Leaving things to the last minute ...

I had some serious plans for this evening ... but life – or in this case, work – scuppered them.

I start teaching tomorrow, and have been asking for my timetable for some time. I had a draft one given to me on Monday ... but was told almost as soon as I got it that there were going to have to be some changes made to it. I got the final (and hopefully definitive) version ten minutes before I left work this evening. I now find that I am teaching elements of a course that I have never taught before and about which I have only a sketchy knowledge ... and that my first session with the students is tomorrow afternoon!

As a result, the painting and modelling I had planned to do this evening were immediately shelved, and I have spent most of my time looking though the course specification, the relevant chapter in the textbook, and the (minimal) teaching resources a former – and now sacked – colleague had left behind. I now feel confident to start teaching the 'new' section of the course tomorrow ... but it was a close-run thing!

Perhaps I might be able to do my painting and modelling when I get home tomorrow ... but somehow I think that it might be delayed yet again ...

Large-scale naval wargames?

Yesterday's blog entry seems to have generated a few comments ... and made me realise how many model ship plans with wargaming potential I had in my archive.

Now for many years I have wanted to stage a Pacific War island-hopping game, but never thought that it was possible ... but I now realise that I have plans of several of the ships that I would need (an Escort Carrier, a couple of US Navy Destroyers, and a PCE [Patrol Craft Escort]) as well a plans of other warships that I could adapt.

I also have a possible time and location where the lawn is big enough to stage such a large-scale naval wargame.

Now what I don't need at the moment is yet another project ... but building a couple of prototypes might not be a bad idea. I have the necessary wood in my modelling store, and it should only take a few hours to 'knock up' something that I can use ...

Oh dear! Perhaps I should never have bought that magazine ...

Inspiration from other hobbies

Although I am a wargamer, it does not preclude me from looking at various magazines about related hobbies. When the opportunity arises, I usually have a good browse through model railway, model aircraft, and model boat magazines as they often have articles that might be of interest.

Whilst out shopping this morning with my wife, I happened to see the October 2010 issue of MODEL BOATS on sale in a newsagent. What caught my eye was the 'Free Plan!' banner on the cover, and when I flicked through the publication I realised that it might be something I could use at some time in the future.

The 'Free Plan' is of a 144th-scale World War I British Destroyer, HMS Mandate. The model is not intended to be an exact-scale one, but what is termed in the model boat hobby as a 'stand-off' scale model. In other words, it looks like what it is supposed to represent, but some of the more delicate detailing has been left off, and the hull shape and superstructure are simplified versions of the original. As a result, such models tend to be somewhat more robust than exact-scale models, especially as they are designed for sailing and not just for display.

The method used to construct the model is straight forward and quite simple, and it struck me that I could easily adapt it to build similar 'stand-off' waterline model ships for wargaming. The plans (and the explanatory article that was inside the magazine) have already been added to my archive, and one day ... sometime soon I hope ... shall build a model or two that have been inspired by the 'Free Plan!'.

Painted Heroscape™ hexed terrain tiles: A progress report

So far I have managed to paint the following Heroscape™ hexed terrain tiles:

• 14 x one-hex terrain tiles
• 7 x two-hex terrain tiles
• 7 x three-hex terrain tiles
• 7 x seven-hex terrain tiles

I am just about to prepare 7 x twenty-four-hex terrain tiles for painting, and I hope to begin work on them later this evening, with a projected completion time of tomorrow evening.

If I can maintain this sort of tempo, I should have enough green painted Heroscape™ hexed terrain tiles for a game by the middle of September. My intention is then to paint a similar sized set of sand-coloured hexed terrain tiles. After that … well I will think about that sometime later.

More DVDs

After making one of our regular visits to see my father, my wife and I stopped off at a large retail park to do so shopping. Whilst I was walking around the ASDA store, I happened to see that they were having a sale of DVDs. I quickly noted two that I thought might be of interest to me, and when I realised that the total cost of buying both was £5.00, they were immediately added to the shopping basket.

