The Raspberry Pi I have been running my server on for the last 2 years has basically become insufficient to handle what I am asking it to do, getting a few failures and slowdowns.
So Paul has lent me Mary’s old HP All-In-One PC so we can transition the server to an X64 system until my plan to build a dedicated server that can also do transcoding can be realised.
The transfer went well, well 69 audiobooks somehow got lost, but I had local backups, so restoration of them was easy enough.
At first I was quite worried as it turned out the system was struggling to run AudioBookShelf as well, but it just took a bit of time for the new installs to verify the files and rebuild some of the metadata.
The machine only has 8GB of memory, 2GB which has been pinched by the integrated GPU, but alas it only has a single SODIMM slot, so when I upgrade the RAM it will have to be a replacement of the existing SODIMM.
So far it’s running pretty well, I am away in Brighton right now and watching a movie that’s streaming from my studio!
What I Am Modelling
I started the week by finishing Illuminor Szeras for my Necrons, which completes the army for now.
Its consistently hot, I am spending most of my time sweating hard!
In my studio its really hard due to being in an attic with a ton of tech and the weather keeps raining hard, so I can’t even have the window open to relive myself with some fresh air and have to have two fans on all the time!
I can’t wait for the coolness of autumn!
What I Am Modelling
I started off with a Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun for my Ork, really lovely model to stand beside my resin one.
Ultramarines Sternguard Veterans x 5 & Victrix Honour Guard x 4
T’au Fire Warriors x 10
Termagants with Spine Fists x 20
Stormstrike Charriot
Blood Ravens Terminators x 5 & Terminator Captain
Mandrakes x 5
Ultramarines Ballistus Dreadnought
What I Am Reading
I finished The Martyrs Tomb by Marc Collins, which was a fun story, felt a bit disconnected from the rest of the series, but still good.
I then listened to Spare Parts by Marc Platt, a fantastic Doctor Who audio drama about the genesis of the Cybermen, and is one the best stories that Big Finish have done.
I am slowly making my way through Secrets in Scarlet, slowly but surely.
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
I played Blood Bowl on Saturday, against Black Orcs, and yeah, I lost, and lost a couple of players 🙁
A few more games were added to the library, starting with Bully, cause it was 99p, plus I got Quake Live and Crumble in a £1 mystery bundle on Fanatical!
I got a couple of bundles, first off Humble Choice, which got me
As with most years recently, other than 2023, I am going to paint this weekend for 24 hours,this time to try and paint a Drukhari Combat Patrol in 24 hours!
I am aiming to raise £100 for the Willow Foundation, a charity that’s very very close to my heart.
I am going to be painting this weekend from 10pm on Friday night to 10pm Saturday night, so it would be great if you could drop by and hang out, and if you believe in the cause, drop a few quid in.
The Willow Foundation is an amazing charity that does special days for very ill young people, and made my friend Lees last days very happy, and his family and friends continue to raise money for the charity with LeeStock, an amazing festival in Suffolk.
But let me let the Willow Foundation tell their story in their own words.
At Willow we believe in quality of life and quality of time. Willow is the only national charity working with seriously ill young adults aged 16 to 40 to fulfil uplifting and unforgettable Special Days. This year we hope to fulfil 1,400 Special Days – a day to anticipate, to share and to remember when happy memories really do count. Sadly for some, it’s a last chance to fulfil a dream with the people that really matter. Thankfully for many more their Special Day is an important opportunity to put much-needed normality back into living.
To give to my fundraiser, visit this link, and you will be able to follow along on Twitch.
What I Am Modelling
I started off by painting the Catacomb Command Barge for the Necrons
I finished listening to The Helwinter Gate by Chris Wraight, got to admit the trilogy started off rough, but was absolutely phenomenal by the end, I hope to hear more from the pack in the future!
I took a lot of injuries in the game, like 4 players got taken out of the match in the end!
At one point I had only one players on the field!
