A risqué one to start us off this year, so much so in fact you can’t even have this song on YouTube cause its too rude!
Eastend Cabaret are a London based duo, and this song just makes me chuckle so much. Its on their 2015 album Perverts.
Look you really need to listen to this song, its just laugh out loud, just not when the bairns are around!!!
This is a bumper two week update due to being generally unwell this past week.
Part of that is probably mental, the car is in the garage, so I am stuck at home, can’t even get to club for a game.
Hopefully the car will be back with us this week, but the repair got delayed by the big storm.
And the bunny is getting better, but it looks like the head tilt will be permanent, which means he will likely need anti-dizziness medication for life plus eye drops.
My PC was a mess, after reinstalling Windows I needed to desperately clean the desk and make it tidier and tackle the cable management, cause that was horrendous.
But a couple of days of pottering around, and it feels and looks a lot better, I still need to replace the desk in the long term and the secondary monitor is starting to show signs of dying.
Not a lot at all this week!
I painted Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Grand Army of the Republic for Star Wars Legion, so yeah Hello There!
I then worked on two units of Skorpekh Destroyers and a trio of Necron Warriors.
After this I finished off my Blackstone Fortress models by painting the Archivist and the Ambull with its Borewyrm Infestations.
I then painted something that I can’t quite talk about yet, but it was a lot of fun to do and I am really looking forward to showing it off eventually.
I did print this Christmas decoration for our geeky tree, it was supposed to have an Enterprise D in the middle, but I ended up taking it out due to having to make it smaller to fit on my printer.
So what’s up next then?
I have mostly been playing Halo 5: Guardians, so I can get caught up on the story before Halo Infinite hits.
I also played a bit of eFootball PES 2021 to get a GamePass quest completed, and boy do I still dislike football games, other than Football Manager.
I went back to Battle Sister, and damn that’s a hard game, the motion sickness for VR is a lot easier to handle now.
I enabled AirLink for the Quest, and untethering myself has absolutely helped a lot.
I tried Battlefield 2042, but I had to return it cause frankly it was a really poor game and just not worth the money.
Frankly Halo Infinite is a lot better and thus I played some more of that, even installing it on my PC.
To add variety to life, I played some Bioshock Infinite, and a bit of the original Far Cry!
Despite owning 5 of the 6 main series games, I have never actually completed a Far Cry before.
The first game stopped working on my PC at the time once I got the level 3, it just refused to load.
And I never picked it up again, but I have now and even made it possible to use an Xbox Controller which is making it a lot more fun.
It’s weird how different it is from the rest of the series.
On Saturday, Paul and Mary came over so we played some games. We started with The Sock Game, me and Mary were on a team together and won that.
Then they played Pandemic whilst I napped, I then rejoined them and we played Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, followed by Unspeakable Words: Deluxe Edition.
On Sunday we played a couple of games of the amazing Just One, followed by a game of Ticket to Ride 10th Anniversary which Paul won!
Not much but I did attempt to test the streaming setup and of course despite the microphone allegedly working in OBS, it in reality wasn’t 🙁
More than I intend this week to be honest.
I bought Kainan’s Reapers for Warhammer Underworlds, which is kind of dangerous because I really like the look of the Bonereapers as an army.
Followed by having to grab a couple of TP-Link Kasa plugs to replace the Nooie plugs that won’t work with Home Assistant or IFTTT.
And I bought these back in the summer, but they only just turned up now.
I did buy a couple of bits of DLC this week for video games. The Aquatics Species Pack for Stellaris, the T’au, Assault Pack and Lord of Skulls for Warhammer 40,000 Gladius.
The Black Friday Steam sale happened, so I picked up Portal and Portal 2 very cheap, never played them before and figured why not try them, cost less than £3 for both of them.
And as I no longer have a DVD drive in my PC I picked up Far Cry and Far Cry 2, as I quite fancy playing them, alongside a dirt cheap copy of Splinter Cell, cause my original Xbox disk is scratched to hell
Oh and I saw a 4k Blu Ray of Star Trek Beyond for £5 on Amazon, so I bought that!
So today we got the news that Paramount has decided to pull Star Trek Discovery from Netflix and force the UK to wait until early 2022 to get season 4.
Well that just sucks balls and I am gonna be clear, I am not gonna wait, I will pirate it, why, because USians can’t help but spoil stuff.
