Probably the Strangest Book I own - The Life and Times of Saddam Hussein

I was having a tidy up the other day and came across the oddest little book I own...

The Life and Times of Saddam Hussein

Part of the Parragon Life and Times series which includes all the major dictators of the 20th Century, plus notable celebrities and all round good eggs, including.

Adolph Hitler Al Capone Albert Einstein Anne Frank Benito Mussolini Castro Che Guevara Frank Sinatra Grace Kelly Henry VIII J F K Jackie Onassis Josef Stalin Julius Caesar King Arthur

Laurel & Hardy Lawrence of Arabia Mahatma Gandhi Mao Tse-Tung Martin Luther King Mary Queen of Scots Mother Teresa Napoleon Bonapart Pol Pot Queen Elizabeth II Rasputin Saddam Hussein The Busby Babes William Shakespeare Winston Churchill

How I came by this book

For a time I worked in the MOD intranet and internet teams which were located withing the MOD Library at 3-5 Great Scotland Yard, London.  During one of their clearouts I came across this little book and as it was going to otherwise be disposed of it came home with me out of morbid curiosity.

Isn't life odd sometimes

Cheap Chinese Soldering Irons - Are they worth the money?

Embarking on the odd electronics project over the last few months has had me sucking at the teat of Aliexpress.  As my previous solder station (a Lidl Parkside special) was almost impossible to find tips for at a reasonable price. I dipped my toes into the water and bought a cheap chinese soldering iron.

80W Chinese Digital Soldering Iron - Under £10

At an almost ludicrous price I was not expecting much.  It came loosely packed with a set of tips a sponge and a pressed metal stand.  Sadly it was equipped with a two prong Euro style cord rather than the far superior UK 3 pin plug but I could not find any UK plug variants at similar prices.

The iron has a small digital display and two buttons marked + and - .  The instructions did not cover basic operation but after a bit of trial and error I worked out that:

• 1 short press of the + or - button allows you to set a target temperature 1 degree at a time
  
• 1 long press of  the + or - button allows you to change target temperature quickly
  
• 2 rapid presses of the + button switches between Centigrade and Farenheit temperature measurement.

Light as a Feather 

As with a lot of mains powered hot tools such as pyrograves, soldering irons and hot glue guns they are extremely light.  They are often lighter than the mains cable they are attached to and so are constantly making a bid to throw themselves off the table.  

The stand provided does an excellent job of preventing this from being a major problem.  However, there is nowhere to place the provided sponge. 

Easy to Overheat

As a relative newbie I found it was too easy to casually or accidentally change the temperature as I was soldering leading to oxidation building up on the tip and then a lengthy cleaning exercise.

What is the best temperature to solder at?

I found that 350 degrees C is the best temperature for soldering.  However, due to the design of these irons it is so easy to accidentally change the temperature that constant monitoring is essential.

Invest in a Brass Wire Cleaner

This is where I chose to supplement my meagre little collection of soldering accessories with a brass wire cleaning pot.

A Simple Solder Station - Thingiverse: Thing 6809777 

I designed a simple soldering station baseplate to organise the supplied stand and sponge and to accomodate a tin of brass cleaning wire.  Your stand and wire pot dimensions may differ so please feel free to remix this model.

N Gauge Model Railway - Episode 9 - Upper Carrom Gets Platforms

Documenting my journey into model railways.

The layout has undergone some pretty big changes of late, none bigger than it getting some platforms and more importantly working out where the logical place for the station is.

The original plan was to have it on the left side of the layout, but things got cramped real fast and so I decided to flip the script and move the station to the right.  It makes logical sense to just have one road going into the interior of loop 1 and then out via a large 3 track spanning bridge adding even more visual interest.

How to make a custom shaped N Gauge Platform for your model railway

1. Grab acouple of sheets of A4 copier paper and lay it over the track. 
   
   
2. Run your finger over the track embossing the location of the rails on the paper and then trace those embossed lines with a marker to make the next step easier.
   
   
3. Draw parrallel lines approx 4mm outside of the track.  This represents the edge of your platform.  Cut out the shape of your platform and test for clearance on your layout.
   
   
4. Draw a line in the middle of your shape which is a known length, say 50mm.  This is your scale line.  Scan or photograph this shape and put it on your computer.
    
   
5. Import the image into Sketchup and draw a line over the top of your scale line.  Use the tape measure tool to measure this line and input the known length of your scale line.  This will rescale the image to match the real world scale line.  Delete this line as you no longer need it.
    
6. Trace around the edge of your paper shape using the straight line and two point curve tools until you have created a filled shape.  Flip this shape in the Z axis or you will end up creating a mirror image of your platform shape.  Ask me how I know...
   
