Bikou, a base, and bugger all else...

Due to work pressures (24 hours overtime this weekend - rather unhealthy Andy at the moment), not much has been done since the last post, lair or painting wise.  In the new lair I'm currently trying to clear up the mess from the work done recently (how much dust?!), lots of sanding, and repairing plaster.  The actual plastering of the fireplace I'm building myself up to - everyone keeps giving me funny looks when I talk about doing it myself...

Painting/modelling wise, I've got Bikou glued to a base (seriously, this is about as much as I've got done in 2 weeks):

One of the really great things about the Bushido miniatures is the quality of the casting (I mentioned this in the Ancible article) - very little in the way of flash or mold lines (certainly no hedgehogification), and the limited amount there is there is easily removed with a file and/or knife. 

The base is from Dark Templar's Malcontent bamboo range - very appropriate for the Samurai/Ninja theme, and really looks the part.  Aside from using a "base topper" from GW's 40K basing kit (used on Pedro Kantor), this is the first time I've used a proper resin base - tonight I was outside with a camping light, wearing a face mask, busy sanding away - if anyone looked into our back garden they must have wondered what the hell was going on.  The base has sanded up well, the casting is detailed and crisp and there are no bubbles/flaws that I could see.  Having a small amount of the bamboo decking next to a large amount of dirt means the tree trunk doesn't look too out of place/weird.

Worryingly, I may not have used a long enough pin into the base, so I may have to change that - we'll see how well the glue holds first.  I'll also need to glue a little basing material where the trunk meets the base, just so there's no gap, and so the dead(?) tree looks like it's coming out of the ground.  I'm tempted to use some of my new "autumnal grass with fallen leaves" basing material, or maybe get some of the grass with blossom, for a "cherry blossom" effect.

Picard was not impressed with Andy's attempt at basing...

GCT studios have got a painting competition closing at the end of the month - can I get Bikou done in time?

Probably not...

I've been playing around with the blog itself.  You'll notice I've got a new little widget for the Ancible articles, but I'm also wondering about a whole new template, as this one's a bit busy - any opinions? 

I'm not a big fan of writing my blog posts in the current blogger web interface, it feels a bit clunky, and I don't feel like I've got a lot of control (I work in IT so I like to fiddle with this stuff).  I've tried using ScribeFire, in both Firefox and Chrome, but I can't upload images in Firefox (where the interface is nicer), and in Chrome there appears to be no preview functionality, so this may be a no-go. Does anyone use Windows Live Writer?  I've noticed this has a Picasa plug-in which may be useful, although this is sat on "determining disk space requirements" now I'm trying to install it - marvellous.

I wouldn't mind so much, but I have to deal with enough rubbish software at work, I could do with something that works properly at home.

Anyway, I'll hopefully have something decent to show for my efforts at the end of the week.  If I don't have anything, feel free to complain to the management... ;-)