Cosmic!

My two latest TransFormers acquisitions arrived on Friday, and both are pretty darned cool. For whatever reason (sudden burst of creativity?) I'm thinking a bit more seriously about updating my website or, at least, the collections section. There must be a way of doing what I'd really like to do... It's just a matter of learning how to do it.

Which may, as it happens, turn out to be a dangerous thing to do, because my employers are/were looking for an in-house technical person, proficient in HTML, CSS, etc. to take over the technical side of administering our myriad websites. Frankly, I don't want that person to be me... And having the required skills and knowledge may tempt me to change my mind having turned it down already. The company seems to have a talent for treating its assets shabbily. At the Annual Report presentation last week, much was made of the wonderful profits made by the company as a whole, and particularly by our little branch... No mention was made of the fact that these wonderful profits came at the expense of our payrises.

But anyway. New toys.

Energon Slugslinger is the same hopelessly overcomplicated mold as the TFCC exclusive Airazor. All the photos I've seen of this model made it look pretty garish. In person, his white is actually light grey, and the violent green is actually quite sludgy and vaguely translucent. Overall, bizarrely, his colourscheme seems quite balanced. Transformation, as one would expect, is identical to Airazor, with all the same quirks and bits that don't quite fit. Nevertheless, Slugslinger is one of the more imaginative models to come out of the Energon line... It's just a shame he never officially made it to the UK.

Superlink Shadowhawk Cosmic Type is essentially a blue repaint of Shadowhawk/Divebomb, exclusive to Japan. Despite its simplicity and quite obvious 'Robot Head Is Bird Form's Tail' syndrome, I'm rather fond of this model. It's very well articulated considering how it transforms and, aside from a very strange-looking robot head, looks great in either mode. I bought this largely because of its rarity and because it is FAR cheaper than second-hand buying the 2006 Botcon repaints as Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, so this one mitigates my feelings of terrible loss :P

Now I'm off work for a week, I'm trying to figure out what to do with the time. Normally, when I book holiday, I'm at a loss for things to do unless I'm actually going away. I really don't want to waste this holiday loafing around at home. I know I want to get my hair trimmed, and I'd also quite like to pop up to Uxbridge one day in the week to see what The Entertainer has by way of TF Movie toys (Deluxes, I'm hoping, and possibly Leader class Megatron). With the news that there will be Gen 1-inspired repaints of some characters (if not all!), I'm going to have to plan my purchases a bit more thoroughly, and not go in for impulse buying. To this end, my (current) shopping list is:

Leader
Optimus Prime
Megatron
Brawl

Voyager
Blackout
Ratchet
Ironhide
Starscream
Thundercracker

Deluxe
Jazz
2008 Bumblebee
Scorponok
Wreckage
Barricade
Bonecrusher
Arcee

Real Gear
Spy Shot 6
Power Up VT6
Longview
Speed Dial 800
Zoom Out 25X
Booster X10

Gen 1 Repaints
Jazz
Ratchet

Other things may get added as they're announced. I'd love to see a Leader class Blackout (with or without Scorponok), and I'm keeping my options open on the Ultimate Bumblebee model... but that should do me for the moment.

There are plenty of other things I could do. My folks have invited me on one of their little day trips on the Wednesday, assuming the weather holds. I may take them up on that, or I may try to find other things to do 'outside'.

If nothing else, I'm now very behind in my collection photography, and need to think about reorganizing my shelves (again) to incorporate the movie toys. It's possible that we'll be doing a bit of cupboard clearance in the spare room... We shall see.

A kind of restraint

Well, actually some might say it was very restrained of me to wait two whole days before splurging on TransFormers movie toys. Street date - global, by the sounds of things - was 2nd June, and I waited till today before visiting Brent Cross Toys'R'Us and grabbing an armful.

Admittedly, I only really waited because my boss asked me over the weekend if I fancied popping down there (largely because, at the time, she was considering visiting some nearby shops to get a new party frock for the upcoming celebration of the 100th issue of one of our magazines). Much better to get a lift down there and back home with my haul, than to get the bus down there and carry an oversize plastic bag all the way home.

The trip was almost called off at the end of the day because I developed a headache. While I blustered that "no force on Earth could keep me from TF Movie Toys!", had the headache not been on the improve, I would have opted to head straight home.

I'm glad that wasn't necessary as, while the selection on offer was oddly stilted (Ratchet and Blackout were the only Voyager-class figures on offer, and Optimus Prime was the only Leader-class, with no deluxes at all, but pegs full of Real Gears, Legends, 3" Titaniums and Fast Action Battlers), the display was awesome. The TF display has taken the place of the Doctor Who selection right at the front of the store, with a massive 3D display on the wall above the racks of products. Along with the toys are oddities like the dinner set, lunch bag, bath fizz and transforming tooth brush(!), not to mention a selection of stuff from the older Cybertron range, and even some Classics.

