Tyranid conversions

The Tyranids have been my army of choice since Rogue Trader. With the 5th edition out they have a few units that aren’t represented by models yet. Notably the Tyrannofex, Tervigon, Harpy, Doom of Malan’tai and Mycetic Spore.

I’ve come across a few sites that offer modeling suggestions for these (Tyrannofex and Tervigon) – most built around a Carnifex frame. With the bits I’ve been getting online, I’m looking forward to giving a few of these a try.

The first one will probably be a Mycetic Spore. I’ve picked up some of the large Kinder eggs to use. Back in Second edition, I had made a bunch of Ork adobe buildings and a few craters with the large Kinder eggs in them – sort of an alien drop pod. They will work nicely to start with.

William – destiny fulfilled

On December 23, 2010, our pet cavy, William passed away. He has been sick for the last week and finally gave in. He leaves behind his cagemate Peter, who currently seems to be in fine health. I expect he is enjoying the extra space but is probably missing the companionship.

It was a bit of a trauma for the kids – being the first pet they have lost in recent years. On the plus side, it was while we were home to deal with it and before Christmas eve or Christmas.


Arguably, pets provide companionship and help teach responsibility. However, their greatest contribution is often exposing kids to mortality. In giving their all, they help to explain the finiteness of life. William has fulfilled all these destinies.

Re-rez Ram!

We saw Tron: Legacy this week. Visually it was beautiful. Story-wise, it holds up fine. There are a lot of familiar faces and a few nods to original series (look for Dumont on the shipping containers, Dillenger’s son in the boardroom, the bits on the fireplace).

While Flynn’s son is the main character, it also has Olivia Wilde from House, Beau Garrett from the second Fantastic Four movie, with Bruce Boxleitner, and Jeff Bridges reprising their roles from the original. There are also cameos from Serinda Swan (Zantanna from Smallville), James Frain (from Tudors and Tru Blood), Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins, Red Eye), and a wacky Michael Sheen (Lucian from Underworld) as Castor.

There is also a scanned version of a younger Jeff Bridges as Clu 2. Except for the flashback in the real world, he didn’t seem that odd. From a technological standpoint this is groundbreaking. Some people are having problems with it.

In fact, some people have issues with the whole movie – saying that, while visually beautiful, it didn’t have that much of a story. That said, I didn’t go to see this film to change my world view. The story was more than adequate for me. It certainly had more layers than Avatar (invaders bad – natives good), and a better story than LOTR.

My issues with the movie were few. I missed the old soundtrack – years of playing the video game have burned the old theme in my head. For a 3D film, it didn’t make a lot of use of the 3D format (unlike Resident Evil Afterlife and Journey to the Center of the Earth). With Rizler being Tron – as shown by the T symbol on his chest, if would have been nice to see his face occasionally. Cindy Morgan was missed – a cameo would have been nice.

The games were good, the visuals great, the upgrades were acceptable. There were enough nods to the old movie and enough backstory provided to cover those who hadn’t seen the original. If you enjoyed the original (which I feel still holds up fine) then you should be fine seeing this one.

As my son said – ‘Word cannot describe how awesome it was’.

need zamboni

I put some more water on the rink this weekend – about another six buckets. It seems to be working okay. Some parts are fairly smooth and others are quite bumpy. I am hoping that more layers will even out some of the less-bumpy parts.

We got Gee’s skates sharpened and she actually went out on the rink and tested it out. She was able to skate around a bit and we didn’t have to drive her anywhere so it’s certainly been worthwhile so far.



Hmm, I wonder if I used a mop and hot water would it smooth out some of the lumps. I may have to add a few more rounds of layers before I try it. It may be one of those proof-of-concept ideas that may or may mot work.

Have a Red Christmas

While at the Legislature's open house, we popped into to see Jon Gerrard. He's been the lone Liberal MLA for a while and recently got another member in the legislature.



Not having full party status, his office is tiny. He was so glad to have visitors pop by that he had a staff member taking pictures. This is the one they sent us.

Happy Christmas to most

To you and yours from me and mine.



Season's greetings to the rest of you.

Locked out

It happens to all of us at some time. But it hasn’t happened to me in quite a while. Last night I got locked out of my vehicle.
I had started it up and then went to brush the snow off my front window. When I finished, I found that the doors were locked. Since the Windstar has a feature that is supposed to prevent you from being able to lock the door with the engine running I don’t even carry a spare key.

I called home to see if my wife could bring me the extra key but she didn’t want to drive down or take the bus so she just told me to call CAA. I’ve had a CAA membership for several years as I used to have a wagon that had issues but haven’t used it for anything in a few years beyond getting triptics for vacations.

I called them and they said it could be up to 90 minutes but because it was a simple lock-out they would get any truck on the way to pop in. In the end it took them an hour to show up and about another five to ten minutes to open the door (he had a bit of an issue trying to jimmy the lock and had to go through the frame instead and ended up pushing the button to open the window.

Needless to say, the car was toasty-warm on the way home.

Ice to see you

When I checked on the rink on the weekend, I was pleased to find that the part I had done had frozen relatively level. Inspired by this I had finished wetting down the other half and pouring a few more buckets on top of the back half. It's not going to be a huge rink - only about 12 - 15 feet around, but it should be sufficiently large enough to practice on.

Now I am concerned that we may actually get a warm day tomorrow. It's supposed to rise to 1 Celsius (about 274 Kelvin). Ideally, it should remain cool enough to remain frozen but warm enough to even out the surface.

November 2010 figure (no) painting total

I only purchased 3 figures in bits last month. I still haven’t painted anything fully. Part of me wants to paint a few figures just to have painted something. The other part says to write off this year and wait until January and get a start on the new year.

Having purchased most of the Orks I figure I need (at least until I can get some painted and play a few games), I have switched to getting Tyranids bits. I'm finding that the bugs aren't as easy to buy as cheaply as the greenskins were. Which is good - as it means that I'm not padding my bought list, but bad in that I'm probably going to run Tyranids as one of my main armies so need to fill in a bunch of figures.

Purchased
Killa Kanz (in bits) - 3

Nov figures bought – 3, figures painted – 0
Running total 2010 – figures bought 97, figures painted 0