New Warhammer 40k 2012 box set!
New 40k Box set goodness!
Well, the new Limited Edition box set for Warhammer 40k was officially announced by Games Workshop on Saturday 25/8/2012, and features Dark Angels Space Marines versus Chaos Space Marines. It’s officially named ‘Dark Vengeance’, following on from the previous names of the other box sets, the last two being ‘Assault on Black Reach‘ (Space Marines vs. Orks) and ‘Battle for Macragge‘ (Space Marines vs. Tyranids).
Now, something that I have been wondering about, is the matchup between Marines and Marines. Personally, I think this combination is potentially quite boring, but I think GW have attempted to shake things up a little. Firstly, the Chaos side only has only 6 ‘Chosen’ Chaos Marines in it, filling the rest with 20 cultists, a Lord and a Helbrute (Chaos Dreadnoughts are now Helbrutes). The Helbrute looks awesome, as followed by the Chosen and Lord then the rest.
By the rest, I mean the Dark Angels force…
For the Marines half you get 10 Space Marines as standard which look much better than the previous box set Marines, a Company Master to lead the army, 5 nicely dynamic terminators, a Librarian and a Ravenwing bike squadron of 3. Specifically in the Limited Edition set you also get Interrogator-Chaplain Seraphicus, a special character, which I’m not yet sure is Dark Angels specific or not.
My issues with the box set
Now I’ll tell this right away, I’m not impressed with the Dark Angels force, and I’ll say why.
In my opinion, a box set (At least going by all previous box sets) is really about providing beginners with the choice to make a Space Marine army, and something else which varied. As such Space Marines have always been the poster child of GW (Of those, mainly the Ultramarines) and this is fine because it makes them recognizable, however, they have always been easily made into another chapter of Space Marines. In this box set there is a lot of Dark Angel specific molding of the models themselves, which is all pretty and all, but is disappointing because I don’t have a desire to collect Dark Angels specifically. This is a problem for me, and is part of a bigger issue in my mind: The box set is no longer generic enough to be any chapter of Space Marines.
Now why is this so important? Well, because I think all beginners will now end up with 2 extremely specific forces, rather than a generic force and one specific force. They are still Space Marines, of course, but they are no longer the Marines that you chose… They are Dark Angels, unless you wish to modify them by literally hacking off the Dark Angels iconography, which I would not buy them to do. Also, I think beginners are a lot more likely to just go with what is in the box set before branching out or physically modifying the contents. This, to me is a bit of a step backwards on the part of Games Workshop, because remember this box set has to last at least until the next set of rules is released, probably in 5-6 years from now. In that time there will be an awful lot of Dark Angels and Chaos Space Marines armies popping up.
I personally have not decided if I will keep the Dark Angel bits but that half of the box, to be fair, is still quite a lot of nice stuff.
Below is a YouTube video regarding the new Box set, but please check the GW site for more on that.
40k Hobby Update – with pics
It’s been a little while since I posted on here regarding my painting endeavors… There’s been a lot going on, since my last WIP update, like moving to the Netherlands, starting a new job and generally restructuring my entire life.
So I wanted to post a little update showing what I’ve been working on.
Recently I had the idea that I wanted to paint some models, just for the hobby of it, with the intention of placing them on the desk of my new Dutch workplace. I had some trouble thinking of a theme, so I settled on the idea of having one character from each army that I collect. These armies are of course Orks, Space Marines, Necrons and soon to be Chaos Space Marines (As I’m getting the new box set, more on that later).
So, about these 2 models I’ve been working on…
I’ve been really busy the last few months so I’ve not had a lot of time for hobby, but I thought I’d ease myself back into it and try some new techniques on 2 models, this time specifically to go on my desk. I have plans to do a 3rd, being a necron of some kind, but for the moment, these 2 will be it. In the first pic, you can see both models, being a Imperial Fist Space Marine Company Champion and an Ork Nob with Big Choppa. I added a euro because some people have asked me what the size of the models I paint are, so it’s just there for scale. The other 2 pics are just close-ups of the models. Things to highlight are that I’m making a lot more effort with my basing this time, being the rock and Citadel tufts on the Champions base. This is also the decided hue of the basing for the rest of my Fists army. I like the blue tone, which was very easy to achieve (Major plus). With the Nob, I spent a lot of time on the skin tones as that’s something I’ve always struggled with on my Orks.
