Tuesday, May 31, 2011

New Blog Launched Nearby

The Battle of Shiloh, by Thure de Thulstrup, from en.wikipedia (PD)

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This new blog is called Headquarters in the Saddle, a play on how General John Pope used to address his dispatches to Washington, DC when he commanded the Army of the Potomac in the summer of 1862. Tradition says Abraham Lincoln made the jibe that that was where his hindquarters ought to be, but it may be the Southern newspapers actually said that.

The blog is separate for American Civil War topics because of the Sesquicentennial which has just started in April and will continue for four years. Translated from the Latin, that means it was a hundred and fifty years ago this spring.

So far there is a one-minute video clip of a Confederate veterans' gathering, filmed in 1914, appropriate for the US holiday of Memorial Day, this weekend, and another one only 11 seconds long believed to be one of the earliest films --ever-- showing Robert E. Lee's army marching to Gettysburg.

You're all welcome to check it out. I'll be jumping back and forth quickly.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Sexual Harrassment Class at the Salt Mines

Entrapment

There's been a trend among employers to have classes on sexual harrassment. Both the Salt Mines themselves and the Mining Company have it periodically, so if it's not one it's the other on their own time tables.

But it seems to be a cottage industry to make everyone into criminals of some sort, and that seems to be what is really behind it all.

Now you don't know me, but I don't have problems with this topic at all generally, and even pretty much agree with it, plus have really benefitted when other  tyrants in my life fall victim to it, which has happened several times. And for me that last part overrules all other arguments about the topic itself.

I wasn't doing anything, and then they have me seated right next to an interesting blonde lady I had never seen before, in the class itself.

Since I had already worked all night on an 8-hour shift, and had to go in the next night, it was not pleasant to have a 6-hour class in the middle during bedtime, 20 miles away. But I didn't say anything.

Instead the blonde lady started complaining, saying all the things I was thinking, but hadn't said because I am not a complainer:  ' I shouldn't be here, I worked all night, I have to work tonight, etc. This is stupid.' I wouldn't have said all that, but I was thinking it.

And then all through the films, she was yawning and stretching, and yawning again. I was too, seeing as how I could barely stay awake. I mean like four and five per minute. It was hours after bedtime, we should be buried in our coffins before the rays of the sun can touch us.

Notice how I never even heard of her, and now I am saying 'us,' like that.

Each yawn was a reminder, as was each other complaint she said, of how many things we have in common. Same Salt Mine company, same Salt Mines, same schedule, same thoughts, same yawns, same same same.

As to the class itself, I was noticing that my own personal policy is actually harsher than theirs is on paper at least, since I think it is all up to the how the recipient feels about it, whereas a couple items they were prepared to think could be reasonable, I was thinking sure they COULD be but they also could NOT be with someone else, since my personal standard is based on the recipient's own feelings and reactions, which will vary from one person to the next.

Plus I have had two or three monstrous Bosses eliminated this way, maybe more if I think back on them,  when I had long since given up hope on getting them out of my life any other way, so the whole topic has actually favored me indirectly more than once. Because someone else nailed them on these grounds, miraculously, when I could see no other escape from their clutches myself.

This aspect has been of the greatest benefit to me and should not be discounted. These guys were real jerks in several cases, and somehow this one thing has the power to get rid of them once and for all. The companies think it's perfectly all right for them to harrass me ten different ways, but Gott sei Dank eventually someone else may nail them on Sexual Harrassment and poof--they are gone!

In the corner of my eye, while trying earnestly NOT to check her out, in accordance with what the movie was talking about, which I fully agreed with, outwardly,  using just the very outer edge of my peripheral vision, I detected that She was checking me out! Ha!


If it weren't for this class I'd have never had any of this happening. It's like they set it up, as an entrapment creating a 'crime' where there was not one in the first place, not even a glimmer of one.

