Can I put those points into shooting please?

As most of you know, I've spent my weekends being a terrible tourist here in California. However, rather than spend my weekday evenings like a terrible business traveller getting drunk in my hotel room/at the hotel bar, I've been pootling down to the local Games Workshop at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton. By pure coincidence, this is a five minute walk from my hotel. The staff there are a great bunch of guys, with manager Greg, and Eric, Kev and Chase. Basically, all GW's around the world are pretty much the same, same layout, same stock, same kind of people frequenting them, same quotes being bandied about. The only difference is the accents. Or as Eric put it (referring to the staff's love of Monty Python and Eddie Izzard), "It's either British accents or bad British accents".

Anyway, as it turns out, staff member Kev, who I got on really well with, is a former US Marine. Also, one of his roles was as rifle and pistol instructor. On hearing that I'd never fired a hand gun, he offered to take me to the local range and "Teach me how to shoot like a marine". How could I pass that up?


So we went to 'TargetMasters' (wow, the Transformers references are coming almost one a post) shooting range in Milpitas and Kev picked a .357 Magnum (yes, the Dirty Harry one) and off we went. Apparently I did pretty good for a beginner.



It was all very GURPS - how can I up my gun skill? You mean I can't live in a skip filled with guns? Ooh, tenuous method that's allowed! Now I know what it's like being Bob's character in an RPG.

Boys vs. Robot

My latest purchase from GW - a Space Marine Scout squad, led by Sergeant Telion, equipped with Camo Cloaks and Bolt Guns. I've modified the original sniper rifles to look like Bolter/Assault Rifles with Suppressors. These chaps are going to be Imperial Fists, but with a reversed colour scheme of Carbon Black body armour with very small amounts of yellow trim. Sergeant Telephone has had all his Ultramarines markings removed and will be painted as a Fist also. Might take these to the Doubles Tournament, but they come to a lot of points. But hey, the alternative was a single clanky robot with a giant death hammer. Hang on, what am I thinking?

SOCAL

So it's a bit delayed; I meant to post this over the weekend, but I was lazy. Anyway, what with some celebration or something in the States called Thanksgiving, I had four days to play with. Now, I could have just done nothing, or spent each day at the local Games Workshop, but I decided it would be much cooler to go to Los Angeles instead. It's an... interesting place. I'm glad I went, but I don't think I'd want to live there! Bit too crazy, bit too driven and a slightly warped sense of priorites. And the closer you get to the epicentre of all the weirdness, Hollywood, the stranger it all gets. This is a place where building a five story mall modelled on an Assyrian temple makes sense. As a tourist I just gawked a shook my head; much like everyone else there that wasn't local. Yes, as usual, I was a terrible tourist, but with a slightly geeky flavour - I made a point of visiting the scenes of movies I like.

Proper terrible tourism. It kinda had to be done.

This is me at Griffith Observatory, a prominent location in Rebel Without a Cause, but more importantly, it's the building Timothy Dalton's Giant Nazi Zeppelin emerges from behind in The Rocketeer.

I hunt for Replicants at the Bradbury building in Downtown LA. This was J.F. Sebastians's apartment in Blade Runner, where Roy Batty and pris hid out.

Does this need any introduction? I stand in front of Nakatomi Plaza, otherwise known as 20th Century Fox HQ.

I took I-5 down from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. This is the most direct route at five and a half hours drive, but very dull. On the way back, however, I took the scenic route up Highways 1 and 101, following the coast. The scenery from here was beautiful, and the roads were a bit more interesting than straight freeway. A little too interesting at times...

I nearly write off the Pontiac by missing the corner and putting it sideways into a ditch. I'm sure Ben would argue that would be an improvement.

And finally, I saw this in a car park in Hollywood and had to photograph it. If it doesn't immediately make sense to you, it probably never will.

Hopefully my next post will be sooner, and include more toy soldiers. Yay!

Do It With Style Or Don't Bother Doing It

Work has been pretty predictable this week, all a bit dull.

However, I have nearly finished the Tech Priest for my Imperial Fists (photos will follow as soon as he's done), I've visited some new places, and I have a new rental car!

