What I've been up to!

What have I been up to?

Well, first off, I've been spending a lot of time at work. I used to just work my basic hours and go home, but now am spending an extra hour at work as we are currently do a validation protocol on a new (to the plant I'm working at) drug. A validation protocol is to prove that the plant can a)produce the product same as the original plant, b) generates quality control data same as the original plant c) ensure the equipment and timelines are right.

So, as I work in the quality control lab, I am part of the team who are ensuring that we can test the product to the same standard as the original product plant and that the product made in our plant is the same as the original plant. The product has a small sample taken at different stages of it production and we run tests on it to make sure it is ok.

Due to the fact that the product is getting sampled at different stages of its production, instead of one 'finished' product to test, we are getting the raw material, the suspension of raw material (the material in a solution), product after the suspension has been applied and then product after curing (oven baked basically). And then finally the 'finished' product. So basically 4 more parts to test.

No wonder we're all exhausted in there!

At home, unpacking is still on going.
But some progress has been made.
I had purchased a 6x3ft pool table for €25. The legs needed some work as the bolts had gotten lost, but the main table was fine. So I had put it on top of the table in the back room as a temporary measure.
I had gotten the new legs and my girlfriend suggested that for ease of movement around the back room, small coaster wheels be put on it. So I did! The table stands perfectly level and is working perfectly. We're going to get a piece of MDF and a cheap table cloth so we can cover the playing area and use it as a normal table.

My games/hobby room was 95% of the items in it that is going to be in it. Going to try and organise it over the next month so I can start painting and building again. Hopefully I'll have photo's of the finished room soon.

Purchases have been scarce for the last few months, moving to a house has brought higher rent, bills and extra mileage (and therefore petrol costs) to the fold. To try and cut down on hobby spending I've been surfing the web a fair bit and am now going to start a huge undertaking. I am going to go through 3tb of data across two laptops and 4 external hard drives and clean, rename and organise them all. This will start within this month and I hope to have it completely finished by New Years.

Another thing I hope to do is to put some reviews on the blog. I started with one of the books I read, but am not happy with my formatting or content for it. I'll be working on a template that will work for books, dvds, models, websites and games. Or I may get lazy and google it.

Lots of text so to finish here's a picture of one of cats sleeping beside me as I type this. He's lying on one of my hard drives. Silly kittah as my gf would say!


Until next time!

The Hobby and I

So the blog here has been very very quiet for the last bit.

My fault, I admit.

I moved from renting a room in a house to sharing a house with my girlfriend. Big step.

Due to this, we have spent most of our free time unpacking, washing, putting stuff away, buying house things and other domestic stuff.

Which has led to a decline in my hobby time considerably.

Hopefully this will change. We only have one room really to get sorted and do some finishing touches on the others. And this last room will be the..... HOBBY ROOM!!!!

Cool, eh?

We'll have a whole room for just hobby stuff. My warhammer, gundam, board games and weights bench will reside here along with my girlfriends art and craft items. Things are looking up!

Hopefully once its organised there will be space for a permanent laptop setup, making it easier to look up info on techniques as well as posting blog posts to the world. At least, that is what I'm hoping!

So this is why feck all posts. That is all.

Book Review: Super Powers.

Book Review: Super Powers.

Saving The World Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be.

The book is a fictional account of what happens when a group of college kids wake up one day with superpowers.

Here's a few details:

Published by:Vintage Books
Publish date: 2008
Cover price:£7:99
Pages: 376
Cover design: Norm Breyfogle
Library Section: Science-Fiction

A Group of college kids have a party one night and the next morning wake up with superpowers. The story follows this kids as they learn to control their powers and start use them in their local town. They get police and media attention and it starts to fall apart soon. Power failings and innocent people getting hurt are just the start. The power set are: super strength, super speed, telepathy, invisibility and flight. The story is told in the backdrop of the summer of 2001/

The book is written as a non-ficitional account, the author (a minor charactor) tells the story in the third person, but will shift into first person for a short chapter to explain more or to give his opinion. The story reads well and the charactors feel real and flawed.