Luckily the previous year's class I was next to an ugly one, who was frustrated that she understood her legal powers but was frustrated that no one would harass her, ever, since she was too ugly, and so she could not come up with any way to use those powers.

So in this year's one I'm yawning away, feeling guiltier by the minute, because each of my yawns elicited a sympathetic vibe and yawn from my fellow worker, and I detected no guilt on her part despite the subject matter.


Ironic that they work us so hard here that the very Sexual Harrassment class itself becomes our only remaining social life. Yes it was all very Professional. Nothing happened really, we just exchanged a smile at the end. And got back to work as soon as we woke up.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Whaddaya Mean, Who's Gary Gygax?

How Soon They Forget--anybody ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons? Role-Playing games? How about icosohedron dice--or Platonic Solids?

Yeah, I wrote regular wargame rules for Airfix men and ships, and made peanuts, it's for the birds.

But add in orcs and ents, trolls and wizards, zombies and boobs--now you're talking a billion dollars. I got this shirt on Maui, ya like it, it's camouflage, because the whole time I was really a wargame geek and I couldn't help but think about the Japanese and island-hopping when I was there.

Here, just read the article. It'll only tell ya half the story, but that's better than nothing. That Leon Tucker guy wrote the rules that got mekelnborg doing the 18th Century; he was one of the early customers back then when I was still selling insurance. In fact he had almost all our stuff.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Cinco de Mayo, or One Thing Leads to Another

 General Santa Anna
Both pics from wikipedia.en public domain



I can't even remember now what I was trying to do originally.

This is just some stuff I have been thinking about while painting figures and getting distracted by different things.

I remember I was going to do a certain article, but now it is not as fresh and I would forget half of it, when the Bears were playing the Packers I was really setting out to do this other article and I still want to put it together, and even had a cool picture to go with it, more than one, but I kept looking at the Bears and started to say what was going on there. I got distracted, had to go back to work, and drifted. The Bears lost in the NFC Championship game, so they did not go to the Superbowl this year.

I don't know who was in the Superbowl, I forgot.

There are still Wisconsin people searching this blog for 'bears fans crying after NFC championship game,' football ended months ago and nobody even remembers that one, the search engine picked up on one keyword the Angry Movie Lurker used in a Comment, months and months ago, and took it out of context. Get over it already. Or at least get your cheese head hats here. The colours are wrong, by the way, Swiss cheese is not that colour, and Cheddar does not have holes. You know that, and I know that.

Those article notes are somewhere, I think. It was about something from Adam from Lancashire's blog. It will appear one of these days. An 18th Century thing.

                                                   *                        *                     *                                                 

Next I was doing some other thing, when this other guy was getting me to play chess again, the same guy who was responsible for me quitting from all chess for four years, and he is after all the first Follower of this blog, so Followers always get certain privileges. I have been calling him my Nemesis. He likes that name.

I do remember this much, I had bought some plastic 1/72 figures at a local store after having read a post by Brigade Daendels about what he was doing, and I was painting those when the chess thing started. That was in February.

There are still two tournaments and two matches going on but only about 12-13 games at a time now, which would seem like a lot but not when you are used to 33. I can handle it now, I think. I'm even beating a couple guys, at least, slowly.


That is finally at a level where I pretty much have it under control. I have been using the Icelandic Gambit especially as a secret weapon, which shocks the people who do not know what to expect. Even if I tell them openly, they don't know what to do to stop it. Usually.

Almost beat the Dutch guy with it, but got forked when I moved under sleep deprivation, so that is just a tactical accident, the system still works usually. I did beat the Scots guy, and now he is very careful, but he always was that way. There are Cautious, Bold and Rash in Chess too, and he is the cautious type. It takes longer.

So the 1/72 project for the American Revolution was going along, and I could have had them ready for the big anniversary of the taking up of arms against His Royal Tyranny of King George III on April 19, 1775, but I still had to decide first on how many men to put in a regiment before I could decide how many to paint with which colour of facings, since those colours are based on which regiment is which.

