Smallest Diorama

Check is out. Guy creates a diorama in a thimble.

When winter first begins to bite:

The wind so whirled a weathercock
He could not hold his tail up;
The frost so nipped a throstlecock
He could not snap a snail up.
‘My case is hard!’ the throstle cried,
And ‘All is vane’ the cock replied;
And so they set their wail up.

Bilbo Baggins

As found in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Tales from the Perilous Realm

Do Avtomat’s Have Memories?

In Daniel Wilsons The Clockwork Dynasty Wilson refers to his clockwork automations (robots) as Avtomat’s. They should not be confused with the Avtomat, the AK-47 combat rifle of Russian origin.

To answer my own question. Yes, it does seem to be true that Avtomats do seem to be able to remember certain details of their past even though they have been around for more than a millennium, perhaps several millenniums?

Here are a few memories from Lu Yan (Peter):

"China 3000 BC

My body is sprawled in the frozen mud of Stalingrad, but my mind is transported to an impression of the past. Memories rush over me like a surge of river water, pulling me under. submerged, visions of my other life appear. Bits and snatches, growing into a tumbling flood of images and sounds that cascade through my mind.

I remember.

In this age I am called Lu Yan. I am holding simple leather reins in gauntleted hands, settled on the wide back of a gray stallion. The horse is strange, with primitive blue-black stripe running along its spine and parallel lines raking over its shoulders. Not a horse, I think.

Somewhere far away. I feel the bark of a blasted tree pressing hard into my spine and weight of Leizu’s sharp knee on my chest. The metal device in her hand sings and sparks as it sends memories crashing through my mind. Sights and sound fall over me, blotting out the cold reality of the war in Stalingrad.

I remember.

In a great cavern, light blazes from hundreds of lanterns hanging from a semicircle of tall stone pillars. Brightly dressed soldiers of all kinds form endless ranks across the room, perfectly still, made of painted pottery. The sculpted clay soldiers stand at arms in battle formation, grids of archers radiating into the fluttering darkness beyond the lamps. Between the soldiers, narrow rivers of quicksilver thread themselves over the expanse in patterns that copy the paths of China’s great rivers.

The cold of Stalingrad is pushed from my mind as another sliver of memory falls. I see Elena’s face painted with bright panic. She has another name here, too-but I recognize my sister’s porcelain cheek, the way it looked in Favorini’s workshop. She and I are running through a primeval forest, hand in hand, wet branches stripping our elaborate silk costumes as we fling ourselves between thick tree trunks.

I remember.

Slipping. I fall over a tree root and roll over a rocky spillway. Scraping my hands through dirt and chalky stone, I scramble back onto all fours. My sister dances more nimbly down the hillside of broken rock, her dress billowing behind. As she throws herself from boulder to boulder, her wrists spill jewelry, hoops of metal and gemstones and ribbons of weightless silk.”

The Clockwork Dynasty, Daniel H. Wilson

Building my Dream Tree house in Miniature

The author of this video is a true artisen. The amount of detail in this model is truly amazing. I was blown away.

40k Terrain from Cardboard Only

Recently, I viewed this twentty-three minute video on creating a 40k Terrain piece totally from cardboard.

Tarmuth A New Diorama?

“The economy or Tarmuth is more than prostitution and piracy. The town is full of industrial yards and sidings. It lives as it has for centuries, on building of ships. The shoreline is punctuated with scores of shipyards, building slipways like weird forests of vertical girders. In some loom ghostly half-completed vessels. The work is ceaseless, load, and filthy.

The streets are crisscrossed with little private railways that take lumber or fuel or whatever from one side of Tarmuth to the other. Each different company has built its own line to link its various concerns and are jealously guarded. The town is an idiotic tangle of railways, all replicating each other’s journey.”

The Scar, China Mieville

Building a Zen Garden Diorama

This is a great fifteen minute video depicting the building of a Zen Garden.

Oceans and Seas of Bas Lag

This is not an exhaustive list of the Oceans and Seas of Bas Lag, but only a first on the geography of the BasLag "the straights, sounds,channels, bays and the bights":

Rime
Boxash
Vassilly
Tarribor
Teuchor
Muted
Swollen
Gentlemens Sea
Spiral Sea
Clock
Hidden...

The Scar, China Mieville

Other Books: Miéville’s Bas-Lag/ New Crobuzon Series (The Scar)

 

I started this category, labeled Special Books back in 2015. This is where I can record lists of books that are mentioned within the story. Most are fictitious in nature, but I still find them intriguing.

