Right now our Circus lady is curing, we’re waiting for parts for the animals and wheels, and we need to start getting the main body assembled. Since this is not a tutorial on assembling the kit, I am going to skip any steps that are just “follow the instructions”. So we will focus on deviations from the instructions. The first thing where we’re going to deviate on the main kit is with some magnets. Magnetizing components allows for rapidly changing them out, and is often applied to weapons options. We won’t be magnetizing the weapons. We will be using magnets however. The key to magnetizing is pre-planning. Where do we want to be able to attach and detach other components at will? Two places. We want to be able to swap bases between the diorama and a scratch built flying base. We also want to be able to attach and detach the Circus lady at will. So we need two sets of magnets.
The first one is rather easy to place. Using the already magnetized base from the other model, I can hold the magnet in place until I affix it properly. How do you affix these internal magnets? There’s glue, but I had leftover Green Stuff, and with those channels in the floor, it will hold pretty darn well. Plus, being on the bottom of the model, it won’t be in as much danger of shifting due to gravity. So that one was the easy one. The other place we want to magnetize is the left headlight assembly. We want our Circus lady to be able to stand on the corner of the vehicle and motivate her beasts to haul. Initially I planned a line of three small magnets with the same polarity so we can have a few options as to where she stands. There was just one problem with this – when you get two magnets close to each other, they tend to act of their own accord. After a lot of frustrated fussing, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do it at the present time. So I cut down to the two magnets on the ends, which were far enough apart that I was able to get them into the notches I cut in the back of the headlight assembly. Once I had glue in, I promptly entombed them in Green Stuff – I was not going to do that all over again.
The magnets on the outside are there simply to help hold the inside magnets in place while the Green Stuff cures, and to remind me that there are magnets in there. Oh, and ensure polarity of the interior magnets. I know that once the interior magnets got entombed, there wasn’t much chance of them shifting, but I really don’t want to fight with the fiddly little magnets any more. So, we go back to textbook assembly until we get to the turret. Thankfully, I already decreed we were not magnetizing weapons, so that is out. So what am I doing to the turret? First off, I’m going to drill out the bore of the machine gun. No one will notice if you leave the bore the solid slug of plastic that it comes out of the box as, but that little added touch of detail helps. I don’t do it to every weapon, or even most weapons, but when I’m already going to all of this effort, I’m going to drill out the bore of the projectile weapons.
The second point of deviation is that we’re going to leave the turret as three subassemblies. The gunner, the pintle mount and the turret proper. Why? Because there are a lot of tight corners in there and trying to prime, let alone paint, all of those nooks and crannies is asking for trouble. So we’re going to paint them separately and press-fit them together. This requires not gluing the layers to each other. The second thing we’re going to do is to swap out the arms on the gunner. We need a pose that says “Drive me closer, I want to hit them with my sword.” And to do that, we need to give the guy a sword. So it’s back to the Bitz Box. Swapping out weapons arms is easy, right? Well if all you want to do is make sure he’s holding the weapon, sure. But we want him posed properly for the meme-reference. So we need to take a saw to some arms. For the left arm, we have a chainsword that’s just a hand, so we can just find an arm pointed in the proper direction and take off whatever’s in its hand. Too many of the arms are posed to hold something close in to the torso, which is the opposite of what we want. For the right arm, the pistol I want to give him has the wrong type of shoulder pad, so I have to swap it to an arm that is compatible with the correct ones.
So we apply a little saw to the arms and do some more part surgery. Why didn’t I use the saw before? Because the female parts were not as bulky, and wouldn’t deform as much from clippers where they were more than the knife could handle. The saw is slow, but it does less damage to the surrounding part and can cut through an arbitrarily thick block of plastic. Once cut apart, we reassemble the parts we want and we have one enthusiastic gunner who can’t wait to get into melee range. Nevermind the fact that he’s sitting behind a minigun…
So what’s next? Well, we need some parts to be delivered, and we need to look at what’s wrong with our Circus Lady’s backside.
So what happened was that gravity caused the green stuff to slump against the front loincloth. And the upper part is still a mess. So lets cover the rump with a pistol from the Bitz Box. Yes, the pistols are gratuitously oversized. But with ammo packs, the holster hides most of the worst errors. We also have to attach a magnet to the heel of that boot. So far I’ve been using thin plastic glue. (Thin being a measure of viscosity.) But plastic glue works by chemically reacting with the plastic to cause the pieces to fuse to each other. It does not work so well with metal. So as I cut a notch from the heel of the foot to fit the magnet, I had to find the cyanoacrylate, more commonly called Superglue. I hate superglue. It sticks to anything but itself. So I end up having to hold the pieces in place for far too long before it sets and pray I didn’t get any on my fingers. If I did, I would get glued to the piece while waiting. This is more than a little annoying.
