Category Archives: Random Thoughts

New computer

Or more precisely, new computer parts. My current computer (5.5 years old at this time) is just about dead; it takes around eight hours to reboot and the video card croaked. Being that nobody makes AGP video cards anymore – and that I was very lucky a friend still had an old machine that I could scavenge working parts from – I felt that it was time to get a new machine. My new computer is going to have a 2.66 GHz Intel i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 300 GB and 1 TB hard disks. I had hoped to include a Radeon 5850 card but they were sold out planetwide when I bought the parts, and as I mainly play console games, I don’t feel too badly about having to settle for a lesser video card.

In keeping with my indomitable spirit of laziness, I’m probably not going to get around to building it until the weekend. No doubt I’ll need the additional time to fix the inevitable problems that are going to occur; something always goes wrong when I build computers.

I got asked to provide a size comparison picture of Kenshin and Meiya, so I also thought this was a good opportunity to provide the goods.

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Random Thoughts VII – Compelled to spend … but on what?

Of the eight figures that I had preordered this month, six have been delayed till next month or beyond. I’m not sure why figure manufacturers don’t tack on extra month on all their pending figure releases just to sync their schedules back up with reality. Even this pornographic figure that I preordered got kicked back a month. You know things are messed up when a small-scale manufacturer like Giga Pulse can’t meet their projected ship date. I bet transvestite Yoko doesn’t make it out this month, too. (And as I type this, I am proved correct! I wish I could say that this prognostication was built upon careful deduction, but anybody could see this coming.)

Serendipitous it is indeed, then, that HLJ is holding a holiday sale with shipping costs waived if you buy a sale item. With funds freed up for this month, this sale is a pretty good opportunity to pick up anything that I had passed on. Or at least, it would be, if there were anything that I wanted to buy. I went through HLJ’s inventory for Alter, Max Factory, GSC, Yamato, and all the other major figure manufacturers and I’m having a real tough time finding something that I want that I don’t already have. I guess Akiha might be a possibility (where’s the Itsuki figure, GSC?). Given the expense of EMS shipping, I feel like I should take advantage of this sale. I was really hoping that they’d have GSC’s 1/4 scale Nanoha or the Aegis Figma still in stock, but unfortunately they do not. I guess I will have to take a second, less discriminating look through HLJ’s inventory. I should probably also take this as a sign that perhaps I shouldn’t throw money at every figure that I want as soon as it comes out.

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My Photography Setup

Lacking anything more productive to do on this cold, wet holiday, I decided to reshoot Kokoro, being that my earlier pictures were particularly hideous. While I was at it, I thought that I’d provide a look at the “studio” in which I take my figure pictures. It’s not a particularly complicated setup, although it certainly is a mess.
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Human Mage Photo Reshoot

Continuing through the figure photo re-shooting project, I took some new pictures of Good Smile Company’s Lineage II mage.




This was one of the more difficult photo sets I’ve taken. I originally used red cloth for the ground surface and it looked conspicuously incongruous with the foliage and flowers and such. I decided to reshoot the photos (making the final set a re-reshoot) using dirt for the ground, except since I didn’t like the idea of strewing actual dirt on my computer desk, I used instant coffee. Of course, I forgot that I hugely dislike the smell of coffee, which tends to make me feel nauseous. The process of taking these pictures was thus particularly arduous, and I’ve still got three fans blowing air in here to try to ventilate this space.

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Senhime and Mishiro Re-shoots

I said something a week or two ago about having a bunch of preorders due this month. Ha! I’ve watched with helpless dismay as figure after figure is pushed back to September and October. It’s almost enough to drive a man to tears. To assuage my lachrymose despondency I went ahead and re-photographed Senhime and Mishiro Akatsuki, the girl with the helicopter hair.

Does anyone think that anything is actually getting released this month? Should figure manufacturers just preemptively bump back all of their releases by a month? Was Michael Vick’s signing by the Eagles a good move? Maybe it’s time to work through the figure review backlog; Alter’s Nadie might be next up, then.

