Viking Project Update: Whiplash

Well, no lousy pictures this week. I didn't get much done on my Vikings. There are two big reasons for this. For one, I'm totally addicted to Titan Quest. I played it all summer, and then lost my progress when my hard disk fell prey to a virus. So I've been playing again. Addictive as all hell and I can't get anything else done!

But more importantly, I've developed some strange neck strain. That's why this I'm calling this update "whiplash." I woke up Thursday morning with the left side of my neck swollen and sore. I figured I had slept on it wrong. But today is Sunday and it feels even worse! In fact, the original area of soreness is gone and a new part of my neck is hurting. I can't do anything without pain, except lie down. But it's especially painful to look down or look up. If I squeeze my shoulder blades together I want to cry. What the hell is this?

I've done nothing that I can think of to injure myself like this. But today, the fourth day like this, I am even worse than before. I have to go lie down about every hour or so to relieve my neck. As lame as it seems, I'm going to have to go see a doctor about this. I haven't felt this bad since I hurt my back last Christmas. But that was due to a reason I could identify. This, as far as I can tell, is a sleep injury!

Well, I put together 8 Viking Bondi last night and then I couldn't take any more. I'll have to wait for this to pass before I can get any more completed. Hopefully, I'll be able to show the completely modeled army very soon. I'm getting pretty close!

Viking Project Update: Hirdmen

So, after about a week or so of one type of disaster or another, I've finally been able to get back to my viking army project. As you can see from the picture above, I've completed three of my six units. They are all Hirdmen, armed with spears that I made from brass rods. I even have a movement tray for one all ready to go! Now I will just have to magnetize the bases and prepare the remainder of the trays. Then I can paint!

Originally I was very ambitious about getting this army table-ready for September. Well, the month is half way over and I'm only half way done. So, I've had to readjust my expectations. I'll shoot for the end of October to have them ready.

This should still be a challenge to meet, yet something that I can achieve. Recently I haven't had a lot of motivation to get anything done with my miniatures. I just wish I was at a place where I could buy a figure or two and just paint it for pleasure. But I have so much piled up, I can't do it. Fortunately, I'm pretty excited about the historical stuff. So that is keeping me going.

So, the next group to tackle are all my Bondi units. These guys are the farmers who don't do this for a living. So they'll be easier to model in that they don't all have to be uniform with spear and shields -- just enough so that other players realize that the units have spears and shields. I'm thinking that the best way to make these guys stand out from the other, better equipped Hirdmen might be in the way I paint them. They'd probably have pretty drab and faded clothing. The Hirdmen might have better stuff and look a little sharper. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself right now. I've got to get them modeled first!

Vikings! A New Project

The best cure for laziness is activity. So, building a new Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) army is just the thing. I've been seduced into this Games Workshop game by a few evil people who are tempting me with ever more interesting miniature games. In fact, I've always wanted to play WAB, and then just founds some people who are doing it. So I jumped into it.

Seeing how I'm writing (struggling to write, more like it) a novel set in Viking age Norway, a WAB Viking army is just the thing. Unlike other GW games, you don't buy miniatures from them. So, this game is a lot cheaper. I paid out less than half of what it would cost to do a comparable army with GW product. I've bags and bags of lead Viking models, more than I'll need, to build my army. They are all from Old Glory. The figures themselves are not exactly the best I've seen. Many a Viking has only half a face or some other casting problem in the model. But they are pretty good. They're true 25mm; so they're smaller than what I'm accustomed to.

My only complaint is that I had to make spears for my spearmen. I guess this is not all that bad, as lead spears would just bend and snap off anyway. I'd have to replace them with brass rod eventually. But I've got a lot of spearmen, and need to make lots of spears. In the pictures below, you can see piles of "brass toothpicks" that I'm using for spears. I've clipped down rods to size and then used my Dremmel tool to grind out points. The points are freakin' sharp and I've already stuck myself a few times! Damn Vikings! I'm also going to have to convert a few standard bears for this too. I'm not good at conversions. So we'll see how that goes.

I'm excited about this. I've got quite a challenge ahead to get these guys modeled and painted before the next meeting of the WAB group next month. I plan to dip these guys to speed up the painting process. We'll see how that goes. For now, here are pictures of the men in their bags and laid out on my work table. Pretty rag-tag, even for Vikings!

The Virtues of Laziness

I offer this lame post only as a means to demonstrate that I am, in fact, alive. When I first started with this blog, I was full of ideas of how I would fill page after virtual page with my thoughts. Now the startling realization comes: I apparently have no thoughts.

You know, I didn't have a really clear idea what this blog was for when I started. It seemed like a cool place to put up my art. But Deviant Art (see my links) is a far better place for that. So I started to put up pictures of my miniature figures. But I soon discovered that 1) I take crappy pictures, 2) it's a lot of work to set up figures for photography, and 3) I'm too lazy to actually take the pictures.

So, what is the purpose of this blog? Who is its audience (currently perhaps one or two people on earth.... perhaps a few others from inhabited planets outside our solar system)? I have given some thought to this while standing in line at grocery stores or while pumping gas. I haven't yet come up with a satisfactory answer. I think the content should drive the audience.... but in my case it seems like the audience is driving the content!