The DVDs in question were ATTACK ON LENINGRAD ...

... and SAINTS & SOLDIERS.

The second of the two is about a group of American soldiers who are captured during the Battle of the Bulge, but then manage to escape.

I am not sure how good either film will be, but at the price I paid for them I will be happy if they are historically reasonably accurate as well as entertaining to watch.

My latest DVDs

As I mentioned in a recent blog entry, I received two DVDs through the post on Thursday. I had ordered them last weekend, and they were delivered in a matter of days.

The first is the third part of the AXIS OF WAR trilogy about the Chinese Civil War. AXIS OF WAR – NIGHT RAID is tells the story of a Chinese Communist raid on a Chinese Nationalist airfield.

As usual, the cover art does not appear to relate to the story told on the DVD; in fact, the 'trimotor' on the cover looks awful, and is very obviously a rather poorly manipulated image of a twin-engined aircraft made to look like a trimotor!

The second DVD is about the Korean War, and comes highly recommended. It is entitled BROTHERHOOD, and is supposed to have some stunning battle scenes.

The computer says ...

There is a character – Carol Beer – in the TV series LITTLE BRITAIN whose catchphrase is 'The computer says no!' Well today I must have been using her computer! Every thing I have tried to do this morning has been met with some onscreen message that told me that I had to doing something else first ... and then would not let me do what I wanted to do in the first place even though I had done what I had been told to do!

If it had just been me, then I would have felt that I was developing some form of computer-generated paranoia ... but everyone around me seemed to be suffering similar problems. The latest thing the system seems to be doing is allocating students to tutor groups ... even though it has not been asked to do so. The end result has been that my tutor group, which is supposed to be made up of just students that I teach, has be allocated students from other subject areas, and the students that I teach have been allocated to other subject area tutor groups.

We start the induction programme for new students on Monday morning, and I have a feeling that it is going to be more than a bit chaotic. As Private Frazer would have said, 'We're doomed!'

Thank God I have plenty of hexed terrain to paint!

Things got better as the day went on ...

By the time I got home tonight, things were definitely on the up. The journey home was much quicker than usual ... and when I got home there were two parcels waiting for me to open. One contained two DVDs I had ordered (more about them on a forthcoming blog entry) and the other contained a complete set of second-hand Heroscape™ hexed terrain that I bought from someone via eBay.

I also managed to paint the hexed terrain tiles I prepared before going to work this morning, so for me, things certainly did get better as the day went on.

Even more of the same ...

I had a few 'spare' minutes this morning before I had to go to work, so I used them productively by preparing the next batch of Heroscape™ hexed terrain (seven triple tiles) for painting later today. I also had a chance to check the tiles I have already finished ... and I am very pleased with the results!

Work, however, was much as I expected it would be. Today's computer problem seems to revolve around the fact that the password to log on to the system was changed overnight ... but the person responsible for making the change 'forgot' to tell anyone. When you do eventually manage to log on, you then discover that for some inexplicable reason the start dates for all the courses (information that was in place yesterday) have disappeared, and now have to be entered manually. One is already beginning to wonder what tomorrow’s 'problem' will be.

It is not yet midday, and I am already fed up and cannot wait to get home to paint some more terrain. Ah! The pleasures of paid labour!

More of the same ..

I spent most of today doing pretty well what I did yesterday ... trying to use the computer system to sign students on to appropriate courses. Today's 'bugs' included duplicated student identification numbers. In theory each student is allocated a unique identity number by the system ... but today it started to give the same number to several students or several numbers to one student. It is a good job that the Information Services Manager has short hair; if he didn't, he would probably have pulled it all out by the end of the day!

When I got home I was in the mood to do something constructive, and as a result I managed to finish painting the first batch of Heroscape™ hexed terrain tiles (fourteen individual tiles) and started on the second batch (seven double tiles).

At this rate I should get a storage box full of painted Heroscape™ hexed terrain tiles by this time next week ... so perhaps spending the day registering students is not such a bad thing after all!