Recommened? Yes, quick to read and easy to follow.

April? Already?!?

It's April.

Where did time fly? I haven't been updating this blog at all and am wondering if I should just close it up altogether. When I started, I had planned to update once a week at least, but that didn't happen at all.
I spend more time browsing the web than hobbying at the minute which isn't helping.

But anyway, what have I done during my down-time?

I bought a car in November and am learning to drive.Hopefully by the summer at the latest, I will have a full drivers license! The car, insurance and tax were a major drain on my cash resources and I still haven't caught back up yet, so my gundam purchases have slowed right down. I do hope to get the new RG gundam mark 2 models and the skygrapser. I may start to collect the RG line only this year and then restart the HG next year if I have more disposable income.

I also moved from one lab at work to another. Bit stressful as the two are ran and operate differently. I'm more or less settled now but my overtime pay has been reduced as I'm not required to do as much. However as the day to day tasks are different from my old lab, I'm coming home wreaked and crashing on my bed.

Christmas came and went. You all know how that time of year is like. Also my birthday was in Jan and I passed the 27th age mark.

We also booked our holiday round this time to go to Africa again. We were there two years ago and decided to go back, we have friends who live there so had to just pay for the flights. This added additional strain to my finances, so gundam purchases were more or less stopped for Feb and March.

In April, we went on your holiday! We visited East London on the Eastern Cape of South Africa, a place by te beach for a week. We then drove for 15hours up through South Africa to get to Botswana. We stayed in the capital Gaberone for a week. Lovely places to visit, Africa is such an amazing place to go and see if you can.

So, what will I have on this website? I'm thinking I will expand the blog to include everything in my life, not just modeling. It may get more posts that way, but I'm not overly sure if it will. I'm going to try keep it going until the end of the year and depending on what I get done will depend on whether I continue to keep it open.

Thanks for reading!

Buda-Pest Part 2

Part 2 of the Budapest holiday! Sorry, this was written ages ago, but I forgot to post it up!

Tuesday:
We went to Statue park, which is part of the Memorial Park. The Memorial Park is still under construction but the statue section is complete. In it they have taken some of the Soviet Era statues that were put up in Budapest during the Soviet occupation. After the occupation they decided that instead of destroying he statues that a park would be build to house them. The park is a fair bit out of town, so we got the special bus that runs straight to it. The cost of the bus and entry to the park is paid on the bus and with the Budapest card, you get a discount. (Pictures are in no particular order)

After Statue Park we returned to the city. Near the bus stop we noticed some stalls in one of the streets. The stalls were local crafts - toys, candles, soaps and foods, with some Christmas stalls as well. It was cute to see this in the center of the city and the place was busy, but not packed. We then got on the tram line and vizzed down to the area where the Great Market Hall is. Unfortunetly is was closed as Tuesday was a national holiday.

Wednesday:
We went to Heroes Park. Heroes Park has a large park, bath, zoo, amusement park and other treasures. We went to the amusement park. They have a lovely old carousel but it wasn't open at this time of year. They also have the oldest wooden rollercoaster in Europe. It was my first time on one and I did enjoy it. They had lots of other rides open too, many of which we went on. Entry to the park cost covers most of the rides, but one of two require additional payment. Luckily these weren't many.

From Heroes Square we took the old underground metro line that runs along Audressy St. We got off at the stop by the House Of Terror. This is an exhibition set up in the old Nazi SS and Soviet KGB building. The exhibition isn't in English, but there are english flyers at each door saying what each room shows.
Down the street from there is a comic book shop. It's called Troll Kepregenyta'r and its a little hard to find.
Its not on the main street per say, but down a laneway to a court yard. The shop itself is small, but they do stock English language manga, graphic novels and comics. Most of the comics are American and the manga are Uk versions. Its nice to find the shop but I didn't get any Hungarian stuff comics.

