Stray thought

Today I found myself looking at stuff I found around the house and wondering how it would do as a target for practicing kendo strikes. My gaze lingered on my 2-year-old nephew perhaps a little longer than I'd care to admit.

Anyway, part 2 of the HK Open, coming soon, 'onest guv...

About those ducks....

That thing I mentioned about Mandarin ducks being romantic? I totally take it back. Damn...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11764-female-ducks-fight-back-against-raping-males.html

Wish I had a Pokeball...

... so I could stick this guy in it:



... then send him to battle against, I dunno, something with lotsa spikes. Seriously, how utterly pathetic do you have to be to preach the immorality of Pikachu, based on your own code of morality derived from what is essentially the Bronze Age equivalent of Pokemon?

"Thor! I choose you!"

"Jesus! I choose you!"

"Thor! Hammer attack!"

"Oh, shi-..."
Hammer attack is super effective!

Dolphins =/= Romantic

I was at a friend's wedding dinner earlier this weekend when someone at the same table brought up the subject of the invitation cards for another wedding he'd been to earlier this year. Apparently it had a picture of a pair of bottle-nosed dolphins swimming side by side, and he thought it kinda sweet and romantic, up until I was obliged to point out that the dolphin idea of sexual relationships largely involves kidnapping and gang rape. Oh, yes, indeedy, have a look see.

Word to the wise: You want romantic animals? Stick with Mandarin ducks.

Oh, FFS...

This CAN'T be for real...

Richard Dawkins is a meme

So sad but so true...

When life gives you lemons...

I remember once upon a time I'd post the odd question on Yahoo! Answers with the naive expectation that I might actually get a sensible response. You know, seeing as I did my level best to provide a decent reply and everything. Suffice it to say, I was disappointed many times, though never with such consistency as I had witnessed in the Malaysian section of Yahoo! Answers*. So sod it, when life gives you fail, the best thing to do is laugh at it. So, yah, I was well pleased to stumble across this:

http://www.yahooanswerfail.com/

The URL says it all. Seeing as I'm still on a high from the most ferocious scrap of my kendo career during the weekend, here's another site I found fairly uplifting:

http://www.fmylife.com/

Yes, laugh at their pain. And don't for a moment consider the possibility that, one day, you could be posting there, too...

* A special brand of fail indeed! It even fails to be the slightest bit funny...

Happiness is mandatory

Are you happy, Citizen?

happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.

Ugh. Reminds me of a creepy old animation I once saw....

On the side: I note my previous post has attracted attention of the paranoid delusional conspiracy theorist variety. I'd respond, but the more closely I read it, the more I realize the only response such a dire mess of trolling gobbledegook deserves is this:

Have a great day!

Satifying my curiousity...

I have French toast for breakfast fairly often, and a thought hit me today: Is it as French as the French fry? Which is to say, not even remotely so? So I peeped in Wikipedia, and here's what it had to say about some food that I'd suddenly become curious about.

French toast is not French. Surprise, surprise. According to the International House of Pancakes, French toast predates the 1st World War, and was called German toast in English speaking countries. Then the Kaiser did his thing and no-one liked Germans anymore and it "became" French. You know, because it happens to be next door. Or something like that. Wikipedia mentions that the French actually have their own version:

In France, Belgium, New Orleans, Acadiana, Newfoundland and the Congo a similar but distinctive food is called pain perdu, or "lost bread", since it is a way to reclaim stale, "lost", bread: hard bread is softened by dipping in a mixture of milk and eggs, then deep fried.

I think I like the sound of that. Hell, I like the look of it...


For the benefit of those reading who don't already know this, French fries are not French. Apparently they date back to 17th century Belgium, and were consumed by peasants living the Meuse Valley in place of wee little fishies. They became French following exposure of American troops to the Belgian troops during World War I. French was the official language of the Belgian army at the time, and the rest is history.

French dressing is not French. I was informed of this fact by a rightly indignant French chef. Apparently the term was invented in the late 19th century to keep American tongues from butchering the word vinaigrette.

And since I'm here, Welsh Rabbit is not rabbit. Wikipedia has a charming little story to go with that:

The first recorded use of the term Welsh rabbit was in 1725, but the origin of the term is unknown. It may be an ironic name coined in the days when the Welsh were notoriously poor: only better-off people could afford butcher's meat, and while in England rabbit was the poor man's meat, in Wales the poor man's meat was cheese.

You may be familiar with the term as 'rarebit' as opposed to 'rabbit'. Apparently this is the fault of Francis Grose, who coined the term erroneously in his 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue* and, in the manner of certain memes, has managed to stick.

And now I'm off to do the litter. Oh, teh horror...

*Available for free on gutenberg.org!

