In the olden days, before the internet devolved into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four”1, the web was full of blogs, news sites and other content. And while you could just visit each page to find out if there were any updates, there was enough of them to make it a bit cumbersome to check every site. This was solved through a wonderful old web-standard called Really Simple Syndication (RSS)2 which provided a way for websites to publish feeds that could be pulled together by a feed reader to show users what’s new across all of their favourite websites at once.
In its day it was one of the key ways people kept up with blogs and news across the web, long before we all became accustomed to simply browsing our social feeds to find things. That was ok for a while, but as the years went by those feeds began to show us less of what we’d subscribed to, replacing it with ads, sponsored content and engagement traps.
Thankfully, RSS never really went away. Most blogs still support it, as do many news sites. It’s even possible to subscribe to someones Mastodon, Bluesky or Youtube account using it3. All you need is a feed reader – these come in multiple formats, you can have an app, a web based aggregator or a browser extension. All of these do the same thing – add the sites feed to your reader and it’ll handle letting you know about new content as it gets posted. It’s a powerful tool for taking back control of how you consume information4.
Many modern feed readers are smart enough that you can point them at the homepage of a blog and they’ll find the RSS feed automatically for you. For those that aren’t, you may need to look for the RSS icon to get the feed URL directly.
To help people get started, here’s a list of blogs with RSS feeds of other mini painting hobbyists I’ve found. This list is also downloadable as an OPML file, which can be easily be imported into most feed readers.
- Azazel’s Bitz Box
- Long running blog where Azazel has shared lots of projects. Lots of other blogs linked in the sidebar.
- Big Geordie Geek
- Bit of a mixture of Warhammer 40k minis, boardgames and some computer games.
- Carmen’s Fun Painty Time
- A long running blog that covers painting and scratch building minis for a wide variety of themes
- Convert or Die
- One more guy, painting minis and sharing their journey.
- Freodom
- I Am Gerard Thomas
- Gerard shares his journey designing his own rulesets – worth checking out if you're interested in game design or homebrewing.
- Just Add Water
- A long running blog focused on historical wargaming. Also has a long list of other blogs shared in the sidebar.
- K C Holt Miniature Painting
- A commission painter who regularly shares photos of his finished works.
- Lead ‘n’ Paint
- One guy painting his way through a lot of old minis and sharing his work.
- Lonely Gamers Blog
- Lots of battle reports, primarily for historical war-gaming (this site also seems to be a shop selling historical minis).
- Musk’s Miniatures
- Muskie McKay writes about hobbying and tabletop war-gaming.
- NeurOnToSomething
- Mixed blog that covers minis, books and a lot of other thoughts.
- Pandaemonium Miniatures
- Peter’s Notebook
- Scar Hand Painting
- A commission painter who regularly shares tips and tutorials.
- The Crooked Staff
- The Lair of Evil Dr Ganymede
- The Responsible One’s Wargaming Blog
- Tiikerikani
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sponge
- Wargames Terrain Workshop
- Blog written by a guy who makes terrain on commission. Lots of photos of his completed work.
- Warpstone Pile
- WickedPaintah
- Regularly shares photos of their completed projects with commentary.
- Wilbur the Red
- Wyrd Fish
- Infrequently updated, but often full of interesting thoughts and news about hobby communities on the Fediverse
- Yet Another Dropzone, Commander?
If you’ve got a blog on the same or similar topic, feel free to drop it in the comments below. I’d love to find you (spam posts will be removed, as will blogs that don’t provide an RSS feed).
- Credit to Tom Eastman, however the original tweet is no longer accessible ↩︎
- What is a feed? (a.k.a. RSS) | About Feeds provides a really good rundown on RSS and how to get started with it. ↩︎
- Here’s the instructions for Mastodon, BlueSky and Youtube ↩︎
- On this, I firmly find myself agreeing with Cory Doctorow ↩︎
For Tabletop Roleplaying fans, it’s also worth mentioning this blogroll: https://dndblogs.com/rpg_blogroll.html – it covers your needs better than anything I might cobble together myself.