CanCon Apocalypse Prep Step 1: Extracting the Digit

And so life plods on as usual.  It’s again been a while between updates with the usual excuse of work and home being busy.  We’ve had the odyssey of the Amazing Vomiting Boy which resulted in many a sleepless night of worry and cleaning followed by the saga of Giving Up the Dummy (which is still ongoing).

But the reason for this update is to give myself a slap upside the head and get my 40K Apocalypse painting in gear.  I have 5000pts of Imperial Guard and Titans to get painted and ready for January next year and I don’t want to rush it all in the last month or two.  To that end, I have a Plan(TM).

I have the following list of stuff to paint (and in some cases, assemble):

Infantry:

Lord Castellan Creed (General)

Sergeant Kell (Standard Bearer)

Master of Ordnance (special officer)

Lord Commissar

2x Officers

6x Commissars

6x Sergeants

3x Autocannon Teams (2 models per team)

9x Comms Grunts

2x Sniper Grunts

2x Flamer Grunts

6x Meltagun Grunts

42x Grunts

Total Infantry:   85 (d’oh!)

Vehicles:

Deathstrike Missile Launcher

2x Vendetta Gunships

2x Custom Hydra AA Tanks

Total Vehicles:   5 (only, thank the gods)

Titans:

2x Reaver Battle Titans (Sweet!)

Now most of the infantry are built and ready to be sprayed (I only have three grunts to go before they’re all done).  Of the vehicles I only have the Missile Launcher done but the Hydra AA Tanks won’t take too much (I basically have to build the AA turrets and they’re ready for paint).  The Vendettas are waiting on parts before I build them.

What I am really waiting for are the Reaver Titans!  My mate Ags is making them for me and I really can’t wait to get my hands on them and paint them up.  I have always, ALWAYS wanted a 40K-scale Reaver Titan.  Now I’m going to get two!  This is what I’m talking about:

They’re awesomely cool and I’m really looking forward to getting them.

This weekend I hope to get some colour onto the Infantry and get the Hydra AA Tanks built.  I plan on having all the infantry done by the end of September with all of the tanks to be done by the middle to end of November, leaving all of December and January free for the Titans.  It’s kind of ambitious for me (as I rarely get more than a handful of minis painted in a year) but I really want to stick with it and get them all done.  There’ll be lots of spray painting and washes to speed the process so I think I can do it.

Wish me luck!  I hope to have semi-regular updates here to keep me motivated.

Na-na na-na na-na na-na na! BatAlex!

Another bout of silence but not as long as before. The virtual world is not holding much appeal for me at the moment, it has to be said. I’m spending most of my time working and being with family as per usual.

Work has seriously improved. My old assistant has taken a secondment to another section and I have a new assistant whom I have been working with for the last two months and it’s a HUGE improvement. She is much more relaxed and more efficient. We are actually AHEAD of our current schedule of classes and have some time to tackle the jobs that normally get left to the semester breaks. It’s awesome. She doesn’t take offence to things like my old assistant did and I don’t have to tiptoe around her like I used to. End result: I’m more relaxed and happy at work. I’d nearly forgotten what that was like.

At home, I am enjoying my son being three. His personality has come leaping out now that he’s discovered his voice and it’s a doozy. His first passion is Cars. Not just any old cars (though he does love Matchbox and Hot Wheels) but Cars from Pixar. He has just about every Cars thing that has ever been made but he’s also recently developed a liking for Batman. Most three-year olds I’ve met love Spider-man but not my boy. Batman all the way and that’s fine by me. I love Batman. He has a little Batman shirt that comes complete with a cape and he loves few things more than running around trying to make the cape fly out behind him and it’s so much fun to watch.

He loves the shirt so much that he wears it everywhere he can. This lead to the following incident, as described to me by my wife. The other day he was at the shops with his Mum and wearing his Batman shirt and cape. It came time to leave and so the following exchange took place:

“Alex, it’s time to go.”

“I’m not Alex. I’m Batman and Batman goes where he wants!”

“Well, I’m Batman’s MUM and Batman’s MUM says it’s time to go!”

“Oh.”

Heh. I would have LOVED to have seen that. My little Batman!

On the gaming front, not much has happened. I had planned on getting lots ready for CanCon 2013 Apocalypse but to tell the truth, nothing much has changed. I’ve developed a new list that has cut down the number of models I need to paint from 117 to 82 but I still have a LOT to paint (only 1 model of that 82 is painted). Easter is on its way, though, and I hope to get a little time to do some more prep on the army and get it ready.

Hello 2012

A flurry of posting activity and then silence. Until now.

