Liberty Belle crash

All things must pass eventually, but its always a shame to see a beautiful, and as irreplacable aircraft like a B17, crash and burn. Thankfully no one was killed.

DEUTSCHLAND AT RAMSGATE - 1920 - British Pathe

DEUTSCHLAND AT RAMSGATE - 1920 - British Pathe

This is interesting footage. 'Deutschland' was the sistership of 'Bremen', which was the submarine I borrowed for RM5.

Both subs belonged to a curious type of submarine developed by Germany as clandestine merchant vessels (you can see how fat they were in the image above). They were designed to ship high value, exotic cargo's into Germany, circumventing the Royal Navy's blockade. Their limited cargo capacity however, and the fact that they just weren't that reliable meant they were later converted into 'U-cruisers'.

Nothing to see here, move along

Lazy days in Aarhus. I've not had much time to do any modelling, nor painting, of late, so not much to relate with that regard. The children take up a lot of my time and trying to manage various obligations, whilst coping with the emotional turbulence of losing my parents takes the rest. It will only be a few months until the first anniversary of my fathers death, but I'm still suffering regular bouts of grief, characterised by depression, lassitude and a general inability to concentrate on such mundane things as dates, appointments and other such obligations. Overall, I have an obscure feeling that I've lost my way and I'm wandering in fields of doubt.

Every so often I get a glimpse of who I was a year ago and I wonder how I get back to that. Perhaps the first step is in finding the way out of those fields of doubt?

Artist of the Month; Emmanuel Shiu

Emmanuel Shiu is a concept artist who has worked on numerous film projects, such as 'Iron man', 'Hell Boy 2' and 'Sin City'. He stands out for me, because he has both an appreciable talent for composition and light and because he has a flair for industrial decay.

There are a great many concept artists working today,and they all use much the same tools, programmes and ideas. The internet is over flowing with concept artists who have painted men in powered armour, vampyres, muscular monstrosities and girls with guns, and its growing tedious to see the same old shit again and again, and again in a multitude of meager variation. It becomes a rare treat to find a concept artist whose best work doesn't fit into a teenagers fantasy world. (That Shiu's portfolio also contains photographic nudes is only to his benefit!)

HEAT-1X test flight videos

I'm not sure whether or not the next rocket has already been designed, or whether Fridays test flight means CS will make a brand new design, but this graphic gives an idea of the scale of the next rocket as compared to a Nazi V2;

Ad Astra!

Copenhagen Suborbitals launched their first full test flight of the HEAT-1X rocket yesterday and as you can see from the video below, despite a bit of wobble, she flew!

The orange bit at the top of the rocket is a capsule big enough to carry a human being (it contained a test dummy for this first flight) and the end goal of the project is to carry a man into suborbital space. Reaching suborbital space is far easier than reaching orbit, which is why the rocket does not have to be very big, but its still a monster of a project for private individuals with very little money. The test flight was planned to reach an alttitude of 16km, but early reports indicate the rocket only made it about half way. The parachutes were also a bit faulty, but thats what test flights are for I guess.

A Danish 'rocket expert' has applauded the effort and predicted a Danish rocket may carry a man into suborbital space within a decade... so no dangerous enthusiasm on his part then. I predict a manned flight within four years, but thats because I am an impatient optimist when it comes to space flight.

The Winter Queen

By Boris Akunin

"Here's to luck!" cried the drunk (or perhaps, the madman), then he raised the hand holding the revolver high above his head, spun the chambers and set the muzzle to his temple.

Ah, but this was a nice read, and not quite what I'd expected at all. That is to say it was exactly what I had hoped for, but I was expecting to be disapointed in my expectations. I wasn't however, and the story was very enjoyable.

Erast Fandorin is a Collegiate Registrar (a minor Russian police man in the Tsarist era) who comes across a curious case where a young man publically commits suicide in a park for no apparent reason. Erast convinces his superior to let him look into the matter and a strange and convoluted story unfolds. Erast himself is a young, naive romantic who stumbles from one predicamant to the next, but always manages to survive by the skin of his teeth, or by the good fortune of being rescued from an unlikely quarter.

The plot was fairly obvious, and the twists weren't hard to spot before hand (some were practically sign posted) but the story telling carried me along and entertained me and consequently I have already sent away for the next three novels in the series. I understand that Akunin wrote each novel with a different style in mind, so it will be interesting to see how they differ.

The Wine Dark Sea

By Patrick O'Brian

Presently it was no more than broken men, escaping below, screaming as they were hunted down and killed: and an awful silence fell, only the ships creaking together on the dying sea, and the flapping of empty sails.

Of all the series, this is my least favourite I think. Although it bucks the trend of the series by being fatter than the others, which get thinner and thinner as O'Brian aged, this book reads almost like a last gargantuan effort to wrap up a story that had grown into a monster. The first half the book is fair enough; still in the South Pacific Jack Aubrey continues along his way, chasing down a pirate and capturing a French political revolutionary, but then the story reaches South America and things get rather dull. Stephen wanders around the Andes, visiting yet more Catholic priests and assorted Irish men and eventually getting wounded as he has done so many times before.

It isn't that I dislike the character, but there is a certain uneasiness about Stephen Maturin. A sense that he is just too good, too much of an expert doctor, surgeon, naturalist, zoologist, ornithologist, code writer, linguist, swordsman, marksman and intelligence agent. That he is also uncommonly lucky in cards, has friends and family connections from the British Court, to the Baltic Sea to the Iberian peninsula and to Peru, that animals and children take to him easily, that great wealth simply falls into his lap... well its all just a bit too much at times.

The fact is, its Jack Aubrey who is the hero and Stephen Maturin is the side kick, and the books are most alive when both of them are together. O'Brian didn't seem to think this though, or maybe he didn't care or agree with it, because he often dumps Jack at sea and lets Stephen roam the land by himself. Sometimes this works, but in this particular book it drags.