Back! with a whimper

yeah...i know i've been missing for sometime now. Not really beacuse of busy Mikey... but more of no internet connection. As most of my friends know, i access the net from the office. Well, we just moved office to bukit bintang (yay! near ALL the toy shops!) and apparently, Telekoms take 10 days to reconnect our previous Streamyx connection.

But they did give us an option of applying for a new broadband line and according to them, connection will be done faster. What a wonderful marketing plan!! well, wait till my buddies in Telekom hear about this!

Anyways..the days have been spent on preparing for Christmas, doing up our tree (yay!), entertaining friends and family. Made my signature chilli again but this time i wasn't so satisfied with the results. Apart from that it has been unpacking and getting adjusted to the new office etc etc..

The internet is still out in the office, i'm doing this from starbucks (as usual). No updates on the Desert Zaku Project yet. Last thing i did was to prime and future the head assembly. Its sitting there on my shoe cabinet, gathering dust (oh crap! more work to do when i get it started again!)

Got 2 nice books from wifey for christmas... if you know anything about my reading speed, i'm about to finish the second book in 2 days. But meanwhile I have something to read, snagged "Rogue Warrior" by Richard Marcinko. This guy is the founder of US Navy Seal Team 6.. the so called "non existant team" Anyways, for a list of what i'm currently reading, take a gander at me sidebar.

So, till i get another chance to update this blog, have a happy and safe new year. Have fun and i'll smell ya later!

Adsense

ah yes.. the lure of money .. i signed up for adsense couple of days back.. so do me a favour, click on them ads on the top of the post so i can get some cash for the garbage i put out daily... alternatively, you can put one on your blog too and get me to click it! at the moment i'm only willing to do this for all the blogs listed under "my buddies" ... anyone else, please email me..

Haloscan

yep.. got meself one of those comment systems.. but i lost all my comments prior to this! (not like there were many anyways. Guess good 'ol crash is gonna get a shock when he gets back from penang! :p

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Sale time again

YES! the year end sales are back! feel like sneaking to sogo (jap shopping complex near my workplace) to look at some more Gundam kits. That 1/144 HGUC Hazel RX121-1 TR-1 looks REALLY nice!Look at this baby!



*sigh* its about RM 70+ (around USD 20). This is part of the series of figures that have been burning the boards at Child of Mecha and other Gundam building boards. Its part of the "Advance of Zeta" Spin off from Zeta Gundam and has really nice looking mecha from that series. Hobby link Japan has this to say about this kit ( look at the picture lah):

""Very nice high grade injection plastic model of the Gundam TR-1, "Hazel Custom", from "Advance of Z(eta)". Molded in colour and featuring snap-fit assembly for ease of building, it comes with foil stickers and clear "Gundam Stickers" for detail (markings for the "Titans Test Team"). A special 35-page "Advance of Z Guide Book", with a black-and-white manga story inside, is also included (all text is in Japanese).""

with a manga book even! i've seen very nice custom decals for this kit and other related ones. Most of them center around the Titans Test Team (go see the anime for more on the Titans. Nope, haven't seen the anime yet, still trying to finish Wing and SEED Destiny) Even Dengenki Magazine has gotten into the act and has done some nice resin Models (i haven't touched resin kits yet..as it is, i'm having trouble with plastic styrene ones!) here's a few pics of the decals form the Advance Hazel + Dengenki Hobby kits :



and one more (thanks to muji from the Child of Mecha Boards for the pictures!)



nice aren't they? too bad they're stickers! yep, not decals, stickers... i hate stickers on my mecha! All this being said, while i'll never have a chance to afford the resin kits, i will have the cash for the Bandai Styrene one but... its 1/144 scaled.. small... not really something i prefer but lets see how it goes when i'm standing right in front of the kit.. hopefully i don't get overwhelmed by my buying impulse! GAH!.. maybe i might change my mind and get that SEED 1/100 Strike kit instead.. been wanting to do one posed with just the "Armor Schneider" combat knives... hmmm... later.. i have more meetings to attend

Desert Zaku Update : 12 December 2005

hmm...unfortunately, i've been too busy/tired to take pictures of what happened lately with the project (remember the disaster?) well, not too much a disaster but here's what happened:

I sprayed the forearm assemblies with the german grey lacquer (thanks a lot Tamiya!) and let that dry for about 2 days. Then i attempted to glue them with my spanking new Thin Cement courtesy again, from Tamiya (you would think they should give me something for plugging them throughout this blog...fat chance! only 5-6 ppl ever read this blog anyways.. :p) then, the unthinkable happened... the paint came right off with the cement brush!

I was horrified! at the spur of the moment, my fire-fighting instinct kicked in and i started gluing the shoulder assemblies without painting them. But i stopped and had a long hard think about the whole thing. I finally decided to do this:

1. Continue painting and then cementing part that can't be pre-built and painted. The only thing different is, i'm adding a thin layer of Future (God bless the man who invented it!) ... i've done that with the other forearm assembly but it still needs another day for curing before I cement it so stay tuned for results of those experiments..

2. For parts that can be pre-bulit, well, as long it doesn't require masking, i'll leave those to dry, sand them and then paint them later.

I'm not going to rush the whole process, funny thing happened the other day, while i was in the state of shock about what happened with the gule lifting the paint, wifey who was seated next to me looked over and remarked, "so what are you doing now with that?"

I replied by detailing the whole process of priming, cementing, sanding, assemblying and laying on the final colour. Then I described the last bits of detailing. She asked how long all this will take. I said I would probably finish by march or april. She had only 1 thing to say: "Wah.. you got so much of time on your hands ah?"

'Nuff said...

Dunderhead moment

grr..blogger is slow today...

Anyways, yes, after 2 days of training and travelling to Cyberjaya, i happily drove to the office only to discover... I didn't bring the power supply for my Notebook!!! my battery died long ago and i ain't shelling out RM 500 for a new one so i drove all the way back to serdang and back to office.. total time wasted on the road: 1.5 hours.

Not to mention the 8 bucks i had to pay for parking... and i have dinner at my parents place today... *moan* looks like the beginnings of a very bad day...

what's that i hear you ask? oh ...whats happening to the desert zaku project? small disaster but i want to take some pictures to show the boo boo..tomorrow, if i still have the strength to photograph them tonight....laterzz

Time Out

Yep... no updates for the next few days.. i'm in a branding training. In Cyberjaya. Updating this from a public terminal in the MSC headquarters.. damn.. IE is so lame.. Stay tuned tho, cos in 2 days there'll be more updates..looks like the desert zaku project has run into its first run of problems *cue impending doom & disaster music*

bye

Desert Zaku: Dec 1 In-Prog - mini update

ok, got the extra thin cement! RM 22.90(about 7 usd), no discount! grr..

Desert Zaku Update: December 1

ok...got down to skewering and a bit of paintin last night. so far i got both forearm assemblies done. But since i'm am absolutely inexperienced with the can o' spraypaint, i think i overdid some parts a little bit. as a result, some parts now have a tiny bead of extra paint on them.. hmm..let me see if i can sand out those parts and retouch them. Anyways, here's a picture



Heh, the german grey went on so nicely. Since i'm off to the bank at lunch, i guess i can stop by the model shop for some cement. hope they have some extra thin tamiya cement..that will save so much of time & effort! I've left the parts to dry off for at least 48 hours before i start on the next batch... must say, painting is fun! The REAL fun will start when i start putting on the dark yellow...I'll worry about that when that time comes...