Yep, last year I got busy with the postings and then lay low. The usual excuses still apply: family and work. Christmas was very nice with a visit from my folks in the morning to watch my son go mad opening presents and not know what to play with first. They also helped to assemble Alex’s big present: a 16ft trampoline. It’s a big SOB. Luckily we had cleared a big section of the backyard only a couple of months before otherwise we’d have had no where to put it. Thankfully he loves it and gets very depressed when it rains and he can’t use it. Christmas lunch then followed with a few friends joining us for the traditional stuffing of the face punctuated with home-made mojitos (I’m pretty awesome at mojitos I have to say). A nice relaxing day that I really did enjoy.

New Year came and went and I started back at work. First thing up was hiring a new assistant. My previous one took a secondment to another section to earn more money (yay!) so I had to hire a replacement. She seems to be working out really well and we appear to be getting on O.K. so the stress here at work has lessened, which has made for a happier me. It should be an interesting year as QUT is hosting TechNet, a conference for Technical Staff from around Australia and I’m involved with the Entertainment Committee. We’re having fun arranging a place for the conference dinner as well as the attendee packs and other entertainment (funny that).

On the gaming front I’ve done very little. I’m spending lots of spare time with my family as Alex is at such a fun age. His speech continues to rocket along and we’ve finally reached the point where we are telling him to shut up. I never thought I’d be happy to have to tell my boy to be quiet. But on the topic of gaming, I’ve decided to aim for CanCon 2013 to play Warhammer 40,000 Apocalypse again. Last time I went and played it, I had a great time and I’d love to do it again. To that end I am planning my army now so there isn’t a big rush to get it finished. Last time I took Tau (with the attendant Tigershark aircraft I built. I still owe Blog-land pics of the finished products). This time I plan to break out my first 40K army: Imperial Guard. Normally the Imperial Guard are pretty squishy with lots of infantry that dies easily but in Apocalypse, you get to take some of the really BIG stuff, which the Imperial Guard have in abundance. I am aiming to take a company of three Baneblades (tanks that are 4 times the size of an ordinary tank, with the expected big guns and tough hides), a Shadowsword (another superheavy tank with a massive laser cannon), Deathstrike Vortex Missile (think of a cruise missile launcher who’s missile annihilates everything it touches when it blows) and lots of infantry to protect them. Heh. Fun. But there’s lots of assembling and painting to do between now and January 2013. Hopefully I can use this blog as a way of keeping track of my progress but based on my track record, I wouldn’t hold my breath if I was you.

In any case, stay tuned for either modelling updates or a complete lack of activity!

When Life Gives You Lemons...

...bend life over and stick those lemons where the sun don't shine.

[Rant Mode ON]
Yesterday, I had some rather insulting news. We had our end-of-year Faculty forum. At this function they tell us what a wonderful Faculty we've been, how awesomely we've served our students and in general they pat us all on the back. This event is also when they announce the winners of the Performance Awards. These awards are given to those staff who have shown excellent performance over the past year. This year, the head of our discipline nominated myself and my assistant for these awards. He's been most pleased with our performance this year and thought we deserved recognition. I felt pretty good when he told us this as its been a tough year and we've still managed to pull through. That was about 3 months ago.

No one finds out if they've won an award until they announce it at the end-of-year forum. Today, they flashed up the names of the winners. I wasn't amongst them. O.K., I can deal with that. My assistant's name was up there. Wait, what? We've been working together on the same projects. I've been doing longer hours and working at least as hard as, if not harder than my assistant has and she gets the award while I miss out!?! I've rearranged my home life to commit to work more, spending less time with my family and getting more stressed than I have been for the last 15 years and apparently I'M the one who is not performing while she IS!?! What the hell is up with that!?! Frankly, I find it highly insulting. I'm pretty angry about the whole thing and if I didn't need the money to support my family, I'd storm into the office on Monday and tell our Dean that he can stick my job where his sun don't shine. How can you possibly award one person for their performance at a set of tasks when their workmate who is not only working along side them but is also supervising them and taking the responsibility for those self-same tasks is not also awarded?

Here, life. Take these here lemons and stick them where your sun doth not shine. I've had it with this cr@p.
[Rant Mode OFF]

Cruisin' around.

Well, I picked up my bike last week. Sweet. Getting the thing out of the dealership was a bit of a nightmare as they farked around with paperwork, checking that we'd payed the money and finding the boots I'd ordered. After about an hour of stuffing around I finally rode out of there on my new bike (so new in fact that it had zero on the odometer).

