Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Superfuel!
She's finished! In modelling terms, that is. I'm about to take her outside and undercoat her. Then I shall return and put pen to paper as regards her statistics. I have some vague ideas, as I have mentioned: she isn't your typical superheavy, as she's a fuel-tanker, but for that selfsame reason, she has the potential to be quite amusing in an Apocalypse game. Who doesn't love a massive explosion? If you're waving a hand, you at the back, then I submit you're not a fan of Apocalypse, anyway. ;-) Here she is completed and prior to painting. The tracks are undetailed as they will later be caked with mud, so detailing would be superfluous.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
On the humanity of computers
For days I have been unable to do things with my EeePC. I couldn't access external devices, open files on the machine or even run the Task Manager function. I lamented my ignorance of any procedure that might save the dying beast, decided it was about to die, and accepted that I had had a good run. I deleted a few files, and was forced to transfer a load of others via Gmail. It was just a matter of waiting for the end, I decided. Perhaps it would be in a day or two, perhaps a week, but it would come. Days went by, and it didn't die. I intermittently poked at the system, and it kept on responding as before, "Ooh, no, I can't open that!" "A Task Manager? I've never 'eard of it, chief!"
Just a few minutes ago I decided to turn the machine off. I tried to bring up the Task Manager. It came up! I was suspicious. I connected my camera. It was accessible! Huzzah! For no apparent reason my computer had stopped working, and for no apparent reason it has now returned to life. The Turing Test should surely include a component that covers irrational, inexplicable behaviour, as nothing is more human than that. Yes, it's surely true: my computer is a Cybermat. Someone fetch Doctor Who before it slaughters me. Needless to say, I'm rather cheered by this development! Of course, what I will inevitably find out next is a burning pile of machinery when my computer does decide to die. It's bound to happen in the next five minutes! Here's hoping it doesn't!
Just a few minutes ago I decided to turn the machine off. I tried to bring up the Task Manager. It came up! I was suspicious. I connected my camera. It was accessible! Huzzah! For no apparent reason my computer had stopped working, and for no apparent reason it has now returned to life. The Turing Test should surely include a component that covers irrational, inexplicable behaviour, as nothing is more human than that. Yes, it's surely true: my computer is a Cybermat. Someone fetch Doctor Who before it slaughters me. Needless to say, I'm rather cheered by this development! Of course, what I will inevitably find out next is a burning pile of machinery when my computer does decide to die. It's bound to happen in the next five minutes! Here's hoping it doesn't!
Monday, 14 November 2011
Good News!
I managed to get onto the downstairs PC. This won't survive me getting a job. I'll have to save up for some shiny keyboard-laden thingy then. For now, though, all is passable. Right, I promised you photographs, and those you shall have! The super-fuel-a-ma-jig is almost complete. That brings to mind that I don't have a name for it. Well, Imperial vehicles are usually named after Greco-Roman mythological (e.g. Medua) and historical (e.g. Crassus) sources, so I suppose I shall have to think of something in that line. That said, I welcome suggestions! Anyway, onto the real tofu (I'll keep making that joke until someone kills me) of this post.
I applied some plasticard to the sides to represent armour plating, and riveted the whole kit and caboodle. Lots and lots of rivets adorn this beauty. I fastened up the back, which was a bit sloppy. It looks a bit better now, although somewhat Orky. The wee grey hinges on the side hatches come from a Baneblade, I think. The Red Bull can was a bit narrow for the body of the vehicle, so I added some strips of plasticard until it sat snugly, then superglued it in place. Fitting the plasticard cover onto the can was such a bother that I almost gave up and decided to go with a bit of drainpipe I had sitting in a drawer. What? Doesn't everyone keep some drainpipe in a drawer for making toys? In the end, with the help of some superglue gel and a fair old whack of Greenstuff, I managed to secure the thing in place. I have just realised that I will need to perforate the can somewhere out of wight, lest the coming winter make it contract and go all nasty. I shall try to avoid poking battle damage into visible bits, because I intend to give it a special rule that will see it explode in Apocalypse battles like one of those superheavies that goes critical - Warhound Titans, perhaps.
