Deep Space Nine is by far my favourite Star Trek, and I have been waiting a while to rewatch it as Megan as been wanting to watch it and she and Lindsay were still making their way though The Next Generation.
But the other week they finally finished and we have now started Deep Space Nine, getting on average four episodes watched a week.
We just finished Vortex, I know the first season was a little uneven, but it’s very enjoyable none the less as you can see the beginnings of what eventually grows into what is in my opinion the deepest and richest of all of the Trek series.
By staying in one place, the show was able to actually really fully develop not only the core cast, but a greater number of supporting characters who contributed to the depth of the setting. I mean the journey of characters like Rom was so fantastic, and very rewarding.
Of course it really starts to kick off in season 3, and will take some time to get there, but it’s just a case of waiting for that!
We did get Move Along Home, which was a very bad episode, but still lots of classics to come.
Graphics Card Aquired
With the impending lockdown I threw caution to the wind and bought a graphics card.
Specifically I got a EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC Black Gaming. I managed to snag it for £217 which was pretty good considering it’s normally £269.99.
Ok to be fair it’s B-Stock, but I am not bothered with this card being pleasuring on the eye physically.
I was getting myself very tempted by an RTX 2060 but, looking at some bottleneck calculations I was gonna run into some issues with my current processor, hence scaling back on the card.
On Sunday my PC was doing a restart so I figured then was as good a time as any to install the PCI-e power cable to get it ready, so that was done, and now all I need to do is wait for the card to arrive on Wednesday and slot it in!
Next thing on the list is a shelf for the keyboard, followed by a keyboard and then some new monitors to take advantage of the graphics card.
What I Am Modelling
I started the week by building and priming my next 10 projects, including my next Underworlds warbands.
I then cracked on with the T’au Empire Strike Team, getting them finished on Tuesday night.
The flavours are great, not too in your face and they certainly don’t taste as harsh as the stuff that comes in cans.
I think I will be ordering another shaker for Megan to use as she wants to have drinks now and then, although she wants one from Sneak because she likes bunnies!
Last week I ordered a combination HDMI switch and extractor to improve my streams, particularly for the Switch.
I got it installed in place and for part 4 of my Witcher III stream on Tuesday and it did make a noticeable improvement.
I did have to order a short 3.5mm extension cable to make sure it was all tidy when using it and I didn’t have wires all over the place, but it works pretty well.
I attached it to the wall just below my monitor using some Velcro strips, and it has a remote control allowing me to switch between inputs very easily.
My new Xbox Controller arrived. This will served two functions, first it will allow me to improve the stream audio by allowing me to listen the it over a headset, and mute the monitor, and secondly it will connect to my PC and allow me to use it in PC games.
Although the HDMI extractor kinda made the first function redundant, but hey, I can now play some games on the PC a lot easier now.
I paid a visit to Battle Bunker on Saturday and grabbed a few things, basically paints and the new Terminator Chaplain, and I got the Recruit Edition of Warhammer 40,000 in an impulse purchase!
It’s gone ok, few teething issues, like I got to make sure the video capture card is working before I start.
And I have sat down and started on refining the sound quality as it’s not been the best, think I need to put headphones on for the in game sounds so it’s not picked up on by the microphone.
So that’s been put into motion and I have ordered a headset for gaming and a new Xbox Controller to allow me to use it.
The Switch is simple as all I have to do it plug in my headset.
Gonna get Megan’s help to take some publicity photos and I am really gonna start on the promo work this next week.
Right now I just wanna get it working first.
What I Am Modelling
I started the week off by painting Grashrak’s Despoilers for Beastgrave which were a lot of fun to paint.
Beasts of Chaos are amazing, and I would love to paint a full army of them, but I really don’t have the space for another army.
Whilst waiting for the Flayed One Flesh, I painted some Ork Nobz, I promised this to another streamer, Cerantis, who is sorting out some Ork models to be donated to a young lad battling Leukaemia.
I also worked on a Warboss and Mekboy Workshop for him, and the Warboss was finished on Saturday.
With the Flayed One Flesh in hand I was able to make more progress on Skaeth’s Wild Hunt, they took a little while to do and were quite a different type of unit than I have done before.
And my first time using clear paints too, which are very interesting to work with.
We had a game of Star Trek Adventures again on Wednesday and this time Lindsay and Megan were able to join in.
Our ship was escorting a Vorta prisoner to an exchange with the Dominon when it was seemingly sabotaged.
Unfortunately power and connection issues for our GM Chris meant that we had a bit more downtime than I think we all would have liked.
Video game wise, I started the week by starting The Witcher III: Wild Hunt on the Xbox One, which I am streaming and you can see that below.
And on Friday I started a play through of BioShock: The Collection, again I will pop the videos below.
What I Am Backing
Not backing anything now, but I did complete the survey for The Rival Networks.
What I Am Cooking
On Monday I cooked us all an omelette for our “together breakfast”. Normally this is Sunday morning but this week it was Monday as Lindsay and Megan were helping Jane sort some stuff out for the Newcastle Mutual Aid group to pull together some food to help sort out food parcels for kids over half term.
I know people will accuse me of being a sheep and all that, but I just like the way iPhones and iOS works.
Plus at this point I am pretty solidly bought into the whole iOS ecosystem, having an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and AirPods!
Anyway I got the 128gb model in green.
I did place a small order with Element Games, I bought some Open Engine War Cards for Adeptus Titanicus, a pot of Grey Seer, an Army Painter Character Brush and a pot of Turbo Dorks Shell-Shocked.
