Monthly Archives: December 2008

Tada!

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Painted from around midday to around 10pm, while also watching the first season and two specials of the Vicar of Dibley, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and also Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Did a tiny bit of work on Sasha and will update the diary posts (there’s a post to come covering stuff I did last week, and I’ll write up a new post covering today’s work which will show up in a few days time).  Messed around a little with one of the fighting nuns, but most of the work went into the zombies.  Finally got a half-dozen or so finished and some pictures posted in the Picasa album over here.

Here’s a group shot, I managed to convince them to stop eating dwarves and stand still long enough for a photo.

zombie troop

… and tomorrow

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… I am going to paint, I swear.  Not sure right now if I’ll do any Sasha or if I’ll finally suck it up and finish up the zombie troop.  I kinda want to get them finished, I know how excellent a squad / group of similar miniatures can be.  Plus we have the incredible fighting nuns, although each one of those will probably take as much effort has half the zombie troop so getting them all done is no mean feat.  At the very least I should paint something just to keep my eye in, as it were.  I guess in some ways I have too much choice!  And on top of that, I’m seriously considering stripping the paint off some of my older mini’s and doing them again (like Blue Ogre or some of the large miniatures that I didn’t post pictures of because they’re truly terribly painted).

Too much choice!

Hellboy II: Even better?

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Just watched Hellboy II: The Golden Army on DVD and I have to be honest, it’s even better the second time around.  You get more time to look around and see what’s going on, more time to absorb the images and the backstory.  Perhaps I just get more from movies when I watched them at home but I really did enjoy it more than the first viewing, and I enjoyed that in the first place.

So, go buy the DVD.

Painting Diary – Chronoscope – Sasha DuBois – part three

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Best laid plans

First base coatI planned to work on the major clothing areas on the Sasha piece after finishing the eyes for the third part in the diary painting thing (part one here, part two here).  However, if you read my post on inspiration then you’ll know I ended up doing Sasha’s hair.  Hair is one of those funny things, although we talk about it being black or brown or blonde or red, it’s really not those colours and it’s very hard to just simply paint hair.  Harder than you might imagine, so when I find a colour combination that works I’m really quite happy.

While painting the deadly hammer wielding nun in the inspiration article I found that one of the brown paints in the new paint set is really good as a base hair colour, which I then wash with a brown wash and dry brush highlights onto.  It’s really effective.  So once I’d got it looking nice on the nun, I picked up Sasha and did her hair.  That’s it, that’s all I got painted on her in this session.  Sometimes that’s the way it goes, I’ll paint huge areas and get loads done (if I’m inspired) or each section will be a real chore forcing me to keep going (if inspiration is a little lacking that day).

Hair after wash and dry-brushSo, Sasha got her hair sorted, hopefully soon she’ll get some clothing as well.  Her clothes really are quite interesting with multiple layers and lots of scope so I’m quite excited about painting them, but I’m also concerned I’ll screw them out, so I’m probably going to try and get into a bit of a groove by working on other miniatures first / as well.  I find that I get better and re-learn things after a long time away and that a few weeks in my hand is a lot steadier.

Fingers crossed.

You can check out part four here.

Half done

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And 6 hours later, Grete’s machine is in a state where she can play LoTRO.  In the meantime I learned about a nice little tool called nLite which I’ll talk about another time, and I was reminded how much I hate rebuilding Windows machines, and that it’s not the base build it’s all the minor customisations and tweeks you make over a period of weeks when you first start using it.

Anyway, now I’m knackered and taking a break.

Proving negatives

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Grete’s machine is infected with the Virtumonde trojan ((sometime today, when she was only visiting regular legitimate websites, so be careful, it may be one of the web comic sites she reads that caused the infection)).  One of the things is does it download other malware.  People have written malware which claims to remove Virtumonde but actually just makes things worse.  It comes in many, many variants.  Most of them resist being removed.

But here’s the rub.  Say you get it removed such that none of your anti-spyware / virus software detects it.  How do you know it didn’t install a rootkit?  How do you know that you’re not finding it or anything related to it because it’s gone, rather than because it’s better at hiding than you are at looking?

How do you prove a negative?

So, out come the XP CD’s.  Grete will be offline for a short while.

PC World price promise pointless

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I’m flirting with buying a blu-ray player (although frankly I have been for a long time) and I’ve had my eye on the Sony BDPS350.  It’s been as low as £158 on Amazon recently although it’s up to £169 now.  I like Amazon, but when buying expensive electronics sometimes it’s nice to be able to walk back into the store with the bits in your arms and say ‘it’s broke, make it work’, and obviously it’s difficult to do that with Amazon.

So I checked in PC World, and the same player was £230.  Being generous that’s about £60 more expensive.  Yes I understand PC World has to staff stores and pay rent, but still that’s a bit crazy.  However, PC World has a price promise, I quote,

Price Match Plus: We promise we won’t be beaten on price!

So I thought, maybe I should point PC World to the Amazon price and we could get the benefit of a good price and be able to pick it up in store.   So I read a bit further, and even this bit sounded ok,

We check our prices against major retailers and websites every day so you can buy with confidence.

Oh cool, they check websites, not just high street stores.

But then you check the rest of the page,

This applies to prices offered by retailers within 30 miles of your local PC World store.

The product must be identical, in stock and available for immediate home delivery in one of the retailers detailed below – single unit purchases only.

This price promise applies to:
Argos, Comet, Jessops, Tesco, John Lewis, Asda, B&Q, Game Gamestation, Halfords, HMV, Maplin, Staples, Toys R Us, Zavvi.

In other words, they can’t or won’t compete with the price that Amazon offers.  So the price promise is basically a statement which says, we’ll match the price of stores in your local area, who in turn are probably just matching our prices or those nearby, so in your area it doesn’t really matter who’s selling this item you’re going to pay out of the nose for it.

High street retailers complain that online shopping is destroying their business, I can’t believe PC World has to charge £60 more for a Blu-ray player to cover their store costs compared to Amazon’s costs, so I suggest it’s their overpricing which is destroying their business.

Of course, if you want truly crazy, Kays Catalog charge £269 for the very same player.  Now that is insane (especially since the higher spec BDPS550 is £238 on Amazon).

Movie Memories: Clash of the Titans

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clashI’ve always been a fan of fantasy and to a lesser extent sci-fi.  There’s something about mythology, heroes, dragons, monsters, wizard and magic that I love.   In 1981 I saw Clash of the Titans at the pictures.  To the best of my knowledge and memory (which, if this series of posts is anything to go by, has been proven to be weak) this was the first film, or certainly one of the very first films, I went to see without immediate family.  So I guess I went with some friends.

I certainly remember feeling grown up, but my lasting movie memory was the opening few minutes.  There was a beach, and along it walked a naked woman.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I was in a cinema, and there was a naked woman on the screen!

Titans in the UK had an A rating, which when I started writing this post I thought meant it was suitable for 15’s and over only, but according to Wikipedia’s history of BBFC ratings meant it was ok for anyone over 5 to go in alone, with parental advice that it might contain scenes not suitable for anyone under 14.  So I would have been 10 in 1981 when it was relased.

Of course I loved the mythology and I was scared by the Medusa and relieved when her head was removed and disgusted to find it was in a bag, and then amazed by the mechanical owl.  But mostly, I remember the woman on the beach.

Whiskey & Red Bull

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Decided to finish the evening with a small glass of whiskey, opened the cupboard and next to the Glenmorangie were 8 cans of Red Bull.

You’ll be pleased to know that although I suddenly had an insane crazy idea to try whiskey and red bull, I managed to refrain.