I’ve always been a quick and dirty painter, contenting myself that they look good as a group, but not so great individually. This is something I actively try to change, because I’m also a painting perfectionist and very critical of my own work, which I feel also drives me to improve with each model and ‘failure’. I very happy with the the rusty effects on the Nobs armour and Big Choppa, this was kind of an experiment to see how it would turn out. I think the model looks great, even though I think it doesn’t look great in the pics (Taken with my phone late at night under my painting lamp. Not ideal lighting).
Now, what was that tasty bit about the new box set, and something about Chaos Space Marines?
I’m adding another post about that specifically, because I tried to fit it in here but ended up waffling on a bit…
That will be up soon…
Valve making noise about Windows 8, says linux is faster!
Valve is certainly kicking up a stink about Windows 8 these days…
Gabe Newell, has gone on record to say “Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.”
This is a bold statement, even though it is not the only one of its kind. There are plenty of people predicting the failure of Windows 8.
Over at the Valve Blog, they have posted benchmarks regarding Left for Dead 2 running under Linux (Note: Linux 32-bit), in comparison to Windows 7. According to the blog post by the Valve Linux Team, with some tweaking (Putting it simply), they managed to achieve 315fps on Linux using OpenGL compared to 270.6 in Windows using Direct3D.
After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6) seems a little counter-intuitive, given the greater amount of time we have spent on the Windows version. However, it does speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL. Interestingly, in the process of working with hardware vendors we also sped up the OpenGL implementation on Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is now running at 303.4 FPS with that configuration.
I find this interesting, especially as they later got it to run faster in Windows using OpenGL. I’ve personally toyed with Linux quite a few times for the purposes of my main workstation, but I’ve always eventually returned to Windows because I like playing games… And because Valve’s Steam runs on Windows (As well as many of the games it distributes).
Now, conversely, I know Valve has had a Mac client out for some time and been playing with a Linux client also but the main point to remember is that many game developers still develop exclusively for Windows regardless of if Valve (Or Gabe) thinks that is a good or a bad thing.
This is a very important point to remember, because it is all well and good Valve porting all their games to Linux (Pending their anticipated OS-Apocalype of Windows 8), but Steam is still just a delivery platform when you take Valve games out of the equation.
Will other devs move to Linux following Valve’s example?
It could be said that Linux is awaiting that ‘critical mass’ product, or ‘killer app’ just like the Xbox has Halo and the Playstation 3 has Gran Turismo. It’s vital that Valve are placing their platform as that role, potentially putting themselves as the front runner to a new market.
They are also set to make a ton of money (From me probably also) if this takes off…
Its also critically important to remember that Linux controls a global market share of 2%, which you can see here.
This is important for many reasons, but the most important ones being that Windows has over 90% because Microsoft meticulously maintains an ecosystem for Windows/Office, from trained professionals to software tools and developer relations. There is a lot of hand-holding when it comes to Microsoft, because it’s in their best interests to hold onto that 90%.
I’ve heard people shout at me about “What about Apache?!” or “Linux is running most of the web servers in the world!”, which I don’t dispute or wish to attempt to disprove, but the point remains that Microsoft servers run a hell of a lot more things than web servers (I understand that so does Linux). My point is that there is an installed, entrenched, trained and invested Microsoft world out there and even though I can see there being a way out of the Microsoft world, I still doubt it will happen.
What’s going on with Windows Home Server?
Those that know me personally and/or have discussed management of home media with me will know that I’m a big user and supporter of a few media-orientated technologies/services. One of them is Microsoft’s Windows Home Server (WHS), both in its original form and the updated Windows Home Server 2011.
For the record, I use WHS 2011 at home, migrated from an original Home Server installation.
My WHS2011 installation sits at the center of my media home, serving video and pictures to all of my media ‘outlets‘. I use the term ‘outlet’ because it is a term I have recently been introduced to that makes a lot of sense. But what is a media outlet? An outlet, quite simply, is anything that I use to consume my media regardless of its physical location, platform or type of device. I mean anything within my home like my Xbox360, bedroom Raspberry Pi Media Center or even remotely like my laptop or Galaxy S2 Android phone (Which I stream the same media to when I’m out).
Convert Putty .ppk Private Key To A Normal SSH .ssh Key You Can Use On An Apple Mac
This is from another article which I found very useful yesterday.
The original article is found here.
Also, how to connect to a server using SSH on a Mac
I spent ages trying to figure this out so that I could SSH onto my production hosting server from my iBook. Now that I know what was wrong, I can’t believe how long it took me to solve, because the answer is so simple – but unfortunately I never found anything in Google that helped me, it was only pure luck and dogged perseverance that helped me figure this one out.
