Monthly Archives: June 2013

Whew!

I’m normally an easy victim on the Gamer’s or Collector’s Edition of things… so I’m thankful that neither special pack of Apocalypse is the slightest bit interesting to me.

(Though I think they named them wrong: the Gamer’s Apocalypse is much more like the Collector’s version of their other stuff. Their Collector’s Apocalypse is kind of it’s own, weird thing.)

I did notice that they’ve got some Apocalypse bundles up, too: I think they were a key part of Apocalypse’s success the first time around (they all ran along the lines of “Who cares that I can never field 18 Piranha! I get three of them free!”). These, of course, meet the new standard for bundling, which is to say that they don’t save you a Sigmar-damned thing besides a few “Add to Cart” clicks. I really wish they’d get over that.

Getting Rid of Google – Progress Report

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So, a few months ago, responding to Google’s admission that yes, they’re evil, I moved the blog on over here to WordPress and vowed to divorce Google as much as possible.

I haven’t been especially successful, I’m afraid.

Reader’s been replaced (obviously). I’m using NewsBlur, which has been steadily getting better and better. Other folks I know’ve moved to Feed.ly and The Old Reader, but I’ve been happiest with NewsBlur.

Semi-obvious: I’ve dumped Blogger for this here WordPress installation. You know I did this for Warpstone Pile over three months ago. What you might or might not have known is that I had a little-used RPG-oriented blog, Owlbear Stabbings, that I pulled into this blog last week. I think it makes more sense to just have everything here. That means you’ll start sporadically seeing RPG-related posts here, intermingled with the hobby stuff. Sorry ’bout that.

And… that’s about it.

I can’t dump Google Authenticator. Heck, I’ve added sites to it.

I still haven’t moved out of Google ~~Docs~~ Drive into Office. I blame inertia.

I gave dumping Chrome for (first) Firefox and (then) IE. I couldn’t do it. IE doesn’t deserve the hate it gets, but ‘cmon. Firefox was shockingly just not comparable. Please, someone make a browser that’s, like, 85% as good as Chrome so I can dump it?

Gmail is similarly undumped, more due to inertia than to hotmail or whatever not working out.

I really need to change my default search engine to Bing. In fact, I’m doing it this instant. Boom.

Google Plus, the font of all misery, remains something I don’t really use. What’s vexing is that many/most of the RPG folks I’m interested in post there and not in the cacophony that is Twitter (for reasons that likely sound good to them). Ideally, I’d just add an RSS to their comments to NewBlur but, oh, wait. Bastardos.

I really need to find a free, angry weekend where I can write a script to parse my posts for images hosted on Picasa, move them into WordPress, and update the references. I’m confident such a thing is possible, but fuck, I don’t have the bandwidth to fiddle with it. For the time being, nothing new’s gone in there.

I could have, probably should have done much better in moving out of the Googleplex over the past few months… but I’ve made some progress. And, considering how much the last couple of months have kicked my butt and how little free time I’ve had, I guess I shouldn’t be terribly ashamed. (Just a little ashamed. A healthy amount of ashamed.)

Wednesday Workbench / Tau!

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A day late, sure, but it’s got to be Wednesday somewhere, right? (What do you mean that’s not how it works?)

Sigmar help me, I’ve actually done some painting. Not a lot, but given how the past month’s been: I’ll take what I can get.

There’s been quite a bit of faffing around with the exact paint color scheme I want to use on my Tau 2.0. I’m still not sure that I’m in love with it, but it’s definitely Good Enough.

Here’s a finished, final model: all he needs is some static grass on the base and varnishing. Sean P. will likely be happy to note that, in the end, I went with Dragonforge’s Lost Empires bases. In the end, it came down to variety, and thinking I could get the effect I wanted. It’s turned out okay, I think.

The only thing I’m unhappy with is the Fire Caste symbol. Previously, I’d painted it black-on-white, and I don’t think it ever looked good. The slightest imperfection in getting lines straight and shapes even stood out. I did some quick alternative color mockups below: the second from the left might have hastily been done in Gimp, but it’s not too far from what black-on-white actually looks like. :/

The more I think about it, the more I like the rightmost one. I think I’m going to give that a spin before I hit the model with varnish.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to make good, quick progress with these guys.

Where’s my stuff?

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What the hell?

Over a month ago, I placed an order with Miniature Market for some Tau. After over a week with no response, I threw my hands in the air, sent them a note telling them to cancel the order, and placed it with The War Store.

(I’ve ordered from MM before, and have been very happy with them: they cannot be beat on 40K RPG books, for example. This was my first time ordering GW kits from them, mail-order style.)

After the same sort of delay at The War Store, I send them a note and was told, “Hey, we don’t have the product. We won’t charge you until we do.” Which made sense: I’m totally sure that’s what was up with MM, too.

Of course, I just realized that was three weeks ago. What the hell? Was Tau product just that under-produced? Is GW putting the screws that hard to retailers?

Am I going to have to pay MSRP for my space-commies?

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