Back in Action

After about a month of sickness and other things competing for my attention, I finally was able to do some painting last night, completing three Lotr Orcs. The picture doesn't really do them justice, but that's ok. Hopefully I'll have some more time in the near future to keep up with the painting!

One more thing I thought I would mention is that one thing I started about two years ago is painting the completion date of my minatures on the bottom of their bases. That way I can just look at the base and see how old the miniature is, and also compare old ones to newer ones to see if my painting skills have improved (or gotten worse!)

The past month...

The past month has been very slow in terms of my 40k hobby, much of it being out of my control. First I got a cold which laid me up for a week. After having recovered, I was able to work a little bit on miniatures, but then I got hammered by sickness again that in all probability was the H1N1 virus. The whole family was sick for a week of hell. We're all essentially better now, but I still have a lingering cough that won't go away.

In the intervening week we've gotten a new living room set (a hand-me-down), painted the kitchen, gotten one car repaired and are in the process of looking to replace the other. Needless to say there hasn't been much time for 40k. Grrr...

I haven't played a game in months--I've been busy doing other things, and my usual opponent Badelaire has been busy taking graduate classes, so it just hasn't happened.

Hopefully in the next month or so that will change. In the meantime, however, I have managed a little bit of fun--I've had the opportunity to play paintball a couple of times. A ton of fun and a bit of exercise.
The audio is a little crazy--the sound of my gun is insanely loud, while everything else is pretty faint, so be prepared. There are also subtitles to the video, which help the video make a little more sense--if you mouseover the icon at lower right you can turn on the captions if they are off.

Fort Hood

When I heard about the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, last Thursday, I was shocked and saddened by what had happened.

Little did I know at the time that I had recently met one of the wounded soldiers. Back in October I had the opportunity to meet a woman named Joy. I did not get the opportunity to talk to her much, but she seemed like a very nice person. Apparently soon thereafter she deployed to Fort Hood, and was one of those shot by the gunman.

Yesterday she had surgery to repair the shattered bone in her arm, and I am glad to report that she is recovering well.

My thoughts go out to the families and friends of all the victims.

Busy busy busy...

Sorry about the lack of updates over the past few weeks--a bunch of things have been competing for my attention, for example...

The little one has been keeping my hands full:
I also had to put up with trillions upon trillions of these things, which kept me out of commission for about a week:

Still and all, I've managed to work on a few things, including this Shas'ui for my Ethereal's Bodyguard unit:

I've also been working on some LotR miniatures, but I don't have any pictures of those right yet.

I've also begun migrating my battle reports from being hosted on comcast directly into the blog. So far I've only done about a dozen or so, and it's been relatively easy since they are simple--just some text and pictures. Once I get up to battle report 33, however, things are going to get significantly more complicated...right now I'm not sure how I'm going to handle it.

More updates once I have something worthy of reporting...

Warhammer 40k: The Movie(?)

It was nerd-dom at its finest. The setting was my wedding reception (well, post-wedding dinner), April 26, 2008. Among the attendees were two rabid 40k fans: my friend Badelaire and my cousin Tyrant. Amidst the general revelry the topic of 40k came up (duh, what do you talk about at weddings?). Tyrant and Badelaire were discussing the possibility of a Warhammer 40k feature film, and naturally I had to jump in.

What we could all agree on was that we would all love it if such a movie was made. The technology exists now that filming a live-action film in the 40k universe is feasible. The argument then arose that while a 40k movie could be made, would one be made, especially in the near future?

Basically Tyrant came down on the side that there will undoubtedly be a 40k live-action movie in production within 5 years, while Badelaire and I disagreed. After a heated argument, we came to a gentleman's bet: If a live-action 40k movie was in production, with the intention of general release to theaters (that is, not straight to DVD and not an all CGI movie), as determined by announcement/press release being made by a reputable source (e.g., IMDB), by April 26, 2013, Badelaire and I would buy Tyrant a ticket to the movie. If a movie was not in production by this date, Tyrant would pay us each $1,000,000 US. (Actually, that last bit isn't true. Tyrant didn't offer us anything if he lost the bet...)

The gist of our arguments for or against were as follows:

Tyrant's arguments for a movie being made within 5 years:

• Such a movie would be an incredible marketing tool for GW products.
  
• While making a live-action movie would undoubtedly be a large investment, the rewards from a successful movie would be huge and well worth it.
  
• While there may be fears of negatively publicity because of the "darkness" of the 40k universe, this is no different from any number of other sci-fi movies being put out these days. Also, "any publicity is good publicity."
  

Darkwing's and Badelaire's arguments for a movie not being made within 5 years:

• While a movie would be an immense marketing tool for GW products, GW is doing just fine and does not need to expand into this market.
  
• The additional exposure could in fact be detrimental to GW--already GW has to combat an image that it is brainwashing young minds with images of slaughter and worship of dark gods, etc. This is manageable now, but if a blockbuster movie came out, there might be a backlash that GW would wish to avoid.
  
• To do a 40k movie justice would require a big investment. With the economy the way it is and the state of the business, GW might not want to foot the bill just yet.
  
• The 40k background is immensely rich--in all of that, where do you even start in choosing a movie idea? In order to attract new customers, you'd want something representative of what GW and 40k are all about, while leaving enough mystery for people to want more--the movie is, after all, essentially an advertisement for GW. At the same time you want to avoid things that appear like movie cliches (E.g., a Space Marine vs. Tyranid movie would have some people dismiss 40k as a clone of Aliens or any number of other derivative works)
  

I'll update this list as I think of more arguments we had come up with (after all, we had the argument 18 months ago).