Tag Archives: Life

Long covid

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These last few weeks have been a bit of a struggle. Covid has left me suffering with fatigue, lack of focus, demotivation and shortness of breath. I have been doing small stabs at hobby, but I haven’t had the enthusiasm to really get stuck in with the painting.

I have been making progress with Blender, 3d modelling software. And I am attempting to rig, basically putting a skeleton inside the figure, my model which will make posing a lot easier.

I have been making some tools for my workshop. I always need clamps for glueing and I have been eyeing up some right angle aids on that fabulous far eastern trader. My aim was to avoid plastic and as I had a lot of spare wood scavenged from the Happylab bins I thought I would attempt to make my own.

I am now working on a bigger version of this now.

The weather has been going from snow to sunshine and back again in a day.

I have had some nice walks when the weather has been clement. My mood improves after being out.

I have finished building the modular tiles for my 4 x 4 modular ruined city table. Now to slap some paint on them.

My neighbour, who is a bit of a perfectionist, took ten hours to deconstruct my Ender3 3D printer and rebuild it totally square. The difference is amazing and I will be posting some pictures soon.

There you have it. A brief catch up on what has been happening.

A resolution for 2020

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I have decided this year to have a resolution. Normally I don’t. They generally last for a couple of weeks and then fizzle out. Like gym attendences after January.

This Year’s Resolution is….

REPAIR, MAKE, STRIP AND SORT.

The plan is to do one of these activities a week throughout the year. I have made fifty two tick boxes in my journal.

There are odd little repair jobs that have been mounting up in my workshop for the last couple of years. Now is the time to get on and do them. Most will only take a couple of hours to do and I have been putting them off. If I do them it will make more working space and earn brownie points with the family.

I have started so many little projects and then left them when something else pops into my little head. Again more space in the workshop.

Figures sitting in jars of Methylated spirits. I have three jars on the go. Some of them haven’t seen the light of day for four years.

Boxes of random stuff from the move from England. Containers full of mixed screws. I have homes for this stuff, now.

If I do more than one of these tasks in a week then I will tick as many boxes as jobs done. The target is fity two tasks by the end of the year and if I do it sooner great!

“I’m not the messiah!”

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“Hello” to my new followers, or rather I should say “Hello” to my new random followers. I’ve visited your blogs. We have nothing in common.

I am a curmudgeonly old git with no social skills or graces. There are no pearls of wisdom to scatter before you. If you think that using someone elses quotes and random unattributed stock photos is going to set the blogosphere alight. well ….

Copyright Antonious Achilleos

Somehow I don’t see myself ever being an “influencer”. Already that word is starting to have negative connotations.

Copyright Getty Images

If you take the trouble to examine my site stats you can see that I barely have a handful of followers and lurkers, hello Ruth. I am certain that there are a couple of bots and one is a dog. Добро пожаловать мои верные товарищи-роботы! И собачий приятель.

I blog to keep sane.

I blog, badly, about a very dull niche topic.

I blog about nothing that would help you raise your blog profiles. In fact linking to my blog would probably kill your traffic.

Copyright Shutterstock

So please

copyright grumpyoldtin

Feel free to unfollow.

Images are Copyright their respective owners. Used without permission.

What I did in my holidays

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Every summer my Wife and the Boys drive down to Croatia for a holiday. Well somebody has to stay and tend to the chickens and cats. My chance to have a bit of time to myself and spread out and finish any projects that have been on hold for a while. I was a bit ill with a virus that made me very tired and demotivated so I didn’t do as much as I wanted.

Way back in 2011 I was approaching my redundancy at St. Martins and I used the time wisely. I made a whole load of these.

A plastic base, wire looped and glued into position, sand and PVA applied and primed in black. I didn’t do anything with them until now. This was the base build for some hedges. Following Mel’s videos on his YouTube channel I made a load of foam clump foliage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN16RxVNrvc Then following Luke’s videos on his YouTube channel I hade some flock. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsmD5774MOQhjYBkXqu3Jdw Using Luke’s videos I purchased some Tacky Glue, I must find somewhere here in Austria that stocks it because the postage was a killer. At my local DIY store I purchased some spray adhesive.

Stage One: paint base brown. Stage Two: drybrush base. Stage Three: apply Tacky Glue to wire and press on clump foliage. Stage Four: spray on adhesive and sprinkle with flock. I didn’t bother photographing these stages as you will get a better idea from the videos.

What I managed to do. There are some still to do but I had run out of clump foliage and the blender used for making it was awaiting a part from the UK.

