Blog Babble - Interested in photography stuff?

Long time no see (again). But as usual I am drowning in work. My travel to Romania didn't help either and the loss of all my prepared post made it even worse. But hey, in Germany we have a saying "Unkraut vergeht nicht" ("A cat has nine lives"?). So Yes I am still here and No I haven't recovered from the loss of the articles yet.

But since I started hiking again and started experimenting with my DSLR (perhaps you remember my older article about it) I have a question to you all: Are you interested in a) Landscape pictures and more important b) Tutorials about using a DSLR and filters and maybe even picture composing/editing? If so, I will start with some articles to this topic.


So long,
Paradox0n

Farming "wife points"

Perhaps you can remember my post about using a laptop cushion as mobile working station for preparing my minis? If not, I gladly provide you a dip into the past with a link back to the review.

As I get slowly back into the flow of doing hobby stuff again, the cushion now also gets into use and I can only say: Yes, it is working. At least for preparing the miniatures like clipping them from sprues or removing mold lines or gluing your stuff together.

That means I can also farm some "wife points" :) Its pretty cool, watching your favorite TV series together, while doing preparation works or sitting together while she is learning french and I scratch away mold lines. Nothing better to keep one going than sharing time instead of being separated in different rooms...

So today I was priming a whole lot of minis (and getting a strong dislike for my brown Army Painter Sprayprimer). I hope I can also paint some stuff up. Kings of War is calling!


So long,
Paradox0n

ReRoll-Weekend!

Today only a short promotional post :) On the first November weekend (All Hallows), the Tabletop Network does held a charity weekend: The ReRoll Weekend. The rules are pretty simple:

• In every game you play at this weekend, you can buy rerolls. 
• Every reroll costs 50ct 
• The reroll has to be accepted

The money you raise will be collected by the TTN and be donated to the Weisser Ring e.V.

So warm up your dices and play games at that weekend :)
More information about that charity event you can find on the delivered links. Warning: All in German :)

So long,

Paradox0n

P.S.:

And some shoutouts to new followers. Welcome to The Responsible One and Morikun. Take one of the free seats and enjoy the flight.

Blogger changes - Cookies!

© dreamstime.com

Maybe you wondered why now a strange message box in the head of many blogs appears: That is because of some recent changes in blogger's cookie policies. In the EU there are some legal restriction for dealing with cookies and at some point you as user have to accept the usage of cookies. With those cookies you enable the website to track your behavior and, depending on the kind of cookie) your interests and stuff.

As always in the WWW there are good and bad cookies. Some are really needed for websites (like session management and stuff) others are somewhat neutral (tracking your likes and thus providing ads which fit to you) others are clearly harmful. 

For  my part, I have a cookie blocker which kills hopefully most of the harmful stuff. Other side of the coin is, I have to whitelist everything I want to allow. But that is up to your decision how you want to deal with all this :) 

I would be happy if you would allow me to track your visit for my statistics and also to display some ads (even if not personalized). If enough people choose to click on ads and have analytics track them, the more one gets for an ad. I will not get rich by this, but maybe (at some point) there is enough there that I can buy some paints or stuff, which I could make a review on or so ;)

So far for this more technical update. If you have questions about cookies and stuff, feel free to comment, maybe I can help you (if it gets not too far). 

So long,

Paradox0n

Alan Wolfson exhibits in Lyon

© Alan Wolfson

If you happen to be near Lyon between the 16th of October and 15th of February you should think of visiting the Musée Cinéma et Miniature in Lyon (France) because Alan Wolfson exhibits some of his urban sculptures there.

You may ask now: Who the heck is Alan Wolfson? And the same I asked me when I saw the information in one of the forums I read... But after looking at his website and looking at some of his sculptures I just was flabbergasted by his work.

Maybe I can convince Mrs. Para to pay a visit to Lyon and this museum ;)

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

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

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.

FFotW: Great Pacific Garbage Patch - A world of plastic trash

As you may know from some older posts I am a scuba diver and love nature (especially the sea). Today I came across a very interesting TED talk about the problems with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch of which more later. 

Source: Good Infographics

If you don't know what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is: Have a look at the infographic, it explains pretty good what is happening there. Just imagine a huge mass of plastic floating in our seas. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only the biggest one so far, there are many more floating and circulating around the sea. Its pretty difficult to get the real size of these beasts and they are measured by the amount of plastic floating in these areas but even this is rather difficult because some of the garbge sinks to the ground or is grinded down to a microscopic level.

Hitting a new blog record

Hey crazy wargamers! Yesterday my blog achieved a personal record: Over 110 views on one day which means more views in one day than normally in a week so far! I know for most of you this are peanuts, but I am really happy that this happened.
As the views raise and I get more followers (A warm welcome aboard new travelers!) I started to refactor the sections of the blog a bit and will reconsolidate some other parts (especially the blogroll).

In Germany we have a saying: "Alles neu macht der Mai" (which is in english "April showers bring May flowers" I think). This year this is true for my blog. At the amount of posts you can already see that I try to fill it up with content and I hope I can also refactor some parts of the blog itself.
Another thing I really think of is putting every blog I follow into my blogroll (Maybe split them but we'll see). I have them all in my reader, but making them more public would favor the smaller ones (even if I don't have hundreds of followers but for SEO this is a nice bonus). Perhaps this can also motivate to put me into the roll.