I found these titles listed within China Miéville’s , The Scar which the second in his Bas-Lag/ New Crobuzon series. The second volume is has thick as his previous volume (638 pages) in a large format. I would say that you would have close to 1200 pages if it had been published in regular sized book.

This is heady stuff:

Against Bendamburg: A Radical Theory of Waters
Maritime Ecologies

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The Biophysics of Brine
Predation in Iron Bay Rock pools
Sardula Anatomy
Essays on Beasts
Theories of Megafauna
Trans-plane Life as a Problem for the Naturalists

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Caudexes of the Wormseye Scrub
High Kettai Grammatology

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Kriiach Aum

'STONEY CREEK'

"An 'On30' Freelance Model Railroad by Richard Grinyer." Some new additions to his layout.

Cyberspace

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...”

William Gibson, Neuromancer

Black Ice

“Black ice. Don’t think about it. Black ice.¹

To many stories in the Gentleman Loser, black ice is a part of the mythology. Ice that kills. Illegal, but then aren’t we all? Some kind of neural feedback weapon, and you can connect with it only once. Like some hideous Word that eats the mind from the inside out. Like an epileptic spasm that goes on and on until there’s nothing left at all.”

Burning Chrome, William Gibson

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1: A cyber security mojo.

The Lamley Daily

The Lamley Daily’s main aim seems to be to report and review new Matchbox and Hot wheels offerings. The site offers Matchbox and Hot Wheels art. If you didn’t know better, you might be drawn to think that some of these pictures were of the real thing.

3 Very Small Model Railroad Layouts

I don't know the scale of these mini railroads, but I can say that they are full of details. They are quite inspirational.

The Forgotten Manuscripts of Dr. Birdlip

So far, my inquiries have not uncovered either of Birdlips manuscripts. For the record they are: “The Myth of the Foggy London Night”, and his “Time, Considered as a Succession of Semi-Closed Doors”.

If anyone has information about either of these manuscripts, please contact Dr. Peoples at the Royal Academy.

Homunculus, James P. Blaylock

Neverwhere

"Crimson the cuts in the carcass,
Fast falls the foe,
Dauntless devout defender.
Bravest of boys."

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere is a dystopian novel that takes place under the streets of London. With its host of intense, melodramatic characters it will keep transfixed.

The Munk a Blind Guide

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

Woes on the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, Matthew 23

This is one of histrofigs 25mm miniatues from their Blasted Planets Special Figures line. I finally got some paint on it. I reviewed a few of these miniatures back here and here.

More of Yagharek’s Musings

...I was once a creature of the air, and it remembers me. When I climb to the city heights and lean out into the wind, it tickles me with currents and vectors from the past. I can smell and see the passage of predators and prey in the eddying wash of this atmosphere.

I am like a diver who has lost his suit, who can still gaze through the glass bottom of a boat and watch the creatures of the upper and deeper darkness, can trace their passage and feel the tug of the tides, even though distorted and distinct, veiled and half hidden….

The air, stills with summer, is heavy with heat and now with these newcomers, these intruders, I cannot see. The air is laden with menace. My curiosity rises. My hunting instincts stir.

But I am earthbound.

Yagharek

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

Yagharek’s Musings

“...I emerge into streets that wind like dark rivers through cavernous brick rock faces. The moon and her little shining daughters glimmer wanly. Cold winds ooze like molasses down from the foothills and mountains and clog the night-city with drifting rubbish. I share the streets with aimlessly moving scraps of paper and little whirlwinds of dust, with motes that pass like erratic thieves under eaves and through doors...”

Yagharek

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

The Garuda

"The great creature stood more than six feet tall, on cruel clawed feet that poked out from under a dirty cloak. The ragged cloth dangled down almost to the ground, draped loosely over every inch of flesh, obscuring details of physiognomy and musculature, all but the garuda’s head. And the great inscrutable bird face gazed down at Isaac with what looked like imperiosity. Its sharply curved beak was something between a kestrel and an owl. Sleek feathers faded subtly from ochure to dun to dappled brown. Deep black eyes stared at his own, the irises only a fine mottling at the very edge of dark. Those eyes were set in orbits which gave the garuda face a permanent sneer, a proud furrow."

page 30, Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

In those days no insult went unpunished...