My haul this evening was as follows: Leader-class Optimus Prime, Real Gears Longview, Spyshot, Speed Dial and Highscore, and Cybertron Swindle. They are running a "buy one, get one half price" offer largely, it would seem, because every other bugger is. It's rumoured to have started with Argos, whose computerised ordering system just couldn't understand people buying two of the same thing (perhaps because their daft ordering system has one order number for an entire size class, regardless of how many models there are in that class). Who knows, and who cares? The end result is that you kind of wonder why they don't just reduce the prices across the board. Of course, "buy one, get one half price" easily explains why they only had the one Leader-class toy.

I'll get some photos up soon (I'm off work next week!), but in the meantime, I offer a brief overview. Of the Real Gears, Longview is the only disappointment because I expected him to be slightly larger. He turns into binoculars barely large enough for a child. OK, fine, these are intended for children, but you'd need a very young 'un for Longview to be the right size. Spyshot is a very convincing camera and, while his viewfinder is useless, he does have a satisfying click to his shutter button. It doesn't to anything but click, but it's still pretty cool. Speed Dial is a fairly convincing replica cellphone, even down to the little ring on which one can hang charms, though he's easily the weakest in robot mode. Highscore is a very well executed handheld game system on which the thumb pad and buttons all move - not entirely convincing as the thumb pad is essentially one big button and doesn't move quite right, but cool nonetheless.

Leader-class Optimus Prime is quite awesome in his complexity. Bits fold over, under and around each other, and the gimmicks are actually very well thought out and very well executed. Literally the only letdown is the sparse paintwork on the robot, and the complete lack of chrome effect on things like the truck's grille and the petrol tanks. Even if these were the only chromed parts, that would make all the difference... Still, it's an excellent action figure and a very well-designed truck... with electronic lights and sounds, thanks to the very well-planned addition of two battery compartments on either side of the truck/robot. Easily worth the cash.

I'll sign off now, but more will follow on these fabby toys.

Blissful Suburbia

When the first thing you see when you wake up is a Police car outside your house, you could be forgiven for thinking that the day had got off to a bad start.

Turns out 'something' happened overnight in a house down the road (known for being 'rowdy') and the Police came a-calling today. One car (that I saw) followed by one van, which parked itself right outside the 'rowdy' house. It would seem not for the first time.

By all accounts, we have neighbours from hell that I was not in any way aware of. Not sure whether or not I feel better for knowing that. I'm told the young daughter in that house (guesstimate age of about 10) dresses like something out of the Bratz toy range (which should be banned, but that's another rant).

Not a terrible day, as it turned out, though admittedly I slept through a great chunk of it. A welcome break after a crappy week at work. Rather than do anything (apart from nap), I spent the day quite lazily. The most proactive thing I did was visit the Dell technical support website, to see if I could uncover the source of the performance problem with my laptop.

In one sense, I think I did... I have the machine propped up on a ring binder, so the keyboard is at a more comfortable angle. When I lifted it up so I could enter a code from a label on the underside of the machine, I discovered the venting fan... and it's very blocked grating. No wonder it's been sounding so laboured - I thought it vented at the side.

Once I cleaned it up and shifted the computer so the vent is more exposed, the fan has been running quieter. That hasn't solved the problem... and neither has the video driver update I downloaded... So I'm guessing something else is adrift. Could just be that some other software updates are expecting better performance than this two year old Pentium 4 can offer (hah!). Apparently that happens a lot when Windows is allowed to automatically update itself.

In other news, on a brief sojourn through eBay, I snagged not only the limited edition 'Cosmos Type' Superlink Shadowhawk and the extremely-hard-to-find Energon Slugslinger. I'd been looking for the latter for quite a while, and actually hesitated when I found him today. After all, I've now got the TFCC exclusive Airazor, based on the same model (but with a far better head)... Do I really need Slugslinger anymore?

Silly question.

Played a bit of Panzer Dragoon Saga today, bringing my new, second hand, unconverted Saturn out of the cupboard for the second time since I bought it. I wanted to remind myself how spiffy the game is... but didn't count on noticing how crappy the full motion video is. It's not even just the low resolution of the video... the overall quality of it is so far behind today's stuff... but then, the game is nine years old.

As it turned out, I played it exactly as well as I did the first time - got as far as Arachnoth, then got well and truly creamed. I remembered his Charge attack, but completely forgot about Tentacle (which ain't that dangerous) and Devour (which... er... is). It's still a brilliant game, though... Wish I could say the same for the rest of my collection of UK games.