I am a fraid to say that this year’s resolutions are a repeat of last year’s. Of which I barely achieved any. The big plan to print and paint a 2000 pt proxy Tau army stalled. The reason? I hate batch painting and the unit I started last Summer is still on my bench. I will try a new approach, paint one figure at a time. Maybe this approach will work?
I still have this malaise and it is really hard to get motivated. I use my journal to chivvy me up and it is satisfying to tick off little tasks at the end of the day. It’s not helped by my taking blood pressure medication making me really fatigued. Apparently this will change as my body becomes acclimatised. Adding to this is the fact that I have nothing to look forwards to. Each day is a repeat of the last. I do remind myself that, unlike a lot of people at the moment, I am warm, fed and have a roof over my head. Also not helping are my biopsy results coming back positive.
Youth is wasted on the young.
BUT I did start, and finish, a few projects which had been started and then shelved years ago (in some cases). And I aim to keep on going with this. It is quite satifying taking boxes of bits and putting them together and freeing up some space.
I have been a little more diciplined regarding painting what I print before I start a new project. But there are several boxes of half started projects and I plan to tackle them this year.
My PC is under utilised, mostly being used as a home cinema setup and for gaming. Despite me saying, “No gaming here!”. The biggest time sink at the moment is Star Wars Outlaws.
One big project I would like to attempt is to get an overview of my Lead Mountain. Just so I know exactly what I have. I think I will start with my Orks, figure out what I need and sell any surplus.
As a result of my new porn addiction, thank you Mr. Matt Lee!
I have started watching PC building videos. They feature builds which are way out of any conceivable budget I my aspire to, but they are slick well produced videos. Moving expectations away from the beige boxes of the past towards more object d’art.
I have been looking at crafted wooden cases as well and if my skills improve this might be a route I might consider. Adding into the mix I have seen how old LCD monitors, which are now next to nothing or free second hand, are being used as a tranparent second screen.
Anyway this is a future project, nothing to get involved with just yet.
Back to my weak will being influenced. I liked my original case. But, it was too big and slightly in the way. Black Friday offers were popping up on my feed with some very enticing prices. There is a dead space on the left of my desk and there was one case which fitted exactly exactly AND it had the on/off switch on the side. No more fishing around under the desk to power on. Just reach forwards, no hassle. Six ARGB fans included. And with another silly price drop I got an upgraded CPU cooler as well.
Here is my little glowy set up.The last two items to add are a monitor light and a macropad.
Adding to the setup is a little footstool I just made. When I watch media ( Just finished “The Night Manager, just beautifully shot, very tense in places and Hugh Laurie plays a truly evil charactor) I can sit back with my feet raised. As advised by doctors.
Don’t worry, back on track with hobby related stuff. I am just about to finish the largest model I have ever painted.
This is something I keep meaning to post for several weeks. Motivation for anything is hard. I have my journal where I set myself daily tasks and that can be struggle at times. There is no sat around moping, I am constantly busy, but it seems so pointless. Mostly I have set myself the task of going through various projects which have been started and the abandoned as I get distracted by something new and shiny. Generally they seem to be scattered around in various boxes, so I have been compiling them into one box or actually trying to finish them. One project, some Ork barricades was started twenty years ago. I have now started slapping some paint on them. I need to reduce my clutter which can seem overwhelming at times.
Back on topic, my new computer. It was a budget build and some mistakes were made. But lessons were learned.The reason I needed a new computer was that my old iMac died (again), it was the graphics card. A known problem, Apple had used a cheap solder which degraded over time. I could have bought a new card for about 200 Euro but there were two problems. Firstly my clever neighbour who has helped me over the years with technical stuff had died. And secondly the iMac really struggled with with anything processor intensive like Blender or BambuLabs slicer.
In all I ended up spending around 1600 Euros, this included several bells and whistles. Knowing what I know now I wish I had saved up a bit more and bought some more advanced parts to future proof. As I said it’s my first time.
On to what I ended up getting.
I bought two parts second hand. The first was this case. The NZXT Phantom full tower. Originally from around 2010. I now regret this. It looks lovely but it is huge and not really up to the job with modern components. It cost just over 40 Euro, with P&P, another 30 or so and I could have got a modern case.
The next second hand part was a BeQuiet! 750W Gold PSU. It arrived boxed as new and at half the price I would have paid if I had bought it new. No complaints.
For the monitor I chose the ODYS i27 monitor with a fancy Monitor mount.
