Salute 2013: ExCel Centre

Picture stolen and cropped from Sydney's blog.

Didn't go to Salute last year as I was suffering from work related stress, but did manage to attend this year. Photographic evidence as proof provided above. I didn't take a camera to take pictures of the show, so you will all have to go to the following sites to see pictures:

Roundwood's World Wargaming Girl, here, here, here and here.

The Angry Lurker, here and here.

Anything I might have added to the above would, I think, appear redundant.

Did I enjoy the show? In hindsight yes, but at the time not so much. I had been having a rough week and as one of my friends said to me on the day, "You sound like you are ready to throw yourself under the wargaming table." I only bought one thing, and that was the new issue of Miniature Wargames.

However, I met up with Henry, which was good. Bumped into friends, which is always good. Had Tamsin sweep me up in passing and give me a hug, so still all good. 

Also, I got to see and ask questions about Dropzone Commander from Hawk Games, which will help me finish my review for Miniature wargames. I then went to talk to Richard and the other guys from TooFatLardies, and saw Chain of Command demonstrated in the flesh, which was awesome.  

Nick has done a podcast you can listen to here.

Left around 15.00 and came home as my feet hurt and I was feeling pretty exhausted by it all. I really had trouble coping with the level of illumination in the hall, which I found quite upsetting as I couldn't focus on anything properly. 

I was told that this was a sign of getting old, and needing more light to be able to see things clearly.

Got home, put my feet up and read the new white cover issue of Miniature Wargames. Bliss. It felt like the first time I read the first issue, back in 1984 when I was ever so young. I may no longer be young, but the joy I got from reading the issue recharged my enthusiasm for my hobby.

RAF Hendon

    

Martin in front of a Eurofighter whose idea it was to go and see the museum.  A good call all round.

This Thursday I traveled up to Colindale on the Northern Line to visit the RAF museum at Hendon to meet up with my friend Martin and have a look at all the lovely aircraft they have on show.  Only took one picture inside the main museum, but did remember to take some in the Battle-of-Britain building exhibit where they were showing clips from the BoB movie.  The music is just so awe inspiring, which made me feel like a five year old again and want to run around using my hands to make goggles.

Wicked looking Ju-87 Stuka.  In the background are a Ju-88, Me-110 and He-111.  Interestingly the Ju-88 had BMW emblem on the engines, while the Me-110 had the Mercedes-Benz tri-point logo on the exhausts.

A section V2/A4 missile which heralded the start of the space race after the war.

Sunderland flying boat in all its glory.

An impressive lawn ornament as you are ever likely to have, a Bristol Blood hound Mk2.

I really enjoyed the day out and walking around the museum, which is huge.  Had a very nice scone, cream and jam as a treat in the afternoon too.  We met up with my partner in the evening at Forbidden Plant and went to Gars for a slap up Chinese meal to round out the excellent day.
  

Shooting at Bisley Camp

  

The money shot as they say in the film industry.

Yesterday I was Bisley Camp shooting as a guest of the Magna Shooting Club.  For a full gun geek post go here.

It was cold out there in the wilds of Bisley Camp, and I was really grateful that I dressed appropriately with two fleeces on to keep me warm.  The day was a present from my partner so that I could write about shooting in the novel I'm writing, and it certainly gave me some insights into my cousin Ewan's comments about not festooning rifles with scopes.
 

New Glasses for Painting

I have some new glasses for painting with.  Designed to give me ultra close-up vision, which work up to a point, but I'm getting old and it is still hard to see as well as I use to. At this rate I'll be up-scaling to 30mm, or whatever 25mm is called nowadays? 

As you can see above I've started works on some more Scope Dogs, and below some Diving Beetles from VOTOMS so that I have some figures to play Heavy Gear Blitz with.

I have played a couple of games of HGB with Roger and we are planning to meet up sometime to play a few more. I have mixed feelings about the rules.  

On one hand there is a great little game trying to break out of the book, on the other the layout of the rule book is less than optimal, which makes it hard to find the rules. On the rules side of thing, some of the writing is overly complex, or maybe I should say that the rules explain simple things in an overly complex way with too much jargon for my taste.  YMMV.

The great parts of  the game are the artwork, back story and general design of the Gears.  I am slowly getting my NuCoal Jerboa painted too, as can be seen below.

Battlegames

Battlegames comes to the end of its thirty–four issue journey as Henry receives the call to a new adventure that of editing Miniature Wargames.  Like all true stories, rather than fairy–tales, when one quest ends, another quest come along.  All stories evoke feelings in the readers, and the story of Battlegames is the story of Henry responding to the call to produce a wargame magazine that covers what wargamers actually do down the club, or at home, rather than what people think they do.

I am of course dead chuffed that my article on BattleTech will appear in the very last issue of Battlegames.  For those readers of Miniature Wargames that fear a return to the days when Miniature Wargames did not feature SF articles, I think you can rest assured that Henry will publish SF in his magazine.  I see no evidence to suggest anything to the contrary.

25 Years of BattleTech Woot FTW or what?! :-)
  

Announcement

 

 
I want to separate my writing blogs from my gaming blogs, as I don't imagine that many of my subscribers want to read about the trial and tribulations of writing a novel.  However, if you do want to read such things then if you subscribe to the new blog, imaginatively titled Ashley R Pollard you will get the updates as they come.

See you on the flip side.
  