What a change to the scooter. The power. THE POWER!!! MWAHAHAHAHA!!! Its just so nice to have the grunt to accelerate up a hill! I didn't get go on quite the long ride I wanted to (as the weather turned nasty and riding in the wet on new tyres is just asking for trouble) but I still got to give her a decent run.

I love everything about my new bike aside from two minor things. 1: Neutral is hard to find. For those of you who don't know, neutral on a motorbike sits between the 1st and 2nd gears. You do a half-shift with the gear lever while in 1st and the bike clicks into neutral. This is essential to find as when you start the bike from cold it needs to idle for a while and you don't want to sit on the thing holding the clutch in. I think it might be because the gearbox is new and still a little clunky. 2: The windshield sh!ts me. In the rain and cold, it keeps the wet and/or cold wind off your chest. Nice. When you go over 70kph the turbulence it generates around your helmet is so loud that you can no longer hear the bike's engine. Crap. You need to hear the engine so you know when to change gears. I can keep myself warm and dry with the right clothing but the noise thing is a problem. So the windshield's got to go. Its only four bolts to remove it so that's not too much trouble. As I said, they're pretty minor things.

What I'm really looking forward to is a nice ride up into the mountains or up the highway. I'm going to a gaming tourney up in Caboolture soon and plan on riding the bike up there. Should be nice to ride up the highway on the bike. Its just such a sense of freedom on the bike. I can see why its so addictive for so many people. I think I may become one of them.

Vroooommmm!

Man. I'm exhausted. Today, Tash and I cleaned up the backyard in preparation for Alex's birthday party next week. We had a lot of assistance from my Mum, Dad, brother and Medway. But the backyard is clear of rubbish and fully fenced in. I'm so glad to have a backyard that Alex can't escape from now. I've been so worried he'd run out onto the main road and now we can be in the backyard with him and not have to worry about him running off.

Also, I'm now the proud owner of a new bike. A nice 650cc Hyosung Aquila cruiser. I went into the dealership for a test ride yesterday and really enjoyed the ride. Very, very nice bike and the price just can't be beaten. The next best bike would be a Honda Shadow and while its the same price (and is also a very, very nice ride), it's only a 400cc and has none of the extra features that the Hyosung has. Tash came along and had a look and we negotiated a deal for this:


This my very bike. Even the colour. With all the bells and whistles. Sweet. I pick it up on Wednesday and I have to say that I just can't wait. I'm taking the day off work and I'm going on a nice, long ride on it. I think I'll head either up or down the coast with it to give it a good run. Heh, heh. Vrooooommm!

Of Bikes and Marriage...

Wow. This morning I was pretty drowsy. The course yesterday really took it out of me and I was wasted. 8 hours of sleep later and I still felt pretty cr@p. I'm cleaning up the kitchen when Tash wanders over to me and says: "Happy 13th Anniversary, hon!" Wait, what? Its not the 21st is it!?! Well sh!te, it is! I'd nearly forgotten our anniversary! We've been married for 13 years and I nearly let the day go by without a thought. I never thought that would happen to me. Ever. Thankfully, my wife is a wonderful, forgiving person and she was not upset. We're going to go out for dinner tonight with the boy in tow and have ourselves a family night. Should be very nice.

As to the bike-thing, I passed my Q-Ride course! YAY! I was really very nervous about it but I think I did really well. I was most nervous about the road-ride but once I was out there, it felt so natural. My gear changing and braking all came to me smoothly and I enjoyed the ride. Wow. I went into QLD Transport today and am now an officially licensed motorcycle rider. Look out world! Here I come! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

My Boy's Growing Up.

Two posts in a single day? Are you kidding me? Wow. He’s either got lots of news to share, is feeling talkative or is bored at work. Well, it’s mostly the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got stuff to do but I’m just not interested in doing it. Plus I’m on my break.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that Alex is in speech therapy to treat his childhood apraxia of speech (or “CAS”). He’s been coming along brilliantly and is up to spontaneous 4 to 6 word sentences. This is awesome. For a child diagnosed with severe CAS, to be spontaneously generating sentences of this length after only 7 months of treatment is truly amazing. But that’s not the best part. What is even better is that he is also spontaneously copying new words and repeating them without prompting. This means he is starting to overcome the apraxia barriers in his mind and body. And yesterday evening he showed me just how far he’s come.

We’ve had a big corner of our backyard cleared out of the weeds and crap. This left a big, bare patch of soil which we seeded with some grass. This has come up but the recent (and sudden) increase in temperature coupled with a lack of rain has turned it brown and its starting to die. Water restrictions have been eased lately so I thought we’d water it to try and get it going again. I was watering it when Alex came over and told me “My turn, Dad”. I gave him the hose and he ran off to spray the water into his sandpit. I told him to come back and water the grass.

