After the Lord Mayor's Holiday

After my Sojourn in Skegness (or more correctly, Interlude in Ingoldmells) real life has hit hard thanks to failing printers, flunked hosting services and flat tyres. Not necessarily in that order.

First things First

Enough woespeak - first, as always, let's begin with some new miniatures! Rafael Callegari's work on Gārwald of Old on his corpse-dragon Drēorgan is just about complete (just cutting to do) and I have to say, he's done an amazing job on what is a quite difficult piece to get right.

Frankly, I don't think anyone could have done justice to the artwork better than Rafael, who seems to go from strength to strength with each sculpt! I think a paintjob will be required to show all the flesh and muscle and bone and so forth, so I may even get my own paints out for this one...

He'll definitely be an October production, probably November if I'm honest, but - well,  he's done, and he's going to be superb! The size of him has to be seen to be believed.

Rafael has already begun work on the reivers of course, so watch out for more news on those in the next few weeks...

Sloppy Seconds

So let's bore you with what's been happening this week (feel free to skip this part). Well: let's just say the best-laid plans often go awry, not least at this time of year when hawthorns fall to the ground and I ride over them in my usual carefree manner. I try to get on the pushbike to work (a round trip of five miles or so) as often as I can, if only to lose some chub and keep the heart pumping, and I don't mind saying I'm a fairweather biker either; rain? Get thee gone, I'm in the car!

Bah!

Anyway, I had a flat rear tyre on Wednesday thanks to running over a thorn, and I always carry a spare inner tube and pump for just such an emergency. Out comes the pump; only to find the valve attachments (as it can switch between the type of valve) are missing. Bah. So I had to walk home, around 1.5 miles at that point. Oh well. Next morning I sorted it with my big foot pump. Off to work I go. On the way home last night, front tyre gets a thorn. Bah! Luckily I had thought of this and my old bike pump was in my bag. Valve attachments were there, but... it didn't work. Double bah! At this point I was around 3.5 miles from home, but fortune favours the brave so I walked it anyway.

I was a bit tired last night.

Anyway I'm back on the bike again after swapping my front tyre for my lad's bike's front tyre as I couldn't be bothered to change the tube or repair it this morning. Which just goes to prove that I'm either stupid, or persistent, or persistently stupid. Who knows?

On that note, this week - perhaps because they've had a week off - the printers have been incredibly annoying. I had to change a Mega 8K fep and screen protector just before my trip, and that one just does not want to work properly now. No idea why. I can only think the OEM fep is rubbish or the OEM screen protector is rubbish - or the printer is now rubbish. I'll change the screen protector first as that's easy, although still £20, and if that doesn't work I'll have to change the fep again. Another £20 and an hour of my time I'll never get back. Triple bah.

Millions of tiny hex screws! Well, okay, 66.

Of course, if it still doesn't work after changing both, either the printer's knackered or the recent cold snap is having an effect. Which has led me to looking at new printers, as ours are 2-3 years old now (an aeon for new technology like this); and, what do you know, some now come with heated wells. Heated wells! Amazing. In the words of Merry, "I'm getting one!" Well, at some point I think. You lot need to buy some monsters before I can!

Let's see if I can't get the heating on first though...

Threaded Thirds

While all this is going on I'm trying to get some lore onto the webstore as well as sculptor information and so forth, as well as adding new graphics for next week's Peg a Pin Up sale (for that is what it shall be called. You should all know by now that if it sounds like innuendo with me, it definitely is).

Lo and behold, I can't upload new graphics from my hosting site Infinity Free as nominet (who look after domain names and such) have decided one of Infinity Free's domain names, infy.uk, has abused something or someone, and has taken it down, which means all Infinity Free's customers have major issues. Quadruple bah! I can't upload images via URLs now, as I do all my work with spreadsheets and csv files. I can of course manually upload images to shopify for each individual product, and then reference that link, but that takes forever and I just don't have the brain capacity. Within about a minute of trying to do that someone will send me a meme, and bang goes my attention span.

So I'll just have to turn off my phone I guess!

Fantastic Fourths

Well, you've stuck with me so far so let's carry on a bit longer. But let's do it as a brainstormed bullet list! Because why not.

• The Army Painter is on my radar (finally found a reliable supplier here in the UK) and should be on the site in the next couple of weeks
• The 100 Warlords production should be half-complete next week (meaning, at least half of all of the miniatures have been printed), all being well with prints
• I will be increasing prices on all products very soon, probably next week if I get the time. The price of underpants these days is astronomical
• I'm musing on a tariff/customs-busting refund to store credit should you get hit by those barstools. Feel free to add thoughts on that here
• I'll be adding all the pin-ups for Artisan Guild next week
• After Artisan Guild, I'll be doing some sci-fi with Adeptus Miniatures' ranges

That'll do for now. I'll expand on all of the above next time!

Keep it Mierce, Miercenaries!