In those days no insult went unpunished; no tribe failed twice in its obligations. The circle of French influence was firmly extended around the haunts of the Iroquois in New York and along the Ohio. From Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, north to Hudson’s Bay, was French land. To the westward, along the Ottawa River, and skirting the north shore of Lake Huron to Michillimackinac and Green Bay, were the strong French allies, the Hurons, Ottawas, Nipissings, Kiskagons, Sacs, Foxes, and Mascoutins. Down at the lower end of Lake Michigan, at the Chicagou and St. Joseph 6 portages, were the Miamis; and farther still, the Illinois, whom the Sieur de la Salle and Henri de Tonty had drawn close under the arm of New France."

The Great Goblin, taunting Thorin Oakenshield

Image from The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey

"Well, well, well! Look who it is; Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, "King under the Mountain". Oh, but I'm forgetting; you don't have a mountain, and you're not a king, which makes you... nobody, really."

The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Great Eagle Salutation

Image from The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey

Whether Tolkien was thinking about the Roc when he wrote the Hobbit Tolkien referred to his creatures’ great eagles.

’Farewell wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at journey’s end!’

‘May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks’

The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Swords Fashioned In Gondolin

Image from The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey, Thorin’s Orcrist sword

The Dwarfs and company came upon the Trolls cave and found that it was full of plunder including several swords that had been fashioned in Gondolin and used in the last goblin wars. These swords were ancient and were made skillfully. Thorin, Gandalf, and Bilbo had each acquired one of these swords. They glow blue when anywhere near a goblin.

Two of three swords were given names, once by the maker and again by the goblins. Thorin’s sword was named Orcrist or Goblin cleaver which the goblins called Biter. They hated this sword and anyone who carried it.

Gandolf’s was named Glamdring the Foe-hammer. This sword was adeptly named Beater by the goblins. If it were possible, the goblins hatred for Beater was worse than for that of Biter.

What Is So Hard About Creating a Panel Door?

Nothing, really. I have used this technique using thin polystyrene and card stock. I suppose you could use the same technique using wood as long as you have the correct scale lumber on hand. Assembly is quite simple. For my shack door I measured the inside dimensions and added six scale feet to the left, right and top so that I had a surface to place glue and a surface to adhere to the inner side of the door way.

I then used the same measurements minus the six scale inches for my panel insert. I then measured three inches, but you could have gone up to six. I did this for all four sides. For the middle I measured down three and half feet (my door stands seven scale feet tall). From this mark I measured up three inches on the top and the same on the bottom.

Having created an upper and lower rectangles I used a sharp #10 X-acto blade and a small metal rule to carefully cut these away. I then used the knife here, is that magic word again, to carefully cleaned-up my cuts. I followed this with a small square file. Once I was satisfied I carefully glued the “panels” to the front of my door, making sure that it was plumb and square with inside of the door.

Daniel Agdag’s Whimsical Sculptures

Here is another inspirational page that features whimsical structures and airships that were created only from cardboard. These sculptures are simply wonderful and inspiring. Just imagine what can be created from simple and readily available materials.

The Goblins Song

Clap! Snap! The black crack!
Grip, grab! Pinch, nab!
And down, down to Goblin town-
You go my lad!
Clash, crash! Crush, smash!
Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!
Pound, pound, for underground!
Ho, ho! My lad!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!
Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
Work, work! Nor dare to shirk!
While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
Round and round far underground
Below my lad!

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As it were Thorin and company unknowingly made camp on the “front porch”, of Goblin town and were taken hostage and herded to the Great Goblin.

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Images from The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey, Text from The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien-The goblins song

The Misty Mountains

“Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere the break of day,
To find our long-forgotten gold,”

Having traveled far they still travel further.

“Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere the break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!,”

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Images from The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey, Text from The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien-The Dwarfs song

Micro-Scale Modeling:

How to Construct Tiny, Intricate Worlds From Ordinary Materials

I may have posted something similar to this already and if I did I apologize. However, the amount of detail that the author has added to his creation is astounding and I believe it deserves another look. And to think he uses ordinary materials. See for yourself.

China Miéville's Top 10 Weird Fiction Books

China Miéville is the author of several novels that can be categorized under the heading of weird fiction so it does seem to so odd that he would create a list of his favorite weird fiction books. A couple I have read and one I have heard of, but the majority I haven’t read or even heard of. Since this is such a great time to catch up on my reading, I need to investigate some of these titles.

Reading & Northern Railroad Steam Engine

Reading & Northern Railroad Steam Engine

The Reading & Northern Railroad is local short-line railway that runs a specials over the holiday. This is one of the two steam engines they own. It made three trips back and forth from up north.

The Dilemmas of Roverandom

“Unawares, the two dogs had wandered too near to the shadows edge of the dark side, where all sorts of half-forgotten things linger, and paths and memories get confused.”

