Month: December 2019 Page 2 of 3

Musical Advent – 16th Decenber

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On 16th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

Today’s song is a lovely little folk song by the incredible Marian Call from her album Got To Fly which is full of awesome nerdy songs.

Marian is a very talented folk singer who lives in Alaska and this song really is her nerd anthem, and hits out at the way that nerdy culture was chic at the time.

I’ll Still Be a Geek After Nobody Think It’s Chic really sums up my feelings about my nerdery, it’s part of who I am, and always will be.

Also this song is cool cause like with a number of her songs, she uses a typewriter as an instrument!

Goodnight Cookie

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On 15th December 2019

In Blog

This is a post I never expected to be writing so soon, but our darling Cooking Fat, generally just called Cookie, passed away very suddenly on Saturday night.

We think he had a stroke, but it was very rapid and he was gone within a few minutes of it happening, it was quick and hopefully painless.

He once lived with me and Lindsay when he was just 1, and in that time, he got both Misty and Sweep pregnant, we had been told he had his operation, he soon actually had it done.

He then lived with my nana for 10 years, she looked after him on a Christmas when me and Lindsay went away and she decided to keep him as she had fallen in love with him, we let her because she really was enamoured with him.

Then he returned to us after my nana had to go into sheltered accommodation, and he and Megan quickly bonded. He would sleep with her, either cuddled up in her arms, wrapped round her head or on her waist.

They were so very close and he made her feel so much less anxious as he was a very calming presence to her.

He was a bit of an idiot though, even with fresh water for him, he always preferred drinking out of the toilet or from my dirty paint water, he used to constantly get in the way and I fought with him every night about who got to use my pillow.

He also had a unique talent of managing to set his tail on fire, either by deciding to sit on the toaster, climbing over the hobs when we were cooking or sitting in front of gas fireplaces.

But he was so lovely, he had an amazing personality and was friendly to everyone, he would make you fall in love with him within a few minutes, even Paul tolerated him sleeping with him.

It feels like he was snatched away from us, just shortly before he passed, he and I had cuddles and he was his usual bright eyed healthy pain in the arse.

I will miss my pal, and I know it will take a long time for Megan to come to terms with it.

It’s been a rough year for us with pets, first Lorgar, then Argel Tal, Sweepvand Fibally Cookie.

We took him along to a place in Newton Aycliffe this morning to have he cremated, and we should get his ashes back tomorrow, we plan to scatter them in Waldridge Fell.

What I Am Modelling

It’s been a slow week I only did three units, the first two being done at the same time, and those were the Poxwalkers I got from Warhammer 40,000 Conquest.

Next I did a unit of Death Korps of Krieg Infantry for Niki, along with a lost artilleryman.

I am currently working in a squad of Custodian Guard and the Godsworn Hunt.

I have washed the armour of the Custodes and gotten the skin and faces of the Godsworn Hunt painted and have just started work on the first fabrics.

My current painting list looks like this.

  1. Plague Marines & Icon Bearers
  2. Imperial Objectives
  3. Death Korps of Krieg Commissars, Quatermaster, Officio Prefectus Commissar and Severina Raine
  4. Blood Ravens Primaris Lieutenants
  5. Foetid Bloat-Drones
  6. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad
  7. Mollog’s Mob
  8. Legio Custodes Contemptor-Galatus Dreadnought
  9. Ylthari’s Guardians
  10. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad

What I Am Reading

I got through the Sisters of Battle Omnibus and I loved it, Faith and Fire was as good as I remember and Hammer and Anvil was just brilliant, the new story Heart and Soul was also pretty good.

Dammit Jim, get more written for Miriya and Verity!

I have just started Requiem Infernal by Peter Fehervari and so far that’s pretty interesting.

What I Am Playing

I played two games of Warhammer 40k this week, both were on Tuesday, both were 500pts games and I used T’au Empire in both of them.

The first game was against Aaron and his Chaos Space Marines, he had four Greater Possessed, a Chaos Lord and a Venomcrawler.

I lasted to turn 5, but had lost it in turn 2, all I managed to kill was two of the Greater Possessed.

In my second game I played Tristen and his Black Templar’s, and he played the silly list after offering me a sensible list or the silly one.

His army was a Crusader Squad, a Techmarine and a Land Raider Crusader. I quickly killed off his Crusader Squad, but couldn’t finish off the Land Raider as the Techpriest kept healing it.

I lost that one on kill points, he killed three units and I only killed one.

What I Am Backing

Still just Car Wars Sixth Edition, it’s in that plateau now where it’s going up much slower, but we do have a couple more road tiles and another mini added.

What I Am Cooking

I cooked a pizza in the oven I got from the CoOp for lunch on day, so that’s progress right!

What I Am Spending

Along with Lindsay and Megan I bought Ticket to Ride London, because it was only £16 at Game, but other than that not a penny.

Musical Advent – 15th December

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On 15th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

Today is a sad day for for my household, so we need something upbeat to make us feel better.