What Video Games I Am Playing
Mostly The Witcher 3, I finished Hearts of Stone in it and am now working on Blood and Wine.
What I Am Creating
The latest episode of Edge of Empire has landed, both in audio and on YouTube!
What I Am Winning
Won a prize on Twitter, a new Western Digital 1TB M.2 NVME SSD, along with a Genshin Impact mousemat and a muscular bunny who looks a bit like my bunny Angron, Eater of Cables!
I am also backing the Jon Hodgson Backgrounds Book campaign, but undecided if I want to go with the Sci-Fi book or the original book, very torn on that one!
The other weekend we had our friend Iain, a fellow games demonstrator, down from Scotland to play Firefly: The Game, which is one of our favourite board games!
So we took the whole day had snacks planned out and we laid out our Whole Damn ‘Verse Mat, and set up all the contact and supply decks and just played a very basic game, in which the aim was to raise $12,000!
For ships, Iain took the Artful Dodger, Lindsay captained Jetwash, Megan sailed on the Emeralda and I was lugging around the S.S. Walden from Pirates & Bounty Hunters.
So there were some interesting differences in our tactics, I went for slow and steady with lots of space for cargo and passengers, Iain went for speed and more crew space, Lindsay wanted a fast ship with some tricks and Megan opted for a ship that could carry people who didn’t want any Alliance entanglements.
We had a great time and played for a good number of hours, but in the end, of course Megan won, me and Iain were quite close with just $200 between us, and Lindsay ended up with no meney!
Last weekend we went to my beautiful sister-in-laws wedding to my brother Paul.
It was a wonderful day and much joy was had.
The ceremony was lovely and the food was divine, and my nibblings were all little terrors!
It was held at Kersy Mill, near Haverhill in Suffolk and the surroundings were really nice, the building was a converted mill and was pretty nice.
It was just a really awesome day all round to be frank.
On the Sunday we popped into Ipswich, had dinner at Prezzo and saw Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, but we missed the last 5-10 minutes as there was a fire alarm and the cinema was evacuated.
The long stairs out of the cinema left be too exhausted to return to the screen, so we kinda gave up and went back to my parents, curse my lack of spoons!
And my playthrough of Control: Ultimate Edition has seen me upload the videos from the week
What I Am Backing
I backed the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Monster Seeds project by Steve Jackson Games, I would have loved to be able to back it at the physical level, but alas they are no longer doing any physical rewards for people outside of the US, which is sad.
What I Am Winning
I won a copy of The Curator by Owen King, so that’s going on the TBR pile.
I also got a PS5 controller charger, the PS5 is gonna move downstairs so we need an easier way to charge the two DualSense controllers that are moving with it.
I won a £25 voucher for Amazon from a KFC competition so I used that to buy a £15 PlayStation voucher to get Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, and some LED lights for the pegboard I am planning on buying next week. Still awaiting delivery of the LEDS.
I ordered the Abhorant Ghoul King with Crown of Delusion from Warhammer Middlesbrough on Boxing Day (or the day after) and he finally arrived, and of course he is now built and ready to paint!
This will be a short one, I am in London spending the weekend showing people how to play Shatterpoint and Legion.
We woke on Monday to find the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition outside, which was weird!
But my sleep has been all over the shop so I expect this weekend to be difficult.
Some Studio Remodel Plans
Ok the controller holders look pants, mostly cause I put them up so badly, so they are gonna come down next month and I am replacing them with some pegboards from IKEA so the controllers can be mounted and look great.
At the moment the controllers I want displayed are:-
PC Engine
Stadia
CD32
GameCube
Xbox 360 (Gonna replace this with a Xenon when that comes out in the summer)
Switch Pro
SNES
NES
Wavebird
Xbox Duke
Saturn
Tribute 64
Neo Geo CD
Dualshock 3
PlayStation Controller
Mega Drive
Mega Drive 6 Button
Steam Controller
Xbox Core
DualSense
Plus I think I have found a cheap NVIDIA Shield Controller, and I hope to have this in my hands by late next week, meaning all I want beyond that is a Luna controller. Actually I am not sure on that, it looks cool, but it doesn’t seem to have even the same interestingness as the Stadia controller.
