Back from Cinque Terre

Hi All,

Just got back from a week in Italy to celebrate our 20th wedding Anniversary. So I thought you might enjoy a few shots from my cellphone.

When we went to Vernazza the sea was so rough that they had brought all the boats in from the harbor.

The next day we had a bike trip from Levanto to Corniglia, followed by a wine tasting on that terrace over the cliff in Riomaggiore.

Lopez reminded me I should look for Oldhammer in Europe. This game store in La Spezia. They had mostly current GW offerings and a lot of Kromlech and a few Rackham models. I later also went to an actual GW store in Genoa, but that was just because I walked right by it on the way to dinner.

The Via Garibaldi in Genoa was interesting, there are many narrow side streets off of it. We happened to pick one that was lined with prostitutes in the middle of the afternoon, it was surreal.

The Piazza de Ferrari in Genoa was interesting.

As was Christopher Columbus's house. It's tiny.

The Cathedral of San Lorenzo is another photogenic spot, but there's not a lot of room to get a picture.

Square across from the docks in Genoa.

The Galleon Neptune, one pier over from the aquarium. I don't know what the deal with it was, but it was interesting to look at. We didn't feel like paying 6 euros each to board it.

All in all a great trip. I highly recommend staying in La Spezia and day tripping by train into Cinque Terre. Super easy to do and La Spezia is an easy going smallish city. Genoa is a much larger city but you can see a lot by just walking around. In both cases we stayed at a Hotel that was about 10 minutes walk from the train station.

I hope to be back at my painting desk this week and getting myself organized for the upcoming things as we barrel towards the end of the year.

I'd also like to welcome Brett Besley and Mathia Gerner to the blog. As always, let me know if you have a hobby blog you would like me to link to.

Happy painting.

On the road again

Hi All,

Sorry to have been silent for so long. Year end stuff, packing and volunteering at school have all taken up a lot of time.

I've been prepping like mad for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, but have not finished as much as I would like. Certainly not all 1000 points worth, but I have about 291 points worth of stuff to get me started for the challenge on Sunday.

Sorry,  my phone has been rotating pictures in a weird way of late. Here you see my usual Sterlite container for transporting paint and minis.

I'll try to post with figures for Paint Table Saturday tomorrow when I get set up.

I'dalso like to welcome da Gobbo Grotto to the blog. I don't see a blog for you, if you have one let me know and I'll link to it. Love your name.

That's all for now.

Cross Country Saturday

Hi All,

The Region 10 USATF Cross Country meet in Albuquerque had me away from the painting table this Saturday, so no painting for me.

After last weeks performance at the Arizona State Championships, we thought our runners would be able to make the National championships. Unfortunately both our runners came in 40 to 40 seconds slower than that race, coming in 33rd and 46th respectively out of fields of around 65 each. Unfortunately only the top 30 qualify for Nationals. So next time. I think the difference in altitude may have played a factor. Phoenix is only around 1000 ft, while Albuquerque is around 5300 ft. My son said the course felt longer.

I'll leave you with a couple of pictures from the Petroglyph National Monument at Boca Negra Canyon.

Hopefully I'll have those Skaven painted for you next week, and that pesky banner.

Travel log - Northern Arizona Road Trip

Hi All,

Back to the hobby tomorrow. Today I wanted to share the highlights of the two days we spent taking the kids to see the sites in Northern Arizona. We felt that, since they are native Arizonans, they should experience these things at least once in their lives.

Before I get to the pictures, I just want to let you all know about a new program from the National parks system. It's called Every Kid in a Park and it's for all fourth graders. It's good at any National Park, so we couldn't use it at Meteor Crater, and can get all kids (I think) and up to three adults in for free. We had planned the trip before we remembered this program. It saved us $60 in fees over the two days. I think we spent that on food (or perhaps the used Warhammer books I bought in Flagstaff).

Anyway, here's my report. Comic style.

Thanks for looking. I hope to have those pesky Bugbears completed tomorrow.

Conclusion of Flying with Paints

Hi All,

I just wanted to report back to you all how my experiment in travelling with my paints worked out. Long time readers may be familiar with my previous travelling paint kits.

