Blue-arsed headless chicken-fly ...

... is how I'm feeling at the moment :(  Work is manic with a capital MAN.  With the recall we have issued, every morming I have to prepare reports and dashboards tracking this as well as my other regular work. On top of that I have 2 other projects, one to finish by Friday this week, the other by a fortnight this friday, and the 'normal' month-end rush taking up next week :(

I hope to start the next instalment of my zed-campaign one evening next week, but I was intending to do that this week - so don't hold your breath, unless you're already one of the infected, in which case that wouldn't matter!

I'm about to go to bed - it's 8.50pm! - cos I'm cream-crackered and need to start early tomorrow and will be finishing late - is that the world's tiniest violin I hear playing somewhere? and is that purple piss your hearts are bleeding for me?  ;)

Anyway, enough of my attempts to drag out some sympathy - just want to let the people crazy enough to be followers here that I will be posting again (and commenting on your blogs), just not in the next 10 days or so  (unless I can sneak some time at work - for commenting that is - won't have long enough to post here, I'm certain).

PS: been managing to read a few pages of Field-Marshal Slim's 'Defeat Into Victory' at lunchtimes - an absolutely superb read and thoroughly recommended to anyone with an interest in WW2 in Burma or what a Corps (then Army) Commander has to cope with and do. Read it - you won't be disappointed.

Oops ... sorry!

Sorry it's been a long while since I posted. I started this re-incarnation of my blogging career with the bet intentions of posting regularly and you know what they say about intentions ...

Anyway, I've been mega-busy at work. I work for a medical devices company and we've issued a voluntary recall of one of the devices we sell. As a result, the share price dropped by almost half in two days ... worrying, but I've got faith in our range and they can make life-changing differences to the people who get them. It seems that the stock market is too panicky to look past the headlines ...

Anyway, enough of that. On the hobby front, I've been painting something new. I'm not sure how I found them initially, but I stumbled across Splintered Light Miniatures and fell in love with their Splintered Land range of 18mm minis and bought The Faithful Boxed Set:

and The Rebels Boxed Set

I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I really like these sculpts. Anyway, I ordered direct from Splintered Light as they have no UK distributor. An email to them revealed that they have a single worldwide postage rate of $6 for orders up to $75, which I thought was good for me, but bad for them!

The minis arrived quite rapidly, but I was disappointed to find that although they were listed as boxed sets, they arrived in ziplock bags! It didn't really matter but I'd been hoping for some painting tips on the box - after all I'm not really familiar with the colour differences between pine martens, wolverines and weasels ...

I did get to the Colours show at Newbury last week and bought a pot of Army Painter's magic dip that I'm going to use these figures as my guinea pigs for. I'll try and get some photos of them up soon - the ones above are from Splintered Lands website.

I also got some more resin scenery from Ainsty and two plastic boxes of figures from Gripping Beast one each of the Vikings and Saxons. I had been toying with the idea of getting them, and was persuaded when the Caliver books stand was selling them for £15 each while Gripping Beast sell them for £20! So how could I refuse that?!

First Painted Gladiators

Well I finished my first pair of plastic gladiators and decided to experiment with the photos. While at Eastern Front I had a conversation with Zombie Ad during which we both moaned about our inability to take decent photos of our toys. Ad said that he was going to get a tripod and try the timer funciton on his camera and I realised that I had a tripod myself so I thought I'd give it a go. Below you can see the results. I often find that a picture looks fine on the camera's viewscreen but when I upload it to the PC, I find it's blurry. Such was the case with the left side of this picture. This composite photo has the same view, both pictures taken using the tripod, but the left side is with me pressing the button and the right side is using the timer ...

I think you'll agree it makes one helluva difference and I shall certainly be using the timer for all my pics from now on! According to 'Red Sand, Blue Sky' the rules I'll be using this gladiator as a Dimachaerus (means two-weapon-man apparently). 

Facing Left



His back



Facing right

After taking these pics, I've added some Tamiya Clear Red to his blades and it look pretty good!

Next we have a gladiatrix (female gladiator) from the Pegasus set 2. I really like this figure and she seems closest to a Murmillo in RSBS. She's the only one to have a name so far - Bodacea from Britannia. The blue circle on her belt has been painted silver and a coat of Tamiya Clear Blue applied, as with the blue stone on the front of her helm. I think it's come out very well



facing left

From the front

and rear shot, facing right

Finally, in a comment on my last post I promised a comparison shot of Pegasus and Italeri gladiators. Well here it is;  on the left is a Pegasus mini and on the right Italeri. I prefer the Pegasus myself. On consideration, I could have chosen a better pair, but these were to hand. I will use them together without any quibbles anyway, and I think the difference is more of a 'style' thing than a problem



Left Pegasus - Right Italeri


Next time, a few more gladiators, a bear, a lion and my arena ideas. Well probably anyway ... something else might take my fancy first!