On Saturday I climbed Mount Diablo in Contra Costa county and despite warnings of rattlesnakes, tarantulas and black widows, managed to reach the summit without being poisoned. I walked a fair bit of the way, but this being America, there was a car park at the top. The view was remarkable, being able to see the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge on the west and the snow on the Sierras to the east. The Sacramento valley is behind me in the photo below.

Given my previous blog posts, you could be forgiven for wondering why I hadn't mentioned my hire car yet. Well, here's why, in all of it it's flat white glory, the '08 Mitubishi Gallant:

Boo! Although it did make cool tyre screching noises on the way down the foothills around Diablo. Or at least it did until I had to hurredly brake rather than hit a disgruntled looking family in an SUV.

However, today I drove back to Avis and demanded a more interesting vehicle. What I got was this, the Pontiac Solstice, a two seat sports convertable. Damn sight more fun that the Gallant, but could do with a little more power (but couldn't we all?). All the pedals are quite heavy, which I normally consider to be a good thing and visibility's nowhere near as bad as you might expect. It's a little small though, certainly compared to the Dodge Rams and Ford Excursions you see on American roads. Also , the roof mechanism is a little primitive. But then, as you may have heard, GM are a little strapped for cash at the moment.

Finally, I had such a good response to last week's war porn, I decided to photograph the following for all of you. This is a US army Nike missile battery, stationed on the US west coast to protect it from communists. Mmm... phallic. Enjoy!

P.S. A pint (or drink of your choice) for the first person to guess the geek reference (and source)in this blog post.

War Porn

Death machine manufacture was a bit slow this week, so had to remind myself what it's all about. I therefore visited Alameda Naval Air Station and their floating museum, the USS Hornet. Run by friendly and cheerful veterans of various American wars, it's an old aircraft carrier that in addition to its military duties found time to pick up the crews of Apollos 11 and 12. The best bit (for the eternal child in me) was getting to ride the aircraft elevators up and down.

I know Ben prefers to keep it to one picture per blog post, but since Sam's hat wish list crashed my computer, I have no compunction in posting the following:



The USS Hornet moored at Alameda in the East Bay.



Douglas A-4 Skyhawk in Soviet colours, used for Agressor training. Just like Jester and Viper's jets.



Apollo and Gemini capsules. Cold War rather than proper war.

Everyone gets shouted at by ex-sailors before the lift begins. The heliopter behind us provides a helpful hint of here we're going.

You're still dangerous, but..... Wow, that thing's cool.

Oh, and I can't believe no-one blogged about our pub quiz team fan club!

Geeks Abroad

'Twas my birthday last week and I don't normally make a big thing of it, but was very pleasantly surprised when Dom and my lovely girlfriend Laura organised a surprise birthday party for me. Well I say surprise, but I was beginning to suspect someting was up when whispered mutterings were going on behind my back. The final straw was on the night itself when my housemate Jason had seemingly vanished. "Maybe he's gone to the shops to get chocolate milk?" suggested Laura. "He's been gone an awfully long time just to go to the Co-Op to get chocolate milk," I replied. "Um.... maybe the Co-Op has run out of chocolate milk and he's had to walk all the way to Tesco to get it...?" Now, anyone that knows Jason knows that he has an almost instatiable thirst for the sweet brown stuff that is Frijj chocolate milk, making this story far from impossible, but I knew someting was up and didn't push the point. As it turned out, he'd been with Dom sorting out the last bits of my party and both drinking a fair mount of beer. I had a great time and thanks to everyone who attended, thanks to Laura and Dom for organising and thanks so those that sent messages - Alan sent a very blurred video from Iceland and Dom read out a very entertaining message from Bob, Bex and Fuzz. Thanks to all of you guys and girls!

Anyway, I'm now in the States again - what can I say, America needs me.

