Mixed feelings around hockey about holding NHL draft early

 Digging through a box of figures yesterday I found an old Grenadier Orc that I had painted back in 1986 or so. Well, I thought time to draft you into the army my son!
It was only when I brought him down stairs to the painting table I realised I had bought some orcs from EBay that matched him exactly. In fact I think the sculpt had been cut up to create the other as from the head down to the belt were identical. Well not being one to break up a family, this lot will be based together on the same base. The range is an old Grenadier box set I think.

 I will rebase him, but I did have to stop and take a trip down memory lane as I studied his base. Back then rather than painting hordes of figures, I would spend hours on just one. This one is based on a piece of cardboard cut from an art pad. Polly filler was then used for the grass and pricked with a needle to create grass, then painted. Boy, now I just wash and go with new improved ground mix from Luke’s APS.
I used to spend hours and days on just one character at a time, glad to say those days are long behind me but it was quite moving looking at the way I used to work as a teenager.

Experimenting with different techniques with this second batch. The strong tone brown is quite dark so is great for clothes but I feel some areas of the mini need a stronger contrast. So with this second group I gave their muskets a wash of black. Also their equipment is very dark too so while I had the ink on the brush I tried on their blue uniforms and a little on their faces. Watching a lot of references and from my own re-enactments, I know the black power gets all over the face with biting cartridges etc, so a bit of black contrast on the face wouldn’t go a miss.

This extra shade on the face did bring out the expressions and characters of the figures a lot more. Again, really quick to do and gave another level of detail to the mini. I will compare the two batches at the end and see which I prefer.

I’m finding that painting them in little strips of five or six minis is actually really fun and gives a much more instant and rewarding experience.

As I paint these guys I try to use the brush in such a way that I leave areas of black undercoat still showing in the recesses. This should help the should help the shading later with the brown tone.

There is one more technique I would like to try on a third batch, using two tones of Army Painter at the same time. A black Dark tone for the equipment/uniform areas and a Strong tone for the trousers etc.

Readers of Language Log will certainly be aware of Tocharian, but when I began my international research project on the Tarim Basin mummies in 1991, very few people — only a tiny handful of esoteric researchers — had ever heard of the Tocharians and their language since they went extinct more than a millennium ago, […]

Today's xkcd: Mouseover title: "DOWNSIDES: Adobe people may periodically email your newsroom to ask you to call it an 'Adobe® PDF document,' but they'll reverse course once they learn how sarcastically you can pronounce the registered trademark symbol." My own pet peeve, speaking of how normal humans choose to communicate, is people who send an […]

Hi all my friends, I was really looking forward to Olice Hush’s party today in the Palace.  I got all changed into my new fire dress and then the Darkness hit without any warning.  I couldn’t get out of my room, on my computer screen it said server failed and all sorts of other things happened to […]

Note: Written and illustrated months before, well, everything happened.

One of the people that I'm subscribed to on YouTube a while back did a tribute video to this song by My Darkest Days to the new Robin Hood movie starring Russell Crowe. I thought this song would be a perfect match to the Mad Max trilogy

Posting videos on YouTube can be a great way to show off your video editing skills, post video blogs, or even your own mini series. Because YouTube is the largest video sharing site it’s also a great way to promote products, or your website to thousands new potential viewers. But what happens when you post a video and it’s either slapped with a copyright infringement or banned all together, and what are the consequences to your account?

Look at enough blogs or websites and you’ve probably ran into a display on their homepage showing their viewers their Alexa and Google Page Rank. But what exactly do these ranks mean and what can they do to help get your site noticed on the web. Here’s a basic description of what these two tools do

If you have an Adsense account you’ve probably heard some of the horror stories about people having their Adsense account banned, their earnings held by Google, and being basically left out in the cold with no revenue coming into their site. And while it can happen without warning (Google is notorious for making policy changes and not notifying anyone or always offering a clear explanation) most of the time it’s the fault of the owner of the site. This is either because they didn’t take the time to terms of service and had their Adsense account banned. Or they got caught trying to cheat the system and as a result have a banned Adsense account.

Perhaps you didn’t read Google’s terms of service, or you tried to get others to click on your ads. Either way your Google Adsense account has been disabled and you either got a nice little email telling you this or you can’t log onto Adsense at all. You’ve probably heard of many horror stories on blogs, forums, or on YouTube telling about how they were banned by Adsense, their earnings now held by Google, and their stuck with no income from their site. If this has happened to you there are some things you can do to try and reinstate your banned Adsense account. I can’t make any promises that you’ll get your account back, but these are some things you can try.

So you’ve created your website, now all you have to is launch it and just sit back and let the hordes of traffic come to you………right? Wrong just because you slapped a few pages together doesn’t mean your website is ready for the world. There are some very important things to do before you launch your website to give it the best possible chance. Using a pre-launch checklist before you launch your website is your opportunity to fix any problems and add any last minute changes before that all important launch. In this post I’ll give you a list of what to do before you launch your website...........

Falling down is the tale of Bill Foster (played by Michael Douglas) a.k.a D-FENS which is his license plate. A guy who isn’t having a very good time. He lost his wife, his home, his daughter, and his job at a defence plant.............