To Recap:

A fine line between clever and stupid
Have Paint, Will Travel
My 2nd Regular Entry - The Mother Crushers

And I'm sure a few others that I didn't put in the right keywords or tags for. In these posts I traveled with all the figures and paints in checked luggage.

For this trip I wanted to try  bringing everything in carry on luggage. As you may, or may not have found yourself , there is a dearth of useful information on the subject on the old interwebs.

I thought I had posted expressly about the trip I just made, but there is only a brief paragraph mentioning it here.

So let me tell you the steps I took to successfully put paints in my carry on luggage.

Small Sterlite container with foam and Quart size (0.94L) Ziploc bag

As many of you know, traveling in the US, you are allowed liquids in your carry on luggage as long as they are individually 3oz or less and can fit in a 1qt size plastic bag. Ziploc is preferable in case of leakage. This is known as TSA's (Transportation Security Administration) 3-1-1 rule. This rule can be read and copies downloaded here.

My interpretation of this rule is apparent in the photo above. I decanted craft paints into dropper bottles, approximately 5mL of a 15mL bottle, and crammed a bag full with the paints and washes I thought I would need. Remember that 1oz is roughly 28mL and that some of the bottles may look full as the paint spreads around to coat the insides during travel.

I sought advice on TMP and the Oldhammer FB Group, with almost all of the info and advice being don't do it. On TMP the Paints on a Plane thread is from 2012 and the last comment was from 2013. In that thread there are, in my opinion, some erroneous interpretations of the liquids rule as well as some complaint about the TSA that is not helpful. People need to get over the state of airport security post 9/11.

The key ideas that were mentioned though is to have some documentation. So I contacted TSA via their blog (here) contact link (here) and got a response in less than 48 hours confirming my interpretation of the 3-1-1 rule. The key caveats were that individual airlines and TSA officers have final say on what can go on the plane, period.

With that in mind I printed out my email response, and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for two brands of Craft Paint and carried those with me. I also got to the airport with enough time to do something about it should I have problems making it through security. I was prepared to have to explain myself but never was questioned. This was at Phoenix Sky Harbor and Sacramento Metro Airports. In the past I have found Sacramento to be slightly stricter in enforcement, perhaps because they are generally not as busy an airport as Phoenix.

So the upshot is it can be done, just prepare for the worst (ie having to toss your paint). I feel that if you have all your documentation, are cordial and non combative, the worst that should happen is you are forced to get out of the security checkpoint and check in your bag. That's when you need to do the math and see whether the $25 fee is worth thee lost paint $ and lost painting time.

I didn't actually paint that much, but it was nice to be able to get something done instead of absolutely nothing. I hope this post helped inform your decision as to whether or not to pack your paints in your carry on luggage.

Welcome to Kat Weazeal of Kat's Painting and Conversions. Kat has been posting on facebook and helped snapped everybody out of bickering about what the cut off date for "Oldhammer" was and just enjoy pictures of painted figures. So check Kat's blog out and hopefully there will be some more updates soon.

Off to paint so I''ll have something resembling an army for Oldhammer USA weekend.

Figure Score and Fire News

Hi All,

No painting today, I visited with my brother who lives in the town where we went to college. I did manage to find this stuff at Bizarro World.

The magazine was $6, the boxed Knights $12 and the single figures in blister $5 each. The magazine is from July 1980, the box 1996 and the blisters 1997. They also had some army books and a few random Dark Elves and Lizardmen blisters. I would have shown these off on the Oldhammer Facebook page, but there's been a lot of squabbling and abuse of what is Oldhammer and these don't fit the criteria. I think 96/97 puts them squarely in 4th edition WFB.

We got back to the farm from the mountains yesterday. I went into Davis for lunch and saw this behind the farm when I got back. At that time it was 25 acres, as of about 7pm it was passing 1000 acres. It's pretty hazy and smells like smoke. I don't think the house is in any danger, as we are surrounded by tomatoes and there are quite a few orchards nearby that are also well watered.

Back to miniatures, if you're so inclined, I posted a few photos of my "greatest hit" over on the Oldhammer FB page but I can't seem to figure out how to link to it. Maybe it's smoke inhalation. Just kidding.