I took some strips of foil (drinking nice whiskey is its own reward, but it offers some incidental benefits to the modeller), and some car body repair mesh, gluing them to the can in semblance of securing strips, and then applied some more rivets.I went looking in a drawer in another room, and found a lot more Lego, which is handy! I then glued several more heads/wheels into place. I took one of those Lego computer screen bricks, chopped half of it away, and coated the remnants in plasticard, giving me something to attach a Heavy Flamer to for the gunner. It did occur to me to wonder whether it was a good idea to have a lot of fuel and a fiery weapon in the same place, until I recalled that the Imperium, if ever it heard of Health & Safety, is surely far beyond it now. I strongly suspect it's heretical, so fiery weapons near fuel dumps might even be a Munitorum requirement! Then I glued in place grab handles for the hatches, and I added a little armoured viewport for the driver, and realised I had left the vehicle shockingly undergunned for a super. It was never my intention to make this a death-spitting demon of battle, but a single weapon seemed a little underwhelming. One Heavy Bolter later and she's as well-armed as a Chimaera. That will do!
What remains is to find a handle-a-ma-jig for the pintle-Heavy Bolter, then get to work making sure the tracks look delightful.Here are the pics, folks. Fingers crossed my next post will see her complete.
I applied some plasticard to the sides to represent armour plating, and riveted the whole kit and caboodle. Lots and lots of rivets adorn this beauty. I fastened up the back, which was a bit sloppy. It looks a bit better now, although somewhat Orky. The wee grey hinges on the side hatches come from a Baneblade, I think. The Red Bull can was a bit narrow for the body of the vehicle, so I added some strips of plasticard until it sat snugly, then superglued it in place. Fitting the plasticard cover onto the can was such a bother that I almost gave up and decided to go with a bit of drainpipe I had sitting in a drawer. What? Doesn't everyone keep some drainpipe in a drawer for making toys? In the end, with the help of some superglue gel and a fair old whack of Greenstuff, I managed to secure the thing in place. I have just realised that I will need to perforate the can somewhere out of wight, lest the coming winter make it contract and go all nasty. I shall try to avoid poking battle damage into visible bits, because I intend to give it a special rule that will see it explode in Apocalypse battles like one of those superheavies that goes critical - Warhound Titans, perhaps.
I took some strips of foil (drinking nice whiskey is its own reward, but it offers some incidental benefits to the modeller), and some car body repair mesh, gluing them to the can in semblance of securing strips, and then applied some more rivets.I went looking in a drawer in another room, and found a lot more Lego, which is handy! I then glued several more heads/wheels into place. I took one of those Lego computer screen bricks, chopped half of it away, and coated the remnants in plasticard, giving me something to attach a Heavy Flamer to for the gunner. It did occur to me to wonder whether it was a good idea to have a lot of fuel and a fiery weapon in the same place, until I recalled that the Imperium, if ever it heard of Health & Safety, is surely far beyond it now. I strongly suspect it's heretical, so fiery weapons near fuel dumps might even be a Munitorum requirement! Then I glued in place grab handles for the hatches, and I added a little armoured viewport for the driver, and realised I had left the vehicle shockingly undergunned for a super. It was never my intention to make this a death-spitting demon of battle, but a single weapon seemed a little underwhelming. One Heavy Bolter later and she's as well-armed as a Chimaera. That will do!
What remains is to find a handle-a-ma-jig for the pintle-Heavy Bolter, then get to work making sure the tracks look delightful.Here are the pics, folks. Fingers crossed my next post will see her complete.
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Bad News
The wizened wee EeePC on which I rely for almost all my blog posts has gone senile. I can't save files. I usually can't open files. I can't run the Task Manager, and - worst of all for the purposes of blogging - I can't access external devices. Having noticed a problem, I tried to back stuff up the external HDD: no dice. Happily, I can still run Gmail on this aged kerjigger, so I uploaded and emailed everything to my Hotmail account. Unfortunately, yes, you're probably ahead of my explanation, if I can't access external devices, that means I can't put access pics from my camera to put on here. I have to use Dad's machine, which has a flexible schedule, serving all four of us at different times and for different purposes. Mm.
What's that old saying? If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So last night I finished the latter half od Michael Jan Friedman's Starfleet: Year One, which is an entertaining but not life-changing look at the first year of Starfleet. There are considerable problems with the TV show Enterprise, but I'm happily in the position of having forgotten what a lot of them are, and minding less about the others. I also finally got round to reading Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives, which is a change of style from a lot of his other work. To be fair, this is one of his earlier works, so it's not that he's changed, but that I've read him out of order! It's a very entertaining piece of literature, and even with my scanty knowledge of Lovecraftiana, I was able to follow the oblique references well. Knowing nowt about computers, I shut my brain off while reading them, pronouncing the syllables without comprehension. That incomprehension also spurred a mild desire to learn something about computers, but it soon faded.