We had a 20% off voucher and ordered a bundle of two 60 serving tubs, with apple and cherry flavours and a shaker, a 30 serving tub of raspberry and a sample of tropical.
This should get delivered on Tuesday as it took us over the limit for free delivery with DPD.
I also made a leap and ordered a new headset for gaming, my budget was very limited so I got a Razer Kraken X, this got delivered on Monday and hopefully this will help me deal with the sound issues that are irritating me on the streams.
And so that I can actually use the headset with the Xbox I ordered a refurbished Xbox One Controller from eBay which hopefully should arrive in the next week.
My mouse is also dying so a cheap replacement to get me by until I can afford a decent one was ordered. I got it for £13, should have been £18 but Amazon had a £5 off voucher deal for it.
It’s nice cause of the RGB effects, but it’s very much a get me by until I get a proper decent one.
I also ordered a HDMI Extractor, because it turns out the Switch doesn’t allow me to output sound to both the HDMI and the headset at the same time, so that was ordered and should replace my current HDMI splitter as well.
So this week I finally sat down with Lindsay and Megan and worked out my schedule.
I need a schedule to try and get myself back on track personally and give me some structure.
I am using streaming as something to do, to keep me motivated and on track.
So here is my schedule for Monday to Friday
Monday
2000 – 0000 – Minis Painting
Tuesday
1100 – 1300 – The Witcher III on Xbox
1400 – 1600 – The Witcher III on Xbox
Wednesday
1400 – 1600 – Minis Painting
Thursday
2000 – 0000 – Minis Painting
Friday
1100 – 1300 – BioShock: The Collection on Switch
1400 – 1600 – BioShock: The Collection on Switch
Weekends are being left free to do stuff, I may do ad hoc stuff but nowt scheduled in.
I started tonight with my first stream, which you can see below.
New CPAP Machine
This week the NHS sleep clinic gave me an upgraded CPAP machine, following Covid they figured they need to keep a closer eye on my sleep apnoea.
The new machine is a ResMed Airsense 10 Elite, which is a lot smaller than my old machine and a lot fancier.
For one, it’s got a built in 4G modem so it uploads my sleep data each night direct to the sleep clinic, so if I don’t use it, I get a telling off.
It’s also got a built in humidifier which really contributes to the smaller footprint and allows you to actually control it. So I have been able to set the level to humidity to one I am very comfortable with.
Overall it’s a very compact machine and is far less complicated to set up and use than my old one.
And obviously very glad that we have the NHS because if I had to buy this privately, well, it costs more than my PC!!!
PC Cleanup & Graphics Card Dilema
I took a bit of time to tidy up the PC interior and fit the Wi-Fi antennas.
I rerouted the cables for the CPU cooler to go behind the motherboard and just about was able to get them into the headers, but the fan cable required an extension cable.
I also removed a 2TB HDD which wasn’t working, and did a general tidy up of the wires.
The target for saving for a graphics card is currently £200, but I may end up bumping that up to £250.
I am currently thinking a GTX 1660 Super is about what I want, but with the unveiling of Big Navi later this month, it may result in price drops to the RTX 2060 and the 5600 XT to be in my budget.
The headline is, I do not really need to go to anything beyond 1080p. It would be nice to eventually get a 1440p monitor, but that’s a long way off.
So the question is, do I stick to my guns and hope the GTX 1660 Super also benefits from some price drops, or do I perhaps go bigger and try and grab a better card to future proof and make 1440p gaming a possibility.
Either way I am not going to be making a decision until I have hit the £200 in savings and the Big Navi reveal.
All things being equal, I hope to have about £175 by early November so it’s likely I could be able to make a purchase in the Black Friday sales.
New Addition to the Studio
Megan has cross stitched for me this wonderful piece featuring all the lead characters from the main Star Trek series and their ships.
Looks fantastic on the wall of the studio and really helps complete the place.
I started the week by building the Ambots for Necromunda, and then I built the Palanite Enforcers and Subjugators from Dark Uprising.
Whilst playing Star Trek Adventures on Wednesday night, I finished off painting the Palanite Enforcers Patrol, and then got transfers on them Thursday morning.
I then placed a T’au Stealth Team and Commander in XV86 Coldstar armour on my painting table, along with the Marketlight Drone and Homing Beacon from the Stealth Team.
These were finished surprisingly quickly, I think the wet palette had really helped when painting T’au.
Next up were the Hellblasters for the Blood Ravens, two squads of them. One squad of ten, containing the five from Dark Imperium and five multipart ones, and then a squad of five with Heavy Plasma Incinerators.
Going forward when it comes to Hellbalsters, I want two more boxes of them, one to make into a squad armed with Assault Plasma Incinerators. And the other to split between the Blood Ravens, with five bulking out the squad with Heavy Plasma Incinerators.
I tonight started on Grashrak’s Despoilers from Beastgrave which is on the Twitch stream above.
So what’s coming up in my painting plan then?
Zone Mortalis Terrain
Grashrak’s Despoilers x 6 & Skaeth’s Wild Hunt x 5
T’au Strike Team x 10 & Sniper Drone Team
Death Korps of Krieg Engineers x 10 & Hades Breaching Drill
Secret Heresy Project Unit
Nighthaunt Dradscythe Harridans x 20
Space Wolves Swiftclaws x 3
Palanite Subjugators x 6 & Enforcers x 5
Stormcast Eternals Lord-Aquior, Lord-Exorcist & Gryph-Hounds x 6
Blood Ravens Intercessors with Stalker Bolt Rifles x 10
A bit of Star Wars: Squadrons which I am really enjoying, even been streaming a bit of it too.
