New Projects and the future

I have recently been quite busy making terrain for my Normandy games (although much of it is generic and could be used for other periods/settings). Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some videos showing off some of this work, but right now I am working on a new project. I'm still sticking with Normandy 1944 and Chain of Command, but I'm starting work on some late war British Infantry that I recently bought from Skytrex. If you watch the 'unboxing' video in the link you'll see how nice these 15mm metal figures are, and now that I have started work on them I like them even more.

My eventual aim is to have a couple of different platoons for both sides that can fight alongside each other in a big multiplayer game down the shed-o-war with the Rejects. This is a long way off and I need to prepare well for such a complex undertaking. Not least because I'll need all my umpiring skills to manage four newbie players simultaneously. The hope is that eventually, I will be able to run this game on a much larger table, in effect playing out two games simultaneously side by side but with linked objectives and of course an overall outcome. Maybe I'm slightly crazy, but the idea has got me excited and I have no doubt I'll live to regret it!! 

In the meantime, I have a 'New' project to keep me going. The miniatures are hopefully on their way to me right now...a long awaiting delivery of 6mm Celts from Baccus. I didn't purchase a whole army because I already have several bases of Celtic/Gaulish warriors for some of my other armies so all I needed to do was add some commanders, cavalry and chariots and I have the ability to field a Celtic/Gaulish Army against my Romans or Carthaginians. These miniatures have been on order for a long time but I have been happy to wait for their arrival. When they do I'll have the 'fun' task of assembling the Chariots... and after the Indian Chariots I painted a few years ago I know I will need all my patience for that particular task! 

On a side note, I'm quite enjoying making the YouTube videos for my channel Miniature Adventures so expect to see more of these in the future. I realise that most of my posts here have been links to these films and judging from the amount of visitor traffic they have generated the combination seems to be popular. Certainly, I feel the two platforms complement each other and my only regret is that I didn't do this years ago.... mind you, it's only the availability of my still relatively new Operations Room that has given me space to make videos and play solo games so maybe now is my time, stop regretting what wasn't possible, and focus on the future. 

A Quarantined Wargamer Update

A few days ago I recorded my 40th episode of the quarantined wargamer and this minor milestone got me thinking about this whole YouTube thing I have been working on. So I thought it would be a good idea to share a few behind the scenes pictures and have a look at where I am with this project, where I think it's going and ask the all-important question, can I keep it up?! Before I start it's worth saying that for various reasons the next few months are going to be very busy for me. Both professionally and on the hobby front, I have a lot going on and I can see things getting busier, so I need to be very careful not to overload myself. So this bit of self-reflection is probably a good idea (for me at the very least) and a chance to ask for some feedback from regular readers and viewers. 

Centenary Remembrance Sunday

Today of course is Remembrance Sunday and this year of course is a very special occasion as it marks 100 years since the guns fell silent. I was going to write a long post about the armistice but nothing I have written so far seems to do the subject justice. So Instead I'll just quote the exhortation given at all remembrance ceremonies. 

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the sun and in the morning 

We will remember them." 

Post Comments Fixed

For the last couple of weeks I have been struggling to fix a problem with Post Comments that forced me to temporarily switch to using Google+ Comments. The embedded comments at the bottom of each post wouldn't load and neither I nor visitors were able to read existing contributions or add new ones. This has happened before several years ago and I was able to fix the problem by editing the code of the site (based on advice from the help forums). This time though I couldn't find a fix and the imposition of Google Comments has stretched on for much longer than I would have hoped. I dislike Google Comments (even though I like G+ as a social platform) because only people with a google profile can comment and this leaves a lot of readers unable to interact with my posts. 

The problem has now been fixed and regular comments have finally been restored. I'm not entirely sure what I did to cure the problem but I have been tinkering with the site template and settings and one of these things mush have fixed the issue. I'm just grateful its working again and wanted to thank readers for their forbearance over the last fortnight. 