The Alte Fritz released his line of Revolutionary War figures just in time for the anniversary, and they look good, they are by a famously good sculptor. See Blogroll for more on that.

But I did not decide completely on the numbers, instead I was looking at other people's figures on the Internet which are painted really well, and that slowed me way down. Especially those Airfix Indians on Benno's. When I used to paint these as a teenager, I would have torn them from the sprues unpainted and said, 'Come on, let's set them up!'

Then maybe a half-arsed paintjob later on individual figures, some I would even use the original plastic colour as good enough for coats, etc, I remember my ACW and WWI and WWII all three were like that, and very easy to paint if you do it that way. Face belt gun done. I had other ones, with a lot more paint than that.

With the plastic Airfix I had periods from ancient to modern so there were lots of different ones, and for the ECW in the 17th Century  I did surgical conversions since those were not available at all any other way. Except expensive metal. Forget that. This was redirected lunch money.

I remember too that when I put more paint on them I liked how they looked, and was able to get non-wargamers to play both WWII and ancient Romans at different times, although they never heard of most of these periods.

Now when I bought these American Revolution figs, I also picked up an Alamo set with Mexicans, and coming off the deep immersion in chess, when I went to paint the Revolutionary ones then I started to do the Mexicans and Texans instead, to bring them up to speed. Now they are getting somewhere, and I have been trying to decide how to put them in regiments, without deciding about the American Revolution ones yet.


May 3 or 4 was a holiday for the hard-drinking carpenters of Mexico, and today is the Cinco de Mayo celebratng their victory at Puebla in 1863 over the imperialist French and their Austrian friends, when they briefly tried to take over while the US was busy with its own Civil War.

So back in the Salt Mines that I keep having to return to, we are talking about El Dia de los Heroes, the cadets of the Mexican Military Academy who suffered at the hands of the Americans at Chapultepec in May of 1847, just down the main street in Mexico City from the Presidentiial palace. They have lots of holidays, but we are all working just the same while we talk about what holiday it is.












El Generalissimo en Jefe y el Presidente Para la Vida Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a Photograph from 1847 when he lost the capital and the country to the invasion by the US

We have his leg.

Now everybody knows there were four thousand Mexicans at the Alamo and the assault was March 6, but Dr Al Nofi the famous wargame-oriented historian says there were only about 2200 of them. It is still a lot more than 183 Texicans and their true friends, but I have not read anywhere about how that went over when he published it. I imagine it would be an interesting discussion.

I do know I am the only person I know who has his book, The Alamo and the Texas War of Independence 1835-1836.

Also some other info such as the Freikorps booklet on the same period shows that the biggest battle of that war still only had a few thousand men in one place at one time, never much more than that. Usually just several hundred at a time in that one. So for that one a low ratio of figures to men would work best, as well as skirmish at 1:1.

But looking at the figures, I wanted to paint them for the US-Mexican War of 1846-1848, ten years later when the Lone Star Republic was ready to join the United States for a while, and there some of the battles were bigger and involve more men. Still not much over maybe 20,000 men at a time and usually less than that, so the scale of operations is comparable to the American Revolution.

Whatever I decide on for number of men per regiment could be comparable then between the two wars. With only one set of figures, which cost fifteen bucks and included six sprues of 25  pieces each, or 150, with four Mexican cannon, I was thinking of going with a larger than normal ratio such as at least 100 men per figure and maybe more than that.

Yes, even for the American Revolution, and that could also apply to the French and Indian War too. In the Revolution I don't think there were ever more than about fifteen to sixteen to seventeen thousand men in one place, at one time, on one side that is,  and usually less than that.

In the Civil War or Napoleonic Wars, there could easily be 100,000 or more, even a lot more, so I need to take that into account. I am interested in the whole battle, either way, and not just a small part to get the idea across, because I only have two regiments or something. I need all the regiments. And on one dining room table. Not even a typical hotel convention table, but my table.