I joined the Mills brothers for the conclusion to our Star Trek Adventures game on Roll20. We saved the planet and didn’t destroy the Cardassian Space Station in the process.
It got really tense and came down to the last rolls of the game, we needed four successes with four dice, and we just pulled it off!
What I Am Backing
No projects in the pipeline at the minute, but I completed the survey for
I also finally got my transfers for Forgotten Chapters, these are really lovely and I can’t wait to get them onto my Sisters of Battle models.
In the Sega 60th Anniversary sale on Steam, in indulged and bought the Sega Mega Drive Classics collection of 57 games and Sonic CD, which cost me a bit over £6.
At some point I plan to play though the 3 Mega Drive Sonic games and Sonic CD, my only disappointment is that Knuckles Chaotix has yet to be ported to anything at all.
I also managed to grab a Servants of the Abyss sprue to complete my Blackstone Fortress collection.
I don’t often talk football, beacuse whilst I love the sport, I am not the most knowlegable about it, and when I talk about it, I tend to make a fool of myself.
But Project Big Picture makes me want to break that habbit, beacvuse I have feelings about it.
Simply put, I think that many of the proposals are good, the 25% of money going to the EFL is a great start, but the power aspect I utterly disagree with. Placing power into the hands of the nine longest serving members of the league is not a good thing, and allowing them the power of veto over takeovers and other issues is a bad road to go down.
If we take the aborted Saudi takeover of Newcastle United, we know how that would have played out, the big six would have all said no to the possibility of a club with the ability to disrupt their dominance of the league. How is that fair, it would essentially create a closed shop at the top of the league.
These proposals would lead to stagnation in the league and a loss of competition and excitement. And the abolition of the League Cup and reduction of the league to 18 teams robs other teams of much needed match day revenue.
As I said before there are good aspects, the 25% of TV deals and abolition of parachute payments will make the EFL much healthier and better positioned to survive, but the special voting rights are bad for the Premier League, and bad for football in general.
In this instance, if the big six want to form a breakaway league, I say let them, the pyramid is bigger than six clubs mostly owned by billionaire’s, and I think the other clubs need to be prepared to jetision the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United if they want to use the Covid-19 crisis to make such an audacious power grab.
So that’s my biannual football post done, but in all seriousness, I think that the state of the game in this country would be infinitely worse off if these proposals were accepted in their current form.
And Jane and Geoff gave me some cash, so I have added that to my graphics card fund.
What I Am Modelling
I started off the week by continuing with the Stormcast Eternals Vanguard-Hunters, this completes the four units of Vanguard-Hunters I own, and gives me two each units armed with either a Shock Handaxe or Storm Sabre.
Whilst doing those I also painted some Spirit Hosts I got from Mortal Realms on the side, these were super easy to do so I just kind got one with them.
I then built and primed a T’au Stealth Suit Team and Strike Team, along with the rest of the models for the next 10 projects.
I then painted a base coat of XV-88 by airbrushing the T’au Strike Team, Stealth Team and the XV86 Commander. I also airbrushed on the main red armour colour of the Blood Ravens Hellblasters.
After that, whilst waiting for the dishwasher to finish, I knocked out the last of my UCM ships for Dropfleet Commander.
For the weekend away, I took with me the Palanite Enforcers for Necromunda. The paint scheme I have come up with for them is heavy in use of Contrast, but I think it works quite well.
So what does my painting queue look like now?
Zone Mortalis Terrain
Palanite Enforcers x 10
T’au Stealth Suit Team x 3
Blood Ravens Hellblasters x 15
Grashrak’s Ravagers & Skaeth’s Wild Hunt x 6
T’au Strike Team x 10 & Sniper Drone Team
Death Korps of Krieg Engineers & Hades Breaching Drill
Secret Heresy Project Unit
T’au Commander in XV86 Coldstar Battlesuit
Nighthaunt Dreadscythe Harridans x 10
What I Am Reading
Not much chance to get more than a few little bits read here and there, must do better.
What I Am Playing
Mostly been playing Star Wars Squadron, high has been a lot of fun, although I kinda wish I got more options to play as the Empire in Story Mode, although to be fair I have just finished the second mission.
Nowt played Tabletop wise but this weekend should see plenty played.
What I Am Backing
Not backing anything right now and no updates on existing projects.
What I Am Cooking
On Wednesday night I made my attempt at Posh Dogs.
I took some normal bockwust, in a part baked roll, in which I spread Dijon mustard, and packed in some caramelised onions.
On top of the bockwurst I then melted some Gruyère and we served them with some red potato wedges made by Megan.
What I Am Spending
For my birthday I treated myself to Star Wars Squadrons. I was torn about getting it for Xbox or PC, but it was in Argos on a great deal, so I spent my Nectar points on it.
With Lindsay moving upstairs we decided to grab another Dolce Gusto machine, the new one is a Lumio and was half price at Curry’s PC World and has an auto shut-off function and a slightly bigger tank.
It means the one I grabbed her last month is moving upstairs to her office, so she doesn’t have to go up and down the stairs every time she wants a coffee.
Because I got a refund from a few things I had to send back to Amazon as a gift card, I decided to spend it on a new power brick for my Xbox One.