This nearly didn't happen, following the litany of disasters that befell this trip, including, but not limited to:

• Our supplier cancelling and uncancelling the trip four days before departure, thus ensuring that nothing was booked with more than four days' notice.
• The Company cancelling my passes (apparently this is policy - every birthday as a special treat they reset your passes and stop you going to work). This necessitated meeting my boss on Sunday night in a dark car park so he could let me in to get everything I needed - inluding my flight times.
• Nat West's corporate card division failing to send me a replacement credit card, meaning I'm having to put everything on my own.
• Amex and Europcar failing to book me a car to get to Heathrow airport which meant that Laura (who is fantastic and I owe big time) had to drive me to Bristol Airport so that I could pick up a hire car to get me to Heathrow.

On the other hand, I've been in the States for five hours now, and I already have a game of Warhammer 40,000 arranged for Friday. This either makes me very powerful, or very sad. Or both.

In other news...

... My housemate Jason and I are planning on going to the doubles tournament in the new year. That's Warhammer 40,000 of course, not tennis. Except that we've found a loop hole that will allow us instead of taking sensible armies with a mix of troops vehicles and heroes, to take an army composed almost entirely of giant killer death robots. Yes, we are heroes.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Rock

Another trip, another muscle ca... no, wait, even I can't pretend that this car is cool.

This is the Fiat Albea, a car so cheap and so basic, that Fiat don't even sell it in western Europe. It's noisy, there were parts hanging off it and it was distinctly unrefined. However, it did do the 100 mile round trip from the Turkish seaside resort of Altinkum to the ruined Greek city of Ephesus with no problems whatsoever. And you realise that the car is less bad than designed with a market in mind. It's cheap, the poor cornering supsension copes with all the harsh roads Turkey can throw at it and it simply doesn't care what gear you put it in. Driving this with garish Turkish pop on the radio over Turkey's haphazard roads, overtaking toothless old farmers who look like they probably fought the Aussies at Gallipoli kind of added to the charm of the holiday. Which was, incidentally, excellent. Laura and I had a great time, with boat trips, lounging, pursuit by loveable strays and exploring Greco-Roman ruins.

Ephesus was fantastic, really impressive. Second biggest surviving Roman city, fact fans and centre of early Christianity. It has a book of the New Testament named after it and St Paul lived here for three years before being thrown out by the Silversmith's guild.

It also has a very impressive main theatre, seating 25,000. Until recently, still used for performances, until a particularly loud Sting gig hit all the wrong bass notes and started damaging the architecture.

The acoustics are still excellent. Sat in the top row, I could hear Laura from the stage. Here she can be seen performing Aeschylus' The Libation Bearers.

I stand below the Augustan Gate as the sun shines overhead. A propitious sign.

Laura in front of the library of Celsus. This has been rebuilt by the Austrian and German institutes of Archaeology, complete with signs in German. It was all rather Indiana Jones. I kept expecting Nazis to turn up and declare that what was once ours is now theirs.

A quick stop off at Priene on the way back. Another theatre, but this time with seats for grandees and bigwigs. I could get used to marble thrones.

Finally, a shot of the Apollo temple at Didim at sunset. Laura is standing at the base, believe it or not - those pillars are over 70' tall.

And just because it's fun, Laura fends of the advances of mutant Turkish pirates.

We are still MEN

Part two! The previous post was getting a bit unwieldy in the editing stage.

Sigh. Now we had to put everything back together.

Springs go on...



If springs don't go on, use more force...



Need... more... tools...



Once you've assembled your new suspension, make sure all the bolts are carefully torqued up properly using a torque wrench.



The wheels can then be re-attached. You should ensure at this point that your helpers are still playing ball.






Hurrah! Just the boot lining to put back in place now.



Now for the escape.

This is what the underside of my car now looks like - well, until I drive to Bath again. Look at the shiny new components! All in all, a tremendously satisfying day and a real difference to the ride quality of my car. It should even pass an MOT now.

We are MEN

(I apologise for any mistakes whilst typing this, I've had a few pints in celebration of completing our task/the pub quiz being on)

Ben, Dom and I were real men this weekend! We set out to do what we failed to do in July, and fix the suspension on my 3-series BMW (yes, I know it makes me a cock - but I maintain I'm forced into it - society treats me like it, thus I become one - you know, like the Stanford Prison Experiment - Bex knows what I mean, even if you don't). Basically, we found all the broken bits on the back of my car and removed them, then replaced them with new parts. For those who care, the broken parts were my near side rear shock absorber and my offside rear spring.

