2007 Roll-Foreward

I don't have much to say as things have been real quiet and busy at the same time. So here's what loyal readers get to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.

A few photo-essays of my last Warhammer games of 2007 - mixing and matching Cities of Death and Apocalypse.

Thoughts on the Logitech G15 (yes, I found one open-box at the local Futurecrap store here, so it was even cheaper than I anticipated).

My order from RightStuf should arrive any day so I'll need to post a bit about the anime classic Irresponsible Captain Tylor.

My order from Toy-Wave should also arrive any moment with my newest additions to my Revoltech collection. Expect more photos.

I grabbed some more WH40k models for my army so I'll be blogging the build as usual.

I found a nice super-fine-tipped marker in a local artist store so I'll be putting the finishing touches that Zaku from before.

And just maybe I will start on that Imperial Baneblade model because holy crap, thats been gathering dust for months.

Crisis Commander 3

Finally going to put the lid on the Tau Crisis Battlesuit I've been blogging for the last week or so.

The last thing to do really is paint (and decals but I'm not a big fan of them). So here's a look at a common trick that's an offshoot of dry-brushing. I have slathered paint in large blobs - large enough that it will run into the crevices on the model. But I wipe off the excess leaving the paint filling in the indentations. Afterward, I will lightly "dry-brush" a darker colour to hid the mess so that the indents will be "glowing" with the brighter colour.

Anyway, here's a quick photo of all my "battle suits." They're all in various states of completion. You can see that some of the "eye" lenses still have the slathering technique described above and incomplete. Some have their bases decorated with "rubble." And you will never see this particular configuration in an actual army. The blue guys are my older paint scheme when I first started playing (I've always meant to redo those). The red suit is my rendition of Commander Farsight while the white one is my version of Commander Shadowsun - they don't really get along.

Reaction: Michael Clayton

Did not know what I was walking into - except that this was one of those lawyer movies. George Clooney takes a turn at the legal-drama field playing (as usual) the role he's so good at: a variant of himself.

What surprised me was how well, the character of Michael Clayton fit the events in the film. He's a smart and somewhat desperate man trying to keep everything from unraveling around him.

Secondly, I was surprised at how well the movie kept my attention. Sure I couldn't help glancing at the time (because I was curious where this movie was headed as it meandered around). But when a movie starts with a climax and then tells you, "4 days ago..." Well, very few other than Quentin Tarantino can do non-linear story-telling.

Basically the movie revolves around what Clayton, a law-firm's unofficial trouble-shooter, as he attempts to regain control of a partner who's gone nuts for lack of medication. The case was a class-action suit against a large pharmaceutical company (or something; ultimately it's not important). But well, the situation quickly disolves into chaos as the company becomes desperate to salvage their defense by any means necessary. What's a lone operative to do?

This is one of those films that I would highly recommend, but also neatly falls into the category: "I'm not likely to ever bother watching it a second time." I'm just being brutally honest there.

Monster PC700

Blurring the thin line between geek-ness and nerd-dom, I bought a Monster PC700 power bar today. Not because my POS computer requires such lavish hyperbolic protection... But rather for reasons simpler than that: the price was right.

Simply put, I found it on the shelf at The Source (aka: Circuit City) at a ridiculous half-price. Yes, twenty-five bucks IS HALF-PRICE. If you're not in the know, that's because aside from setting the industry standard for mid-range home-theatre cabling, Monster is also dabbles in over-priced solutions for power protection. They have a whole line of this sort of stuff. Just walk into your local Futurecrap store and you'll find a really gimmicky demo station with what looks like an oscilloscope read-out that shows the stability of the electric current with and without a Monster product in it...

But aside from the questionable legitimacy of Monster's claims or the rationale a sales guy will try to give you for paying out the nose for a freaking power-bar, I will give Monster credit for some of their design choices. Besides making good solid cables, they do produce a pretty cool power-bar.

For their power bars, the plug is a handy round affair that is angled so it won't interfere with other plug you may want to have in the same 2-outlet wall-jack. The main toggle is positioned safely on top where an errant toe won't kick it accidentally (if you happen to be me at a certain LAN party). Plus, on the off chance you have a few plugs for devices which have their transformers built into the plugs making them fat, Monster also provides a few outlets with extra space around them too. Do you have one of those all-in-one FAX printers? Well, that's now protected too as there's a pass-thru for the phone line on this baby as well.

Monster products don't go on sale too often. In fact, they pretty much NEVER go on sale directly from Monster and usually it's the retailer taking a hit (I've been told in the past that Monster has very strict pricing policies on their products). So if you're in need of a power-bar to replace that crappy one you bought in the 80's, welcome to the 21th century.