I’d also like to display one of my SN30 as well if I can, that’s currently away in a drawer, its place having been taken by the Steam Controller.
I am thinking of getting two black Skâdis boards and mounting them one on top of the other above my desk, which should get me enough space to store the controllers, and hopefully eventually my Switch JoyCons and Wiimotes.
Plus I am gonna get a nice braided pair of USB A-C and USB A-Micro B cables to hang up there for use with the controllers when I want to use normally wireless controllers (I prefer to use controllers in wired mode for the lowest latency possible)
I am going to mount a RGB strip around the border of the whole thing to make it really gamery!
That said, its more expensive, but there are the Uppspel boards which whilst £10 more expensive, do look quite a bit cooler with that ROG branding. Either way the Uppsepel accessory kits will be getting used for some stuff as they are compatible with the Skâdis boards, and the magnetic strip would absolutely have some uses.
Thinking the straps might be a good way to store/display the Steam Deck when I get it.
Also I am hoping my Govee prize will come soon which could add some more coolness.
And finally, I am considering a clock, I know I have one on the PC, but I think I want a physical one, oh and a couple more fake plants.
What I Am Modelling
I started out by painting the second Firestrike Servo Turret for the Space Wolves.
So what will be up to paint once I am, back from London!
Ultramarines Assault Intercessors x 10
Man-Skewer Bolt-Boyz x 6
Necron Triarch Stalkers x 3 & Triarch Praetorians x 5
Kairic Acolytes x 18
Drukhari Helions x 10
Imagifier
The Guild x 8
Ultramarines Repulsor
Hedkrakka’s Madmob
Skaven Deathrunners x 2
What I Am Reading
I finished Echoes of Eternity as an audiobook, and yeah, what a story, really blows my mind away!
I listened to The Eye of the Scorpion by Iain McLaughlin, which was fairly good, would have been great if it had been made into a TV serial, but alas. Anyway that brought me 2 years into the Monthly Adventures series!
I then listened to Colditz by Steve Lyons, which as well as being an interesting story of growth for Ace, is also the Doctor Who debut of David Tennant, in a villainous role, which in my opinion is just as insidious as his portrayal of The Purple Man!
Then I moved on to Primeval by Lance Parkin, a bit of a sequel/prequel to the first Nyssa story, The Keeper of Traken. Very good story and I loved how it expanded on that story and established a deeper understanding of the culture and history of Traken.
I finally finished processing my Big Finish Doctor Who audio stuff on to the audio book server, and oh wow that was a slog that has taken over six months to get sorted!
Mind you its a complete collection dating back 25 years, so yeah its a lot of stuff to sort out, would be easier if the software could scrape data from Big Finish, but sadly it can’t so I have to enter the data in manually!
What Video Games I Am Playing
Played a bit more of The Witcher 3, have transitioned to using the Steam Controller, just to really give it a go.
But alas the game still has major crashing issues, and I get maybe an hour and then it crashes to the desktop 🙁
I tried to play Control on stream on Tuesday night only for OBS to keep crashing so I gave up, edited what videos I had together, and then uploaded them.
I have now transferred the gameplay videos for Horizon Zero Dawn over to the Big Geordie Geek Plays channel, so you can find them there, if you want mind-numbingly bad game play videos!
What I Am Spending
I bought Vampire Survivors, it looked alright for a few quid and well, it did win the BAFTA, the bundle I got also came with its expansion, Legacy of the Moonspell.
And cause it was super cheap, and I really fancy playing it again after having last done so on the Sega Saturn, I bought Resident Evil HD which came with Resident Evil 0 HD.