Almost as annoying as getting glued to the piece is realizing I don’t have magnets small enough to hide in the foot. So what am I going to do about this oversized lump of metal in her heel? I’m still thinking about that. So what is there to do now? We need to wait for the pieces I ordered online, but that doesn’t mean work has to stop. What can I do while waiting? I can paint. My preference is for spray primers and to paint light on dark. There are a few simple techniques to ensure a good primer coat that doesn’t wipe out details. First off is to remember that you can always add more primer, but taking it off will be difficult to impossible. Especially around the fine details. So short bursts in gentle sweeps will do well. You need about sixteen to twenty inches of separation from the spray nozzle to the piece in order to have the best dispersal of pigment. Don’t try to get the whole piece in one pass. Coast from one direction, so you have a dry face for the model to rest on. Let that layer dry and spray the other side. Repeat from as many directions as needed to remove pale spots and get a uniform coat. A bright penlight will help provide alternative lighting to check whether or not a given pale spot is the underlying plastic or reflections.
Oh, and whatever you do, make sure you spray prime in a well-ventilated area. Most sprays use hydrocarbon-based accelerants that will cause issues if you breathe too much. Plus the pigment, which you don’t want in your sinuses. No matter where you work, there will be droplets of pigment that float long enough to dry and form colored dust. You will begin to notice this if you use the same spot long enough. It can be wiped up, unlike a direct spay that will stick to whatever it hits. Last tip, put a backdrop behind the piece to catch as much of that loose pigment as you can. A simple cardboard box will suffice, provided it’s big enough.
Right now we’re priming in eight pieces, three layers of the turret, the Circus lady, three weapons mounts, and the main chassis. This will allow the structure to have more posability, and allow us to paint it properly. If you notice the walker in the back, the one on the left, it’s not just there to look pretty, it’s a color reference for the vehicle. So we start with some base coats. The primer counts as our first base coat, because there are large areas of the model that will stay black. On our Circus Lady and the gunner, we have one model that has a lot of exposed skin and one completely encased in armor. His coat will be more uniform, mostly dark red. The base coat for the skin and hair will be leather brown, and while we’re painting it, we’ll paint the holster and ammo pouches. We need to be careful not to paint over her shirt. That one gets based in dark purple, the loincloth in pale gray and the metal in a lead hue.
While I could leave that as her skin tone, I’m not going to. These intermediate layers do two things – one they reduce the number of layers required to cover a pure black base, and it subtly influences the character of the final color layered on top. Most of the brown will be covered up, except for the holster and ammo pouches. Though the red is the final color of the gunner’s armor. Since I’m basing the Circus Lady’s armor, I’ll hit the metallic parts of the main chassis and weapons. Because there are so many “metal” components across my collection, this particular silver hue is one of my most commonly used pigments. There are two painting techniques I have to discuss when applying these patches. First is what is typically thought of when mentioning ‘painting’. That is evenly applying pigment to coat the area. This is used for things like gun barrels and antennae. The second is drybrushing. Drybrushing is the use of a limited amount of pigment (the ‘dry’ brush) to scrape over the prominent details of the model. This gets useful for grates, vents and simulating wear on mechanical components.
There are some people who would advise diluting your pigment. I have only once ran into a time when I needed to add water to paint – after a pot had all but dried out and needed to be restored to working order. This is because I find diluted pigment doesn’t cover well, and refuses to stay where I put it. You will typically get this bad advice online when you gloop it on. More appropriate advice would be to use less paint. As with primer, you can always put more on, but taking it off is not so easy.
So we start layering on other colors. With a few details, the “very undone” look of freshly primed pops to something looking closer to completed. For this reason, I try to pick primers that represent as much of the base color as I can. This is not always practical, and for individual characters I will just suck it up and paint it all, such as with the Circus Lady miniature here.
Comments
223 responses to “Kitbash: Drive Me Closer, I Want to Hit Them With My Sword”
I’m not familiar with that euphemism.
It’s when the epoxy resin sets in its final form.
Making the euphemism more obscure doesn’t really help.
He’s making something thicc by letting it sit in a warm place.
This. Unless you’re airbrushing or making a wash there is no reason to do anything to it.
Ooooh, look who’s an expert on diluted pigment!
*applause*
BTW, Your Holiness, I noticed on a dead thread that you were in ATC in the USMC, or did I read that wrong? Just wondering because MACS is a small world.
MATCS-18 in Futenma. Nav Aids pogue.
All my other time was spent at NAS Memphis.
*asks google*
You were an air traffic controller?
Nope, he was a technician working on navigational aids, the TACAN
Basically, there are five sections in a Marine air traffic control squadron: radar, comm, nav aids, aux (they run the generators and AC units), and the controllers.
So he didn’t actually have to talk to the pilots and try to get them to understand him. Got it.
Nope. God forbid. We lived with them though.
Like Chip said I worked with gear that told the pilots which way to turn and how far away they were.
No kidding. I’m assuming MATCS-18 was the forerunner of MACS-4. I was Detachment Alpha at Futenma. Iwakuni was Det B. I was radar, working on both the 22 and the 73.
I remember my old gunny from Okinawa talking about how much Millington sucked and how we new guys didn’t know how good we had it at NAS Pensacola. I think the school moved around ’96, a few years before I went through.
MATCS-18 was only in Futenma. Det A was the one that got sent TAD to various places. For the most part I was Det C which was midfield at the airstrip on Futenma.
No idea where Det B was.