Eldar Howling Banshees

Another photo sent over from my brother as he continues to revamp the paint job and add more special-character exarchs to his Eldar army. This time it's those babelicious Howling Banshees... Okay, really, I have no idea what I'm talking about - as usual my knowledge of these ladies is limited to what little I derive from Dawn of War: they're close combat units.

Anyway, on a side note, here's the assembled Crisis Suit I've had hanging over my head for the last week or so. The stand is finally more or less secured to the base.
I have already brought it down to my "base-coating station" (a big empty cardboard box in the basement) with a slip of scrap paper folded around the transparent base to keep it clear. The AI controlled Drones are not glued to their bases so they came right off for the spraying. Overall I'm quite happy with the way this whole thing has turned out.

Crisis Commander 2

Update: I have not been in the mood to do any work on this guy since Friday when i did some putty work. But one thing I played with a bit every day, was deciding how to mount the character onto his base (because his feet won't been enough surface to glue to the base).

Here's my ultimate solution:
I used a transparent "flight base" - this is a common stick that usually got onto a matching transparent base for models that are meant to appear to be flying or hovering. For my application, I had to cut the size right (becuase I still want the guy to appear standing on solid ground when I'm done). The standard flight heights didn't match the size of a Crisis Battle suit.

So cutting the shaft to the right height, I also had to carve down the edges to make it fit into the whole I drilled into the base. All this sounds like a commercial for my favourite tool, the Dremel, I know. But really, it's the secret weapon for any hobby enthusiast. I will mount using more putty to perfect the fit and then add glue to the feet once I confirm the position of the feet.

Game Night December 2007

This is a 2-for-1 post. First, last night we (my buddies and I) held a LAN party - and considering the nature of PC gaming (installing games, version compatibility, hardware setups), I'm amazed we had as few troubles as we did. Of course, it helped that we tried to stick with a game we all knew we could run: Unreal Tournament 2004... old enough that I acutally found a used copy at a local Value Village (aka: "Savers" in the USA).

Hi-lists and lo-lites:
- While figuring out how to plug in the various PCs that everyone bought, I accidentally kicked a power bar's toggle switch, killing the juice to both my PC and to Weirdguy's PC. We don't know if it's related, but for some reason we couldn't get his machine to stabilize afterwards - it would reboot itself for no apparent reason from time to time. And then after a while, it went back to normal.

- Once all 8 players were in place and all the PC's plugged in, the power went out. We didn't throw the main breaker because the hall light could be turned on. Heh.

- Only 1 out of 8 PC would refuse to connect to the others. We spent all night taking turns at the problematic machine trying to debug it while the other 7 would play. We never did figure it out.

- Took a break for a pizza supper. As anyone can guess, there was bound to be a round butting heads over toppings. I drank two cans of "energy drink" during the party... one Tab Energie and one Sobe Arush. I wouldn't fall asleep until about 4:30am!

- broke out the old SNES to play Super Bomber Man 2 by 2AM. It was also awesome. I complained that the game wasn't particularly realistic.

Now for PART 2...
I was just reading in Running Room Magazine an article about caffeine. For the longest time I've been wondering just how "extreme" are these so-called energy drinks. Well, Toronto nutritionist Tara Postnikoff reports that Health Canada recommend no more than 400mg of caffeine daily for an adult. And that an 8oz cup of coffee has about 150mg... so... wait, that would mean a typical 250ml can of Red Bull with 80mg of caffeine is about half a cup of coffee. Of course, that doesn't take into account all the sugars and other stimulants in an energy drink.

Anyway, beyond this, I've also decided that Tab Energie sucks. I mean, it does what it's advertised to do but it also tastes terrible, if you ask me. Firstly, I hate diet drinks - artificial sweeteners have this chemical aftertaste that remind me of cough syrup. Well, Tab Energie suffers on two counts:

First, it has a really really strong "diet" taste. And secondly, it's a cherry flavour drink. Whereas Red Bull and Arush taste more like cherry cola, Tab actually tastes like a cherry drink - like those Crush or Minute Maid fruit-flavour soft-drinks. But of course, a being a chemical-tasting cherry drink, it tastes more like bad coough syrup. I'll take an Arush over this any day.

To close up, however, can somebody out there tell me if this is the same "Tab" drink Americans have and we don't?

