Thinking Outside the Box

Canada Prepares For Crackdown on BitTorrent Movie Pirates -  http://www.globalnews.ca/pages/story.aspx?id=6442761468 Have a read over the article and see what you think. I'll wait. Right, welcome back...I promise I'll be brief. While I agree that downloading music and movies is illegal, what I don't agree with is ISPs being essentially forced to provide their clients personal information to seemingly whoever asks for it. I don't know the legality of it, but it seems to me that the whole policy could be abused should it be overseen by the wrong people, or perhaps seen just as a way to prop up sagging revenues. Does the whole thing violate any of the service providers own privacy policies? What about any constitutional rights or laws? What constitutes 'downloading'? Is streaming OK? Is an IP address alone enough to convict someone on? Drop a comment below and let me know what you  think!

For the last few weeks I've been trying to decrease the number of items on my painting table, without a lot of success. That's probably because I keep adding more stuff to the backlog than I actually clear off! I've got several pieces of scenery and markers, a 'hero' model for SuperSystem which will also serve in my Nazi Death Cult for Kulten , plus the Lycaon and Vampire starter boxes for Empire of the Dead sitting up there. There are also a ton of primed figures-in-waiting up on top of the fridge (to keep them out of reach from both the cat and curious little-people fingers). Sunday turned out to be a lazy sleep-in-then-stay-home day, which was pretty nice as they don't seem to happen terribly often. I did a few things around the house that required doing, watched some TV and then continued work on a few things from the miniature projects to-do list. As you may have seen in my previous post I also received a large batch of stuff for a  Stargate  ...

Another box full of unpainted metal goodness showed up at the post office for me yesterday. After getting it home and dumping it all on the table (then cleaning up the resultant mess of green packing peanuts) here's what I found. What you see there is an assortment of the officially-produced 28mm Stargate miniatures by Phoenix Icons in (or around) 2007 or 2008. I ordered them from Cold War Miniatures in the UK and they arrived two weeks to the day after. They had quick service, nicely packed and shipped, and there was also a friendly little handwritten note inside saying thanks. In case you can't tell by looking at the full-size image here's a run down of what I picked up: 2x Stargate & DHD 1x Jaffa First Prime 2x Skull-capped Jaffa 4-pack 2x Serpent Guard Jaffa 4-pack 2x Hawk Guard Jaffa 4-pack 2x Jaffa Heavy Cannon w/ gunner 1x SG-1 Team (O'Neill, Teal'c, Jackson, Carter and Mitchell) 1x SG-9 Team (5 generic SGC dudes armed w/ P90s) In...

Spent some time this week out and about...gittin' me sum culture! Well, CULTURE depends on your opinion on the matter I suppose. Sunday night Wes and I headed down to the Palomino Smokehouse to catch Jim Byrnes play some old-time blues and country tunes. I've had the good fortune of seeing Jim play a few times before (which I believe I wrote about on this very blog). The crowd was pretty thin, which was disappointing to me, but didn't seem to phase Jim at all. His regular partner Steve Dawson wasn't able to join him, but the fellow he brought along to help out was no slouch either! In between sets I made sure to go pick up a copy of Jim's new CD, I Hear The Wind in the Wires , chat with him for a few minutes and get a signature. The show was really entertaining and both Wes and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You can easily see just how much Jim loves what he does when he's on stage, because he's smiling the whole time. I haven't had a chance to sit down w...

I've always been the kind of person who has too many things on the go. Or at least that's what people often tell me, wondering how I can ever keep it all straight, or finish anything. The truth is that, for me, I need to have all those things happening so that I can keep myself entertained. I almost wrote focused  instead of entertained, but even I'm not so self-deluded to think that I possess much in the way of focus when it comes to my hobbies. Obsessive perhaps, but not focused. You see, I know I have too many hobbies and the reality is that I don't have time for all of them. Nowhere near really, but that's part of the appeal. For some reason, the way my brain is wired, I will zero in on some activity or concept for a length of time, produce some interesting or cool stuff (yep, aren't I modest), and then move on to something else. For the past 6~7 months I've been pretty firmly rooted in working on miniatures and terrain building. However, I regularl...

Last week Uncle Mike and James made their regular monthly visit to Trilogy , despite the awful weather we were having. I was the only player to show up (which is not unusual), so we ran through a few play test games of Kulten . I was playing with an unpainted army, and these are play test games, so there are no photos...sorry folks. The first game was a "chance encounter" between my Nazi Death Cult and James' Cobra troopers. I rolled five of my cultists onto the table and James got a measly three. A few bad moves by me allowed James to take out three of my figures, dropping me to below 50% of my starting members and won him the game. In the post-game phase I was able to roll up skills on both of my surviving cultists, which worked out really well for me, and I didn't end up with any lasting or terrible injuries to worry about. Just a note however, that James' Cobra army/cult is really cool looking. He's done a great job converting all kinds of stuff, ...

I recently picked up two new additions for my gaming shelf and had a chance to try both games out yesterday. The first one is Eaten By Zombies: In Cahoots! . This is a stand-alone box with enough cards to be played as a two-player game, or added in to the core game to expand it up to six players. We played it on its own with two players. The artwork and card design is the same level and quality as the base game. Thematic, lots of colours and nicely done overall. Unfortunately, also like the base game, In Cahoots!  still suffers from rampant spelling, grammar and general editing errors; both in the card text and the included rule sheet. In fact, there is one error on the rule sheet that is SO bad that a new player to the game would end up playing a fight scenario completely wrong. There is also one instance in the rule sheet where the name of the game itself is spelled incorrectly. This kind of poor quality control really shows a lack of care and I personally find it extre...

Now I do have to admit that I've strayed a little bit (fine...a LOT) since I put out my "What Should I Paint Next?" survey a few months ago, but I haven't forgotten about the  Pulp City  starter boxes that were chosen by my readers. Yep, that's right...thanks to all three of you out there that voted! When I received all my Pulp City figures (and rule book) I was really excited. It was a huge box of toys and the price had been a really, really good deal from a fellow over on Lead Adventure Forums . Unfortunately after going through all the figures I found an even dozen of the models that were supposed to be included were not. The cards for the figures were evidence of that. I was told several times that they had been shipped but as of my last inquiry, over a month ago now, I haven't received anything, nor a response to my email. It's a real shame because Nate seemed like a nice guy. However at this point I feel like something not-quite-right went on a...

Nov 2,  1922 From: Carl Selinger, Commanding Field Agent To: Director Silver, Calgary Field Office RE: Case File SA-121031-tDD Director, All Hallows' Eve conjures up image of ghouls and demons, or dark supernatural forces for most folk. While they are right to be afraid of those things, I'm happy to say that the world is safe little while longer. Threshold intelligence reports proved correct. As we had suspected a leak from our recent difficulty in keeping our ciphers secure, the false report that we tendered paid off and my team was able to follow the trail. The artifacts that were stolen during our operation on case file SA-120816-RtA were indeed being used to power a nefarious doomsday device. Our adversaries were obviously hoping to go unnoticed, but vague reports of heavy vehicles and strange sounds from the locals helped us pinpoint a forested area west of Calgary near the hamlet of Cremona, Alta. As twilight began to take hold my team found this ...