I managed to go to Atsugi for a month, ROK for 3+ months. I heard right after I left that a bunch of guys got to go to Clark in PI for a couple months.
We never went anywhere for any exercises when I was there. The CO was from TAOC and didn’t seem to like ATC much. MACS-4 always went to Thailand for Cobra Gold, for example, but for a few years including when I was there, ATC was left behind while TAOC went. Same thing with whatever the exercise in Korea was (can’t remember now but they did it every year) and this huge one in Alaska, Northern Edge, where we were pretty much the only aviation unit left behind on Okinawa.
Foal Eagle, that was the Korean one.
Well, if there is one thing I was born to do…
You tell em, HM!
Now gimme some thicc….
Erm, pleauze.
Oh, bravo, Pope. Bravo.
Damn. Pretty good there, Holiness.
*80’s accelerating clap*
Which one of you Glibs sniffing UCS’s model glue was this?
I love the last sentence. “The church plans to drain, sterilize and re-bless the holy water.” Well that’s good to know.
The whole article is gold.
He fathered the kid when he was 14?
*fist bump*
Before Jimbo asks; no, I don’t know him and he is not a relative.
Your workspace is beige and bland. There, I said it.
Interesting hobby and article. I’d love the article even more if the pics were clickable for higher resolutions.
Without the clutter, it looks like This. The particle board workbench was cheap, and I didn’t need it to handle great stresses.
Is that a typewriter?!?
Yes.
And it still works.
I’ve had to use it for the “Intent to take a Civil Service Exam” NCR form because it’s nigh impossible to get anything the register on the last page by hand without ripping the front sheets.
Is it a Brother? Looks like the one I had. My kids don’t believe that I used one to write papers in HS.
I don’t remember. I’d have to check. I am, however, at work and it’s at home.
It’s a Smith-Corona
When I was in high school my mother had a printer that had a daisy wheel on it. She needed it for her tax preparation business to print through the carbon forms used back then.
At the time our high school had outlawed turning in research papers printed on a dot matrix. (They felt that word processors were cheating and if we were going to be properly prepared to get a white collar job we’d need to know how to type). The dot matrix printers back then also had trouble with crap like foot notes, underlining etc (or maybe the crap wp software my high school had)
In any event, I was golden because the daisy wheel printer turned out stuff that was identical to stuff typed on a typewriter. The only drag was you had to feed in the paper a page at a time (the old perforated stuff would give you away).
I’m guessing that’s why they were stuck teaching high school instead of having a real job somewhere.
My mom was doing word processing on an IBM in the mid-80s. Hard to believe teachers were unaware that was already a thing (or going to be a thing, depending on what time period PJ was talking about).
Mom bought her Kaypro in ’81 or ’82 She was one of the first people in our town that had a computer in her house. She bought it for her tax preparation business.
Word processing back in those days did seem like cheating. You didn’t have to learn how to use correction tape or use white out. You could type super fast and let the wp program fix things. Good typists wanted to be fast, but also accurate. Also, with a wp program, you don’t have to spend time organizing your thoughts and writing out drafts in long hand. You can just move blocks of text around. How are you going to learn proper planning that way?
Hate to say it, but they were sort of correct. My spelling skills are horrible because I just let the computer fix/warn me when I get words wrong.
It was cool to have the Kaypro in the house, but it also was used as an excuse to not buy an Atari to play games with. Instead, my sister and I had to play Ladder. The most pathetic excuse of Donkey Kong ever.
From a commenter over at Althouse regarding Hillary Clinton’s comments on civility:
“Trump fills stadiums
Hillary fills Depends.”
That’s so poignant.
Pungent.
Filling.
HA HA HA. You can’t parody these douchebags.
Was that Acosta near the end calling Trump rallies mob-like?
You should invest in a pair of super-gluing gloves.
Gloves reduce manual dexterity and make it more difficult to work with the tiny parts involved in these tasks. Besides, it does me no good if I end up witha glove glued to the project either.
Superglue also has… interesting reactions to some other components used in modeling. Never use superglue with foam, cotton, or wool. Especially don’t glue any of those items to your fingers accidentally while putting flocking on a base.
Flocking is supposed to be applied with PVA glue.
WHITE GLUE, speak English Damn it, We aren’t British here!
There are a lot of glues that are white, and not all of them are polyvinylacrilate.
Not seeing it, if I need to Seal I use WS scene sealer, otherwise Elmers is fine, it dries Matte, and pressure always works
Yep, and that’s how I learned that lesson.
Now that’s a euphemism!
Ca comes in many thicknesses, try the Heavy with a toothpick to apply it, and get some kicker,
Nice work UCS!
/still have some internet
Hey Not Adahn,
I drew your name for BIF and I might have gone a little crazy and bought 15 different beers. Would you like for me to pick 8 and be surprised or send you the list and you pick your 8?
Surprise me
*instantly regrets saying that ti Florida Man*
Florida Man surprises Not Adahn.
What’s with masturbating in other people’s home? Don’t these people have front lawns?
It’s the new cool kids thing. Front lawns are so old people…
Get the fuck off my grass!