Crisis Commander Battlesuit 1

Remember that Crisis Battlesuit kit that arrived last night?
It's a pretty simple build: 3 pieces make up the torso, and a "ball joint" connects the limbs. And this being the ninth Crisis torso I've put together, I've learned an important trick: you need to keep the "backpack" parts squeezed together while the crazy glue dries. Here I've used an elastic band to tie the handle of my cutter together. The rubber grip provides a soft surface that won't damage the model.So far, there's not much decision making to do. But from here on, it's coming up with a "mock-up" pose. No glue yet, just fitting pieces together to get a rough idea what it might look like when done. I am substituting in "bitz" from a Commander Suit box I have leftover from another model.And finally... glue. And also, seeing as metal bitz have a tendency to not fit onto plastic well, I've used some model putty to fit the head on securely instead of glue.
The only thing not fixed at this point is the exact position of the feet and missile-pod on the upper left (his right). I've also made a terrible discovery at this point: the feet are spread too far apart for him to stand on the standard base. The base is important because it plays a role in the actual game (it delineates when a model is considered in close-combat with another model or not).
In my next post I will talk about modifying the base to accept a "flight" base stand to provide additional support to this thing. It'll take the better part of a day or two for the putty to cure anyway.

More WH Backlog

I freely admit to people who don't play that Warhammer is a very involved and potentially expensive hobby. While you can sub in a few items like rulers, dice, props to serve as terrain, other cheaper brands of paints, etc... Heck, you could conceivably play and never own a rule-book (you just share a copy with someone else). There are a few things you can't really substitute: the models themselves. It would simply be too confusing to remember what miniature is proxy for what Warhammer unit.

Then there's the little upgrades which can signify two things... either you have gone hardcore... or you have money to burn. :p

So anyway, here's what I found in my mailbox today (here's a hint: if you hunt around a bit, you'll eventually find a lot of places who will sell below the "official MSRP" from Games Workshop:Yup another Crisis Battlesuit (I have plans for this box which I will explain later). What I'm really laughing at myself for buying is the two tins of official Warhammer dice. The box on the left is the WH40K edition dice that I can't seem to find in stores any more. I'm just sort of geeking over it because now I have my own set. What I'm REALLY amused about is the middle box: a tin of "Big Gun Dice" that goes with the recent Apocalypse "anything-goes" book.
Here's a pic of my collection of specialize Warhammer tins... none of which are absolutely necessary for playing...Far left: WH40K-themed dice set - 8 with "bullet holes" for the dots and the Imperial "hawk" emblem for the "1" face. Also includes the scatter die.
Middle left: the Big Guns Dice - oversized dice featuring the Mechanicus Adeptus logo (I think) for the "1" face. Also includes the scatter die.
Middle right: Vehicle Damage dice - each face has a corresponding icon representing the possible damage caused by weapons fire on a vehicle.
Far right: Cities of Death "stratagem" markers - plastic chips with a bunch of icons on them for use in marking buildings and locations on the play field.

And... really, you need NONE of these special dice to play. Often you can always find a way to randomize anything with normal dice with faces marked 1 through 6. And that includes the directional scatter dice (just say 1 thru 4 for the four directions of the table edges and 5 and 6 are "on-target"). But it makes me feel totally geeky to know I have all this crap at my disposal now. :)

Eldar Firedragons

So yeah, my brother sent over another photo of his latest...

I'll be brutally honest. I know nothing about these dudes except that in Dawn of War they have really flashy weapons flare effects... and they're supposedly good at taking down vehicles and buildings.

Food meme

stolen from ...well, the blogosphere, of course.

1. How do you like your eggs?
Fried and over-easy. Poached is an option.

2. How do you take your coffee/tea?
Very little sugar and a touch of cream in my western beverages. If eastern, obviously it'll be black.

3. Favorite breakfast food?
The Sausage Egg McMuffin from MacDonalds (I know it ain't healthy, but it tastes so good).

4. Peanut butter - smooth or crunchy?
Smooth.

5. What kind of dressing on your salad?
right now it's raspberry vinigrette ...this answer is likely to change by tomorrow.

6. Coke or Pepsi?
Coca-Cola.

7. You’re feeling lazy, what do you make?
Instant ramen (any variation)

8. You’re feeling really lazy. What kind of pizza do you order?
Whatever they offer as "fully loaded" - I figure if I'm not going to do the work, somebody else should.

9. You feel like cooking. What do you make?
A casserole of some kind.

10. Do any foods bring back good memories?
Canned pasta. I ate a lot of that when I was little.

11. Do any foods bring back bad memories?
Poutine when served in a small bowl - high-school cafeteria. I hated high school, btw.

12. Do any foods remind you of someone?
Chocolate milkshake - I never had one until college... and a special someone there introduced me to it.

13. Is there a food you refuse to eat?
Anything that still resembles its living animal state. I once had Chinese roast duck and the butcher included the head (duck is traditionally roasted whole) in my take-out container... I totally freaked out. That said, I still eat roast duck today, I'm just more careful about what's on my fork before taking a bite out of it.

