Robot Claw – Page 474 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Happy Birthday Jim!

March 20, 2013

Just like last year, there are two birthdays in a row!

KLS’s dad, James B F, was born a long, long time ago. In 1945 to be accurate. This makes him the wizened old age of 68!

As with 1935, a year we learned about yesterday, no-one actually remembers what happened way back in 1945 (aside from Jim being born, of course), so I had to turn to the interwebs for some insight:

– Microwave ovens and computers were invented
– Animal Farm was published
– A plane (accidentally) crashes into the Empire State Building
– Rod Stewart, Bette Midler and Henry Winkler were born
– Petrol was $0.15 a gallon in the US
– (And the one that we actually never forget) Oppenheimer invents the atomic bomb, which was then used twice to end WW2 and kill approximately 200,000 civilians…

…wow, bit of a downer year wasn’t it??!

Oh well, that was forever ago. Let bygones be bygones and celebrate today Jim!

Happy Birthday Jim 🙂

Happy Birthday Dad!

March 19, 2013

My dad was born in 1935. That was so long ago that no one can remember it. Luckily we have a giant repository of all the information everyone has forgotten, so I took a drive down the information superhighway and discovered this list of other notable events from 1935:

– Helicopters, fluorescent lightbulbs, parking meters, paperback books and radar were all invented
– Amelia Earhart made her solo flight across the pacific
– Persia was renamed Iran (and yet I still have students referring to themselves as ‘Persian’)
– Canned beer first went on sale (in the US)
– Monopoly was released
– Julie Andrews, Woody Allen, Elvis Presley and the Dalai Llama were born
– (Perhaps most notably, considering the topic of this post) The Luftwaffe was created and German began rearmament after WWI 😉

OMG, a good year! I wonder how old dad was before he saw his first parking meter?

Happy 78th Birthday Dad!

Tanked

March 18, 2013

I wanted to remember what it was like to build a (non Gundam) model kit, so recently bought myself this:

Here’s what was inside:

Given I had built only Gundams for the last 2 decades, my first thought was “Do I still need glue?”. The answer was yes!

There’s the chassis with wheels attached. I’d done a poor job, since the glue I’d bought was crap and the instructions left a lot to be desired. For instance, should the wheels turn?

It wasn’t until I got to the next section that things became much more difficult…

Those ladder rungs, glued on so obviously poorly in the above shot, were typical of many pieces that required pinpoint precision to attach accurately. Again, the instructions could have been clearer. Again, my glue could have actually worked!

Case in point above: see how the wheel is separating even though the glue had been drying for two hours!! (This was exacerbated by the too-much tension in the tread.)

Anyway after considerable frustration, the near-finished product:

And the actually finished version, after the exercise in frustration that was decal application (turned into a comedy of errors since I had a phone chat with SFL after putting the decal sheet in water!):

Actually looks decent, doesn’t it?

So where is this fierce scale model tank right now? Moments after the above shot was made… I broke it and tossed the pieces in the garbage 🙂