Thursday, April 23, 2009

Mr Carnifex

I've had this model for over 2 years but I kept postponing it because I wanted to magnetize it and didn't take the time to find out where to get decent magnets.
Since I dó have magnets now which you know I've already tried out at another model, I finally restarted painting/building the Carnifex.

Carnifex Parts
I wasn't satisfied with the way I started painting it so I did all the red on the legs and tail again and will re-do it on the rest of the model.

Next to having trouble getting started with the model itself, I decided I needed a cool scenic base to go with it. And last year I stumbled upon this base:
Base

It's made by a small company in Poland and it didn't cost me more than somewhere between the 3-5€. There was some kind of knight-corpse on the base which I turned *I put down a holstered eldar gun on top of where his sword was* into an eldar ala Iyanden because they're one of the opponents which were struck hard by Kraken *sorry..that is just 40K talk*. The base isn't finished completely though.

I'll try and get some decent work done next weekend and I'll see how fast it can be finished. It's a lot of work though, magnetizing all configurations (different weapon-arms).

Monday, April 20, 2009

Food: Poffert

Poffert is quite a local dish (northern part of the Netherlands), over half of the people I know..dón't know this 'dish'.
It's a kind of a doughcake with raisins & currants.
In normal circumstances, it should take you about 2,5 hours from start to finish (it being actual on a plate), but the while it's cooking you can go and do almost whatever you want.

The recipe:
Ingredients:
- 500gr self raising dough
- 250gr raisins/currants (pick one or mix them)
- 2-3 eggs
- 2,25 deciliters milk
- a knifetip of salt
- breadcrumbs..*can't seem to get a better translation of 'paneermeel'so click the link*

Preparation
Put the dough in a bowl and make a little cavity in it and break the egss in there. Add the salt. Get an electrix mixer *I'll show you later why you really need it!* and mix it, when the mixing gets tough, add some milk till you're all out of milk. When the dough's kinda smooth add the raisins/currants and mix them with it.

You need a special kind of cooking bowl for the Poffert (shown later) which you have to 'grease' with olive oil and cover it with the breadcrumbs. Put the dough in the bowl and top it off with breadcrumbs. Now you can put the lid on the bowl.

What you need is a very large pan *you'll see it below* and put the cookingbowl in it and fill the pan with water to just below the edge of the lid. Boil the water *lid on the pad* and let it boil on a low fire for 2! hours.
Take a look now and then to make sure everything's allright (if the fire's too high, you'll get water splatters all over your kitchen ;)

After 2 hours, take out the pofferbowl, open the lid and get the poffert out. Cut parts with a breadknife like you would do with a cake. I like to add butter and jam, sugar or syrup on it. Most people are stuffed after 4-5 pieces.
I'd say you can easily prepare a poffert for 4-5 persons and have a good meal out of it.

The photo's which will show how ..nót to do it, although it turned out alright.
Rico (a friend of mine..yes TAS..thé Rico) tries hiding the mess we were making
Hiding

Ok, this is what happens when you find out you don't have a proper mixer and have to use your hands:
Do(ug)h hands
Washing hands
We scraped the dough of his hands with cutlery..*he didn't lose any blood*

The pan we used:
Large pan
The special poffert bowl (notice the lid with clips)
Poffert bowl

Tada! Poffert
Poffert

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

4th ed Genestealers + tripod!

In January I took care of the cats and chickens at my uncle & aunt and in return I got this tripod!:
Cullman2904
I didn't get it until last sunday because I hadn't seen them since January. The tripod, a Cullmann 2904 is old (at least 20 years), but it's in an as good as new state and it's just plain awesome. It also has an extra add-on (not on the photo) where you can attach an external flash or if you're just messing around, a second camera ;)

But on topic. I had plans to magnetize some models for ages, but I've been looking for a Dutch company who sold rare-earth (neodymium) magnets which were small enough and not too expensive and last year I found it and last mónth I ordered about 50 small ones. The simple thing with magnets is..you need to make sure you don't glue them before checking a gazillion times that you messed up the polarities (that is..glueing it the wrong side around!).
Of course I did...being a bit frustrated I immediately prepared a new head and found out that 2 heads will have you end up with this ;):