Escape to the Aegean

The UK summer holidays are finally here and my poor wife (an overworked primary school Teacher) is about ready to collapse. The one thing that has kept us both going are our holiday plans; we are heading back to Greece for two weeks in Rhodes. To say we are looking forward to this trip would be an understatement of epic proportions. We all have a stack of books to bring with us and I have been making a list of places I want to visit. This year its just myself and my wife and our youngest daughter and I suspect their main destination of interest will be the pool complex in our hotel!

Rhodes is one of a number of islands in the Aegean that could be described as a crossroads between Europe and the East. Its been fought over and controlled by the Minoans, Romans, Byzantines, Turks and the Fortress of Rhodes is a World Heritage site. Needless to say its high on my list of places to visit during our stay. I'm planning a couple of posts while I am away but the reality is that I could just as easily end up sitting around the pool reading and find that blogging is far from foremost in my attention. So things may go temporarily quite here, if only for a couple of weeks. I'll probably be posting holiday updates on my Facebook Page if your really interested but otherwise I'll post some history related posts here when I return. 

Brace yourself Crete, the Hadley's are coming!

Big Lee's Miniature Adventures will be going quiet for a couple of weeks because my Family and I will be jetting off to Crete later today. This will be our first foreign holiday for many many years and we are all looking forward to it. Its also the wife and I's 25th Wedding Anniversary in a few days, which is why we are pushing the boat out a bit with our summer holiday this year. 

Sun, sea and museums (don't tell the kids!)

We plan on doing a lot of the usual sightseeing and swimming but I also have a couple of museums on my hit list so expect me to come home with plenty of pictures to share. I promise there will be no photo's of me wearing budgie smugglers around the pool... the thought even makes me shudder.  

Manchester

I don't normally do this - I try to keep my blog a politics free zone - but today I can't. This morning I woke to hear the terrible news that some scumbag had blown himself up at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena. I won't be wasting a millisecond grieving for that bastard but my heart is breaking for the 21 others confirmed dead so far, including children. With 59 injured I think we can sadly expect that number to rise. The fact that that creature decided to target a concert filled with children and families make this all the more despicable. 

No political objective, no religion or belief can justify this act. It is simple barbarism, nothing more. The desperate act of animals, without an ounce of humanity in them.

My reaction this morning is born partly from the fact that I am the father of two girls, who have tickets to a concert at the O2 Arena later in the year. When I heard the news I was immediately in the place of the parents of lost, injured or frightened children and all I wanted to do was gather my girls in my arms and protect them. There will be many parents this morning hugging their children close.

Our initial reaction is of course anger, frustration, incredulity and inevitably, fear. We have to deny the terrorists that victory. They want us to react to extremism with extreme measures. They want us to shift further and further away from our open and tolerant way of life because they are frightened by it. And there is the great irony, the people most scared by terrorism are actually the terrorists, because they know in some deep part of their psyche that they won't win. We are stronger than our base instincts, we are braver than our primal fears, because we are human, because we care about other people and because to do otherwise would be to give the terrorists exactly what they want. 

#Bigly

I'm an avid follower of the news and have, like many others, taken a particular interest in the US Presidential race. So it came as something of a surprise to hear Donald Trump seemingly endorse BigLee for president. I never even knew he was a reader of this blog! It's even made the BBC News. 

I don't know whether to be honoured or horrified, Bigly. 

Enter #Bigly on twitter and this is what you get!!!

Bigly Presidential

One day we'll look back on this an laugh...but for now just hide the nuclear codes somewhere safe.

Je Suis Charlie

Operation Overlord: D-Day

Today is the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings in Normandy, Northern France on the 6th June 1944. Operation Overlord was described, for good reason, as the greatest seaborne invasion of all time. Dwight D. Eisenhower lead over 156,00 men in the assault on Nazi Europe and despite at least 12,000 casualties (of which 4,414 were confirmed dead) succeeded in establishing a bridgehead from which the Allies were able to begin the process of liberating Europe. Many Veterans - men now in their 80's and 90's - will be back on the beaches today to commemorate the great sacrifice and great courage that was shown on that most momentous of days.

I recently helped at a fund raising day for Veterans planning on returning to Normandy and the greatest privilege was to be able to chat with these guys and listen to them share their experiences. I made a point of shaking each mans hand and sincerely thanking them for their bravery and their service. I come from a generation that on the whole has not experienced war or hardship and we owe a large part of that to the courage of men (and women) on that "day of days" 70 years ago.

