Category: Blog Page 27 of 49

Sometimes, It Doesn’t Hurt To Visit An Old Favourite

On Friday I completed BioShock, it meant I played an extra 3 1/2 hours, but I really wanted to get it finished because I was really enjoying it!

I was initially worried when going back to it, that I would actually end up having my good memories tainted if it didn’t stand up to modern games.

Well my fears were unfounded, it was just as good as the first time round, and the remastered version was amazing, it felt and looked exactly the same, but sharper and better looking.

So glad I picked it up in the summer, and oh my god that moment in Andrew Ryan’s office!

Next week I start on BioShock 2, looking forward to that as I only played it through once back in the day.

I will admit that I really missed achievements, it’s a big reason I love Xbox, that sense of, well achievement.

The BioShock collection is fantastic and I am so glad it’s in my collection, even better it has BioShock Infinite which I never got the chance to okay before!

If you want to watch me play it though in its entirety, you can follow this link to a playlist with all the video in it.

But I don’t recommend that, I am a terrible gamer!

Lighting Changes

Seeing as the studio is now my main home, the inability to just go up and down stairs when I want will do that, I am focusing on making it a comfortable and nice environment for me.

One thing I have been struggling with lately is eyestrain, I am not sure if it’s the fact I am a couple of months overdue for an eye test or that I am just getting older.

But it’s annoying and I have moved some LED strips around to attach one to the rear of the monitor and the upstairs TV.

I got the one fitted to the monitor on Monday, it’s got a Zigbee controller so interacts with the Hue system perfectly, which is nice.

Megan has also contributed and has bought a pair of Trådfri bulbs from IKEA for the studio to replace the simple white bulbs we currently use to illuminate the painting area.

Again these use the Zigbee protocol so will be controllable via the Hue Bridge and be able to be controlled by Screenbloom for some interesting effects in the office.

I am giving some serious thought to some more cosmetic lighting in the office, a strip under the rim of the desk for example, just stuff to make the place look cooler, and absolutely a cinema light box!

What I Am Modelling

Took a few days but I managed to paint Rippa’s Snarlfangs for Uneerworlds.

This means I am 50% if the way though the Unserworlds warbands now.

I then moved on to the T’au KV128 Stormsurge to complete my T’au Empire list for my resolution.

The airbrushing of the armour wasn’t perfect so I had to take the brush just to smooth a few bits out.

This completes 2000 points of T’au Empire painted in 2020!

I have now started on an Ork Megatrakk Scrapjet.


I found this one took a while to do, I dunno I guess it’s cause my mind has been a million miles away the past few days.

So what’s coming up next in my painting queue?

  1. Zone Mortalis Terrain
  2. Ork Megatrakk Scrapjet
  3. Death Korps of Krieg Death Riders x 10
  4. Nurgle Blood Bowl Team x 13
  5. Ork Meganobz x 3
  6. Secret Heresy Project Unit
  7. The Wurmspat & Hogthorns Mantrappers
  8. Blood Ravens Intercessors with Assaukt Bolt Rifles x 10
  9. Escher Gang x 10
  10. Blood Ravens Stormhawk Interceptor

What I Am Reading

I started on The Harrowing of Doom by David Annandale.

Quite good so far and I will update you hopefully soon.

What I Am Playing

As mentioned above, on Friday I finished off BioShock, all those video are now uploaded to YouTube.

The last two parts were played using the Switch Pro Controller which is a great piece of kit and really did help make the experience that much better.

What I Am Backing

Just backing Wyrd Science magazine which is due to find this week.

What I Am Cooking

No cooking from me this week I am afraid, simply too much pain to even attempt it.


Musical Advent 2020 – December 7th – Stuck To You – Josh Ritter

A hidden track on his self-titled debut album, Stuck To You is a great little song from Americana songwriter Josh Ritter.

Its also called the Science Song and compares ones love for another person to scientific prinicples.

I really love this song and you can hear within it Josh’s influences, artists like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

Anyway give it a listen, its really worth it.



Musical Advent 2020 – December 6th – I’m Your Moon – Jonathan Coulton

This sweet song is about the reclassification of Pluto from a planet to a Plutoid, and is from the point of view of Charon.

It talks about their unusual orbit and how they always face each other.

This really is a lovely little love song and was part of Jonathan Coultons Thing a Week project back in 2006.


Musical Advent 2020 – December 5th – Cartoon Heroes – Aqua

If you think the only thing Aqua did was Barbie Girl, then think again, this nerdy classic is from their second album, Aquarius.

The video was one of the most expensive produced ever at the time, and its quite a classic.

Just pure crazy late 90s europop, and sometimes that’s what you need.


Musical Advent 2020 – December 4th – First World Problems – MC Frontalot

Web designer Damian Hess, better known as Nerdcore pioneer MC Frontalot who has been around in nerdy music for a very very long time.

