You came in that thing

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Built my birthday present.

Fewer pieces than it looks, only took an hour or so to put it together but it still looks pretty cool.  If I felt like it, I’d do a bit of glueing, filling and some touch-up painting, but we’ll see.

It makes me want to build more model kits but you can’t get Star Wars ones that are true kits, just the snap together quick ones (as above), plus, I have nowhere to put them anyway.

It’s also rekindled an urge in me to scratch build scenes / dioramas / buildings.  I’ve never tried, but always thought I’d be good at it 😉

Choosing a template

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I want to change the template for this blog, because I fancy a change.  But choosing a template is not easy!  Instead of templates just changing how the site looks, over time, they end up changing how the site behaves, how you include little snippets of code, how your SEO stuff works, etc.

There are some really good looking templates out there, but they’re either too big or too small, or too fiddly or too hard coded with features I don’t want / need.

It’s pretty frustrating, mitigated by the fact that I’m not paying for any of this and it’s only thanks to other people’s freely provided effort that I have software to run a blog from anyway.

I’ll keep looking.

Dumb Software

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I used TweetDeck as my desktop twitter client.  I think it’s too big (i.e. takes up too much screen space), but it’s the most reliable, feature rich client there is, and it’s easy to use.

I used to be able to drag and drop images into the text input box and it would upload them to TwitPic, after the last update it stopped working.  It’s taken me some trial and error to work out why, and it’s stupid.  If I expand the window so that I can see around 1.8 columns instead of 1, then the text input box says ‘drag links and media here’, however, if I shrink the window so that it’s a more reasonable 1 column wide then it just says ‘drag links here’ and no longer accepts images.

Why the hell does the size of the input box matter?

#tweetdeck fail

Blood sugar

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I took my eye off the target (knowingly, complicit) and my blood sugar control is shot to shit.  The orange line is where I was in 2006, the red line last year, and the blue line is now.  They’re single day snapshots so not perfect, but they’re good enough to kick me up the ass.

Taking my head out of the sand and taking control is actually a good feeling.

Plastic Dwarf Tastic

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Another couple of in-progress images.  The last time I gave up painting I was painting six or seven miniatures at a time, or at least had that many ‘in progress’, switching between them while paint dried, etc.

This time I’m just sticking to one at a time, even if it means long breaks while a particular coat dries, but I’m finding it easier to see the detail.


Fixed (kinda)

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So it turns out it wasn’t anything I did re: the change of themes, it’s a small problem with the Mandigo theme not linking to the theme options page in WordPress v3 correctly.  I can work around it for the time being, although I am hankering for a new look for the site (but still want to keep / use some of the header images).

The new default theme is okay but it’s all so big and I much prefer small sites.  I guess I can edit the theme options and have a play.

Anyway, I finished my little plastic knight, and it’s not a half bad job considering.

Oops

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I changed themes to test out the new default WordPress theme, didn’t like it and then when I switched back to Mandigo, it won’t let me edit the settings 🙂

Please stand by while I try and fix things!

It’s not much but it’s a start

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I’m painting, as the title says, not much, but it’s a start.  Finished off some plastics (from various HeroQuest editions), two orcs and a mummy.  Started a plastic knight (looks like it’s from one of the newer HeroQuest boxes) and done some broad areas on a few ogres (from another HeroQuest expansion).  I don’t feel in the right place mentally to do any high quality metals, I’m just trying to get my brush skills back after yet another long break.

I’m trying to decide if I want to try and master any new skills or if I’m just going to be content to paint like I always used to paint. Eyes, they’re my bane.  Also, my hands are shakier than they used to be, so all fine detail work is increasingly problematic.  I need to decide if I’m going to keep photographing my progress, it mostly depends on how embarrassed I am by my painting efforts at any one time.