Imperial Fists first Rhino hull airbrushed
Well, been some progress on the Rhino and Razorback that I started last week. One of the hulls have been pre-shaded and base coated and the other has been pre-shaded.
I think the yellow base-coated one doesn’t come out so well in the pic I think as the color looks a bit odd, but still I’m happy with it as my first airbrushed models. I’m planning to start detailing it soon with a paintbrush.
Imperial Fists Rhino & Razorback interiors
Recently I’ve been doing a lot more Warhammer hobby and the main focus of my hobby attentions have been on my Imperial Fist Space Marine army.
So far I’ve finished much of the tactical marine squads that I have already (I plan to convert the Dark Vengeance Box set into more Imperial Fists) and now I’ve started moving onto vehicles.
Vehicles in 40k have always been a sticking point for me because I’ve never felt that I do them really well by hand.
As an Ork player, of course I’ve gotten good at painting troops but vehicles have always seemed somewhat daunting to me, mostly because of the large 
flat areas that I would need to paint. I did successfully paint 3 Battewagons and 2 trukks for my Orks, but Ork vehicles have that ramshackle look to them which allows for very few large flat neat areas.
And so it is that upon purchasing my airbrush, I’ve been busy this entire week and have been unable to get any hobby done. Today, I had some time and decided to continue with a Rhino and Razorback that I primed a few months ago using a can of Army Painter Desert Yellow.
As for the Army Painter cans, I’ve had mixed results, some models coming out great, others looking terrible. For example, I used a can of Army Painter Plate Metal on the Dreadknight I did a while ago, which came out great, and I’ve used that color of Army Painter again and had consistently good results. 
The Yellow on the other hand has an annoying tendency to lay down too thick and obscure detail on the model, making some of my marines look terrible but still paintable. Results of the Desert Yellow are also quite unpredictable, even in identical conditions.
To say the least, I’m glad to be past it, and using an airbrush instead.
So, what have I done recently?
The tactical squads, a Terminator Squad, Captain and a couple of Melta guys (Gotta have Melta).
As for these Rhinos, I’ve primed them to the best I could get with Army Painter, and today I used my Airbrush to coat the interior of a rhino and I detailed the rest using a brush. All it needs is some a little drybrush and a wash and 
will be ready to go I think.
Of course, I also need to paint the outside as well…
What happens when the servers are gone?
Late last year I read an article on Gizmodo that discussed one mans experiences of running a blogging service, that was then taken offline for personal reasons. He told his story of his web-based service that he took offline, tried to bring it back online, failed and then tried to get users their data back as a last resort. he tells about the outrage and inevitable negative response he received from the community, and decided to issue a warning to the world, one that would tell people to beware of the hordes of media being uploaded into social media networks such as Facebook and/or Twitter.
Although his story was full of woe, there was a moral that he tried to leave at the end of it:
In a way I’m writing this to encourage everyone who’s profiting from this stuff now to set aside some of the money to help the users in what is sure to come. But also to the users to wise up and also to stop being such children.
There’s a lot more to the article and the extract above is a tiny fragment of that, but it is mostly written from the perspective of that of a provider, not so much from that of a user of such a service (Even though these are clearly the people reading the article). As I was reading this on the train, I finished reading, and stared out of the window dreamily attempting to imagine how my own life would be affected by such a world-changing event such as Facebook or Twitter disappearing. As an (Occasional) user of both Facebook and Twitter among many other ‘cloud-based’ social media services I eventually came to the conclusion that, surprisingly, I’m mostly quite prepared for a social media apocalypse.
So why write about this? Whats the point here?
Well, bear with me and I’ll try to get to that (I may repeat myself but meh).
Firstly, consider that the way our world and social society currently work are unlike anything that we have ever had in human history. We have accepted a normality regarding releasing control of our media and identity-related assets into a ‘cloud’, which we have little idea how this data is used.
After considering my own contingencies and backups of my own generated media (And feeling a little bit good about my natural distrust of social media networks), my mind wandered to others. Those who stood out the most especially were those who’s losses in the same potential catastrophe would affect me in their unpreparedness. This may sound selfish at first glance, I admit, but I ask that you think about this… If your wife/husband/other-family-member loses (for example) your childhood photos or other important media such as the baby photos of your own children, does that not affect you? Of course it does.