In this song he focues on how we get pissed about the little things, and also get a little bit political too. Plus the video is very very good.


Musical Advent 2020 – December 3rd – Terminally Seventeen – Eben Brooks

Eben Brooks is a kickass filk artist who has proclaimed himself the superhero of San Diegio.

I picked this song for the advent, not only because it is such a positive representation of polyamory, but because I think it captures me, and I am someone who has never mentally aged beyond seventeen.

At least I don’t think I have!


The Final Form

So yeah this week, I did more desk reorganisation and I think this is the form I am happy with.

Megan has been pestering me for weeks to reorganise my desk, specifically by getting rid of my Citadel Painting Tray.

Well I followed her advice and I have to say, she was right, so now I have a hit more space on the desk and a permanent home for the Switch dock.

Plus it really does look a lot tidier, and you can see the RGB effects from the speakers a lot better.

I did also reconfigure the setup for the speakers, because the Xbox One and Switch connect to the monitor via HDMI, they bypassed the speakers. Which meant that I only had the option of hearing them through the crappy inbuilt speakers or by plugging in a headset to the monitor.

So what I did was grab a 3.5mm cable and plug the monitors headphone socket into the 3.5mm socket in the speakers.

I moved the cable organiser from the side of the desk and put it on the back, this now holds the 3.5mm extension from the PC, and a 3.5 mm extension that heads to the side of the desk to keep the headphone cable from trailing over the desk.

So somehow trying to reduce wires and faff under the desk, I actually added more wires!

I am still trying to figure out how to be able to listen to the music from Pretzel when I stream and feed it all though the Mixer, so far the solution involves physically feeding the music through an audio cable from the PC to the mixer. Which is not how I want to do it, the mixer is a USB one, I can hear the music through the headphones, but it just won’t record in OBS, quite frustrating and I just can’t quite figure out what’s going wrong.

Sunday was spent pottering about mostly, I rerouted a few cables around the back of the desk to make the whole setup look tidier.

On Wednesday I put in place a monitor stand which would allow me to slip the keyboard underneath it when not in use. And I also swapped the HDMI switch for one with a remote and extended IR receiver so that I could locate the box under the desk.

What I Am Modelling

The first things I painted this week were a squad of Intercessors and Inceptors for my Blood Ravens.

The Inceptors are armed with Plasma Exterminators and the Intercessors are armed with Stalker Bolt Rifles.

These complete my New Years resolution to paint all of my Blood Ravens that I owned on the 1st January.

It’s been a long time since I bought and built these, I got them when they were first released in fact.

And for the longest time I had so much Blood Ravens stuff sitting in a box unpainted, but now everything I had at the start of the year is done.

The Inceptors were finished first on Thursday night and the Intercessors were finished on Friday.

All I have outstanding for them is the Indomitus box, a set of Intercessors I added earlier in the year and the Terminator Chaplain and Librarian that got released this year, oh and a Stormhawk Interceptor.

I then moved on to a squad of Death Korps of Krieg Grenadiers for Niki, along with two Heavy Flamer teams.

Whilst painting them, I also painted the Azyrite Belltower from Mortal Realms to add to the city of Esasa.

On Saturday night I finished my entry for Armies on Parade, you can read my blog post here about it.

Once done with them I got Rippa’s Snarlfangs to the table and started work on these bad boys.

At the same time, I started work on the last Nighthaunt from Soul Wars, that’s the Grimghast Reapers and Glaivewraith Stalkers plus Crawlocke the Jailor.

I did them them finished, which means I have completed all of the models from both Age of Sigmar starter sets now.


So what’s on my painting plan next the.

  1. Zone Mortalis Terrain
  2. Rippa’s Snarlfangs
  3. T’au KV128 Stormsurge
  4. Ork Megatrakk Scrapjet
  5. Death Korps of Krieg Death Riders x 10
  6. Nurgle Blood Bowl Team x 13
  7. Ork Meganobz x 3
  8. Secret Heresy Project Unit
  9. The Wurmspat & Hogthorns Mantrappers
  10. Blood Ravens Intercessors with Assault Bolt Rifles

What I Am Reading

I read The Fractured Void by Tim Pratt and I will be getting a review up in the next couple of days.

What I Am Playing

On Friday I did four hours of BioShock, I am getting on well with the game and probably will be finished in a couple of weeks.

I was supposed to stream The Witcher III on Monday but Megan was expecting a phone call from the doctors and was very nervous, so she asked me to hang out with her instead.

On Friday night I tried Among Us for the first time, which was a lot of fun, although I kept getting voted off even though I wasn’t an Imposter!

I had a couple of games of Apex Legends on Saturday to try and test out how my new setup would work for streaming more intensive games, the bigger monitor with higher refresh rates is pretty taxing on my modest GPU.

