Category: Miniature Philosophy
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The Dead Ghost Of Habit
How many of the daily routines that fence your life are done out of necessity? How many out of enthusiasm? And how many are pure habit? All the way from eating and sleeping through cleanliness and exercise, we can have good habits or bad ones. In many cases we cannot tell the one from the…
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Do Not Start Too Small
I met a chap re-entering the hobby recently who was trying to choose his kits to build skill before he tackled the one he really fancied. I thought this was sensible thinking, but I suspect he made a bit of a problem for himself by selecting a 1:144 scale plane. It was charming, but too…
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Never Too Late
Except if you dined at an Ethiopian restaurant the night before and feel you might need to seek a toilet. No matter how fast you are, you will never be fast enough. And there is no point in getting up and thinking you’re done. You might as well settle in for the day. In the…
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Simplistic Modelling For Complex People
Have you ever wanted to have a perfectly-detailled scale model of a walnut? Or a woodpecker? I cannot vouch for the first but I remember that there were plastic kits of birds that my friend Trevor built in the late 50’s. The kits came with matt paints and brushes and he was reasonably good at…
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Hall Of Fame
I am starting to despair of ever getting into the Modelling Hall Of Fame. No matter how much I desire it, no-one pins a medal on my chest or shakes my hand. The pedantic types point out that I don’t enter competitions. True, but that shouldn’t stop people from praising me. I think I am…
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What I Have Learned From Big Local Model Exhibitions.
I’ve checked my photo records and discovered that I’ve been looking at model exhibitions for some 50 years. In some circumstance as a participant – in others just a spectator, Whichever, I have learned valuable lessons: a. They are all worthwhile – even the manky little ones. There is always something new to see in…
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It’s Not A Stash Sale
If you don’t buy something you don’t need. If you buy something that you don’t want, it ratchets up to a higher level. If it is overpriced, you are moving into the professional league. If you buy aftermarket for it, and build it, you have become a master in the art of Zen modelling. The…
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Boeing X-Plane – Part Four – Long Range Bird On Spindly Legs
I wonder what the US Navy might have nicknamed this Boeing fighter/bomber if it had ever proceeded into service? There had been few Boeing fighters before this – I can only think of the P26 ” Peashooter ” that the Army flew. Not a very prestigious name but fairly apt considering the tiny size of…
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AI And The Contest Judge – Part Four – You Lose Points
The scale modeller who seeks love by looking in the wrong places – ie a scale model contest – will be particularly ill-served by AI. The ordinary run of contest modelling is hard enough: A. The business of conceiving a new model based upon the bias of the judges – analysing what they rewarded in…
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AI And The Scale Modeller – Part Two – The Electro-Boss
Let us imagine for a moment that the model making firm of Plasti-Prag decides to download a computer program for AI to help out the staff. In it goes to the works Mac or PC, settling in amongst the porn and unpaid invoices, and the design section tries to use it to draw up box…
The Little World 