And for that I turn to Jonathan Coulton and his brilliant song, Code Monkey which is a rocking anthem about dead end programming jobs and much of it applies to any dead end office job I suppose.

Many people love the below video for Code Monkey which it’s made using imagery from the World of Warcraft.

Code Money even made his debut as a comic a few years ago in Code Monkey Saves The World.

Musical Advent – 14th December

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On 14th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

During the Hollywood writers strike of 2007-2008, Joss Whedon, his brothers Zack and Jed along with Maurissa Tancharoen sat down and write the amazing Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

This is a musical web series staring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion in a hilarious internet distributed comedy about an aspiring supervillain, his super hero nemesis and their shared love interest.

It was a huge hit and has left a significant mark on geek culture, and it’s full of so many amazing song, but which one to pick to highlight, well I decided to go with My Freeze Ray which is the the very first song and certainly one of the funniest.

Seriously if you haven’t seen the series, go out and watch it, you won’t regret it.

Musical Advent – 13th December

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On 13th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

Today we have our first repeat artists and its one of mine, Megan and Lindsays favourites The Doubleclicks with their joyous song, Love You Like A Burrito.

Its a lovely song which sums up how love feels like great food, yeah you can tell I am a fat guy can’t you.

I had the pleasure of seeing Laser and Aubrey perform this at WorldCon in Dublin this summer and it was really awesome, the whole room came alive and it was just amazing being there.

Anyway this song is available on the album Dimetrodon which is really really good.

Musical Advent – 12th December

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On 12th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

At this halfway point I want to introduce you to a nerd culture term, shipping, as in relationshiping.

It’s a thing whereby fans put together characters into relationships, usually romantic ones and discuss and write about them.

Often these ships come with nicknames, for example in Harry Potter Harry and Hermione is often called Harmony and Harry and Draco is called Drarry, which itself gives rise to slash, but that’s something for another day.

A popular ship from more recent times has been that between the characters Poe Dameron and Finn from the Star Wars sequel trilogy, this ship is often called Stormpilot and a lot of slash has been written about it.

A favourite group of mine called the Library Bards did a great song about this ship, titled Finn and Poe, it’s a paradoy or a song called Exes and Ohs, which I am not familiar with, but I love this version!

I had the pleasure of seeing this performed live at WorldCon in Dublin this year, and it was absolutely amazing!

It’s from the amazing album Bardcore, which I highly recommend you all go check out.

Musical Advent – 11th December

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On 11th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

Today I want to bring you something from Steven Universe.

For those of you unaware, Steven Universe is a great cartoon from Rebecca Sugar about a team of non-binary alien beings called the Crystal Gems and their little brother Steven.

It’s a wonderful heartwarming coming of age series which address some amazing themes of Steven struggling to come to terms with his powers and his destiny as well as his bridging of two different worlds.

It’s got some great music and this song is sung by the character Garnet, who is voiced by Estelle, and is a great anthem about how two people are stronger than the sum of their parts.

Steven Universe is a lovely show and I highly recommend people watch it, it has an amazing message and it’s also a great show for queer representation too, which is oh so lacking in a lot of shows.

Musical Advent – 10th December

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On 10th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

How about some high culture!

This song by Rachel Bloom, the actress and comedian behind Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which I have recently decided to watch though again, well I say again, I hadn’t seen the fourth season yet.

It’s an ode to Ray Bradbury, a giant amongst speculative fiction writers, and is widely considered to be one of the main people to bring modern science fiction into the popular mainstream. When he was shown this video, he apparently had a good laugh about it.

The song is, extremely sexually explicit, but amazingly funny, and was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, losing out to the Doctor Who double episode, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.

I highly recommend watching this somewhere private because it’s pretty dirty!

Also the album it’s taken from is pretty good too.

Musical Advent – 9th December

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On 9th December 2019

In Blog, Nerdy Music Advent

Graham and Chris will love this one, it’s a track by Ken Lawrence in his nerdcore (that is nerd rap) persona, MC Hawking. The Mills boys couldn’t believe that nerdcore was even a thing, and Graham is a big fan of gangsta rap so I think he will dig this song.

MC Hawking is basically Stephen Hawking as a gangsta rapper, and was in fact quite enjoyed by the great man himself, and he even got Ken to perform a new song live for him, Richard Dawkins and Brian May.

This song is very funny, it’s All My Shootings Be Drivebys, and makes me laugh a lot, in fact the whole album, A Brief History of Rhyme, should be required listening for any nerd!

Starting Christmas Season

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On 8th December 2019

In Blog

Today Lindsay and Megan insisted we put up the Christmas trees, personally I’d rather have left it until next weekend, but I always get overruled on this.

I say trees, because we have two trees, in the office we have an adult grown up tree, and in the den, we have a geeky/nerdy tree.

The adult tree has our oldest collection of decorations on it, but it’s an ever evolving collection, as we add to it every year, these generally until the last few years kept to the red, green, gold theme, but recently whites, woods and even blues have been creeping in.

