Robot Claw

The Stamp Collector (Part Five)

December 12th, 2017

It’s time for the penultimate entry in my stamp collection series. This time: ‘Chinese New Year’ stamps!

Stamps of this type represent the bigger portion of my collection, especially since they (usually) are released every time I am in Australia. But as you’ll see I have a few from elsewhere as well. Because of how many I have this post won’t show all of them. If you interested in seeing the others, ask me next time you come and visit 🙂

I’m going to do these in chronological order, and the above is my earliest – a snake stamp from 2011. Note it’s (another) Christmas Island issue. You’ll see that is true for all the new years stamps issued by Australia.

This pair (2003 & 2004) was another purchase from the stamp museum in Washington DC. They’re quite remarkable because the envelopes actually have cloth patches glued on to them. I wonder if the entire series (of 12 animals) was done over the years? I’ve never looked…

I suspect this dog stamp from 2006 is in the same series as the snake above, although it looks different. By this time several different covers were being issued since they did one (or two) stamps with the animal of interest, and an entire sheet of all twelve. For most years since then I have both covers, but as I said I’ll only show one here.

As a child of 1972, my ratlike qualities are well known. I’ve been told by an expert (thanks YZ!) that the stamp on the right actually says ‘mouse’ in Chinese 🙂

2010 was the year of the tiger, and here’s both first day covers that were sold then. Once again they use the Chinese characters in the stamp itself, but the second set contains stylized pictures of the animals. I very much like this approach, and Australia has been continuing it ever since.

Eagle-eyed readers will ask “Where are 2007 and 2009?” The answer is… I don’t have them 🙂

For 2011 – the rabbit year – I’ll only show the full sheet of twelve. Note the rabbit stamp gets special treatment being framed by a silver moon. I love the colouring on this set.

I just read online that famous ‘dragons’ (ie. born in the year of the dragon) include Bruce Lee, Vladimir Putin and none other than Jesus Christ himself! I bet all of them would love the above stamp.

Both covers from 2013. The former is impressive not just for the lovely design, but since it includes the food that the animals types like as well. I never knew Jesus was a fan of tomatoes! The latter seems to be the first year they started including the larger sheet on the second cover, which in this case depicts the serpent-goddess Nuwa, who I had never heard of and was not aware had anything to do with the Chinese Zodiac!

2014 was the year of the horse. Notice the horseshoe cancellation and the inclusion of elements with each animal. This is unusual since I believed each animal had multiple potential elements. I’m not sure how they arrived at the ones shown on these stamps.

Here we have a second year of the horse stamp, this time from Singapore! Bernard got me this when he visited. It’s very fanciful and colourful, as all Chinese new years stamps seem to be.

I think if I could have picked my animal I may have chosen goat. Not only are they cute, but I like the word ‘goat’, and since I myself am ‘calm and gentle’ (which are characteristics of goat-people) it’s seems silly I was born under the rat in the first place!

Here we notice Singapore straddling 2014/2015 with this issue, which contains both a horse and a ram. Once again, it’s a beautiful and colourful stamp with metallic-ink elements. I also suspect that ink may be pure gold, since Bernard paid a princely sum for this one:

Who else has a brother that purchased them thousands of dollars worth of stamps when he went to Singapore? 😉

And here we have this years stamp, the rooster. Note the series is still following the same style as 2008, which means for 10 consecutive years. Since I don’t have 2007 I can’t say if this began then (and will end next year) or whether my rat cover was the first (and it will end in 2019). I guess I’ll find out soon enough!

2016 you say? That was the year I shuffled around post offices in Australia looking for first-day covers that I was told at the time didn’t exist but have since learned did. I have tried to not let that bother me ever since…

Only one more stamp post to go, and it’ll come sometime next week. This series has been a lot of work; I hope you’ve been enjoying it.

Posted in Otaku, Stamps | 1 Comment »

First Snow

December 10th, 2017

We had our first significant snowfall overnight; 4 inches according to the local weather.

It’s very light snow – almost intangible – and therefore sticking to everything prettily.

It’s very cold out as well, which gives me hope this may not melt quickly. Walking around taking these photos was an uncomfortable experience 🙂

That’s one of our old squirrel feeders. It’s useless now – you can see where the squirrels chewed through the plastic – but I leave it up because it’s become part of the backyard.

It’s rare we get a snowfall like this before I leave for Oz. Even though it’s just a little snow, this was a pleasant surprise.

