40k Tournament

Recently I've been busy priming and painting a bunch of models for a Warhammer 40k tournament in September. I'm assembling a Tyranid "Godzilla" army, an army made of mostly large monstrous creatures. The models are assembled, including magnetic arm sockets on all of the monstrous creatures, but most are not primed or painted yet. I'll have to hurry then...

The main hive tyrant with two tyrant guards. I bought the tyrant already painted, and the scheme is what I'm using for all the other monstrous creatures, but the tyrant has been modified to use magnets.

The carnifex I bought with the above hive tyrant. I modified it to have both big guns as a gunfex.

A new hive tyrant I built with wings and two twin-linked devourers. (really nasty weapons) I still have to prime and paint him.

Two identically equipped carnifexes (carnifices?) with two pairs of twin-linked devourers. Notice the green stuff I used to secure the magnets. These will be covered by the spray primer and paint.
My close combat carnifex, Gene Simmons.
Most of the big guys together. I'll have to post more photos once I paint more of them.

Personhood and the Twilight Zone

This is an interesting discussion about the philosophy of personhood from a (classic) Twilight Zone episode, with comments skirting into Battlestar Galactica. :)

Farfour

This is the final performance of Farfour, the Palestinian Mickey Mouse rip-off.

Save the Earth

You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice.

- Dogbert

New Freeware X-COM

There's a very nice looking fan-made X-Com clone with modern 3-D graphics, and it's getting close to done. The game is called UFO: Alien Invasion and already has most of the playable parts available. The UI is very different now and may take some getting used to, but all the original features, from base-building and research to turn-based combat, are there. Download it and give it a try!

Space Combat Physics

Here are a couple of good clips demonstrating the physics of starship combat:

The laws of motion

Explosive decompression

It's actually surprising how many scenes from sci-fi shows have decent physics. I'm not surprised that Babylon 5 seems to make up quite a few of them though. :)

John Maynard Keynes on Bertrand Russell

Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally.

Maritime Combat

Here is the website of a group that does recreation of "historical maritime combat," i.e. hand to hand combat in the time of the pirates! Everything seems quite well researched, and it seems to be another direction in the now burgeoning WMA movement.

Another Planet?

Interesting discovery of a very "earth-like" planet.

Uhh....

Having sex with your neighbor's goat is a lot like violating a copyright. It's totally victimless, right?

- Scott Adams

(oh, Scott Adams...)

Ben Franklin On Meat Eating

Our People set about catching Cod, & haul’d up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my Resolution of not eating animal Food; and on this Occasion, I consider’d … the taking every Fish as a kind of unprovok’d Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the Slaughter. All this seem’d very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, & when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smeled admirably well. I balanc’d some time between Principle & Inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs: Then thought I, if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you. So I din’d upon Cod very heartily and continu’d to eat with other People, returning only now & then occasionally to a vegetable Diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.


Both this and the previous quote were from this New Yorker article. Interesting stuff.

Scottish Selkirk Grace

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.


I think this will be my motto for meat eating from now on. :)

Ancient and Modern

"The Confucian says: ' The superior man must be ancient in mode of speech and in dress before he can be magnanimous.' We answer him: The so-called ancient speech and dress were all modern once. When the ancients first used that speech and wore that dress they would not be superior men (according to the Confucians' criteria)."

- Mozi, "Against Confucianism"

Blogger Layout

I finally started using the Layout features of Blogger. So now I have labels for posts and real recent comments, which should make navigation much easier. Now to figure out how you can get more than 5 recent comments...

Reclaiming the Blade

On a related note, there's going to be a documentary film out called "Reclaiming the Blade." It looks at the ongoing reconstruction efforts in Medieval and Renaissance martial arts, and how that's affected movie choreography, etc. It's actually going to be narrated by John Rhys-Davies, :) and will feature people from WETA Workshop. (the people behind the effects in "the Lord of the Rings") It looks like it'll actually be good, especially with advisors like John Clements and Dr. Syndey Anglo.

Mythbusters Ninja

It looks like Mythbusters is going to have an episode on Ninjas. I'm quite impressed though that they did their homework in finding the right people.

Modern Art

Yet another swipe at modern art, this time from the always readable "Spengler" at Asia Times.

No more Mr. Noodles

I just found out that Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant noodles, recently died. Well, I guess we should peel off the lid, pour boiling water, and observe three minutes of silence.

Space Marines

For the last while, I've been painting my latest Warhammer 40k army, the Space Marines. They are the first human army I've painted for WH40k, although I haven't had the need to paint actual human features yet due to all of their power armour. I decided to collect an Ultramarines First Company army - this means that all of the space marine infantry wear Terminator armour, the super heavy powered armour used in the game Space Hulk. The only other units are vehicles. I made this decision because it keeps the number of models I need low, and reduces cost and painting time. :) Some of the miniatures I bought were already painted, others I stripped and repainted. The badly painted ones are mine. :) In keeping with the style of the game, I've named the squads and main characters in the army.

Librarian Docente (with power axe) and his command squad. I bought these all painted this way. The black ones are only undercoated and still need to be finished.

Chaplain Elysius. I stripped the original paint scheme and repainted him.

Two space marines with assault cannons that I stripped and repainted.

Squad Honorius with two Cyclone missile launchers. They all came painted.

Squad Valius with two assault cannons. I painted the assault cannon space marines (not the same ones as the picture earlier) but the others came painted.
Brother Irenaeus, a venerable dreadnought. His paint scheme is awesome, so definitely not painted by me. :)

Apocalypto

Hmm... Here's an actual good review of Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's new, ludicrously bloody film about Mayans. Maybe it could be worth a look.