Comic-Con 2010 Recap

Posted on 2010-07-25 at 11:01 by Doppelbock

I was only able to attend Comic-Con on Thursday this year, hopefully I’ll go back to all four days next year. There’s so much to see and one has to be selective and ignore some areas completely in order to see the really interesting stuff in one day. It seemed to me like there was even more space dedicated to video games and this year, I really wish they would cut back on that and use the space for more genre related stuff. The toys were just out of control this year, huge Hasbro area for Star Wars/G.I. Joe/Transformers and there was a constant line at the Mattel area the whole day (for what I have no idea).

The wait to pick up badges didn’t take too long (only 20 minutes or so) but the line stretched all the way north along the front of the convention center, then wrapped around to the back of the building to the south. We got there at about 9am and had badges in hand by about 9:25am. For some reason even though the show opened at 9:30am the security guys (I hesitate to call them guards) weren’t letting people down the main stairs & escalators where everybody was coming out from registration. Luckily I am familar enough with the venue that we backtracked and went around to the Bayside area and went down those stairs to get in.

Steampunk was out in force this year, lots of people dressed up and more vendors than in past years. One booth had a giant selection of goggles and other paraphenalia; another vendor had a really neat steampunk mechanical arm. Lots of zombie comics this year, more than I remember from the last time I went in 2008 (I am not too sad I missed 2009 since Twilight was really huge that year).

I only picked up two of the convention exclusives this year (it took forever to read through the entire list on the web site): Devil Bacon from Mr. Toast and Neonomicon #1 written by Alan Moore, art by Jacen Burrows (and I even got Jacen’s autograph on it); fun fact: this was a limited edition cover for Comic-Con with only 1500 printed.

Devil Bacon from Mr. Toast (limited to 1000 produced for SDCC)

Neonomicon #1 (special Comic-Con cover)

While we were at the Mr. Toast booth we also picked up a vampire candy corn for the dogs to play with.

Vampire Candy Corn from Mr. toast

Next update I’ll list out the books that I got and the people I met (in all honesty as much for myself as a journal to look back on as for my readers’ benefit).

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I actually completed another video game

Posted on 2010-07-21 at 05:34 by Doppelbock

I’m a little impressed, I actually completed playing Borderlands last night. I think that’s only about the second game that I’ve actually finished (the other being Half-Life 2). I did it on Normal difficulty and only had to Google a couple of times for hints. Usually I get stuck on a game either because I’m not a good enough shooter or I can’t figure out where to find something. I put down Bioshock a few months ago because I couldn’t get where I needed to go on a particular map (even with hints) but I’m going to give it another shot because I really enjoyed that game.

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World’s Longest E-mail Sig

Posted on 2010-07-17 at 20:32 by Doppelbock

I ran across this e-mail signature and it is definitely the longest one I’ve ever seen. Let’s step through it, shall we? (Apologies for the ugly pixelation but I had to blur out personal info and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it.)

We’ve first got her name and title (all well and good) but then a full list of everyone for whom she is the assistant. Street address of the company is next, is that really necessary for electronic mail? Next is her e-mail address (couldn’t you just get it from the e-mail itself?) followed by phone and fax numbers.

Next up is a pithy quotation (source not identified of course) and then the company name, slogan and web site. Whew!

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Professor Badass

Posted on 2010-07-17 at 20:09 by Doppelbock

Yep, he sure is.

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Gray Eagles Film (great P-51 pilot story)

Posted on 2010-07-17 at 19:56 by Doppelbock

This is a great video documentary of a WWII Mustang pilot getting to not only see his own plane but fly another one 60+ years later. I was very glad to see his grandchildren so interested in what he had experienced during the war.

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Funny list of search terms

Posted on 2010-07-16 at 21:07 by Doppelbock

I just looked at the top search terms that brought people to this site and had a good laugh.

reqs: search term
—-: ———–
57: kool aid man
36: pygmy chameleon
23: doppelbock
14: sled game
13: mr woody hot dog cooker
12: kool aid
12: moose knuckle
12: mooseknuckle
11: sled games
7: cox newsgroups
7: bitter waitress
6: cthuhlu
6: weird
5: total annihilation unit pack

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Exemplar Errants Assembly

Posted on 2010-07-06 at 22:25 by Doppelbock

My Knights Exemplar Errants are going to be very strong on the battlefield but getting them there is going to be challenging. They are a pain in the butt due to the large part count on each model. I built a minimum unit of six about two years ago and didn’t buy the other four until now because I hated assembling them (not to mention painting all the detailed armor plates).

