28.9.07

Friday Cat Blogging


It seems that Selene has been giving Loki lessons in how to give the stinkeye.

Just look at that expression..

Friday Rodent Blogging


It took me 3.46 seconds longer than the mandated time to provide a pumpkin seed earlier, so Selene is.. not happy..

26.9.07

Crazy Belated Everything Post

Between celebrating our anniversary (yay!), watching the Bengals get thrashed (crap!) and going back to work (boo!) things have slid a little around here, so this is a catch-up post.

First:

Friday Rodent Blogging



Selene would like a moment for rebuttal, in re the question of the happiest match, and would like to submit gerbil and pumpkin seed as a contender.


Friday Cat Blogging


Attack! Attack the hand! Kill! Kill! Kill!


The Anglo-Saxon Project


This is the latest. The green stuff (kneadatite) arrived and progress was made. I started with just the helmet and the neck piece, leaving the sides and face mask 'till later. For reasons that aren't fully clear, even to me, I also added the crest. With some tidying, I should be able to finish this in about.. a year or two.

Actually, one more session should see it near done.

21.9.07

The Anglo-Saxon Project

Here's a modest update:

I've gone about as far as I can do with this until my supply of green stuff arrives.

I started with this figure:


This is basically a standard Praetorian Lieutenant model, but I had already reshaped the sword, making it a powersword rather than a chainsword. I needed to strip the paint from the model and do some more work:


I removed the sword's handguard and reshaped the blade into a short sword. I am considering reshaping the blade further in order to give it the distinctive Anglo-Saxon tapered look. I then ground the helmet and face down to give me a nice base to work on.

And that, pending kneadatite, is all folks.

Apart from the name. The British Museum site plays it coy about the identity of the helm's owner, but the Sutton Hoo site declares him to be Rædwald, King of East Anglia and later, one of the most powerful figures in Anglo-Saxon history.

Accordingly, this character shall be called Major Rædwald, 22nd regiment, Praetorian Guard.

17.9.07

This Week's Impossible Dream

Here's a nice picture:


If you're from England, I probably don't have to tell you what that is. But for those not from The Centre Of The Universe, or for those to whom history is merely something that happens to other people, that is the Anglo-Saxon helmet discovered at Sutton Hoo, now on display at the British Museum. The Sutton Hoo burial mound was first excavated in 1939 and a wealth of treasures were unearthed from an unidentified Anglo-Saxon king's burial ship.

This helmet has fascinated me ever since I saw the original as a schoolkid. I love the look of the piece.

The British Museum also has this replica, made by the Tower Of London Armouries, which shows the helmet in all of its original glory:




The trip down memory lane that led to the British Museum's website also sowed the seed of a mad idea now germinating inside the fizzing fireworks display that I sometimes, but not often, call my mind.

I have a spare Praetorian Lieutenant model. And that helmet would look just awesome on him.

Yes..

And I have the week off work..

I'll get back to you if there is any progress.

All images © Trustees of the British Museum.

16.9.07

Blogger Play

Blogger has a new feature, where you can sit and watch the pictures that are currently being uploaded.

It's called Blogger Play and it's strangely compelling. Be careful, though. There's no filter and sometimes people post pictures that are a little.. ah.. near the knuckle..

14.9.07

Friday Cat Blogging

Ah, fresh laundry and cat. Is there a happier match in this world?

Friday Rodent Blogging

This week we present, via a cool feature on our picture editing software, Selene as a comic book character.

Wonder if Marvel is looking for a new title?

Our Lord, Who Art In London..

From our You Cannot Make This Shit Up desk comes the story that HRH Prince Phillip is God.

So HRH Prince Charles is Jesus, right?

Hat tip to Simon.

10.9.07

Bengals 27-20 Ravens

What a rollercoaster this was. Yep, the NFL's back, and the opener at Paul Brown Stadium was a heart-in-mouth sweatfest. Right down to the wire, thanks to some dodgy foul calls granting the Ravens nine attempts to get into the end zone from spitting distance ending in one beautiful interception.

Fantastic.

On to other news:

Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett suffered a fractured spine in yesterday's game with the Denver Broncos. Today's news is not a good. Everett suffered a fracture dislocation between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae and, according to team orthopedist Dr Andrew Cappuchino, "the third cervical vertebra had translocated completely over the front of the fourth cervical vertebra causing a scissoring effect on the spinal cord."

Everett underwent surgery to relieve the pressure, where the two vertebrae in question were fused together. The injury could still potentially prove lethal, and more will be known in the next three days.