---

With the D-Day 70th Anniversary commemorations taking place today I thought I'd share a few pictures of my favourite D-Day related wargames that I have seen over the years. Operation Overlord is one of those events in history that is such a massive undertaking and of such huge importance that sometimes it can be hard to take in. Massive amounts have been written about the Normandy Landings and there are countless personal stories, diaries, unit histories, photographs and documents for historians to ponder over for decades to come. But one way in which this period in history can be broken down and understood is through the medium of Wargaming. I'm not for a minute suggesting that wargaming D-Day is somehow more important than the great and scholarly work of historians, but they are another way of understanding a particular moment in the battle and really 'connecting' with those events.

"Normandy Firefight" in 20 mm by Herne Bay and Whitsable at Skirmish in September 2012 

Battlegroup Normandy - 20mm Skirmish game earlier this year at Skirmish

At last years Salute "When Chaos Reigns" a 28mm Normandy 44 game by Nantwich Gamers

Glider Assault - Pegasus Bridge 6 Jun 1944 - Honnington Wargame Group. A 20mm recreation of the assaults on Pegasus and Morsa Bridges prior to the D-Day Landings (Salute 2010)

Maidstone Wargames Society - Operation Deadstick. Without a doubt one of the best D-Day/ Pegasus Bridge wargames I have ever seen was at Salute 2012. Operation Deadstick by Maidstone Wargames. It won Best Demonstration Game at the show so I wasn't the only one impressed by this 6mm Flames of War Game. In fact I'd say this was the game that got me seriously thinking about 6mm as a way forward. 

The truly awe inspiring beach landing. "30 Seconds to Dog Green" demonstrating the Battlegroup Overlord rules.
I have never seen a beach assault depicted in such detail and scale before.

Another game from Salute 2013 also using the Battlegroup Overlord rule called "Inland from Utah"

This wasn't a game as such, it's a Diorama of Omaha Beach in the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth. 

Another display, this time from Nothe Fort in Weymouth. 

Picking the Bones Clean

Well I've paid my last respects to Model Zone and it was a very depressing affair. That's not to say I didn't leave my local shop without a bag of bargains but it was sad to see half the shelves empty of stock like that. More importantly I felt really bad for the staff in the store. I've been in their position myself many years ago and its not an enviable one. I had a quick chat with them while I was paying for my stuff and wished them well but that's little comfort when they are faced with unemployment. 

I really should have gone to the store last week because there wasn't much left that I wanted (most of the Vallejo paint had gone) but I didn't want to leave empty handed. So I joined the other vultures circling Model Zones corpse and picked up a few items as a last huzzah to yet another high street victim of the ongoing 'recession that isn't officially a recession but bloody well feels like it'.

RIP Model zone

I bought a 1:72 Airfix Cromwell Tank to paint up as a display model and some Tamiya spray paint to base coat it with when its assembled. I'll see if I can get the Young Padawan to join in and build it with me. I also bought her one of the Revell mini kits mainly because she seemed to like building aircraft and because I think the Fokker DR I is an interesting and evocative plane. If she continues to show an interest I'll see if I can pick her up something a little more challenging at the next show I attend.

I was never a big spender at Model Zone but I did go there regularly to stock up on sundry items like flock, glue and paints. Personally I always thought the stuff it sold was a bit overpriced and certainly couldn't compete with other retailers or the Internet. But it did carry a reasonable variety of items in its stores and was my main 'local' source for modelling paint and materials outside of trade shows. Its other main selling point as a brick and mortar store was that it wasn't Games Workshop. With the departure of MZ I guess I'll just have to stock up when I go to shows in future. 

Satire or just another Stereotype?