Oh boy are you going to be surprised. Seriously though I’m learning some stuff through BIF. Some of the local beers I like only come in bottles or growlers, no cans. Some breweries only do taps, so a couple things I plan to get I had to scrap. I hope you lik the selection I’m sending. Should get it shipped out next week after some last minute taste test.
Shipping bottles is fine, just more costly, and more prone to breakage. The newest innovation that I love is the crowler. It’s a 32 oz can filled by a tap, and then sealed right then and there. Oskar Blues created and patented the technology a couple years ago. I would think they’re down in Florida since Cigar City is owned by Oskar Blues. I would avoid shipping growlers though, with the short shelf life, the CO2 leakage, the weight, and the volume they’re really not worth it.
Glad you’re learning though, hope it’s been fun so far. The real fun comes when you get to dig through a package that’s arrived to you.
Beer: Bringing proof that even Florida Man can learn. 🙂
Lol. I brought back a bunch of crowlers from Sam Adams when I visited Boston. Perfect size to bring back a bunch of samples and enough to share with friends.
I’ll be buying my beer for BIF this weekend. I have three breweries that I like within a half hour of me (Schmaltz, Brown’s, Newburgh) and a fourth that unfortunately just closed (Saratoga Brewing Company). I’m hoping to go visit them to see if they have some not-out-in-stores stuff, since the supermarkets pretty much stock whatever variant of IPA they produce
I know you said no IPA but I was tempted to send you this just for the lols.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/161/61613/?ba=Kinanik
I have shipped bottles to home brew competitions without problems.
The biggest problem is bottles banging into each other when the package is jostled. I solve this by wrapping each bottle in bubble wrap and then taping the bottles together. This way they move in unison when the package is jostled.
I shipped all bottles, Bubblewrapped and packed snug so they didn’t shift, pricey though, go for cans if possible.
Luckily there are enough local brewers that I was able to get a nice selection all in cans. I would hate for Not A to get a soggy shipment of beer. 🙁
I have three beers in cans and four in bottles. There are fewer options here in the desolate wasteland of Iowa.
My thoughts and prayers are with you…
Those seven beers include 3 GABF gold-medal winners and 1 GABF sliver-medal winner.
So quality not quantity. 😉
I will be sending a mix also, mostly cans and at least 1 bomber.
Damn…. that is some high quality. I didn’t even think you had that many breweries in Iowa! 🙂
I’ve only got seven medal winners from this year within an easy drive for me (between home and work).
/adjusts random number generator for the next BIF
/adjusts random number generator for the next BIF
Do it quickly. 😉
I had to buy six-packs for most of those. So I am ready to ship again, and again, and again. /within a reasonable time frame
Now you are gonna get this…
Artificial sweetener?
Try that again.
If the Repubs have any brains at all, I think they can sew up the open Arizona Senate seat for McSally. Pull quote:
Now, you can use “crazy” affectionately, but that “stop your state from becoming Arizona” is going to be hard to explain away.
“What I meant is… we’re unique and irreplaceable! Don’t even try!”
I would think it’s particularly bad for her being someone who hasn’t even been in Arizona all that long. Seriously, this chick was the best they could do for a candidate? McSally already had taken the lead in the most recent poll, and I imagine that trend will continue.
Either way, this guy is spot on.
Nick Benz
@NickBenz2
17m17 minutes ago
More
Replying to @NRSC @kyrstensinema
She’s right about one thing, Arizona, crazy is the only explanation for electing the likes of a John McCain.
And Jeff Flake
+1 shithead
Bruce Braley throwing away Tom Harkin’s seat in the Senate in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH51LNpqZ94
So, the road to success somehow does not include begging for donations in a different state while standing next to the liquor table.
Well, that was dumb
Is this at all surprising? When you get right down to it, 90% of modern progressivism is about social signaling to establish your superiority to everyone else who is like you. If you’re a progressive from Arizona or Texas, it’s about establishing that you’re superior to other Arizonans or Texans. If you’re a white progressive, it’s about establishing your superiority to other white people. If you’re an American progressive, it’s about establishing your superiority to other Americans. Is there a progressive you don’t think talks like this behind closed doors?
And. in case anyone really needs to ask, yes, at least a little bit of my libertarianism is snobbery toward my snobby neighbors.
I can be libertarian because I don’t have to resort to cheap social signaling to establish my status, unlike the progressive riff-raff.
They’re driven by envy and misanthropy.
And a desire to control, or at least to see others controlled, which may just be a consequence of envy and misanthropy.
Oh, the totalitarian drive to control things is driven by their need to force equality of outcome – picking the winners and losers – and that need is plain and simple about their envy and jealousy of others that are doing better than them. A lot of them also use it to gatekeep their special circles. Control of whom gets to be a kid is a big deal with these people.
fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope….
But, the envy and misanthropy themselves are as status play. They hate others because hating others gives them superior status, at least in their own mind. They envy others because resenting others’ good fortune feeds their feelings of superiority. They seek to control because controlling others gratifies their need for superior status.