First off, we started with the fuel for such escapades:



The 'Quote-Unquote-Ultimate-Burger" - which was pretty ultimate. With this and a cup of tea we were ready to start.

Ben and I had previously had a deal - which we called 'our engineering summer', whereby we exchanged help on our various projects. I had previously helped Ben with casting models (http://umbrellagraveyard.blogspot.com/2008/07/rated-g.html) so he had offered to exchange this help for help in fixing my car. Now, we were basically unsuccessful at the first attempt at fixing my car, so I got to call in the help again (the terms of this deal were never really laid out), this time with a slight variance in goons. This time we had Dom!

After detaching the wheels from my car, we proceeded to remove the suspension components, which was easier said than done.

First we had to remove the boot lining.

Then remove the wheels.

Following this, we removed the damaged shock absorbers. They should be the same length - see how they really aren't. Believe it or not, this really reduces the handling of the vehicle. Seriously, shocks are important as they provide damping to the suspension. A car with only springs and no shocks would hit a bump and spring all over the place. Making for a very uncomfortable ride for passengers.

Once we had these out, we had a bit of room to play with. Then we could get the old springs out. The trouble is, they're jammed right in under compression and impossible to just pull out. Ben was tempted to just cut them out, but this is bad idea as so much energy is stored in them that when they break they'll probably explode out going through either a) my car or b) Ben's face. On the basis that I like my car, I vetoed this plan. Fortunately, I had previously purchased from the good people at German, Swedish and French a set of spring compressors. The idea with these is that you fit the grippy bits to the coils of the spring and then tighten them up on the thread. The spring then compresses, hence the name, to a size small enough that you can then just pull them out. You carefully undo the threads, discard the old spring and fit your compressors to the new spring and mount it in the right place. Remove the compressors and you have a new, expanded spring in place, keeping you car on the road. As I say, that's the idea. In reality you've really cramped and you can't get the compressors in properly because the wheel arch, hub and trailing arm all get in the way. And once you've got the bloody thing in place you can't tighten it up because there's no room to get a wrench in place (ok, I admit, the wrenches I had - having the right tools is a wonderful thing).

Anyway, here's the spring we pulled out from the offside:

Yep, it's supposed to be a single component.

Meanwhile, Ben and Dom fit spring compressors to the new spring.



Ben and myself ponder how to insert the new spring whilst Dom lurks under the car like a troll under a bridge. With a camera.

Right Turn on Red

I said it was coming up! Apologies to all those expecting more toy soldiers, but we take a turn for the Automotive today. It's a different kind of geekery today! You did read the title of this blog, right? Anyway, it's the long-awaited Ford Mustang Review!

(Warning - this blog post may contain American English)

Unfortunately I only got to drive this car for a fortnight ("A Fortnight? What's that? A night in a fort?" No, Marissa...) this summer as they seemed to be pretty popular at Avis car rentals. For the first part of my trip to the US this year I had a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder. Which was fun, but a little small and... well, a bit... OK, it's a girl's car.

Roll on the American muscle.

OK, I should point out here that this isn't a true muscle car - it only has a 4.0 litre V6 engine under the hood. Yes, it's the base model.... Boo, Avis! Boo!

Anyway, it's a different car to drive. It feels heavy, like my normal 3-Series, but unfortunately, the live rear axle and the cheap suspension make it a bit wallowly. There's some exposed bodywork in places that you'd never see in a European car either. It's clearly cheaply built from cheap, old technology. And it doesn't corner all that well. And, jeez, I'm sure I had to fill that thing up twice as much as the Eclipse. However. However. It's a Mustang and I'm in California! San Francisco! This is the car Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt (Well, close)! I challenge anyone to drive this car with the sun streaming down, some old school rock like Steppenwolf playing and not immediately forgive it all its flaws and head off down the highway grinning ear to ear. I certainly did. I started grinning as as I turned the key, the whole car rocking from side to side as the 244 cubic inch engine powers into life. It really does! It has an official rating of 200 bhp (yeah, yeah, BMW and Honda can get 200 bhp out of a 4 cylinder 2 litre, I know) and 0 - 60 in 7.3 seconds. It's a quick car, for not a lot of money. Well, as long as you don't turn any corners. It's not so hot there.