“No. My turn, Dad!”

“But the grass needs water, Alex.”

“No.”

“But look, it’s all brown and sad. Its needs the water to be happy again.”

“Oh, no. My turn for happy!”

With that, he ran over to the grass and began to water it by running up and down, spraying water and saying “Happy! Happy!” over and over. He’s never said the word “happy” before. It involves several sounds he’s had trouble with (“H”, “Pee”) but he just took straight to it. It was wonderful and made the months of hard work worth every minute and cent we’ve spent. Occasionally he’d stop to survey his handiwork and see a brown patch he’d not seen previously. He’d say “Oh, no. Sad, Dad!” I’d ask him, “So what will you do?”, “I go happy!” would be his reply (we’re working on “make”). He’d smile at me and run off with the hose and water the patch of “sad” grass. It felt good to have him communicate with me. I can’t wait to hold long conversations with my boy.

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks.

I’ve been riding my scooter for about 10 years now. It’s saved us an absolute pile of money in commuting (MUCH cheaper than public transport) as well as time (as I’m not beholden to a bus or train timetable) but the poor thing is on her last legs. She’s done more than 26,000km with some serious hills to challenge her little 50cc motor and now it’s starting to tell. She’s developed a rasping noise that I think is telling me that the bearings in one of her wheels is about to go and that’s a pretty major repair. Her tires are wearing out (these are the original ones she came with) and her headlight has blown AGAIN. All this adds up to a scooter that is more expensive to repair than she’s worth to sell or trade. So it’s time to upgrade.

Tash and I said that when we got rid of the scooter we’d get me upgraded to a full motorbike licence, gears and all. So when the noise started in the scooter, I went and got my motorbike learner’s permit. Here in QLD, if you have an open car licence, you can apply for your motorbike learner’s, do a course called “Q-Ride” and if you pass the course, you get your motorbike provisional licence (which, like a car licence, you stay on for a year). There’s no waiting time. You can go in and get your bike L’s and that afternoon do your Q-Ride course and pick up your P’s the next day. One issue for me though: I’d never ridden a bike with a manual clutch before. Scooters have gears, but it’s all automatic. I don’t want to get an automatic bike licence, that’s just lame. It’s the full licence or nothing for me. So I had to get some training in riding a manual bike.

A few phone calls and I found Morgan and Wacker’s training centre. They do Q-Ride courses but also have a Gear and Clutch course to get you used to a manual bike. Nice. Best bit is it’s only about 8mins down the road from home. Sweet. I booked in and did the course yesterday. I wasn’t too nervous until I got on the bike. It was a big, 650cc BMW. Nice bike. I chose the 650cc as Tash and I are looking at getting me a 650cc cruiser bike. Once I got on, I realized I needed to learn a LOT more than I thought I had to. My feet have had nothing to do on a bike before but now they have to brake (right foot) and change gears (left foot). Plus I now have to remember that my left hand is the clutch instead of the rear brake. Thankfully my right hand is still the front brake. The clutch was trickier than I thought it would be. I’m not ashamed to say I stalled the bike a few times before I got the feel of it but I’ve realised I need to work hard on building up the strength of my hands. The clutch is heavier than I ever expected and you use it A LOT. The biggest lesson I learned: RIDE THE CLUTCH! At low speeds, you control the speed of your bike not with the throttle, but with the clutch. THAT takes a bit of getting used to. After 90mins of riding, doing slaloms, slow riding (as in less than 10km/hr) and tight figure-8’s I got a much better handle on the clutch. I hope I’m ready for my Q-Ride on Sunday. I think I am.

But I’m still nervous. I might be ready to ride around the training circuit again, but I’m not sure if I’m ready for traffic yet. Still we’ll see. I’ve just got to remember I have a clutch and a foot brake. Then once I’ve gotten my licence, it’s off to shop for a new bike! This is what I’m hoping to get:

Quite an upgrade from my little scooter. Sweet.

Parental Anecdotes 2.0

And yet another blog post proving that I have had my head buried in work and family for such a long time that it’s now September, meaning 6 months have flown by since my last Blog post. Geez. Lots has happened. Work got busy. Alex grew some more and started speech therapy (he has been diagnosed as having Apraxia of speech) and is coming along in leaps and bounds. Tash started a new job. I got all technological and acquired smartphones for Tash and I. Busy, busy, busy life.