I started writing up a thought in the morning thread and gave up, but the gist is that it may be too cynical to think progressives and PC police are merely posturing and jockeying for position, that they may be in the throes of religious mania. They really seem to believe that Kavanaugh is guilty simply for being accused, not because it’s politically expedient to treat it as fact, but because they earnestly believe in male guilt and white guilt and heterosexual guilt as a matter of secular original sin. So the question of whether he’s guilty isn’t a product of which party nominated him: he is in fact guilty because he was born male, a white male at that, and has a preference for females. That is enough to damn him; Ford’s testimony was just show trial crap for the unbelievers. Seeing it as religion explains a lot: the hysterics, the passion that douses any bit of flickering reason, the manic insistence on their One Undeniable Truth, the continued nuttiness even in the face of losing rather than gaining public support, it’s all of a piece with religious mania. I used to think it was cynical playacting, that nobody reasonable would take it seriously, but more and more it seems like something we know too well: otherwise reasonable people who are convinced of the inviolability of their capital-T Truth will accept outlandish and contradictory propositions as a matter of faith.
You think so? In this framework, I would posit that the party that nominated him plays the role of some sort of evil cabal.
It’s a clear case of “if he’s not guilty of this, he’s still guilty of something”.
Being a privileged white male is clear evidence of wrong-doing throughout his life.
It also explains the screaming at the skies, the loud crying and wailing, and the insistence on certain words as dogma. The real question is if the leaders are true believers or are riding the waves of those in the throes to power.
JournOlism
Journalism is deciding what stories to tell, which ones to partially tell, and which ones to bury in order to make sure the news favors team blue.
Or the Iowahawk formulation: Deciding which stories to cover……with a pillow, until they stop moving.
That will fall on deaf ears.
Some commenters bring up a good point; why is this the first we’re hearing of it? You’d think at least Fox and Brietbart would have brought this up long ago.
Rand’s an icky libertarian who it’s best not to speak of. /team purple
Kanye is going to make proggies cry.
Already happened. I love the way the totally not racist progs call Kanye a token negro and Taylor Swift a hero when they both make their chosen political statements. Never mind that Kanye is black and Swift is lilly white, nothing racist there at all.
Kanye’s not backing down. Dem’s may come to regret turning on him for questioning the plantation. If just one or two more high profile black celebs follow him, their whole black vote house of cards could start crashing down.
Doesn’t Trump have something like 35% approval among black people? That’s pretty unheard of for a Republican president.
I follow a lot of people in the #walkaway movement on Twitter. About half of them are black, vocal, and (IMO) persuasive.
If Trump wasn’t a dumbass, he’d legalize weed and start pardoning thousands of prisoners who are locked up for non-violent crimes.
The problem is that Trump is a bit of a Puritan when it comes to fun with chemicals himself, so I don’t see him doing this.
The other thing I’d do if I was him would be to really hit the NFL protesters to sit down and come up with a list of people that they think are locked up unjustly. Then I’d pardon every one of them that hadn’t hurt anyone or stolen anything.
“If Trump wasn’t a dumbass, he’d legalize weed”
He’s not a dumbass. He just sometimes comes off that way. That being said, I’ve said that exact same thing about legalizing weed many times. If Trump did that it would be the ultimate troll of progs. They would go stark raving mad ( not a long trip). I can’t even imagine the fun of so called liberals turning into the biggest drug warriors of all time. But they would and I think everyone here knows it. Trump is missing a golden moment if he misses that one.
Unfortunately that useless asshat Sessions is probably the greatest impediment to him doing that.
He could troll 2 birds with one stone. The troll of Sessions would be almost as good as the prog troll. Then when Sessions is still reeling from it, he should fire him on TV like he did Comey.
If Trump wasn’t a dumbass, he’d legalize weed
I think the net on that would be pretty favorable. I don’t think he would lose enough votes to matter (I don’t get the sense that even law ‘n’ order Repubs really think pot is the debbil anymore), and he would absolutely fry the circuits of some Dem anti-Trumpers.
and start pardoning thousands of prisoners who are locked up for non-violent crimes.
Not so sure that would be a political/electoral plus, at least not without a lot of groundwork and a context of criminal justice reform.
I’ll say one thing for Kanye: he’s not afraid to speak his mind and he won’t back down. Attacking him is beyond stupid; they can’t really paint him as an Uncle Tom, especially when anyone can go on youtube and see him saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”. The best they can do now is use Soviet-style, “he’s off his meds” and “the only reason he will talk to Trump is that he’s mentally ill”. I don’t think that will fly with a lot of thoughtful black voters.
I’ll say one thing for Kanye: he’s not afraid to speak his mind and he won’t back down.
They don’t call it “Fuck you money” for nothing.
Uffda. There he is sitting with Jim Brown. Jim Fucking Brown a true American Badass.
The proggies better get a lid on this pronto. If guys like Kanye and Jim Brown start liking Trump and making being GOP friendly OK, they are fucking doomed.
Jim Brown was an exceptional athlete, a mediocre actor, and a piece of shit human being.
I always cut him some slack because he really did have to put up with capital-R racism in his life. I’m sure that fucks with anyone.
Besides being a giant asshole braggart is the very definition of an American.
Also a guy who banged Raquel Welch gets a pass in my book.
