantasy (I forget - skirmish versus
mass combat? - plus a few more) and so on.   

A marvelous listing.  The only two weaknesses were 1)The proverbial "no
pictures" problem that is still endemic to web shopping and keeps the
B&M
Shops getting my money and 2)you couldn't get  a listing of miniatures
manufacturers by scale (i.e., all "10mm" or "all 10mm ACW" - although
you
there is an awesome alphabetical listing of tons of 'manufacturers' of
game related stuff.)

He has a new format but the old format is not available.  I have
notified
many friends that I had suggested TMP prior to this as a great resource
and told them (for miniatures) "Never mind bothering looking for
miniatures but it is still a great site for manufacturers or rules
searches."  Bill is dependent on the miniatures makers or volunteers to
put the figures of the various lines into an Excel spreadsheet for
inclusion into the TMP listings.  

Unfortunately the old is gone and the new is very incomplete currently. 
Bill did not keep the old on line during the transition in a dual
listing
mode.  When the miniatures listing approaches the usefulness of the old
listing I will tell my computer literate friends that the miniatures
listing is useful again, just in case they don't check it themselves.  I
discovered this when I went looking for miniatures listings for a
particular scale and era.  Thre was nothing listed at all for ACW much
less anything in my "scale of interest" for ACW.  Previously there had
been a ton of figures makers  available from 2mm to (at least 54mm)
including companies I wiould never had heard of by word of mouth.

Glenn/Triphibious
This is my Science Fiction Alter Ego E-mail address.

On Sat, 2 Jun 2001 23:08:01 -0400 "bill_armintrout"
<bill_armintrout@email.msn.com> writes:
>> The bulk of them are in the Fleet Books. *S* If Jon is too busy, I'm 
>sure
>some
>> of us could supply descriptions.
>
>Maybe you all could propose them here, and see if Jon agrees?
>
>> Out of curiousity, Bill, will you be putting in, or do you already 
>have,
>> listings for Jon's other miniatures, such as the Stargrunt II and 
>Dirtside
>II
>> ranges?
>
>The intention is to eventually put EVERYTHING into the new database. 
>I'm
>holding off on putting any more "ground" sci-fi yet, since I'm having
>trouble figuring out how to categorize it.
>
>In most other cases, the breakdown is by nationality and then 
>function. Or
>with starships, there are some commonly agreed upon ship classes
>(battleships, destroyers, carriers, etc.) that work well. With sci-fi
>infantry, there are no useful nationalities, and the weapons are all 
>"made
>up" too!
>
>Right now, I've got the sci-fi infantry already in the Directory 
>grouped by
>Human and Alien. I can break it down further by armor type and weapon 
>type,
>but that would have to be real fuzzy categories ("light" armor, 
>"rifle" type
>weapons, "heavy" weapons, etc.), and I'd need to practically see every 
>mini
>to know how to classify it.
>
>I should mention that the eventual object is that a user can look up 
>what he
>wants by scale and function, and find who makes the right figures. For
>instance, 28mm, Human Marines in Light Armor, boom, see all the 
>figures from
>the various manufacturers.
>
>- Bill Armintrout, editor
>The Miniatures Page
>http://theminiaturespage.com
>