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Had to hold the thing between my knees while twisting the head off. After smashing the thing against the furniture to get it open in ways other than it was meant to...

Going back to bed now, cause I'm tired.

You'll go blind, you know... 

Meant to put this up earlier....

Do, you ever eat in?

[Scottish]

Wrong again!

It starred another Scottish actor who a lot people here thing might make a great Slaine. In the film itself, he did appear to be bit like him as well. He may be a bit too old for that role now, though.

[Discworld]

I've always recommended Mort and Reaper-Man as some of the better places to start on the Discworld series rather than The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.  The first two books are enjoyable but show Pratchett still trying to find his voice properly.  They feel a bit like he is still trying to hard.  Mort is the first to really showcase his strengths to my way of thinking.

Having now worked through Men at Arms, Jingo and the Fifth Elephant I'm now on to Thud.  It is interesting to see how the whole cast has evolved over the course of the books on some levels.  The humour has become more subtle and the social analysis more complex.  Jingo was probably the best for the humour, especially Vetinari's take on the old Jingo song:  "We have no ships. We have no men. We have no money, too".

Thud is probably the best book for a critique of some of the complexities of extremist thinking.  The Deep Downers cast as a comparison for, I'm guessing, Extremist Preachers of all stripes.  Along with The Fifth Elephant, Pratchett found the perfect scenario for examining ethnic tension in the Dwarfs and the Trolls.

I did think about including Monstrous Regiment since Vimes appears but since it is only as a supporting character near the end it got passed over for now.

I have read most of the first lot of Discworld novels (Listed here.) reading them all in chronological order up to Eric, skipped over Moving Pictures, not sure if I did read Small Gods (I still have a lot of my novels either stored into random piles or just scattered around the new house, mainly in the leisure section of the house. I don't think have that one going on memory!) Skipped over, Lords & Ladies, read the next one....skipped over Soul Music (Which I did see as cartoon in two or thre parts on video as well as Wyrd Sisters which I did read! It's a adaption from Macbeth & very cleverly done so as well.) Not sure if I read Interesting Times (I doubt it, but if I have it & it's worn looking, then I might have read it!) Skipped Maskerade, I read Feet of Clay see it as the adaption of Terminator Two, very clever! Didn't read the Hogfather (That was adapted into a live action film as well & I didn't like it either!) 

Continued later....

[Slaine]

The movie was a little later than that, it was made since year 2000!

It was showing at a time when I noticed the novelisation on the shelves & purchased it.

You could compare it to Slaine & how he went about his business post Horn-God. Watching this film yesterday, I compare the physical discombobulations suffered by the certain identities who overused or  misused device for getting there & back.

Kind of like why Slaine is Warped because of that problem they have from doing that very thing that Slaine had been summoned...sent to do so many times.....

[Billy Connolly]

Big Hint....two hints....Billy Connolly is in this!

This film was made over ten years earlier.

[Fire-Extinguisher]

Guess which film I am watching here?

On the telly, while I'm eating my damper on the poof & you can see the books I've been talking about on the bottom right of this picture next to the boxed Fire-Extinguisher. Above in pile of things is a box. A game box, A old computer game from the early 90's.

Can you guess what that one is?

[Maia]

Is of course.... Maia!

Supposedly, a planet in the Tau-Ceti system or star or both.

I have had this early access game at least over year or two now according to memory only. Talking about this game again, because it had more work done within it, but still has the same problem that prevent me from getting far before the game crashes to my desktop.

To recap, it's a space colony management game set on the world called Maia, & this time you can choose the four people you allowed to start with from a simple looking roster after launching.....

Although it's hard to read small print on bottom three applicants & I don't think really matters what is says they are good at because at this stage of the game they nearly always end up expiring from Hypothermia, Starvation, or Hypoxia. Before they can enjoy the comforts of their new habitat....

This takes a while because they cannot be controlled directly. Yet, you can read their emails to get some idea what they need. Usually, it's bad poetry (I should know!), but mostly is a request for access to the Work-Shop table. Even after I put one in. Maybe they want another one, who knows??? Because, early on in this game (Like a lot of other games of this ilk!) it's important to build small & to fore-fill the most important of survival needs fast. Yet, with in reason, because it says a person can survive without water for 3 days or up to week & as long as that is happening, may be a little shorter without food. Yet, the need for food is also a luxury that has become habit. So, it's hard to tell, wether we really need to be fed unless we're been starving for a while.

Some of them have very quirky habits like Mongolian Throat Singing. Which seems to be more of a fluff thing right now, but I appreciate any type of humour in games like this. Some of the backgrounds shown, might give you some idea how best qualified they are for selection. Yet, like I wrote earlier, their quality never come to fruit in time before the game has told me I have failed any way or the game just crash's.