Napoleon had nearly 200,000 men at Leipzig and he was outnumbered and surrounded by four Allied armies with hundreds of thousands more men than that. Nobody really knows for sure, they couldn't keep track of it, it was too big for them, and that's the way it will always be, we can not find out much better than we already think we sort of know. It is not possible to completely reconcile the sources.

And I want that on my dining room table. That's why a few years ago I went down from 15mm to 6mm, and from 6mm to 5mm the next year, and then ultimately to 2mm, which are very, very small.

I still have those and just painted 72 wagons in 2mm before I bought the 1/72 plastic, and maybe in part because once I painted those I was in a mood to paint and fresh out of things to paint.





The Table is a Huge Factor in How Much Territory is Depicted

 The Leipzig battle field is about fifteen miles square, more or less. Fifteen miles each side of a square, or maybe 16 by 13, something like that. My table is one meter by one and a half meters.

 I don't want a bigger table, I want different wargame rules.

 Fabrizio at the Torgau Project and Gunfreak at the apartment of war have both mentioned similar concerns at various times, and they are far from the only ones. People were talking about these issues thirty years ago, but are still largely ignored by the community.

In the old days there were a lot less publications, so the occasional letter to the editor was much more readily drowned out by the crowd. But there is no rule that says everybody has to do things any one way. Maybe in the official Dungeons and Dragons, or Chess or something, but not the free-wheeling miniature wargamers. Some might think so, but they are mistaken.

How Long Did Gary Gygax Stick With One Certain Set of Rules?

Gary Gygax did not follow any one system slavishly, he continually invented new ones. It's his legion of followers who follow, he led. And his Civil War game Hardtack did not have twenty yards per inch, he went for something different. It was shocking to change the traditional measurements, he went to the metric system and said one millimeter represents one yard, in this game. People were really messed up trying to figure out millimeters, even though it was on a lot of rulers, on the side we always just ignored. This was like 1973.



So instead of the normal wargamers' 24 men on six trays of four or four trays of six no matter what war it is,
I am thinking in way smaller numbers per regiment, even like three or four figures, or six. Or two or three. Some of these Revolutionary Regiments were really small anyway.



Then on the Mexican War there are only fifteen figures out of the 150 pieces (counting cannon wheels) that look like they would pass for American regulars and a lot of the volunteers, because of what they are wearing, so I started thinking about even TWO figures per regiment, as I was painting them, and again it was the facing colours that force the issue.

I was actually painting four to a regiment, but thinking about what if it was only two and make these two regiments of two, instead of one regiment of four?



That got me up to just a couple days ago, when I went back to the store to get another set of Mexicans and Texans, and wound up getting a couple hundred 1/72 American Civil War figures too.

I was probably thinking something like this, what if I had twice as many figures and did go back to four per regiment.

But now these Civil War ones are starting to make me think the exact opposite, because I did some calculations about Gettysburg and about my table, and started last night to think about what if I had ONE figure per regiment, except for certain especially big regiments, so something like 360 to 400 men represented by ONE figure.

It doesn't really have to be quite that drastic, this allows all three days of Gettysburg with the wider  field that entails, and also even the cavalry battle out to the Union rear, usually ignored, with the even wider field that THAT entails, all to fit on my one by one and a half meter table, with 1/72 plastic figures.

Actually any figures work on the same table, but with 2mm you'd be able to put thirty men on the same half inch, where 1/72 has one figure, so the difference is just in how you look at it, and if you can bend your imagination to the scale being used.

But is this just way too drastic for the Revolution? I have not tried it yet, but it would reduce those battles to about the size of a chess game, so most wargamers would think that's way too small. At least the miniaturists.

Boardgamers have used exactly that scale for many years in the classic game 1776. The battles in that game only took a few minutes to resolve, maybe three quick turns for a minute each. Still they were exciting and not exactly predictable in their context.  The real game in 1776 was the campaign and it could take a bunch of sessions to play out the whole Revolution, for the whole eight years at one month per turn--that is about 96 turns.