But what I wanted to share in this blog post was another joyful moment of parenthood I experienced last night. Alex and Tash went to bed early as they were both exhausted giving me a couple of hours of Peace and Quiet (TM). I watched a movie and then played a game on the ‘puter. Just before I shut the ‘puter off I decided to browse through the folder marked “Alexander”. While trolling through the hundreds of photos of my son I found a folder marked “Playing with the New Camcorder”. I open it to find some AVI files of Alex. In one of them he is “helping” his mother water the garden. What he is actually doing is spraying everything in sight with the hose. At one point he finds the outlet for the downpipe off the shed roof and begins spraying water up the pipe. After a couple of seconds, the water begins to run out again, at which Alex squeals with delight. So he sprays the water again and, after another delay, more water comes out. He’s fascinated. He does this a few more times before the video ends. It was really nice to watch.

I love watching my little boy discover the world. He just finds so much happiness in the simple things and I love sharing it with him, even after the fact.

AMUSING SIDE STORY: Two nights ago I was getting ready for bed when I heard Alex grumbling in his sleep. He’s had some nightmares recently so I thought I’d check on him. As I entered the room he sat up, still sound asleep, and belched rather loudly. After the belching was done, he giggled and proceeded to lie back down as if nothing had happened. All still sound asleep. I had to creep out so I didn’t wake him with my laughter. It still makes me laugh. Heh. THAT’S my boy!

So 20% of 2011 is gone?

Wow. Three months gone. And what a three months it has been. Alex turned two. My wife and I each officially got another year older. We once again celebrated the Christian hijacking of a pagan holiday as well as the turning of the year. I watched as my hometown (Brisbane) flooded to levels last seen when I was just one year old. I’ve been to Melbourne and Canberra (in that order). Alex started at Childcare. Wow. A very busy time. So much has happened it’s hard to know what the most significant event is. I’m thinking its likely best to just leave it there and pick up anew when I get a bit more time to write more.

I’ll write more about the Tigershark conversion I mentioned a while ago along with completed pics as they turned out better than I had feared. Plus they have lights and sounds! Wheee!

But for now, let’s just agree that it’s been a helluva time since I last posted, shall we?

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back...

Bleh. What a way to start December. Normally, I absolutely love this time of year. Its normally quiet at work so I get all those things that have piled up done and out of the way and with my wife's and son's birthdays as well as Christmas there's lots of celebrating to be done.

But these last few days have been a trial. Lots and lots of little things have all built up to be annoying one after the other and making me more and more agitated. Things falling over. Tripping on the boy's toys. Not leaving for work on time. The boy having a rotten night's sleep. Dropping things constantly. Then last night Alex poked himself in the eye with a paintbrush and got so upset about it that he threw up everywhere (if Alex gets really, really distressed, he vomits). Vomit all over our bed (twice), all over the bathtub. Thankfully the bathtub is easy to fix but at 9pm the last thing you want to be doing is to be changing your bedsheets and putting the foul ones in the washing machine. It took ages for Tash to calm him down (he didn't want to be anywhere near me and cried everytime he saw me).

Then this morning, I lost my wallet. My Mum and I tore apart the house looking for it but it was nowhere to be found. That was the last straw. I pretty much lost it and cracked the sh!ts. After three days of frustration, all I needed was to lose my wallet. This also made me very late for work and that just p!ssed me off even more. The wallet has been found by my long-suffering wife under the driver's seat of our car but the stress of not knowing where it was has put me off for the day. Bleh. I really, really hate losing things.

It just goes to show how very, very important it is to have a safety valve. Stress and frustration can build up ever so slowly until you blow your stack. I think I need to get myself a punching bag. Or I need to go and stand in the rain.

Apocalypse Prep: Part 1

As I mentioned in my last entry, I thought I'd post my progress in painting and converting my Tau Apocalypse army for CanCon 2011. Well here we go.

I plan on fielding three Tigershark AX-1-0's in my force. These are beautiful Forgeworld models that look like this:

There's one small problem, however. Each one costs 140 pounds. Gah. I just don't have that kind of money. Luckily, I have a solution.

Hasbro makes these:

They're from the GI Joe movie and they're called Night Ravens. The body piece, which is the part from the little red intake behind the front wings back, is exactly the same dimensions as a Tigershark. Exactly. The best bit is they cost me $14.99 from Aldi. Each. Sweet. So my plan is to turn them into this:

I have spare Railguns (the black gun bit under the red intake) and burst cannons (the multi-barrel gun under the wing) that I will cast up in resin and add to the body. I'll chop down the nose section which, fortunately, doesn't come attached to the main body.

I've already made progess on this. I've managed to chop down the nose of one of the models so that it fits into the main body similarly to that shown above. With some gap-filling and a proper paintjob, I expect they will look enough like a real Tigershark to pass muster. I hope to have one finished (bar painting) this weekend. Sweet.

