Apologies and a Book Review

Right, first off I'll apologize for not posting on Monday. The weekend was nuts and I was very stressed out as a result. I didn't have the wherewithal to do a post. I'll do better, I promise!

Today I am going to do my first book review!

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest.
Disclosure: I am not a fan of the Steampunk genre. I don't have anything against it, but I guess I just don't get it either. Take it as you will.

The book is a little over 400 pages long, which makes for a decent read for most people, but I read really fast. It took me a day to finish it and I wasn't reading it non-stop.
Set in a fictional Seattle of the 1880s, the blurb on the cover says that it is a steampunk-zombie-airship adventure, and while it has all of those things it doesn't go particularly far with any of them. Airships, while integral to certain parts of the plot, actually have very little page time for one thing.
Zombies are set up early in the book, caused by a strange gas that seeps up from under Seattle. The gas becomes an omni-present threat in the book, but no attempt is really made to explain it or justify it. It just exists to make zombies. And apparently to make drugs, which is touched on as a moral grey point a couple of times between characters then never mentioned again.
As far as the steampunk part goes, I don't know if I would call it steampunk. It features a few weird science devices that are greeted with a somewhat muted response indicating, to me at least, that these things are not all that rare (not common, but not rare). But in the book only two "scientists" are ever mentioned, which may or may not mean anything to anyone. Also, as far as I can tell none of these devices are powered by steam. Electricity, mechanical operation, hydraulics, but no steam. This is probably me nitpicking, and I could very well be wrong about the definition of steampunk.
The characters themselves are varied but not well fleshed out or convincing, and much of the story seems to hinge more upon the character of people who are dead than on those who are alive. Some characters are more than a little stereotyped (two out of three airship smuggler captains were Han Solos).
I think that the best I can say is that the pace moved forward at a breakneck speed.

All in all, I didn't like the book. It didn't do anything for me, it didn't pull me in or invest me in it. If you want something that has airships, weird science, guns, magic powers, and even a city of the dead full of zombies, I would recommend the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia.

Unboxing my Vengeance! (pic heavy)

I received my copy of Dark Vengeance on Wednesday this week, so Isabeau and I opened it up together and started assembling it! This has however thoroughly distracted me so today's post is late. Oops.

Teh Box of Vengeance. Pretty hefty as well. 

As you can see, Isabeau had the camera phone...Lookit that ugly mug! Only a God of Chaos could love that! Also, I had to put pants on to take this picture. But I'm weird like that. The red things in the pictures are Line of Sight/Measuring sticks, they run out to a distance of 18 inches.

All of the contents of teh Box of Vengeance. Looking through the mini rulebook, there are a lot of changes in how the game works since 2nd edition (go figure, their up to 6th edition now). All told the box contains 48 miniatures. On the Chaos side of things, you have 20 Cultists (divided into close combat and ranged units), 6 Chaos Chosen, 1 Helbrute, and 1 Chaos Lord. The Dark Angels army has 10 Tactical Marines, 5 Deathwing Terminators, 3 Ravenwing Assault Bikes, 1 Librarian Psyker, and 1 Company Master.

Me assembling some of the miniatures. I didn't take any good pictures of the assembly, but these minis are designed to go together without glue, using pegs and slots and whatnot. Most of them go together fairly snugly, but needed to be glued together for strength.

Close up of the assembly.

A Cultist! This one is pretty cool, he has a trenchcoat and a drum fed autogun.

Chaos Assemble! The lighting in the apartment sucks for taking pictures....

All in all, I think it's a pretty good set. You get a lot of bang for your buck compared to how much this stuff would cost individually. The Chaos Marines, Lord, and Helbrute are very very spiky (painfully so) and might be hard to reuse for some chaos armies. The Dark Angels minis are also clearly identified as Dark Angels, so you would need to do some customizing to use for other Chapters.

EBayin' like a Boss

So...yeah. EBay. Baaaaaad place for me to be. Last couple of weeks I have been perusing miniatures and this week I made my first purchase!

Bam! 20 Ork Boyz! Made out pretty well as they only cost $26.51 after shipping was added on. Seeing as how they normally go for $29.99 for just 10 Boyz, I feel pretty good about it. This gives me a start on my own Greenskin Horde, though it pales in comparison to Isabeaus massive horde of grots and boyz.
I will also probably be picking up a set of Dark Vengeance off of EBay. This will give me a solid start on both Chaos and Dark Angels armies....which means I will have small quantities of faux Imperial Guard, Orks, Space Marines, and Chaos. If nothing else I can have a great time skirmishing against myself!

On the other hand of EBay, I started several auctions myself to try and finance my further miniature purchases. I am selling an Imperial Guard Hellhound, Chief Librarian Tigurius, and a lot of six Legion of the Damned Space Marines. These are all things I have had hanging around. The Hellhound is still in its box and on its sprues, so I should get a pretty good price for it. Tigurius could go for god knows what, and the marines will probably sell pretty well if they sell (Legion of the Damned are weird like that).

