Lynx7725

You roll on the upper torso table, so the odds of a head hit is 1 in 6. It's not so much the head destruction, but the pilot hits.

Not the name... the whole Warmaker CLAN, stationed on the Prometheus. Heh. Did I mentioned my CF-1J had been here a whole 2 weeks, but I've yet to open it?

That's not Death From Above. DFA is when you deliberately crash into someone upon landing. On the board game, it's somewhat difficult to pull off and not always useful, and in the PC games it generally takes quite a bit of skill to pull off.

Heh, who said anything about the helicopters? I want to slap these bazookas on the Frames:

Uh, actually I meant if the weapons et. al. from these would plug into the Frames....

You know as well as I do that's parts-on-sprue count, and that's relatively inaccurate. What's more, it's also only two style right now, with what, 3, maybe 4 weapons? Not really enough, not for the type of kitbashing possibility that lines like Busho Shinki and Armoured Core has. I like it, I really do. But if there's no clear idea what other further releases there will be, it's very iffy to get into. Those are an earlier line, so might not be part of this -- not even sure if it's compatible. But nice find, going to pick a couple up.

Inner frame looks interesting, but the other frame parts are the key; right now it looks to be way too little parts to make a decision whether to go along or not.

Well, to be honest, for AC6 I just look for the plane with the FAE...

Are you refering to the PC Game license or the general book license? Because Catalyst Game Lab has done quite a bit for the CBT line in the last 2 years.

You can actually blame some of the novel authors for that. Improvised tactical nukes are nice and all in a story, but having them blow up right underneath you is a bit annoying. (I was playing MW4, was testing out a Daishi config.. 30 SRMs to an Uller drone and it ended up sliding beneath me. Another 30 started a nuke fire right under the cockpit....)

Hmm, that's a LOT of work. I thought it would have been a lot more automated by now... During the final hanger, it seems the horizontal stabilizers were sagging quite a bit. Is that normal?

Hmm. Wonder if a Virgin Road Super 1D would look good.

Let us know what's the pricing; potentially I'm looking at 4 sets.

Er, those who read the manual?

Well, not so much pain here (as I'm not that big a gamer...). I called the support line, they verified my serial number, and then told me to go to the support center on Monday to pick up the exchange. It's gotten to the point where they treat it as "Business as usual"... Part of the recorded drone speech went on and on about the E74 error, and how the helpdesk people can't view the status of the refunds (or whatever) -- guess too many complaints there too. My RROD failure is actually quite interesting. I was playing Burnout Paradise when it started; game just started hanging, sometimes with a squeak. If you start seeing that for no good reason -- I thought I was overheating the console, but a cold start didn't alleviate the problem -- and lemme tell yah, it's 100% hang with 5 mins, you can't mistake it for anything else. Start gathering up the support docus, because it's on the RROD road...

Forgot to mention -- nice composition. I'm just thinking it would be better if you could have taken 2 or 3 steps to the left. Something about the rear car's wheel arc being visible feels right to me.

Hmmmm... My Elite just RROD this morning. Gotta bring it to the service center to get it exchanged. Will let you guys know how it works out.

Heh, that's why digital is much better for these. Fairly instant feedback. The trick, I find, is to use consistent types of lighting. Use all tube, or all bulb, all daylight or all white, but don't mix; the key consideration is consistency in colour of light. You can custom white balance a consistent shift in colour out, but if you mix in yellows and blues it becomes very hard to get the colours right. The amount of light is much less an issue, because you have multiple technical tricks up your slevees; you can bring in more light, or you can increase the exposure, or you can open the lens up, or up the ISO. Of course it depends on your subject, shooting stationary stuff indoors is fairly trivial in terms of technicalities, while shooting concerts or presentations is a PITA.

Not bad. The bokeh on the yellow flower is very nice. The red seems to be a bit soft though. If anything, these highlights how much technology can be used to bridge the experience gap... Actually, the reverse is more likely. Indoors, you can often control the lighting, simply by bringing in more lights and setting the angles right. Outdoors you are dependent a lot on the weather, which makes things a lot trickier at times.