Another boardgame or two, Prague and I think even a Torgau by GDW and Frank Chadwick, also used this same scale that I am now arriving at, for tactical battles, but the way they did it the game  could go an hour or two. This is not the same Torgau game that Fabrizio has been talking about, but is much smaller and about the same physical size as the Holowczyn game he has been talking about the past few days, with only 100 or so battalion size pieces.

All of these have been out for 25 or 30 years in the boardgaming world, so it is really not something that could shock anyone but a miniaturist stuck in the Sixties. I think I am going to keep thinking about it. The Gettysburg game at 1:400 or so men per figure would only need a couple hundred figures on a side, but would fit on the dining room table, and that is the main criterion.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Other Award--the Stylish Blogger Award Nominations

There it is:   the award!  All the award-winning blogs have something like this.







It might take more than one visit to absorb what's all here, because I am going to say something about a bunch of other blogs. And not even half the ones I could say something about, but some anyway so it has to be a long post.


This one has more rules:

  • Thank and link back to the person giving you the award   ( that is near the top )
  • Share seven things about yourself.  Okay, but I probably already did.
  • Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award. (This is what will take up the space.)
  • Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award  (this will take the time)
On the one hand, it seems this weekend this award has appeared on half the bloody blogs I read, whereas on the other hand it did not appear on the other half.  Yet.

See How the Other Half Lives

So the first thing to do is to thank the person nominating me for the award, and this gives us a chance to reflect on how the other half lives, for the first blog on the list of those deserving this award is only one half of a class operation whose other half has nominated my blog. Thanks Fran.

Thanks go http://theangrylurker.blogspot.com/
 
Fran has been supportive of my efforts since I was suffering from the intense heat last summer and afraid to run the computer when it was above 90 degrees, and this lasted about six months. By the time the heat finally dissipated, I could not remember how to even post, let alone what I was thinking about when I started it in the spring. That is six things about myself in that sentence, also. Here's another one:

I was in the 111th MP Company and later at the US EUCOM HQ, J-2, or Intelligence Directorate, in the Regular Army and then subsequently in the 85th 'Custer' Division in the Reserves, as a 19D Cavalry Scout and after that 19E Tank Commander. Both of these latter jobs were as an instructor. RA, that's where I learned to use the word kimchee to mean m*rde.  The 85th went into Italy in WW2 especially during the Gothic Line period, and in WW1 they invaded Russia, around Murmansk or Archangelgorod. Might do it again, too, if ...ahhhhhh.

At first going from the regulars to the reserves I had feelings bordering on a condescending contempt for the reserve components, because at first I thought I was a strack troop compared with them, but that changed and ultimately changed a lot, with increased maturity, and perspective on the skills and the efforts the two types bring to the table. And their horizons.

While at EuCom I took actions that I believe won all the wars in the Middle East, including many of those that hadn't even really started yet, but I am not at liberty to explain what I did. That's too bad, because then the next story will stick better in the memory, and leave a false impression. But I can't explain that.

I also helped with an American defeat, on the other hand, the one in the spring of 1980 when a raid in Iran turned into a fiasco, when a desert sandstorm rendered too many American machines useless, and the mission had to be scrubbed, right in the middle of it. I was not there, it is only that I helped in a small way, from where I was, doing my job. I'd have been in trouble if I didn't but again, I can't explain yet I don't think. Maybe, it is over thirty years.

There was also a successful raid around that time, but I was a cog in the other one. Many years later in the US I worked with a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who was on the other side then, and he explained that the reason was well known in Iran, that the spot chosen for the raid is haunted by evil spirits. So of course there was a sandstorm, and no one would expect anything different to happen there. It was in the wind.

It was the djinn.

It gave a sense of closure to be discussing this with such a one, years later, over tea and dates, and to increase multi-cultural understanding between the former, erstwhile adversaries.

