It is a beautiful day...

First nice day with normal temp and sane humidity. Time to clear coat everything that I have painted in the last 6 months. Thanks to Fallout 4, that is basically nothing. 

On the table now - Khorne Cultists 26 of 30

The finish line is in sight! I have these 4 that need details and 4 more that need touching up. I should have the 30 Cultists done in time for Greg at Cranky Old Gamer to take them a tournament. I hope they do well for him. 

I have been able to dedicate more time than normal to painting because my computer has crashed and needed to be shipped out to be fixed. That means that there has been no video games. So many Raiders, Gunners and Super Mutants have gone unshot in the head. 

Final Fallout 4 Countdown

I am doing some of the final work on my computer getting it ready for Fallout 4. Part of that is checking how my rig fairs against the recommended system requirements. I wanted to build a computer with the expressed goal of playing Fallout 4 and bought the best computer that Dell could build with few exceptions. The system requirements were not out until very recently.

I did some checking and my system stacks up pretty well. I should be able run Fallout at 1920x1810 pretty easily. That is good because that is about the highest resolution that my poor old eyes can take.

The main bottleneck is my GPU which is sad because I have a pretty sweet GForce GTX 960. There is a gaming version with twice the memory. In retrospect, I wish I could have bought the stock GPU and then upgraded to the Geforce 960 4GB later. I think that this upgrade will have to happen eventually to play upcoming games.

My painting station and computer station is in the basement and the light down here is not good. There are several fluorescent bulbs handing that provide harsh light. When I turn them off, I can't see my keyboard or what is on my desk. To solve this, I bought a $10 USB light with a dimmer and used an old USB extension cord. I positioned the light in such a way that it casts light on my keyboard. Pretty cheep solution. It balances pretty well with half of the keyboard on the USB extention and the other half on my painting station.

Fallout Enbargo

The only thing that I want for x-mas

Up until now, my habit is to look for Fallout news and videos every day. I have been reading Reddit habitually as well as the boring official stuff from Bethesda. Until earlier this week, I would have said that there were few people that better informed than I in Fallout news.

There were some leaked photos from a Spanish gamer this week and that was the first unofficial leak. Most of the pics were hi-res and of things like Dogmeat or buildings. I didn't think that anything could be spoiled this soon but I was wrong.

Soon after that leak came many more. I watched a few videos an immediately ran into quest spoilers. In an effort to play Fallout 4 unspoiled, I have sworn off any Fallout news until after the game drops.

Pipboy? Schmipboy!

I did not find out about the Pipboy Edition of Fallout 4 until long after it was sold out and on eBay for 3 times the price. I love the idea that I'll be able to use my mobile device as a second screen but am not going to go out and drop $500 on a giant plastic Pipboy. Instead, they are a myriad of iPhone holders out there and a few just for forearms. 

I picked this up for $9 shipped from China and love it. It fits my giant iPhone 6 Plus perfectly. What I like most about it is that the phone attaches to the arm thing with Velcro so I can position it at an angle that is easy for me to read on the fly and type on. 

This month is killing me. I think we are 26 days out now and each one is grinding by. The worst are my days off. At least at work things fly by but when I am at home I have all the time in the world to think about Fallout 4 and obsess over every SPECIAL video and perk analysis. 

Einem Nukacola, bitte.

I DLed Wolfenstein: Old Blood to use as a shake down for Fallout 4 on the new computer. I am glad that I did. There is a flickering screen problem that people with Nvidia cards have when running some games on Windows 10 and I am one of those people. The current fix is to run the game in a window, but there are more detailed fixed that I am not quite brave enough to try.

Other than that, the games works amazing. I will try to use it and Adventure Capitalist to distract me over the next 27+ days until my game drops. I feel like am I in a perpetual X-mas Eve. This state of arousal is exhausting. It has eroded my interest in anything else.

I feel like even when Fallout 4 drops, I'll still be sucked into a world without 40k or painting. I'll do my best to make posts about what I am doing in Fallout, but those are less interesting and kind of off topic for this blog. On the other hand, off-topic content is better than no content at all.

On a cute side note, I did find a little Easter Egg from the detail-oriented folks at Bethesda. It seems that they could not help but to cross the streams between Wolfenstein and Fallout. Unfortunately, this is just for fun an in no way means that the worlds could be the same as Nukacola was invented in 2044. That's about a century too late to be in the Wolfenstein world.

Fallout 4 has a new home

And that home is my new Alienware X51 R2. I know, I know. I am a big ole nerd and should be able to build my own computer. 10 years ago that might have been true but technology has gotten away from me in the last decade. I no longer recognize any of the names or tech. I could have gone to a site like NewEgg and built my own but that never really worked out for me in the long run. All the PCs that I built crapped out in a few years whereas the Dell that I bought in 2004 is still chugging along. I know that I paid about $400 more for Dell building it for me and for that sexy little alien head. It came down to security and stability (things that get increasingly more important the older you get).

At the time of posting this, Bethesda has not released any of the system requirements for Fallout 4. This site has speculated on what they might be so I bought a computer that was one better than everything that was there. I don't what the difference between an i5 and and i7 processor but I know which is more expensive now.

There is a speculation that Fallout 4 might have lower system requirements than expected. that would be similar to Fallout 3 which ran on my outdated system at the time. Granted, the draw distance was rather short for critters and grass, but it ran and the experience was pleasant enough.

The X-Wing collection grows

Part of the reason for the drop off in posting frequency is the excitement for Fallout 4. I spent the last month playing through Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and now Skyrim. In each case, I stated a new character and played from scratch. I know those games so well, that I hit the highnotes and got to a place were I was a walking god looting the watelands with impunity and also with no greater purpose. It is the methadone to the china white that I hope Fallout 4 will be. 

Also very distracting is X-wing. After buying the starter set I bought what you see in the picture for about $100 which is about half retail from a nice guy locally. 50% is what I like to pay for things that are not new and it seems that the bottom has fallen out of early-wave X-wing stuff. 

X-wing Starter Set

When there are long lapses in updates, it is usually because I have fallen into a video game or am moving across the country. I have been playing a lot of Bethesda games lately as the excitement for Fallout 4 ramps up and once that drops, you might not hear from me again until 2016. I might have to start posting what I am working on and screen caps in lieu of painting posts. 

I also picked up X-wing today. Now I am about 5 years behind the cool kids on this one so I have a lot of catching up to do. There is not really a painting aspect to this game but you know I am going to get a book on Star Wars fighter markings and make each ship unique. 

I have yet to get my first game in and am already looking at building a large force and getting them in foam. There is a pretty good crew out here that plays and I think that I hooked a 40k player into trading portions of a Starter Set with me. I think he is set on playing Imperials so that leaves me with the Rebels. I think that fewer and more forgiving crafts will suit my play style but I sure do like the look of the advances Imperial craft.