Was the same with series 1 of The Mandalorian, so yeah, so will pirate it, and I will make it clear that this policy makes me extremely unlikely to subscribe to Paramount+ at all and I will pirate subsequent shows.
The golden era of streaming has ended as the market fragments as every company wants a piece of the pie.
But well, I need to dust off my pirate hat once again.
Today I took the old Core 2 Duo that was originally going to be used as a NAS until we discovered that the PC can’t run FreeNAS and I installed Home Assistant on it, running on a virtual machine in Debian.
It’s gonna be a lot of work to configure, but I look forward to the challenge.
I have had to reinstall Windows 11 on my main PC, I wanted to move away from the Dev Channel as I now need stability, but that necessitated a full reinstall, not a huge deal but it’s done now.
Got the PC more or less back to what I want it to be.
I started the week off by painting a Shokkjump Dragsta for my Orks.
I had found my Macrotek Enginseer amongst a load of 40K Adeptus Mechanicus stuff, so I got them built and painted next.
After which I turned my attention to Sigmar finest, Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear & the Celestant Prime.
I got them more or less finished at the same time, but they are such important models I felt they deserved their own posts on Instagram.
I ended up painting them in the traditional Hammers of Sigmar colours, because I really want them to stand out on the tabletop and also stand apart from my Celestial Vindicators, because that’s how important their roles in the army is.
I then started work on Obi-Wan Kenobi for my Grand Army of the Republic force for Star Wars Legions.
So what’s in my painting queue for next week?
Not a thing, but I did listen to the audiobook of Dominion which was quite good, really good plot and lots of cool action.
But of a mix, mostly Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 5.
I did finish Halo 4 and have now started on Halo 5 Guardians.
Also Halo Infinite launched so I have a bit of a play in that.
Not a thing 🙁
I put up the latest battle report for Imperium and that’s about it.
Not a sausage, but I have now confirmed the pledge manager for Avatar: Legends and the shipping and add on costs for Orlog were taken.
For Orlog I ended up adding on the glow in the dark dice, the Valhalla dice set and the linen mat.
Sadly not a thing, I need to change that.
Not a lot as very much broke.
I did purchase the Festival DLC for Tropico 6 from the Humble Store, and Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force on GOG
The last week has been dominated still by sleep issues so not much to say, but I have an appointment with a doctor on Monday about it.
I started off by painting the Abhorrent Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist for my Flesh-Eater Courts.
This now completes that army to 2000 points and completes my resolution for 2021 for Age of Sigmar.
I then built models to ensure my next 20 projects were ready to go and I got that lot finished on Saturday night.
Annoyingly I had to 3D print a couple of bits for this, first off I managed to lose the back of a head for a B1 Bartledroid for Star Wars Legion, so I basically printed off a droids head to harvest the back of it.
And when building an Imperial Knight, I got a miscast part, luckily it was a part that’s very commonly available as an STL because it allows you to magnetise a weapon, so i printed that and now my Warden has a choice of either the chainsword or the fist!
I then painted up a bust that I printed last month of a Death Korps of Krieg Infantryman.
I am currently working on a Shokkjump Dragsta for the Orks, the buggy is finished, just working on the crew now.
Not a sausage, sleep problems are making it a real issue.
A little bit of Forza Horizon 4 started the week to get me in the mood for 5!
I also decided it’s time to use my Oculus Quest seriously, and I got it up and running with my PC properly, playing some Project Cars and Star Wars Squadrons.
I also played Sonic the Hedgehog for the Mega Drive for a play through video which uploaded yesterday.
Of course with Forza Horizon 5 landing on Friday, I played an awful lot of that!
Me and Megan had a game of The Sock Game on Monday, she wasn’t well and it kinda cheered her up before lunch.
Despite her being ill, of course she still won!
Also played a game of Nature Fluxx which I surprisingly won!
I got the latest battle report uploaded in Friday night, but annoyingly there were some sound issues.
The next episode of Edge of Empire is almost finished and should be out tomorrow.
And I put up my play though of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive up on YouTube.
Not a thing right now, nowt has taken my interest.
I made some pulled pork on Sunday which was quite nice, must make that again soon.
Not much, but did buy some new glasses which I pick up tomorrow.
This month was a bust due to illness sadly, but I did finally start my Grand Army of the Republic clones.
I have also brought my painted tally up to 1077 models painted for the year.
I made no progress last month, but the Abhorrent Ghoul King on a Royal Terrorgheist in on my table right now!
Sadly no progress.