Our hobby often gets wrongly maligned and insulted by those on the outside, in the so called 'real world'.  Its a sad fact that articles mocking the hobby or stereotyping its participants appear with tedious regularity. I've been a Wargamer and Roleplayer for over 30 years now and the phenomenon of 'jocks' picking on 'geeks' has never really gone away, even as society has supposedly become more enlightened and tolerant. That's not to say that 'geek culture' hasn't become more mainstream over the years but despite this there are still plenty of journalists out there that feel the need to portray wargamers as weird loners still living at home with their parents. Unfortunately there are also a few writers who have come from within the hobby that have also joined this narrow minded and facile band of hacks.

So what has prompted this little outburst of mine? This article in the Telegraph prompted one blogger (Porky's Expanse!) to rightly refer to it as a "joke piece" (read his full his post here). As this subject often gets me worked up I decided to leave this comment:

"This reads to me as a satirical piece, poking fun at David Cameron's sudden evangelical zeal for the populist anti-internet porn bandwagon. The problem is that some readers, including some wargamers, don't get that this is satire and have read this as a genuine attack on the hobby (just read some of the comments below the article on the Telegraph website). 

I fear that the net effect of articles like this reinforces stereotypes, marginalises players and damages the wider hobby (which, btw, is worth tens of millions to the economy)."

I guess what hacks me off the most is that this journalist probably thinks he's being very clever, juxtaposing geek culture and politics in a mildly humorous fashion, and personalising the article by referencing his own involvement in the hobby. Clearly he's not nearly as clever as he thinks he is because by personalising his article in this way he has managed to turn this into an attack on the hobby and on the person he used to be (before he became an idiot and a journalist). Many people will read his article and see it as a weak attempt at satire, but a lot more will subconsciously (or even overtly) see this as a vindication of the harmful clichés they so desperately cling to. 

Mockery isn't 'harmless' because it reinforces prejudice, marginalises people, suppresses creativity, stifles enterprise and lowers self worth. This is why so many Bloggers go to great lengths to remain anonymous, using nicknames or pseudonyms instead of their real names. I totally understand their decision, and its one that we all have to make based on our personal circumstances, but its still a sad state of affairs when gamers must suppress who they are because the people around them are still influenced by derogatory stereotypes.

I've written about this subject many times before (notably here and here) and sadly will no doubt do so again in the future, but as you have probably guessed by now I feel pretty strongly about this. I'm fed up of our hobby being the butt of shallow and pointless jibes and anyone that enjoys that hobby being labelled as socially retarded losers. The real losers are those people that live ordinary dull boring lives with 'regular' hobbies, shackled by conformity, devoid of curiosity, stifling any hint of creativity.  I have met thousands of gamers over the last three decades and every one has been passionate, talented, inquisitive, creative and generous. These are the stereotypes we should be reading about, not that other puerile rubbish.

Come over to the Dark Side losers, we have cookies.

Ding Dong - Throw me in the Stocks!

I have been away for a few days with my wife and youngest daughter on a mini-break to Hastings on the South Coast. Needless to say we were hoping for slightly better weather at this time of year but the cold easterly winds didn't put us off from getting out and about. We packed a lot in and made the most of our short time away including a visit to the Eastborne Redoubt Military Museum (pictures to follow in due course). 

On the downside the hotels wireless Internet was a bit useless and I wasn't able to keep up to date with news and Blogs etc, despite taking my Tablet away with me. So I feel like I have been out of contact for most of the week - surely a crime punishable by a few days in the stocks! I'm sure I've missed something terribly important (something to do with flying monkeys?) but I'll make an effort to get up to speed by Monday.

Vietnam : A Soldier's Eye View

If you have any interest in the Vietnam War then you absolutely must check out these rediscovered pictures from Vietnam. Charlie Haughey was drafted into the US Army in October of 1967 when he was just twenty four. After 63 days in Vietnam, he was made a photographer, and shot thousands of photographs between March 1968 and May 1969 for the Army and US newspapers. When his tour ended he took the negatives home and tried to put the war behind him. Now 45 years later this body of work is being digitised and made available in a special exhibition. Some of this evocative and intimate collection is now available to view on Facebook and Flickr and is well worth visiting if you are interested in this conflict.