I started grinning even more when I got out of the parking garage and into the sun and put the roof down. As you can see, this one's a convertible. Not the most practical (the handling suffers even more, but it's not too detrimental - I imagine most would argue it couldn't get much worse), but I thought it was cool, especially in the California sun. It also enabled Dukes of Hazard style getaways. One of my abiding memories of this car is at midnight as the staff of GW Stoneridge and myself 'escaped' from the Livermore In-n-Out, burgers clutched close, leaping into the car in unison and flooring it , tyres squealing, avoiding the California Highway Patrol (OK, the last bit about the Highway patrol is a Foxtonism). Ah, happy days. You also feel a million dollars driving this car up the hills of San Francisco, CRUMP-CRUMP, as you hit the intersections and the gradient changes. I just wish there was a black Dodge Charger I could have been chasing.

In short, this car is crude, unrefined, inefficient, not especially good to drive. In fact, the equivalent BMW is better in every single way. Which would I rather have? Take a guess...

Goon #1 reporting for duty

The Company decided I was obviously spending too much time at home and sent me to Nottingham for the night. Oh well, at least I got to do a spot of painting. I know Nottingham has a reputation for a great nightlife (I did once live there, briefly) but once you've checked into a hotel, rustled up some food and realised what time you have to be up in the morning to attend that meeting where everyone's going to blame you for what's gone wrong (I hate you Department of Homeland Security!), you don't really feel like going out. Anyhow, this is what I got done:



I've only done two so far, but I'm really pleased with how these Fists are coming out. I think the Vomit Brown shading is working really well. It's much easier to paint that those damn black lines too. Willard Foxton disagrees, however, saying, "Personally, I really liked the stark contrast". Personally, I really bloody hated painting it. Andrew Taylor reckons Will's entirely wrong. I'll leave those who've seen both parties' painted models to decide who's right in this case.

Anyway, I played a game of fifth edition 40k using the brand new Space Marine codex (thanks Nic!) against Paul the RoboJew (part man, part machine, ALL JEW) and his Imperial Guard Storm Troopers. Despite some Hellhound problems, my mighty Fists rocked home to victory, with Captain Taelos and his command squad working their way through several units. The new apothecary rules make command squads so much tougher, with Taelos and Morlock shrugging off quantities of wounds that would have felled whole squads of Fists previously (they felt NO pain!). They're pricey, but quite frankly Taelos and Morlock need all the help they can get to survive a game.

To Me, Loyal Goons!

The sergeant of Squad 1 may be complete, but what kind of leader would he be without a crew of loyal henchmen to carry out his every whim? These chaps will get painted as soon as I get round to it (those with Action Man Eagle eyes will note that I've started shading a few of these already). Soon they'll be pilfering wallets and scrumping for apples with the best of them.









Note the unnecessary, pretentious touches, like marine with hawk, marine with bionic leg stolen from a Necron warrior (healthcare is SO expensive these days) and marine in mk4 armour with giant flashlight.










These goons include squad leader / 2nd in command, sniper rifle and special weapon operator. I figure that if in the new marine codex all marines with boltguns also have bolt pistols, then the marines with plasma guns must also have plasma pistols, right? The GT judges will allow that, right? Right?














And they all ride to battle in the giant yellow fun bus. The black stuff at the front is additional stowage / equipment. Those who've seen my tanks before will know my insatiable thirst for stowage. Unfortunately I'm starting to run out of the Tamiya Modern US army equipment sprues. Does anyone have any?

I still need to do a Plasma Cannon for these boys. And I will, just a soon as I think of an unnecessary conversion for him. Probably involving huge amounts of protection for when his gun explodes, attempting to kill him. And I do mean WHEN, not IF.