Outbound linking it seems to go against the grain to get your site noticed. You’ve probably heard over and over again about the importance of having high quality back links pointing to your site, these links help boost your search ranking, page rank, and hopefully get you some more traffic. Outbound linking you would think would be the opposite of that. It turns out though that outbound links are good for you. Having quality outbound links can have some big benefits to your website or blog...................

If you use some type of analytics to monitor your websites performance you’ve probably seen its bounce rate. So what is bounce rate exactly? It can be defined in a couple of different ways; it can either be an indicator to the number of visitors who view only one page of your site and leave. Or the number of visitors who leave your site after a short amount of time (usually only a couple of seconds)............

Google Adsense it’s usually the first place people go who want to monetize their websites and blogs with the hope those Adsense earnings will net them some big cash. Normally these ads will be matched to your site based on the content and browsing history of the people visiting your site. The goal is to tailor make ads that will hopefully be appealing for people to click on......................

Like Minecraft but looking for something a little different? Recently PC Gamer briefly reviewed a new game called Blockade Runner (Click here to see the PC Gamer review) essentially bringing something like Minecraft into space. Players currently are able to build their own spaceships, or space stations from scratch in much the same way Minecraft’s creative mode works, but in zero g. Unlike Minecraft however (unless your using a mod) you can attach different weapons to your creations and fly them around, blasting other ships and asteroids to pieces........................

1. Coronavirus found in sperm after men’s recovery, research finds  7NEWS.com.au
2. New study finds coronavirus in semen  Body and Soul
3. Urgent Warning For Covid-19 Patients After Virus Found In Semen Of Some Recovered Men  10 daily
4. Coronavirus Has Apparently Been Detected In Semen  Rolling Stone
5. Coronavirus Has Been Detected in Semen, So What Does That Mean for Sex?  Prevention.com
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1. AOC insists opportunity knocks for Australia's 2032 Olympic bid  Sydney Morning Herald
2. Tokyo Olympics could be the greatest ever after the coronavirus pandemic, says AOC president John Coates  ABC News
3. Sport boss claims hosting the Olympics could pull Australia out of a post-coronavirus recession  Daily Mail
4. AOC CEO looking at great sporting decade  7NEWS.com.au
5. Channel 7 sweats as Olympics plans still up in the air for 2021  Herald Sun
6. View Full coverage on Google News

Playing to 130,000 online, with a virtual tip jar: Performers adapt to life under coronavirus  ABC News

We rank the 20 best Australian TV characters of all time  Herald Sun

1. Readers respond to the COVIDSafe app's launch  Sydney Morning Herald
2. Australian Gov releases source code for CovidSafe app as promised  techAU
3. Government's lack of honesty on virus app is a problem  The New Daily
4. What You Should Know About COVIDSafe's Issues And Bluetooth-Related Risks  Gizmodo Australia
5. Covidsafe app: how to download Australia’s coronavirus contact tracing app, how it works, what it does and problems  The Guardian
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Dodging the flu shot doesn't make you an anti-vaxxer, says union  The Age
2. Shop owners in virus-free towns plead to reopen  The Age
3. UFC 249 preview - Ferguson v Gaethje, Cejudo v Cruz and…  BT Sport
4. Why the best team won't win in a year that will be mental as anything  Sydney Morning Herald
5. Wellbeing hit: modelling reveals huge cost of school closures  Sydney Morning Herald
6. View Full coverage on Google News

Unpacking the Wuhan connection to Victoria's biggest COVID-19 cluster  The AgeView Full coverage on Google News

1. Barbaro family makes emotional plea as manhunt continues following death of Melbourne mum  9News
2. Ellie Price’s murder investigation ramps up as police from three states unite in manhunt for Ricardo Barbaro  7NEWS.com.au
3. 'Please come forward': Fugitive's step mum pleads for Ricardo Barbaro to make contact  The Age
4. Ricardo Barbaro’s stepmother pleads ‘please come forward’ as police continue manhunt  NEWS.com.au
5. Fugitive suspected of murdering Ellie Price, 26, in Melbourne had just got out of jail  Daily Mail
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A hedge fund manager in Hong Kong has publicly apologised after a parody video of him licking his finger and wiping it on a hand rail in a metro car went viral, sparking anger in the city which is grappling to contain an outbreak of the new coronavirus.

(This March 17 story corrects stock symbol of Zoom to ZM.O, not ZOOM.PK in the last paragraph)

I’ve had some inquiries lately about variegated floss that can be used for embroidered items that will be regularly laundered. …

The 'Curtain of Distraction' is well known at Arizona State University as a hilarious sports tactic. This time Michael Phelps came out Magic Mike style to prevent a few free throws. Just look at those sweet moves, the opposing team was bound to miss. 

Frank Lee designed this gigantic version of Tetris for Philly Tech Week 2014 in Pennsylvania.

Remember all the details about the periodic table from high school chemistry?  Yeah, me neither.  Don’t worry – we will get through this together. Let’s…

The Deepwater Horizon disaster released approximately 4 million barrels of oil from the Macondo Wellhead over the course of 87 days in 2010.  Thus, becoming…