14. What was your favorite food as a child?
Lasanga... it was an unusual treat to have non-Asian meals in my household.

15. Is there a food that you hated as a child but now like?
Steak... took me years (decades?) to discover that if cooked properly, beef could be juicy and tender. All this time my folks were over-cooking steak!

16. Is there a food that you liked as a child but now hate?
KFC ...don't know if its just me, or if the chicken's actually gotten smaller, greasier, and more overpriced over the years. But I distinctly recall it didn't suck as much as it does today.

17. Favorite fruit and vegetable:
Fruit: orange - because that's where OJ comes from. Vegetable: brocolli.

18. Favorite junk food:
Milk chocolate.

19. Favorite between meal snack:
Tall glass of milk. Kills my appetite for an hour or so.

20. Do you have any weird food habits?
I have a running list of food establishments I refuse to enter. If they do something wrong, they go "on probation" and I won't return for at least a year. Does this qualify as "weird?"

21. You’re on a diet. What food(s) do you fill up on?
I have no idea.

22. You’re off your diet. Now what would you like?
MacDonald's food. Despite how inherently disgusting it can be (especially after watching "Supersize Me", they also make really tasty food.

23. How spicy do you order Indian/Thai?
I'm not big on "hot." I like to actually taste my food and "hot" is not a taste - just a "sensation."

24. Can I get you a drink?
OJ if you have any. Or make me a cup of tea (any style).

25. Red wine or white?
Depends what I'm eating.

26. Favorite dessert?
Chinese egg tart - but it has to be warm and fresh, otherwise these things are gross.

my apparent age

I don't know how obvious it is from my tone or the occasional photo that pops up, but I'm in my early 30s.

Last Friday a door-to-door survey lady rang my doorbell. When I answered, she asked if my "mommy or daddy" was home. She apparently thought I was in my teens. We laughed with each other over it once I told her I was indeed the "man of the house." But I then thought, I'll take that as a compliment because I do intend to outlive each and every one of you. And I'll be damn good looking until the end too.

Eldar Guardians

My bro just sent this image over. Looks like his Guardian squad is ready for action. They are joined by Warlocks and Support platforms...
I didn't used to take Guardians seriously but when they're in numbers like that. They're as good a meat-shield as Tau FireWarriors. ^_^;;

DoW on G15, anybody?

Ok, I'm just throwing this out there (because I know there are people that come and go without leaving comments). But does anybody out there have an applet for the Logitech G15 keyboard's LCD screen that does anything for THQ's "Warhammer 40'000: Dawn of War" series of games?

Tonight I finally saw the G15 in person and it does indeed look very sexy as far as keyboards go. Actually, I like the look of the "Gaming Keyboard" (with the blue lighting) better than the "Version 2" (has orange lighting). But then I came home and started doing research. And it seems Logitech was pretty sparse on the included software for the cool little screen.

But they did release a full SDK suite for the general public to code custom applets. So has any body out there tried this thing? Is it easy to work with? Hard to work with? I may be an IT professional, but I'll admit, my track record for setting up my own compilers has been spotty at best - I do my best work when I just have to worry about the code itself and not the mechanisms behind the machine language.

Anybody? The best answer would be to say, "why yes, I play Dawn of War also and have a G15 set up to show lots of good info on the mini-screen. And here's how you can get it too!"

Zaku: semi-final

Anyway, here's what I've been up to the last few days (not that I worked a total of this many days). I mean it took this long to disassemble, paint, and reassemble, in between that little thing we like to call "real life."So yeah, the big part was the legs - especially since they had those "tubes" that promptly fell apart as soon as I pulled the knees apart. Looking at the colour photos of the original anime, the legs are hardly molded in the right colours, so that's where I concentrated.

And here's the "semi-final" model.
Only 2 major things to do at this point, try to find a fine-point marker to do the panels (there are lines molded into the plastic. Pro builders add dark lines into them to give the illusion that those are separate pieces - we call that "panel-lining." I used to own a "Gundam Marker" - that's right, Tamiya paints actually branded a series of paint markers just for Bandai kits, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I'll have to replace it.
Secondly, I really want to add some decals to it.

Lastly, and this is optional, I will clear-coat the whole thing with a matt-finish. In the photo above, you can see that the whole thing looks really "plastic-y" (note the glare on the chest). For small-scale kits like this, a matt anti-reflective finish make a world of different and it's stupid easy to achieve.