Posted in Home, Nature | Comments Closed

The Stamp Collector (Part Four)

December 3rd, 2017

It’s somewhat unsatisfying that my blog in recent months has become a “look at this thing I own” catalogue, but this has been one of the busiest semesters in recent memory and I seem to always lack the time I wish I had to spend on other diversions. Given I started this series (and enjoy it!) I’d like to finish it before Christmas.

Therefore, another installment of my stamp collection, this time ‘miscellaneous’. Here are the bits and pieces (including loose stamps) that didn’t fit easily into the other posts, including those yet to be made…

Another item I no doubt picked up on one of my annual trips to the south. Once again we see Christmas Island, and an animal. It’s exotic isn’t it? I read recently that stamps from places like this are ‘worth’ more if actually used for postage, rather than sold as collectibles like this. Doubly so if they went through other post offices on the way and received additional cancellations, as was once done.

I also read that first-day-covers are essentially worthless; a product of the 1960s/70s/80s mostly that has little interest to anyone today. This explains why I often find them for sale for a song 🙂

These were both purchased in Brighton a couple of years ago, for next to nothing, and mostly for their kitsch value. I’m sure on a postcard somewhere I have stamps of Will and Kate’s wedding, and I’ll look forward to an Ozling sending me a postcard with a ‘Wedding of Harry and Meghan’ stamp. I do like the metallic ink on the Charles & Diana envelope…

I’m not sure where these came from. I think they’re too recent to be stamps I collected myself (why doesn’t Australia put the year on stamps?!?) but I don’t know who gave them to me or when. Maybe I soaked them off letters after I got to the US? I also have this little batch:

But they were obtained as freebies at the Smithsonian. Except the bottom one of course, which was on a letter sent by Sue. It’s a lovely stamp, but the cost of international postage from Australia – it’s closer to $3 today – is notable. A significant portion of my annual ‘Australia trip budget’ is stamp costs!

This is actually how I buy most stamps when I’m in Oz. Almost every post office has a ‘stamp collecting’ section where they sell stamps packaged like the above. I suppose the sheets like this are for the collectors, but I open them and use them. In the last few years I’ve made extra effort to make sure the postcards I send have different (and attractive) stamps on them – I wonder do you even look at the stamps?

More random Australian stamps in my collection, this time packaged carefully in a little display folder. These are particularly pretty. I should have put them on cards!

Australian/Korean stamps issued simultaneously in each country and sold together as a set. I think I bought these because I liked the Korean stamps. Note only the Korean ones show the date.

This is a collectors stamp set issued by Australia a couple of years back (this is one of two sheets). You’ll note that the Doctors themselves are not actually stamps. They are in fact stickers! They would have looked sublime on postcards I suppose, but it’s a bit of a con that Aus Post charged $12 for this set when the actual stamps (the globe showing Australia) are so generic and boring.

This is more interesting. It’s a two-sheet set of ‘Mythical Creatures’ stamps issued by Australia a few years back that was packaged with 3D glasses since one of the sets is printed in 3D. I bought this in a post office for some piddling amount, and have always wondered if the 3D versions are acceptable to be used as postage. There’s nothing about not using them on the folder, so I assume the answer is yes, but I also wonder if they’d give the computerized scanning machines a bit of trouble?

Of course the USA isn’t immune to licensed stamps, and famously many years back the above sheet was printed. I bought a bunch of these and used the hell out of them, and it is very likely you’ll have a postcard or two in your drawers sent by me featuring one of the above. The postal service went a bit crazy promoting these, and even repainted some post boxes to look like R2D2! We can only hope they do it again and I can put a Porg stamp on your next postcard…

There’s also the above, which is a massive (20 or so) stamp set commemorating the Harry Potter series. It’s pretty and very nicely presented and overall one of the better licensed stamp products I’ve seen. This was difficult to find when it came out, and I drove around to a few post offices since I wanted to buy one for Florence in time for her Birthday or Christmas or something like that. I wonder if she used the stamps or still has it?

I’m sure I have more of the above around. A few years ago I actually framed some stamps and hung them on a wall, and I know they’re up in the attic or something today. I’m sure you’ll get to see them yourself during an installment of the very overdue and long-planned ‘Stuff I found in my attic’ series coming in 201X…

Posted in Collecting, Otaku, Stamps | 1 Comment »

Space Crusher

November 26th, 2017

I picked this up at a local con the other weekend:

It’s a Tandy/Radio Shack LCD game from 1985! “Penetrate Space City” the blurb says, fighting enemy spaceships and meteorites whilst enjoying ‘quick-action fire’ and ‘battle sound effects’.

