While the Star Trek Adventures Roleplaying Game is well suited for playing as theater of the mind where everything is left to the imagination, I do enjoy using miniatures and props in many of my games.
I’ve picked up several of the Giant Books of Battlemaps and a couple box sets from Loke Battle Mats, and they make for a good surface and background for many of adventures I run, and I often combine them with other props, particular the wooden props that I picked up from Galaxy Gaming Gear.
The crew has landed on a building located on the shore of an ocean and is meeting with the locals.Using Galaxy Gaming Gear tiles and props to represent the ShuttleThe shuttle is preparing to dock at a complex containing stasis chambers and a gatewayContinue reading ‘Star Trek Adventures – Props’ »
This is an interesting one. He has a few samples of his work on places like Thingiverse but for the majority of it, you will need to sign up on Patreon. However, unlike most Patreon subscriptions for miniatures, you don’t get a monthly pack of minis starting the month you sign up, you get access to everything that he’s ever done, which is a very large list.
I really like the Cylons he’s done up. I haven’t tried printing off any of the vehicles, I don’t think my small Elegoo Mars 4 resin printer would handle them very well. I think the Viper Pilots are well detailed, my only issue is they seem a little blocky, rather lacking in the neck department, and no females. They do come in a nice variety of poses though.
Up until now, the miniatures I have been looking at have been physical miniatures that I ordered from various companies. I finally bought a 3D Printer this year, an Elgoo Mars 4, and have started getting STL files and printing off minis. Naturally I started off with Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica miniatures.
The first site that I’ll cover is Lost Heresy Miniatures. They have more Star Trek related miniatures than Battlestar Galactica, but they do have one that I haven’t found anywhere else.
These are the Mandrake Storm Droids, which interestingly don’t show up on their website, but are on My Mini Factory and possibly other places as well. I think it’s fairly obvious from the photo what they are supposed to be.
If you are looking for Star Trekish miniatures, you can search for “Away Team Red”. I love some of the names that these companies have to come up with to avoid copyright issues.
One company I ordered from and forgot to do a post about is Tangent Miniatures. I recently did another order from them, so I’ll cover them now.
The miniatures arrived in a nice little box, then in several bags within the box. There wasn’t any extra padding, but they arrived in great condition so no complaints.
I ordered three sets, and he sent me a bonus set because of some shipping delays that had occurred, which I appreciated.
The first set is the Space Fleet Guardians Bundle, your basic Viper Pilots. I was impressed that the figure that is obviously based on Apollo has his blaster in his left hand, some nice attention to detail. And, there are two female pilots, which are few and far between when it comes to miniatures.
There are also helmets available, if you felt like lopping the heads of the minis and replacing them with “Bone Domes”
After that we have the Enemy Pursuers Bundle consisting of Baltar, Imperious Leader, and Lucifer.
And finally, Don’t Panic!, the bonus set is the Cosmic Travellers Bundle, with characters from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
There are all sorts of other interesting miniatures available from Tangent as well. Unfortunately they did have some problems with their website awhile ago and had to do a rebuild on it, and it looks like they are still catching up on putting up pictures for some of the miniatures. Hopefully that all gets finished up in the near future.
It’s been over eight years since I last posted about buying miniatures, but I haven’t stopped, and I’ve even finally started painting some of them. In my original post about Crooked Dice Game Design Studio I mentioned that they didn’t have anything that looked like Viper Pilots. Well, that changed at the end of July this year. They added a few new sets, and I found out after I ordered the physical minis that two of them are available as STL to purchase and print on your own, if you have a 3D printer:
I realized that I haven’t done an update on what’s going on in my life since I did a small one in Jan 2019, which was supposed to be the first of several for that year. Previously I had done a more detailed one in mid 2018. Looking at that one, it’s almost funny how similar I think it will be for this year.
I’m not going to go into much detail in this post, I’m just going to do high level summaries for several categories and hope that in the coming year I will actually do some more detailed follow up posts for at least some of them.
