Month: January 2012

For Reference Purposes

Behold the God Machines of the Omnissiah!

The battle against rickettsiae continues. I’m still sick, but not quite as sick as I was yesterday. However I’ve completely run out of tissues so it feels just as bad as yesterday. Sigh.

In any case I’ve spent my time today cancelling reservations and preparing to contact my travel insurance company to beg for money. To calm myself down from this I’ve also just spent a few hours researching 40k Titans and seeing what I could figure out about the vexatious issue of scale. So I can find these easily in future, I thought I’d put them here.

So here is height and scale data for Imperial Titans (as far as I’m concerned :))

Imperial Knight Titan (Rarely mentioned these days)
Tabletop: 15 cm / 5.9 inches
Real Scale: 9m /29.5 feet

Warhound Titan
Tabletop: 25 cm / 9.8 inches
Real Scale: 15m / 49.2 feet

Reaver Titan
Tabletop: 40 cm / 15.75 inches
Real Scale: 24m / 78.7 feet

Warlord Titan
Tabletop: 60 cm / 23.6 inches
Real Scale: 36m / 118 feet

Emperor Titan
Tabletop: 90 cm / 35.4 inches
Real Scale: 54m / 177 feet

It would be nice for the Emperor Titan to be bigger (one of my calculations suggested 180 metres, which would require a tabletop model 3 metres tall!), but around 54 metres seems to be the most reasonable figure.

Hope that helps someone out, if only me 🙂

Dachshund Antibiotics

The title is a pun…

OK, I couldn’t get the code installed to take the Wyrmlog offline in protest over SOPA/PIPA today. Let’s just pretend, OK?

Here’s some info about the issue.

Saw the Doc yesterday and he’s confirmed that I probably have typhus. I’m on some pretty powerful antibiotics (the kind where you can’t go outside because your skin will slough off on exposure to sunlight) that should sort me out in short order.

I hope.

You Can Dance if You Want To

We built this city on Rock and Roll…

Thanks for the concern everyone. I’m feeling a bit better now – mentally if not physically – and can start to think about what went wrong without wanting to curl up and die.

On the physical side I’m sick as a dog, so it’s probably best that I got of the ship when I did – I’d rather be sick as a dog at home than in the middle of the Tasman sea. There’s at least the chance that I’ve caught a mild case of typhus off a tick that attacked my leg, but I’m off to see the doctor today who’ll presumably give me a firm diagnosis and some pills to fix it.

As a final note, if I can pull myself together enough to get the plugin installed I intend to take the Wyrmlog dark tomorrow as part of the worldwide SOPA/PIPA protest. So if you come to visit and there’s nothing here, don’t panic. It’ll all be back to normal soon enough.

On another subject, may I present this?

Oh, ok then, no 😉

A Dark Place

So, am I sailing the ocean blue, heading for adventures in New Zealand?

No, I am not. I am sitting in my apartment in Perth wallowing in a nasty combination of embarrassment, humiliation, disappointment, anger and worry about how much money I’ve wasted.

Turns out I hate cruising. After two days on board the boat I felt so wretched that my only option was to jump ship at Melbourne and fly home. So I’m not going to New Zealand, I’m not seeing all the cool stuff I was looking forwards too, and I’m pretty pissed off at the world and myself for not realising that life on a cruise ship would be hellish for an Aspie like myself.

So, I need to cancel all my reservations in New Zealand, alert my bank that I’m back in Perth so they won’t block my card and get in touch with my travel insurance to see if there’s any way I can get any of my money back. I’m not hopeful on that last one, but I’ll try.

I’ve also got to try and reconcile myself to another magnificent failure at living. If American sit-coms are anything to judge by, this is the kind of thing best treated by consuming vast amounts of alcohol and going to a strip club, but that’s not going to happen, so I’ll need to figure something else out. Give me a week or so and I should be coming out of this horrible funk. I hope.

Man I suck.

Checking Out

Had a lot of fun in Sydney, but today I’m checking out of the Rydges and boarding my cruise ship. This means that I’m going to have even less online presence than I have for the last few days, as I’m not willing to pay insane Satellite Internet prices out on the open sea.

Before I go, a quick summary…

Sunday – Great tour of the Middle Head fortifications, including lots of underground tunnels. Met up with Paula and her friend Saskia, gourmet pizza at the Australian Hotel, tour of the Old Observatory in the middle of a massive thunderstorm.

Monday – Hire car out to Katoomba and the Jenolan Caves. Three Sisters much more impressive than I’d expected. Caves amazing, although we only had time to tour one. Our guide (Analiese I think?) was awesome and took us to look for platypuses afterwards (we saw plenty of water dragons but it was too windy for the platypuses). Drove back to Sydney and had expensive (but very tasty) fish and chips at Doyles.

Tuesday – Fascinating tour of the Opera House, then Cadman’s Cottage and the Harbour Bridge Pylon museum. Afternoon tea in the park at Wynyard Station, then the Queen Victoria Building. Finally a fantastic Ghost Tour through the Rocks with ‘Ghost Guide Gary’.

Today – Plan is to do the Centrepoint Tower, the Chinese Gardens and the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Powerhouse. Then I board my ship.

See you all in two weeks!

Sydney Day One Roundup

Sydney Town Hall – Mildly impressive
Queen Victoria Building – Like an upscale Diagon Alley
Town Hall Railway Station – A descent into the bowels of Hell
Circular Quay Station – Best view from a railway station in the world
Circular Quay – Crowded but cheerful
The Rocks – Enjoyably quaint
Sydney Harbour Bridge – Mind bogglingly massive
The Old Battery – Of considerable archaeological interest
The Old Observatory – Fantastic views

Just about to head off for a tour of the old Middle Head Battery. Should be interesting!

Live! From Sydney!

Live in Sydney!

I have safely arrived in Sydney and am happily ensconced in my quite swanky hotel. I’ll be heading out shortly for a ghost tour in the rocks, and also to find some lunch, as the only things I’ve eaten all day were two ham sandwiches at 3:30am and a small bag of those grain chip things. On the upside I watched three episodes of Warehouse 13 on the plane – which just made the time fly.

The Firelight Isle

A graphic novel without compromises

Paul Duffield's Firelight IsleI’m about to head off on my mystical* journey to the East, but thought I’d drop in a quick plug for Paul Duffield’s Firelight Isle.

(No, not that one, that one!)

Paul, late of FreakAngels, has taken the really bold step of starting work on an entirely creator-owned graphic novel. Because he unfortunately has to eat and such, he can only afford to spend one day a week on it, but the work he’s done so far looks fascinating.

If you’re of a mind to help a talented artist – and get a few goodies along the way – please consider dropping a few bucks into the IndieGoGo campaign. If that’s not your kind of thing, there are also a number of other ways you can contribute.

OK, I’m off to pack my bags. Sydney, Sydney here I come!

(Sydney, Sydney, yum yum yum…)

* Not at all mystical, in any definition of the word

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