This means I am now on 2470 points before the next edition drops!
Still to finish I have a couple of units of Squig Hoppers, some Squig Herds, a Dankhol Troggoth, Skragrott the Loonking and some Rockgut Troggoths.
Get My Drukhari To 2000 Points – 58% Complete
No progress, need to buy some more units, I have some more Helions and Reavers to paint, but that’s it right now.
Want some Wracks, but having issues getting them.
Complete My Video Game Geek Hardcore 10! – 60% Complete
This month I completed Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster, it’s one of the alternative three, so will only count at the end of the year if my main ten aren’t done
This week has been much of a muchness, there isn’t much going on at all
Just waiting for WorldCon I guess and a the Heresy event
Got to get a shift on with a few things, but this week has just been meh
My depression is getting kinda bad, but I have a project of refurbing the studio to get on with
What I Am Modelling
I started out with the Blade Champion for the Custodes, who will do double duty, being in both the 40K Combat Patrol and being a Shield Captain in Heresy.
To start a long awaited studio refurbishment project, I bought the first of a few paint racks we are going to need from TT Combat, this is a rack to hold 72 Citadel pots.
The plan is to have 3 of these plus a rack for 72 dropper bottles.
I also bought a 20m Cat 8 cable to route data to the server and Lindsay’s desk without creating a trip hazard!
Now because this was delayed by 24 hours, Amazon gave me a £10 gift card to compensate me, it was like £8.
So I used this to buy a network switch for the studio, this will go on the end of the 20m cable and then be split into Lindsay work laptop and the server.
Since Insulationgate last October, at least one wall in every room of the house has needed a coat of paint.
And yeah it’s a bit depressing, due to disagreements between the insulation contractors, the landlord and the government, we decided to cut them all out and decorate ourselves.
It’s not that we couldn’t have just waited for them to sort it out, it’s more, we want to avoid massive disruption, so we are doing this ourselves at our own pace.
Megans room is the first to be done, we had to start with a mist coat, which was very runny.
That was done on the Monday, two coats overall.
The on Tuesday, we did three coats of Brilliant White, yeah it’s full, but it’s what the rest of the rooms are painted. When you rent it’s often easier to keep what the landlord had, so we don’t need to redecorate too much when we eventually move out.
It took three coats, but we got there in the end.
The next room getting done is mine and Lindsay’s bedroom and we may at the same time do the ceiling in my studio.
The studio is going to get a bit of a refurb at the same time, we are adding the 3D printer there, so taking the time to change a few things up, especially now that Lindsay works up there and I will never be using the gaming table again as a result.
So yeah that’s about it, gonna do Lindsay’s room next week, and that will be fun!
What I Am Modelling
I started off with the Von Ryan’s Leapers for the Tyranid’s Combat Patrol
And I have a box full of Stormcast stuff that’s never been touched, so I am thinking of painting them up as Hallowed Knights, I already have Gardus Steel Soul painted up.
So I used the Gamer Grass base I got from the UK Game Expo to paint up this test model, which I am rather happy with
I spent the other week at the UK Games Expo as a volunteer on IT and it was a knackering but amazing few days.
I really enjoyed it and I will absolutely being doing it again next year if they will have me, but I do have to be more realistic about my physical abilities and perhaps I need a job with more sitting down.
My journey to Birmingham was pretty bad, we got continually stuck in traffic, including being in the middle of a bunch of cars headed to a funeral that were following a marching band.
And finally the bus broke down as we left Manchester, and we had to wait over an hour for a replacement, so all in all it was a typical MegaBus journey!
I didn’t get to play many games, but the one that stood out to me was Samurai, but its long out of print, so I will be buying Pollen instead which is in print, if a little expensive.
There were a few cool things that peaked my interest, the DRPA Case and other stuff from Tabletop Tech, the amazing Colour Forge, TT Combat and their Strike Team Commander, Catalyst had Battletech which had me all nostalgic, and Gamer Grass had some amazing stuff as well.
Next year I need to take more notes to give a fuller report!
What I Am Modelling
On my return I hit the Chaos Space Marine Legionnaires of the True Sons
I got a couple of games of 40K in at the weekend, playing both Dale and Craig in the 40K league, and if I don’t win the wooden spoon I will be peeved!!!
Posting this weeks post early because today I am off to the UK Games Expo, an event I love to do.
This year, as my Asmodee contract ended, I am volunteering directly with the Expo itself, my job is being split between IT and the Bring and Buy.
Most of my time will be spent setting up the IT equipment to run the expo and a few hours spent helping in the Bring and Buy.
I am going by Megabus from Middlesbrough to Birmingham via Manchester!
Firstly Lindsay took me to ASDA for lunch, would have preferred Tesco, but they don’t go back to normal hours until Monday, but I grabbed a wrap and energy drink, plus a bottle of coke for the coach, and then we drove to Boro where I hopped on to the bus and here we are.
The Megabus is certainly better than I remember, more legroom and even a plug socket for my Steam Deck, not that it worked, but the thought counts right!
What I Am Modelling
I started out with some Blood Angels, painting first a Terminator Captain
So there is going to be an election, I don’t have much to say on the matter.
But get to know your candidates and vote for the person you think would do best for your area.
But what I would like to say is that right now, the UK is broken, schools are falling apart due to dodgy concrete, the roads are full of potholes, rent is stupidly high, the cost of living is out of control and things are just broken.
So with that in mind, I think we need to make a choice on who we think is best placed to fix whats gone wrong over the past few years.
What I Am Modelling
I started out with a Mega Boss on Maw-Krusha to join my Ironjawz
I then painted up some Glaivewraith Stalkers I had sitting in a box, they were in a weird state, a bit of disreppair, no idea how I came into ownership of them, but I didn’t build them, so there was a bit of work involved, but they give me a chance to try out some new rust techniques.
