Dinosaurs in Miniature has been updated with all the latest releases: Some cavegirls from Reaper, some running dinos from Hasslefree and a Megatherium and Smilodon from Rattrap.
And at long last someone, Amazon Miniatures as it happens, has made the killer pig itself, an Entelodont:
Venice was simply amazing. Lovely weather, great food (especially the seafood), amazing sights.
We stayed at the Hotel Rivamare on the Lido, which meant we took a boat across the lagoon into Venice proper everyday. In the city itself we saw all the big names: the Palazzo Ducale or Doge’s Palace, the Basilica di San Marco, the Piazza, the Bridge of Sighs, Rialto Bridge, the Grand Canal.
Things that appealed more directly to me included the Museum of Natural History was only partially open but we did get to see the excellent Ouranosaurus and Sarchosuchus; The Museo Storico Navale or Naval History Museum which only costs €1.55 and is packed full of relics from Venice’s and Italy’s seafaring history; The Rome and the Barbarians exhibition in the Palazzo Grassi was a ten times more expensive (and I really wanted the exhibition book but at €48 it was too much) but much more extensive than I’d expect for a temporary exhibit.
We also visited some of the other lagoon islands: Murano for the glassmaking; Burano for the lace making and painted houses; and Torcello for the eleventh century cathedral.
For one day we got the train to Verona, passing castles and vineyards on the way. There we visited the Arena and the Castle and had another fantastic lunch. One day wasn’t enough and we plan to go back sometime.
You can probably guess where we went.
Knackered now.
Went to see 10,000 BC this afternoon. Oh boy, history, biology, geography, astronomy – they all get a hammering in this film. I can’t be bothered to even start listing everything that was goofy here.
It was one of the most by-the-numbers renditions of (the easy to understand bits of) Joseph Campbell’s monomyth that I’d seen in a while. I smiled at the bemusement when hunter-gatherers first came across the evidence of agriculture, but of course in Campbell’s scheme there has to be a ‘boon’ to take back home at the end (sorry, that was a spoiler). There were also bits lifted from the Bible, Stargate, Conan and 300, just in case the mention of Campbell misled you into thinking there were highbrow sources being used.
The action and CGI were very good, the actors managed to keep straight face. It’s not a bad movie in the sense that it’s exciting and visual, but it’s certainly one to watch with the brain switched off.
Oh, by the way, the Doctor Who and Star Trek trailers look amazing on the big screen.
This blog now has a theme tune courtesy of Brother Typewriter of the Burning Lodge.
Very True Things is a tribute to my friend Steve’s blog of the same name. The idea was to have a 16-note sequence running throughout the whole song and then play different stuff against that – which sort of worked, I think. Actually it was more to do with the fact that I couldn’t be bothered to write any more complex sequence in Moog Modular V. I am VLT – Very Lazy Thing.)
Thank you Howie, I think…
As a lad my, (um, and mustn’t forget that, okay) third favourite toys were Action Force. (What do you mean you’ve never heard of them?)
Imagine my nostalgic glee when I found that Soapy was doing a year long project to build Action Force and the Red Shadows in 28mm – Action Force Wargames Project 25th Anniversary.
Lettice and I went down to Brighton yesterday to enjoy a bit of sunshine and sea air. That all went according to plan – some photos are on Flickr. Also, a fabulous lunch at AlFresco and a very good haul from the second hand bookshops and comic shops (including the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier). Can all weekends be like this, please?
The past couple of columns extolling the virtues of Firefox were enough to tell that he was ‘one of us’, but this week Stephen Fry is blogging about the W3C and WHATWG. In fact, this makes a lot of sense, if the W3C’s efforts were to be compared to a gameshow then one, like Mr Fry’s QI, where the contestants regularly end up with a negative points total would be an appropriate analogy.
Recently: Opera takes Microsoft to court, which leads to calls for the CSS Working Group to be disbanded, which is, unsurprisingly, shrugged off by the working group itself, and then Microsoft announces that IE8 passes Acid2.
And as you’d expect there’s been a lot of froth and nonsense across the interested blogs.
My thoughts are that progress is being made, both by people like the the IE team (the current versions of Opera and Safari already pass Acid2 and Firefox 3 will pass it as well) and by the W3C which has made some good efforts this year to be more open and transparent.
It’s good to question the way things are, and Andy Clarke’s post about the working group has certainly made people take a good look at the status quo. But I feel that his proposed alternative would take us back to the time where the W3C created specifications that bore no relation at all to what the browsers were actually doing or planning to do.
As far as Opera and Microsoft goes, this is more about commerical advantage and business models than it is about web standards per se. Opera’s current business model aligns itself with web standards. Microsoft’s business model is so large and complex that it can be both for and against web standards and as the Acid2 result shows the team building IE8 are for them. I think the lawsuit is a sideshow and shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the standards discussion.
For many of us the shenanigans of the CSS working group hold a strange fascination, but I think that Mr Fry is right to point out that it’s in the areas of video and audio that the next big battle will be fought. As such Microsoft aren’t the main bad guys, Apple and Adobe probably are. Going back to business models, these companies are both secretive and fond of closed proprietary solutions. I’m not saying that either of them are evil through and through, but I’d love to see a lot more openness and cooperation from them in 2008.
Anyway, Stephen Fry is blogging about W3C working groups and open source video formats. He’s so one of us.
Yesterday I went to see the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2. First time I’d ever visited the dome in either of its incarnations. In many ways it’s a pity that it didn’t get turned into a casino-resort beacuse there’s already a lot about that reminds me of the casinos I saw in Las Vegas.
Anyway, the exhibition itself was extremely well presented and managed the important job of putting into context both stories – that of Tutankhamun himself1 and that of the discover of his tomb by Howard Carter. The level of preservation of three thousand year artifacts is incredible – not just the metal and pottery but wood, even showing the original paint colours.
Being the geek I am, I also enjoyed spotting all the Stargate references. Um, I think I may have that backwards.
1. Relatively speaking. Egypt has a lot of history2 and there was no way it could all be related here, but if you don’t come away knowing a lot more about the Eighteenth dynasty then you must have your eyes closed.
2. Only tangentially related to Tutankhamun himself, my favourite ancient Egypt fact (you may have heard this before). Cleopatra, the famous one, also the last Pharaoh of Egypt, is closer in time to us in the twenty-first century than she is to the builders of the great pyramids.
I’ve just updated the Dinosaurs in Miniature pages with the latest releases and re-releases.
Wargames Illustrated have finished re-releasing the DZ Miniatures prehistoric mammals. They’re also selling a set of rules called Tooth and Claw to tie in with this range. Written by Chris “every other set of rules out there” Peers who has pedigree on this area with Saurian Safari. My copy is in the post, so with luck I’ll be able to post a review soon.
There are also new rules out from Magister Militum called DinoMight and MM continue to expand their range of 10mm figures, now including some non-dinosaurs.
Finally on the pre-historic front Reaper have released a “Jungle Girl with Sabre Tooth Tiger” which is okay-ish except for the huge mold line in the photo and the fact that it’s an idea that’s been done several times before. Very nice cat though.
Meanwhile… It was only a matter of time… Pre-painted, collectible (i.e. random sealed boxes) miniatures for Doctor Who (via Forbidden Planet). They’re by Character Options which is a good sign (they make the very nice DW action figures) and the price is the same as for the Star Wars minis. On the downside (apart from the collectible nature) is the scale, 35mm, and the lack of anything from the classic series. Will I be buying them? They’re Doctor Who miniatures!