Who remembers what a 486 looks like?

Here's a bunch of websites worth a peep:

I did stumble upon this site a couple weeks ago and memories of my wasted youth did come flooding back. Well, in retrospect, I'm not sure if wasted is the right word. These days it seems any schmuck with a pair of functional thumbs can escape into lavish, photorealistic world of mindless bloody FPS violence. But back in the day, when a 256 colour display was a luxury, there was a touch of class to gaming. There's just a certain charm to a game on four 3.5" floppies, with a 200+ page manual, 16 colours and almost no music. Do check it out. There's treasure to be found there. I for one am itching to try out the Krynn series...

In other news, I poked around a bit more on GW's site, and verily, I despaired somewhat, because the prices are simply prohibitive. A quick guesstimate puts the cost of assembling a respectable 1,500 point Imperial Guard army at about GBP400 to 500! Looks like the only way I'd ever get my hands on that is if I worked for GW again and used the luvly staff discount. But on the upside, Codices are no longer an issue, seeing as the Japanese GW site has all the major codices up as pdfs for free! In Japanese, of course. Nan da? Nihongo o wakaranai no ka?

Slightly more serious note, when I look back to my childhood in Malaysia, I have no doubt that with the exception of mathematics, I was taught more through computer games than I ever learnt through textbooks. Between games like UFO: Enemy Unknown, Civilization, SimCity, Chip's Challenge and TFX, I was introduced to logistics planning, world history, aeronautics engineering, the art of war and some good honest lateral thinking. You know, as opposed to the Malaysian education system standard of Omnomnomnom-BLEARGH!-Repeat. So my interest was piqued when I looked upon the Daedalus Project. If you're interesed in peeking at the computer game's impact on human psychology, have a read.

Here's something a bit random - ever wondered what the insides of a Lego man would be like?
Yep, someone actually did the anatomy of a Lego man. And a gummy bear and balloon dog. Go see.

Lastly, a damn good laugh. Have a peep.

Zomg the Glorious Dawn!

By Carl Sagan, featuring Prof Stephen Hawking:



Epic win is epic.

Painting Space Hulk, Part 1

I've decided to record my progress painting the lurvely Space Hulk minis here, partly as a guide to those who'd like to learn to paint the GW way, that is, the basic formula of:

1) Base coat
2) Shading (includes washing)
3) Highlights (includes drybrushing)
4) Details

This assumes an undercoat of black, of course. Be warned that the GW way is extremely meticulous. If you dig around on the net, you should be able to find any number of techniques which will give you minis that look pretty ok in a fairly short time, i.e. perhaps an afternoon to do 5 marines. This record won't cover that. I intend to come out of this with minis that you can look at and admire and, in my case, 5 years on wonder how the hell I managed to do that.

DISCLAIMER: I may have mentioned that I worked for Games Workshop once upon a time. I worked in GW RETAIL. As such, there are several different standards of painting. A rough guide, from best to worst:

1) Golden Demon - The pinnacle of the art of miniature painting. Truly, you are a god among men.
2) 'Eavy Metal - The people who do the miniatures that get photographed real nice in the magazines. Serious professional work here.
3) Shop display - Often the personal armies of particularly artistically inclined retail staff. Painted and modelled with some love, but just short of the technical expertise needed to make 'Eavy Metal standard. I'm around here.
4) Trial - Models painted to introduce newbies to GW gaming. Painted nice enough to look good on a tabletop, but not too nice, because we generally expect some arsehole to steal them at some point. The great bulk of GW hobbyist armies I've seen will fall into this category, as do dip method minis.
5) Basecoats only - Just basecoats, no shading, no highlights. Lazy bastards.
6) Fail - Monstrous parodies of the original miniatures, which can result from too much effort as easily as too little effort but nothing is as insulting to the tabletop as...
7) Unpainted - The only use you have for a paintbrush is to put a big red 'L' on your deserving forehead, you Loser.

There's any number of pitfalls for the novice painter, so out of the goodness of my heart, I'm putting up a few little tips that'll make your first attempts to painting GW-style hopefully not end in too much fail. Also, I thought it would be nice to have a photographic record of my progress. I think there's something a little magical about slowly bringing a wee lump of plastic to life with paint.

I'll be more or less following the guidelines laid out on GW's site, because a) the miniatures have all been festooned with Blood Angel iconography, so using a different colour scheme would look a little odd; and b) I lack the imagination to do so. Note, however, that the people who paint those as seen in the gallery are pros with ungodly amazing skills who will not only dot the eyes, but paint a gleam in the eye of miniatures barely the size of the top joint of your thumb. So, I'll deviate in one or two places in a manner commensurate with my own abilities and the limited number of colours I have currently at my disposal.

