Robot Claw – Page 305 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

I Made This!

September 12, 2017

It’s been a while since a craft post, so here we go!

BFS sent me this. He’s always sending me these metal kits since he knows they’re a chore to put together and he uses me as his proxy! There seems to be two companies making them, the ‘metal miniatures’ guys (that you see in stores everywhere) and these less common Chinese models, which are more difficult and have slightly lower quality control.

To put it bluntly, this thing was excruciatingly frustrating to assemble. The pieces were miniature and mostly black or very reflective gold – both colours seemingly chosen to make it impossible to see the sub-millimeter tabs and slots with the naked eye! Furthermore the instructions left a lot to be desired.

I struggled on though, cut myself more than once on sharp edges and made two critical structural errors that essentially doomed the thing. But I was able to pose it in a more or less finished state regardless:

Verdict: way way too fiddly. Save this one for when you’ve built all 500 other similar kits 🙂

I bought the above in Japan. It was a new release and as you can see quite cheap for what it is. Which is a Gundam? A girl kit? A girl Gundam?!? Who knows!

I love the colouring and the pearlescent plastic and the soft parts and the fact the manual is – for the first time that I’d seen – printed in both Japanese and English! Look at all those eyes though…

She was an easy build because Bandai has long since mastered these sorts of things. As a bonus she comes with a stand!

She’s a little creepy isn’t she? Maybe it’s just the lack of a pose. She’s got joints everywhere and her wings can spread out fully behind her so I suppose I should make her a little more dynamic. Overall a great kit for under US$20 and a lot of fun to assemble.

We also purchased the above in Japan, and it even cost more than the Gundam! As you can see it’s a ‘Real Scale’ plastic bonsai kit, which seems a bit of a lie since it’s actually quite small.

The instructions are very cute but also very short since the kit itself was only 5 pieces! I was a bit mystified by the manufacturing though: how did they get the tufts of green into the brown plastic like that?

Assembly was trivial and I skipped the painting advice in the instructions. Even so, I think it looks pretty good assembled:

That’s a normal sized Lego guy next to it for scale. See what I mean about small?! This was expensive for what it is but I suspect it may have been partially ‘garage’ built (i.e. handmade) and it’ll look good in our curio so I’m glad I bought it.

I think the next one of these posts may focus on electronic crafts. Look for it in a month or two 🙂

New Hampshire

September 5, 2017

We went to New Hampshire for a few days! Specifically we stayed at Weirs Beach in the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. It’s a very popular tourist destination with lots to see and do.

On the first day we started by taking a lakeshore ride on our tourist train.

Jim had bought us tickets in the caboose, which meant we could sit in the seats up at roof level for a spectacular view!

The trip was great and the views better. They even served food and I had a delicious sandwich! We were dazzled by the crazy lakeside homes we saw, including one little shack on sale for a cool $900k!

Right after the train we comboed straight into another trip, this time on a boat:

BUT NOT JUST ANY BOAT! You’re looking at the only floating post office in the USA, and we rode on the second mail route of the day to several islands on the lake.

That’s the crowd at Jolly Island, waiting not just for their mail but also the ice-creams sold on the boat. The lake has dozens of islands, many of which have summer homes on them. It’d be a fab place to spend a few weeks in the summer…. if you were rich enough to afford it!

Two minutes walk from our cabin was a boardwalk that had restaurants and gift stores and two arcades. You can bet I visited it nightly 🙂

On the second day we went to a place called Polar Caves. After being (not so) momentarily distracted by the feedable deer, we took the route through their nine glacial caves.

This place was incredible. Self-guided, the caves required a lot of agility and stamina to get through, and we were very often crouching down almost to our knees or contorting ourselves in ways we had forgotten to get past a tight obstacle.

The limited warnings in advance and near total lack of any meaningful safety notice meant we didn’t expect anything like this, and while (a lot of) fun, this was a very strenuous experience!

Easily the best cave system I’ve ever visited, this place is highly recommended to anyone that can still climb ladders, crawl along on your knees and doesn’t suffer from vertigo (since some caves were vertical) or claustrophobia. Beware if you’re a fat man though; you’ll be miserable 😉

And then after the caves came Funspot, the mega arcade we visited last year and the reason for the return trip. It was mobbed with people since the remnants of hurricane Harvey had blown into town and it was very wet, but we endured the crowds for a few hours and had a lot of fun.

There’s probably more I’m forgetting but I’m sure you can tell we had a fun long weekend and a good ‘last hurrah’ to summer. Even though it’s a long drive, I’m sure we’ll return again one day.

My Collection: XBox

August 29, 2017

I received my XBox as a Christmas gift back in 2003. This was more than two years after it had been released, and by then there were many games already available. I actually owned one, D&D Heroes, that I had bought several months earlier. I guess I knew what Santa was bringing me for Christmas that year 🙂

While I didn’t buy an excessive amount of games for the system, I played it fairly frequently for the next 2.5 years and remember enjoying it. Some games, such as Morrowind and the Otogi series were particularly good. But the last game I purchased was in early August of 2006. Since I never had an XBox 360 or an XBox One, that day ended my time as an XBox player.

That is the sum total of my XBox collection (except the console, of course); 38 games for which I spent (in total) only about $450. I very rarely spent full price for an XBox games, and many of them cost me under $10. One of them cost only $5 new and a certain trilogy cost even less:

Those are the three Burger King games released in 2006. They retailed for $4 apiece but I recall there was a deal when you bought all three at once (maybe $10 for the set). They’re simplistic – today they’d be called ‘mobile games’ – and little more than curiosities, but a memorable part of my collection.

These two games are the highlights of my collection:

The Otogi series is a magnificent set of two games set in mythical Japan. Complex and challenging, they are mission-based action games featuring absolutely beautiful graphics, destructible environments and lots of intricate combat. Developed by From Software, both games contain elements that would resurface in the Souls series, and in my opinion these two are important milestones in the history of the action-RPG. They are so good in fact, that these two games along justified the XBox for me. Neither were released for any other console, or have even been rereleased or remastered.

As for strangest game, that award would go to a demo I have of a Magic The Gathering action game from 2003:

Entitled Battlegrounds, this is a terrible RTS-style game where you frantically summon creatures and cast spells to defeat your opponent in real time. There’s no cards, or even decks, and it only has superficial resemblance to an actual game of MTG. While I’ve only got the demo, I obviously wasn’t (and aren’t) impressed enough to buy the actual game!

The final XBox game I ever bought was this one:

Since I had the system out and connected for a bit of nostalgia, and since JJ were visiting, it seemed like a good time for an old fashioned retro gaming tournament! So once again KLS, JBF and myself sat ourselves down and answered the question of who was the superior videogamer. The ‘standard rules’ applied (one game each, no practice, winner goes first on next game) and we – as always – only played games with a score.

Here’s the per-game result:

And here’s the cumulative score result:

It seems I haven’t lost my mojo!

Anyway the XBox has now been boxed back up and returned to ‘deep storage’ where it will remain for at least another decade or so. Unlike almost every other system I own there are no games for the XBox I’ve always been after, so if and when I get it out it will probably just be for another go at Otogi or maybe Solomon’s Key. Who knows if the system will even work then…

Speaking of old games tourneys, we’re off to NH for another visit to Funspot this weekend. Watch this space for photos…