Soccer team vid

Been a good long while since I did one of those silly DOM posts. But it's also been a while since I was genuinely entertained by a new single coming out of Hello!Project. What's interesting is that according to Hello!Online, this is the first song penned by the masterminds behind Morning Musume's biggest hits (Love Machine all the way to Renai Revolution 21).

Ongaku Gatas are a derivative group stemming out of Hello!Project's kickball team (if there's anything the Japanese have done well it's promoting compulsory athletics among their youth). But that's not what I care about - I'm happy to find Konno Asami is back in the biz!

Anyway, check out their latest single courtesy of Dohhhup!

Zaku Update 5

The home stretch - The torso came together a lot faster than I thought it would. Once the pilot dried and stuffed him into place, the armour panels went onto the upper body. From that point on, it was just stocking up the armoury with weapons!The gun-sights need lenses. I'm using the same clear paint trick with a coat of silver beneath to give it a reflective quality. Just needs to dry - and I'm taking no chances because for whatever reason, Tamiya clear paint takes a long time to dry and if it doesn't do so properly, it won't give a smooth finish.In the photo I've left it on the sprue to paint. That's okay because it'll be nestled into the gun-sight frames when completed so it doesn't need to be coloured all the way around the edges.

And here's the almost-complete MS-06R-1A Zaku II!!!Just needs detailing. Some additional paint on the arms and legs (because for some reason Bandai didn't mold those parts in the right colours). Then I will apply the decals. And of course, some aging and dirtying weathering effects with paint.

Zaku Update 4

Another quick one because I wasn't home last night but I did have time to paint up the pilot figure...I didn't wait long for the primer to dry: it's only one side in fact!

And yes, I know the helmet is pretty messy - the blue visor over-runs the top edge of the visor on the right (his left) side. But I don't care. Seriously, it'll be almost impossible to see once it's in the cockpit, you'll see.

email in-joke

Recently I was lamenting the fact that I have a bunch of paper in the house with my full name and address that I feel uncomfortable with just dropping in the recycling. While I'm unlikely to suffer a dumpster-diver in my neighbourhood, I'd rather not take any risk if I can avoid it. Weirdguy offered to loan me an old shredder he found for cheap...

The following is an actual email exchange that occurred this morning:

WG: BTW, I got the shredder in the car.
BO: Wow... how many members of the Foot Clan did you have to fight to get him into the car?
WG: None, they said it was ok if I had him back by 5:00 PM.

Reaction: No Country for Old Men

Just came back from "No Country for Old Men."

I would like to thank Javier Bardem for playing the perfect crazy. If it wasn't for him, I would have to rate this movie in the negatives.

I swear, I do not understand why reviews of this film said it was the "best yet" from the Coen Brothers (not that I'm all that familiar with their work - because if this is indeed the best they have to offer, I'd hate to watch one of their stinkers). It had its moments (all of them featuring Bardem as the insane assassin. But this tale of a drug-deal-gone-wrong and the chase of a case full of cash across west Texas... well, it sounds a lot better than it turned out to be.

The themes of Tommy Lee Jones as a man out of his element (a old-time sheriff who finds the world changing around him, i.e.: violent crimes of America) are not lost on me. In fact, it's kind of force-fed from the moment the film starts: he voices the opening narration talking about the way his father and grandfather used to do things. But I think the ultimate failing of the film is that itself: we don't actually meet Tommy Lee Jones' character until at least 20 or 30 minutes into the movie.

In fact, for a long time, we're not even sure if this movie is about poor old Josh Brolin's character (a retired war-veteran who stumbles on the case of money first) or the assassin (who we actually meet first) or Jones as the police officer who... well... arguably has the longest do-nothing dialogue scenes. It's a crime how long those scenes drag on. So long, that when the denouement came rolling around, I wasn't even sure it was supposed to be the end of the movie! (the screen went black and then the first credits started to appear before I realized it).

Alright, so maybe I'm being harsh - I was uncomfortable because I happen to sit in the seat that staggered with the next row at just the right interval where the drink-holder in front of me was at the exact position where my left knee should be. So I had to sit crooked for the entire duration of the screening. And secondly, because I had arrived early and decided to have a sandwich in the building for supper, I was charged an additional $2 for the underground parking because I was there for over the 3 hour allocation for a movie. And that sucked too.

I have a record for giving every movie its fair chance... but all things considered, a screwed up film like "Across the Universe" was easily more entertaining than this was.

Zaku Update 3

Between yesterday afternoon's post and today, I worked on the ZakuII model maybe an hour or so...Here's a quick photo where I've started assembling the torso from the various joint parts. The completed model should have shoulder joints that will simulate ball-socket motion. As the parts came together I noted that at this point I should start working on painting the pilot figure otherwise he'll never be done once he gets mounted into the cockpit in the chest cavity.

