Normal service will resume shortly

I've been exceptionally busy these last few days. Most of the things I was selling on Ebay sold, and so I spent most of Sunday and Monday making boxes for stuff. For some reason I don't have a vast stock of prefabricated boxes for shipping around two Leman Russ chassis. Madness, I know! I posted twenty-something parcels today. I don't know how happy they were to see me in the Post Office. Because of yesterday's Bank Holiday they had had a really busy morning, and I helped mess up their afternoon, too. The new Royal Mail prices took me a bit by surprise: most of my international parcels cost more to post than I had charged in postage! Oops!

If any of my buyers are reading this, wondering why I haven't added a tracking number to your order yet, I probably would have, if I'd been able to get to the good PC. I managed about ten earlier, so I am still waiting for it to be free for me to add the remaining half. That said, a couple of folk only sent the money today, so I literally haven't had time and the necessary (good) computer access (this machine is zooming into obsolescence) to do it. I've got an appointment at the dentist's tomorrow, but I will make that "post things in three working days after receipt of funds" limit Ebay has for all my orders!

I've managed to do a little painting and modelling, but haven't had a chance to post anything on here. I'm happy to say that I managed to finish the Plasma Generator, and I'm progressing well with some new walls. I might do a little set-up of a table for my next post. I need to pop along to a GW at some point and pick up some Genestealers to use as the nasties. After I'd wrapped everything up last night I fished out all the old episodes of The Outer Limits that I taped back in the '90s, and watched The Refuge ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Refuge_(The_Outer_Limits) ), which was fun, if I was a bit befuddled by the concept that causing water to freeze at higher temperatures would crash the temperature of the globe. Surely, if water freezes at ten Celsius, say, then it won't chill you to touch it like it would if you touched ice at zero Celsius. Whatever! One shouldn't get hung up on that sort of detail! I had a nice feeling of nostalgia.

Speaking of nostalgia, I've watched quite a bit of Space: Above and Beyond this week, and been very pleased. There's a commentary by a load of the original folks on the first (feature length) episode and a documentary about the series, in the latter of which actress Kristen Cloke, I believe, reminisces about how dangerously close the show came to being funny by being so very bombastic. Perhaps in America it only came dangerously close, because I spent the whole of the pilot laughing my socks off. The impending conquest of Earth by aliens has never been so funny. The commentary track added a whole additional layer of comedy to it.

There is a scene in which Colonel T. C. McQueen enters a room to brief some green pilots, and flings a table across the room, saying he wants nothing between him and them, so he can look into their eyes. The scene already made me chuckle, but finding out that it was based on something an American sports coach did made it even funnier. So if you see that boxed set while you're peregrinating about the internet, pick it up. It's well worth your time, whether you chuckle at bombastic military melodrama or you simply enjoy folk angrily declaring martial phrases. Alumni of my secondary school will be surprised that the first three notes of the epic and stirring theme song match almost perfectly our (awful) old school song. Au revoir for now, folks!

Big walls and little walls, and so ad infinitum!

I have been continuing my work on the walls for "Space Hunt", and it's been going pretty well. I had completed a load of large walls, and so decided I needed one or two wee ones. Needless to say, I got carried away! In total I have seven long walls (9" by 1.5") that are giant background fuel/oxygen/whatever pipes, six long walls (of the same dimensions) that have computer access points, little bits of decoration and all that, thirteen (!) small walls (3" by 1.5") and four doorways. I think I might stop at six doorways, but I am quite keen on the idea of ensuring they all have semi-transparent viewslits (or something along those lines). Please note that the flash has rather wonkified these colours and that on all the small pieces and some of the large ones, I've pretty much just hit the pipes with an initial layer of one of the yellow Foundation paints. They will receive more attention! Now, if you fancy a model tank, then check out this listing of the stuff I am ebaying. There is less than a day to go, folks. Anyway, check out this impressive array of walls if you don't fancy it. Man, I say the dumbest things sometimes! "Impressive array of walls"? Heck, I have to laugh!

Giant wall-mounted fans and why we love them

That's giant in the scale sense of giant. I don't live on a film set or a run-down industrial base or in Nakatomi Plaza, so giant fans play no part whatsoever in my daily life. I just wanted to make that clear so nobody would feel let down or upset later on. Moving on, I think anyone who has been watching this blog lately will be familiar with the fact that I have slaughtered a laptop and dissected its carcase for parts. I've only been using keys so far, as they are just right for depicting scale computer screens, but every laptop, no matter how decrepit, has a cooling fan. So I coaxed this from its erstwhile haunt and relocated it to a wee box on one of these walls I've been making for "Space Hunt" as I have taken to labelling this terrain I have been making of late. Anyway, I assembled a box in which to mount the fan, but wanted to have a covering over the fan. I made that from more plasticard and some car body repair mesh. Whether this will be glued in place remains to be seen. There is no point in having a ludicrous ventilation fan on your wall if nobody can see it! I might select a less obvious covering. Watch this space, folks! I also have a couple more walls awaiting painting, as you can see below, and some little nuggets of pre-painting goodness I shall show off next time.

Generator Room, increase power!

The Plasma Generator is coming along pretty nicely. She has had her grey undercoat and her basecoat of Ford Midnight Sky. I brought her in earlier, and started wrapping her ready for a coat of white for the hazard stripes (they'll be yellow eventually), but ran out of masking tape. I shall get some more tomorrow, and then we'll be ready for the final stretch!