What's on the horizon.

Hi All,

Been back from vacation for a couple of days and just trying to get back into the swing of things. Here's a few pictures.

Looking North to Lake Tahoe from the head of the Desolation Wilderness trail near Echo Lake.

One of the parental Chipmunks that live in front of the cabin.

Three baby Chipmunks playing near their den outside the front window.

A Stellar's or 'Western' Blue Jay.

The house on the Eastern shore of Lake Tahoe, purportedly built by Adnan Khashoggi.

Site of some free pine bark for modelling terrain.

Back in the valley, 2 of the 3 Peacocks and a Peahen.

A cliff swallow peaking out. (Very lucky shot.)

So I only took 189 photos for this trip. As usual you get the scenic ones, as I am forbidden by SWMBO to show her or the kids.

Anyway we had a nice time.

I have to run off and prepare dinner as we have another online gaming session tonight on Roll20. Steve will be the GM tonight and we'll be playing Dungeon World. I had hoped to edit all my stuff from our Call of Cthulhu sessions already, but it hasn't happened.

I'm also intrigued by the concept of playing 10 games 10 times (the 10 x 10 challenge). We'll see if I have the gusto.

Oh! And check out the Google+ Oldhammer community. If you're into that sort of thing.

Paris pt. 2

Sorry for the delay. Our schedule was pretty hectic, as you will see, and I have been horribly jet lagged since getting back this past Sunday.

Going back to Friday March 28th, we got up fairly early to go to Gare Montparnasse and catch the train to Versailles Chantiers. After missing the first train and realizing I don't know how to read a time table, we recovered and found another train that got us there in good time. Versailles is amazing.

That's a lot of gold.

Hall of Mirrors

Another copy of the Coronation of Napoleon

Battle of Aboukir 1799

Distribution of the Eagles

It's good to be the king.

Just a smidgen of all we saw. Next up was the Arc de Triomphe.

We did finally find the walkway to get there but we were on a mission to get to Napoleon's tomb so this was as close as we got.

On next to Les Invalides and the Musee de l'Armee.

Les Invalides

Napoleon's Tomb

We next went to the exhibit on the two world wars. I thought it very interesting that they started this exhibition in 1870 with events leading up to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Something we don't seem to focus on here in the States.

We then had a lot of colonial stuff.

 Unfortunately most of my pictures of the uniforms etc here had quite a bit of glare. But I got a better picture of an Enigma machine.

Then it was on to Armor.

Then a small display of Napoleonic cavalry dress.

I started getting a little punchy and felt rushed as the wife and kids were lagging at this point.

A blurry shot of Napoleon's stuffed Arabian horse.

A damaged Eagle.

Whew, I'm tired just blogging it. We had dinner with friends that evening and gave ourselves permission to sleep in a little for the 29th. On that day, our last in Paris it was:

The Eiffel tower. The line for the elevator was around the block, so we took the stairs. The kids powered up them no problem. Only my brother in law took the elevator up to the top, the rest of us were happy to be on the deck level.

We quickly stopped by the Moulin Rouge and had lunch across thee street. The escargot was good.

From there we walked to Sacre Coeur, but it was a quick snap of the outside and on to the next thing.

Which was Le Bon Marche. I'm still not totally sure why my wife wanted to see it but there you have it. When we first moved to New York in 1977 my parents bought some Danish Teak furniture at Bon Marche, so I took a picture for that reason.

We then tried for the Crypts (Catacombs) which were only two stops from our hotel on the metro. But we got there too late and we were too far back in the line to gain admittance for the day. Next time.

I did have time to go to a toy shop down the street from our hotel.

I did not buy the fetish but did buy a small Red Rackham and X-FLR6 for 5 Euros each.

And that was our trip. Next day we woke up late and almost missed our airport shuttle, no one mentioned the daylight savings switch (we don't do it at all in Arizona and it had already occurred elsewhere in the US).

Anyway we made it home safe and had a great time. I've been horribly jet lagged, waking up at 1AM most mornings, but managed to sleep in until 4:30AM this morning. I hope to get back to regular posts this weekend, although we have two flag football games for the Spring season.

Wish us luck.