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.

I had initially considered the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4ATX AM4, but this month my money situation may allow me to get the much better Asrock X570 Socket AM4 ATX.

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.

  1. Zone Mortalis Terrain
  2. T’au Strike Team x 10, Cadre Fireblade & Devilfish
  3. Mortarion x 2
  4. Nighthaunt Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed, Spirit Torment, Guardian of Souls & lord Executioner
  5. Adeptus Titanicus Titans – Warhounds x 2, Reavers x 2 & Nemesis Warbringer
  6. Dropfleet Commander UCM Ships – Cruisers x 4, Frigates x 4, Corvettes x 6, Destroyers x 2
  7. Death Korps of Krieg Command Squad x 5
  8. Millitarium Tempestus Drop Force Imperator x 5
  9. Palanite Enforcers x 10
  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.

And Steve Jackson Games delivered some more of the GURPS 2020 PDF Challenge this week as well.

What I Am Cooking

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.

I would rather it had been southern fried, but I used my own Cajun seasoning to make it quickly.

In all honesty it was more a proof of concept that I could actually do it.

On Sunday, myself and Megan made some Coca-Cola Chicken Wings for our tea, along with some Sesame and Peanut Noodles.

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!!!

A bit weird, but it actually works, and it works really well! We served it with maple syrup and a glass of apple juice and it was bloody delicious.

What I Am Spending

My HDMI Capture Card arrived, along with the HDMI Switch and I also at the same time bought some thumb grips for the XBox One and the Nintendo Switch JoyCons.

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).

My dry brush from Element Games turned up as well, which was a pleseant surprise!

The House of Blades dice set I ordered last week turned up, along with a fee paints I needed.

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.

The new table is 3ft wide, so we will at long last be able to minis games on a minimum 3ft x 3ft table!

I was going to build a table topper, but this eliminates the need for that!

Last week I ordered some new Horus Heresy dice, four sets of them, and they arrived today.

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.