Figure for scale, available from Heresy Miniatures

I must mention that Mel has been hard at work and recently had a Kickstarter to promote a book all about making wargaming terrain. If you missed it, or like me don’t have a form of money that Kickstarter recognises…. you can get on board herehttps://terrain-essentials.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

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Electric Love 2019

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This was my fourth Summer working here and I think my last. I greatly enjoyed the production side of the job, the actual making and preparing for the festival. But working at the festival under the supervision of “Team Leaders” who liked to show off their status and avoid actual work was not so much fun.

So let’s crack on with the pictures. Look away if you are at all squeemish. It was my Summer job, but on the first day it snowed.

Production has moved away from Thalgau, a bike ride away, to Hallein which is much further away. Production has now taken over what was an indoor kids playground where we used to take to Boys.

I had a little mishap. The “official” story is that I was in a container and dropped a big box of screws on my toe. The end result was that I ended up in hospital with a broken toe. I’m waiting on what is happening with sick pay. HR have been nice to me so far, and I had two weeks working in the storage/supplies, in theory with my foot up as recommended by the hospital, in practise errr… no.

  • Immediately after my mishap. I didn’t think it was too bad, until I took off my shoe.
  • Sewing toe-nail back on.
  • Wooden block and grip-tape so I could cycle back home.
As usual we had to contend with the rain

On the first day of the festival Red Bull put on an amazing display, which my old camera was far too slow to capture. Four aircraft, two WW2 Planes and an acrobatic plane and jet. The whole display was wasted on the crowd who were seriously indifferent.

The festival site
Obligatory selfie in front of the Q Dance stage
Too drunk to care
I had four days, during the featival, zooming around the site on a Gator

Sound systems from around the campsite. Some people didn’t even bother going to the festival and spent their time partying there.

And Paris Hilton came to visit. She didn’t say, “Hi!” though.

Updating

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So that’s the Summer done and dusted. I have been a little slow on the progress reports. A combination of laziness and the Black Dog.

Look forwards to a flurry of updates, well maybe one or two. Let’s start with the painting done before Electric Love.

These two are from the Old School Miniatures range. “The Circus of Corruption” Jamie sent them to me and it seemed rude not to paint them up.

https://www.oldschoolminiatures.co.uk/circus-of-corruption-15-c.asp

More from Jamie. These are from the abolutely gorgeous Gnomes range. This is part of the Baggage Train. I swapped out the goat and replaced it with a snail which I thought was more appropriate.

https://www.oldschoolminiatures.co.uk/alpine-gnomes-3-c.asp

As you might have guessed I love this Gnomes range of Jamies. Some scenery is forthcoming from me and this is the first.

Next up is from Alternative Armies. This guy will be used in my Beastman unit in my “Not” Imperial Guard Army.

GRN53 Zarglain High Prefect

I couldn’t get (rather couldn’t afford) the Beastman Squad Leader, so I settled for this guy from Forgeworld.

More updates on the painting coming soon. KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES!

 

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Some bits and bobs from 2018

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Here are a couple of bits that I painted last year that I think I didn’t post up.

One of Citadel’s Giants

Quite tiny compared to todays giants
Battle Standard Bearer for my Albion army

This is from Hasslefree’s Kickstarter
Some quick and dirty Genestealers from Lost Patrol
Lost Patrol (not my image)

Got it for a bargain price, but sadly missing a few figures
Plague Demon sculpted by Kevin “Goblinmaster” Adams

That was 2018

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Another year done and dusted.

This year hasn’t been terribly productive for me. May comes along terribly quickly and then for three months I’m tied down with Electric Love which takes all my energies then the end of the year seems to arrive before I know it.

My Mighty Fortress addons have been popular, but not enough to retire on. But apart from that I haven’t made anything of note. This has been partly a lack of confidence/laziness and intimidation from seeing other company’s work. And partly due to depression.

I got myself a new toy.

My set up

It is the Ender 3 from Creality, It seems to be taking the 3D printing world by storm, a combination of price and quality. It is still not good enough for miniatures, for that I’ll need a resin printer, but for scenery and vehicles it’ll do. If you apply the “Three foot rule”. I’ll post results next year. I’ve made some modifications, fan covers, LEDs, stepper motor dampers and bed handle. Next up will be TL Smoothers. I’ve been hitting Thingiverse, there’s a lot of interesting bits there for free. I’ve been printing some APCs for my Not Imperial Guard Army.

I have just been given a Laptop and I am getting to grips with it (PC 😦 ) because I’d like to get back into 3D modelling, something I used to do twenty years ago. I think the future is 3D modelling and digital distribution. For me a combination of laser cut, 3D and vac forming will make some very interesting models.