What I did like with this game now is that option to choose your colonists. You build as much as you like without worrying about resource management for building supplies. You still need to build the right things to maintain the supply of water & rations & protecting colonists from the ravages of a world not really fit for them. You can also build as many of these small repair robots as you like. Just don't do try to fill a room with a lot of them all at once. They might get grid locked. Like the excavation robots that (Which can be duplicated in the 3D printer!) also move any relevant material or corpses they find back to the storage room. They can now be controlled when ever you click on one & click on the target icon that appears to the right of meagre interface & I'm suddenly seeing it's point of view....

This is done very charming way as the resolution is more pixelised to show you they see things differently. The smaller robots are different to control & a little harder to as well. When ever a colonists pass's through the airlock chamber, they are automatically outfitted in their pressurised suit & helmet they arrived in. You can only try doing the first person thing with them while they have their suits on outside. Sometimes a glitch may have them walking around the base interior still in their suit. Yet, this is a rare thing & while their still wearing their helmet. You can access their helmet camera this way. That's all you can do with them of course. Otherwise, it would be a very cheap way of getting much needed control of your workers, the people who build the specific rooms & furnish them after the little robot has excavated them. When in control of the robot, you can try & manually get them to dig rock that I have tagged for removal in order to carve out rooms. Which is where this game appears a lot like Dungeon Keeper. The little robot 's design may even be nod to the appearance of Worker-Imp's from that game....

Although, the rooms don't automatically attract creature/worker types. Your just stuck with the four colonists you start with, or what remains of the original four I had chosen from the beginning. I can also request another planet drop or fall of another three or four colonists who arrive in a little space-capsule in random location near the entrance to the base.....

Because of modern aspect of this game. It mostly resembles Evil Genius without the funnelled story aspect (Yet!!!) & stereotyped characters & bright cartoonish work of Siku.

Yes, this game is kind of shadowy, with billowing gases rising over the planet, & natural heat vents randomly on it's surface & from the air-processing machines I have bothered to place inside.  Obscuring my sight, especially during bad weather events. Sometimes, everything is lit up so much. I only see shadows over a desert landscape that might have almost become tundra for the reflected light in my face....

The need for light is important here, & while it may take forever for the lamps to be manufactured in the 3D-Printer-Module, & then a greater need for the Everlasting-Glowstick that can only be placed on the ground, anywhere on the ground to make for fast lighting up of a gloomy area. Unlike Glowsticks I'm familar with, they can't be thrown or broken open to spill their glowey residue on doors, walls or trees to mark them out in the dark....

(I have now been given a very good idea why my games of this have suffered. After seeing official Wiki for these well known camping implements!)   

About those little robots that repair everything. It just lightens the load on the hapless, ignorant humans who take forever to walk anywhere in their special suits outs-side. Once those little things get going, touring the station's interior in search of smoking machinery that means they need their attention. I think this only how it appears on the surface. I think they really are just responding to a broken stuff automatically anywhere in the game. Even outside! Because its very odd to find a smoking wind-mill even when there is!

(I was suprised to find that picture, because, I thought they're design less flammable )

Again, those robots remind me of the little DRD's that respond to the summons of Pilot the insectoid (Pilot!) in symbiotic partnership with Moya/Leviathan from Farscape....

I had more to say about this one, but very tired right now. I just cooked a loaf of Damper (Australian Bush Bread!) where both the preparation & cooking while inserting other peoples pictures into my essay here have made this evening a little more stressful for me. I think I'll spend the rest of the night picking at my loaf while in front of telly.

It is messy though, & requires a lot of preparation, the right paints, brushes, thinners. The right work space, (Which I may have now.) & a lot of patience......especially if your me.   

[Warhammer-Fantasy]

I wanted to get the new Warhammer-Fantasy books as I found them on the shelves of the new gaming/book store before they shifted along the street probably about a month & a fortnight ago & didn't find any of books...exactly.

Yet, I did pick up Warhammer 40k - Death-Watch & 5th Edition - Players Guide for Dungeons & Dragons. Pretty damn pricey at about 60 dollars AUD each.

Not that I expect to be playing any of these games. I still like to flip through them to read random paragraphs & admire the new art-work. Which is a dramatic change from the art of the very first monster manuals. Just saying so, because the book usually has a lot of art in it!

 

[Axe]

I have a older brother who's lawyer, but we're not talking right now, because he hasn't given back my Axe,Celtic Gladius, Gandalf Sword.

[Guards! Guards!]

Guards! Guards! - I've decided to do a bit of a thematic re-read of the Discworld novels. Aside from owt else I need something to take my mind of work and the pleasures of 'INSPECTION' The Night Watch has always struck me as one of the more endearing set of characters and the stories tend to have more laugh out loud moments (at least that's how it seems to me).  It always amazes me how Pratchett can take a complete stereotype and turn it into a real character. 