I found I
already knew that I could open an SSH connection on my Mac using Terminal, and I could SSH onto my production server from my XP pc using Putty with no problems.
So when I copied my .ppk Putty key from my PC to my Mac I expected to be able to type:
ssh -2 username@123.123.123.123 –i yourkey.ppkfrom within Terminal and get straight onto my server with no questions asked.
But oh no! it’s not quite as easy as that – well these things never are, are they?
Let start with the very basics, you can find the Terminal program on your Macintosh in Applications -> Utilities.
Open it and you have something resembling a Windows DOS prompt.
Now if you already have a .ppk file from your PC that you want to convert to use on your Mac you need to visit the Putty Website www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html and download puttygen.exe (on your PC) now open it, and using the File menu, load your .ppk that you already use, and type in your pass phrase.
Now go to the Conversions menu and export the key as an OpenSSH key – hey presto – you now have a key file that will work on your Mac! Such a simple solution, yet that took me so long to figure out …
Anyway, now you just need to copy your new .ssh keyfile over to your home (~) directory on your Mac and set the permissions to 700 (chmod 700 yourkey.ssh).
Once you’ve done all that you can use the ssh command.
ssh -2 username@123.123.123.123 –i yourkey.sshand you should be able to SSH onto your box as you would from your PC – amazing!
The wings of change…
Well, it’s been a little while (a month) since I’ve updated my blog and I’ve been very busy in that time. I’m not sure where to start but, to say the least, there’s been a lot of change in my personal life.
At the moment, I’m making my preparations to move to the Netherlands, which is taking up a lot of my time (And even more of my money). Why Holland? That’s a long story but the short answer is that it’s nice there.
Otherwise I’ve been doing quite a bit of 40k painting and I’ve even started another army: Necrons, as well as bolstering my neglected Imperial Fist Space Marines. And of course there’s my Orks. There’s a lot of work in progress stuff in that hobby at the moment, and in recent weeks I’ve just not had time to get much of it done.
Also on the 40k side of things, the new Warhammer 40,000 rulebook has been released last week. This is huge for 40k fans and signals a lot of changes for the game system. Are these changes good or bad? Honestly, I would say good (mostly), while I wait for the dust to settle.
Of course, there are some parts of the rules where I did myself say “WTF!” but, again, mostly good and in the right places thankfully. More on that later…
Did I purchase the £45 rulebook? Why yes I did, and I even got the £75 ‘Gamers Edition’ collectors set which included a set of limited edition (different color) dice and a (pleather) satchel which I actually quite like and have been using daily.
Is it worth it? Meh, I dunno, probably not but I’m happy with it and I think that’s the important part.
So I’m definitely planning to add more 40k WIP stuff and useful articles.
bye for now.
Warhammer Historical quietly dies (Nobody notices)
Now, I dont collect Warhammer Historical, but every once in a while I check the page and have a peruse. Read the rest of this entry »
Know what your Winsxs folder does!
Something I often come up against dealing with server systems is low space alerts.
Now it is important to remember at this point that a low space alert on a server is A LOT more serious than a low space alert on your typical Windows XP/7 desktop. Read the rest of this entry »
Raspberry Pi – I WANT YOU SO BAD!
There are no words to explain my recent muted excitement over the past few months regarding the coming release of the Raspberry Pi board. Read the rest of this entry »
Why “patent-trolling” is bad for the human race
Note: I’ve been writing this article in draft form for about 6 months (I’ve been coming back to it with the intention of finishing but never really did until now) and merely the fact that it remains relevant shocks me. I don’t really feel it’s finished but I wanted to get it out there anyway. I’m planning to add to it later.
I recently had a conversation with one of my well respected work colleagues where I made the statement “Patents are the worst thing ever to happen to the human race”. I believe this was in response to the very public recent events between the big tech companies that have essentially been suing each other without stopping for breath. I am of course referring to Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, HTC and Motorola to name just a few.
I was promptly given a stern talking to and informed that I really had no idea what I was talking about, which I decided was not a battle I wanted to fight with someone that I like working with.
Now, I know the statement I started this all with sounds very sensationalist, and with the accompanying title to this post I would be inclined to agree, but I do feel that there is some fuel to this fire that I’ve started by merely moving my lips. Read the rest of this entry »
FollowKMan 