Now that the unit attachment is out (which makes them really strong) I decided to get the unit buffed out to full strength. Below is one pose with the sword & shield in hand plus crossbow on the back. The second shot is even more parts, crossbow in hands with sword & shield on the back.

Errant with Sword

Errant with Crossbow

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Seamus & Sybelle Assembly

Posted on 2010-07-06 at 20:46 by Doppelbock

That last Seamus shot was very small after cropping from the camera so here’s one of him after assembly as well as Madame Sybelle. Yes, she’s an overweight undead madame from a cathouse. Shooting raw pewter is sketchy, the high reflectivity can wash out the details sometimes.

Seamus and Sybelle

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Errants in the Spray Booth

Posted on 2010-07-05 at 15:41 by Doppelbock

Here are various Knights Exemplars Errant in my ghetto spray booth. The officer from tbe UA is on the far left and you should be able to pick out the standard bearer. The other four are the grunts from the two blisters that I just got to bring my unit up to full strength. Now I just need to grab the Errant Seneschal solo.
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Seamus Assembly

Posted on 2010-07-05 at 15:36 by Doppelbock

I finally got going on my Malifaux figures today. I started with Seamus since he looked relatively easy: one hand w/toolbag to glue to his wrist. Turns out I had to pin it since there was so little contact area.
image

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Steam Wars custom figures

Posted on 2010-06-14 at 18:51 by Doppelbock

http://www.sillof.com/C-Steampunk-SW2.htm

I am really impressed by these steampunk Star Wars custom action figures.

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First Malifaux Purchase

Posted on 2010-06-08 at 20:07 by Doppelbock

Well my first model purchase (since I got the book a couple of weeks ago).

I had my LGS order me the Red Chapel Gang and the Miners & Steamfitters Union boxed sets. I wanted to be able to demo the game but stupidly ordered only the Resurrectionists deck (so I should have that next week). For you non-gamers Malifaux is a really neat miniatures game that combines victorian horror, steampunk and wild west themes all in one game. The startup cost seems to be a bit less than Warmachine or Hordes, a box is about $30 and you can add extra models for less than $10 each. Best of all (from an assembly and painting time perspective) there are no full-sized units, the closest is a few things that come with maybe three models. (Of course one big exception is the arachnid swarms in my Arcanists set, there are six individual spider models but they are tiny.)

For anyone interested the publisher’s site is http://wyrd-games.net/ and if you Google “Malifaux review” there are several good ones out there so I won’t bother reviewing the whole game. Future posts will include my thoughts on specific topics but no general overview. I will probably do one of those goofy box-opening videos just for fun, too.

The surprising thing was the small size of the boxes (since I’m used to the size of a Warmachine battle box). The second picture shows one set next to the box for my Gravus solo.
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George Washington (as told by Brad Neely)

Posted on 2010-05-30 at 11:46 by Doppelbock

Ran across this cartoon today and couldn’t stop laughing. I will have to check out more of his stuff. By the way, don’t watch this at work.

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Cho v. Seagate Technology – class action suit

Posted on 2010-05-12 at 20:17 by Doppelbock

Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc.

If you bought a Seagate hard drive at retail between 3/22/01 and 9/26/07 you can go to this site to see the class action settlement against Seagate. The gist is that they advertised hard drive space in gigabytes measured as one billion bytes instead of using the binary definition of 2 to the 30th power (like operating systems use) which resulted in their drives being sold as having 7% more usable space than they really did.

The upshot is that Seagate is paying out 5% of your purchase price as cash for drives bought in that time frame. Check out the site for all the gory details.

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Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig in New Romance Comic

Posted on 2010-05-09 at 18:04 by Doppelbock

Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig Become More Than Friends in New Romance Comic

Wow, I may have to drop the four bucks on this comic.

Starring super-notorious musclebound punk/metaldudes Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins (with a little help from super-notorious soft-rockdudes Hall and Oates) Henry & Glenn Forever is a love story to end all love stories! The premise of this Cantankerous Titles-released comic is explained at the front of the zine: “Henry and Glenn are very good ‘friends.’ They are also ‘room mates.’ Daryl and John live next door. They are satanists.” What follows is ultra-metal violence and cryfest diary entries, cringing self-doubt and mega-hilarious emo-meltdowns. Who knew Danzig was such a vulnerable, self-conscious sweety-pie? Who knew Rollins was such a caring spouse? Who knew Hall and Oates were so infernally evil-yet so considerate?

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