I had an Amazon voucher from a redund, so I grabbed Bayonetta 3 for the Switch, just need to hunt down a copy of the second game without being ripped off now!
At the minute my servers files are all over the place, we have 13TB of space but the files are spread out randomly with some films and TV series on each drive, audio books split into 3 folders, 8 different book folders and documentaries and kids stuff spread out all over the shop!
So we are struggling with managing what’s where, and thus, we decided to expand with another 4TB of space, by adding this drive from Amazon to it
So right now I have all the films transferring into this, which should mostly fill it, the last folder is currently transferring and will need a little over 20 hours to complete the move!
Then all TV Series will be moved to the 6TB drive, and other stuff, like documentaries, kids, concerts, standup, anime etc, will move on to the original 4TB drive.
Music has already been transferred to its own dedicated 1TB drive which it’s nowhere near filling as I have still transferred barely anything of our music collection over!
That will leave a 2TB drive, which is going to store things like books, comics for which I intend to install Kavita in an attempt to do for books what AudioBookShelf is doing for audio books.
So to summarise what we have right now is
4TB HDD – Movies
6TB HDD & 1TB HDD – TV Series
1TB HDD – Music
4TB HDD – Other Media (Anime/Audiobooks/Documentaries/Kids etc)
2TB – Books/Comics
The last stuff being transferred is the final TV Series stuff from the original 4TB HDD to the 6TB HDD
The process is allowing me to do some long overdue data hygiene as well!
Long term a dedicated device for the server will happen, with bigger hard drives running in RAID and offering NAS functions, but that’s gonna happen after I decide what to do about upgrading my PC next.
I am torn between replacing the mobo, CPU and RAM and moving to an AM5 CPU, or upgrading either the GPU to a 4070 Super or perhaps even just the CPU to a 5800X3D, just got to figure out what’s gonna give the best result for my meagre £s
What I Am Modelling
I started with an Aleguzzler Gargant for the Gloomspite Gitz.
Lindsay and Megan wanted a better way to use Apple Fitness +, so we got an old and cheap, Apple TV HD, in cosmetically bad condition (but works great) from CEX
As many of you know, I am a diagnosed AuDHD person and one of the things that benefits me, is a visual list of what I need to do, but well, paper isn’t working and we have been looking for a more techy solution for a while.
We were looking at a screen just showing a .txt file for my to do list, and I spoke to Paul about it on Friday, but thinking, hey someone must have done this before, so I googled it and found a few things that would do the job.
I saw the MagicMirror 2 software, but it just wasn’t going to work due to the issues adding modules, needing to be done via terminal and I just don’t have the spoons for it right now.
So instead we are going with DAKboard, which isn’t open source and less customisable, but does the job really well.
Initially I was going to use a TV we had lying around, but well, there was an accident 🙁
So I turned to the old monitor I used for my second screen, and well, its not as good, but its done ok.
So I downloaded the DAKboard software and installed it to the SD card, after a few false starts due to the issues with a counterfeit card I got from Amazon.
I then had to wire up some new extension cables to power it, plus move a set of sockets from behind the bookcase to use with the hoover!
Had to order some specific length cables for the monitor power and the Micro HDMI to DVI needs, but now they are in, it looks a lot cleaner and is perfect for our use case
I backed a 3D Printing project, the Sci-Fi Outpost – PAY WHAT YOU WANT, which has now completed its funding cycle, and will hopefully soon deliver me some cool STLs!
What I Am Spending
I bought the Sisters of Silence I need for the first Custodes Combat Patrol, along with some paints
Last night myself, Lindsay & Megan went to the cinema to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and I loved it.
Look I know it gets a lot of hated but it has always had, and always will, held a special place for me.
First up, it was the very first “new” Star Wars I ever saw in the cinema, ok I saw the Special Editions when they were released, but they don’t count cause they weren’t “new”.
And sitting in the cinema in Ipswich with my friends all cosplaying characters, the moment the fanfare hits, was a special moment, and it was so exciting, we waited months, counting down the days, consuming as much as the early Internet reported about it, and frankly we weren’t disappointed.
I know it’s not the strongest of the movies, but if you see it for what it is, a kids film, a film made for kids to enjoy then it’s far better and more enjoyable.
It just feels like everything about it worked for me, the soundtrack is beyond epic, literally one of my favourite movie soundtracks of all time, the slow transformation of Anakins theme into the slow tease of the Imperial March, and of course Dual of the Fates, just hits hard!
The special effects might have the odd bit of roughness these days, just in one or two areas where stuff is composited, but they still hold up, the CGI is of a very high standard and the brilliance of the physical effects works so well.
The costumes are all amazing, Queen Amidala’s outfits are so extra, so extravagant and over the top, they just make her character feel so regal. Also a fun game is trying to guess when she is Kiera Knightly playing Sabé pretending to be her, and when it’s Natalie Portman. Also in the comics, Sabé has an interesting story after the Revenge of the Sith.
My favourite part though is how the lightsaber fights were improved upon, in the original trilogy, they were kind of static and a bit stiff, but since The Phantom Menace they have been elevated into real feats of athleticism with jumps and intense fighting.
Look I know it’s not a popular film in the series, but I will always enjoy watching it, and 25 years has not made it less special, if anything it’s made it more special, because I will always have a massive grin on my face when Darth Maul activates his dual bladed lightsabers.
Plus let’s not forget, the prequel era has given us some of Star Wars best media, The Clone Wars, Rebels and The Bad Batch are some of the best stuff ever made for the franchise.
Anyway, don’t at me, cause I am not gonna change my mind on this one!