Didn’t he punch his wife in the face or something like that?
No idea. I just remember him constantly talking about how he could still play in the NFL or beat people in a race.
Which one?
He should have just weighed her.
Or throw her in water and see if she floats.
He could build a bridge out of her?
He should have said she’s a Republican and he’s part of the resistance. Then he would have received a lot of support. Probably a job at NYT.
North Dakota nice.
Yep. He was protecting the rest of us from a witch.
If he was really trying to protect you guys from a witch, where was he when Hillary was stumping there to lock up NoDak’s 3 electoral votes?
Now that’s a genius question there. what’s your answer NoDakers?
That witch has never stepped foot in North Dakota.
I don’t understand. This seems like a cultural issue for Azizov. Are we really going to be such Nazis that we condemn this man’s deeply held cultural beliefs?
Hey, are these guys reading SugarFree?
Needs MOAR vaginal tomb.
I’ll just leave this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI5wtAznWps
Bless you.
There are days I’m optimistic about the direction of the country. I think about the people in my real life who a) don’t talk politics and b) just go on with life as per usual.
There are days I’m pessimistic about it, like the days I see my prog friends screaming online. I’ve started deleting them out of my timelines, and some of those relationships go back years. I feel I don’t know them anymore. “If you did X, you’re wrong.” Well, okay then.
Then there are days I go about my business, think about my neighborhood and nothing seems to touch my Gadsden flag neighbor and the self-proclaimed Deplorable neighbor. I think, “We adapt to our world. What world am I leaving to my kids? Do I have any control over it? Can my kids adapt? Will they go on and be themselves and do the best they can with what they’ve got?”
And somehow I feel everything will turn out okay.
The world will continue to change, but the patterns will remain. Several new technologies will come out, many of them will be hailed as world changing, while a technology that came out that was mostly ignored will do the work of changing the world. Children and teenagers will make bad decisions, and bad parents will blame whatever the newest entertainment that the kids are currently using as the cause for this “increase” in bad decisions. Adults will continue to make mistakes trying to understand the children through their own childhood, while children will still think the adults know nothing. Books will be written, books will be removed from library shelves. People will still worship, produce, and consume (though not necessarily in that order). Every election will be the most important election ever. Nuclear fusion will be 20 years away. The Earth will continue rotating, going around the sun, and moving through a cosmos that doesn’t care about us.
For a small sense of perspective, you can always read the Beloit College Mindset list. It’s written up as a guide to the new class of college freshmen.
Don’t be Silly.
Commerican Fusion is now perpetually only Ten years away.
Amazing the progress. 5 years ago it was always 40 years away and 2 years ago it was always 25 years away. I’m getting optimistic now.
I like Lockheed’s small reactor rapid prototyping approach. The cheaper* units make for faster turnaround of improvements and make it more feasible that they’ll overcome the major obstacles.
*cheaper by standards of fusion reactors.
I’m just waiting for my personal unit to power my home and flying car.
What about your woodchipper?
That’s powered by orphans. Chipped or whole.
That list is neat. Thank you!
In case you didn’t notice, they started making the list for the class of 2002, and they have all of the historical lists available as well. I forget where I heard about it originally, I think it was some forum post about “If you want to feel old…”.
“I’ve started deleting them out of my timelines, and some of those relationships go back years. I feel I don’t know them anymore. “If you did X, you’re wrong.” Well, okay then.”
The girl I took to Junior Prom and continued to be good friends with for years in spite of her actually working at the Center for American Progress unpersoned me in the past year. Our relationship was never based on politics and there were actually a few issues we could agree on (drug legalization for one). However, she has decided that I am evil and must be culled from her life.
Oh well, that just means she was never that good of a friend anyway.
The #1 reason I dumped FB was because it was so depressing to see people I like and respect act like such nuts. Getting rid of that lets me think of them as they are when I interacted with them in person.
My theory is like Schrodinger’s Cat but with social media. Maybe call it Trump’s Pussy.
Until you open up a FB feed, Trump may or may not have grabbed a pussy. The superposition of these two states allows you to continue on with your life without undue stress and angst.
The number one reason I never joined facebook, or for that matter any social media shit, is that I am certain that the only people that will want to friend me will be the ones I want to avoid. Wait. I hate everyone equally, so i wouldn’t friend anyone. Oh, well. Nothing to see here. Move on.
See, the reason I never joined Facebook is that I don’t want it confirmed that there is literally not one person on this planet who wants to be my friend.
STEVE SMITH WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!
Now that we are on hyper-political annoying people. When I was in DC over the weekend so my wife could vote in the Brazil election, I got an Uber ride from the voting place back to Union Station. Older buy picked up us and was just chattering away. Somehow we got on cars and he was talking about his first car and I told him my first car was a F150 straight 6 and we got on how easy it was to work on your own car back then. Then he was asking me what we were doing that day and so I told him. As soon as he realized my wife was one them fureners, like on cue, he immediately went on this progtard rant, and Nazis, and racists, and Trumptards and blahblahblah. When he stopped, I didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. So then I said ‘You know what else was nice when I was growing up besides working on your own car? It was nice that everything wasn’t political’. He got the message and then changed the subject. I didn’t give him a tip, fuck that guy.