   
7. Extrude this shape up about 2mm to form your platform surface. 
   
   
8. Use the offset tool to create a matching shape 2mm in from your outer line to form an inner filled shape.  Extrude this shape up 10mm.  Save as an STL and send to your slicer of choice for printing
   

Obligatory Running Video

This weeks video shows off some of the lighting I have been adding to the layout and in particular the little 5v USB power distribution block I bought from AliExpress for some stupidly low price.  Lighting is an involved process and I will be going into this in much more depth in future episodes.

Roleplaying... Yes I still do that every week

Regular readers will probably be tired of the sojourn into Model Railroads by now.

Whilst I have been playing Fat Controller, quite a bit has been going on in my roleplaying world.

Dragonmeet 2024

A couple of Saturdays ago I made my annual pilgrimage to Dragonmeet but this year was different for me as I had very little interest in what was new on the dealer floor.  I literally went for the bring'n' buy and I returned with quite the haul.

The Low Life -

This is quite a weird pick for me and I don't know what possessed me... oh yeah it was the £10 price tag.  The Low Life is a wholly unique post apocalyptic setting for Savage Worlds.  Gazillions of years after hoomanity destroys itself in "The Wipe",  what is left of life has evolved, devolved, mutated and discombobulated to wander the "Oith" in search of something.  Archive it under very strange.

The first source book is a world guide to the Oith.  This is an incredibly dense book and after a brief read it feels like I'm transported to a Spongebob Squarepants sort of world with a writing style like William Gibson.

 

 

The strangeness continues in Holy Crap which is another world building guide to the religions and the denizens of Oith.  Think of it as a combination of Unearthed Arcana and a Monster Manual.

 

Paranoia - The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues 

An impulse purchase (£15) of this reissued and reimagined version of the classic Paranoia scenario.  I've been getting a lot of requests to run Paranoia at the club and it is one of those games that when it works it's amazing.  The original version of this scenario was reviewed back in 1985 by Marcus L Rowland and he gave it a 7 out of 10 so I have high hopes.  

Having read most of the first book this is definitely something I want to run in 2025.

Castles & Crusades - The Secret of Ronan Skerry 

£4 for a scenario is the sort of money I want to be paying.  Quite slim at 20 pages but it is an interesting sidetrek which could be used in any fantasy game.  Castles & Crusades is one of the best value OSR games out there and the very Celtic world of Airdhe also fits quite easily in most Dark Age RPGs like Savage Worlds Hellfrost which is another great setting.

Among The Stars 

This scifi engine building boardgame looked really interesting and as it came with 2 expansions I snapped it up for £19.  I will report back if this ever gets played and what I think of it.

Colossal Arena 

This has the three magic ingredients - Reiner Knizia design, Fantasy Flight publisher, Silverline game range.  It's a 2-5 player betting game about fighting monsters in a Fantasy Arena.  Sounds great and Knizia is a dab hand at the betting game mechanic (play RA, it's awesome) so I have high hopes that this will be a quick to play and fun game.

Wreck & Ruin 

It's no secret that I am a fan of post apocalyptic car combat games like CarWars, Gaslands and Dark Future so could not pass up this kickstarter version of the boardgame for £25.  I
regretted the decision every time I picked up my bag as this is chock full of stuff and weighs a ton.

I particularly like the Desertkin faction who have inexplicably tamed dinosaurs as their ride of choice in the irradiated wasteland.  Looking forward to getting this on the table. 

Dragons Keep Christmas Games Day & Party

Our last Games Day of the year and our Christmas Party is scheduled for today, I hopefully will get to play some more Dorf Romantik and we have a session of our current Cthulhu game - Masques of Nyarlathotep.

Other RPG Purchases

Golden Heroes - Queen Victoria & The Holy Grail 

This scenario completes my collection and it is rumoured to be the best scenario for the Game.  I have a lot of of love for this IP free supers game (check out my Time Travelling WWII superheroess plot line Project Daedalus) and whilst it rarely gets to make it to the table hopefully I can mine this supplement for inspiration.

Judge Dredd Block War 

Another purchase which feeds my Judge Dredd addiction.  I have been gettting a few requests to run a game of Dredd and I would love to integrate this into a game.  Replicating the anarchy of a Block War is something I have struggled to implement in my games so I am hoping that this is a nice quick game which can be easily brought to the table for a group of 4/5 Judges to play collaboratively as perps for a change.

As I am writing this I am thinking that having a Block War as a decision node in a game is a really cool idea.  Imagine having a plot where the outcome of a Block War determines the rest of the plot.  Now that could be quite cool.  I will have to put more energy into exploring that... 

Mothership Deluxe Box 

I don't actually have this in my hands yet, but I put down the funds on a pre-order from Zatu.  I saw shiny new copies at Dragonmeet so hopefully this will not be too long of a wait.  I played it at the club once and was really impressed with how well it played and it fits my criteria of rules lite no prep roleplay.

N Gauge Model Railway - Episode 8 - Viaduct and Archway Shops

Documenting my journey into model railways.

