Weekend Update CW 18/2020

It's a prolonged weekend this week in Germany, with friday being labour day. A small lot of Dark Elves arrived, to go with my Realm of Chaos project, we had a go at the last missing piece of my Wild West collection and had another Frostgrave review this week.

Other than that, it has been a rather dark week for Wargaming. The UK Games Expo, that was postponed towards August, is now cancelled (event schedule updated). A german gaming store, MOEWI Games will close their doors on June 30th, and I expect further stores to follow down that road due to the lockdown, lack of customers and less budget for hobbies due to short hours. And as a third and most moving bad news, a fellow wargamer died a few days ago, Andy Zeck of AZ Painting. We weren't close, but I enjoyed his work and participation on a broad range of projects. Farewell, my friend.

At least in Germany the lockdown is particularly lifted, with strict stipulations. Some goes for production, so some warehouse in Europa were able to restart with a smaller crew (to keep distance between workers). So did Games Workshop and their online shop is back, as well as many stores - at least in Europe. To support the traders and gaming stores, they released a limited Imperial Guard Colonel from Catachan, available only through the independent shop owners. And it's already getting weird.

On Warhammer Community they released an article from White Dwarf #158, from 1993, that covered a classic battle report between Ghazghkull and Ragnar Blackmane. A bit irritating that they did only have on issue, where the snotlings were marked with pencil.

Among the dozends of different clients used for collaboration and team work, Microsoft Teams is very often used as part of Office 365. They offer custom backgrounds for group calls, but so far you can only choose from the ones they provide. Unless you use a workaround to add pictures (ideally 1920 by 1080 pixel PNG-files) to these file paths, depending on your OS.

PC: \User\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams/Backgrounds

I already took the chance and created personalized backdrops, of my wargaming library (a bit noisy for most situations), of my living room and of my grandparents bar (yeah!).

I was a bit amazed by the way the sunset broke into the living room and covered everything in a warm tone. The light broke on the glass of the cabins, creating an interesting prism of colours, but leaving the miniatures inside dark, just pointing out the outlines.

I have some plans for cooking on the weekend, among them giving the Lasagna from Bon Appetit another go (after cooking it for the first time in february). There is a video on Youtube, Bon Appetit - Chris makes Lasagna, as well as the recipe as a regular page available. It got a bit darker, as I wasn't using my own kitchen to prepare and the heat development of different oven is quite ... different?

Yet there are a few other things, I am looking forward, for example trying the Tiny Tacos, Sam the Cooking Guy introduced. And I'm really excited about the Burger Scholar with George Motz.

We were able to catch up on some Tatort episodes we missed, and picked up the Lindholm (played by Maria Furtwängler) story line and her disciplinary transfer from Hanover to Göttingen. Homeland ended this week, convincing and fitting finale of a great series, very satisfied with the way they wrapped it up.

I watched the first season of Seinfeld (its only 5 episodes) and first few episodes of season 2. Due to the participation of Larry David it has its similarities to Curb your Enthusiasm (which I picked up on a Singapore Airlines flight), but it starts rather slow and is a bit strange to Europeans, as the upper class live style of the early 90s New York isn't something you can easily relate to.

I have two suggestions for history buffs, that I found on YouTube. One is Modern History TV, where Jason Kingsley OBE, also known as the modern knight, covers multiple topics on the medieval times, from the warfare on horse, the way of the knights towards to everyday live of the people back then. Quite interesting. And another very interesting history channel is Voices of the Past, where I found among other things the documentation of first meetings of cultures - from both sides, for example First Meetings, Japanese first meeting the Europeans. Very interesting to hear, how the japanese scholars described the causasians they saw for the first time, or how the Aztecs got to know about the Spaniards.

After Saturday Night Live is now continuing as Zoom-oriented comedy sketches, I am a bit cloyed of that formate and couldn't really enjoy the special episode of Parks & Recreation.

That's it for today. Stay safe, stay at home. If you want to know what I am up to during the week, drop by later or follow me on Instagram.