That is exactly how I feel.
Brooks’d it. Dammit.
*shrug*
Nobody’s prefect.
Steam is celebrating International Girl’s Day with special deals. Hilarious. I see seven games from no-name publishers. You’d think Square-Enix might have offered a buck off the new Tomb Raider game.
Is that a game inspired by SF’s post from yesterday?
I’d best tell the wife it’s Girl’d Day on Steam, and that must mean that girl’s get to buy their guys games. Because everyone knows girls don’t play games. I mean bejeweled and HeyDay, but those aren’t real games.
I don’t think there’s anything I want, except RDR2, which isn’t on Steam and is now pushed back to Oct 28, ):. I just bought AC Odyssey and Pathfinder Kingmaker. Both of those are good if you like RPGs. Also bought a 34″ 3440×1440 IPS gsync monitor. Man, this thing is sweeeet!
I was interested in the Pathfinder game, I’d be curious as to your thoughts. I just fired up the Bard’s Tale IV and I’m about an hour in. I’ve already come across some annoying bugs, and some disappointing features (certain races are gender locked for models, no quick save, a craft system that requires recipes). I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to give it before waiting for a patch.
Pathfinder: If you like games like POE, DA, or DOS (even thought that one is turned based), you’ll like it. I like it better than POE. If you actually know AD&D rules, that might help you. I don’t, and to me it is annoying that there is no feature in the game or any resource at all, that will tell you the weaknesses/strengths of enemies. The only way you can know is by trial and error watching the combat log. But I guess if you know AD&D and/or Pathfinder rules, that will help you a lot.
The other 2 things I would tell anyone who is thinking of buying the game.
1. The first 2-3 levels are brutally difficult on normal difficulty.
2. Beware of timed quests. I wasn’t paying enough attention and would up restarting the game after more than 20 hours of gameplay. IOW, if you fail a timed quest, it’s game over. Game over meaning starting again from the beginning.
Otherwise, I love the game, good story, interesting dialogue between your party members, and good combat (once you have it figured out).
Sounds good, and I do have AD&D experience (no Pathfinder, but it was based on D&D 3.5 IIRC). But D:OS 2 Definitive Edition is beckoning, as is XCOM2: War of the Chosen with the new DLC for free.
Take some advice from a person who spent 130 hours in the first DOS. It is MUCH better than the 2nd one. That is one of the best RPGs ever made. Just get DOS 1, you can thank me later.
I’ve got the Definitive Edition of DOS as well. I was somewhere in the third act and got in an unwinnable situation somehow. I could go back and start that over as well.
Showing my age here, but Fallout 2 was the best RPG ever made for me. How many games allow you to get stuck in a shotgun wedding, and then allow you to sell your spouse into slavery to get rid of them? Or allow you to hit a child in the groin with a sledgehammer because they pickpocketed you? Or even better, let you walk by the pickpocketing children with an armed time bomb, and let them steal that from you to deal with their thieving ways? You could also become a mob boss, a porn star, a boxing champion, and a kung-fu legend!
“Showing my age here, but Fallout 2 was the best RPG ever made for me.”
Those games are too dated for me. I’m a graphics ho now, no going back.
Pathfinder ruleset is the same as D&D 3.5. They released an open source rule set. Which I thought was extremely clever, but they haven’t done it since.
D:OS 2 in my opinion is an excellent game with quite an entertaining system of combat.
I haven’t gotten into Pillars of Eternity 2. The first was just sort of ok.
D:OS 2 I played for a bit after release, got tied up with something, and then they announced they would be releasing a Definitive edition. So, I decided to leave it on the back burner until the Definitive edition was released.
“haven’t gotten into Pillars of Eternity 2. The first was just sort of ok.”
The voice acting in that game and the story with the annoying gods is cringe worthy. I had to turn off the sound it’s so bad. Outside of that, it’s good.
What does the definitive edition have that the one I played through didn’t have?
“What does the definitive edition have that the one I played through didn’t have?”
I think more voice acting and enhanced graphics.
Urthona: Here’s a couple of articles going over the difference.
TLDR:
Rewritten dialog and story arcs
Better inventory management
Changes to fight balance
Improved Physics engine
Longer (optional) tutorial section
Nice! Which monitor?
My graduation/employment gift to myself is going to be a new PC. I’m definitely going for a higher res than the 2560×1080 I’m using now.
This one:
Alienware 34
*drool*
Do you think the refresh rate makes a difference? I hear it does but I’ve only ever run at 60Hz.
Of course it does. Don’t let anyone tell you that there is no difference after 60 FPS. That is bigger fake science than AGW and 32 genders. Of course, in some games, it’s not going to make much difference. For instance, like an isometric party based RPG. Like Pathfinder which I am currently playing. doesn’t really matter. But action RPGs like Fallout 4, or Witcher 3? The difference between 60 FPS and even 80 or 90 is huge. And gsync is another thing. It makes everything butter smooth no matter what your FPS. Another thing, if you decide to go ultrawide 21:9: Then you are never going back to 16:9 for gaming, ever. The curvature for me, I don’t really notice it, not sure it does anything.
