On the upside, I do now have a cheque covering the cost of my Ikea Kitchen Starter Set (conspicuously absent from my Grandmother's card and, in fact, written by my mother rather than my Grandmother).
I must say that my Belkin Laptop Cooling Stand has been pretty fantastic so far. The fact that the laptop's fan is still running on full all the time strongly suggests the machine is on it's last legs, but it's running at speeds I hadn't thought possible in well over a year. It plays video files again (with the odd jitter, but nothing as bad as it was), though Flash video can still be troublesome.
I finished reading Watchmen yesterday - though, when I say 'finished reading', I mean I read the main story, skipping much of the metafiction that adds to the experience as I found it cumbersome. I'll go back and read it again, taking a different route, then I'll read it again for the interviews, news clippings and autobiography snippets later. It is quite an impressive story and, despite knowing broadly how it pans out, the end was still quite surprising. In many ways, it seems a strange book to turn into a movie, because there's such a large moral grey area involved. I hope Hollywood doesn't try to 'clarify' too much...
The artwork hasn't aged that well... by today's Photoshop-savvy standards, the colouring is very basic and bland, and really doesn't get across that Doctor Manhattan is actually glowing blue. And while I'm not sure I can believe or accept the Silk Spectre costume from the movie (seriously - it's just a Dominatrix costume in opaque black and translucent yellow rubber), the costume in the book is just terrible. Odd, when you consider that most of the others work quite well (with the exception of the original Nite Owl and Ozymandius) and translate quite well into real-world costumed (Nite Owl II in particular).
Today, I may be shifting stuff over to the flat... depends whether or not I hear from my boss. That said, my sister's husband will have access to a van sometime over the coming week, so stuff should be moving one way or another.
If not today, perhaps I can get a bit of photography done. Before Christmas, I bought myself a TransFormers Universe (Classics) Ironhide and Silverstreak, along with a bunch more Robot Heroes sets (Arcee/Rumble, Rhinox/Waspinator, Optimus Primal/Tarantulas).
Ironhide is pretty good, but needed some serious paintwork straight out of the pack. The red plastic is very anaemic, and his black/red upper legs were in dire need of metallic paint. His weapon was cast in dull grey plastic, and now has a coat of metallic paint (I kinda wish I'd held out and ordered the Japanese version, with its chromed weapon) so that looks decent enough. Oddly, I haven't had half the problems others have reported. Sure, his head doesn't come out flush with his shoulders, but that kinda suits Ironhide.
Silverstreak is basically the same as Prowl... but something went wrong with his assembly, as his hips were barely mobile, and rotating one cause a large crack in the upper leg. Nothing dangerous, but annoying nonetheless. It looks as though the balljoints on the hips are too large for the slots in the upper legs, so large depressions were formed (possibly the plastic wasn't properly set). I filed the balls down a bit and they're much better now... but still very tight. Other than that, it's basically Prowl without the lightbar and with a different paint job. I had intended not to buy repaints of this mold, and I certainly won't buy Smokescreen (they haven't remolded any parts between Prowl/Silverstreak and Smokescreen), but this one looked pretty cool, and was the last one left.
Now all my Classics collection needs is a few more Decepticons... so I'm happy to see that Universe Silverbolt is being repainted as Darkwing. The mold almost looks cool in those colours.
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