Reading

Entry tags:

communities,
gunpla

Also, The Mangar.

Taking a brief break from building RG Exia to catch up on other things and eat... And I was randomly reminded of a community that I saw advertised the other day. No check-ins, except for needing to fill out a form for every single post. No exclusions except for this stuff that actually excludes a lot of people (and is overly vague)... All these formats allowed, except actually works have to be transformative. (I suspect the mods literally don't know what they're saying there?) Anyway, the initial hook was a good one and perhaps I'll steal it as it's certainly not nailed down.

RG Exia is an interesting build so far. Unlike any kit I have built, ever, the starting point is the legs. But this is also my first RG so perhaps it's a line-specific thing?

I realized earlier that I haven't heard my upstairs neighbor in at least a few days. I can't remember the last time I saw his car, either, so I guess he's headed somewhere warmer for the season. He always used to, and then stopped at one point, and now I can't remember what he's done for the last few years. ^^;;

Combination hangar and manger, the Mangar is a silver manger with colorful LED lights and model Acerby decorating a little Christmas tree while model 00 Gundam attempts to untangle some garland.

I'm working on The Mangar again this year. I've finally got it (mostly) de-mossed and painted, and mounted the first set of little LED lights I found. There is a ways to go, but that's fine.

Entry tags:

(no subject)

What an incredibly busy week! The year end slide is absolutely in full force. But I have gotten things ordered, gotten things sent, etc.

Yesterday was a day of shoveling the 'rents out a bit, mailing packages, ordering a holiday pie, and picking up my first 3D printed request from the library. It will need some trimming (okay a lot of trimming!) before I even know if it'll work, but it's a conversion head for an HG GINN, to make it into Elijah's GINN. I did in fact tell boycritter that we needed to run to the bookie joint so I could get a little head. It was also their book sale weekend and I ended up with a couple of books, a few CDs, and a half-sized binder of clear-pages that will work great for model decal storage.

The weather was awful midweek. Just absolute snowpocalypse for a couple of days, and the worst was that it warmed up and then the temperature dropped like a rock, so everything is now frozen hell. It's supposed to warm up again next week but idk how much that'll help. I think I burned a lot of my ability to can just driving from place to place. (Also did some untoward things to my shoulders while working under the dash of an old Mustang.)

Really the only interesting thing from my week was a small brightly colored tank, lol. I did have a couple more of my Black Friday purchases finally roll in and I think I've officially crossed the space-to-store-stuff rubicon. ^^; Time to get building.

Also time to catch up on my inbox.

Entry tags:

gunpla

Tanks A Lot

It looks like I forgot to mention acquiring a pair of tanks from M at comic-con. (Wait no, I did, it's just buried in commentary, whoops.) They're 1/144 scale and were priced right (as in, I would have paid but didn't have to) and I finally got one built and painted with some paint markers I was trying out.

Because I am silly, and the best thing to do with German WWII tanks is be silly, here is Astray Blue Frame 2nd with a tank:

Blue white and orange model of Gundam Astray Blue Frame Second, a humanoid piloted robot, kneeling beside a matching model tank on a green cutting board.

Blue white and orange model of Gundam Astray Blue Frame Second holding the matching model tank in its hands as if she is offering it to the viewer.

The tank itself needs a bit of glue at some point to not fall apart at the tiniest of movements or drafts, along with a tiny hand-painted snake-mark, but overall it passes the two-foot test and I am pleased. (Blue Frame also needs a bit more work but I misplaced her decals and have gotten varying degrees of annoyed at her color-correction. I'll get there.)

Persona 4 and Nanako the stray kitten

We found a kitten!!

Edit: we worked everything out and are keeping Nanako!

( a few preview cosplay pics, more later )

Entry tags:

anime - general blather

Media Roundup, Accidental Advent All-in-One Again

From Far Away 1-14 (Kyoko Hikawa) - for a beautifully-drawn shoujo manga with an interesting plot, this was such a slog that I am absolutely baffled. Like, I have bounced off this multiple times and basically made it through this attempt by skimming towards the end. Absolutely should have been my thing, absolutely was not. Base plot is isekai/portal fantasy, schoolgirl in a world with a bit of magic with a strong romance and good supporting cast.