I haven’t played Pathfinder, because the reviews have only been mediocre. Both POE2 and DOS2 have gotten much better average reviews. I do love the D&D 3.5 rule set though so maybe I should not care about the reviews.
Forget about the reviews and just read what I wrote above. You’ll like it. After the first 3 levels it gets to be a lot of fun. Until then, be prepared to get wrecked by immortal pigs. I beat on one of them for 20 minutes after it had zero hit points, while it killed everyone else in my party. A lot of bad reviews on Steam are because people got their asses wrecked and went all snowflake.
I have that one.
It’s a’ight.
It’s fantastic compared to the 27″ 1080 TN panel I was using.
Yeah it’s really good.
I mostly play strategy and top down RPGs though so I probably don’t get the full advantages.
Even on Pathfinder, the difference is amazing for me. Everything, my characters are so big and the amount of detail is stunning. When I was in a dungeon in the other game, I couldn’t make out much detail, especially because the detail and color contrast was so poor. When I started using this monitor, I can see every detail in a save, every spider web, the beard hairs on my characters, just incredible. Going from a poor monitor to a really good one, exceeded my expectations.
“in the other game”
Other monitor
Dang, Hype. And I thought I spent on my hobbies.
Uffda. I thought the new received gospel was that steaming vaginas was bad. Is that a thing again? What about asshole bleaching?
If my wife wants her vagina to have the same weather as Puerto Vallarta, who am I to stop her?
Sandy, and full of Mexicans?
I’d buy one…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUKolh8Q9hA
Erm… OK.
I thought it would be a sexbot with tig ol bitties. Man, you boring!
TRIGGERED.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RujZAzxjFQ4
Florida woman
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world/florida-woman-says-she-slipped-and-accidentally-stabbed-husband-to-death/1516586856
22 times?
It was real slippery that day. Believe women! What, you want that poor woman to have to put a 2nd door on her house?
That is a rough 38.
The husband got a light sentence there compared to waking up to that face every day.
From the sidebar of that article:
Arkansas Sheriff putting inmates in Nike shirts for mug shots, activists say.
LOL
Friend accidentally stabbed on purpose at Nashville haunted house.
I love my new AR pistol more than any of you.
That’s all.
I don’t like that configuration so of course you love it more than I do/would/can.
Yah, well, I love my AK pistol more than you.
But both are still silly.
An SBR would be better but I will take what I can build without having to ask for permission. I do find it interesting that I can carry it loaded in a vehicle legally. (After I was given permission by the state to carry concealed, lol)
And you can take across state lines without “Mother may I?”
That’s easy because I dont love your AR pistol at all. I dont even like AR’s.
You’re welcome.
Dean:
When is McCain’s seat going to be filled? What’s Arizona’s process on this? Does the governor appoint one?
The guy is already appointed isn’t he? Not sure how long until the next election, when appointed guy will be up again.
Guy’s name is Jon Kyl.
I thought the governor already appointed John Kyl to fill out the term.
You are correct. I must’ve missed that. Apparently he’ll serve until a special election in 2020.
In more recent news, when is Flake getting lost, forever, so that we never have to see his cuck face again?
He’s done. Sinema and McSally are running to replace him.
You learn something new everyday:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle
The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
I have told several people that Trump does not lie. He bullshits.
The bullshit artist says things that are blatantly untrue. He knows they are not true. You know they are not true. He knows that you know they are not true. That’s the whole point. He wins by overwhelming your ability to function by making you so angry and frustrated at trying to refute the blatant untruths that there is no energy left to do anything else.
Long live twitter.
Cloward-Piven applied to rhetoric.
There’s no time to do anything else anyway. Apparently, the plan after the giant blue wave, is to impeach Kavanaugh and Trump. I mean there could be a token gesture in there somewhere to take away people’s crumbs, but Trump would just veto that. So we get 2 years of impeachment with the ugliest people we ever saw in our lives gathered on in front of the Capital building screeching like imbeciles. What’s not to love?
Makes sense.
Banksy scores again.
I hate that vandal. I hate the morons who buy his defacement of properties even more.
Loctite Gel is much better behaved as superglues go, and the bottle I opened a year ago still flows.
There are some people who would advise diluting your pigment.
“water-soluble” would be more accurate than “water based”, as the paint consist of the pigment and acrylic medium, not water. hit the acrylic canvas paints section and get some clear matte medium to thin with.
The paint is plenty thin. Just don’t glop it on your brush and you’ll be fine.
GW has tons of vids now, for some bob-ross-style exposure to how they do it, and that’s something you hear at least once per vid lol.
The other takeaway for me was not trying to achieve the final coverage in one coat, they really emphasized using multiple, super-thin applications to keep everything nice and smooth, free of brush marks, and not clogging up your details.
The twit from GW also syas nonsense like “just highlight the edge of the eye lens” (which is smaller than most people are able to see, let alone catch the edge of.)
He is not a good soruce of advice unless you get paind to do this for a living, have better than perfect eyesight and molecule precise brush control.
“We also want to be able to attach and detach the Circus lady at will.”
I know right?