Tips on brush technique, assuming you are using a Citadel standard brush:
1) Protect that tip! The bristles will most certainly splay out when there's lotsa paint on it, but with small amounts of paint, the brush should be able to come to a point.
2) Don't let paint touch the metal bit. If it dries there it'll fray the brush.
3) On contact with the model, pull, never push, and definitely don't drag it sideways.
4) You may lick the brush. No, really. After giving the brush a good shake in water, I'll wipe it on a tissue, then use my tongue, curled in an 'O' to restore the brush to a sharp point. Just don't drink anything other than water when you're painting.
5) Pay attention to how you grip the brush and the mini. I find the steadiest way to grip is to place both elbows on the table, mini in left hand, brush in right and brace your wrists against each other. Also, I grip the brush the Chinese way, like so:
I find this grip gives me far better control than the usual pen grip, allows a greater range of movement and is especially well-suited to the way I hold the mini, that is, wrist-on-wrist. Also, since elbows are up on the table, you can keep sitting up straight with a decent posture, as opposed to crouching with wrists braced against the table, as some prefer. Make sure you've got a good, bright lamp, preferably one with a movable arm and you're good to go.

If, like me, this is the very first time you're painting Blood Angel Terminators, it helps to have a spare model to experiment with. This is my guinea pig of choice, Trooper Bob:

I forget where on Earth I got him, but as I continue painting the Space Hulk minis, I'll be testing colour mixes and techniques on various bits of him. I'm kinda curious how he'll turn out at the end of all this... .

Basecoating
So, first things first, basecoating. The dominant colour of the Blood Angels is, of course, Blood Red*. I distinctly remember this colour being an absolute bastard to work with as a kid. That's because back then, no one told me that:

a) You have to thin down the paint.
b) You have to use several coats.

Here's what the effect of each coat looks like, modeled by the exceedingly badass Squad Lorenzo**:

From left to right: Black undercoat, 1st coat of Blood Red, 2nd coat, 3rd coat, 4th coat + shading.

You may notice I've been a little sloppy with the brush at some places. This isn't really an issue. Since the paint is heavily thinned down (about 2:3 paint to water), when the paint dries, it won't obscure the detail. Since the Blood Red bits cover the most of each of the minis, I've opted to complete the base coat (i.e. 4 coats of Blood Red) and proceed straight to shading, then come back and base coat the other areas. Also, I went for Blood Red first because there's heaps of little trinkets and bits all over these guys. The Blood Red bits are underneath quite a few of these, so to minimize the impact of possible errors, I went for the colour that is most difficult to reach with the brush first.

Tips on basecoating:
1) These minis are absurdly detailed, so it really won't hurt to study the model for a bit before you start. Turn it over and over in your hand look at the way the light hits it and just get a feel for how you're going to shade and highlight it.
2) Be systematic about it. Start at one place, preferably the largest flat area you can find, then draw the paint as evenly as you can around the mini. It's a little counterintuitive at first, but ignore the fact that, the first time round, your Blood Red isn't quite Blood Red. Just remember, after 4 coats (maybe 5), it will be.
3) Make it as even as you can! Can't stress this enough! Don't let the paint pool in the crevasses, and smoosh away any bubbles you see. When these paints dry, they form a tough layer. If you let too much accumulate in the crevasses, you're making it much harder to shade later.
4) As mentioned before, don't stress too much about getting Blood Red on the wrong bits. Chaos Black is an extremely solid colour and even thinned down it will quite easily wipe away your sins at a stroke without squishing out the detail.
5) You can afford to be sloppy for basecoating the first colour. Beyond that, correcting mistakes is a LOT more troublesome. Be patient. Breathe steady. Have a tissue ready for a quick draw and wipe in the event of emergencies.

Shading
Seeing as I didn't have, as recommended by the guide, any Dark Flesh, I decided to improvise. I used Scab Red and a touch of Chaos Black to wash the Blood Red bits. Now, what 'washing' means here is to take a colour significantly darker than the base colour, thin it down to more or less the consistency of milk, then go over the base colour and deliberately let this darker colour pool in the crevasses. Sounds easy, but takes a little practice to get the hang of making surface tension work for you and letting the right amount pool in said crevasses. You may have noticed Trooper Bob's left leg has been shaded. After testing it out on Bob, I moved on to Brother Deinos below:

After washing, your mini will generally look like he's been playing in the mud. Fear not, just come back and touch up the raised areas with the base colour again.

Anyway, this is as far as I've gotten for the moment. I feel I should mention that, at this point, I've actually played the game twice; the first mission as both Marine and Genestealer. It is as they say: Painted minis roll more 6's. And red definitely makes 'em go fasta.

* All the colours I'm using are of course Citadel Colour standards.