© Charlie Haughey

© Charlie Haughey

BLMA gets a Dynamic Facelift

You will probably already have noticed that BLMA has been given a makeover, and I'd like to know what you think of it. Way back in 2011 Blogger introduced Dynamic Views as a template option for blogger Blogs. Although I liked a lot of what I saw I decided not to enable Dynamic Views because it wouldn't carry over many of the Widgets I had working in the sidebar. More importantly it wasn't possible at that point to insert a header picture which meant my 'hand crafted' logo art would disappear.  However most of my initial concerns have now been addressed and after some fiddling with the template design I decided to shift BLMA over to the new template. 

One of the major benefits of this new layout it that it has increased traffic across my blog, literally overnight. One reason for this is that it is easy to see and access several of my most recent posts from the home page without having to scroll down to find them. This means that new visitors to the site are now presented with five posts to catch their attention rather than just the latest one and are therefore more likely to look around. I have also read (but con't confirm if this is true) that blogs with Dynamic views get a higher page ranking in Google Searches which also increases traffic on the site. Obviously my priority is to communicate with existing readers but if I can attract more followers and add to 'the conversation' then that isn't a bad thing.

Most of my sidebar widgets work fine in this new layout (now that I have tweaked them that is) and I have been able to fix the 'header issue' and insert my own artwork. The only problem I have encountered so far is that the new width settings have caused some minor formatting issues with older posts. I'm working on this issue now so hopefully that should be resolved soon. I have also opted to drop some of the less popular Pages to make the header bar less cluttered.   

As with previous changes of layout I can promise a few things. Firstly BLMA will remain a non-commercial site, meaning no adverts. I doubt if I would ever have the sort of site traffic that would generate much income but from a purely aesthetic point of view I don't want the site cluttered up with  adverts over which I have no control.  Secondly BLMA will continue to feature lots of my pictures and in that respect Dynamic Views really is the best way to present my posts. 

So what do you think? I'd really appreciate your views and feedback on the new layout and if there are any major problems please let me know and I'll do my best to resolve them.

Google Reader murdered in cold blood - NSFW

NSFW - I'm letting rip, and there will be swearing! 

I'm a little bit pissed off right now. Hell I'm fucking livid! This morning, like every morning, I turned on my computer and went straight to Google Reader to catch up on my 422 blog feeds. Without reader I would have found it very hard to keep abreast of such a mass of incoming 'news' items and the best stuff would have been lost in the noise. But now I (and every other user) have found out that Google are shutting down Reader effective 1st July. To say I'm annoyed would be an understatement. 

I should make it clear that I'm not the sort of person that Google should be screwing over, because I'm a committed and loyal Googlephile (or I was until this morning). I subscribe to most of their products including Blogger, Gmail, Drive, Calender, You Tube and of course Reader. In fact I use their family of products so much I have bought additional cloud storage for all my services and I pay for BLMA's domain through them. So shutting down a much used and well loved service and basically telling us to find a non Google alternative seems to me to be insanity. Once that move away from their products has started they may find their users like the alternatives and keep on moving.

Thankfully I have found an alternative to Reader, its called Feedley. It looks pretty good although I have found its response times to be a bit slow - although that might just be down to a surge in new users! The developers of the site anticipated the closing of reader and have enabled the programme to sync with it and upload a users RSS feeds from the soon defunct system. I'm also going to try out a couple of other feed readers as well until I find one that suits me. But whatever one I eventually settle on, it obviously won't be a Google product.

Judging from the on-line response to this change I think I can safely say I'm not the only hacked off user. I think I can summarise our collective response thus:

"Shutting down Reader was the idea of a nobhead. Don't do it again!"

Acknowledgement at last

Listening to the radio this morning I heard that at last veterans of the WWII Arctic Convoys and of Bomber Command would at last be recognised for their contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany. A special medal has been created - The Arctic Star - for naval veterans and the Bomber Command clasp for veterans of the air campaign. Up to 25,000 veterans or their widows will be able to apply for the medal. Next of kin can also apply on behalf of deceased veterans. 

I have met veterans of both groups and talked with them about their wartime service, and know they all deserve this new and long overdue acknowledgement. 