As always devoured in less than a day in between all the other mayhem in work.  Next stop - Men At Arms.

More favourites of mine & then there is the Reaper-Man & the The Colour of Magic.

[Queen]

As for the contents of related soundtrack I really looking for. I'm not sure about that. I don't think Queen featured on it. Yet, was It's Kind of Magic reused in that film?

It's been ages since I saw it, and I've understandably been reluctant to revisit it, but as far as I recall it is played on a jukebox in a bar by old-man-MacLeod early in the film.

Yeah, I don't remember details of that film exactly that much these days.

Guess what?

I found the cassette tape on the same bed & looks like I was just ignoring it too. It was with some more tapes as well. One titled Classic Heavy Metal a birthday/Xmas present from my older brother. Obviously before I started/finished buy all the The Angels tapes. One of songs on it No Secrets & hits fromCheap Trick, Boston, Cold Chisel, Thin Lizzy, George Thorogood, Rose Tattoo, Kiss, Slade & Steppenwolf to name a few of the featured bands.   There is date of release on this a& it might have been older since none of the songs were new back the very early 90's and Waking Up the Neighbours. The one I was trying to recall the day on another part of the music thread by Bryan Adams & his band. Can't Stop This We Started was a hit back when I got it. This is good honest Canadian born rock n roll. Very wholesome stuff.

Here's the thing about this tape cassette & the Highlander Two soundtrack. My older brother by a strange coincidence has that earlier Bryan Adams cassette tape (I'm pretty sure of it.) It must be Reckless with those  like Run to You, Summer of 69, Heaven. They were big and he was also the prpoud owner of first Highlander soundtrack which was mainly Queen including that song It's Kind of Magic & remember first seeing that video for the song on television showing bits pieces of the movie that would be Highlander. WOW!!! Yet, Princes of the Universe was brilliant & it even includes features a female new-reader reporting murderous exploits of that present day Kurgan, as he drives in search of more immortal brethren to de-cap with composite sword in briefcase by his side.

So he had the first & I had the next of two cassette tapes, very small but still some coincidence.

That Highlander Two cassette tape has the year 1990 written in small print on that little folded card & little wonder. I was expecting to say that & nothing more surprisingly earlier. I might be itching to listen to the tape right now, because my internet is so buggered right now, that You-Tube would take ages to buffer it I was to find it there. I has a photo taken from the film.  Which back then seemed very interesting....greying Colin Macleod (In cartoon spin-off of the film, Colin Macleod was a Roman who was excepted into the clan as a young boy. He wasn't a Macleod until he was dealt that mortal wound by the Kurgan & truly claimed it when he awoke!) duelling with one of the bounty hunters on a narrow cat walk. Who sent from his home world to either bring him own or back. I thought other guy did look odd & kind cool back then I saw C.L. again as younger Colin Macleod but wearing the same clothing here after something must have happened to get back to being youthful in earlier Sci/fi/fantasy film magazine I found in the Daily Planet Comics when it was a small shop across the road from the Myer Center. Little did I know how much this film would bomb & piss off fit's fans.

Queen don't feature on the album despite the jukebox moment in the film. Does anybody know the Lou Gramm Band? While that sounds familiar, I couldn't recall anything they've done ever & especially they're One Dream which is lyrics from It's a Kind of Magic. The album cover promises a film that tells a bigger story.....

(Please insert photo from movie soundtrack tape cassette inlay....My internet still hates me!)

I might have wrote this before else where on the forum & I'll repeat it now. This sequel is to the success of the first film what many may feel Slaine - Time Killer is to everything that he did right up until he was transferred to Cythrawl. Not that I mind the Sci-Fi embellishments of the forbidden weaponry. Too me this was one of the more memorable parts of the saga.

Other cassette tapes I found. Some free games that came with a early computer magazine. Remember when games had to loaded on a special computer cassette player. Some blue robot like R2-D2 in platformer where it has to find keys to the next levels while being shot at by red bots. Some Rage of Against the Machine - Battle of Los Angeles Why... I got that I don't know.. & Foo -Fighters - There is Nothing Left to Lose! yeah, that's more like it, but haven't listened to that one much either.

That's all for now....

[Amazon]

Today, I had to take hike to the neighbouring suburb to pick up some books I ordered thru Amazon.

The Art of He-Man & the Masters of the Universe

This limited edition book that should contain a lot of the original art that came with the action-figures, vechiles, their mounts,  play-sets & other accessories. As well the eventual cartoon series & film. Which were both disappointing & the series initially so. I never liked it that he had weaker alter ego called Prince Adam. The same goes for Cringer & Battle-Cat, & Orko. If they stuck to original concept that perhaps was too close to the niche occupied by Conan the Barbarian which the toys were original meant to actually be. Yet, that never worked out & so we have He-Man. Aside from initial impressions, the series still did grow on me & looking back on it all I admire it more now. I did stop collecting the figures and their accessories or more likely lost interest in them in early high school if I remember correctly.....