Life
Generally, life is good. My Mom, Angie Knorr did pass away on Feb 6, 2022 near the tail end of the Covid epidemic, but not from Covid. That was hard, and dealing with her very simple Estate took way longer than I think it should have, but eventually everything got settled out.
Overall, Covid didn’t affect me too badly. Michelle and I were both able to work from home, and continued to after the epidemic was over, which we enjoy. We don’t miss the daily commutes or having to pay for parking.
We did a complete renovation of our kitchen and bathroom over the summer of 2023, which went really well and we were very happy with the results. Our contractor, Luigi was amazing. To quote my sister in-law “He is a national treasure and should be guarded at all costs”
We also finally purchased a new vehicle this year, a 2024 Kia Seltos in green, which we also love.
We took it on a road trip for a Family Reunion on my Mom’s side of the family with my cousins and one of my aunts out at Madge Lake Saskatchwan, which my Grandparents had a cabin at for many years and we spent many summer vacations there when we were young.
We also did a family vacation in October in Nuevo Vallarta with Michelle’s family. Her parents, sisters, and spouses and all the nieces and nephews except one were able to go. It was a great time. I haven’t flown anywhere since our trip to Maui in early 2015, so we were overdue.
Work
I’m still working at the same place, although the name has changed a couple of times. It was “Calgary Laboratory Services”, then it briefly went to “Calgary Public Laboratories”, then the UCP got elected and didn’t like the word “Public” so it changed to “Calgary Precision Laboratories”. As mentioned above, I’ve been working from home since early 2020 and still enjoy my job most days.
Health
I’m doing quite well health wise, have fairly typical issues for an older white guy, Type 1 Diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, but are all being well managed and I have lost 25 pounds since the 2019 update. I’m within five pounds of the target weight 225 that I set ages ago. I will definitely do a more detailed post, and a page update on some of this later.
Social Media
I’m still the most active on Facebook, so look for me there if you are interested in staying in touch. I just set up an account on Bluesky and deleted my Twitter/X account. I suspect I will use it more for following and won’t post much there. In particular for relevant news, since Facebook won’t display news site links in Canada anymore.
I do have a Threads account and an Instagram account, but I don’t really use them much. I think my Facebook posts still get forwarded over to Instagram, I should probably verify that. I’m not sure if it’s considered Social Media, but I’m somewhat active on Discord as well.
Games
I finally started playing 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons this year and am really enjoying it.
I’m also continuing to run my monthly Star Trek Adventures game, although I stopped posting pages about it here. It was too much extra work and wasn’t getting used.
I’m also still working on and off on my WEG D6 Battlestar Galactica RPG game which I hope to run within a year or possible two. I was excited that D6 System: 2nd Edition finally went into Kickstarter, with pdf’s being available as early as mid February 2025. That’s what I’m going to use as the base and turn the work I’ve done so far into an add on module, which is the approach they are taking for different genres and options. In the meantime, I’ve finally started painting some of the miniatures I picked up years ago, and have printed off using the 3d printer I purchased this year.
I also did a little work on a Basic D&D / Old School Essentials campaign I would like to run as well, but that is on indefinite hold for now. So many games, so little time. I’d also love to run Coyote and Crow now that a set of adventures have been published for it, and a campaign setting is finishing up in Kickstarter.
Websites
For this site, at the top of my To Do List is updating the “Calgary Tropical Fish and Aquarium Resources” page. One site listed is no longer in business, one formerly on-line buisness now has a physical location, and there is one new store, fairly close to where I live, that I need to add.
I also want to go back to my posts about Battlestar Galactica character miniatures and fix some of the pictures that have gone missing, then do an update post about the sites mentioned. I then need to add one site that I missed, and another about some of the 3D prints that I got. Finally, I need to do some updates on how the painting of those mini’s is going.