I want to do some streaming from it and realistically that means I need it downstairs So rather than pulling a power brick out from behind the TV each time I want to use it, I bought an extra one to keep downstairs in the studio.
Early last year I relocated my desk downstairs to share the office with Lindsay.
She has worked from home for over about 13 years now and it’s not always plain sailing for her, she can get very lonely. And the depression was really eating away at her during work hours on her own.
So I packed up my upstairs studio and moved down to keep her company.
Unbeknownst to me, that arrangement has not been working for Lindsay, she finds me an annoyance and a distraction, stopping her from working.
She says she can’t get any office banter with me because I am doing one thing and she something very different.
We tried everything we could to make it work for her, offering to give her complete control of what we listened to, so she could silence it when she had a phone call or needed to concentrate etc.
But alas, its just not worked for her at all, so today, as she prepares mentally for a return to work after a few weeks off, she decided to move her desk upstairs to my former studio and turn it into her office.
Which leaves me with the bigger room as a new studio, I do share it with Megan of course.
I was literally just getting comfortable in the downstairs room, I had put up shelves, and all sorts to organise my space and make it manageable, so I guess it was easier at this point for Lindsay to move.
We have decided to take a short bookcase from upstairs and put it where her desk was and we visited IKEA to pick up an armchair to go next to it. This creates a little reading/relaxation area for Lindsay to chill out in, or for myself and Megan to just sit and read in.
I have moved a bunch of books around, including most of my war games books and RPGs and placed them in the book case and will be relocating my “small” electric guitar there.
This has allowed me to relocate my Warhammer Underworlds core games and a few boxed games from Games Workshop to my top shelf and thus freed up some room in the board games shelves.
But the final step has been taken and the upstairs studio had now been renamed in Alexa, The Office, and the downstairs office, The Studio.
Today was my birthday, it was very nice, Megan made me scrambled eggs on dinosaur toast and we had southern fried chicken for tea. Megan also made me an amazing birthday cake.
The girls let me spend our Nectar points on Star Wars: Squadrons for Xbox One and they are picking that up for me tomorrow.
This coming weekend, we are off to the lakes for a weekend in a hot tub and playing board games.
What I Am Modelling
I started off by painting a bunch of UCM ships for Dropfleet Commander. Four Cruisers, a New Cairo, Santiago, and two Madrid’s, two Destroyers, both Kievs’s, four Frigates, two Toulon’s and two Taipei’s and six Santiago Corvettes.
I am now working on some Vanguard-Hunters for my Stormcast Eternals.
I also built some bits for a special thing I am hoping to have finished in the latter half of October, but more about that when they are done.
So what’s on my list to do right now?
Zone Mortalis Terrain
Palanite Enforcers x 10
Stormcast Eternals Vanguard-Hunters x 5
T’au Stealth Tram x 3
Blood Ravens Hellblasters x 15
Grashrak‘s Ravagers x 6 & Skaeth’s Wild Hunt x 5
T’au Strike Team x 10 & Sniper Drone Team
Death Korps of Krieg Engineers x 10 & Hades Breaching Drill
Secret Heresy Project Unit
T’au Commander in XV86 Coldstar Battlesuit
What Am I Reading
I haven’t really picked up any books since last time I posted.
What Am I Playing
A game of Carcassonne on the PC but that’s it.
What Am I Backing
Nowt at the minute.
What I Am Cooking
On Saturday Megan was supposed to make a stirfry but she wasn’t feeling very well, and so I ended up making a Cajun Chicken Gumbo, which was really nice.
I spent a few pounds and bought myself the One Special Day Humble Bundle, which got me 8 new games and one new expansion. I have given Ogre to Graham and Talisman to Misha.
I also had a voucher for some money off a Fanatical Bundle of my choice, so I picked up the Reaper Bundle 6 as well as a bargain basement copy of Warhammer Quest and Space Wolf plus a few other little bundles too.
I need something to better organise the charging cables on my desk and so I grabbed this set from Amazon, and they have worked out quite well.
I also grabbed myself the current hotness of Among Us too as a birthday treat!
And to make the office work better for Lindsay, we grabbed an IKEA Trådfri colour bulb which has been added to the Hue system and works quite well with that.
I also got the Space Marines Heroes painted as well, so that is the Death Guard complete, and both resolutions competed.
Paint 2000 Points of Stormcast Eternals –
No Stormcast were painted this month ;-(
Still left to paint are:-
Lord Arquilor
Vanguard-Hunters with Storm Sabres x 5
Gryph-Hounds x 6
Paint 2000 Points of T’au –
I first started by pointing the next Strike Team, a Cadre Fireblade and Devilfish, which means I now can field a battalion detachment for the T’au if I so wish.
So I bought a new PC, well rather Megan lent me the money to do so, well half the money!
On Sunday I built the new machine, you can check out how I built it later in this post with a video we made of the build.
So let’s take a look at what went into the machine.
CPU:- AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
CPU Cooler:- GameMax Gamma 500 ARGB
Motherboard:- Asrock X570 Steel Legend
PSU:- GameMax RGB 550w Modular 80 Plus Gold
Memory:- Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 2 x 8GB DDR4 3600
SSD:- Crucial P1 1TB x 2
Wi-Fi & Bluetooth:- Intel 7265 M.2
Case:- Kolink Aviator Gunmetal
Case Fans:- upHere PWM 120mm Rainbow x 5
A few compromises were made, the PSU was a little less powerful than I wanted 750w was my target to give me room to get a powerful graphics card eventually, but the budget restricted me to 550w. But given the kind of graphics card I am initially thinking of getting, this should be plenty powerful enough.
