30 October 2014

Watermark

The week has blasted by again but I have managed to update my water mark for my photos.  Here's a couple of shots from the weekend.





25 October 2014

Monsters in the Garden

After spending the morning working in the garden I had some time to get out the Macro lens and do some bug hunting. Found this speedy little jumping spider that was happy to sit still long enough to get a few shots of him.He didn't like the flash much,
Garden jumping spider

Then after the sun drove me inside I worked on a few shots that I'm putting into a calendar for a Christmas present to family and came across this Bee-Eater shot from years ago. The original was under exposed and quite dark, but thanks to Youtube and some training videos on Lightroom and Photoshop I managed to resurrect it.

Bee-eater

24 October 2014

Watermark

I got inspired after seeing some photos on google+ when I discovered the million and one “Communities”  out there, some of the warbird shots I was looking at had a little logon watermark which I thought was pretty cool. So after several hours of mucking around I came up with this.

It’s a mix of things, the circle is almost the same as my wedding band, and of course I cant go past the dragon, being that I have a large tattoo collection of dragons. I’m not sure about the dragon, may have to change it for a less detailed one so when its stamped in on photos its more recognizable.

Here's a couple of test photos with the logo on, still a work in progress I think.





So after a 1am callout this morning, (ugh .. I’m getting to old for that) I decided to spoil myself and get a new bottle of scotch.

Signatory Bruichladdich 21 year old … oh yeah

According to http://www.whiskygalore.co.nz/


“Classic Bruichladdich on the nose with fresh ripe fruits (notably melon) and apricot, it builds to a creamy, buttery flavour and a striking salty twang on the edges of the palate with becomes quite dry. A classy old dram that shows you don't need peat and smoke to be a great Islay whisky.”




I’m not sure about the apricot, my noise and tastes aren't that subtle, but its definitely got the buttery creamy thing going on. Its smooth and silky, no hard edges at all on the after taste. It’s going to match up well with the slow cook pork belly I've got in the oven for dinner tonight.

22 October 2014

Invisible man

This month has turned into the invisible man and just disappeared on me. I haven't had much time to play games or even blog over the past few weeks. With the weather getting nicer and the photographer in me wanting to get out more. Then pile on work and this month has just vanished.

This year I decided I get around to making another calendar for Christmas presents since it was way back in 2007 when I did my last one. So trolling through some photos I found this little gem.. or big scary gem, 2+ meter Cassowary that we meet face to face in the wild up in Carin's Australia a few years back. Definitely a contender for my wild life based wall calendar.


Back to gaming, I did get a Bolt action game in on Sunday with Phil. My Japanese up against his Americans. So a nice traditional fight at 1000 points per side. I did a last minute change to my list, so I could get on my new tank and tankette (only half painted). Phil had also managed to get a bunch of his guys painted up as well.




We rolled off and got the “envelopment” scenario and Phil won the side selection and chose the Defender. Phil setup a nice desert wasteland board and things got under way.

Turn by turn I moved across the board slowly on my right flank where I thought I’d have the best chance of getting off the other side (my objective), The dice rolling was pretty even on both sides, but Phil did fail a lot of morale checks which helped me no end.

I was only picking off a few models from each of Phil's units and was finding it hard to kill off whole squads, but at the same time I was making good progress across the board.

In the last turn it was a mad dash for the board edge as I ran my Tankette and a suicide bomber off the board to get victory points, unfortunately my Tank morale failed me and it just sat there as a big fat target. Looking at the board at the end of turn six and we didn't have a clue on who had won, it seemed so even. With the American’s inflicting quite a lot of damage on me, but I managed to get a couple of units off the board. Which ended up winning me the game on a 10-14 points victory. I was actually a bit surprised on the win. It would have been a loss if I had lost two more units, which I was very close to losing with only two guys left in one unit and also have three other single man units on the board.

It was a great game and alot of fun. I think with less buildings on the table (or none in this game) will help with future games.

Now onto the wonderful and bizarre world that is Random YouTube Videos.Wonder if Mozart would have ever dreamed of this show to match with his music.

14 October 2014

Horsing around.

On Sunday I had the day to myself since the girl was away on a girls weekend. So I went out to the local Equestrian center which I've driven past hundreds of times and always thought I must pop in and take a look to see if it’s worth shooting some photos.

What I found was a huge center, with hundreds of horses and horse trailers everywhere. So out came the camera and I snapped of a few shots. Having never photographed horses that much I just shot a few with various settings to see what I get and plan to go back again when they have a competition.