I should also do an update on my Aquariums. The 140 gallon tank sprung a leak and there was a rapid two day replacement with a new 90 gallon tank.
As for my ICEWEBRING site, I wouldn’t say I’ve abandoned it, but I don’t do much with it other than basic maintainance. If nothing else I should add the new Rolemaster “Spell Law” and “Treasure Law” books to the product list.
Family Tree
I haven’t done a lot with this, although I did have one weekend where I worked through one of the Parish File lists and added a substantial amount of information to the Knorr family treee.
Unfortunately, Morris Knorr died unexpectedly this year, and he was really the driving force on the Knorr Geneology Facebook page that I set up several years ago. I’m hoping to keep it going, even it if is just posting the occasional update that says that I don’t have any updates.
There is supposed to be a “Family Tree Maker 2024” release this year. The last release was “Family Tree Maker 2019” so it will be interesting to see what improvements they have made.
Politics
What the fuck? Okay, I’m just generally disgusted with the state of politcs these day, from the US Election to Canada’s Federal parties, and the UCP in Alberta. I’m reasonably okay with our Municiple government overall, although it could use some improvements too.
I think the worst thing about all of it, and the reason I’m disconecting from most of it is the overwhelming negativity found in just about every aspect. Fear mongering from the Parties involved, the outright hostility of people commenting on anything political, and dragging politics into areas where it doesn’t need to be. This is one category that I probably won’t do any additional posts on, it just makes me angry.
Wrapping up
I’ve hit the time limit I was allowing myself for this post, and I covered all the topics I wanted to hit. Hope you enjoyed it and look for more content in the coming year.
By the time 2022 started, the tank was close to the configuration that it would keep. In January I did give up on the first moss wall that I had tried to get going, which had become more of an algae wall.
I consulted with a local expert on plants here in Calgary, and he got me set up with a metal mesh that attached with suction cups and a small amount of moss to get started. I didn’t think it would be enough to get a good wall going but decided to give it a shot. The moss is glued to the mesh with super glue.
Last weekend (Jan 21st) I did a survey of Tropical Fish prices at the various locations in Calgary, as well as some of the local online vendors. I made a “Shopping List” of 17 fish that I have purchased in the past or might purchase at some point, then I went around and checked which locations had the fish and how much they were. For Petland and PetSmart, I went to the 130th St SE location. I listed two prices for Petland, the first is the regular non-PetClub price, the second is the PetClub membership price if you buy three or more of the listed fish.
One thing that really stood out is how different the selection is at each location. Also, price isn’t the only factor to look at when buying fish, there is often a significant difference in size for the same species of fish from the various locations. If you have the time, it is definitely worth going to as many locations as you can before purchasing.
I have added a new page to this site called “Calgary Tropical Fish and Aquarium Resources.
It is a guide to the resources in and around Calgary for Tropical Fish and Aquarium enthusiasts. My hope is that it will be useful to people that are new to the hobby as well as those that have been in it for longer that might want a handy place to look things up. Enjoy!
Here is what the 140 gallon aquarium looked like after the initial set up. There are several things that can be seen here that would eventually change. On the left is a plexiglass three compartment box, which I’ll discuss below. You can also see that the intake for the FX5 canister filter has a mesh bag over the end to prevent shrimp from being sucked into the filter. I quickly discovered that the mesh was too fine and clogged up quickly. It got replaced by a sponge tube fastened with a couple of zip ties. That would also get replaced a little later with a better setup.
There is also a pre-filter sponge over the intake for the AquaClear 100, also to prevent shrimp from being pulled into that filter.
There is a single heater on the back near the outflow from the FX5, then a mesh square held on with suction cups with some moss attached to it in the center on the back of the tank. A change between the first and second picture is the addition of a mesh net over the moss wall. The plastic squares were just big enough that some fish, in particular a rummynose tetra, would try and swim through the squares and get stuck. I actually had one die because it got stuck and I didn’t notice right away.
