Praise Papa Nurgle

Life is a roller-coaster it seems. Since nearly two weeks I am now struggling with fighting of the flu I got at the beginning of last week and still I have the last remaining symptoms of it. Thinking of painting while you cough or sneeze is not possible. Stress at work and some stuff to recondition because of my sickness don't improve the situation either.
At least I am fit enough to do some short bicycle circles around my flat. Christmas and New Year didn't perform well on my hips ;)

Hopefully I can return painting a bit (and finishing my working place, it has changed again a bit and is nearly complete now) and finally sorting some pictures for my second Majorca post (better late than never).

I am happy that some you are returning to blogging again and even if I am not able to catch up all your posting I hope I can comment once in a time.

Happy Blogging!

Paradox0n

Happy new year 2014

To all my readers, supporters and all others I wish a happy new year 2014. I hope all your wishes come true and you had a good start into the new year without accidents, trouble with drunk people or worse.

So long,
Paradox0n

Pimp my working space - Part I

As previously stated, christmas brought some very nice presents for me, one of the a daylight lamp with a magnifying lens (yes we are not getting younger). But to bring the lamp into place and good use, I had to rethink my working place a bit. So after a bit of shopping and a bit of screwing (and testing my new cordless screwdriver) I had much more place for my stuff without making a big mess and having to rebuild our complete "office":

New working place - Step 1

The new rack has a slot with two drawers, one slot with just a door and two slots with glass doors and inlays like a cabinet. This leaves me with enough space to store my paints, tools and crafting stuff and started projects and clearing enough space on my desktop that it doesn't always look like a big mess (and being a happy playground for our cats).

Hitting the next milestone: 20.000 views and over 300 comments

Wow! Slowly and quietly my blog reached another milestone: The 20k views and 300 comments mark (even if about one third of the comments are from me I think). That's totally insane especially since it was only in July when I hit the 10k views (which took me nearly a year).  So twice the fun in half of the time :)

Thanks to all who regularly return to this place and read the (sometimes weird) stuff I write. And since this makes the blog a bit more to a happy place, I am in the writing of just the next few articles. Not necessarily hobby related, but in line with some of the other posts I did recently.

So stay tuned.
Paradox0n

MMM - Woodkid

Wonderful Black and White art in his videos and very cool music in a way I haven't heard before: That is Woodkid.
Maybe you know Run by Run from an advert campaign of a big mobile provider (which itself is also very nice especially the start with the animated cat/robot).
I came across his music a while ago and my wife really liked the song on the advertisement and immedeately bought the album :)

The videos are really great and take you into a very unique black and white world.

Woodkid "Iron" from WOODKID on Vimeo.

Woodkid "Run Boy Run" from WOODKID on Vimeo.

Hope you enjoy them as I do and have a good start into your week!


So long,
Paradox0n

Still alive :)

First things first: Sorry for not posting this long. At he moment I am pretty much fully stretched at work and since I had a colleague to train (and everything had to be done in English) I am pretty exhausted when I come home. Most of the time its preparing food, spending some time with my wife and relaxing on the couch (or having some "leasure" time with my colleagues at Adventsmarkt or Christmas Party which is also most of the time in English).
Nonetheless I will return on blogging around christmas (maybe Father Christmas will bring me some nice hobby stuff). I also found some interesting stuff (not only hobby related) on the AEther and tried to make some pictures of stuff I am working on. Sadly the pictures aren't presentable, my Photobucket definitely comes to its limits with bigger miniatures/models.

Adobe Elements suite arrived!

After testing some stuff out and being forced to use IrfanView or even Picasa as picture editing tools I had enough and couldn't resist and buy me Photoshop Elements as it was in Amazons Cybermonday Week.
Additionally my trial for Sony Vegas has expired and I bought me the Adobe Premiere Elements. Since the two came in a bundle, more the win than ever :) I think I have spent 40€ worse this year (especially if you look at retail price!).

So at the moment the programs are installing and I am really curious if they do what I want them to do (always worked with the CS/Pro variants until now since I have them in my office at my disposal). But for easy stuff like color correction and easy editing they should be more than enough.


So long,
Paradox0n

Blogging update - Bug rant and moving pictures

Lately I got some serious problems with some disappearing pictures. Be it in the Followers Widget, in my Related Post Widget or even in my articles. Today this miracle is solved! I don't know why but the appropriate Picasa folder changed the displaying rights and therefore all links to the pictures in it where broken... I hope know this will now be solved and not happen again (had to correct  five posts, my widgets and some other stuff here). So be careful with your Picasa stuff, you never know what can happen :)

Another thing is, that I want to do some videos some while now. Perhaps you remember my posts from April where I started thinking about this topic and showed my camcorder and stuff. This weekend I played a bit with some stuff I found (and a trial license of an editing software) and don't want to keep this experiment from you. It nothing fancy but hey you have to start somewhere!