Motherboard is an ASUS TUF Gaming B550 with wifi. Processor is AMD Ryzen 7 5700. 32gb of Crucial DDR4 ram. 1tb ssd. The GPU is NVIDEA GeForce RTX 3050. I got roasted so badly online when I had posted my build spec. When I had been researching it had been recommended as a decent budget GPU. So I am not quite sure where all the hate is coming from about this.
I did spend, probably too much, a bit on a keyboard. An Epomaker Leobog Hi86 mechanical keyboard with a solid aluminium body. It weighs a ton and feels so lovely. This I do not regret.
Tasteful
A Samsung Galaxy Tab 6E was bought for use as a graphics tablet. So far I have spent over five hours with Technical Support trying to the registration sorted out. It requests that a verification code is sent to my phone. No problem. However the code takes upto twelve hours to arrive. The verification window is two minutes. The helpdesk people haven’t been able to sort it out. Maybe there is a problem with my network? Well how come we are communicating almost immediately? They refuse to stray outside their script and when I request an upchain I’m told that there are no supervisors. I can’t request an escalation as the ticket is open. I am promised call backs which never happen which means I have to repeat the problem again to another person. GRRR!
My old scanner finally gave up the ghost. It was an Epson with the ability to scan negatives. The replacement cost was eye wateringly expensive. So I have gone with a Canon.
Money was spent on various USB cables, velcro strips for cable tidying, desk light Mouse, Mousemat, influencer lighting strips and a USB hub.
For sound I dug out my old speakers.
Nice
Once it is dark I will attempt to take some pictures so you can see it in all it’s influencer glory.
I got my Ender 3 in 2016 and although it has produced satisfactory results it needed constant tinkering and I had to deal with bed levelling and clogs.
My Neighbours asked me what I wanted for my Birthday and Christmas. I had been looking at a lot of YouTube videos and they were all pointing me towards the BambuLabs A1. And with Black Friday it was too good a deal to pass up.
All I can say is, believe the hype.
It is easy to set up and the print results are amazing. With the 0.2 hotend and highest print quality you are looking at a near resin quality. And if you apply the Three Foot Rule you would never know.
For very fine details resin is King. But dealing with the clean-up and the toxic waste is a right pain.
This was written a few months ago and a few things have changed which I will update in another post.
What’s going on? Well a few things actually.I have been seeing a Psychologist on a weekly basis, which has been helpful. Sadly this has finished due to cuts in Government spending. It did involve some art projects, which was nice. And to make a YouTube playlist starting from depressing to uplifting.
Originally it was supposed to have nine tracks, from a low mood, to middling and on to happy. But me being me stuff had to be added.
Health wise still pretty much the same. The Doctors at the Hospital still don’t know what caused the thrombosis, so I have to continue taking blood thinners. One of my cancers has to be biopsied and that resulted in another operation. When the results came back the tissue was precancerous. I had an all clear on the other one and having checkups every six months.
I did write a long piece on dentistry, but it was long and boring. I will just say I have ongoing dental problems.
Kids, go for regular checkups, worth it when you’re older. Damn my fear of dentists.
The Employment Service have enrolled me on a German course. Apparently my age and lack of German are the two big hurdles to me getting meaningful employment. After roughly thirty minutes it all starts to go “Blah, blah, blah” as my mind starts to get overwhelmed. I just forget everything and I feel so stupid. But I have to keep reminding myself that compared to some members of my classmates I am not that bad. It has been stressful and as a result I have had some spikes in blood pressure, giving my blurred vision in one eye and headaches.
My plan this year hobbywise is to finish off some projects. I get excited about things, start a new project…..
Oh look a squirrel!
….and then get excited about something else and this has left me with quite a few unfinished projects.
What I want to finish this year is Bloodbowl and HeroQuest. I also need a way of storing the components. I also have two unfinished armies from Dragon Rampant, Elemental and Undead, which would be good to have finished.
There are also plans to go through my stuff and try and de-clutter and sell surplus bits. And some work in the house.
Don’t worry there will be more hobby updates coming.
As, somewhat belatedly, promised here is a photo dump of painting from 2024.
As you can see a bit of a mish mash. I am trying to get get various projects into a state of completion. My focus is Bloodbowl and HeroQuest. I do want to get my Mighty Fortress parts assembled and painted. The problem I have is that I get easily distracted and move on to another project.
It’s been a while and still a long road ahead in terms of health, physical and mental. One day at a time. I kept up my painting. It has been a chore at times and I don’t take the same pleasure in it as I used to do. One change I did make was to move my painting area upstairs. I used to paint in the cellar and that time was used to escape the clamour of daily life. Now I find it too isolated. Whereas upstairs I can hear voices and not feel so lonely. Plus I have cats sleeping in the window, drinking my tea and I have a view. Having a view is nice. I didn’t realise I missed having a window until now. I used to have a view in London and it is good for the eyes to change focus every so often. My lighting set up is still downstairs as it would be a mammoth task to unwire it all.