Remember, this can happen at any time. PCs crash, hard drives die, fire happens, etc… I dont mean to sound like a scaremonger here, but most of us apparently at some point lost interest in keeping huge photo albums of pictures in and instead place gigabytes of photos, taken from mobile camera-phones on Facebook as backup (Once again, Facebook is NOT your friend). A lot of people don’t backup separately either, just to Facebook. Somewhere in this process, we lost the part where our parents and grandparents would meticulously maintain physical photo albums and store them in the safest of safe places.
So, if for example, my own girlfriend were to lose our holiday photos then this would be an issue for me. Likewise, I would expect it to be an issue for her if I did the same. As such, I will certainly be making sure her laptop and photos are backed up like mine are already.
This is why it is important to plan for these things, make backups, and don’t fall into the mindset that so many others (Especially the younger generations among us) that Facebook cares about you. They really do not, and I’m often surprised at those I meet that imagine Facebook as this consumer dreamland created just for them (Yes, I’m that guy that reminds people that Facebook is an evil corporation). Why else would Facebook sell your data to anyone willing to pay them enough? Worse, what happens if they throw in the towel when the next Facebook (Remember MySpace?) comes around and people move to that?
Realistically, Facebook wont last until the end of time, or even the rest of your life, so what happens then?
My Solution?
I put the redundancy of my digital content at the top of my list.
I have a home server which I backup my phone and PCs to remotely via Dropbox/Google Drive.
My PCs and laptops also backup directly to my home server automagically when at home.
My home server backs up my photos to external local storage nightly.
Where does this leave me?
It means I can leverage the ease of cloud based services to facilitate my own remote backup purposes.
How can you do this?
Well, it’s actually not that hard. All you need is a place to backup to (Your PC will do), a Dropbox account (Which is free upto 2GB to start) some free software and you’re good to go. Alternatively, you can backup directly to your server via WebDAV (Web folders), which takes out the middleman and also means you do not need your private photos going through some cloud company. This is an approach I’m moving to, as having complete control of my own data is important to me.
Purchased an Airbrush – Happy times ahead
As the title suggests, I have purchased an airbrush and compressor set.
I’ll go through what I’ve purchased, but first I want to go through my reasons for purchasing this.
My Reasons
There are a couple of reasons why I wanted an airbrush for miniature painting, and it is my belief that this is a great investment.
Firstly, I absolutely despise basecoating models using cans outside.
Where I live I dont have a whole lot of outside room and it gets quite windy regularly and unexpectedly, so its a test of my patience to shield from the wing and spray when I think its safe. It also feels like a chore to get a cardboard box ready and prepare it outside, and takes a while to dry and is quite bad smelling.
Next, I’ve tried to make the experience of spraying better by using different brands of spray paint, from GW’s benchmark spray to Army Painter which is very unpredictable and a few others. I feel that I’ve wasted a lot of money doing this as some of the models and finishes have left me very dissapointed in how heavy they go on, messing up all the detail on the models. I’ve spent hours upon hors looking at forums and guides on how to spray correctly and avoid the issues encountered, but I see that so many others have had similar experiences that its disheartened me.
Lastly, I want to achieve a better finish and do it quickly. This is the main reason that I went with sprays to begin with, and why I eventually went to using sprays of varying color. I’d like to establish good even and thin coats quickly and in comfort. Sprays did not deliver this, and cost a lot as a result.
So in conclusion, I’m happy that I purchased this, and feel that I’ll be learning a cool new skill by using an airbrush also.
What I bought
I did lots of research and decided to purchase from this seller:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008BH2Z6G/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1HGRE909K6WTV
It was a bit more expensive than other sellers but I discovered its from a real proper Airbrush specialist with a website store called Airbrush Supply Online, so I also ordered a bunch of other things from the same seller which reduced my postage (Shipping to Netherlands). I had a good think and when reading advice from professionals, it was advised that if you’re seriously considering getting into airbrushing, even on a budget, consider seriously that you may need to buy more than just the compressor and airbrush, such as cleaner and thinner (If you don’t want to use water). I purchased these things at once too.
I also emailed them for more details about the Amazon link above, because it was vague as to what was being supplied, and these are the models of compressor and airbrushes that come in the link above. They also responded promptly and with accurate information.