My Humble Choice also came out this week for April, and that got me:-
The final game was a big 3500 point list and for that I took my 2k list replacing the Champion with Fafnir Rann, and adding a Warhound Scout Titan and a few other bits!
I played Damian’s World Eaters in game one, and my lack of weapons that could intercept was a flaw that allowed a Leviathan to drop down and kill my Kratos.
The Contemptors were a bugger to deal with, but I managed to take them out, but at the end of the game I just had 5 Templar Brethren and a Champion plus Apothecary left!
I played against Jacobs Sons of Horus, and the addition of a pair of Sicarans, and a Warhound Titan really changed things up for me!
The Sicaran is, if I am honest, a bit more effective than the Kratos, but the Kratos actually did get to shine a bit here, until it was taken out by a Terminator!
Sadly however, my bane was a pair of Leviathan Siege Dreadnoughts which over 4 or 5 rounds of combat took out my Warhound, but it was only able to do 6 wounds in response, I just couldn’t hurt them.
In the end I won, destroying everything in the table apart from the Leviathans and a couple of straggling Veterans.
My Thoughts On The Event
Pretty good event, the tables terrain was nice, especially the last games.
A few teething issues, particularly around general admin at the end, but show me an event that doesn’t deal with that, and as an EO myself I thought they did really well.
If they run anymore Heresy events, I will be returning for them, really really fun day!
Imperium Expansion
We have known for quite a while now that Warhammer 40,000 Imperium was being extended by 10 issues, and I thought, why not mention what I think about the contents!
Issues 81 – 83
The Sisters get a hell of an expansion with the Paragon Warsuits, spread over three issues, costing £8.99, that means you get them for £26.97, saving nearly £20 off the RRP!
These are great looking models and I have ordered an additional two of each issue!
Issue 84
A Skitarii Marshall, seems a bit of a let down when compared to the stuff the other factions are getting, yeah it’s a lovely model, but still, would have preferred something else, but to be fair, the Mechanicus range isn’t easy to grab something from for this.
Issue 85
The Hexmark Destroyer is one of the best looking models in the Necron range, ok, a bit pants in game, who cares when it looks like that!
I already have one, but I don’t mind having another!
Issue 86 – 88
The Space Marines get the full multipart Redemptor Dreadnought, which is a great kit and pretty cool to have in here.
Personally I would have preferred the Invictor Tactical Warsuit, but that’s down to my personal collection!
Issue 89
Inquisitor Draxus is a cool looking model, but we subscribers already got an Inquisitor in the form of Katarina Greyfax, so this whilst cool, wasn’t the greatest choice, personally I would have replaced this and the Skitarii Marshall with a two part AdMech kit.
Still great model and I can’t wait to paint her to join the rest of my Inquisitorial forces!
Issue 90
Not only does Illuminator Szeras represent great value, but also, is a wonderful and beautiful model for your collection!
Really over the moon we are getting this amazing character
In Conclusion
We are getting some really nice models, for my personal collection, a couple don’t make sense, but hey, it’s not all about me.
The only thing that I am currently wondering, is where to put the Redemptor Dreadnought.
Not sure any of my Space Marine armies need another one, but it’s likely going with the Ultramarines.
What I Am Modelling
Started off urgently beavering away to finish the bits for the Imperial Fists for the event by painting first up a pair of Sicaran Battle Tanks.
I then rebased an old Reiver Squad for my Space Wolves, originally built for Kill Team in the last edition, but on a different basing scheme, when I convinced myself that my Wolves wouldn’t have any Primarise stuff!
Anyway, they now join the Infiltrators, Redemptor Dreadnought, Ragnar, Aggressors and Repulsor that currently comprise the Wolves Primaris forces, and I have more on the way at some point!
Then, the last Tomb Blade was finished for the Necrons!
Been trying to play The Witcher 3, but the latest update has caused an issue with random crashes, so I may have to abandon the game for a bit until that’s fixed.