** No, I didn't come up with these names. No imagination, remember? I'm using the names from the Space Hulk Mission and Background book. From left to right, those marines are: Brother Goriel, Brother Valencio, Brother Zael, Sergeant Lorenzo and Brother Deinos.

Hurr! Derp, derp! BOOMS!

I was just looking at my painting after the previous post, and it struck me how RED and LOUD they'll be when they're done - which reminded me of this (0:36):

Ph34r mah OVERWATCH!

Hokay, it's been a long, long while since I've actually put any decent amount of text in here. Been a bit distracted lately, coz I've just gotten my grubby paws on Space Hulk! THE 2009 edition of Space Hulk! Verily, I was pleased:

The original Space Hulk was released 20 years ago and was full of win. It was about 15 years ago that I did first lay eyes upon it and was for the first time exposed to the awesome of the Warhammer 40k universe. The long and short of what Space Hulk is, it's a 2 player game where 1 player takes a squad of marines (the Terminators*) stomping through a mess of narrow corridors infested with hordes of aliens (the Genestealers. Long story.) with sharp, pointy teeth and claws, controlled by the other player. It was, and still is one of Games Workshop's most popular products, having been worthy of 2 computer game adaptions (officially), 2 expansions, and another edition (which I've never seen) before going out of print and circulating around eBay. I played the hell out of this game, and youth's folly did let me overlook the fact that I was mildly bamboozled. How so? Well, back then, the rulebook had this to say about your marines:

ZOMG teh awesome!

But what you actually got was:

DERP

Forgive my 15 year old painting fail. I still don't know what the hell possessed me to put gold paint on the base. I've improved since then, 'onest guv, and have since had some of my works displayed in GW Bristol. They might still be there, if, as I suspect, no one could be bothered to put up a new Blackstone Fortress. Anyway, you got 10 of the monstrosities shown above with 1st ed Space Hulk, each being a single lump of plastic to be manhandled into those little round bases. I know not if they improved upon it in the 2nd edition. The 2009 edition is the 3rd and I daresay they've improved their moulding techniques since then. Observe:

I'm sorry, brother, but you're just too damn ugly to live...

Naturally, it simply wouldn't do to leave these works of art languishing in bare plastic! The very thought of actually playing a game of Space Hulk with these unpainted?! Barbaric! Well, the chap in red here is a work in progress. The paint has to be thinned down with water and several coats need to be applied before you can really get to work. I've no intention of cutting corners so I expect it'll be a week or so before my first marine can be said to be finished. But do click on the happy thumbnails here for a good look at the sheer detail they've put into these new models. They're awfully fragile, though. Took me ages to get them out of their sprues, which leads me to a little point about the appeal of Space Hulk and the greater bulk of GW games.

If you're looking for a game where you can just buy it, take it home, then be ready to play after, say 30 minutes of reading the rules and preparing the pieces for the first time, Space Hulk is NOT for you. It took me 1 pair of sidecutters, 2 files, a damn sharp hobby knife, a fair amount of glue and perhaps 3 hours to get everything out and actually ready for a game. That's the easy part. It took another hour to spray on a black undercoat on everything, after which I blew black snot for a couple hours afterwards. Serves me right for not wearing a mask, I suppose. I'm guesstimating it'll be 2 weeks before my first squad of 5 marines (out of 12 marines and 23 genestealers) will be painted to a standard which I would not consider embarassing. Over the course of the next few months, with a brush and a steady hand, the marine player will not be in command of 5 bits of plastic but the Blood Angels of Squad Lorenzo. And the thing is, it doesn't really matter of you've got mad painting skillz or not, it's a labour of love, so in your eyes you've gone way, way beyond just gaming - you've just immersed yourself in the elaborate universe of the 41st millenium. And I can tell you, fail marine up there felt pretty damn awesome back in 1994.

Well, it's now 15 years since fail marine. I haz better skillz, and I intend to use 'em! Pics will follow. Whoopsy! Gotta go, Souseki's trying to eat mah Genestealers...

* No, I don't know if a lawsuit was involved.

Boom de ya da, boom de ya da...

No, it doesn't get old.

Whoopsy!

Missed a couple...

Know your -isms

From the happy and edumacational intertoobs:

Another good thing about Malaysia...

... because they're so damn hard to come by. Anyway, I just came across another nice thing about Malaysia, which is by no means unique to Malaysia, but is nonetheless one of the requirements for a civilized nation:


Now, from a bottle of this stuff to civilization in a little over a minute, instructions are as follows:



Man, that tickles the Beribazu...

Far too true...

Dredged from the diabolical depths of t3h intertoobs, I bring you heretical win:


Because if you can't laugh derisively at people who consider faith a virtue...