Scheduling the Posts

I've decided after listening to recommendations that I am going to cut back on the number of posts I make each week. If I post too much I run the risk of running out of things to talk about and then I would have longer dry spells between posts.

So, I think that I will start posting things on Mondays and Fridays, and we'll see how that goes for a week or two. Mondays I can talk about things that happen over the weekend, and Fridays I can discuss the stuff that happened during the week. If this works out well, then we'll stick with it, or I might experiment anyway.

That's all for tonight.

Happy Hollow

About two weeks ago Isabeau and I took the kids to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo in San Jose on one of our rare days off.
The kids had a LOT of fun and we got some really good pictures!

 Isabeau and Osric looking at the Lemurs!

 By the Turkey Vultures. We have several pictures from this area, but I think this one is the best.

 One of the clearest pictures we have taken of Corwin in a very long time. He looks pretty adorable.

 On the teeter totter

 All three kids got to ride in a giant bowl swing and they loved the heck out of it, as evidenced by Ozzies giant smile!

And then the two big kids wanted to ride the giant stone turtle on the way out.

The Machines!

So, second week of classes down, about to go into the third week, and I am still not certain how I feel. The Shop Math/Blueprints class has only improved marginally and that's because we stopped looking at the math book entirely and focused on the blueprint book on Thursday. That one was interesting and the first time I felt that I was learning something. From the sound of things, we will be focusing on that book almost exclusively for the time being.

Things we touched on Thursday included isometric views, orthographic drawing, Third Angle vs First Angle symbols (which I am still not clear on, as the differences between the two are both subtle and glaringly obvious), Detail Drawings, how to read things, tolerances and their meanings...Maximum Material Condition and Least Material Condition (which were actually pretty cool to talk about)...
It was kind of a lot to cover in a single class, and nothing went into real detail. Especially the First Angle/Third Angle bit. I will have to study up on that on my own.

The Intro class was a lot more exciting on Thursday, because we got the Detail Drawings and instructions for our first hands on project! We will be making a Spring Center, which is intended to help center an object on a lathe or mill so that you can more accurately cut it. Though the one I am making doesn't look the one at the website.

Here is a picture of the piece of steel I am working on. All we managed to do in three hours on Thursday was cut our pieces of steel, face one end, and drill a center hole so that we can cut the piece down to the proper diameter next week.

The Imperial Guard

Warning! Picture Intensive!
Next in the miniature lineup is the completed faux Imperial Guard unit that I've been working on lately. Probably going to call them the 1st Gavinrad Imperial Guard Regiment, Bravo Company, 2nd Platoon. So far there are only 18 of them in total, but I will be picking up another box of 18 pretty soon as well as a heavy weapons section to back them up.

 First picture is all of them together. Currently split into 3 units, a squad of Lasguns, a squad of Autoguns, and a Command Squad. Each of the two squads has a Grenade launcher backing it up.

 The start of the Command Squad. Consists of a flamer, 2 boltguns, and the officer who has a lasgun and a sword.

 The Autogun squad on its own. Though I may have to call them a Lasgun squad as well.

 Lasguns likewise.

 Closeup of the Lasgun Sergeant.

 Autogun Sergeant

 Autogunner with a grenade in his mitt.

 This dude is one of my favorites. Bolter and a sword.

And the officer.

I am currently reading up on the Imperial Guard Codex (granted, its the second edition codex) so that I can actually figure out a small army to field. The hardest and most expensive part will be the vehicles, as I'll probably need to go with GW stuff for that and that stuff is not cheap.

Painting Battletech

This'll be a short throw away post for today, as I am just going to post some pictures of the Battletech Mechs that Isabeau and I have been painting.

 Big group shot! In the back row, from left to right, we have a Black Lanner, Marauder, Griffin, and a Banshee. Second row is a Hermes, Owens, Raven, Whitworth, and a Panther. And of course in front is Saffrons mech, which is a Commando not a Javelin.

 Close up of the back row.

Close up of the second row.

That's all for tonight!

Cars in the market go vrooom!

One of the things that I love about managing the Farmers' Markets, is watching all the different people go bye, in all their shapes, sizes, colors, personalities, etc. Also lots of fun is seeing what cars show up as well. Sometimes you get some real standouts among the Prius's and minivans and whatnot. Like this one.

This is a Bentley. Pristine. I know nothing other than it had plates for the Bentley Owners Club. It might be a Bentley Speed Six. But I am not positive.

On another day I had this one park right behind the Info Booth. 

It's an MG MGB. Probably 1975 North American, and still very pretty to look at! I couldn't get a good picture of it, do to where it was parked.