Woodhill Sands Equestrian CenterWoodhill Sands Equestrian Center


Woodhill Sands Equestrian CenterWoodhill Sands Equestrian Center


Woodhill Sands Equestrian CenterWoodhill Sands Equestrian Center


Woodhill Sands Equestrian CenterWoodhill Sands Equestrian Center

Woodhill Sands Equestrian Center

Woodhill Sands Equestrian Center
Ouch - looked like it hurt 

After that I headed into town and found that the Diwali festival was on. So spent a few hours walking around and shooting that. Will joined me after I called and let him know it was on. A fun and colorfully event. Would have been nice to stay into the evening, but I was pretty stuffed so piked out around 5pm. Still had lots of fun and the young kids were awesome all dressed up.

 Diwali Festival 2014


 Diwali Festival 2014


 Diwali Festival 2014 Diwali Festival 2014


 Diwali Festival 2014

 Diwali Festival 2014 Diwali Festival 2014


 Diwali Festival 2014


 Diwali Festival 2014 Diwali Festival 2014


 Diwali Festival 2014


 Diwali Festival 2014

 Diwali Festival 2014

13 October 2014

Blink Blink Gone

Yep, Blink once, blink twice and the week disappeared. Kinda like what happened to all my Calvary in our game of pike and shotte at the club on Saturday.

Feeling lazy tonight so I’ll use Bryan’s  little write up on the game. Which I’ll post below.

Other things happening, well I decided to go back to my old blog format, the new one I tried was just too much overload. Also got a couple of games of Small Worlds in, which is a great fun little game, easy to play and its a non-brain draining game.

Looking forward to getting some more games in since the last month was just a blur of holidays and family life.

Pike and Shotte

Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-003 Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-008 Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-010 Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-011 Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-012 Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-014 Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-015 Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-016 

(Bryan’s report) As per the last couple of meetings, we had another large Pike & Shotte game for the October meeting. Going into this game the Parliamentarians had won the first game (two months ago), the Royalists (thanks to Cavan) had won the second game (last month), so the coming game would be the decider.

This time we had myself (Bryan), Glenn and Cavan upholding the Royalist cause, against Rob, Kevin and Mark for Parliament.

Pretty typical deployment all along the 16ft table, however the Parliamentarians did try something sneaky on their right flank and massed the bulk of their cavalry (9 regiments) there with Rob. Opposite this was myself with Prince Rupert and (initially) only four Royalist cavalry regiments, so I was worried, but Rupert wasn’t!

Cavan held our Royalist centre, mainly opposed by Mark (yes, he had made a rare appearance and even played some of this game before being distracted by another game!). Glenn was on our other flank with a mixed force, opposite to Kevin with his Scots infantry (Kevin’s Scots cavalry had all gone to Rob to bolster that big cavalry deployment mentioned earlier).

Pike-and-Shotte---Warlord-Games---South-Auckland-Club-Day-017

So the Parliamentarians got the first turn, and Rob was super aggressive with his 9 cavalry regiments, most getting 3 moves on superb order dice rolling by the Parliamentarian maestro that he is. I think his plan was to overwhelm Rupert’s 4 cavalry regiments, before the Prince could bring up his two reserve cavalry regiments to assist. Things were looking grim for the Royalists. Then Prince Rupert (or was it his poodle) pulled a blinder! First fight – two cavalry regiments on two – Rupert wins, Parliament rolls low and both are destroyed. Next fight, similar thing happens, next fight, same again, and again! At the end Rupert (who now had 6 cavalry regiments) had destroyed all 9 Parliamentarian cavalry regiments for the loss of only one Royalist cavalry regiment. And that loss was caused my Mark’s pikemen coming across to assist Rob! A total massacre for the Parliamentarian right flank, leaving their centre exposed to (nearly) the full force of Rupert’s Cavaliers!

In the centre Cavan was grinding it out against Mark, mainly infantry action around a village, with Cavan coming out slightly ahead in the end. On the other flank Glenn and Kevin were thrashing it out, but the lack of cavalry for Kevin was probably not helping him. In the end Glenn seemed to have that flank, so with Rob broken and Kevin nearly broken the game concluded as a major Royalist victory!

Another awesome game on the big table, and thanks to all players especially Rob who took his defeat (and bad luck) with a smile which truly made for an enjoyable game (at least for Rupert – he is redeemed!).

Grant and John came for a visit and played a 28mm game of Impetus – an Ancient/Medieval ruleset, with miniatures on large bases which looked really interesting.

Early finish, once the Parliamentarians capitulated, so Mark suggested a beer, like we used to, so we all retired to the Two Fat Cows (or Blondies or whatever it’s now called), and Rob being the loser he was, very kindly paid – what a sportsman he is!