Something that I insisted on, and Lindsay eventually came to love was that no two decorations on the tree should be the same. I hate trees which are filled with identical decorations, they just feel so impersonal.

Having each decoration be unique has meant that everything on there has a story to tell, for example, a favourite of mine is one of the oldest we own, it came from ASDA about 17 years ago and looks like the derided sculpture called B of the Bang. I like it because of that, it just makes me smile every time we put it on.

There are also a couple of decorations that Lindsay brought home from India, and a bunch now that Megan brought from her parents tree to give it an infusion of her, and since we came together, we have bought decorations together.

The upstairs tree, the nerdy one, has at its core a box of Disney decorations that Lindsay got from her grandparents plus some other ones that we have picked up other the years.

Star Wars has a good representation on this tree, but no Star Trek yet, we have just added , Captain Marvel, and have our eyes in Beymax.

My personal favourite decorations on this tree is a Spider-Man one we picked up a couple of years ago from Poundland and a Stormcast Eternal and Primaris Intercessor I got from Games Workshop a couple of years ago, that I have painted up gold and turned into decorations.

Oh and the tree topper is a Cthulhu stuffy that Megan crocheted, although he is looking a little worse for wear now.

What Am I Painting

The week started with the first of the Death Korps of Krieg Death Riders, finished on late Saturday night, followed by the others on Monday.

I then picked up the Tempestus Scions and their Taurox and got them finished over a couple of days, I needed to do something whilst I sought out mental inspiration for finishing up Ghazghkull Thraka.

I love the Scions and have plans to do an army of them allied with some Sisters of Battle led by an Inquisitor.

With those done I came back to Ghazghkull Thraka and got him finished off for Alexander, and I am quite happy with how he turned out.

I then picked up two Lords of Contagion, and the remaining five Death Riders to paint up and got them finished on Saturday afternoon.

I then painted Zarbag’s Gitz, I am very behind on my Underworlds Warbands and I am going to try and finish the Nightvault ones by the end of the year. So after this I will be doing The Godsworn Hunt and later on in the month Mollog’s Mob and Ylthari’s Guardians.

I am now working on all 20 Poxwalkers I got from Warhammer 40,000 Conquest, but these are being done with Contrast so they won’t take long at all.

My painting queue currently looks like this now, I have sent a Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad back a bit in the schedule, I have quite a bit of them at the moment painted and until I hand over this batch to Niki, I don’t want to try and squeeze more in the box.

  1. The Godsworn Hunt
  2. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad
  3. Plague Marines and Icon Bearer
  4. Custodian Guard
  5. Imperial Objectives
  6. Death Korps of Krieg Commissars and Severina Raine
  7. Blood Ravens Lieutenants
  8. Foetid Bloat-Drones
  9. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad
  10. Mollog’s Mob

What I am Reading

I started with the novella Wreak and Ruin which was an entertaining little yarn, and leaves me desperate for more stories in this series. I think a full novel for Sister Augusta is needed to be honest.

I then read The Crystal Cathedral, which is another young Sister Augusta story, and it was pretty good, but way too short.

At this point I decided to pick up a big book, Sister of Battle: The Omnibus by James Swallow, these were the first stories written about the Sisters of Battle and I have only read the first novel, and that was a long time ago.

So I was looking forward to this and quickly demolished the first story, Red and Black, which was previously only available as an audio drama, but it’s a really good audio drama, and one I think lots of people should listen to.

I am well on my way through Faith and Fire and it’s as enjoyable as the first time I read it, but I have never read Hammer & Anvil before so I am looking forward to that one.

I also listened to a couple of audio books, Spear of the Emperor was really good, not a lot of action but you got a real good story about the chapter and about the experiences of the helots of the Mentors.

Then I listened to The Tranzia Rebellion, I had got up to part 6 when it first came out, but it got put aside for a longer book, I can’t remember which. But it was a decent audio, and I am glad I finished it, a cool old fashioned radio drama.

I just finished listening to Call of Archaon as I am quite behind on Age of Sigmar fiction and I want to start reading and listening to some more and figure getting through The Realmgate Wars will give me a good grounding in the setting.

What I am Playing

On Tuesday night we went to Megan’s parents and we wanted to play Hint and Just One, but because the evening went quite wrong, we ended up just playing a couple of games of Just One, but we did manage to score 11 points in the second game!

What I am Backing

Can’t really afford to back anything else right now, so sticking with Car Wars Sixth Edition for which now my pledge also includes Miniatures Set 3, a Dice Bag, Crew Pack and Linked Weapons in addition to what I had in it last week, other game components continue to be improved as tuning slowly climbs up.

Munchkin Pathfinder 3 arrived with my friend in the US and is now on its way to me, so I look forward to having that in a couple of weeks.

What I am Cooking

I was supposed to cook enchiladas on Thursday night with Megan, but I chickened out.

What I am Spending

Very broke, so apart from a couple of Christmas presents and my Secret Santa’s, I have spent nowt.

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