This month I painted the Negavolt Cultists, Rogue Psykers, Spindle Drones and Guardian Drones for Blackstone Fortress.
So headed into next month, what’s on my painting queue?
Most of the past fortnight I have been quite unwell, a tummy bug that just refused to budge.
Spent a few days in bed unable to do much of anything including one day where I basically slept for 20 hours.
So the emulation game needs improving, and I have tried to do that by turning my Raspberry Pi kit that I got earlier this week into an emulation console.
Originally when I ordered it, I was thinking of making it a server to run Home Assistant, but I am not quite ready to do that yet, but it is high on the list.
Anyway at first I installed Recallbox, but I couldn’t get on with it and it refused to recognise the DualShock 3 controller I am using temporarily, well I was and then an Xbox controller was freed up, and I much prefer the layout of the Xbox pad.
So I ended up putting Batocera on there, but that refused to connect to the houses Wi-Fi, which was really annoying as Batocera was my first choice to run the system.
So I ended up going with RetroPie, which is a fantastic bit of software and very user configurable, but it’s as user friendly as I wanted it to be.
At the moment I have emulators for the Master System, Mega Drive, Game Gear, Mega CD, 32X, Dreamcast, NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance, Amstrad CPC and PlayStation running and still figuring out to get Amiga CD32 and Neo Geo games running.
The primary intended use is for my nephews to enjoy use of it and play some amazing games from my childhood.
But I am looking forward to being able to play some of these games myself.
Meanwhile downstairs I took a photo of my family of controllers that I have right now!
Not much this week as I have been quite poorly, but I did paint a couple of Legio Custodes Caladius Grav Tanks.
I then moved onto the Phase 1 Clone Troopers for my Grand Army of the Republic.
Not my best work but they look okay for the tabletop.
So what’s coming up next week?
A lack of concentration means nowt 🙁
Other than a three hour stint on Dizzy, I have mostly played Halo Reach and got it completed this Friday.
I have now started on Halo 4, which I never got very far in the last time I played, and I am now further than that.
I found it frustrating and dark, and at the time my setup wasn’t that great. Much more enjoyable to play now, but the Forerunner level was a bit of a chew on.
Also played a few games of Street Fighter Alpha, I seem to be incapable of pulling off the special moves or defeating the final opponent 🙁
I played a lot of Forza Horizon 4, managing to go on an Achievement hunting run on Friday, getting myself a total of 150G in a couple of hours.
I am kind of wanting to get to 32000G by Christmas, so need a few more days like that.
Adeptus Titanicus was played a couple of weeks ago at the club, mostly as an intro game for Graham.
Myself, Lindsay and Megan also played a game off Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese Pizza, which I won, and a game of Love Letter, which Lindsay won on a Friday night.
I have been quite ill these past weeks so things have been slow.
But the next episode of Edge of Empire was published, so that’s good.
I have made a video that’s going out Monday about a couple of odd games for the Master System from Brazil, more because I though that they were weird.
And the next Imperium Battle Report went out as well!
Actually noting right now.
Another week with nowt at all.
Probably too much, I bought a couple of movies to watch on the Xbox, I had some vouchers going spare from the rewards program.
I bought Ultra Street Fighter IV just cause I fancied playing it and I didn’t own it, only cost me £3.99 and I was happy paying it. I want Street Fighter V but I am gonna wait until next month for that.
I did also pick up Aeon’s End because it came on sale at the right price.
And I umm, well I bought an Xbox Series X, managed to get it from EE with a pair of extra Controllers and Assassins Creed Valhalla as an Add to Plan item, which is fantastic.
It’s going to live in the den and will also be used as the households 4k Blu Ray Player, so I picked up a couple of 4K UHD Blu-Rays, The Little Mermaid and Mulan, cause it’s Lindsay and Megan I need to win over to this new format!
Did you know that Virtua Fighter & Street Fighter II got releases on the Master System, well now you do, so how do they look.
For some far better retro gaming content, check out Lady Decade and Sega Lord X.
Here are some specific videos
You can support what I do by doing any of the following:-
Recently, I am so buggered up with Insomnia.
I am following the advice the doctor gave me, so no being in bed unless it’s for sleep, staying up until I am actually tired, no caffeine after 4pm (I am actually quite bad at that one) e and getting up at a set time etc.
The biggest issue I am having is that I love reading in bed, it’s my safe space to read and it’s where I feel most comfortable reading, so my reading has plunged to a record low.