(That is, the finished model, like all MG type kits, will also have an opening cockpit. However, since only the front of the seated pilot will be visible, I only need to paint the front of his uniform!)

Zaku II: update 2

Since the last update, I formed feet and legs (you win a no-prize for getting that reference). The photos will look a little out of order because of a personal preference: The manual shows how to make 2 of everything at a time but I like to do all the parts for one side first and assemble them before starting on the second set. Here is the first leg done!

I like to split the work into seperate limbs so that I can avoid my own confusion later trying to distinguish parts meant for a left or right limb. Also, by doing a full build on one side, I can work out any puzzles so that I won't waste any more time while doing the second one.

The first example is perfect: here are the "rings" and "springs I talked about in the previous update. This time around I knew right away how many rings I would need and which spring length to use (there are 6 in the box).The following is some more progress I made, all the while remembering what I had learned from the first set. In particular, I had trouble on the first leg with things like how to fit certain pieces together (like that "hose" at the knees). There was also another set of "hoses" that are molded straight but you need to bend them and fit them into the correct slots on the leg armour. It needed to go in in a particular order otherwise it was just too hard to work in.Note the detail Bandai has worked into their mold: the soles of the feet have details sculpted into them.When lunch time rolled around (after, say, 90 minutes to 2 hours of actual work time since my last update) I decided I needed to clean up the work area... here is my progress as of lunch time on day two.

A new interface for ZeroPrime

So I finally went and bought a new monitor. It's one of those rare instances where I'm replacing a perfectly good piece of hardware (my 17" Samsung DF756 still works and works well). The irony is, the LCD ended up with isn't even the one I went running out to find.

I was browsing this week's brochure from Future-scrap and noticed that my dream LCD monitor was on sale. The Samsung 226BW happens to be one of the highest rated models around and shares a pedigree with one that mrbabou heartily recommended to me. And well, earlier this week, my overtime pay finally came through so I had a bunch of cash on hand.

But when I got to the store, I took a look at the 206BW - the same monitor, but 2 inches smaller... And you know what? Having them side by side on the same shelf, I realized, "damn, talk about the law of diminishing returns." I decided I didn't feel like paying $60 for an inappreciable difference in size. I mean seriously, between 20" and 22" I stood there and couldn't even tell the difference. So I grabbed the smaller one.

And really, now I'm sitting in front of it all plugged in and it's fine. I just need to get used to the funky resolution (because really, everything does look kind of smaller because everything's so stupid sharp. It's kind of like transitioning from a 800x600 screen to 1024x768 for the first time.

Anyway, I'm happy and I didn't spend anywhere near as much as I was anticipating. So there.

Zaku II: update 1

So, um, yeah, that's what I got done after an hour and a bit. I know it's not particularly impressive. It's a few parts that will be arms and a head. What took so long was that business with trying to mix up a "clear pink" colour which sadly did not turn out anyway. It kind of became orange more than anything. So I started over, and did the "eye" in the regular clear red straight from the jar.

After waiting to dry, I assembled the whole thing into the head. I also had to redo the "tubes." it's a series of rings that fit over a single line but I later realized from looking at the photos that there's a metal coil that goes underneath the rings. I can't really describe it other than, imagine a really tightly-wound spring fit just right under a series of rings. Er, yeah.

Zaku II - start note

Here's something I picked up a while ago but never got around to starting work on. I grabbed it from a local shop on a whim. It's just been a good long while since the last time I built a Gundam kit. More interesting is that I've never built a Zaku type kit either.

The main reason why I left it for a whole month? Well, I simply haven't been home for a while. The first thing I noticed about the kit was that "glowing eye" in the head. "Master Grade" kits have a tendency to require building the heads first so I couldn't really get a start on this thing without fixing up the eye.

See, unlike pretty much every other robot model kit in the universe, Gundam lore has it that Zaku mecha always have PINK coloured eye sensors... And I've always used a little trick I discovered in my youth: that you could make a pretty cool "lens" effect by covering the front of a transparent piece with clear coloured paint and the back side with a pale metallic coat so that light relfects off of it. Anyway... where does one get a pink clear paint? I'm going to have to mix my own with clear and clear-red... I hope it works out.

Well, here's the contents of the box:And if all goes well... this is what I should wind up with in when I'm done!
I'll post updates as it goes!

mailbox today

Well, it's been quite the odyssey, an irritating one, at that! But I finally completed my collection of Boom Studios' "Damnation Crusade." And more than anything, I can't wait to turn around and reread the whole thing in order because it took forever to get all the issues. And maybe at the end of it, I'll tell you if it was worth the effort (because shortly after acquiring most of the issues, minus a few, I discovered it might have been cheaper to just wait and get the collected edition due out in the next few months. Crap.