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Subaru Photo Reshoot (or Angry Girl in the Snow)

Back when I really did not know what I was doing, I took this picture of Subaru, the cutest amputee ninja around:


Man that looks bad. The background is bad. The figure looks bad. Everything is bad. The rest of the review’s pictures were just as bad. Now that I’m a bit more experienced with taking pictures, I decided to re-do Subaru’s photos:




Lately I’ve been making an effort at providing an interesting backdrop for my figure pictures. I think it makes for a much more appealing photo, and the backgrounds are a lot of fun (albeit rather time-consuming) to create. I’m also trying a few different things with respect to photographic technique. I’ve switched to the cheap 50mm f/1.8 lens for all my figure pictures, and I’m spending more time performing post-processing. My figure reviews take a lot longer to complete, but I think the time spent is worthwhile.

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Meiya Photo Reshoot

After a protracted period of figure repair and familiarization with the new camera lens, I’ve finally finished reshooting Meiya. In retrospect, even though her armpit is looking rather ragged, the arm repositioning turned out better than I could have initially hoped for, given my cluelessness with respect to modeling techniques and the limited hobby resources available to me.

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Random Thoughts VI – Fixed-up Meiya and Cheap Lens Impressions


I got Meiya put back together and as one can see, she’s actually holding her sword now. Am I making a note here, huge success? Hardly; I did an awful job of reattaching her arm, but fortunately the paint is dark and her armpit isn’t visible from the front. Given a choice between ugly arm joint and a straight sword versus a clean arm joint with her sword passing over her right hand, I prefer the former.


I’ve been playing with the new cheap lens; it’s tempting to abuse its capabilities by jacking aperture width as wide as it’ll go. It’s noticeably sharper than the kit lens I’ve been using for all my earlier shots, but it seems more difficult to focus where I want it to. It’s also unusual in that I have to position my camera farther away from the subject than I’m used to; with the kit lens, I’m usually no more than a foot away from the figure, but with the f/1.8 lens I usually need to move back a meter or more to get it in the frame. It’s fun to experiment with, but it does provide a humbling indication of how little I really know about photography.

In miscellaneous news I looked at my preorders and I have something like ten figures scheduled for release this month. It’s gonna be spensive.

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Random Thoughts V – New Cheap Lens and Fixing Meiya


I got the famous cheap Canon f/1.8 50mm lens today, although I haven’t had a chance to do much with it yet. I’ve heard that it’s a pretty good portrait lens though, so my hopes are high.


Instead of taking pictures, I spent most of the evening wrestling with Meiya, and not in a good way. As I mentioned in my review of this figure, Hobbyfan screwed up her arm positioning so that her sword doesn’t line up properly. It bugs me to have a nice figure with such an obvious error, so I figured I’d tear off and re-position her arm. As I found out, that’s much easier said then done; her shoulderguard and hand make it near impossible to saw through the joint, and I discovered that my Dremel is busted. I resorted to using a hobby knife to cut through it; I was really tempted to try batoning the blade but I guess that wouldn’t have worked all that well. After cutting maybe half of the way through, I pried the arm off with a can opener. Let me tell you, the can and bottle openers on Victorinox tools are some of the most useful things around. I don’t think I’ve actually ever used them for their intended purposes, but they are outstanding small pry bars.


I think I can position her arm so that the sword is reasonably straight, but as one can see, doing so leaves a conspicuous and hideous gap between her arm and armpit. Sigh. I do have some modelling putty around here, but having never used it before, I have no clue what to do with it. I’ll also have to paint over the putty as well as the damage I inflicted on Meiya’s paint job. I hope the results turn out okay.

As everyone in the figure collecting hobby knows, the summer Wonder Festival recently ended. Lots of good stuff was shown, but Good Smile Company didn’t unveil any new Sora Kake Girl figures. Come on GSC, where’s the Itsuki figure? Don’t let your sponsorship of the show go to waste.

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Site slowness

This site has been very, very slow recently, with some extended downtime, and I don’t know what’s causing the problem. My webhost’s support staff suggested that the poor performance might be caused by my site’s theme, so if this issue persists, I might revert back to the default theme for a few days to see if that clears things up.

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