In some ways he was acting like he wanted to be a part of the Dukes of Hazzard, and drive an old American beater car, faster than the police would let him.



The Other Half

On to the nominations of other blogs deserving of the awards.

Many I thought of at first already seem to be talking about how they were nominated by someone else, and if the reader has the same experience it can lead to frustration to see it all playing out again, but that is too quick to go negative. There is positive here.

These awards not only inform the reader of many tidbits about the authors which they would otherwise not have mentioned, probably ever, but also allow us to see many other blogs that are deserving of more attention. Revealing these details is actually somewhat painful for the authors, but to readers they are still interesting. After all there are whole books about Edgar Allan Poe or Franz Kafka, and readers still want more.

These nomination speeches are eye-opening for the readers who skipped over things they hadn't noticed before, out of haste and out of habit. This gives us a chance to break the molds.

The first nomination goes to http://theangrymovielurker.blogspot.com/

This blog is the other half of  the Angry Movie Lurker's Blogly Empire, and ironically it dominates the first four pages and more of the search engine results pages for its own name, yet draws only half the traffic I eke out, and survive on, here, a fiftieth what he gets on the big one, even though it is chock full of A-1 quality posts of original and meaty content.

There are well over thirty and nearly forty in-depth movie reviews, with pictures, but the blogger has not posted there since February, the poor b%*tard, probably suffering more in spirit from the neglect of the readers than his physical challenges. He pours his heart into those articles, and three Comments, elsewhere a pic of breasts draws fifty or sixty. It isn't fair and it isn't right. It's one click to get there, and much easier if you click as a Follower, or otherwise bookmark the page.

The blogger can become discouraged when there are only a few evident visitors, and fewer commenters, or followers. Is it only what a former lurker has coming to him? Come on he's writing big articles on there, so you know which movie you want to see. Even if you normally speak a foreign language, I urge you to encourage this blogger by saying something in your own language anyway; for all you know there are ten other visitors from your country and it would also encourage them to participate more fully. We know how to translate with a little effort.

I was going to go to Italy next, to the Torgau blog, but Carlo Antonio has already hit there, so good, that means someone else can get in, as we are limited to 15.

Let's go to Russia then. This one is hard to read for me because it is in Cyrillic, and I have to sound out the letters like a second grader, an advanced second grader who uses Phonics, that is, and fortunately his posts are usually only about thirty words so I can actually make out the gist of what he's talking about, although the details are lost on me. Marsimsgastat, or Gastat

The pictures are good, however, he generally posts figures he has painted and comments a little on them. At least there aren't a lot of definite articles.

Another Russian one with a great deal of 18th Century material, especially the Great Northern War but with promise of more on the Polish Succession, and this time with a lot of English-language material to complement the Russian in Cyrillic, is at   Gromoboy's Oderint dum Probent at rusmilhist.blogspot.com

Some of how I described Gastat also applies to this one from Catalunya, except that this one is usually in Catalan, Castilian and English to help the foreign readers such as myself. http://elsenyorverd.blogspot.com/

Others I read in Catalan will no doubt already be hearing from Italy at least so I will merely point at the Blogroll at the lower right hand side of the screen. There is also puro Castilian to be found there. What is that, four?

I have more. Here is Norway, with Gunfreak with his apartment. If he keeps doing 28mm it will soon be full.
I read him on TMP before reading at his blog.

Back in 1972 I read a book from WW2 called "We Die Alone,"  and always remember that when I think about Norway. I've only been to Iceland up there, and even then it was flying over it several times without being able to land there.

Elsewhere in Scandinavia, I can't figure out yet which part, but probably Sweden or Denmark, whoever uses o with an umlaut, we have this one, where Gunnar is. A theme I am indirectly aiming to not hide under a rug is the theme of disability and challenge, being met as well as it can, and to be honest it is a part of human life.