But I am struggling to be asleep before 4am and it’s making my days awful, even when I am so tired I just can’t get to sleep.
I don’t want to end up on sleeping tablets, so I am doing my best to avoid that, but something has to give.
I started the week by painting two units of Stromcast Eternals Judicators armed with Skybolt Bows.
This actually completes all the Stormcast Eternals I have right now, other than Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear, and the Celestant Prime should also be delivered and day now.
I then painted some Orks, specifically five Nobz, a Painboy, Warboss, Gorzag Gitatompa and Nikkit.
After that I painted an infantry squad for the Death Korps of Krieg.
And whilst painting those, I also knocked out the Spindle Drones and Guardian Drones for Blackstone Fortress, which actually completes the original games and the Ascension expansion.
So what’s coming up next week then?
I finished The Dark Avengers: Patriot List by David Guymer, the review for which you can read here.
I have now started on the Zombiecide novel, Last Resort by Josh Reynolds and should have a review if this amazing book out by Thursday.
I did my play through of the 8-Bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog, and posted that up on YouTube.
Decided to continue with doing a retro play through and I am currently playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Master System using Retroarch.
Started that late Monday night, with very frequent saves. I had intended to play a level a night but due to a shitty sleep cycle, I only got a chance ti play again on Friday night.
I also started streaming again, and had a very early morning Bioshock Infinite stream on Thursday, which was uploaded to YouTube on Friday.
I have got the old PC that used to belong to Geoff set up to run some old games via emulation, it is however a lot lot older than we thought it was and the GPU is not the GTX 750 that Geoff was told it was, but rather a GT210, which is significantly worse.
I have also played a little bit of Back 4 Blood, which has been rather enjoyable, and I am continuing to play Halo Reach.
Sadly none, but I am playing Adeptus Titanicus tonight with Graham for an Intro game!
As in a previous section I posted the video of my 8-Bit Sonic the Hedgehog play through and the sequels play through.
In regards to the YouTube stuff, I made it to 75 subscribers on Monday, which is amazing cause I was on like 30 something a few months ago, and at time of writing, I am now at 88 subscribers which is mind blowing!
I am not trying to become some kind of popular content creator, I just feel like there is stuff I want to do for my own enjoyment. I have zero interest in appeasing the algorithm, I just want to make content that I personally want to see myself.
So my current focus is on the battle reports in the casual narrative style, and retro video game playthroughs. And any Twitch video game playthroughs will get added to that as well.
Sadly Munchkin Mayhem was cancelled, so right now I am not backing anything.
Not a good week, other than beans on toast, nowt.
I feel like I am finally in a place where I can restore this section of the blog, but I may not share any hauls quite as frequently.
This week was subdued in terms of spending initially, I bought myself the Play Pink Bundle on Humble Bundle, I had most of what’s in the bundle, but what I didn’t have saved me plenty of money still.
And Steam Codes for most other stuff is being given to friends, who don’t have them.
I also bought a couple of video games in addition to the bundle.
I bought Far Cry 6, well I got it dirt cheap from a friend who works at Ubisoft. I also grabbed Alan Wake Remastered with a voucher for the Epic Games Store and the Premium Add-Ons Bundle for Forza Horizon 5.
I also kinda spent some money on a Raspberry Pi kit, I am enjoying old games and I want to add a emulation machine in the den, that’s easily transported around. Along with a USB Bluetooth dongle so I can link the DualShock 3 Controllers to it.
This week I had my birthday, and it wasn’t what I hoped for.
My sister in laws cat went missing, and I have some medical stuff to deal with.
So Fosfos, Emma’s cat went missing on Sunday night and it’s not like her to wander, so Monday Emma was busy leafleting in Blyth where she lives.
Tuesday, Lindsay and Megan went up to help her, but she was still no where to be found, thankfully she returned home at 2am Tuesday and woke up Emma for cuddles.
So that was a huge relief.
Tuesday night we went out for Nando’s for my birthday, which I really enjoyed, haven’t had a Nando’s since the day before the first lockdown and I really enjoyed it.
Present wise, Lindsay and Megan bought me the Evil Comes Prepared expansion for Disney Villainous and the Orruk Warclans Battletome, and I bought myself the Stormcast Eternals Battletome and the Charadon terrain box.
At the weekend we were meant to have some of our nephews staying but Gandalf our arsehole of a rabbit developed an ear infection, so he had to be rushed to the vets and needs hand feeding for a bit, so that was not a good environment for the boys to stay over as they are very active.