Where HAVE you been?

Wow. The months fly by. Its such a cliche but at the same time its not uncommon to look up and think, "Geez! Where did that time go?". And so it's been for me. So what has been keeping me so busy?

Gaming.
I've mentioned my liking for the miniature games Warmachine and Hordes before. What I may not have mentioned that I am a volunteer rep for the company that produces them. For those of you not familiar with these games and their parent company, Privateer Press, we reps are called Press Gangers (Privateer Press - Press Gangers; get it?). Each year in Australia we hold a National Championship for these games to crown an Australian Champion. Its normally held at GenCon Australia, formerly Australia's "Premier Gaming Event" and this year I volunteered to run it. About 8 weeks out from the event, GenCon Australia announced they would not be running this year due to "financial concerns". This created a few hiccups around the traps but eventually we found a new venue and ploughed ahead with running our National Titles anyway. I wanted to make this event the biggest and best Nationals ever seen and to that end I wanted to give every player a prize-pack for coming along. It was quite a lot of work getting it all together. I could bore you with all the details but to make a long story short, I ran the event (with much help from friends and fellow Press Gangers), the players played and walked away with their swag of stuff and the various champions walked away with a swag of prizes. I thought the event went along pretty well on the whole but it ate a large chunk of my spare time.

Work.
I won't say much about work as you never know who's reading your blog and don't want to unnecessarily offend certain people. Suffice to say that I've had some big issues at work and have been focusing on getting under control there. Its been pretty stressful and I'll be glad when its all sorted out some more or I go on holidays a few weeks (yay January!).

Family.
Before you get worried, my wife and son are fine. We still have a few sleep issues with our boy but they are slowly improving. He goes to sleep much better now than he used to, he just gets pretty restless some nights and finds it hard to settle himself. We're working on it. Other than that, our boy is a pretty happy lad who is fairly easy to take care of. He has his good days and bad days but on the whole, the good far outweighs the bad. My wife is enjoying being back working at least two days a week and feels like she's contributing something (as if looking after our son wasn't enough). No, my family issues have been with one of my brothers. He suffers from pretty severe depression and recently it got the better of him. Thankfully, nothing tragic happened but it was touch and go for quite a while. While I didn't have to deal with most of the problems, it still made me worry a lot at a time when I had lots of worries already. Depression is a very serious mental health issue that many people don't realise is quite so bad until they have to deal with it (and I didn't deal very well with it I have to say).

But thank heavens a lot of it has passed and things are looking up. I hope to be blogging more regularly in the near future. I'm heading to Canberra to play in an Apocalypse tourney being run by my mate Bart in January and I am really looking forward to it so to motivate myself to get my figures ready I'll try and blog about my progress. Stay tuned.

Simple Joys

What is it that happens to adults that we find it harder and harder to find joy in our lives? Sure, we have the burdens of finding food, clothing and shelter for ourselves and those we care for but surely the burden is not so onerous that we cannot find simple joy in things?

I've been watching my son with interest over the last few months and I am constantly delighted and surprised at just what he can find joy and happiness in. Pulling a silly face at him can make him laugh himself silly. A few nights ago I was lying on the floor when my wife came over and I asked her to help pull me up. Alex squealed with delight and "helped" push me up. I then collapsed back down so he could do it again and for the next ten minutes I was pushed and pulled into a sitting position by my son and wife while he laughed himself to the point of tears. He has also taken to dragging around a tunnel that we have for him. He drags it from one room to another, laughing and smiling all the while.

The simplest things are an absolute joy to him and I love watching him enjoy it and as a result I find myself finding joy in these things, too. This causes me to ponder my initial question: what is it that happens to adults that we find it harder and harder to find joy in our lives? Is it the burden of responsibility? Is it the influence of the modern media and marketing? Or have we simply taken for granted the world around us and can no longer see the simple pleasures it has to offer us?

I know there will come a time when nothing I say will be right and I will be the very definition of un-cool but right now I am one of the most important things in his world and I am going to enjoy it for all its worth. Knowing I can make my boy laugh with just a silly face or playing peek-a-boo is possibly the most wonderful thing in this world. I thank my lucky stars for my beautiful son. Through him I have re-discovered a beauty and joy in the world that I had previously lost.

Activate interlocks! Dyna-therms connected! Infra-cells up!

Form Voltron! "And I'll form...the head!". Ah, Voltron. Yet another icon of mis-spent afternoons in front of that irradiating device we call television. I remember watching Voltron as a young boy and marvelling at the way five robot lions or 15 different vehicles combined to form a giant battle robot that could smite all before it. I preferred the Vehicle Force Voltron over the Lion Force team due mainly to the fact that the Vehicle Force team had planes, helicopters and trucks (the naval force portion were lame). Hell, the robot's feet were a pair of cars! He could skate along on those things (an important consideration in the early '80's). But still, even the Lion Force Voltron was pretty cool.