The case fans are set to a simple rainbow pattern, but that’s cool, they cost me £34 for six, so I am happy with that. Eventually the plan is to fit a proper controllable Corsair system in to the machine, but these will be perfect for now.
Because I do a lot of media heavy stuff with the podcast, I had wanted to go with 32GB of RAM, however the budget didn’t allow for that, so I have gone for 16GB now, with a plan to upgrade within the next year.
But these are all things are either purely cosmetic and are easily upgraded or added to in time when budget allows, in the meantime it’s gonna do me awesomely.
They memory was originally going to be Adata XPG Spectrix D60 RBG 2 x 8GB DDR4 but delivery turned out to be an issue and despite it being next day delivery when I ordered it, it would actually be mid October before I got it, so that was cancelled and a replacement ordered.
The case was picked specifically created because it had a 5 1/2 inch external bay, which is use for my Blu-Ray writer, and I actually still need that.
A salvaged windows key was purchased which was nice and cheap. And due to an ordering mixup, I have two NVMe SSDs instead of a single one, so plan is to use one for my O/S and most used programs and the other for games.
A couple of bits were taken from my old computer a 1TB HDD which contains my documents and stuff I am working on, a separate 2TB HDD which currently is used as a game drive, and the BRD drive of course. I also took the 2TB external HDD which is used to store my music on and plugged it into this.
The first lot arrived on Saturday, over five separate deliveries all from Amazon, three came with Amazon delivery folk, the case came with DPD and the CPU cooler came with the dreaded Hermes. Because our Hermes man doesn’t like ringing the doorbell, I ended up putting a sign in the door asking him to make sure he rang. As it was I was lucky as was loading the dishwasher when he pulled up so was able to grab it off him quickly.
The motherboard arrived on Sunday after taking a trip from Spain, along with the memory. I must admit to getting very worried as the memory took until 5am to ship, but luckily it just shipped from the Darlington fulfilment centre.
I did forget to order a set of antennas for the Wi-Fi adaptor and ordered them early Sunday morning.
The Build
The build took place on Sunday evening, the original plan was to prepare the case with the PSU and case fans the night before, but alas, my hands were not cooperating with me to do that!
I started off on Sunday morning by preparing the case, so I fitted the case fans, installed the PSU and moved over the drives from my old PC to this one.
The first thing we discovered, is that the interior has been significantly redesigned, it now has a PSU basement and the wiring for the USB sockets and case functionings is a lot better and no longer looks like it might get in the way of any ports on the top right corner of the motherboard.
It did mean that I was losing out in the RGB aspect of the fan, but it does mean that I was going to make sure it was pulling cool air from outside the case into it, thus making sure that it lasts longer. The original spec had no filter at the bottom so it would have had to drawn air from inside the PC.
Once the motherboard and memory arrived, I was able to crack on with that, and it was very fun.
First things first I fitted the CPU, being very careful with it, then I installed the memory, M.2 SSD and M.2 Wi-Fi module.
Lastly on the motherboard I fitted the cooler, the reason I did that last was because it’s fairly big and bulky and I didn’t want to have to work around it when fitting the other stuff.
Then I slipped the board into the case, and screwed it in, followed by attaching the necessary power and data cables.
Initially it didn’t POST, turns out the PSU isn’t capable of supplying the extra 4 pin CPU power supply. I know this is only really needed if I plan to seriously overclock the CPU, which I don’t but it was annoying.
So after removing that power connector, we were able to get the PC to POST successfully, and it runs very nicely. I did take the opportunity to turn the CPU cooler round so that we could see the lovely RGB lights.
Windows was installed via USB media, which I smartly prepared the night before. And when that was set up, I then connected up the extra HDDs one of which I smartly downloaded all of the drivers and other software I wanted as well.
But you can take a look at the build process hopefully later this week as I did video it all.
I did my best to make this the most attractive PC I have ever built, and with actual cable management to minimise dust issues.
The second M.2 drive arrived Monday along with the Wi-Fi antennas, so they were fitted then and as such are not on the video. I also had a spare 300GB HDD which I normally use as a scratch drive, I struggled to figure out how it went in the case on Sunday, but figured it out on Monday.
I also had a 2TB HDD, which I tried to fit, but it seems the drive is knackered and the PC refused to POST with it plugged in.
Future Plans
Short term, I need to make a couple changes to the desk, first, I need a under desk keyboard tray, because I use so much of my desk space for painting.
Medium term the plan is to add a discrete graphics card, I only need something that can handle 1080p gaming with a little streaming, so current thinking is something like an XFX Radeon RX570 8GB, MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super or perhaps a MSI Radeon RX5500 XT 8GB or similar, that would do me just right, but if budget allows, I will spend a bit more.
This will then allow me to upgrade the processor to something a lot more powerful, which will be nice. The current processor was picked to allow me to initially go without a discrete graphics card.
The memory is gonna go up to 32GB , might seem overkill, but I want to do a lot more video work for the podcast. And I also want to add a proper video capture card as well to make streaming from consoles a lot easier, as well as making it so I can grab a DSLR for making video content.
And a big possibility for me is the addition of a soundcard. I know that soundcards are kinda redundant these days but I am a podcaster, and I need good sound quality. If the sound on the motherboard is good, I will stick with that, but in the back pocket the possibility of upgrading to a decent Creative soundcard is there.