I've entitled this post the virtues of being lazy. In fact, I can't really think of any virtues associated with laziness. Guess I just thought it would be a satirical title to this post. At any rate, I'm not really a lazy person. I've got a reputation for being overly ambitious, in fact, when it comes to my interests. Right now, I'm really putting a lot of effort into my Japanese study. Other things (like this blog) have taken a back seat to that interest. So, I guess I'm not being lazy after all. I'm just being selective about what I put my effort into.

I suppose that this blog is really just an online diary. Later, at some time in my future, some co-worker can surreptitiously find out all about me. Then somehow he can take what can be found here and turn it into a nice blackmail scheme. Or maybe my long lost family will discover it, read about me, and decide that I'm best left in the "long lost" category. Who'd want to contact such a dull person anyway?

Well, I'm glad I've had this conversation with myself! I think I'll take another 90 days to think about it and get back with a new mission for my blog. Really, if I'm going to do this, I had better think of a way to get someone to read it. Otherwise, wouldn't it just be more efficient to think this stuff in my head instead?

More Dwarfs!

So here are yet more dwarfs. Here is the command unit for my Quarrelers.
I hand painted the banner. In this pic it doesn't look so smooth. But on the table it looks more crisp than this. Dwarf players.... go look up that rune in your army book and tell me what it is.

Here's my lame BSB conversion. It's basically a regular warrior champ with an extra long pole and regular banner. But you get the idea. The banner pole is a brass rod.
There are more dwarfs waiting to be painted. I don't think I took photos of my longbeards. So, I'll do that later. I've got two bolt throwers to go, 7 more Longbeards, 24 more warriors, two more engineers, and 20 Slayers. That ought to keep me busy!

Dwarfs!

Here are some samples of my Dwarf army that I've been claiming to paint all this time. I'm really painting it! I am just going slow at it. The models have a lot of detail, and I like to bring it all out even if it doesn't show on the gaming table.

Up first is an Engineer and a Runesmith.
They came out nicely. But I don't think they came out as nicely as this Grudge Thrower crew and Engineer:
Here's my Organ gun and a sample of the crew. I think these guys came out nicely, but just one crewman suffices to demonstrate the look.

This post is getting a little big. So I'll add more pictures to a new one.

Could I really be this lazy?

Wow, don't six weeks just disappear so fast? I couldn't believe it when I popped in here to realize that my blog has not been updated since March. Ouch..... Oh well, it's not like some big fan base is awaiting my next entry here.

At any rate, I've been busy. You just wouldn't be able to tell that from this blog. I've completed my 1500 pts of Dwarfs for the team tournament that I played in last month. I think they look pretty good. I've got to get around to photographing these and posting them up. It takes a lot of effort (for me anyway) to dig them out, set up the lighting, and get the pictures onto my hard disk. But I'll get to it. I''m aiming to complete the remaining 500 pts of Dwarfs over the next few months -- two bolt throwers, a grudge thrower, 7 more Longbeards, and 24 more warriors. Geez.....

So, my novel outline is done. I left a lengthy post last time about that endeavor. I added in story lines for two other characters to flesh it out and an outline for two others who I may or may not show. The great part of this outlining technique is that you can take things out or add them in without destroying the whole manuscript. Now I'm going to let it sit for a spell and then begin to write it starting on June 1st. That way I'll be able to track how long it takes to actually write it. I'll be shooting for six months -- so maybe the first draft will be my Christmas gift this year.

In other news, I've restarted my learning of Japanese. Not sure if I mentioned it here, but I can speak and read (to a fair degree) Mandarin Chinese. I hesitate to ever say that I actually "speak" the language. But I can carry on a conversation about stuff that interests me, and I can say things like, "Hey, don't point that gun at me," or "please stop punching me," you know, things that you need to survive. Of course, I lived in Taiwan for a while in the early 90s and my wife is Chinese. So I've been able to keep up my learning of the language. Some of those Chinese "historical" dramas for T.V. are actually pretty good. So watching those helps keep me sharp.

But how I've digressed! As I was saying, I am starting my study of Japanese. Years ago, when I was an ambitious young man, I told myself that I would learn both Chinese and Japanese. Then I got married to a Chinese, and the next question I asked myself is "why bother learning Japanese since I can't use it to pick up Japanese girls now that I'm married?" So that ruling logic held for something like 15 years. Then I realized that learning Japanese because I'm interested in their culture is also a noble idea. So I began to study about three years ago. Then work got busy, and excuses flowed like water. And now I'm restarting three years later. Had I kept at it by now I'd be speaking Japanese and understanding important shows like Cowboy Bebop in the original Japanese.

I'm using a combination approach of Pimsleur Japanese, which is a pretty radical way of language learning from my experience. But after just ten lessons I can understand a lot of little things in Japanese already. It took me like 6 months of Chinese study to get to that level. So Pimsleur is cool. I'm also using the sentence memorization method advocated at alljapaneseallthetime.com. (How's that for a crazy url?)

OK, my fingers are tiring. I'll update again later. But just one note for music buffs out there. If you were ever into Black Sabbath -- the original 70s version -- you owe it to yourself to check out these bands that I've so recently discovered: Wolfmother, The Sword, Witchcraft, and Priestbird. These are all new bands recording stuff that will take you back a few years. The funny thing is I don't think any of these kids were in more than diapers in the 70s. So, they've obviously put a new spin on things. Anyway, check them out if you can. They're really good!