It started out as a curiosity. I like to give the "little guy" a chance when I'm in the comics shop. And I had never read a Boom Studios title before. Plus it was Warhammer 40k, so why the hell not? But after I picked up the first issue, it seemed that I had missed the second issue. The weeks and months flew by and before I knew it, the book had disappeared off shelves.

When September rolled around, I found myself in Markham at a store called Heroes World. And they had issues 2 thru 5. So being on vacation with a bunch of extra cash on hand, I grabbed the ones they had. And unfortunately, also being on vacation, I wasn't really sure if issue 6 was really out or not. I just assumed it hadn't come out and that's why it wasn't on the shelf. I would later learn that I had indeed missed it as well.

A couple of weeks back I mail-ordered my missing issue directly from Boom Studios and also decided I'd like to check out their newest series "Blood and Thunder." Not sure what's up with their official site. I had made the lazy assumption (the second one in this blog entry, if you're counting) that it'd work like a pre-order; that they'd ship it out to me so that I'd have it around the same time most retailers would have it available. Not so. Blood and Thunder's already been on the shelves since last week and I just got it in the mail today. Crap (also the second time I cursed this blog entry).

All that to say, I'll be doing a lot of reading tonight.

Commentary: Cities of Death

Didn't have my camera but I loved my first go at Cities of Death. The new "stratagem" rules bring a new element to the standard WH40K game: working with the environment. No longer taking cover when you can get to it... in CoD, you work the environment to your advantage. The mission was "High Ground": a scoring unit must occupy a designated ruin at the end of 6 turns. We played to a draw but it was still a satisfactory game.

- At Alpha level I was afraid we'd be too crowded. Turns out the rules for placing buildings are very well thought out and the 3 major structures in a 4x4 left plenty of room for a pair of 1500-point forces to duke it out.

- Being Scout units, I was able to position a Devilfish right near a building and use the Rappelling Lines stratagem to drop off Pathfinders all over the tallest building on the first turn. From that vantage point, their Markerlights were all over the enemy.

-My brother's Dark Reapers also reached a cover within the first turn and started to drop Barrage fire all over me from the safety of the Basilica Administratum. For any survivors, he'd use the building's "Power Generator" stratagem to reroll his damage. My numbers dwindled quickly under a hail of non-stop damage.

-Thankfully, I got my own lucky dice-rolls as combinations of Railguns from my Broadside team and Seekers started taking out his Wave Serpents. Strictly speaking, this isn't a Cities-specific observation but it's a matter of realizing that the right tools for the right job is the way to go.

-I think what really set this game apart was that we chose to simplify our choices. What really slows down any game is when we need to look up wargear stats in the rulebook. I played a very unorthodox game by not fielding any Crisis Suits. Instead I kept a unified theme where almost everyone from the FireWarriors to Piranhas to the Devilfish all had Burst Cannons or Pulse Carbines. Strength 5 isn't great against much except supressive fire, but it does the job well.

We avoided any slow-downs from trying to sort out who had what weapons and upgrades. Compare this to playing against an Inquisitor's Retenue where the single unit has 6 or 7 individual characters, each one armed differently and with different skills. Indeed, I think we broke a personal record for how fast we completed a full 6 turns that night.

The end result: the game came down to the final turn, each of us scrambling to move our last remaining legally scoring units into the objective ruin. I could not hold off the sheer firepower coming from the Dark Reapers who had their upgrade. My units were being decimated despite several lucky cover-save dice rolls. Sensing that I wouldn't be able to win by capturing the objective, I outflanked him using my speed - a Hammerhead armed with Burst Cannons and an Ion Cannon with the Devilfish (also a Burst Cannon and a pair of Gun Drones) brought a total of 14 dice rolling on the table... it was enough to kill off the remaining Eldar Guardian squad that was making a break for it.

metathesis

I was having a burrito for lunch and as usual I decided to satisfy my curiosity on the origins of what I was eating. So I started browsing Wikipedia. I'm always wondering what's a "real" ethnic food and what's made up by a North American pretending to be foreign.

I then stumbled on the term 'chipotle' - that's a smoke-dried chile pepper, btw... And I noted the spelling. And not for the first time either.