And I have two new adventurers on board! Welcome Remco and Old Fogey. Enjoy the travel and I hope you find your fortune on it.


So long,
Paradox0n

Impressions from Majorca - Part I: Attractions

As promised I will start with some impressions of our Majorca trip a week ago. It is not easy to sort and select all those pictures (we did ~370 pictures in one week) so I decided to separate the pictures into two categories: sight seeing and landscape. With the sight seeing I will start today and dive directly into the pictures of the cathedral of Majorca, the town's landmark. So watch out: Picture heavy and wall of text ahead!

The "Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma" or just "La Seu"is a gothic roman catholic cathedral build on the site of an earlier existing mosque (Majorca has a pretty turbulent history with lots of captures and stuff). The construction began ~1230 but was finished in 1601 when the main portal was sanctified. Around 1850 the main facade was reconstructed and was only finished in the early 20th century.

The cathedral now is on of the main attractions in Palma and you have to pay to visit it (~6€ pP). We did that and spend some time there. As I know many Gothic churches/cathedrals here in Germany (especially the Freiburger Münster) I wasn't that impressed by La Seu. It is beautiful and especially the altar is quite impressive.

Some late summer pictures from Europa Park

Before I am posting some of my pictures from my trip to Mallorca (which I still have to sort and select first) I post some late summer pictures I took on our last day in Europa Park (when our annual pass ran out).
These are from late August and it was a beautiful day there and we once again had lots of fun there. The park has some really cool places which are most of the time ignored or you just run by because you have to get to the next attraction.

The first two are from the children wonderland the first is the giant from the Grimm's story "Das tapfere Schneiderlein" (The Valiant Tailor) the second is a Gnome with snail pets from a children rollercoaster. There are many such things for kids when you have a keen eye and really look out for it (or you have kids and therefore have to look for them).

Life signs

Yes I am still alive. I just had a very interesting one week trip to Mallorca (or Majorca as it is written in English) with lots of driving and walking around on lots of sports on the isle. I had to dive immediately into working again so I am just catching up with all the stuff happening in the blogosphere.

I think I will post some pictures of this trip soon because I really was surprised of how beautiful this island is (if you don't go to places like El Arenal I suppose).


So long,
Paradox0n

MMM - The Doctor's Wife

Picture from Mike Savad

After visiting the Dentist once again today (lucky me only for a follow up check) and getting examined by the "doctors wife", which does the substitute at the moment, this song nearly immediately came to my mind for my (unregular) Monday Morning Music post:

The picture is "Waiting for the dentist" from Mike Savad. Check his page he has some more nice pictures there!

"The Doctor's Wife from The Clockwork Quartet"

Yes I know the text doesn't match my morningly visit but I really like this song :)

Battered airbag from Turkey

Yesterday I had an unexpected information leaflet from our "Deutsche Post" in my letterbox. A registered letter has been delivered to me and waits for pickup at my local post office. So I went there today at 8 o'clock and was disappointed that the office opens at 9 ... I asked myself WHY they write on the leaflet "Pick it up from 8 o'clock tomorrow" but OK... So I went there again just some minutes ago and TADA there was a battered airbag from Turkey waiting for me :) And perhaps you can already guess it, it is my price from Mr. Lee's 100k views contest, the Scibor Moscal Boyar Lord.

If you compare the two pictures (the one on Mr. Lee's blog and mine) you can only guess what airmail, customs and transport did do this poor airbag. But happy me the miniature itself wasn't harmed at all.
Its the first time I have one of those Scibor miniatures in my hands and to be honest: On the first look I am rather impressed. I've read lots of how bad those stamp techniques are and stuff like this. But the miniature has clear details and nearly no molding lines. Clear details and a stout and resolute posture give this miniature the perfect look for such a stubborn Chaos Dwarf Moscal Boyar Lord. The only thing which DOES worry me are the additional parts like the axe head and the shield which are cast on an extra sprue and seem to be rather heavily attached to it. I hope I can cleanly cut them off the sprue, especially the axe head which really seems to be a problem. The miniature is delivered with a small scenic base which looks pretty good. Again I am impressed how clean the casting is. I slowly understand why these miniatures are so expensive (in Germany at least).

The Lord will be a nice addition to my still secret army :) Ok ok you can guess it: I have some Chaos Dwarves (to be honest some Abyssal Dwarves from Mantic) flying around which wait for assembly and paint. Since I think I got all those miniatures from the KS (have lost the overview) I think I finally can start to put everything together with this lovely Lord as start. I hope I can give it the love needed, especially since it is such a nice price from the contest.