I don’t have a product of the year this year. I have invested in Kill Team and Blackstone Fortress (gorgeous models) from GeeDub. But painting or playing them hasn’t happened. I do plan to make a Kill Team demo game for Austrian Salute. I have played a couple of games of Tanks with Number One Son and they have been fun. My big time sponge has been a Playstation 4 gifted to me by my Daughter. I have been playing Destiny 2 but have been getting frustrated as there seems to be no story to it and you have to be online to play. The downloads for it are huge and I can’t play them unless I pay. The Nessus world is gorgeous and I’ll be copying the style for my Kill Team Board.

I have been resisting buying figures (ok ignoring Kill Team and Blackstone Fortress) because I am so behind on my painting. The Dragon didn’t get touched and I have Alpine Dwarfs and a Gnome army to finish. I have been sooo tempted by an Athurian army from Footsore miniatures but I don’t have anyone to play against and I’ll never paint it.

Best wishes for the New Year to my regular readers, my lurkers (Hello Ruth!), my randoms (WTF do you have in common with me?), anyone else who stumbled across this and the one follower who I am sure is a dog.

Peace out!

Off to London

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Spoiler alert, this doesn’t contain much about SELWG.

It is a beautiful sunny morning here in Austria and it is hard to take in while I do my walk to the farm to get milk and gazing at hazy mountains that in less than five hours I’ll be in London.

The main purpose of this visit was to attend SELWG. The South East Wargames Group annual show held at Crystal Palace. The show is far smaller than the London Salute but much bigger than the Austrian Salute. I’d looked at the list of traders and there were a few of interest. I then went to each trader’s website and made a note of anything that interested me. Then I downloaded a plan of the venue and highlighted anything of interest.

selwgplanAs the show is so small I plan to walk around first and then decide what I want to spend my money on. I did a couple of jobs recently where cash was “in hand” and this was to be my spending money. So I have a plan and a budget.

I’d packed a few bits and pieces as gifts for people I was seeing. One, a jar of mustard, was not allowed. I had mistakenly misunderstood that Ryanair would take my hand luggage at check-in, not after security. Luckily my Wife was on the other side of the barriers and was able to retrieve it from security. While I was waiting for boarding I spotted a bag with an Electric Love lanyard. I got chatting with the owner, Chris, and found out that he worked in the media side of the festival. He was going to London to see Chelsea play. The first thing he had planned to do when he hit London was have a pint.

The plane was late and we arrived after an unevenful flight forty five minutes behind schedule. I met Chris again as we waited almost an hour for our luggage. The coach into London was clean, such a relief after my last trip. There was a beautiful autumnal light shining through golden leafed trees and it made me quite homesick. Of course being behind schedule I didn’t have the time to eat at C&R Cafe which I had been looking forwards to.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/15/c-and-r-restaurant-review

I managed to get issue 2 of Warhammer Conquest magazine at Warhammer. Sadly no copies of issue 1. They evaporated the minute they hit the shelves, mostly to scalpers. No wonder, for £1.99 you got three space marines, three full pots of paint, a brush and a magazine. I had hoped to pick up a couple of copies for the Boys. Warhammer was pleasant, no hard sell and a chatty Red Shirt. A nice change from a couple of years back when it was sell, sell, sell.

I swung by 4D Models to pick up a few things that I couldn’t get cheaply in Austria. Then I hit Poundland for superglue and epoxy glue.  Something I found was a halloween bird skeleton which might come in handy for scenery.

Then on to my old house where I spent a pleasant hour or so chatting to Simon, the new owner.

https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/XB639

https://forktail.bandcamp.com/music

Finally off to spend the first night of my trip with an ex-student and her architect husband. Their garden was full of concrete castings for the house they were building.

We ate at Vijay’s Chawalla

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/21/this-weeks-best-food-and-drink

and it was as good as I remembered.

pluralMy friends good news was that she had got Arts Council funding so she could work on her graphic novel.

Saturday was a bit of a panic as the cashpoint ate my card. Aaaargh! Another full day of running about and meeting my Daughter. Forbidden Planet for the final book (no it isn’t!) of the Expanse series and a look around. The London Graphic Centre, a traditional sweet shop and something I had been looking forwards to for a very long time, traditional fish and chips.

https://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/fryers-delight

Gorgeous.

This will be concluded in Part Deux. I’ve jost got a phonecall asking if I want to spend a week in Vienna working on an eGames event. Starting in a couple of hours.

https://www.redbull.com/at-de/events/planet-one?utm_source=Revolution+Event+Jobb%C3%B6rse&utm_campaign=e0742d0c21-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_11_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ddd37678af-e0742d0c21-297104985&mc_cid=e0742d0c21&mc_eid=c274541db7