Here's hoping he pulls through.

And, just to finish off.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I intensely dislike the New England Patriots. They're loud-mouthed, big-headed, and they cheat. A lot.

And now they've been caught.

Hoo-bloody-ray.

8.9.07

Friday Rodent Blogging (Belated)



Selene, upset that the c-word got a video last week, wanted her own. Selene Productions Inc proudly presents The Great Pumpkin Seed Rescue, a short movie where our heroine bravely rescues a pumpkin seed from The Big Giant Hand and whisks it to safety.

Friday Cat Blogging (Belated)


Loki, in extreme close-up.

7.9.07

Oh no they didn't...

More proof, as if that were needed, that Australians are completely and utterly barking mad, whilst, at the same time, have balls of steel, emerged today.

Via AMERICAblog to Crooks and Liars comes the story of how a bunch of Australian comediens waltzed through the security surrounding US President George Bush - which costs AU$1million per hour - with one of their number dressed like Osama bin Laden:



The comedians, from a show called The Chaser's War On Everything take an honest Aussie's dislike for everything in authority and take it to the max:



Yes. The story is worrying. It is worrying that a AU$1million per hour security force could be that piss-poor. Don't lose sight of that.

And, notice the pattern. The government ends up with egg on its face, but the comedians end up in jail.

5.9.07

Judge says "I hate everybody"

And the draconian society marches on. Now Lord Justice Sedley says that everyone who lives - or even just visits - the UK should have their DNA taken and stored on the national DNA database, which is already the largest in the world.

You may want to think on that. The UK has a population of 60m people. The USA has 300m. That's five times more. Yet the UK has more DNA profiles on record than the USA.

And Sedley isn't the first to suggest this horrific breach of privacy. In 2006, Tony Blair made a similar proposal.

We can only be grateful that, at least, those north of the border still have their testicles and, what's even more encouraging, they still have hair on them. Not only did the Scottish government reject Sedley's idea, but DNA from those arrested must be destroyed if they are not prosecuted.

Real men wear kilts it seems, and give up their DNA for no man.

This makes me glad I don't live in the UK. They can have my DNA when they drain it from my cold, dead veins.

3.9.07

The Bourne Ultimatum

Third in the series. You know the drill. If you didn't like the first two, why would you go see the third?

Okay, The Bourne Ultimatum. Third movie about the rogue assassin Jason Bourne, based upon The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. I stress that The Bourne Ultimatum isn't based upon the book of the same name (and neither was The Bourne Supremacy based upon the second book in the series), because the first movie departed so radically from the book's storyline that the second and third installments just wouldn't have made sense as written.

I loved the books. The books are incredible. The films, though different in many ways, are almost as good.

There is, as with the first two, one flaw. Shakicam. It's like the opposite of Steadicam. It's where many scenes are shot from a shaking camera, as though filmed by an amateur using a hand-held whilst sitting on a massage chair. I guess there's supposed to be some aspect of this that lends gritty realism to the movie that I am simply too unsophisticated to grasp, in my ignorance of the director's art, but it annoys the hell out of me. If I wanted to see the action wobbling all over the place I'd consume a bottle of fine Scotch before watching, and have a much more pleasurable experience for it.

Seriously, it's not big and it's not clever. Hold the bloody camera steady.

The movie itself is excellent. The storyline is gripping, the action is thrilling, and Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is as violently endearing as ever. The movie is a fitting continuation of the Bourne narrative.

Oh. Continuation? Yeah, there's a fourth and fifth book - The Bourne Legacy and The Bourne Betrayal - so it's even money that there may be one more film at least. I haven't read, nor do I have plans to read, these new books because they are not written by Ludlum, but by Eric Van Lustbader, and such projects are, in my experience, invariably disappointing.

This movie is, though, worth your time.

Doombreed Rating: * * * *

2.9.07

Carnival Of The Godless

The latest Carnival Of The Godless is up at AtheistFAQ.

And look! That's me on there. I submitted the piece I wrote about an atheist symbol and lo, it was good...

Must tidy up.. We've got company coming..

Friday Cat Blogging

Thanks to some trouble with Blogger's new video feature (which I eventually had to abandon in favour of using the ever outstanding photobucket), FRB and FCB were a little delayed. My humblest apologies.



CAT! LASER! HOURS OF FUN!

(No, your computer isn't broken, my camera doesn't record sound.)

1.9.07

Friday Rodent Blogging


Selene is not happy about being photographed whilst eating. Not happy at all.