1985 Hyaku Shiki - Z Gundam Plastic Model Kit

I got into something new recently - well something actually so old that I haven't really thought about it since I was a teenager - plastic model kits!

Back when I was doing these, they were sprue sheets of solid white, blue, or red etc, and required painting.  I remember those cursed little bottles of Tamiya paints - I loved them and hated them at the same time.  I loved that I could paint all these cool model kits of robots and anime characters that I could get, and I hated that brushing them on, they were all streaky and blotchy, nothing like the way the kits looked on the box.  I was fairly precise with a brush, but I lacked experience and technique, so I found these paints way too thick to go on the model kits nicely. 

I remember spending days painting the radar nacelle on a Zetaplus and getting mad at how hard it was to get the paint to behave. I didnt really know about masking off sections I didnt want paint to accidentally touch, so I did all of it freehand.  It was also hard to get all those black detail lines in precisely - I ended up using a black paint/water wash to wick the paint into the lines, but it took so long to do, a tiny bit at a time wiping away excess that got onto the other colors.  The results were still pretty good for my level of experience, but I was not really satisfied with the results.  Eventually I gave up painting them, just keeping the ones I had, sitting nicely in a display on a bookshelf all through my 20s - a bunch of Gundam kits: Zeta, a Mark II, a Zetaplus, and an Ex-S.  Also, a Macross Battroid Valkyrie and a 1/4th scale 80's Dirty Pair Kei and Yuri.

Anyways, this time it started off when I was at a toy store with my son Connor in the springtime, and we saw a Gundam model kit with 2 units in it, for the incredibly low price of $40, an incredible steal considering that typically this stuff costs $30 to $50 for a single one.  Here we'd get 2 of the big names in the Gundam series, a Gundam RX-78 original and a green MS-06 Zaku as an opponent, for a mere $25 each!  I decided I had to buy and assemble them.  I reasoned that I could let my son play with the robots after they were built.  They came in multi-coloured plastics and everything and didn't even need paint or glue!  OMG!  So since Connor was behaving pretty well at the time, I bought it for us so we could both get some fun out of these Gundams.

They took about 3 days to assemble, and Connor smashed them both up pretty nicely within a week.  Not too bad.  Lasted longer than I thought, actually.  They weren't too terribly smashed up though.  Mostly the joints were too weak to survive kids twisting them and smashing them together in a "fight".  I am still repairing them now and then for Connor using superglue.  (reminds me, I have to glue two feet back on the Gundam and an arm on the Zaku)

So looking at these models got me thinking about my own models again.  Sadly, I had thrown my collection out a while ago, but I still had a few un-built ones sitting around - notably a Hyaku Shiki that I'm pretty sure I picked up in the early 90s.  So I pulled out the kit to take a look at it:

I had already painted it at some point, but never assembled it.  Looking closely at the kit, I remember not liking that the gold paint was streaking, especially on the wings and ankles, and the detail on the chest plate was all wobbly.

Ugh...  I'll have to do this over again, properly this time. With primer, paint, decals, and a finishing coat.

So first things first - How do I strip off the old paint?!

Trading

Well, I've been playing on the market for a little while now, and I'm not sure if I know more than when I started, or less.  I've seen some pretty tricky moves by companies to boost their stock price, only to do a mass sell that triggers a collapse a day later.  Things move pretty quickly and theres a good amount of money involved.  Sometimes you really have to act right that day in order not to lose out, cause its gone the next.  Other times selling too quick means you miss out on a good climb.

I've tried dollar cost averaging which sounds really good, but you have to remember that it only applies to a healthy company, and you have to stay with it long enough to see them go upwards eventually.  It doesn't apply to dying companies like Yellow Pages or RIM - if they are gone, so is your investment.  I suckered myself into thinking that YLO would come out on top sooner or later, but their 30c shares are currently now 7c shares and not much of an outlook for improvement.

Everyone is talking about Apple stock - I bought some too at when the craze was starting up.  I went up with them from about $500 or so, to about $580 and I sold.  I didn't want to have too much riding on them in case everyone screaming about how it will go to $1000 was wrong.  There are a lot of people out there saying lots of things - you really have to be careful whose advice you take or what news source you read.  In the end they are all guessing.  Sure they are educated guesses, but there are no guarantees - anyone could suddenly have a downturn in sales or a lawsuit, or even some exec suddenly deciding to sell off a massive amount of stock, triggering a slide.  Right now, Apple is sitting at about $627, and the stock's been floating around $600-$630ish for about a month now, and is definitely not the surefire, you-can't-lose stock that people were making it out to be.

Here's another fun one - Zynga, that I've alluded to a couple of time already.  I bought a bunch of their stock on the news of buying the Draw Something game.  The stock shot up nicely, $12 became $13, then the CEO or CFO or someone at Zynga sold off a crapload of stock - bam, the stock tumbled down to $11, and now is kind of half in half out at $11-$12, $11.56 at the moment actually.