I didn’t realise that it had been over a year since I last posted. There are going to be posts covering this period. Yes with photos! One thing that did throw me a bit was my computer giving up the ghost. Yes I know one can still post on a mobile, but it isn’t the same.
I made something new. Don’t worry this time it is hobby related.
Years ago when I was taking the Boys to the playground I spotted something buried in the mud by the swings. I couldn’t tell what it was and being bored I dug it out with the help of stick. It was a mini tripod. I cleaned it up, stuck it in a corner and forgot about it.
I have started to use my “Handy” for taking photographs but I have a little trouble with camera shake. During my recent tidying I came across it. And now that I can laser cut again I had an idea.
I was browsing through various woodworking tools online, as you do, and came across a centre line marker. It is probably not something I would use frequently, if ever, but I looked at it and thought, “I can do that!”
This was the first iteration using bolts that I had in abundance from Electric Love waste.Here it is in operation but the bolts wobbled and didn’t give a satisfactory result. And the bolt used to secure the pencil was awkward to tighten.Iteration three.
I replaced the side guide bolts with dowling to reduce the wobble following the adage, “Keep It Simple Stupid!” I wish I had discovered woodworking forty years ago rather than recently.
Don’t worry dear Reader I will be returning to the Hobby. This Blog needs a bit of a refresh and I plan to make some changes. My catalogue of lasercut bits needs a lot of trimming. I would like to start photographing my figures properly and make the gallery images standardised. And as the Mancave has stumbled to a halt I want to delete it and start a page focussing on the tools and equipment I use.
I am trying to reverse engineer my way to happiness despite the best efforts of my lovely Wife. This is the philosophy I am attempting to use.
“Retrophrenology: It works like this. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone’s character, aptitude and abilities by examining the bumps and hollows on their head. Therefore – according to the kind of logical thinking that characterizes the Ankh-Morpork mind – it should be possible to mould someone’s character by giving them carefully graded bumps in all the right places. You can go into a shop and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection and a side order of hysteria. What you actually get is hit on the head with a selection of different size mallets, but it creates employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that’s the main thing.”
I can gauge my mental state by my surroundings. The tidier and more ordered it is then the better mental state I am in. So I am attempting to reverse engineer a better mental state by organising my environment. Having a now fully functioning laser cutter has been a huge mind saver.
The third time is the charm. There are boxes of tools that I have inherited from my Father and Grandfather, and from my Wife’s Father and Grandfather. I have been sorting through everything, getting rid of any broken bits and setting up tool boxes for my Boys with any duplicates. What I have left has been slowly organised.
As you can see it is rather poorly madeSome gouged out sections to allow for bitsMeasure twice cut once anyone?Second attemptIn situ in a rather gloomy corner
Had I enough wood I would have attempted a third go to correct those mistakes.
Tool cabinet slowly getting organised. I inherited it from my late Father in Law. It originally was well equipped with tools, but when I got it there were a lot of mysterious gaps which I am now trying to fill.
The corner is gloomy no more.
I have started painting a bit but the joy has been stolen and I am finding it hard to get my mojo.
Some Night Goblin Netters that I got as a present
Wot i am workin on now
This guy is going to be part of an Empire Mercenary band. Based for Dragon Rampant.
I have been designing some bunker facades for my trench terrain
I must mention the competition being run by Old School Miniatures to design an Orc War Machine
I can’t honestly say that 2023 was amazing. Firstly dealing with the side effects of medication and the my Wife’s life changing announcement.
2024 looks like more of the same, a hostile uncommunicative environment.
The last half of 2023 wasn’t very productive. Any little pleasures that I used to have were stripped away. I barely picked up a paintbrush.
What I did manage to do was to get a new laser tube and have started cutting and designing again.
There are four big projects that I would like to bring to completion if only to get boxes of odds and sods out of the way.
Bloodbowl – everything is printed. It just needs assembly, painting and most importantly storage.
Heroquest – this need the characters and furniture painting. This one is almost there.
Then I have two big modular terrain projects.
The ruined city, all made apart from a few pieces which need laser cut tiles. And obviously painting.
Modular trenches. This has been made with pink insulation foam. It is about three quarters done. I have been laser cutting walkways and wall retainers. There are still some more tiles to make but before I do I need storage. A trip to Ikea beckons.
There has, understandably, been no product of the year for me.
I’ll sign off and wish all three of you a Happier, Healthier and more Productive 2024.
genuine grumpy old tin 