Big Dog: Bad Dog

 
As I may have mentioned I'm trying to complete my first novel, called Bad Dog, which was inspired by a phrase that popped into my head that went something like this, "It was all Big Dogs fault that I'm sitting in my Dog in Afghanistan being shot at."  It came to me just like that and so I wrote it down and filed it away as an idea.  That was around the middle of last year, or so.  I can't remember exactly when as I over wrote the original note when I started the novel, which is a bit of a shame really.  However, they are just words and ideas and one can't get too precious about such things.

Anyway one line pitch for Bad Dog: Starship Troopers meets Ground Hog Day.   Synopsis: Life in the military means everyday feels like every other day, but for Gunnery Sergeant Tachikoma today is just like yesterday.

The running total for first four weeks of writing was 25,087 words.  I've just finished another 2000 words today, so that makes 10,195 words this week, and brings this monthly total up to 41,210 words in all, which is why I've been a bit remiss in posting stuff here.  The novel now stands at 64,616.  It's an interesting challenge to write a novel, and for the first time in a long time I'm actually immersed in something that I'm really enjoying, in spite of it being really hard to do.

On a related note the BBC just posted a story about Big Dog and DARPA are developing things that I very cleverly allude to in passing in my novel.  Life imitating art?  No not really, just obvious stuff that happens.

Other news is that I now have new glasses for painting and making models.  Special prescription after taking a couple of examples of what I do into show the optician.
  

Scribing Away

If you watch the above there is a scene with some android girls typing.  That's me, or so my partner says.

This month I've been taking my writing seriously, for definitions of serious that means I write everyday and try and do a thousand words.  On the the advice from a friend who is a professional writer, big shout out to Alec, I downloaded a programme called Scrivener.  It rocks, because it makes keeping track of a story's structure a piece of cake, or a walk in the park, or just plain easy.  Well, for definitions of easy where one assumes that you are the kind of writer that likes to work from a structured outline.  Not all writers do, some prefer writing as guided discovery with the story flowing from the writing process.

Now if I could only write narrative as easily as I just wrote the above paragraph.

Seriously, I'm finding it quite difficult to get the tone and flow of the words down as I want the to be.  Instead it's all a bit rough around the edges and at times I think my eyes are going to bleed, or my brains start dribbling out of my ears.  Still it beats sitting around doing something one doesn't enjoy doing.

Anyway, enough of the bonhomie, this week I've managed 8563 words, and for the month 25,087 words in total.  Approximations as Scrivenor only claims to accurate give or take ten words, or so.  Go figure?

I was also reflecting on the amount of stuff I've written over the last twelve years for a game that I participate in called Contact!  I just totaled up my mission reports that I wrote after each game and that alone came to 26,568 words, which doesn't include all the annual Power Point Presentations I did for the game, other reports on what we found, or requests for information I made to the plot team.  I'm not going to go back and calculate all the words for the games that I wrote, but I'd guess that it doesn't fall far short of 70,000.

I don't regret any of it, but I do realize that all that time spent writing could have produced the best part of a novel, or an RPG scenario book, or even a dissertation for a degree in something.

So, as my friend Alec reminded me, blogging is writing, and I have been doing a lot of it.  So now I'm going to do some more.
  

About TIme

Super Dimensional Fortress Macross has moved one step closer to becoming a live-action movie.  I want to thank Robotech Battles blog for the heads up.  I've also added your blog to my front page blog list as a result.  Should have done that a while ago if truth be told, but them's just the way things happen at times.

Seeing Robotech for the first time was one of those big sense of wonder moments when I was over whelmed by the concepts of giant aliens from space having their asses handed to them by people flying transformable robots.  I guess you had to be there to appreciate what a big thing this was at the time?

I remember Helen McCarthy, who writes about Japanese culture and anime on her blog A Face Made for Radio running an anime fan run video stream at the 1987 Eastercon, where she pretty much kicked Japanese animation into the forefront of UK SF fandom scene by showing Urotsukidoji, otherwise known as The Legend of the Overfiend to an unsuspecting audience, which pretty much made everyone role for sanity loss.

So with Palladium moving towards a Robotech wargame and the now this movie, I see much happy giant stompy robot wargame goodness in the future.  It's heartening for an old time fan like me to see a new generation being exposed to something I love.
  

Sounds of Cylons

Anyway, a friend of mine, Kari posted this YouTube video on her Live Journal blog, which I thought was worth stealing.  This of course being the highest form of flattery possible.  Anyway, Kari is an interesting writer who is well worth reading if you are into fantasy novels inspired by Dumas, who is one of her passions.

I've been too busy writing other stuff to really post anything on the blog this last week or so.  It's not like I don't have a lot of stuff in first draft form waiting in the queue to be finished and posted even.  At last count I have sixteen articles waiting for me to edit, or take pictures for, or whatever?  Of course that begs the question of whether or not articles can be said to be waiting to be finished?  However, this is going off on a philosophical tangent that is best left unexplored here.

Last year, not so long ago, another friend of mine, Ferret quilter par extraordinaire, posted the following on her FaceBook page, which I stole for my FB page, and will post again here for reference.

I found Alan Watts discourse quite moving and it certainly hit home with me.  It made me ask the question of myself, and what I decided was that I want to write stuff that I own the IP of.  So I've made the decision to take my writing more seriously.  This doesn't mean I will stop writing reviews for magazines, even though they don't pay, as I quite like doing them.  Or for that matter writing where I get paid to write, but what it does mean is that I will be focusing on projects that are mine.

The downside is that I'm less likely to be doing as much blogging.  Not stopping, just my own writing has to come first.