The Bomber command guys in particular have spent most of their lives since the war under a cloud of post war revisionist thinking about the morality of the strategic bombing campaign. For me the rights and wrongs of the policy of strategic bombing should always have been treated as a separate issue and should never have been allowed to tarnish the reputations of these airmen. Over 55,000 of their comrades died carrying out their orders over France and Germany and their bravery and devotion to duty should never have been in question. 

Sadly it has taken over 60 years for the recognition they deserve and for many of these veterans this award is far far too late. 

A new Ice Age cometh!

Britain is bracing itself for severe weather after what has been something of a 'phoney winter' of mild temperatures and rain. Parts of the country are already experiencing 'blizzard' conditions and the snow is marching steadily eastwards. If the weather forecasters (and panic mongers) are to be believed this is the beginning of an icy Armageddon which will cause untold travel chaos, widespread disruption, power failures, "cats and dogs living together" and other portents of doom.

We are expecting a maximum of two or three inches of snow where I live. 

Its at times like these that I think most of the rest of Europe are laughing at us (well, more than usual). This is no more than a flurry to them and they seem to function perfectly well with two or three feet of snow. Of course the real problem isn't the snow, its our reaction to it, and our inability to adjust to changing conditions, particularly on the roads. In England we consistently over dramatise the weather and overreact to the predictions but still somehow fail to adapt adequately and appropriately to the conditions on the ground.

Its been snowing in my location east of London for a couple of hours now and we have less than half an inch of snow, although it is getting heavier. I have just sent my staff home early and I'll be going home soon myself. I don't actually consider the conditions here to be that bad and I personally am quite comfortable driving in snow, but there seem to be a lot of utter morons out there that don't adjust their driving speed, regardless of the conditions. Frankly its them, not the weather, that worry me.

Winter motoring can be distilled down to some very simple advice.

• Take sensible but proportionate precautions and think about your journey. 
• Listen to local radio for weather and travel reports. 
• Ensure you have enough antifreeze in your radiator and de-icer in the windscreen washer. 
• Drive slower and take your time.
• Use gentler manoeuvres when on snow.
• Increase your stopping distances and break gently. 
• Be a little more patient with your fellow road users... 

...and that's it. Simples.

I'll be taking my work laptop home so I can continue there, but I'll also probably get a little painting done as well. Then when the kids get home I'll go and play in the garden and enjoy the snow for the brief time it lasts. In the meantime our European neighbours will be looking across the Channel at their eccentric British cousins and quietly chuckling to themselves.

The end of the World is Nigh!

The end of the World is Nigh! ...or not. As predicted the 2012 Mayan Cataclysm end of the world nonsense has started to dominate the headlines. According to the conspiracy theorists the world will come to an end on the 21st December 2012, just in time for Christmas! Apparently the Mayans new all about the cataclysm that would destroy the Earth but hadn't yet invented the phrase "The end of the world is nigh". So instead of just leaving a big inscription warning humanity, they invented an elaborate calendar that would count down to the end of the world. Only they didn't. 

Bizarro Blog © Dan Piraro

Rest easy folks, the Mayan calendar does not end on December 21, 2012. If you don't believe me check out these links here, here and here. This date is the end of a Mayan long-count period (a period thousands of years long) which will be followed by another long-count period just as one year is immediately followed by the next year.

One doomsday theory I heard recently has actually been around for a long time, but its still a load of pseudo-scientific nonsense. This states that a supposed rogue planet by the name of Nibiru is headed toward Earth. While this would make a good plot of a sci-fi movie (such as the classic When Worlds Collide) the rest is all just made up rubbish. 

What I do know is that if the world does end on Friday I'll be bloody annoyed because that's when I start my Christmas Holiday!

Just for a laugh check out the Daily Mash and their article entitled Mayans 'full of shit' say experts from within lead-lined bunker. To quote Doctor Brubaker;

"Such is our indifference to the 13th b’ak’tun and the rogue planet Nibiru that we’re hosting a big ‘un-Apocalypse’ party for the scientific community, world leaders and genetically superior individuals ...In a bunker.”

Remembrance Sunday

The D-Day Memorial at Lepe, New Forest

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the sun and in the morning 

We will remember them." 

['For the Fallen' by Laurence Binyon]