But What About The Old PC
The old PC is well, a bit sore and sorry looking, but I have replaced the BRD drive with a plain Blu-Ray drive, cleaned it out, cleared it off and reinstalled Windows and a few other bits of software and it’s going to go be used by Megan’s mum for her paperwork. And being an early learning practitioner she has a lot of complex paper work to do, and my old machine will be perfect doing that for her.
So on Sunday morning before touching the new build, I took that apart, cleaned it out, put it back together in a much tidier set up. I then formatted the OS drive and gave it a clean install of Windows 10, along with giving it a Charlie Bears wallpaper for her.
As I had a spare RGB fan from my build, I decided to give her that, so I fitted that to the front and now she gets a lovely little light show when it’s in use.
What I Am Modelling
I started by having a little rest after the long hard job of painting Mortarion, and built the two starter warbands for Beastgrave, Grashrak’s Ravagers and Skaeth’s Wild Hunt.
And I also built the Azyrite Ruins from Warhammer Mortal Realms plus a set of Spirit Hosts I got with them as well.
The first models I painted were the Nighthaunt character models that come with Soul Wars, although these were actually from Mortal Realms.
I painted up a Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed, a Spirit Torment, Guardian of Souls and Lord Executioner. My Nighthaunt scheme isn’t particularly sophisticated, but I am happy with it.
I then began work on the Adeptus Titanicus Titans, doing a total of five of them. A Warbringer Nemesis, two Reavers and two Warhounds, along with a Vulcan Megabolter for a Reaver.
Was very slow going but I managed to complete two Reavers Titans early Wednesday morning.
For Friday wing night, I made Whiskey BBQ wings in the slow cooker. I had intended to make them bourbon wings, but we were mysteriously out of bourbon.
The accompaniments were not great however, Lindsay experiment with the mash, making it in the microwave, it was not very nice if I am honest.
And the other side was courgette fries, which I really disliked due to the big differences in texture, my autism reared it ugly head big time!
Megan did thicken the sauce the wings were cooked in as a sort of gravy, which was really nice, but it’s not pictured here.
On Saturday I made Smoky Pork and Boston Beans, was very nice, but next time I am going to make the beans an actual mix of beans rather than just cannelloni beans
And I cooked it in the Dutch oven covered, but the sauce was quite thin, so if I leave it uncovered next time hopefully the sauce will thicken a little.
We served it with corn bread for the real American taste!
What I Am Spending
Obviously all the gear for the PC build!!!
My foam for Beastgrave arrived, and well ahead of schedule, so that allowed me to build the models from the core set at long last and add them to my painting plan.
But that’s alright as I traded it in and bought Super Mario 3D All-Stars instead, which is brilliant as I have been wanting to get that. That was delivered on Monday.
I also did a swap with my pal Kev, we wanted each other’s tin plates from our Warhammer Mystery Box that we got from Half Moon Bay, so I sent him mine, he sent me his!
I also saw a killer deal for a pack of four smart plugs on Amazon, normally I go for TP-Link Kasa, but these had a £25 off voucher allowing me to pick them up for just under £15.
This allows me to smart up the bedside lamps and fan in mine and Lindsay’s room, leaving one spare for the Christmas tree, because that season is close approaching.
Not much to say this week, things have been quiet, just worried about what’s going to happen in regards to the virus, but then again I think every body is.
Living in the North East I am now under tighter restrictions due to the high R number. Tuesday night I was supposed to return to Durham Raiders for the first time since February for a game, but that has now obviously been cancelled.
We just gotta do as they say, wash out hands, wear a face mask, where we can and keep to social distancing.
I think I am better prepared for a lockdown than I was last time, and tomorrow I will be doing a paint inventory to identify any that need a spare purchased.
We have, and sensibly I think, purchased a few extra things for the cupboard, basically some extra tins of beans and chopped tomatoes and are buying a few extra little cupboard things in our weekly shops, just in case.
We aren’t panic buying, don’t want to do that, just instead of a packet of custard, we might grab two, and a slightly bigger bag of pasta than normal.
But this is something we have kinda been doing since the first lockdown, sounds daft, but it’s reassuring to know that we have enough to get by for a least a couple of weeks if the shops experience huge shortages again.
I wasn’t a Boy Scout, but right now I think the mantra is , Be Prepared.
So guys I guess let’s just be ready to bunker down if we have to, trust me, you don’t want to catch this virus, it’s horrid, and we most certainly don’t want vulnerable people to get it.
So stay safe guys!
What I Am Painting
Might sound like total common sense, but whilst I have been experimenting with airbrushing, I haven’t been using gloves.
Well Lindsay and Megan kept having a go at me about it, so I relented and when putting the first paints on my T’au Strike Team, Cadre Fireblade and Devilfish, I used gloves.
Of course they were right, it was far easier and far cleaner. I guess I like the look of hands covered in paint, but it will be better if I keep them clean.
So I tried a slightly different method with the T’au this time to see if it works better.
On Tuesday the fates aligned and I was able to get about 50% of the Zone Mortalis stuff primed, at long last, but I lost the daylight before I could get the last of it primed, plus I didn’t have enough gunmetal spray so had to go to Wilkinson’s to get some more.
I was quite unwell for a couple of days so no painting got done for a couple of days 🙁
First model I got finished was a Devilfish for the T’au Empire Strike Team, so much better now I have figured out getting the base colour on with an airbrush.
The T’au infantry give me a lot of bother, I really struggle to get smooth coats on them, so I kinda did some research and ended up putting together a wet palette, and oh my god, it literally transformed my painting!