It made me think about that stupid commercial with the bunch of ladies around a bowl of dip. And one of them says, "ha-LA-pen -no" peppers even after being corrected by another who explains that "the 'j' is silent." Anyway, it makes me cringe when people induce metathesis to the point where it becomes commonly-acceptable. It's NOT acceptable, damn it! When somebody says "chi-POL-tay" they sound like a frickin' idiot! It's "chi-poh-lay" - not only is the 't' supposed to be silent, but it comes BEFORE the "L" anyway!

basilica administratum 2

Possibly one of the faster builds I've even done, the Basilica Administratum kit came together in a record evening. After a break (for blogging and whatever) I went back to the kit sensing how close I was to completion. About another hour later I had main walls and floors completed.I got started on the little embellishments like the arches and columns. I spent a lot of time shaving off excess flash with a knife. You may notice that I also had some additional "beams." This is to finish off the right-side edge of the model because the panel system always included a beam on the left to glue to the next panel. That means the first panel on the far right is actually missing the last side of its frame.
The extra beams come in "complete" pieces that run the height of a single floor. So for the panels on the upper floors, I had to cut a beam in half and exercise some creativity with my knife to make it look like it had broken up along with the rest of the wall.
Gluing the beams into place allows me to add the 8th and final "arch" embellishment. All that's left are the little other embellishments like lamps and gargoyles. Thankfully these are all single pieces that just need to be trimmed from the sprue and glued into place...Here's the final completed build. Up next was paint... Kind of weird pictures below because of the angle. I set the model on its side so that I could get my spray to reach under the arches and everywhere important. Undercoating in black provides instant shadow so I won't need to go in with dark ink or anything afterward to add relief or texture.At this point, I've waited pretty much the whole evening for it to dry properly. Really, there's nothing to show at this point. Just take the third photo up and imagine it all black. I will be lightly "dusting" it with a white spray in a top-down angle to give it a bit more texture before going into colours. I'll probably be dry-brushing most of it with a pale grey and highlighting with metallic colours. I'll post again when it's all done, so look forward to it!

Basillica Administratum 1

I thought it'd be fun to document my progress on my latest kit. It's a building for the Cities of Death game that brings an urban-combat setting to Warhammer 40'000. Specifically, I bought a single box thinking it would be nice to start with a given how-to so that I could get a feel for the new free-style kit sets. I'm a little disappointed to report that despite having done so, the box actually contains only a generic manual with a sprinkling of advice but very little in the way of telling you how to build the headline model depicted on the box.So there you have it, it's a 3 sprues: 2 "walls" and 1 "accessories" (I made up those names, Games Workshop probably has names already that I'm too lazy to look up on their web site). I started by cutting out the first few walls, choosing ones that looked to be the kinds on the bottom level according to the photo on the box... and following the advice in the leaflet, built the first level around a "corner" to provide a starting point onto which to build the rest of my model.I quickly noticed I was going to have to free-style because I could not find any reference material that hinted at which "floors" were meant to go where on the interior. The leaflet's photo of the "Basillica Administratum" model is only an exterior view...I also learned quickly that turning the model on its side and upside down helped balance pieces while the super-glue set. Experience had already taught me that very small drops tend to set faster and is just as strong.After an hour or so, my fingers were getting sore (and I was getting high on the fumes). But I managed what I thought was some decent progress...The most time-consuming part of this kit (and I guess all other Cities of Death buildings) is that there's an aweful lot of flash and mold lines to cut away. Thankfully it's the same soft plastic as all other GW kits and cuts fairly easily. Still, that's a lot of tiny scraping to do with a hobby knife.

VForce for Dummies

I learned this weekend that there is some basic know-how that newbie paintballers lack about their new gear. Some masks are packaged OEM-style and or the VForce manual is unclear. A few buddies came over to play. They opted for the more affordable Morph, but all VForce masks feature the quick-change lens so this tutorial is applicable to all of them.

Anyway, I will demo using my Profiler, meaning there's an extra step involved that is not for other VForce masks: the strap is secured into the lens clips. So I need to get the strap out first. Here's a close-up on what the end of the strap: it's a squeeze-release.
To get at it, you need to reach inside your mask past the foam with your fingers and feel for it. It's not very tight even when it's new – you won't need tools or anything for this. Once that's out of the way you will remove the clips. These clips keep the lens snared against the retaining loop on the mask:
With your thumb, lift the clip away from the mask: it should slide back away from the lens. This may take a bit of elbow grease, but again, don't use tools.

Finally, with the clip off (on both sides), press down on the end of the lens so that it slips underneath the retaining loop. Simple!As a side note, I thought I would mention as well that a VForce mask should come with a little baggie of o-rings. These are used to secure the retaining tabs on the visor. It's easiest to install these when the lens is off. Slip them on one end of the tab and then just press into place on the other end.I've met more than a few newbies who didn't know what to do with those o-rings for some reason.