One year of blogging

Nearly unnoticed my blog had its birthday. At the 11th of April last year, I welcomed you aboard this blog with my Howto build a swamp. Since then many things have happened:
- I started my tower project which is still waiting for its base
- I build a modular gaming table with the help of a friend
- I bought myself an airbrush which I still have to master (which makes loads of fun)
- I made some reviews and started my Hobby Basics series (for which some more articles are already in preproduction)

At the end of last year I had a very big motivation leak so posts become rare but I hope this time has gone and I can deliver some more stuff in the future.

And now it is your chance to give me some feedback (ok you have always the chance but now I am asking): Is there something you wish for me to do in the future. Or some stuff I shouldn't? Maybe I can fulfill something of your wishes.


So long,
Paradox0n

Camcorder and stuff - My setup for testing

Camcorder and accessories

As promised I shot some pictures of the camera and stuff I received yesterday. The camcorder is a Sony HDR-CX220E and is, although very tiny and not very expensive, able to record the things in full hd. The tripod is also a rather cheap one from a special from Aldi (a discounter here in germany). And I had to get myself a smartcard, because the cam was delivered without one. And last I had to get myself a pocket to safely store the camera. You can't believe what our cats are capable of in matters of destruction. All necessary cables (HDMI and USB) where part of the camera so I can start testing with a setup so that's it.

When pictures start moving

The horse in motion - First "movie" ever

Today a special package arrived and I feel myself like one of the pioneers of the early days when they started with zoetropes and the first moving pictures showed up in the early 19th century. And oh boy I am excited!

I got myself a small camcorder, a small tripod and all the necessary stuff needed to connect this stuff to my computer. I just have to find a decent, free video editing tool (not movie maker or something like that) because my Adobe Premiere license is suspended.

A long time ago I worked in school with semiproffesional equipment and a complete video editing studio, perhaps I can now work some magic again and present you some moving pictures in the futures. No promises will be done, but I will see what I can do. What I can promise is that I will do a short presentation and review of the camera as soon as I have worked out how everything gets together (camera, editing, youtube)

Stay tuned!

So long,
Paradox0n

Monsters!!!

Felt monsters are conquering my table.. .HELP ME! Nah just kidding. They are tooooo cute to be really dangerous or even a thread :)

Felt monsters attack!

If you wonder why the hell I am showing these... My wife got a crush on those and started making them herself. Two of them are permanently lingering on my working table and the cats are mischievously eyeing the other two... All of them are made out of felt, darning wool, yarn and some decorating stuff like buttons.

Back from a deep slumber

Heidiho dear readers, after a veeeery long time I'm back again. Hope you all enjoyed a happy Easter and had some merry days with your family.

Sunset on the desert road near Hurghada

I'm also back from my (too short) vacation in Egypt. Although short, it helped me to fill my batteries and get some long needed rest from work and some distance between me and my computer :) As posted, I had hoped to scuba dive but unfortunately some health issues prevented my wife an me from diving, so we just went on some extended snorkeling tours. And as unbelievable as it sounds, my wife was lucky as hell and even spotted a manta ray! I was not as lucky, as soon as I turned around it vanished in deeper water.
On these 16 days we had nearly everything possible: On our departure from Frankfurt our plane had to get an anti-ice treatment, we had nearly 2 hours delay and had to get within 30 minutes from one plane to another in Cairo. On our third day a sandstorm broke loose, it was pretty cold (at the first days only 25°C) but nevertheless some 30°C difference to my hometown! And on our last days the temperature went up to nearly 35°C. So yeah we had a pretty relaxed time and enjoyed it. Everytime we are in Egypt something happens which is pretty cool.

When air seems like water

Something completely different today! As you may know one of my other hobbies is scuba diving. A very good friend of mine is a pretty good diver and also does some more technical diving (wreck diving and this stuff) and asked me if I'm not interested in doing some ice diving one day. And he delivered the perfect advertisement video with his question :) Pretty sick and I don't want to withhold it from you!

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

So long,
Paradox0n


P.S.: My next Kickstarter package did finally arrive: Sedition Wars is mine! Hope I find the time to do some unpacking shots this weekend.

Painting workshops - The fear of failure?!

Perhaps you have already read the great day by day coverage of Mr. Lee about a painting workshop in Aachen (if not: do it, its worth a read). These articles made me think over some things and I just felt like having to write down my thoughts WHY I always missed the opportunity to go to one of those, even if they are only one or two hours away from me. I always look into the description of the announcements of the workshops in the big tabletop forums (perhaps I should add Brushbrothers in the future too) and especially the ones from Massive Voodoo or GeOrc always get me itchy and I'm always thinking and thinking and don't register myself in the end.

Still alive

Hey dear readers,

I'm still alive... Had to fight some health issues and some stress at work but I hope I can return to post again in a few days. Have already planned on some stuff and only need to shoot some photos.
So stay tuned for some stuff of Hobby Basics and Reviews.

Wish me luck :)

Greets
Paradox0n

Merry Christmas to all

I wish you a "Merry Christmas" and hope the "Christkindl" or "Santa Claus" or "Père Noel" or whoever brings the presents to you had a biiiiiig load of gifts with him/here.

Miniature wise I already got my surprise package from Mantic Games, the "Crazy Christmas Box" as present from my wife. There are really some nice addons for my armies in it, I think I will do a "Whats in the box" after the holidays.
And my mother-in-law bought me plastic glue from Revel and an airbursh care kit! Pretty cool stuff! I think the whole family thinks now I am weird :D

I hope you have some nice and tranquil days with your family and friends and wish you the best for the new year if I'm not coming to write in the next few days.


So long,
Paradox0n