Compressor: AS-186
Airbrush 1: HS-35 (Gravity feed)
Airbrush 2: HS-28 (Bottom feed)
Lastly, I decided I wanted something extra fine as an airbrush once my skills develop a little.
From the same seller I purchased the HS-80 airbrush, which is apparently a straight clone of a £300+ Iwata:
So all in, this kit will set me back ~£120 not including extras I ordered.
Lastly, look what arrived today:
Now if I can actually get some time to get home and try this I’ll be happy.
Hopefully, more to come.
Finally built my display cabinet
I’ve been working on this for a while, but I finally finished it over the weekend.
Back in late 2011, I saw this forum thread on DakkaDakka called ‘AesSedai’s guide to building a custom glass display case for your figures’ (Which became an article) which detailed his efforts to use a generic Ikea ‘DETOLF’ glass cabinet as a display case for his models.
To say the least, I was smitten immediately and have always gone back every once in a while to see if any updated or others have posted pictures of their own cases. THere have not been that many responses, but I always wanted to do this myself.
So, onto this year, with the extra space I now have since moving, an Ikea nearby and a girlfriend who is always willing to go to Ikea, I decided that now was the time to begin this project.
As it is, it turned out to be simpler than I initially intended it to be.
I purchased the first DETOLF unit and set it up a few weeks ago, but wanted to add more shelves like to article, so following his instructions, purchased some rope clips from Ebay and installed them in the unit, using the existing shelves to measure fit.
Originally, I also intended to purchase only the unit itself and then buy extra glass like the article writer. This proved to be ridiculously expensive, in the region of 70+ euros for 4 pieces of cut safety glass.
When considering that a complete DETOLF unit with 3 glass shelves included is 50 euros (Not including delivery), I decided to simply buy another DETOLF, and carry the thing home rather than pay a further 40 euros to deliver a 50 euro product.
Beware, if you want to do this, this thing is heavy.
I only really needed it for the shelves, and I got 3 rather than 4, but I may see if I can sell off the rest of the unit as I don’t have much use for it now without the shelves.
Grey Knights Dreadknight – Complete
Well, I actually (nearly) finished this a while ago, but I kept meaning to put an update here showing the finished model.
It’s still not quite 100% but good enough for now. I got to the latest stage back in September, and still have it mounted on my desk at work, since I don’t have a Grey Knights army to go with it and its really because I just wanted to finish it.
Anyhow, it was an interesting paint for me, as I tried to get the characteristic ‘Silver-Blue Metal’ look of the Grey Knights by using washes and drybrushing.
In the back of my mind, I’d like to have a small Grey Knight contingent to back up my Imperial Fists using the 6th Edition Ally rules. Just a couple of squads of Terminators, Draigo and the Dreadknight would do it I think.
I think I like that idea, and will hopefully come back to it later, but for now it’s all about finishing my Imperial Fists and then starting Necrons.
New Year & New Life
Well, its 2013.
I feel like I’d just got used to 2012 and now here I am a whole year later…
So many things have happened in the last twelve months, and I can already see so much more will happen throughout 2013, so much so that I’m writing this to solidify some of my goals and review some things I wanted to do. Read the rest of this entry »
Creating a Windows NAT in Amazon Web Services (AWS)
As I’ve probably stated before, I use Amazon Web Services on a daily basis in my work, and recently I’ve been considering moving my own private hosting to them (For this very blog, for example).
The problem I have with Amazon Web Services, is that it seems to me that they should stick a big ‘BETA’ sticker on the front of it. I say this because although AWS has a lot of genius and good ideas, as well as being very affordable, it is somewhat buggy. There are also a lot of unexplained and odd things that happen when you do more advanced things within its infrastructure.
For examples of these glitches, have a look at the AWS Support Forums. Read the rest of this entry »
Interesting Article regarding Microsoft
Over at Business Insider, there is an interesting article surrounding the recent unexpected departure of Steven Sinofsky.
This might seem something very Microsoft-like to read, but I would say that Sinofsky was very much like Steve Jobs in his approach. Worth reading about how the next would-be CEO of Microsoft behaved, according to direct reports of those who worked with and under him. Read the rest of this entry »
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