Unfinished front
4thed Mutantstealer_1
Unfinished back
4thed Mutantstealer_2

Front again
4thed Mutantstealer_3
Finished mutant
4thed Stealer magnet fail

4thed Mutantstealer_4
The possibilities
4thed Stealer possibilities

The decent version:
4thed Genestealer_1

4thed Genestealer_2

4thed Genestealer_3

4thed Genestealer_4

What I learned during the magnetizing progress: don't mess up the sides of the magnets...códe the magnets: just paint the side that's going to act as the magnet, this way it álmost can't go wrong. Oh and stuck is stuck with superglue..damnit. That's why it's wiser to stick the 2nd magnet to the first magnet, put glue on the backside, make sure it fits into the 2nd part like a glove and you're a happy camper.
Oh and I messed around with the tripod and the countdown setting on my cam for this horrible shot:
Ik_14-04-09

*I'm a bit rusty in my html..so if anybody can give me a decent code to get the 6 small pics in a table where there aren't more than 2 next to each other, it'll be greatly appreciated*

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Stealer update

ok so I promised a new post, even a 40K post.
It's coming, but not this weekend. Due to eastern I'm running around a lot (family, friends ..you know..real life).

The genestealer is as good as finished..and I'll take photo's of the finished model on tuesday.
You'll just have to wait a bit longer.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Autorai 2009 (If I had a billion dollars)

So I went to the Amsterdam 'Auto(car)Rai' 2009 yesterday. They used to (it was my first time, but so they said..) put the cars from one brand in one spot so you could visit all Audi's, Volkswagens, Rolls's etc in one place. They changed it this year. What they did is they divided the cars into segments like Family cars, Eco-cars, supercars etc. In essence it's a good idea, but well..sometimes I had my doubts about putting certain cars in certain segments.

Putting a BMW 7 series in the family segment is a bit much. I actually got driven *my boss's car* in one to the Rai and, yes you could fit a small family in there. It has seatbelts for 5 but to be honest you only want to travel with 4 people if you're all adults (the midseat isn't that compfy). Other than that it's an awesome car though!!!

On to the oooh's and aah's.
We saw this car in the garage, apparently they drove all the way from Monaco!
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This one looked like a bit of a pimp car, but in a cool way:
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I think it was Burton who built this 'original' Donald Duck car:
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There were some very very cool concept cars, especially the rims were awesome:
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I'm afraid that there were so many people I didn't get a good change to take the wheel-picture very well, so it's a bit blurry..
Next to cars, there were also all kinds of motorbikes *yay Harley*
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Mazda had a car which just says: COOL!
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There were some oldtimers
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Maybach was there, and I was in it haha:
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Unfortunately I don't have 600K under my pillow to spend *or at all for that matter*.
The veal-leather was really really compfy though! I didn't really like the shiny wood for the gears, but's that's just my sense of taste I guess.

Bugatti was also on the show:
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They let me (as you could see) sit in the Maybach, but they dídn't let us sit in any of the Rolls's which we found a bit stupid. But who wants one of these? Ok so they're awesome. But it's really like they're built cars on a scale of atleast 2:1!
These ships are 6 meters long and at least 2,5-3 wide! You would need 4 parking spaces. You can't drive in half of the streets in the Netherlands because they're..well just to narrow and you probably wouldn't be able to make the corners:
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Ferrari was there too:
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As was Morgan:
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And the Dutch Solar car from the university of Delft (the Dutch cars have won many of the solar car races) including those in Australia :)
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*of course I took more photo's, but that whould make this to big of an entry, chech them out here.
The lighting in the Rai was very bright which sometimes made taking photo's a bit difficult, next to that the amount of people also wanting to have a glance or a photo made the photo taking a bit hasty which sometimes resulted in too dark or darnit..even somewhat blurry pics..and that with my eos 400d.. but at least I had a great day!