Stay tuned for more sumpy, grumbly, evil madness :)

So long,
Paradox0n

Motivation - Or at least some loss of frustration

Today I checked my stats of the blog and just blinked my eyes because I had some increased of views in the last two days. Normally I fell back to just a small dripple (no wonder because I don't post as much as last month) but on the weekend I was added to another bloglist: The Blogs of War. Don't know who runs this blog but thanks for adding me :)

That brings me to another point: I really was a winner in Mr. Lees 100k view contest. And since I placed second I was lucky to get the miniature I wanted, the Scibor moscal hero. I hope I can find the time to give this miniature some love and paint it the best I can.

And the next thing: As you may have read I procrastinate and rather drive my new bike than painting BUT this has a major impact on my (caution Buzzword alarm) work-life-balance. Since my wife and I cycle together we spend much more time with another. Pretty cool. And watching some of the MTB stuff (especially the following video) I feel like I can fight dragons or climbing mountains.

Procrastination - Blogging laziness and Late summer

Perhaps you already wondered why there are so few new posts on the blog at the moment. To be honest I am taking a step back from the blogosphere do some gaming and most important taking the chance to enjoy the last rays of sun and mild temperatures for a reborn hobby. But first things first:
I think I have some kind of hobby burnout. Most of the time I fight alone with my hobby stuff, have fun with it, but mostly painting or crafting alone isn't really motivating. At least my wife supports me and lets me piling up my stuff and so but at the moment I see all those plastic miniatures (or started terrain stuff) and am disheartened be the amount of stuff I have flying around. Lots of ideas but no creative power to execute all those ideas. Somehow this is really sad but if your work also kicks in (I have to substitute our Scrummaster on top my development work) the only thing you can do is to sort your time and ask yourself what to do with it.

Mr. Lees 100k views contest

Just a really short post while writing an article: Mr. Lee from Mr. Lee's Painting Emporium has a small competition running for his over 100k views now. If you missed this blog you really should jump over and have a look. Mr. Lee was one of those few who commented pretty early on my blog and helped to keep me motivated. Therefore I do this "advertising" which I haven't done earlier.

So long,
Paradox0n

Short Blogger Update

While I am thinking of how I will write my review of the Painting Buddha DVDs I am also thing about some blog changes. First I think of changing the layout a bit into one bigger column left and two columns right. That would also give me the opportunity to place the blogger networks on the most right column and would give me entry to the BoL network. Hopefully this could bring some more traffic on my blog.
Another thing I think of are future posts... I am still fiddling with my video setup with no satisfying results at the moment so nothing new on this front.
So yeah pretty much on the conceptial part.

While I am on it. I do some advertisement for the Painting Buddha DVDs. Although I haven't written my review yet, I can say that this is a pretty good set.

So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: No I am not sponsored by the president, I just like what he and the other guys are doing. :)

Buuuuuuuuuugs

Today I somehow felt like a soldier from Starship Troopers. I don't know exactly where they all appeared but we have an invasion of bugs in our supply closet. So today was full of clearing the room, checking everything we stored (flour, herbs, different sorts of rice etc. pp.) cleaning all the shelves and trying to find the hatchery. At least we know know WHICH bug invades us. In english I think it is the wheat weevil. As far as I could find the information this thing nests in flour or other food (e.g. the dry food of our cats of which we will have caught them we think) and has a rather quick life cycle. If you do not fight them, they can easily multiply their population in a few weeks. So we spent over 3 hours with searching, examining, cleaning and throwing stuff away. Hopefully this will start to work.

At least we didn't find a brainbug :)

Therefore: No painting today, the Dunny only got a basecoat of dark metal. I wanted to start with some rust experiments but after this meee today I really wasn't in the mood. I rather repaired the bike of my wife and tinkered the clutch of our small trailer to my bike. Perfect for the necessary short shopping trip today :) Hope tomorrow I find some time to paint. Want to try out to achieve some rust effect with stippling browns and oranges onto the Dunny...

So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: And a new fellow on board my little flying vessel. Hello Miniature Man, take a seat and have good time :)

Basket full of gifts

Perhaps you remember that I had my birthday some weeks ago. After having my birthday party last weekend and receiving lots of hobby related presents there, I thought I want to share with you the stuff which was given to me. A big thanks to all my friends and family for supporting my nerd hobby!

From my mother-in-law I got a whole bunch of modelling tools. First I got some modelling brushes or clay shaper or whatever these things are called in English :) That was really something I missed at my last experiments. And I also have the need for them in a future project I am planning at the moment.

Its over 9000!!!

Again a seldom but happy day in a bloggers life. Yesterday the visits climbed unknown heights, thanks to Natfka who gave me a backlink on his famous Faeit 212 blog. Thanks again for that!
This brought me over 640 visits in one day! A number which I had never thought it would be possible :) That's normally the amount of visits I get in half a month.

Another thing is that I broke the 10.000 visits mark. I didn't mention this earlier because lots of traffic is from spambots, which I already moaned about. But slowly real visitors crowd out the bots which I am very happy about.