And now my favourite miniatures company, Privateer Press, have fed my childhood fantasies once more by releasing a Voltron Miniatures game! Based on their Monsterpocalypse system, Voltron: Defender of the Universe pits Voltron and a force of Galactic Garrison cruisers against the evil Prince Lotor's Lo-tron and their force of Skull Ships. The two forces battle it out over one of two maps representing either a supernova remnant or a comet flying through space. Medway and I got to play some games last night and it was fun. They've done a great job with the game and it does play like battle-scene from Voltron. Voltron consists of the 5 Lions in their "Alpha" form and can form up into Voltron while the evil forces have four Ro-beasts and Lotor's Command Ship that can form up into Lo-tron. The Cruisers and Skull Ships can be used to secure resources on the map such as power crystals or satellites or you can throw caution into the wind and have them try and blast the enemy robots or ships.

I lost both of the games I played last night as both Voltron and Lo-tron but it was still great fun. The dice just didn't like me and no matter what I did, I just couldn't hit anything that had a target number of 5. What the hell is it with 5? I also demanded we have a store rule that if whom ever is playing Voltron doesn't call "And I'll form...the head!" when they move into robot-mode they owe everyone in the store a drink. You still owe us all a drink, Medway! But I'll settle for one just for me...

Heh. Lots of fun. Form Blazing Sword!

Its an incredible Universe we live in.

This Universe is full of wonder. I am constantly amazed by just how incredible our Universe is. I've been watching the wonderful "Voyage to the Planets" series that aired on ABC1 recently and it is just fantastic. The images they have generated from the data that the various probes we have sent out into our solar system have collected are just mind boggling. The episode on Jupiter (my personal favourite planet) was fantastic. Despite the fact that I know a trip to Jupiter would be lethal due to the radiation field around it I still think that it would be one of the most amazing sites to see. A planet that over 1000 Earths could fit inside with a storm that has been going for over 400 years and could swallow our little world. Twice. Incredible.

But what was even better was seeing the scientists admit to what they don't know. So many of the moons in the solar system have features they can't explain such as Triton , Iapetus, Hyperion and Europa. And we know next to nothing about Pluto. Yes, yes, I know it's no longer classified as a true planet (its O.K. Pluto, I'm not a planet either) but we've observed it for 80 years now and still we know only it's relative size, orbit, a little about its surface and the fact that its main satellite, Charon, is about half its size. I'll be waiting with excitement to see what the New Horizons probe that will arrive in 2015 shows us about our closest dwarf planet. Who knows what it will show us about the Kuiper Belt objects it may encounter?

Another mystery is exactly what shape is our galaxy? Astronomers have a pretty good idea based on observations but exactly what it looks like will likely never be known. To get a good look we'd need to travel about 50,000 light years straight up or down relative to the galactic plane and that's a feat that will likely never happen in my lifetime or Alex's. Still, I wonder what the night sky would look like from a planet who's star lies about 20-30,000 light years above or below the galactic plane? How amazing would it be to look up at night and have the sky dominated by the swirl of a galaxy. The band of the Milky Way that we see is beautiful but how much more grandiose would the whole spiral be? That would be a sight I'd love to see.

I would have loved to do astronomy if only I could have dragged myself through the basic vector and optical physics classes at uni. I know they are essential to the higher-end stuff but really, they bored me to tears. Still, I just love to look up at the night sky.

Nothin' beats home cookin'

Yep. There's no denying that homemade food is best. Since the arrival of Alex, Tash and I have gotten somewhat lazy with eating. Alex is not a great sleeper (as I have mentioned before) and as such we are both often very tired in the evenings and get lazy with the cooking. Enter the Slow-cooker. What a wonderful invention. We can prep dinner in the mornings when we tend to have more energy and simply drop it all in the cooker. Set for "Low" and leave it to do its thing for the day. At the end of the day I'll simply make some roast potatoes or something equally nice and serve. Beautiful. Corned Beef, roast chicken, beef or lamb, stews, casseroles, etc. Simply delicious and packed full of veggies.

