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Sunday, 11:59 am, 29 August 2004 I sometimes wonder, putting the Log online, if it portrays a false image of who I am. The main visual aids for the Log are Fred Reed images. Actually without the images, a large portion of the Log relates to fantasy/medieval related discussions. But I wouldn't have thought of myself too much in that light. Yesterday, I went to a craft fair with my wife and by chance there was a medieval weapons display. It seemed rather alien to me. The last time I had seen a weapons display was when I was about 6 or 7 at CanCon in Australia. The start of my childhood interest in toy soldiers.  The first thing that struck me was that recreationists probably falsely represented the kinds of folk that were knights. I imagine knights to be the elite boys' school rugby player types. Instead the recreationists looked like medieval hobbyists. Their display was more comical than factual. Although the portly knight was particularly violent and thus won the 'tournament'. It was strange seeing knights in a human size though. The noise made by two of them fighting echoed on the horizon. It makes me wonder how many more would have sounded. The one thing the UK is very good at is providing stuff to watch whilst offering craft stalls for others. Good morning. Friday, 08:33 pm, 27 August 2004 Working through the needed fixes for Noble Warfare and a new GPI version. The GPI needs a good dusting off. Anyone reading the log for the first time may think this is the Fred Reed fan club. Not too wrong. Another couple of stunning Fred Reed paint jobs for the weekend.   A new figure and some old figures. The grey rock is an old favourite Fred hasn't photographed until now. It always works well. Good night. Thursday, 08:45 pm, 26 August 2004 New Warhammer 40k Rulebook I got an email from Chris Blair earlier in the week about some figures he painted for the new Warhammer 40k rulebook. My copy of the rulebook arrived today. One of the benefits of supporting independent retailers like my man, Nick Umanski, is that you can beat release dates by a couple of days. The new rulebook is an interesting change to the previous addition. I was expecting more figures and more colour pages. But it is a progressive mix of the best bits of the first edition - Rogue Trader, the third edition and some new works. The colour is not evenly spaced, but it does accent how attainable a reasonable army should be, in terms of painting and construction. In all, I think the new edition is a logical progression. It seems a little lightweight on the rules, when compared with the third edition. I'm not sure if it is reduced or if it appears to be reduced. Battle Building I like creating command line tools. It seems strange that I am totally against command line tool traditions. But I like writing automated applications and anything that compiles or builds information. Stability. Memory use issues. These seem to be central themes. I am currently designing a tool for compiling battles. It is an interesting problem. At one end, there is the input specification. That is the format Noble Warfare 'reads'. Imagine there are two armies coming together. These are assembled into a single battle file. But this file could be made of a number of smaller files. If you were creating an army to play with your friend, you would set your army out in a singular case. So you would create an army facing 'forwards' going up against the mock enemy. Now the battle building utility needs to have some idea of rotation and space. In the simplest case, I am thinking just two options facing forwards or a 180 degree rotation with a reversal and advance of coordinates. The file format Noble Warfare reads already incorporates some inheritance. For example, you describe types of units and then describe the location of the units. So putting these two ideas together is the current problem. The documentation on the Noble Warfare site is dropping back a little bit. I might do an update in the next couple of weeks. The main writing over the next few days is the Mailout. I have written three sections already but the final edit always produces cuts and additions. Good night. Tuesday, 09:42 pm, 24 August 2004 Back from a two day magical mystery tour of the south of the UK stopping in Leicester. The trip could have been subtitled - No Sleep Til Wilmslow. The UK has a real problem with 'soft'. No 'soft' toothbrushes and no 'soft' beds in hotels. The first bed was so comically hard, that punching the floor vs punching the bed indicated the bed had less give. The second night, the bed was hard, but just bearable. We found that hard beds produced strange dreams. The first night I had long conversations with people I hadn't seen for at least two years. In some cases ten. The second night, the coherent dream was building the barricades between Castro's Cuba and the US army base. Set in the 1950s, it was a surreal dream. Home at last. With another classic set of Fred Reeds.  Incidentally, if you are interested in commission work from Fred, click one of the images on the Noble Warfare site and it will give you Fred's contact details. Good night. Thursday, 08:46 pm, 19 August 2004 Some More Classics... Some of these Chaos Renegades are sculpted by Kev Adams, others by Mike Perry. But some of my favourite figures, uniformly painted by Fred Reed. Something good for the lead up to the weekend...   Good night. [ Previous Log ]
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