I also picked up some Netflix stock a while ago - After it crashed from 120 to about 80, I picked it up, thinking that in the long term, with their expanding markets, they should do well.  However, analysts were screaming that Netflix is doomed, they wont survive, and the stock dropped further down to about $60. This was after a harrowing ride of 70s-90s for a while, and the stock was "reassessed" to be worth $60.  I eventually sold it, disappointed.  Now, it's back up to $110-120 range with everyone saying how great they are.

What the fuck man?  Basically the lesson I took from this is that I can't believe any of the shit I read on the market news, unless it's a fact, like "someone sold x" or "stock x went up 20 cents today".  I have to stop reading the "Apple is going to reach $1000 by the summer!" type of news and read instead about what day the iPhone 5 is coming out, and if they are having any manufacturing difficulties, how much heat the Windows and Google phones are giving them, then decide on that.

My last set of trades haven't been so good - I was trying to make the high-volume trade ratio for the quarter and I tried out some tech and software stocks.  However tech is not doing so well and all the ones that people were talking about on the news as 'recommended' have been pretty shitty so far.  Maybe it will turn around in the fall when titles are coming out and they are actually selling games, rather than right now where they are pouring money into development and not selling anything.  I guess this would be a good time to "buy" since they are dropping.  Then when the games are out and the revenue is coming in, pick a good time to sell the boosted stock.

In the meantime though, anything I sell will be at a loss, so I probably have to hang on to them and keep an eye out for developments.

Upsen.

Syndicate

It's a pretty dead time for new releases it seems.  Diablo 3 and Ghost Recon 4 are some time in the next couple of months, but we've been left rehashing all the old games from the end of 2011.  I never got into Mass Effect since it was mostly single player, so I didn't really notice Mass Effect 3 come and go.

I've been playing some Syndicate, that's the only thing that's relatively new.   It came out in February, and was a pretty good take on the whole cyber dystopia thing.  It's "generic" but I'd think anything that takes place in a such an environment would be considered "generic" nowadays.

They have some interesting mechanics where you have to do hacking and fighting at the same time, with enemy troops and drone robots that have shields and other defenses that need to be hacked and disabled before you can hit them.

I also liked the way the characters didn't just move around like they were on caster wheels - there are definite footfalls to the motion, and you move in discrete steps, yet it's not awkward whether you move fast or slow.  Maybe it's just an illusion of some type, but it really worked for me.

Also very cool are data overlays on your weapons - you get your bullet counts and functions listed next to your guns, instead of being an actual readout display - very clever and fits the milieu, with everyone (who is anyone) being chipped to see data.

Also, its a co-op game for it's multiplayer aspect!

The only things I don't like about the game is that:

One, it is too short.  The campaign is kind of fun but short singleplayer.  There are lots of multiplayer maps, but there need to be some more soon, since they are starting to wear thin as the central aspect of the game.

Two:  You can get every power in the game half way to maximum level.  At that point, all the different agents you play with, some specced for fast hacking and repair, some specced for armor or extra damage, start looking all the same.  Sure you can pick different application software to load, but the chip upgrades really would have given us a bit more... variety in agents.  Weapon upgrades are pretty good too, but they are sort of like the chip powers too - you will basically upgrade all aspects and not just some aspect, no strategy involved.

Three - and this is a common thing I dont like in general about online multiplayer no matter the game - NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING.  I could be playing with AI drones, geez.

Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary and its Kinect Features

I picked up a copy of Halo:CEA and I've been playing through it in my free time.  I started with Legendary, thinking that I ought to be able to handle it.  I swear, Legendary mode is exponentially more difficult than Heroic.

I was doing all right, progressing slowly and surely, until I got to the landing bay in Truth and Reconciliation.  I could not for the life of me figure out how to finish off so many stealthed Elites in such a small area, so I had to dial the difficulty down to Heroic.  Now I've pretty much breezed through the rest of the game on Heroic.

The game is as good as I remember, and I'm even playing it at a harder level than I did the first time around. Occassionally I get lost though, since the waypoints are fewer and farther between than nowadays, and the game has the tendency to run you back and forth through the levels.  Also I'd forgotten how hard it used to be to stick a plasma grenade.  Overall I'm really enjoying the game.


The new Kinect functionality is somewhat of an irritation.  Man, I can rant on about this for a while.

You need it on so you can fill the library with data about objects and people in the game.  However the recognition quality is really low, or perhaps 8-10 feet away from the sensor is too far for proper use.  When I'm playing solo, my typical use sounds like this:

Analyze.
ANALYZE.
ANALYZE
(Analyze mode pops up)

SCAN
SCAN
ARGH

I have a Canadian accent naturally.  I'll try with an southern American accent or with a British BBClike type accent, with about equally bad results.

Maybe I should just scream "Anus!" at the kinect like these guys.