Skip the next two paragraphs if you don't wish to read the waffle below...

Like, I have the main ones, like Stratos (The bird-man or the one who had wings attached to his wrists & could fly via a rocket jet-pack! I think I lost the wings. Was the very first of these AF's I purchased on late night trip into the city with my folks. The rest were present that were given to me in the subsequent years from 82 onwards!) He-Man (He doesn't stand up now more!), Battle-Cat (Went Missing!), Teela,(Cobra-Snake-armour?) Men At Arms, Skeletor, Merman, (of the last three, I had left chew marks on the plastic straps that held their armour on, because it was too hard to strap it on with my fingers!)  along with Castle-Gray-Skull, (It got thrown out or stolen when somebody left it back landing & I 'm trying to source the Italian version of that playset that was better made & came with a brown-wood coloured front door......

....)  Snake-Mountain (It's not lost, but I have left it at home. Right now, I only have the plastic snake that was supposed to be attached to the top of the thing swing around. It had this micro-phone shaped like Wolves Head). Which was kind of cool, I guess, but this set up was never as cool as the original Gray-Skull-Castle. Additional action figures....Man-E-Faces & Ram-Man. The Battle-Ram (Still there, with it's detachable flying sled (Kind of like that flying sled from the Flash-Gordon film, but rest of it that had these thick wheels that that had these short appendages that would make short work of anything that got too close to the side. It had cannon that would fire these large red cylinders adorned with the head of monsters or demons (Kind of like mini-Gronds!). I think there were three of those.) A flying boat called the Wind-Raider, that must have belong to Mer-Man. (Had body like a convertible green car with out the top, and these yellow aero-plane wings that could be pulled off. (Only one remains!) & a significant yellow fin like rudder making it seem more like a boat than anything else. There is also a anchor that can be fixed to the hood. When not in use & pulled off & out by it's long piece of cord that is kept wound up inside. A zip cord motor bike like transport that I think is called a Road-Ripper. (Remember those Smash Up Derby Cars that were made to fall apart & re assembled again. I had those as well! They work the same way.) The Dragon-Walker which best described with a photo....

(The head piece would move along that track via cog & engine while the long green part would spin around propelling the thing in a unpredictable wide circle. It's easier to imagine if you just look at the picture. It was my favourite piece & it the engine inside soon rusted from disuse. It had ran on batteries & I think they might have leaked inside the thing, causing the damage. It's a unfeasible design even the head could be more securely attached because the that track would need to be kept clean of debris for the thing to run continueously.) The very last thing the jet-plane sculpted to look like a Eagle a with perch that could be attached to the top castle tower. (One of the wings went missing with that one too!)

Anyway, I look back fondly on the television series, the silly & some times inappropiate voices & He-Man's customary end of show monologue. discussing what ever relevant moral that was covered over the current episode.

Back on the subject of the book. The regular edition is pictured down below the special edition if you follow the link above.  I'm looking forward to opening the damn thing some time some time soon.

Which I'm still trying to figure out how to open, from that picture it appears the door on the front should unlatch or slid down, but I can't budge it for some reason. Might look for a unboxing video on You-Tube later if I can't get it open. Unless somebody has some sage advice about that.

Related compilation of all his mini-comics brought together into one big bumper book.

Thinking it would be filled with a compilation of all those mini-comics that were packaged with each action figure. Each figure got a random comic, which meant I have a couple of the same ones. I can only find one of them now & I think have with me in the pile of books, novels & comics I'm still sorting through here.

There is double DVD packaged together into one slim case containing of the entire collection of episodes  from the related cartoon. Only the earlier cartoon series, you see. I'm not just sure about the latest series yet. While it certainly looked better drawn/coloured & animated. It never appeared to depart from the idea of having a hero with a duel identity, and I think Orko is still in this one as well. Aside from now showing you how Skeletor got his head defleshed, taking more mature stance. I haven't paid it much attention apart from the bits n pieces I've seen on You-Tube. I'm planning On getting it, but I have soft spot for the old series and that special where he met his twin sister She-Ra-Princess-of-Power. The music was as colourful & campy as it was. These always bring me back.

Best of He-Man & the Masters of the Universe

Anyway, in my haste to order these earlier last week. I forgot to check the regional information with this one. I made this mistake before with video tapes, but at least they would still work, but only in black & white.

I'm too tired to write any more & I've get told this is too long for anybody to read anyway. Next up, Ghost-Busters -The Ultimate Visual History.

[Egyptian]

You know after all that hullabaloo about a film about the Egyptian Gods, I forgot who else Thoth is