"Gaiking" - the Force Five version of the series, presented on five DVD-Rs that I picked up many years ago. Despite this being an incomplete version of an already-shaved series, it wasn't difficult to follow and was pretty enjoyable. Had a 'movie version' added at the end.

RahXephon - complete series + movie. This is one of those "I will need to watch this again to fully follow wtf just happened" pseudo-mecha anime from the earlier part of the century. I liked it, and I liked the cast for the most part, though every now and then it felt like it was trying to go the harem route for no reason. I have a full DVD set with all the beautiful liner notes but I apparently also picked up a thin Blu-ray set at some point...

So, From Far Away can go, Gaiking and the thin RahXephon set can stay. Technically I guess this is a 50/50?

Anyway, even though we're into Actual Advent territory, I'm just gonna keep going and probably all through next year?

Entry tags:

photo: bookish mailbox

A metal sculpture style mailbox featuring a kid sitting on a tree trunk reading a book. A dog is on the ground looking up at the kid. The mailbox is at the top of the tree trunk. The whole thing looks old and tarnished, with green corrosion on the tree part.

This is super cute! Most of the mailboxes around here are buried in concrete pillars, so it was fun finding this one.

📸 All Photos

♥ ->

Greetings

I've done another bit of security-pruning and circle adjustment. Occasionally I just unfollow/un-access accounts that haven't posted for a rather long time. And I saw a few folks that are active again, so re-followed. ^_^ This is also a reminder that you can unfollow/etc. me for any reason and I won't take it personally.

I posted up a

holiday_wishes post over here. The most important bits are to tell me what to work on with my website and also send me Gundams, lol. I'm still granting all the wishes I can. This is such a fun time of year.

If you're in the USA (sorry, int'l shipping sucks), you can have some of my stuff over here. I really should make these posts more often as I spelunk.

I need to go through my communities and make/add some sort of No AI guideline to each. I just pulled a drabble from a community because they're allowing AI slop to be posted. It's now crossposted to my spaces and deleted from theirs. I'd always meant to create more for that community but that sure isn't happening now.

Entry tags:

🔗 hacking at leaves, free books, ai shopping scam

Hi, happy Friday! Here’s some links for y’all to explore:

Media

The Yellow Nineties 2.0 is a digital collection of Victorian magazines, specifically “searchable digital editions of eight late-Victorian little magazines in the context of their production and reception between 1889, when the first issue of The Dial appeared, and 1905, when the last volume of The Venture was published.” I noted it for myself because it has copies of Pamela Colman Smith’s The Green Sheaf magazine as well as an excellent scholarly introduction to the series as a whole AND INDIVIDUAL ISSUES explaining the contents and how it was made, etc. Fantastic!

Hacking at Leaves is a recent documentary released via the Internet Archive and is available for free. Summary: “Hacking at Leaves is a 2024 Austrian documentary film directed and written by Johannes Grenzfurthner. It explores various themes including the United States’ colonial past, Navajo tribal history, and the hacker movement, through the lens of the story of a hackerspace in Durango, Colorado, during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was produced by monochrom.”

Free books (and a few zines) from Cita, a feminist indie press.

Here’s a collection of public domain and/or Creative Commons films hosted on Wikimedia Commons. You can sort by year, genre, country, and there’s a few special lists like works by female or LGBTQ+ directors.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

Entry tags:

media: documentaries

📺 watched: the merchants of joy (2025)

🎬 The Merchants of Joy: Directed by Celia Aniskovich. Follows five NYC families as they source, bargain and hustle to sell Christmas trees, blending street smarts and holiday spirit. 🔗

Watched on Amazon Prime; could’ve been really cheesy but it did a good job of showing the realities of running a seasonal small business in a cutthroat city alongside the gooey sentimental Christmas stuff. Still, it didn’t dip too far into sensationalism or anything– just a straight-on viewpoint of what it’s like being a Christmas tree seller in NYC.

Recommended if you’re interested in the topic (or just like NYC documentaries).

🎄 2025 Watched List / All Watched Posts

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.