This past weekend, I got to work at Airecon, a wonderful little board game convention in Harrrogate.
I spent the weekend showing people how to play Star Wars Legion, using a capture the flag scenario that gave people a very very basic taste of the game, to tempt them to join the Dark Side and crush the rebels!
Got to stay at the Crown Plaza, which was nice, until they nicked my pizza, but that’s another story!
Really nice breakfast though and I got to have Eggs Benedict on Sunday, weirdly served with bacon, and I ate probably very badly, existing on pizza, burgers and Coke Zero!
And I needed to hook up the Xbox Series S, PlayStation 5 and printer to the network physically, so I bought 3 Amazon Basics Cat 6 ethernet cables to do this.
I grabbed Fallout 2, Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition and Fallout Tactics for Steam, kinda decided I am going to buy a Steam Deck at some point in the next 12 months, so grabbing a bunch of games I really enjoy that are cheap specifically for Steam.
I mist admit I was tempted to get 100 cans of Pepsi Max, cause I don’t drink, but Lindsay wanted some alcohol free gin and cider, so I ordered that for her, and then made up the remainder with soft drinks, total cost to us was £1.75!!!
I won another game in the form of Row of Numbers for the PlayStation.
Not only have I spent most of it unwell with a nasty tummy bug, but the flat has turned up a few issues.
We were in the process of having a water damaged cabinet replaced, when it was discovered that due to some missing airbricks, there were some geet big holes in the wall letting in moisture!
So we are having to have the plaster removed, get airbricks put and, so a damp treatment and then replaster.
Anyway, due to a shortage of available tradesman, it’s gonna be after Christmas before it can actually get done so that’s annoying, as it was the cabinet with the kitchen sink in it!
Ah well, life does love to throw some curveballs at you!
What I Modelling
I started by finishing off a pair of Necron Tomb Blades.
I am now currently working on an Imperial Fists Tactical Squad.
So what’s up next?
Imperial Fists Tactical Squad x 10 & Officers x 6
Kataphron Breachers x 5
Oruck Gutrippas x 12
T’au Crisis Suit Team x 3
Imperial Fiats Contemptor Dreadnought
Ultramarines Intercessors x 10
Silver Tower Heroes
Blood Angels Repulsor
Templar Brethren x 10
Hobgrot Slittaz x 20
What I Am Reading
Finished up listening to Kasrkin which has been an enjoyable listen.
And a little progress has been made on Zachareth, but not as much as I would have liked.
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
Sadly none at all.
What Video Games I Am Playing
Sadly not a thing, which I am quite upset about, the ill meant I really struggled to sit down to play anything.
What I Am Creating
Nowt I actually did myself, but I did go on Bez’s daily show.
What I Am Backing
I am in on the Steve Jackson Games Campaign for some Car Wars STLs.
What I Am Winning
I am not entirely sure who this was from, it just came with a plain white piece of paper saying “congratulations on your win”, but I won a black Playstation 5 DualSense controller, which is brilliant.
It might have escaped your attention, but I really love the plethora of mini consoles released in recent years.
Well the consoles themselves are cool, and offer a great way to transport some awesome games to play very easily.
I much prefer emulation via RetroArch, but the mini consoles usually bring something with them, as close to original controllers as possible.
I mean you try and get a PC Engine controller outside of the box containing the CoreGrafx Mini!
There is just something so much nicer about playing with controllers that are basically like what we had as kids, and often the knock offs just aren’t as good.
But that leads into another obsession, controllers and that’s a subject for another time!
But the consoles themselves are pretty cool so let’s take a look at what’s in my collection!
The C64 Mini
The C64 Mini (note not the Commodore 64 Mini) comes with 64 classic games for the Commodore 64 and VIC 20.
The design of this one is just so adorable, yeah the keyboard doesn’t work, but it doesn’t need to, and they even got the discolouration right.
The joystick however, is to be honest, rubbish, I hear that the standalone one is better, and I think I may invest in one.