Several of the Internet people have got one situation or another to deal with, and each of them feels alone. I have probably got half the symptoms myself, of all the ones I am running into here; in this case there is some material on coping with MS that can be helpful to others to read about it, and realize they are not alone. http://gataskog.blogspot.com/

Also from Benno's Figures (see FIGZ in the Blogroll) is this one from Belgium  http://peterscave.blogspot.com/   mostly written in English with the highlights in either what looks like it could be Vlaams or Dutch. A Breughel painting there still sticks in my imagination, and he reproduced it as a vignette of figures he painted, one ticked-off lady going inside the Gates of Hell to beat on them down there. That is Art.

Speaking of art, there is at an undisclosed location resembling the USA this one with art made for the blog and pieces on artists past and contemporary, and other stuff. I usually do not think it's worth fighting annoying popups but I do for this one, and that is a recommendation, there is good stuff in there.the sketch is the one I look at from dgrphx, which I pronounce wrong, I think the grphx is supposed to be pronounced graphics, but I see it as digger-phx. It's what happens from reading instead of hearing words.

Another one from the USA I think is Dirt Cheap Wargaming, a fantastically unpretentious blog that goes far to combat the Snobbardly Tendency, to paraphrase out of context the famous Dave Hollins, that can sometimes be detected among self-appointed elitist wargamers, obliviously and unapologetically destroying their own hobby, via their stupidity and insensitivity, and inability to get along with others. I am reminded of the wealthy git who passed off someone else's painting as his own in a collection worth thousands of Pounds of Silver on a certain forum recently, while admitting he knew nothing of the war he was representing either, and only paid the money, then tried to pass it off as his own work as if he was therefore Glorious somehow, when he had hired a painter who he did not mention at all--well, here at this blog http://dirtcheapminis.blogspot.com/

you can make an army out of a half-burnt matchstick and may well get a better game out of it too. What a git that guy was, at that other forum. It's still up there too.
 I don't think he can erase it.

Heilige neun, that's already nine. But there are still more.

This one is in the UK, with Adam from Lancashire, it is about the 18th century with an eclectic mix of his painting projects, books from the eighteenth century, for free, and his extensive travels to the scenes on the ground with reports for the use of those who can travels there after him. I've referred to it before and will again, when I can put it together. Last time I had the article started I was interrupted by the Bears game with the Packers, but I will put it together again.   http://goldensuninn.blogspot.com/

 I have my Ten, set for Eleven--that way it's better.
Here I would think from the USA also is the mistress of minis doing A Girl's Guide to Gaming Geekery. She's been doing figures and other models for ten years and knows lots of tricks, then in the middle of the history of her blog the symptoms break out--migraines, shakes, etc etc, blackouts and what not. Here again is someone who is figuring out how to deal with an oncoming disabling condition...how to paint the fine details when her hands start shaking, or the knife falls into her foot.  I hope that she will be able to continue and carry on with the blog. I noticed my hands were shakier than they used to be, or at least I thought so, trying to paint figures this past couple of months, although it might have always been like that.

   There are Dutch blogs at http://brigadedaendels.blogspot.com/     mainly about 1/72 plastic or otherwise figures for the Anglo-Russian invasion of the Batavian Republic during the time of the French Revolutionary Wars, and also the one I first followed I think, written half in Dutch and half in English, at http://rampjaar.blogspot.com/                    and they are also nominated.
 
The trip around the world will end with Germany and Austria, respectively, with these two:

http://scheckssyw.blogspot.com/     this one has 40mm figures, not only Prince August, but several other makes, and also has remarkably good photo settings  to display these figures, so that they look like real guys, even though the figure itself in your hand would look like a big caricature if you saw it that way first.

http://zinnsoldatengeneral.blogspot.com/  this one is from Austria where Andreas Hofer is doing the American Revolution, this year, and at Christmas he has a remarkable mounted figure as a cross between Santa Claus on horseback, and General Robert E. Lee.




Well, I had another article cooked up, but this is plenty for now. I'll get to the other article later.

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