Building a model railway layout in any scale is a challenge.  If you are not an experienced railway modeller and are coming at this without the benefit of many layouts under your belt it can seem a bit daunting.

What are the challenges when building a model railway

1. Buying Your Track - This is a key barrier to progress, as track layout and more importantly what track you need to purchase, is going to determine how quickly you can build your layout. 
   
   Fortunately, I had a few scraps of secondhand flexitrack which meant I could get a rough idea of how many loops of continuous running track I would need and how many points.  This created a shopping list for eBay and Aliexpress and I could get on with some other critical elements of the build whilst I awaited delivery.
   
   
2. Track goes on top of some things - Where my particular layout is concerned I have two items which need to be built before I can lay any of the 2nd and 3rd loop track.  This comes in the form of a viaduct whihc pulls double duty as a tunnel.  Fortunately, I have access to a 3D printer and so after a few hours searching I was able to locate an STL file which met my needs... somewhat.
   
   
3. Building to a Budget can delay a Project - Model railways are expensive things and if you are not made of money then assembling your critical items might need to be spread over many weeks depending on your budget.  This can be a challenge when you are buying lots of points or turntables which can cost a fortune.  This can introduce delays which slow the process down and can suck all the fun out of the room. 
   
   We can all fall into the trap of prevarication but keeping up the momentum is key and there are lots of smaller projects which you can bring forward at little to no risk to the project as a whole.  Smaller scenic items which can be dropped into a layout at the right time are a godsend.

3D Printed Viaduct and Archway Shops - Cults 3D - £3

Whilst I waited for all my track components to arrive, I needed to build the elevated section of my layout (loop 3) and I had enough track to test the incline and build the up and down ramps.  The layout is intended to be viewed from the front and I wanted something a bit more visually interesting than a grassy hill.  This meant I needed to set the height of the tunnel so I could determine the height of my track and then put in place the loop 3 roadbed.

I found the perfect STL file on Cults 3D and shelled out the princely sum of £3.  I then set about  printing out a couple of these sections on my Photon Mono M5 to test on the layout.  They are huge chunky models which benefitted from hollowing out and adding some drain holes.  However, even after doing this I ended up with quite a lot of trapped resin which leaked out slowly... very slowly. 

Without realising that the designer had created a Low Relief version of the viaduct, I sliced the fronts off in Meshmixer to create fascias for all my arches.

Over the course of a week or two I printed off several fascias and infills to create a curved section of viaduct which hides the tunnel.

Archway Shops and Real World Inspiration

Ottley's Coffee & Catan - Inspired by my colleague and fellow boardgame fan Stephen Ottley.  Stephen is our resident coffee afficianado and also runs the tiktok channel TableTok Games.  

Sam's Sounds - Sam Buckley is our resident muso and part time punk. He will of course now be referred to as the punk pickle.

Lejava Journeys - Tom Lejava is one of my longest serving colleagues and is never happier than when he is on holiday in some exotic destination.  A travel agent was the obvious choice and Tom has the dubious honour of having a name which is super easy to cut out.

Just A Girl - Impeccably attired Elena is honoured on this layout with a fashion boutique specialising in the latest street fashions.  "Just A Girl" is her catchphrase and fits this shop front like a glove. 

Neale's Yard - Sales Director David Neale got a discount warehouse on this layout.  If you look very closely through the open door you will see the man himself pushing the Ark of the Covenant into the back of the warehouse. 

Anisha's Snack King - Anisha's snack drawer is legendary and so having an international snack store was a perfect addition.  If you are the King you need your sign made out of gold... real gold.  I knew I would find a use for that gold leaf I bought from Aliexpress all those months ago.

Loop 3 

Determining the height of Loop 3 was a simple case of tracing between a couple of sections on all three sides of the baseboard scribing a horizontal datum to work to.  On the left of the layout loop 3 climbs up to meet this datum, tracks level across the back of the layout and then falls down more steeply on the right.  The road bed was superglued in place with some MDF supports.

I threw in some track and tested that my engine would fit and with a small amount of support trimming it did.  I then tested that the same fully engine could climb the incline easily with a rake of wagons behind it.  It passed the test sufficiently well for me to continue. 

Using a wooden curve template I drew on the rough arc that the loop 2 tunnel track would take avoiding any of the vertical supports which will form the retaining walls for the loop 3 track. 

Magnetised Scenery

This entire section of scenery needs to be removable yet tie into the layout at each end where the tunnel mouths (portals) are.  This would seem like a perfect task for those tiny but incredibly strong neodymium magnets.   The ones I have are about 10mm diameter by 1mm thick.

The magnets were glued onto small offcuts of MDF on the back of the viaduct facias and matched to magnets on the viaduct supports.

As you can imagine this was a fiddly exercise and I broke the viaduct several times.  I used some car body plastic bumper filler to strengthen the combined fascia structure.

Obligatory Running Video