Back to Posts - Misc Links

So we haven't had any posts in 6 months. I hope to do better this year in getting something up besides robots or Adepticon, though the robots section needs a update as well.

I've been working on painting up Super Dungeon Explore. Thistle doesn't like the chibi look of the models, but my boys enjoyed the game and don't mind the aesthetic. I'll get pictures of the completed dragons up soon.

Now for some link dumping:
• James Wappel is running a Kickstarter to create painting DVD tutorials, runs until Feb 8: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/891905985/discover-the-painting-pyramid-with-james-wappel
• Speaking of James Wappel, Rivet Wars models has a chibi look painted by James, runs until Feb 4: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/rivet-wars?ref=category
• Darklands is a great look at classic mythological creatures, runs until Feb 15: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mierceminiatures/darklands-a-world-of-war?ref=category
• Kingdom Death: Monster Kickstarter is over but has some wonderful models: http://monster.kingdomdeath.com/ Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/poots/kingdom-death-monster
• Shadowrun turns 25 in 2013 and with it 5th edition and a miniature game: http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/2012/12/21/the-year-of-shadowrun/
• If you enjoy cooking, a friend started a cooking blog Knife Bowl Dot Com: http://knifebowldotcom.blogspot.com/

Battle Fleet Gothic Demo

Sunday I was able to teach and see how Battle Fleet Gothic plays. Capital City Games was kind enough to host the learning demo.

Things discovered from the experience:

1. Fleets need stick together.
2. Concentration of fire to finish ship is important.
3. Movement and slow build to actual shooting is important.
4. I need to read and comprehend the Annual 2010, since the ordnance phase felt weird.
5. Painting the smooth surfaces of Eldar ships makes me hate painting them. More fun is dry brush happy Imperial and chaos ships.

More pictures in the rest of the post.

Bioloid Type A Video

So I built the out of the box base Bioloid Type A robot from Robotis. I did no programming, just pure assembly. All of the motions are with the IR remote that comes in the kit. Video is me just playing with the remote and filming what happens.

Overall very impressed with this intro kit. I looked at the programming environment and I am going to avoid it like the plague. For me it is evil and will make any coding time at least twice as long if not more.

Next up is to disassemble it and build the smart car to figure out more on programing the AX-12 servos and how to hook up the Arbotix micro-controller.

Displaying Streamed MJPEG In Java

So my day job is a Java and Informatica application developer for an insurance company. I mostly write middle ware pieces interfacing our reporting systems. Nothing exciting, but this is my main background hence the code that is written.

So I am starting to work up GUI code for Mech warfare, since most of the basic turret controls are written. What I discovered was I have a IP security camera, DLink DCS-930L, but no good way to display the video stream. So I did the usual programmer's way of solving this and started searching the web and came up with pretty much bupkisk. So plan B is write it myself. So I'm going to document so items, since it is for my own purposes anyway.

Adepticon Season Begins

Another Adepticon is coming up and that means it is time to get into nitty gritty time of team tournament preparation (at least if you are hoping to do well).

It is always a grand time thinking up a new army builds and hanging out with friends play testing. It is always fun starting to assemble models and coming up with display base ideas and shirt designs.

Then the work of painting comes. The task itself is fun. But time frames exist and tasks need done by certain points to be able to be ready for the tournament and be able to enjoy the convention. That leads me to my current painting schedule. My 1000 points of models are to be done by the end of December. That sounds like a lot of time.

When I project what that actually means, it changes to 2 models a week. Not the end of the world, but after the first 2 models, each one is taking about 6-7 hours and the bases are already done. So based upon this information, I will be painting for at least 2 hours every day until Thanksgiving. Hopefully, I figure out how to speed up the painting, but I'm not holding out hope.

So here's to another Adepticon. Let your paint flow well.

Tony Ork

On the way back from Adepticon 2010, Thistle challenged me with entering my ork warboss into the Rogue Daemon 2011 contest at Adepticon 2011. The challenge was to get me to work on my extreme ork army which had completely stopped due to boredom. The intended goal failed but I did finish the model in time to enter it.

Fulumbar Ironhammer

This is a commission piece done for my good friend's son. It is Fulumbar Ironhammer the Dwarf from Reaper's Warlord series.

Adepticon 2011 Wrap Up

Another spring came to Chicago land and another invasion of miniature gamers descended upon the Westin in Lombard for Adepticon 2011. My weekend started on Wednesday with the initial setup of the 40K hall. This year the great improvement to set up was large bolts of felt and the use of binder clips instead of taping the entire table. All of the pictures from empty hall to terrain being on tables can be found in the setup gallery.

Thursday was the set up of the fantasy hall and a couple of learning games of Epic:Armageddon with Anton and Nat. Thanks guys for getting me ready for Saturday's tournament.

