Saga So Far

To continue on the "Flood" saga.....

We found a house on the East Hill that we liked and put in an offer. It was accepted. Before the economic downturn, I would not have been able to afford this house. But the house is really cool. Not only do I get a gaming room (aka the "Bonus Room"), I also get a workshop along with part of the 3 car garage to put my Radial Arm saw, routing table and other large power tools that will create a lot of wood dust and make it easy to clean up.

The workshop is really nice with a bench with power and shelving already in place. There is a place for my Drill press and other smaller power tools. Once I have everything in place I'll post pictures.

I'm jazzed because I can now, supposedly, have the room and ability to create all the terrain I want and actually have a place to paint mini's etc. This will allow me to finish the mini trays that I had been posting pictures of and I am hoping to actually make a tutorial that I can post on YouTube.

So stay tuned to this space for further updates. (Just an FYI we should be moving over the US Thanksgiving Day Holiday.) I should be posting more frequently (but then don't I always promise that? :D ).

Life

As usual it's been a while. Life always seems to happen just when you start enjoying yourself.

At the moment, there are two things going on in my life. The first is I now live in a flood plain.... WTF?!? how could I go from not living in a flood plain to living in one? It's called the Howard-Hansen Dam. Seems this Dam was built in the 1950's to keep the area where I live from flooding..... which caused it to no longer be classified as a flood zone. Now fast forward 50 years later and with climate change hitting the Pacific Northwest pretty hard (we now get rain like the East Coast gets, large, hard and lots of it, were before we got drizzle), instead of 90 days of drizzle, we get 90 days of OMG CATS and DOGS flowing from the sky.

So last year (2008) was a record year for the Dam. The Dam normally fills to 75% capacity. Last year it was 90%.... then the operators/care takers noticed "depressions" in the Dam... not a good thing. They drained it and discovered that it is no longer viable to hold massive amounts of water and it will take 8-10 years to fix..... whoops... so all of my inquiries into "Do I live in a flood plain" and being told "No" was a bunch of crap. There is a single point of failure in the logic that a flood plain is no longer a flood plain just because some Humans built a Dam and said so.

This brings me to point number two. In our strive to not have everything we own ruined by said coming flood... we have started to raise items in the Townhouse. So all the books/video's that are normally downstairs, are now upstairs... all the fun stuff in the Garage / Workshop is being moved to shelving I have put into the ceiling. This creates a much more open workspace. And that is awesome because I've been wanting more workspace. Of course that euphoria won't last long as all that extra space will be in 6-10' of water when the rains come.

With all the new workspace and hoping that the rains do not come or are not as bad as trending has shown it should be, I'll be working on a massive amount of stuff. The display boards I have not finished will finally get finished and photo's taken and posted.

Too bad that the "right now" is taken up by flood prep. But hopefully it will all work out in the end and I will have a cool workspace that won't flood.

The DC Chronicles.

Discovered this series of short movies while checking out Fallout 3 Vids on Youtube.

The DC Chronicles.

The Fallout 3 engine allows for scripted sequences and I found a series of video's on Youtube by member Drakortha and OMG! this guy is good.

Not only is the scripting very well done, but the writing and how it is presented is incredible.

There are 3 episodes up at the time of this post. It is highly recommended that you watch them, even if you are not a fan of the game.


My hats off to you Drakortha. Damn good job.

Blame Fallout 3

It has been quite a while since I posted last.

I blame Fallout 3 for my absence. I have been sucked in, hook, line, sinker and life time subscription to Anglers Monthly.

I am still plugging away at the ORK-43 rules as well. Just not as quickly thanks to Fallout 3. (By the way I DO RECOMMEND that you get this game and play it).

I wish it had a co-op mode, but it does not and that is very sad. Having a few "buds" with you as you explore the Capital Wasteland would have been awesome.

Oh well. I have have land to explore and Karma to gain or lose!

Computers Suck

We had a power outage a week or so ago and my PC started acting up. So it became so bad that I really, really needed to get a new box.

So I got an iMac. I've been a PC "dude" since 1982 when the original IBM PC came out. Now I'm a UNIX Guru, having Linux or FreeBSD boxes in and out around the house, but supporting and having to constantly rebuild or compile my own drivers, etc... sucks. So I wanted a Unix variant that was supported by manufacturers and a company that would actually fix bugs that are reported and I don't have to compile anything.... unless I write it myself.

So now things are being ported over and hopefully I will be done soon.

Oh, why an iMac and not a MacBook Pro? Twenty Four Inches of Real Estate... now I have 48" of screen.... OMG!!! So the iMac has a 24" built in monitor and I have a 24" Dell monitor from my Windows Box. WHOOOT!!!!

Once I get stuff converted over and transferred, etc, etc. I'll be posting more!

TTFN!

Ork Boys for Ork-43

I've been able to work on more of the conversion for Orks for AT-43. I'm planning on putting this all into a handy dandy downloadable PDF when it's done. So please be patient. And please post feedback!

Ork Boyz (size 2) Type: 1 Numbers: 10 to 20 Standard Equipment: Shoota and Choppa Optional Equipment: Grenades Special Weapons: Burnas Specialist: Pain Boyz Ork Boyz(size 1) Mv: 16, Mrl: 8, Armor: 5, Combat: 8 Standard Equipment Acc ROF AOE PEN Shoota 0 4/0 - 4/1 Choppa 8 1/0 - 8/1 Special Weapons Burnas (indirect fire, projection) (25) 1/0 4 9/1 Optional Equipment Grenades (indirect fire) 0 1/0 1 4/1 Equipment Standard Number(1) Maximum Number(2) Extra Fighter Standard 100 AP 160 AP +6 AP Grenades 160 AP 240 AP +12 AP (1) 10 Ork Boyz, including 3 special weapon and 0 to 2 specialists + 0 to 1 officer (2) 20 Ork Boyz, including 6 special weapon and 0 to 2 specialists + 0 to 1 officer

Necron Display Board (WIP)

I thought I'd document my Necron display board. I'll be using the same method to create boards for other armies. Not just for Warhammer 40k, but for AT-43, etc.


I have a set of Hole Saws, but I purchased them at Harbor Freight and I'm not thrilled with the sizes or that the 1" (25mm) one cracked on first use. So I purchased some Forstner bits and those are wonderful. The MDF board is a little hard, but with some patients it works well.

I should be able to use these bits to drill down into thicker wood to just the right depth. So making really nice wood boards should definitely be possible.









I put marks and made lines every 5cm since all the miniature bases I use are in millimeter and not inches. So the board gets covered with 5mm squares, I then place a base on the board and mark the corners of where a square would fit around it, then I draw lines between them, making an X. The X is where the drill bit goes for a nice cut. I have been spacing the small bases (25-40mm) 10mm apart just for strength. Since I'll be gluing this to metal, it probably won't matter, but I want to be sure.

As you can see, besides the Ork-43 conversion I'm doing, I also have other projects that I'm trying to get done.

So much to do, so little time.