Theft and Footnotes

The first political log entry in months and the email is coming in... good to be read. I should have noted in my entry on my father's work that he had noted the status of his books on Marxism. It wasn't a reflective judgment on my part.

An interesting footnote, through my travels in the US, I have found myself at a number of public libraries. Typically using the free internet facilities, but occasionally also reading and enjoying the musty book smell which is universally calming (for me at least). Through my searches in San Fran, San Jose, Chicago and New York public libraries, my father's Marxist texts have always been reported stolen. If this isn't a perfect indicator for a good Marxist text, I don't know what is...

ApeScriptin'

I have put the first of a series of reflective notes on ApeScript online;

http://www.nobleape.com/script/

I don't know the frequency of the updates. When I write another one, I will establish a proper index. For the time being, it seems a little dramatic to have an index linking to a single document.

In other news, Malek is back on email.

Good morning.

I've exchanged a couple of really nice emails with Hugo Pritchard at GW's Legal Group on the White Dwarf 310 article on counterfeit figures. My feedback was that this information should go online with example images and should also contain information on lead rot relating to counterfeit figures.

I found an informative article on lead rot online this morning.

Good morning.

Watching the Apple doco on Bob Dylan on PBS. It's a strange thing watching documentaries on 1960s musicians. Particularly ones I listened to as a child. I own a number of Bob Dylan's early records. His first album of delta blues is a favourite.

As Michele would say, I have quite a bit of animosity to the generation of the popular sixties. Perhaps because I live as a child in their final world. When I was 19, I wrote a short book - a treatise - called When the Flowers Died. The outcome of the book was that the popular sixties achieved nothing, in fact it was a digressive movement in terms of the apparent philosophies of the movement. What emerged from the popular sixties was forty years of punishment for those that agreed with the philosophy.

Now we have these documentaries of old men and women talking about how great this time was. The un-accessible time.

I've had a number of nice conversations in recent weeks with my father about the death of ideology. He wrote a few Marxist books in the 1980s and these are now not even in reprint because they aren't part of any current sociological study.

Good night.

Figure Fear

My issue of White Dwarf 310 arrived today. There was a solid page article on counterfeit miniatures. Like any old figure collector, counterfeiting fills me with dread. Particularly as you pay considerably assuming what you are buying is the genuine article. The article did make me rethink my practice of selling on what I don't need from large lots. The last two points from the article seem to eliminate eBay as a safe mode of buying and selling-on old figures;

If someone has large numbers of older models for sale - be wary, he or she may be a counterfeiter. Genuine old Citadel miniatures are hard to come by in quantity.

Accordingly, you should avoid buying cheap or old models without first ascertaining whether they are the genuine product, because you may well be being duped!

My experiences from buying large old army lots on eBay has come through mothers or aunts clearing out their male relation's collections. This could easily be a story. Similarly eBay does not keep records of sale older than six months. My email keeps the record, but who can be bothered with the hassle of going back through email trying to track which figures came from a particular auction and a particular person. It seems best to follow the article through and just not buy or sell old figures through eBay.

In the end, the genuine collector suffers in this kind of climate. For me, I feel my collection was relatively complete when I left the UK. My eBay sales now are of paper GW items and the final letter certified Imperial Guard army... which may not make the reserve by the looks of things.

Script Notes

I have been writing a number of sample ApeScript programs over the past few weeks with some notes. I wanted to put them online in the next couple of days as a series of tutorial documents. I'm hoping to add to these documents progressively to get a coherent resource of ApeScript information together.

More information soon!

Good afternoon.

Finally, photos are starting to appear online of my man, Kirill Kanaev (aka Kirill Kanaeu)'s, Golden Demon winning Landraider. I was starting to think I would never see the snaps from the limited coverage of Games Day 2005 online.

In other news, ApeScript is finally hotting up with some good discussion on the mailing list.

I chatted with my man, Loe Pesci today about my philosophy of minimal inventory and how WeFunk Radio should get Montreal cats international A&R contact.

Good night.