First off I ran a new Heaven benchmark, whioch gave me a score of 3725, which is lower than what I got when I was running at 720i, but that’s expected I suppose.

Before the GPU I was getting and FPS of 52.8, with the GPU I got up to 217.0, but now with the bigger screen I am getting 147.9, but that’s still pretty good I think.

Anyway here are the videos of the live streams.

On Tuesday I played a single two hour session of The Witcher III.

And I also played a little bit of Star Wars: Squadrons that night as well

What I Am Backing

I am back Wyrd Science on Kickstarter, it’s got some articles in it by friends, and I am happy to jump in on this because I really want it to fund.

What I Am Cooking

On Thursday I made our teas a Colcannon Cottage Pie, which was really nice.

I want to try it again but with lamb instead so it’s a shepard’s pie and throw in some marrowfat peas. I think that this is a dish I would cook for nibbling as it’s jam packed full of veg.

Then on Friday I cooked again, this time I made Mongolian Glazed Chicken Wings, served with sides of Garlic Spinach in Chicken Broth, and a Chinese Cucumber Salad.

That wiped me out, I shan’t be cooking two nights in a row again.

And tonight I helped Lindsay cook Korean Beef Tacos with Pickled Cucumber and Sriracha Mayo.


Musical Advent 2020 – December 2nd – Dragostea Din Tei – O-Zone

How could we not include this hit by the Moldovas most famous export O-Zone!

Made into a geeky classic thanks to the Numa Numa video by Gary Brolsmas, its kinda been a classic on nerdy playlists ever since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmtzQCSh6xk

And why not its a bouncy classic, lots of fun and just really gets you dancing.

I mean its just so much fun!!!


Musical Advent 2020 – December 1st – This Is My Jam – The Doubleclicks

Since last years musical advent was such a huge sucess, I think its only right to bring it back this year!

So lets start with one that got cut from last years list, but only because I ran out of days, plus the artists had already been featured a few times!

I give to you today, This is My Jam by The Doubleclicks, a song which is really about loving things and being cool with people loving different things.

Take consoles, I am absolutely on team Xbox, but in no way do I look down on folks who play Playstation, that’s simply what they prefer. For me its all about the controller, Sony have never made a controller that I have found comfortable to use for myself. Plus I love Game Pass.

But if you like Playstation thats awesome too, I have no reason to hate on anyone who likes what they like, and I wish other people would act the same. We all like different things, and as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says

Behold a beautiful garden full of flowers, shrubs, and trees. Each flower has a different charm, a peculiar beauty, its own delicious perfume and beautiful colour. The trees too, how varied are they in size, in growth, in foliage—and what different fruits they bear! Yet all these flowers, shrubs and trees spring from the self-same earth, the same sun shines upon them and the same clouds give them rain.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá – Paris Talks

November Resolutions Update

I have this month I ended with 1295 minis painted so far.

With one month to go I am very interested to see how many will be the total for 2020.

But what about the rest of my resolutions?

Finish The Blood Ravens I Own on 1st January – Completed

I managed to finish the last two units for the Blood Ravens, a squad of Intercessors with Stalker Bolt Rifles and some Inceptors.

So that’s a lot of units painted this year, but the box looks much better with mostly painted units in it.

I actually have some more stuff left to paint for them that I awaited this year, so let’s see if I can get a bit more of this done before 2021!

Paint 2000 Points of Stormcast Eternals – Complete

This month I completed the list, with the painting of the six Gryph-Hounds and the Lord-Aquilor.

Really happy with this and right now all I have left to paint is two trips of Vanguard-Palladors.

Paint 2000 Points of T’au – 79.9% Complete

I completed the T’au Barracuda which leaves me with just the Stormsurge to paint for the list.

Complete 2000 Points of Orks – 15.25% Complete

This is being abandoned, Megan has specifically asked me if painting our Orks can be a joint project for next year, so I am reluctantly abandoning this resolution.

Rebase the Orks

I really need to get in with this, must do it this month!

Completed Resolutions

  • Paint 867 Models
  • Rebase the Blood Ravens
  • Finish the Death Guard
  • Paint Mortarion for Everchosen

So what’s on my painting list as we head into December

  1. Zone Mortalis Terrain
  2. Rippa’s Snarlfangs
  3. T’au KV128 Stormsurge
  4. Ork Megatrakk Scrapjet
  5. Nighthaunt Grimghast Reapers x 4, Glaivewraith Stalkers x 5 & Crawlocke the Jailer
  6. Death Korps of Krieg Death Riders x 10
  7. Nurgle Blood Bowl Team
  8. Ork Meganobz x 3
  9. Secret Heresy Project Unit
  10. The Wurmspat & Hogthorns Mantrappwrs

Page 27 of 49

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