As Friday morning rolled around, I once again helped with the appearance judging of the 40K Championships. This year it was much easier to focus, since I wasn't suffering from 4 days not enough sleep. There were a lot of very nice armies including Mad Mork (Mad Max as imagined with 40K orks). I was also able to spend a good amount of time looking at the Crystal Brush entries. It was fun looking at the various vendors wares and armies on display through out the day.

Saturday I was able to spend some time looking at the various 40K Team Tournament armies. I was also drafted into doing some appearance scoring in the morning. After 3 years of not playing in any event, I actually played in a tournament on Saturday. My third through fifth games of Epic: Armageddon went fairly well. In the tournament I had 0 wins, 1 massive loss and 2 draws which was pretty good for playing space marines with little actual experience in the game. In the end I tied with 2 others for best sportsman award. After bitz trading, I then spent the early portions of Sunday morning help move terrain for the final 8 players of the 40K Championships.

Sunday I was able to relax until it came time to start the tear down. With the improved table setup, having a couple of extra bins and a lot of extra hands helping tear down of the terrain went very quickly. After the hall was cleaned up a good dinner at Harry Carry's, I then headed up to Hank's suite to help him celebrate his 40th birthday. Hanging out with Hank and Team Sweden was great fun.

Another great year in the past on to looking toward next year's 10 year anniversary. For a complete look at all of my photos, including ones from the terrain builds at Capital City Games, head over to the Adepticon 2011 event gallery.

Epic Brazen Sons

I finally took the plunge and built and painted an entire 3000 point Epic Space Marine force (6mm tall infantry). This was the most fun I've had painting for a long while. Now to try and get a game or two in before the tournament at Adepticon, otherwise I play the game blind.

The army is based on the original, and only, Brazen Sons model I painted back in 2005.

Adepticon 2010 Wrap Up

Adepticon 2010 has finished and it was yet another great year. Mind you I am just now starting to feel human again and unfortunately have to return to work tomorrow. The con started on Wednesday for me as Thistle and myself headed to Hank's to load his full size van and the rented trailer up with prize support and registration materials. After getting Hank's vehicle loaded a trip to Thistle's to load up books for the swag bags. A very long day for myself since I packed up 2 boys for their grandmother's care and then finally found a bed around 2:30 AM on Friday at the Westin. I appreciated the unloading of the trailers on Thursday but would have much rather gone to sleep at 12:30 AM.

Well Thursday saw to set up of the halls. We tried a new technique with the felt this year, which had me laying down all morning. That technique, just unroll a bolt of felt and tape off the tables. We attempted to tape up the edges, but after taping all of the felt up under the tables at least 2 times (some as many as 4 times) and it kept on falling, it was decided the extra 6 feet of felt length would just get taped and the long edges would just hang. I did have a great meal at Bippity Boppity Boos (yes, I don't remember the real name of the restaurant) followed by talking and drinking until about 3 AM with Toby and Colin.

Friday rolled around early for me to do very little except wander the halls and talk with vendors. A great way to start the actual convention. I was able to even play a little bit on Friday. I played a demo of "Check Your 6" which is a pretty good flight WW II flight game. Simple enough for quick gaming but has enough of what planes can do to make it tactically challenging. I also played a bit of the landing on Omaha Beach with the Flames of War system. I did actually get a decent amount of sleep that night which was good.

This year I helped judge appearance for the 40K Team tournament on Saturday. It was fun to actually get to see a lot of the armies up close and hearing some of their themes. The other fun highlight of the day was my sister driving up and us going out for dinner at Omega. It was great hanging out with her and showing her my hobby; though me getting into and out of her car must have looked like a clown car, hope you had fun sibling.

Sunday was the chaos of appearance judging 220 players in the 40K championships. The first impressive feat was that with the six judges we had we were able to judge 215 armies before the first round started (part of that was benefited by the extra 30 minutes it took to get half of the tournament going). It was a lot of fun to see armies up close yet again including the Scallywaggin' pirates, Dave Taylor's and Brian Carlson's armies.

Once the tournament was over the joy of clean up of the 40K hall began. This year things went much smoother than last year. The only issue I had was the desire by others want for a steak at Harry Carry's and the 9 PM'ish start of the poker tournament. I think next year we need a better plan for clean up, but for all those that helped a big thank you. I was very happy that the fantasy, specialist and combat patrol halls were cleaned up and all I had to worry about was the main hall. The other big improvement this year was that we payed the hotel to clean up the tables and floor. All of my pictures are up in the main Thistle & Shrub gallery. Thistle did throw down a challenge for me: to start and enter my Ork Warboss in next years rogue daemon contest. My own challenge, to have at least two entries for the rogue daemon contest. Time to begin the remembering on how to paint well without shortcutting to table top quality. Yet another great year and great growth for Adepticon, time to start on projects for 2011.