Was so much quicker to paint and a lot easier too, I will never go back to not using one!!!
I finished listening to Saturnine by Dan Abnett, blown away by it again and picked up so many more things that I missed first time round when reading it.
What I Am Playing
We had a session of Star Trek Adventures on Thursday, we boarded a damaged Cardassian space station to try and prevent it falling to the surface of a planet and causing an extinction level event.
Some mild torture of a Vorta was involved, and we will be picking up the game again in a fortnight.
What I Am Backing
Calico arrived, although it did so whilst we wet out shopping and thus we had to take in trip into town to grab it from the access point.
It looks really good and hopefully we can get it played soon.
But I think that’s because I didn’t toss them in the spice and sprinkled it on instead.
What I Am Spending
I got a £10 Amazon gift card from a competition, so put that towards a foam insert for Beastgrave, which is coming from Feldherr so will probably arrive early October going on past orders from them.
I did also buy a 24 pack of Carabao Sugar Free Green Apple, as I said a few weeks ago, I am struggling to make it through the day with an energy drink mid afternoon.
I know I need to get something like Sneak or Razorwire, but they are a big outlay initially.
The loss of Misty has hit me hard, she was such a big personality that our home feels, empty without her, which is unfair on Bonnie, Gandalf or Jenny, as they all have fairy big personalities themselves.
The house just feels less full, Megan was upset when she got back from her nanny’s as normal Misty would make a big fuss over her.
She was a real bright spark in our lives and we are going to be coming to terms with her loss for a while.
So the main thing I have done this week is plan my new PC! My current one cost a grand total of £150 about 4 years ago for a motherboard, processor, SSD, memory and case, with some parts scavenged from my previous PC
Those components were brand new, and so you will understand, they were massively underpowered, and now they are really struggling to do anything, and editing the podcast is getting more and more difficult with each show.
So it’s time to upgrade, but I am going to spend a bit of time and money to get one which will be capable of more and not spend my time with it getting very frustrated.
I want a PC that can handle audio editing I’m for podcasts, streaming, gaming with some video editing.
But I have to keep it affordable too, as my money situation is always precarious.
I am starting with a motherboard, I am absolutely going down the AMD Ryzen route, and if I were to buy a processor tomorrow, it would be a Ryzen 5 3400G. Simply because it means I can get it up and running quickly with graphics, and get a good graphics card later on.
So I need an AM4 board, and I want to be future proofed, so it’s gonna be an X570, so it can handle the next generation of Ryzen processors, offering me an upgrade path.
Both offer an M.2 WiFi socket, which leaves a PCIe slot free for a good soundcard, something all good podcasters need, and two M.2 slots for SSDs.
The Steel Legends is more attractive because it has better sound capabilities from the get go, allowing me to forgo a soundcard until a bit later on, plus it has some RGB components built in which is cool.
Either way, end of the month I am buying a motherboard, it will be one of these two.
So then it’s a case of getting memory, I am gonna be a child and get RGB memory, an M.2 SSD, power supply and a case. As well as some case fans, this new computer is gonna run hot, may as well make them RGB too
With the last two the plan is to make sure I am future proofed as much as possible, so the power supply will have to be planned to be good enough to handle a decent graphic card. The case needs to have two 5.25” drive bays to house my Blu-Ray Writer and a USB front plate, because you can never have enough USB sockets. And of course it needs a transparent panel to make sure I can see all those fancy RGB lights!
The general plan is to get the motherboard first at the end of this month as I said, then the power supply.
The very last component to purchase will be the processor, as a new generation of Ryzen processors will be coming out, so it may push down the price of the processor I want, or indeed offer better options in that generation.
Once it’s all done, hopefully it will make life a little bit easier when it comes to my PC.
What I Am Modelling
I finally got Ragnar Blackmane finished. I ended up having a long painting session until 2am on Monday and got him finished, and the base was completed the next morning.
I am not the biggest Ragnar fan in the fluff, but I have always loved his model, and my Wolves belong to his Great Company, because I loved his old model.
It may have been very dated and lacking in dynamism, but there was just something about it, probably because it was the first 40K model I was ever given as a wee 12 year old boy.
I never painted him back then as Fantasy was my game as a child, but this was the single model that was left when my parents moved house about 10 or so years ago (maybe more) and thus was the only thing I had left from my boyhood collection.
I painted that model up a few years ago, and as soon as I saw the release of a new Ragnar model, I had to have it, he is so bloody awesome.
I have seen better painters than me do wonders with him, but I enjoyed painting him an awful lot, so much detail and at times I felt a little overwhelmed.
I still love the old model, and that will still be selected to play with now and then, but this one is really nice.
So anyway, that means all the SpaceWolves from Prophecy of the Wolf are now painted, not that there were many!
I then moved on to a squad of Death Korps of Krieg Infantry for Niki, and doing these I am thinking about how I am eventually going to do the ones I have sitting up stairs unbuilt.
I kinda fancy the same scheme, but I am not going to, so if I ever played Niki with mine I can distinguish whose are whose.
I have a scheme in mind, and am considering doing some test models soon.
Anyway Niki’s models got finished in Friday, I did actually do some of the painting on a Twitch stream which you can see here.
Next was a secret Heresy project, that I can’t tell you about because I am waiting until it’s done.
But it’s a squad of 10 men and was very quick to paint! I really want to share them, but I am not going to because I said I would share when they got to a certain point.