I mean to finish off Life of Pi later on, and then a splendid little memoir of the Great War, Haig - Master of the Field by Major-General Sir John Davidson. Generally regarded these days as an incompetent bungler or murderous buffoon, thanks to the acid-tongued memoirs of Lloyd-George, it's interesting to read about Haig's positive qualities. It is also a timely read for the season, as I am posting this between Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday. Memoria minuitur nisi eam exerceas (memory diminishes unless you exercise it), as my old Latin teacher used to say. Although in his case he was chastising me for always forgetting homework. On that note, I was mildly amused by a discrepancy in this assistant-teacher training course I'm taking. Some of those taking the class hadn't e-mailed in their homework to the tutor. A tasty little juxtaposition with the irritation a teacher might reasonably show with a child who did the same.
I roped my brother in yesterday, and he helped me move my weights bench up from the cellar. I never used it down there, and since lugging it back up here, I've used it twice. Not to mention the exercise of hefting a hundred kilos of weights up here to fiddle with. I've pulled out the old Arnie New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding off the shelf, allowing me to invigorate the leetle grey cells with ways of rebuilding the beeg muscle cells. I have no idea why Poirot crept in there, and I apologise, 'Astings! :-D To the consternation and bafflement of a number of my friends, I have long found dance music rather conducive to exercise. Truth be told, I also used to baffle my mate, Kev, by working out to Madonna's '80s work and Johnny Cash classics. Maybe my friends are right to be concerned! I'll leave you now, with Johnny Cash and Madonna cacophonously clashing in your lugholes, with the hope that next time I'll be able to post from Dad's PC and get some pics up. Bye-bye!
What's that old saying? If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So last night I finished the latter half od Michael Jan Friedman's Starfleet: Year One, which is an entertaining but not life-changing look at the first year of Starfleet. There are considerable problems with the TV show Enterprise, but I'm happily in the position of having forgotten what a lot of them are, and minding less about the others. I also finally got round to reading Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives, which is a change of style from a lot of his other work. To be fair, this is one of his earlier works, so it's not that he's changed, but that I've read him out of order! It's a very entertaining piece of literature, and even with my scanty knowledge of Lovecraftiana, I was able to follow the oblique references well. Knowing nowt about computers, I shut my brain off while reading them, pronouncing the syllables without comprehension. That incomprehension also spurred a mild desire to learn something about computers, but it soon faded.
I mean to finish off Life of Pi later on, and then a splendid little memoir of the Great War, Haig - Master of the Field by Major-General Sir John Davidson. Generally regarded these days as an incompetent bungler or murderous buffoon, thanks to the acid-tongued memoirs of Lloyd-George, it's interesting to read about Haig's positive qualities. It is also a timely read for the season, as I am posting this between Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday. Memoria minuitur nisi eam exerceas (memory diminishes unless you exercise it), as my old Latin teacher used to say. Although in his case he was chastising me for always forgetting homework. On that note, I was mildly amused by a discrepancy in this assistant-teacher training course I'm taking. Some of those taking the class hadn't e-mailed in their homework to the tutor. A tasty little juxtaposition with the irritation a teacher might reasonably show with a child who did the same.
I roped my brother in yesterday, and he helped me move my weights bench up from the cellar. I never used it down there, and since lugging it back up here, I've used it twice. Not to mention the exercise of hefting a hundred kilos of weights up here to fiddle with. I've pulled out the old Arnie New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding off the shelf, allowing me to invigorate the leetle grey cells with ways of rebuilding the beeg muscle cells. I have no idea why Poirot crept in there, and I apologise, 'Astings! :-D To the consternation and bafflement of a number of my friends, I have long found dance music rather conducive to exercise. Truth be told, I also used to baffle my mate, Kev, by working out to Madonna's '80s work and Johnny Cash classics. Maybe my friends are right to be concerned! I'll leave you now, with Johnny Cash and Madonna cacophonously clashing in your lugholes, with the hope that next time I'll be able to post from Dad's PC and get some pics up. Bye-bye!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
