FFotW - The Order of the Stick

My FFotW this time  is a comic series called "The Order of the Stick" by Rich Burlew. This series is really hilarious and so funny (at least if you are somewhat in P&P role-playing games like AD&D (on which this one is based).

I am not through the whole story but as far as I could read (somewhere around 300th strip) its pretty good.

Aaaand the best: There also exist some miniatures to the story and even a board game.
The miniatures are from Morland Miniatures a company I never heard before. They fit the look of the characters pretty good :)

I just had a quick look at the other miniatures there. There is some stuff which looks really cool. If anyone knows the company already, please drop a line in the comments.


So long,
Paradox0n

More impressions from Norway: Models in Flam museum

So I will continue to show some of my pictures from Norway. This time I only have four pictures which I have shot in the Fram museum in Oslo. When my wife first told me that she wanted to visit the museum I thought "Nah not interesting" but oh how I was wrong...
The Fram is a pretty famous ship, which was used in Arctic AND Antarctic expeditions and has quite a history to tell. The museum contains the Fram herself (yes the whole ship!) and the Gjøa.
The main hall which contains the Fram is four floors high and you can wind up your way up to the deck hop on it and discover the complete ship. On the different floors you can see lots of items from the expeditions and at some places also some small dioramas which I will now present to you.

If you are interested in more information about the museum or the ships, just visit the linked sites :)

Hope you enjoyed it.


So long,
Paradox0n

MMM: Heaven Shall Burn - Combat

Time for the music wakeup on Monday! This kind of music will either wake you up or make you run away from the noise :)
 I think this is a pretty depressing topic with matching video. Child soldiers are something this world should have never seen. I can't even imagine how the psych of these children is destroyed. I only know from dialogs with my grandpa (who was roughly 16 and more a teenager than a child when he had to fight in WWII) how bad stuff can be.

So why do I post the video? Because I think stuff like this needs some attention from time to time.

Heaven Shall Burn - Combat:

So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: The cartoon characters remember me somehow of the Lulus of the Toughest Girls from Raging Heroes without judging that. That is why I though it somehow fitting for a tabletop blog.

FFotW - Seans Photoguide

First camera

My finding of the week is this time a series oft posts of Sean a fellow blogger. In his blog he shares some of his experiences with photographing miniatures. So if you are interested in stuff like this, please have a look at his series and maybe you find his blog to your liking.

Since I found it rather difficult to find all the parts, I just put the current five posts into this list:

1. Photographing miniatures - Part 1
2. Photographing miniatures - Part 2
3. Photographing miniatures - Part 3
4. Photographing miniatures - Part 4
5. Photographing miniatures - Part 5

Hope he continues with the series (he suggested stuff like processing pictures etc. pp.). Although I know lots of processing pictures in Photoshop due to my work, hearing what others experienced and use as tools is always nice.

And as always: Sharing is caring!


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Something went wrong with the publishing therefore you get my Friday Finding of the Week on Saturday morning ;)

Hitting the 40k visits mark

So wow! I just checked my statistics and saw an unbelievable number oft hits there. Over 40.000 visits on my blog! Although I know that most oft the traffic comes from Google and other crawlers I am pretty happy. Even more since I know that most oft the spambots are now blocked out (can see that pagehits did break down after I changed the comments to registered only).

So a big: Thank you! to everyone who is reading this blog.

And I take this oportunity to make the small anouncement that I will post again more (hobby) stuff. Had to take some time off doing other things like working and hiking (especially in Norway and the Black Forrest) until I found the motivation again to interest me for my plastic mountains ;-)

So stay tuned.
Paradox0n

Impressions from Norway

As promised I will post some of my Norway pictures. Today I want to start with some more hobby related pictures which gave me some nice ideas for bases/weathering and an idea how stuff "grows" in reality.
So without anymore babble I let the pictures speak. "A picture tells more than 1000 words", right?

Earth, Stones and Trees

Some impressions from our first hiking trip. Liked how the area looked, a bit "highland" feeling.

Ice | Nigardsbreen

Some impressions from Nigardsbreen. After we did a small hiking trip to one of the arms in the neighborhood, we decided to go to the big one which is one of the biggest attractions in Jostedal. We booked a short guided tour and therefore I could take some nice pictures from the glaciertongue itself. We didn't climb up too far, but it was very impressive. Next time a bigger blue ice tour ;)

Weathered truck in swampland

One nice thing I stumbled upon when we did our last hiking trip was this rusted truck. It was nearly reoccupied by nature and was really cool.

That's it for today. If you liked it please say so in the comments, I can post some more pictures of Norway if you like. For example on our canoe trip one part looked a bit like the place where the hobbits paddled through ;)


So long,
Paradox0n

Painting Buddha Academy: PBCC released the first video in their series

As you all know by now I am a pretty big fan of Painting Buddha and their DVDs. And they don't stop surprising me! Michael, Ben and Mati did another masterstroke: They opened up their own painting academy and just promote it.

If you want to know more about the Painting Academy, the features, costs and everything, please read their very informative and comprehensive blogpost concerning the Painting Buddha Community College.

 And what better way to promote that with the first tutorial video (out of 42 as usual)!

I put the released videos all together in one playlist for your convenience and hope Michael is OK with that. You can find the original blogpost from Painting Buddha on their new website/shop/blog and all the videos on their Youtube Channel.

I myself only opted to take the blue pill and hope they continue to produce DVDs and stuff (which I will most likely buy then) and not switch completely to this community thing. To not take a membership (for now) is just a personal preference, most paid communities I had a look on didn't just convince me. Have to see how the PBCC will be in the future.

Hope you enjoy it.


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: I think Michael really wants to take over rulership and be "El Presidente" ;)

Hobby Magazines - Ironwatch Issue #25

Ironwatch Magazine Issue 25

Issue #25 of Ironwatch Magazine, the Mantic Games Fanzine has arrived.

This time it contains a nice mixture of Kings of War and Warpath topics like:

• Kings of War scenarios
• Gallery of professional painted Mantic miniatures
• An overview of an undead army
• Second part of a Warpath story
• and many more

And there is also one short notice about the planned hardcover variant for the magazine:

Due to technical difficulties, availability in hardcover has been put on hold for the immediate future. We will attempt to get them to you in hardcover as soon as possible!

If you haven't checked already, take a look, its free and fanmade and totally supported by Mantic (so you'll see lots of images).


So long,
Paradox0n

MMM - Dan Bull 40 years of gaming and back from Norway

The leisure times are over... My vacation in Norway was way too short but with lots and lots of impressions. If you need ideas for your display bases or army displays Norway is the country to travel to. I live in a really nice area (Black Forrest in Germany) which has an incredible landscape, but Norway was even more spectacular since it combines all kind of landscapes.
I have been climbing the heights of waterfalls, wanted to explore caves, did some glacier hiking and some canoeing in a fjord. And took more than 1000 pictures which I will show you some of them as inspiration for your future projects as soon as I have sorted them.

For today I will just show you a nice music video from Dan Bull: 40 years of gaming. I am curious how much of the stuff you know, my first video game wath Ataris PONG in the living room of our neighbours and since then hasn't stopped :)

Hope you enjoy it!

So long,
Paradox0n