It also triggers at inopportune times when you are talking in general, such as when you are trying to play co-op.  I'll be talking to someone and suddenly a menu screen will come up and block my view, or I'll toss a grenade when I'm warning someone that there's an incoming grenade.  Isn't saying "Grenade!" sort of a military standard for an incoming grenade?  Hmm that's worth a lookup.  Wikipedia says this:

Standard U.S. military procedure includes calling frag out to indicate that a fragmentation grenade has been deployed. Yelling the word "Grenade!" is used to warn others to seek cover from an enemy grenade that has landed in the immediate vicinity.

Yeesh.  I guess it's appropriate since most of the time you all end up running away from the extra unwanted grenade you just voice-lobbed, in addition to the one you are trying to warn about.  Even asking someone how many grenades they have left will trigger one of your own.  It's funny how saying grenade will almost ALWAYS work, while the Analyze command only works one in 4 tries for me.

There really isn't anything in the game you can do better with voice than a button.

Upsen.


What they SHOULD have done is implemented a voice command button, hold it down, say your command.  that way, it shouldn't fire if you don't want it to.  Or, maybe implement some keyword to activate voice commands like "Xbox!" in the Kinect console, or "Computer!" like in Star Trek. Oh well, maybe in a future game.

Considering Online Trading as Online Gaming

This game's always been a little daunting to me, but here goes.

It may take a while to get anywhere as there's a pretty steep learning curve, but if I manage to get past it, it could be pretty rewarding. I heard about this game because people talk about it now and then, so I opened an account online and picked up some tutorials.

It does suck to start at the bottom though.

There's a few different servers to choose from, like TSX and NASDAQ, for example. I wonder what the differences are. I'll have to check out a few to get started.

Hopefully with this thinking methodology I've adopted, I can motivate myself. :D

Upsen.

EDF Insect Armageddon

This was a nice little budget title - I didn't expect that I would like it so much, but I do. The game is an excuse to let you shoot giant bugs and robots, and it does so in a really fun way.

I have been playing this for a whole month.

You get 4 different soldier/armour types to do the shooting with, and the game has 3 extended stages broken up into 5 levels each. Each level has multiple objectives in them for you to complete, such as destroying enemy carriers, anthills that spawn infinite numbers of ants or other nasties, and checking on various dropships and friendlies, as you fight the alien bugs.

The four soldiers armours are all pretty different, in effect 4 character classes:

• Battle - a tank type with good armour, a shield, and crappy weapons.
• Tactical - a pet type who drops turrets to do part of the fighting for him.
• Jet - a high mobility type that can hop and zip around the battlefield quickly
• Trooper - a standard soldier without the above special armours, but can do everything else faster or better -reloading, first-aid revives, running, dodging, bigger weapon selection.

I started off with a Tactical cause I liked the turrets for a bit of automatic firepower, but eventually I found that most of soldiers have some sort of auto-aiming shot anyways, so the turrets weren't really necessary. The first armour I got to level 8 (top level) was the Jet, and the Tactical is only slowly closing in at level 7. The other two I haven' really played much until the last week, but they each have their strengths

The weapons are pretty interesting too - there's all sorts of goodies from shotguns to missile launchers, fitting all sorts of play styles. The most notable of all of them are the Level 8 armour's weapons - they are called Pesticide guns, but they are more like clean nukes - you fire one, and everything in a 2 city block radius is vaporized (including other players) If a rifle does 400pts a shot, and a rocket launcher does 1500, these nukes do 500,000 points. That's enough to one-shot all the sub-boss type enemies, most of the boss enemies, and even the end boss will bite it in one if you manage to hit it between the eyes. (Or in a few shots if you use the nuke's splash radius damage.) This thing even permanently destroys anthills at a distance, when normally you have to fight your way up to a hill and plant an explosive charge on it.

The Battle gets a mortar version (arc fire)
Tactical gets a missile version (lockon)

Jet gets a sniper rifle (zoom in recommended)

Trooper gets a cannon version.

All of them are slow to recharge, and can't be sped up with an active reload.

The downside of this thing though, is that it's very easy to accidentally kill all the players on the map including yourself, resulting in a quick mission fail. The only player who might survive a nuke is the Battle armour tank guy, if he has his energy shield deployed and at full power, which is generally not the case.

Still, lots of fun, especially at it's price point.

Upsen.

What's coming up:

Traded in a bunch of older games and planning to pick up the following when they are out

• Catherine (got this now, kind of fun but not as fun as EDF right now)
• Gears of War 3 (September 20, 2011)
• Battlefield 3 (October 25, 2011)
• Modern Warfare 3 (November 8, 2011)
• Ghost Recon 4 (Some time in Q1 2012, ugh)

edit - wow there are a lot more titles too, though I'm not sure of them:

Guardian Heroes

Dead Island

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine

Gamma World: Alpha Mutation

Rage
Resident Evil 4 and Code Veronica HD

Halo Anniversary

Upsen.