Much of Sunday was spent getting models built and primed so that I can actually paint them. I normally like to have my next ten project ready but I have let this slip as of late.
So I built Mortarion twice, once for 30k and once for 40k, I also built the Death Guard Space Marine Heroes, a T’au Strike Team, and some Death Korps of Krieg lads.
I actually built the T’au on stream, well actually two streams, because my PC died in between sessions!
On Monday morning I built the Nighthaunt characters, and the Palanite Enforcers, which brings me up to my next ten projects built, followed by an afternoon of priming.
It was good weather, but there was a possibility we were going to pop out to Costco, and so I decided to not prime the Zone Mortalis terrain, but I will try tomorrow.
So as we head into the next week, lets see whats on my painting queue, I am still missing my chance to get the Zone Mortalis Terrain primed but I hope to rectify that this week.
Zone Mortalis Terrain
T’au Strike Team x 10, Cadre Fireblade & Devilfish
Mortarion x 2
Nighthaunt Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed, Spirit Torment, Guardian of Souls & lord Executioner
Adeptus Titanicus Titans – Warhounds x 2, Reavers x 2 & Nemesis Warbringer
Dropfleet Commander UCM Ships – Cruisers x 4, Frigates x 4, Corvettes x 6, Destroyers x 2
Death Korps of Krieg Command Squad x 5
Millitarium Tempestus Drop Force Imperator x 5
Palanite Enforcers x 10
Stormcast Eternals Vanguard-Hunters x 10
What I Am Reading
I started on the Saturnine audiobook, and it’s an amazing book, I already read it, but I like to listen to them soon after to pick up the bits I missed.
I have started in earnest on Curse of Honor by David Annaldale. I have a review copy from Aconyte and need to crack on so I can review it.
It’s difficult because I really don’t get in with David’s sentence structures, I find them too short, but so far the story is interesting.
What I Am Playing
I am pretty much all set for streaming now and plan to start doing it on a regular basis.
I did a number of test streams last week, not scheduled or anything, I just jumped on and did stuff.
The first of those was to test the HDMI Capture card, which I did by playing Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting very badly on the SNES Mini. You can watch my over view of the device and no an unboxing below.
My first stream went quite well, I played Super Mario Kart and it worked really quite well, now it’s just a case of refinement and figuring out what I am doing before putting in place a schedule.
The second stream was Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, which went very badly!
I then streamed a bit of painting to test that out, but more on that later, and I also streamed an attempt to play Super Mario World!
Sunday myself and Megan tested out the capture cards ability to do the Nintendo Switch, which it did amazingly well at, we just recorded that.
And on Monday I actually streamed from the Switch to Twitch, playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the video for that will be on YouTube tomorrow.
What I Am Backing
Again nowt this week, money isn’t there and there isn’t a massive amount that is catching my eye right now, but there is one forthcoming project I can’t wait to share with you when it goes live!!!
In the meantime Calico which Lindsay backed has shipped and is due to be delivered on Tuesday from the EU distribution centre in Greece, it should be delivered tomorrow.
On Tuesday I made good old reliable dirty rice, Paul was round for tea and he is not very tolerant of spice, so I made a smaller pans worth for him, which didn’t include spice or mushrooms.
I love this dish, it’s packed full of vegetables and flavour, a real favourite of mine, I sadly forgot to take a photo of it.
I experiment on Friday with the air frier and made some Cajun Fried Chicken, it was ok, but not all the flour cooked, so next time I think I am gonna spray a little oil on it.
Couple of things, I forget to plan a vegetable side, which isn’t good, and we ran of paprika so I substituted cayenne pepper, so they were a bit spicer than planned.
Every Sunday morning we try as a household to have breakfast together. In the week this doesn’t often happen as Megan is an early riser, Lindsay eats at her work desk and I am a late riser.
But for the past year we have been trying to make Sunday breakfast together an event. This week it didn’t happen as Lindsay was unwell, so we did it on Monday instead.
Inspired by a random Buzzfeed video on Facebook, we made fried chicken and waffles!!!
The thumb grips are needed because our bunny is a pain in the bum and if he ever gets near a controller, he nibbles the thumb pads, and he has now taken to eating, yes thats right, you heard me, eating thumb grips.
So I need to be more careful about where I leave the controllers.
My order from Battle Bunker arrived, Jus did me good and sorted me out with Morgwaeth’s Blade-Coven for Warhammer Underworlds, a set of Escher Gang Tactics Card and Zone Mortalis Gang Tactics Cards and a pot of Leadbelcher (to get me over the free shipping limit).
We did spend a little money on the car, we got a Groupon to have the air conditioning recharged at ATS Euromaster for £38.99 rather than the £60 they normally charge.
Unfortunately during the work they found a leak in the system, so we got the money refunded, which is a shame, but looking at the options for repair, it might be uneconomical.
Didn’t actually buy this next item, but we got a new dining table from our friend Kris and Kim.
Our old one was a hand-me-down from several generations of Megan’s family, it’s really good, but annoyingly it’s very narrow. Which means most board games and miniatures games are not able to be played on it.
Got a set for my Death Guard, Ultramarines and Word Bearers, plus a fourth set for my secret Heresy project!
For streaming from the Switch, I didn’t know that you needed a specific type of USB-C power adaptor, so late on Sunday I ordered this one from Amazon Prime, and got it this afternoon.
Cause hell no am I going behind the TV unit each time I want to bring the Switch Dock downstairs to stream from. Long term I probably want a second Dock for downstairs.
