[unofficial weekender] Books!

[sundancer 44279xp 1]

Monday morning. Nice book recommendations.

One thing I noticed and I have zero explanation for:

Me, reading any kind of book in German is fine.

Me, reading books in English: my brain goes into sleepy mode almost instantly. I read the last pages of “Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld” by Paul Kidby and the first paragraphs of “Talking Miniatures” and almost fell asleep.

oO

[blinky465 17208xp 0]

Is it because reading in a second language is more “work”?
When we lived in France, I used to love completing french Logic Puzzles books (les énigmes logiques).
But I found having to check and double-check my understanding meant I often read things four or five times.
A few times I completely messed up a puzzle because I’d read a clue as something like “Pascal has a red car” instead of “Pascal does not have a red car”. Subtlety in written work is difficult enough to detect sometimes; doing it in a second language is maybe just a lot of work? Kudos to all our multi-lingual friends who bear with us and our irrational, confusing language!

[sundancer 44279xp 0]

That surely adds but I think it’s more the fact that I read those books as a form of hobby, spare time, relaxation thing. And my body seems to think “Oh, we got some us time? SHUTDOWN -hP NOW”

But then again, when I read stories to my daughter when she was 3 or 4 I also fell asleep reading XD

[limburger 22375xp 0]

nah, that’s just you getting older 😉

OTOH … I remember trying to read one of Gibsons’ books. (I think ‘Neuromancer’ ?)
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
Say what?

I think it depends on how flowery/poetic/alien the language used is that makes it difficult to read.
Which is probably why I doubt I could ever like any GW novels. That need to have odd names and cryptic words for no reason at all just feels silly and awkward instead of interesting.

It might explain why I love listening to the Forever-series. As whenever the main character is introduced to some complicated technobabble or an alien species with a tricky name he is likely to go “Hell nah … I’m going to call you [insert stupid simple name]”.

That reminds me that I may have to listen to a point in the story again where he ends up in a machine that has a ridiculously silly acronym and not until everything goes pear shaped do we realise it was a real moment of ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’.

When listening to audiobooks I definitely have moments where I seem to stop listening and just go into dream state.

 

[zoidpinhead 12797xp 1]

1st of the month so updates are due in various places.  I finished the Epic Celt cavalry who you can see here.  For your delectation here my latest progress putting 28mm Persians together.  Kardakes (Wargames Atlantic and Victrix):

I’ve got some militia/sparabara to do now and that’s the Persians getting pretty close to fully built.  Unless I crack and get another couple of elephants, leader sets and some skirmishers from A&A, and possibly some more skirmishers from the recent release by Foundry.  More is always better though, right?

[danlee 22823xp 3]

Got the cycle four aeon trespass: odyssey primordials painted. Just some simple contrast paint colour schemes to get them ready for playing the game.

 

Dan’s 2025 Side Projects

 

[sundancer 44279xp 0]

you’re all painting monsters!

Just like that it’s Wednesday. During office hours the time crawls but the days just woooosh bye.

I don’t like that.

[zoidpinhead 12797xp 1]

I spent the UHH and last evening sticking Persians together.  Effort rewarded with this:

Sparabara at the front and archers behind, or combined into a militia unit for an Achemenid force.  A mixture of bodies, mostly Victrix with some Wargames Atlantic and a couple of metal Black Tree Designs.  Spear arms are a total mish mash as I was running out so there are Gripping Beast and Wargames Factory bits alongside the ones from the main manufacturers.  I’m happy they are finished.  Samnites are getting cobbled together now but that might be enough Ancients for a while.  I might move on to A War Transformed next.

[limburger 22375xp 0]

Thursday has come and gone in a flash it seems.

I’m home now and it feels like I must have been at the office too as I remember riding my bike today.
Weird …

I think I had a really bad sleep yesterday. Time for an early bed today, because I wanna hobby in the weekend.
(and I still need to do some 1:1 scale terrain construction)

[blinky465 17208xp 1]

1:1 is the best scale for terrain work!

[sundancer 44279xp 0]

1:1 is the best scale for terrain work!

Especially if it’s intended for long term use!

 

It’s Friday!

[blinky465 17208xp 0]

Well Friday just rolled in and no sooner had I blinked and it rolled back out again.
Fridays are great because I means I go for an early finish so I can pop into town and do some tufting!

I’m making a hearth rug, ready for the winter (when we get to light the fire and make it all cosy in the living room).
I asked various kids in the family to provide me with some artwork for the rug and the 9-year-old twins Aoibhinn and Orlaith drew fruit and a panda, 10-year-old Aoife drew a massive strawberry and 13-year-old Elvis some weird cartoon character (that apparently is quite popular, where he lives in Sicily).

I asked if they wanted to come up with something a bit more cohesive, between them, and they insisted no – I had to create a rug using the artwork they had each individually drawn and provided. So that’s what I’m doing.

Progress so far….

This is actually the back of the rug (you “tuft” from the reverse side) and it’s taken me four sessions of two hours to get this far!
Hopefully another two and it should be done and ready. The view from the front is less impressive until the entire thing is done, because the pile doesn’t stand up as it should, so the edges look a bit blurry

The hardest job was not correcting the mistakes in the drawings! I had to work really hard to keep the pictures exactly as the kids had drawn them. But it’s coming along nicely – and is going to look awesome in my living room once done! It’s about 1.6m x 60cm in size – so will be covering a decent chunk of floor space when it’s down!

 

[sundancer 44279xp 0]

There are no mistakes in children’s paintings! It’s true art!

 

Speaking of art: NEW THREAD

 

[unofficial weekender] Art!

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