He is slowly getting better, but he really does fight us when it comes time to give him his medication.
I started off by painting the Negavolt Cultists and Rogue Psykers for Blackstone Fortress.
The Rogue Psykers were finished first.
Followed by the Negavolt Cultists.
I then painted up three Assault Intercessors and a Primaris Captain from Imperium.
After which I turned my attention to two squads of Stormcast Eternals Judicators for the Celestial Vindicators.
So what’s planned for next week then?
Actually haven’t read a thing all week 🙁
Played a lot more Halo 3: ODST and got that finished and have now started on Halo Reach!
I also played through Sonic the Hedgehog on the Game Gear, emulated via Retroarch and have a play through video of that uploading tomorrow.
On my birthday we played a game of Ticket to Ride: London, and I was three points off wining, but I am happy I didn’t come last again!
On Sunday me and Lindsay had a game off Ticket to Ride: Germany using her new Play Pink train set. And surprisingly I won!
After that Megan joined us to play a game of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, and we managed to close all four gates and save the world from the terror of the Old Ones!
I published a Warhammer 40K Battle Report of my Death Guard taking on Megans Orks, which you can see below.
Munchkin Mayhem looks amazing, and I have decided to back it, cause well I love Munchkin.
So I went in on the YOU GOT GAME! level, it’s only £12 or so, but I really think it could be a cool game.
Once again, bugger all 🙁
On Thursday #Cans happened, for those not from Newcastle upon Tyne, this was the end of a long running saga, last nearly two years in which the local football club, Newcastle United, my team, were sold.
To give some background, for the past 14 years the club has been owned by Mike Ashley of Sports Direct fame, under whose watch, we have seen the lowest recorded attendances at the stadium since the formation of the Premier League and its expansion, two of the clubs six relegations, and the lowest net investment of any club in its team in Premier League history.
He was not a popular man, he was aloof, rarely spent any money on the team and say an overall decline in all aspects of the club.
To put it bluntly, the squad is threadbare with almost no injury cover, the academy is all but decimated, the training facilities need to be demolished and rebuilt they are in such bad contrition and St James’ Park is Felapp dated and in serious need of maintenance.
The club has been a zombie of the game and in perpetual crisis, within a few months of his arrival, he had sacked two managers and alienated club legends like Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer.
Our ground has become not only potentially the tattiest ground in English football, but has basically become a cheap advertising board for Sports Direct.
So to summarise, the club is glad to see the back of this awful man, and I honestly hope he never sets foot in the city again.
However there is a big but, our new owners are a consortium of the Reuben brothers, who are some of Britains richest men and have actually been investing a lot in the city these past few years. One of the sons, Jamie will sit on the board.
Amanda Stanley owns another 10% and she has been trying to buy the club since early 2017 have fronted a number of bids and put together a few consortiums to try and prise the club out of Ashley’s hands.
She was also a broker in the sale of Manchester City so she has a track record of football wheeling and dealing. And she is relocating her main residence from Dubai to Newcastle so she can be on hand to run the club.
The remaining 80% is owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, a state owned investment group that invests the counties oil profits.
That makes us the richest club in the world.
But it also means we are owned by a regime which restricts the lives of women, murders journalists and LGBT folx, and routinely suppressed Shia Muslims and Baha’is.
And of course there is the involvement in Yemen, which to be honest is such a bloody complex situation with no actual good guys that I am not even going to try and explain that one.
We are being used to sports wash, you would have to be a fool to not see that, but frankly, we fans get little choice in the matter.
Are they the idea owners, of course not, but when we look at who else has been allowed to own Premier League clubs, it would be hypocritical to make a special case for Saudi Arabia, after all Manchester City has been own by people with questionable human rights records twice and are also used to sports wash.
The crack is, we fans have a chance to use our club to show the Saudis that they need to change how they do things at home, we can protest their crap during games with chants and signs, and these will be broadcast into the Kingdom for all their citizens to see, and I highly doubt beIN will be in any mood to censor that.
Look I know it’s not perfect, but right now, I am glad to see the back of Ashley, as for the Saudis, that’s something we have to figure out, the club lost its soul long ago, for all the bad they have done, The KSA has given us that back.
I am conflicted, I doubt it will ever sit easy with me, but my club is more than the ground, players, infrastructure and owners, it’s the fans, and we must remember that owners come and go, but the fans are what make the club.
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