Thursday:
We took it easy Thursday, we took the Cog Railway up part of the Budapest hillside and then transferred over to the Children's Railway. Lovely scenery as we went further up the hills. The childrens railway is a railway run by kids. They sell the tickets, check them on the train and do most of the signalling for the trains. The adults supervise these and also drive the train itself.

After this we went to Mammut Shopping center. Again a large shopping center full of american and english shops. In the food area though is a restaurant called Prime. It is a classy place, low lighting, bar, fireplace.
The food was gorgeous, each course nicer than the previous. The only catch is that you will pay well for the food. But it was sooooo nice.

Still Friday and Saturday to write up, have to find the diary I wrote stuff down in. Laters!

Buda-Pest

Hi all!
A little departure from normal posts, this post is going to be about my holiday to Budapest. Hope you all enjoy it!
I'll be writing this up, day-to-day and will give a description of the places that I and my beloved (who shall be named RT in this post) visited! I'll write it up over a few posts so here's the start!

Saturday:
Left Dublin at 3:30 ish with Aer Lingus and arrived around 7:50 Budapest. Budapest is an hour ahead of Ireland and England, so the time change isn't much at all to the body. Arrived in and picked up the bags and went straight to the information desk. My GF bought two Budapest cards - one each. The Budapest card allows you to use most of the Metro, Trams and buses lines during the lifetime of the card. The card can be bought in 24hr, 48hr and 72hr and starts when ever you want it to to the nearest hour. My GF selected it to start the next day at 11am (the start date is written on the card and you sign it). We then got a taxi from the airport to the hotel The Golden Park Hotel. The taxi has the maximum cost that it can be on a receipt by the company at the airport kiosk so you can't be charged more than that. The trip to the hotel took about 30mins. Got to the hotel and was given room 208. It was tiny room. Across the road was Mcdonalds, KFC and Burger King. We went to Burger King. Then went into the large rail station that was beside us. Really beautiful building. Damned if I can remember the name of it.

Sunday:
Awoke to people being loud (very loud) in the corridor. RT asked to get moved rooms, which we did after we explored a little. We got moved to room 201 which was much larger and nicer. Before the move, we went exploring - we went up the street from the house, got on the metro and ended up at the Main Jewish Synagogue for Budapest. Outside the synagogue we met Maria (if memory serves). She runs an one-hour course for Hungarian called Fungarian. I really do recommend it for you, having some easy to use phrases really helps when you're going around. After the course we went around the Synagogue in a tour and the attached museum. Beautiful building, tragic story, and very eery to me, but i would say to do to it. Maybe not do the tour but have a look around yourself. To enter the synagogue they give you a temporary Jewish hat called a kippa. The museum is on a tower beside the synagogue and has lots of pieces to look at. A memorial garden is to the rear for the victims of World War II.

Monday:

Went exploring the city. We were looking for the Chinese Market, but it was closed. Went down the tramline further and we found a lovely promenade along the Danube. We walked it and came across a lovely little gem of an area. There was a small bush labyrinth which of course, just had to be explored, and a large circular building tower. We went up to the top and had a look around. At the top, you get a brilliant view across the river and some of the surrounding area.

We then got the number 2 train which was just a walk away alone the Danube, lovely views alone the way. We then changed to the number 2 tram and continued on our way. We stopped before the Parliament building so we could visit the Shoes on the Danube memorial. I was kinda unsettled to be honest to be standing there. The shoes are made of metal and are permanently fixed to the stone in memory of those who died in World War II, falling into the river dead and their shoes left behind.  

We then walked up to the parliament building. Big imposing building, lovely gothic architecture. We didn't go in but had a walk around it. Well worth a visit. There's a park infront of it with very big statues and a memorial to those who died in the uprising against Communism.

We then returned to the hotel and moved. After I went for a walk and found the Avenue shopping center, a large monument to American mall capitalism. All the shops you want from home are here.

I think I'll leave the rest for my next post. This one is quite long with the pictures and all. Hope you enjoyed it so far.