I never had a Commodore 64 as a kid, but plenty of friends did, and I remember wasting plenty of time playing Speedball and Impossible Mission.
The most irritating thing about it was to have it load up, only for it to fail at the last second meaning you had to rewind the tape and load it up again!
This particular console is great, but I wish I had grabbed the Maxi or the VIC20 for the working keyboard, but that would have taken up so much more space.
NES Classic
Now living in the UK, the NES wasn’t that popular or common. We mostly had the ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC, and when a console did get big, it was the Master System.
I never saw a NES in person until I went to university, but the GameBoy was very common.
I got this when it first came out on release day, and it’s kinda cool, but I guess, the games in it, don’t have the same nostalgia kick for me as they would for others.
I mean I have played a fair few of these games, either in the arcade or in later rereleases down the years.
The big issue with this controller is the puddly length of the controller cables, you can’t use it in the average living room without extension cables.
And the connector itself is a Wii Nunchuck port, so the controllers themselves whilst being very very well built and almost perfect replicas of the originals, they require an adaptor to use them with PC.
Mega Drive Mini
This is my main nostalgia kick, my first console that wasn’t borrowed from a friend, the 16 Bit masterpiece that was the Mega Drive.
My parents got me and my brother one with Sonic the Hedgehog, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, and a three pack with World Cup Italia 90, Columns and Super Hang-On.
It also came with the Master System Convertor so we could swap games with our friends who owned the earlier system, as well as buy our own games for that system.
It was far and away the best system of the era, the software was great and there were so many fun games on it, I even saved up the money from my paper round for 6 months to buy Virtua Racing for it, cause it cost an eye watering £100 back in 1994!
The mini version is grand, comes with a lot of the big hitters, but sadly missing Sonic 3, the controllers are just *chefs kiss* but a part of me kind of wishes that they bundled the six button controllers simply because games like Eternal Champions and Street Fighter II work better with them.
PC Engine CoreGrafx Mini
The PC Engine was a weird console, it was technically an 8 Bit console, but it’s 16 Bit GPU, and the lateness of its release meant most people considered it part of the 16 Bit era.
The PC Engine was super rare in Europe, but I did know one kid who owned one, that he imported from Japan, and we did have a lot of fun playing bullet hell shooters!
The mini version is a bit of an oddity, carrying both Japanese and English language games, and there are times in here that I am rather upset didn’t get an English version, Snatcher being the biggest disappointment.
Always wanted to play that game, but the lack of a modern release, and the only English version is for the Mega CD, and that was massively censored.
But there are plenty of other games on there, and even Japanese ones which require little, if any reading.
This is a great little console and the only way to get CD Engine controllers in USB, I know 8 Bit Do have released some similar controllers, but they lack the turbo switches and instead only have a turbo button.
A500 Classic
I had an Amiga A500, our best friends had one as well or in some lucky cases, an A1200, I even had a friend with a CD32!
The Amiga was the dominant platform that wasn’t a console for a very long time, and the versatility of what it offered was wonderful.
We used to have just as much fun with Deluxe Paint, as we did with Lemmings, Sensible World of Soccer, Alien Breed and Zool!
This platform was fantastic and the death of Commodore after the failure of the CD32 was devastating to me, but it did essentially allow to IBM PC platform to become the dominant force it is today.
The A500 Mini is the most recent addition to my collection and thanks to the developers awesome system, I have a 32GB USB stick, with every game ever published for the platform on it, including all of the CD32 games.
My only criticism is that the game pad, whilst clearly taking inspiration from the CD32 controller, is quite a bit different, but I guess I can live with that.
SNES Classic
Being British, the SNES, well it wasn’t as big a deal as it’s Sega rival was to us.
I did have a friend with one and there were some absolutely killer games released in the platform. The Mario games are up there as classics, for a long time it was the only way to play Street Fighter II at home, and Mario Cart made its debut here.