Yesterday we realised that we had some porterhouse steak in the fridge that had to be used. Neither of us were inclined towards a steak dinner so Tash suggested pies. We have a little pie-making device that Tash won years ago but that we haven't used in ages. So Tash seasoned the steaks and popped them in the slow cooker for a few hours. When done, they simply fell apart and tasted amazing (got to taste before using). Using the stock that was left in the pot, Tash brewed up some fantastic gravy and we cooked up some carrots, peas, corn, onion and capsicum. All mixed in with the shredded beef from the steaks and popped into pastry to make pies. Man they were good. They beat the cr@p out of anything you can buy in the stores. A complete meal encased in pastry. Oh yeah. My wife has the best ideas sometimes and man-oh-man can she cook. Gourmet meals and all that fancy stuff they show on things like "Masterchef" (bah!) are all well and good but simple and tasty home cooked meals are often the best. Duck L'orange and Souffle are nice and all but a lot of the time I just enjoy a simple home recipe like savoury mince, beef casserole or those wonderful meat pies. Yum.

Science is fun and cool.

On the whole, I like my job. Sure I b!tch a lot about undergraduate students and the fact that they can't follow the simplest of instructions or break everything they go near but on the whole my job is pretty good.

And days like today show just how interesting science can be. Today, the students are looking at Rheology. One of the compounds they make is called Carbomer 940. At a concentration of 1% in water it forms a fairly fluid gel (like runny hair gel). The students make a 0.2% solution (which is nearly as fluid as water) and measure its viscosity. This comes out to be very, very low (close to water). Then they add a 2.0% (0.5M) Sodium Hydroxide solution (otherwise known as Caustic Soda). This causes the pH of the solution to increase (become more alkaline). The effect on the gel is dramatic. It goes from being very fluid to being a thick gel in a matter of seconds. The mechanism behind this is that the Carbomer is tightly coiled at very low and very high pH levels and as such is quite liquid. At a neutral pH the carbomer molecule uncoils, making it very thick. The students continue to increase the pH until the solution is quite alkaline and see that the gel goes very thick at neutral pH and then becomes fluid again. Its very, very cool to watch as the change is so dramatic.

Another compound they work with is Methylcellulose. It’s weird stuff. It’s dispersible only in hot water but only soluble in cold water (I'm not sure why). So to make the solution, you need to have very hot water and disperse the powder in it. It will not dissolve, despite the high temperature. You then add ice cold water and you notice that the solution goes from a cloudy fluid to a thick, clear gel in a matter of seconds. And it’s fun stuff. Completely non-toxic (it’s edible), it’s the classic goo. It’s actually the stuff they use in movies for goo and saliva special effects. Ever seen Aliens? Remember the saliva that dripped menacingly from the aliens' jaws? Methylcellulose goo. The goo the Gremlin's had dripping off them when they came out of their cocoons? Methylcellulose. A guy in Scandinavia once tried to make ice-cream that stayed solid at room temperature and he used methylcellulose as the base. It worked apart from one fatal flaw: it tasted terrible.

Science is fun.

Lighten up, fat boy!

Well, it’s been a while since I updated. Life’s been busy, busy, busy. Work has finally ended its stupid cycle and I have time to turn around and scratch myself. Home life has started to settle a little and I’m hoping that things there are a little less stressful.

And its funny how easily you let the stress get to be too much and not even notice it. As I’ve mentioned before, my outlet is gaming. And last night it really did become my outlet and not in the good way. I was playing a game of Warmachine against Medway. My dice rolls had been average to poor up until my pivotal moment while Medway’s were doing considerably better. Then I reached said pivotal moment and lined up an assassination run on his Warcaster (Strahkov for those in the know) and charged on in with my Stormclad Warjack. I’d loaded it up on focus and ploughed right in (for those who don’t know, killing the Warcaster wins the game for the assassin). I miscalculated a distance calculation in the first instance and thought I’d fallen short but a quick re-measure showed my instincts had been right. I was in range of my target and let fly with the attack. All I needed to hit was an 8. With three dice, that’s fairly sure odds. Not to be though as the dice came up a seven. I swore. So I followed up with a second attack. Hit (barely). Yay. Damage: A paltry 6 (a roll of 3 on two dice plus the bonus). Bah! That was the last straw. My temper snapped and I threw the offending dice across the man-cave. What I thought was a pretty sure thing wound up as a botched attempt. In the end, I managed to win but the failed initial assassination run had left a bad taste in my mouth.

Later, lying in bed, I reflected on just how stupid and petty it was. It’s just a freakin’ game. Sure, my life hasn’t been going according to plan right now but still, it’s a just a game. I really need to lighten up and get over these outbursts. I can lose my temper very quickly over petty things and I need to try and reign that in. I don’t want my son to wind up with a short temper thanks to my example. So here and now I apologise to Medway for my poor sportsmanship. You’re a great sport and a great opponent. Thanks for the game and your patience.

On the plus side I do feel better now...