EMSIA and MSIA are nominally 1/144, but EMSIA is a tad bit bigger. I'm not sure of the material, should be PVC? Rubbery. Definitely not on the same density and quality as GFF PVC. MSIA has a huge lineup, but EMSIA is a lot more restricted. Why are they better? Suits my needs and style better. I like to play with them, change their pose frequently when I'm handling them, so they need to stand up to abuse and be much more posable than GFF. Detailing is definitely not up to GFF's mark, but that's always a bonus for me, so it's not a big loss IMO. But if I'm to invest in a display piece that I can occasionally take out to repose, then GFF fits the bill. It largely depends on what you want to do with it. If the Robot Spirits is what I think you refer to, I don't own any, so I can't tell...

Generally speaking, I would treat GFF as posable, modifiable display models rather than toys that can be played with. A lot of optional parts that in some cases you can mix and match, incredible details (that you pay for), but very poor playability due to the sacrifice of fit/ joint space for looks. Don't get them if you are not prepared to leave them to gather dust in the display. If you want to play with them on a regular basis, EMSIA, MSIA or even HCM-Pro is better.

Hmm. With the parts, it can't carry a gun pod, but it's good to see the wing hardpoints still there, so you can still slap a few missiles on it.

Yeah well, I got bored. Turned out to be a few hours of effort: Many things I'm not happy about, and a lot of mistakes, but hey, you learn from those... EDIT: Youch! U/led the wrong file -- screwed a layer up and exported the wrong file. Should be fixed now..

Hmm.. actually, if I can get my mitts on some cheap, I might mod it to carry some ordnance. Maybe a pair of missiles, or rocket pods, or iron bombs. And a low-vis paint scheme. But, m'eh. Not keen if it takes too much effort to track down.

Dude -- a piece of advice? Don't quit your day job. Ever considered that the glut of really good prosumer SLRs means there's a lot more people with exactly the same idea as you? And the general herd of humanity can't tell the difference between a good and a great photograph -- most of them are after the cheapest possible photographer, especially for events like weddings and such. Most of these "professional" photographers don't even do it for a main living -- a lot are just hobbyists with good gear that is moonlighting. I know someone who started photography seriously when he was about 18 (he was older than me by about a year or so, IIRC), by now (over a decade later) he's very experienced and very good. But he couldn't keep up with the competition when they are running around with better gear than he had, using superior AI and technology to compensate for lack of experience, and charging way under what he has to (to maintain his solo photography work). Too darn proud to join a studio, he ended up migrating and studying accountancy. Or finance, can't quite remember. Being the best artist with camera glass means... not that much actually, without the connections necessary to get your work published and recognized. Unless you already have access to an extensive network, your first few gigs are going to be quite low paying and mind numbing. If you're single and not worried about supporting a family, that might be ok... but it's still good to have another stable source of income. This is what I suggest: you're working as a mobile DJ; that means you move around a lot. Get a decent entry level DSLR, then before or after you work, go around the area and look for interesting things to photograph. Try different styles, different approaches, different perspectives. Then share the photos out at places where you can get critiques. I ain't going to lie -- unless you really have talent for it, the first few thousand photos you take are going to be very mundane and boring, and it will show. Then after a while, you'll develop interest areas, where you will become much more in-tune with, and then you'll start to develop your own personal style. And that's when, if you really are very good and you actually get there, you'll start breaking into the right circles. Nothing against wizartar, but I'm really very tired of hearing that line. Yes, the artistic talent of the photographer plays a big part, but so does equipment; a genius with poor equipment is constrained by the limits of the equipment, but an idiot with great equipment can still produce good results... but will not, of course, be able make the most of the equipment. Put another way -- equipment allows the photographer to make the most of his talent; having the right level of equipment relevant to the current and developing skillset will allow the photographer to be most efficient and still continue to grow. Being over- or under-equipped just punishes the photographer for no good reason.