Here’s the contents:

As you can see it’s in remarkable good condition as well as being complete in box. You’ll also note it has four-way control. What sort of game is this…?

A quick look at the manual revealed all:

It’s a Scramble clone! And – for an LCD game – a fairly sophisticated one at that.

And yes, it still works perfectly:

The field scrolls to the left continuously and you have full control over your ship. The controls themselves are weird (Nintendo had debuted the d-pad by now so they should have ripped that off) but they are responsive and the game speed isn’t too fast.

Strangely everything is worth 2 points, and the game ends when you score 2000 (or run out of lives of course). I haven’t played it enough to see how long that would take, but my guess is easily more than one full loop.

As a kid I would have loved this game. As an adult I love the purity of it. A real gem of a find at a local con 🙂

Posted in Games, Otaku, Retro, Tech, Toys | Comments Closed

‘Clonan’ Books

November 16th, 2017

I’ve always been a Conan The Barbarian fan. Back in my youth I read most (all?) of the original stories by Howard and loved the unique stories and evocative setting.

In recent years I’ve been reading a lot of 1960s/70s pulp novels, and in doing so have discovered and appreciated several notable Conan clone series. Here’s my impressions on a few of these.

Brak The Barbarian

This series of five books, written by John Jakes between 1968 and 1980 are perhaps the most directly Conanesque of this lot, with a very similar protagonist, setting and adventures. Brak himself, a barbarian from the north, is on a series-spanning quest to a fantastic ‘golden’ city in the south and he has many adventures on his way, usually involving crazed sorcerers, evil – occasionally Lovecraftian – monsters and the occasional (though less often than Conan) beautiful maiden. While I’ve only yet read half the series (but own them all) I enjoy them quite a lot.

Thongor

During the 60s and 70s Lin Carter wrote seven books featuring his barbarian warrior Thongor. His adventures occur in a fantastic ruined world of lost wizardry, ancient ‘dragon kings’ and many exotic but distinct civilizations. These books are unsophisticated but fast-paced and rich in imagination, and on the whole contain less barbarian violence and womanizing than most on this list. Good, quick reads, these also inspired a (good!) marvel comics series also penned by Carter.

Kothar

Gardner Fox was a writer for DC Comics in the early years who turned his efforts to novels in the 1960s. This spawned two notable fantasy series, the first of which were the five Kothar books. Kothar himself could be Conans younger, blonder brother who decided he wanted to have the same adventures as his more famous sibling. Interesting differences (a magic cursed sword, an immortal sorceress) combined with a pacing obviously learned from a career in comics result in very readable books. Probably my favourites in this list.

Kyrik

This is Fox’s second series, written (for a different publisher, hence the original hero) in the mid 1970s. Mostly identical to the previous (another hero having wild adventures in a ruined world) this one features the usual – and expected – assortment of magic and monsters and near-naked women to save. While perhaps not quite as readable as Kothar, this is still a recommended series.

Richard Blade

This remarkable series of 37 (!) books was written over 15 years (starting in 1969) by three writers under the pen name Jeffrey Lord. After reading one book that I bought in Australia last year I was so impressed/insane that I purchased thirty-five more for the low, low price of $100!

The premise of this mad series is that MI6 sends super-agent Richard Blade (a fitter, handsomer, stronger and smarter James Bond) through a dimensional transporter into exotic new worlds where he performs reconnaissance for queen and country. Since the transporter can’t send clothes, he’s naked when he arrives and since many of the worlds are stereotypical fantasy realms, there’s more than a hint of Conan inspiration here. I’ve only read two, but those books alone had enough lunacy for a dozen other books, and I look forward to reading more.

Raven

‘Richard Kirk’ was the pseudonym of famed fantasy author Robert Holdstock who in the 1980s created an eventual five-book fantasy series about a female warrior named Raven. The books are slightly infamous for the Royo cover art (in the USA) and (nuder) Achilleos art in the UK – all I am sure crafted carefully to attract teenage male readers…

The books themselves are much more sophisticated than the covers suggest and the heroine in particular is more reflective and has a richer backstory than any other mentioned on this page. The setting is satisfyingly exotic and once again features barbaric civilization in a world scattered with evidence of a lost civilization. The quality of the books is not consistent, but overall these were worth the read.

Posted in Books, Miscellaneous | Comments Closed