Roverandom, J. R. R. Tolkien

Further Adventures of Roveramdom

“… On the white side of the moon, the insects are very large and fierce, and often so pale and so transparent and so silent that you hardly hear or see them coming. The moonbeams only shine and flutter, and Roveramdom was not frightened of them, the big white dragon-moths with fiery eyes were much more alarming; and there were sword-flies and glass beetles with jaws like steel-traps and pale unicornets with stingers like spears, and fifty-seven varieties of spiders ready to eat anything they could catch…"

Roverandom, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Great White Dragon of Roverandom

“All white dragons originally come from the moon, as you probably know, but this one had been to the world and back, so he had learned a thing or two. He fought the Red Dragon in Caerdragon in Merlin’s time as you find in all the more up-to-date history books.”

Roverandom, J. R. R, Tolkien

A Bag of Metal HO Scale Details

I just received my order from eBay; a bag of random metal HO scale detail parts. I have no idea if they were hand-casted, but they do have the look as being retrograde detail parts.

There are to my count, thirteen figures, both male and female, fourteen platform seats, a few architectural pieces, a shovel, barrel, cast-iron stove, ETC. There are a few parts that have perked my curiosity. They seem to be parts for a small flatcar of some sort.

Breathing a lie Through Silver

“Dis graced he may be, yet is not de-throne, and keep the rags of lordship once he owned. Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly confined in living shapes that move from mind to mind.”

Myths are "lies breathed through silver."

On Fairy Stories, J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien on Magic

“Magic produces, or pretends to produce an alteration in the Primary World; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world and domination of things and wills.”

J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

Miscellaneous Bits from Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories

An Ancient Charm against the Fairies

Peace of God and peace of man,
Peace of God on Columb-Killey,
On each window and each door,
On every hole admitting moonlight,
On the four corners of the house,
On the place of my rest,
And peace of God on myself.

Manx Fairy Tales, by Sophia Morrison, 1919

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• The Juniper Tree
• Odin the Gath-the Necromancer, the gutter of the crows, and the Lord of the Slain
• George MacDonald
• The Golden Key
The Golden Key was written by George MacDonald

• Elder Edda
• Green Fairy Book
• Chronicles of Pantouflia

Forward of Tolkien’s Tales from the Perilous Realm

“The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things; all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril: both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.”

Tales from the Perilous Realm, "On Fairy Stories", J.R.R. Tolkien

Shrike

Universal Studies, Mortal Engines

The antagonist Shrike, was a resurrected one that was rebuilt in last century. Ninety percent robot, but he still holds on to his human mental facilities (however slight they may have become over the decades, there is no one left to judge). Built as Stalker and mechanical warrior and having received a commission from the Lord Mayor of London, Shrike is on his way to arrest and kill Hester Shaw, a protagonist in Mortal Engines.

“Shrike moves through the suburbs streets with his head swigging slowly from side to side. Bodies drift in the flooded rooms, like cold tea bags left too long in the pot. Small fish dart in and out of a pirates mouth. A girls hair coils on the currents”...

Mortal Engines, book 1, Philip Reeve

Chrysler Peavey

Oh, oh!

“The flash of a crimson robe out in the Digestion Yards caught Tom’s eye. The major of the pirate suburb had come down to look at his latest catch, and he was strutting along the walkways outside the cells, surrounded by his bodyguards. He was a tiny little man, stooping and hunched, a bald head and scrawny neck jutting from the cat fur collar of his gown.”

Mortal Engines, book 1, Philip Reeve

Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines Cover

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Table of Contents

Part 1

1. The Hunting Ground

2. Valentine

3. The Waste Chute

4. The Out-Country

5. The Lord Major

6. Speedwell

7. High London

8. The Trading Cluster

9. The Jenny Haniver

10. The 13th Floor Elevator

11. Airhaven

12. The Gasbag and Gondola

13. The Resurrected Man

14. The Guildhall

15. The Rustwater Marshes

16. The Turd Tanks

17. The Pirate Suburb

18. Bevis

19. The Sea of Khazak

20. The Black Island

21. In the Engineerium

22. Shrike

23. MEDUSA
    

Part 2

24. An Agent of the League

25. The Historians

26. Batmunker Gonpa

27. Dr. Arkengarth Remembers

28. A Stranger in the Morentains of Heaven

29. Going Home

30. The Eavesdropper

31. Chudleigh Pomeroy Sees It Through

32. Wine and Nibbles and the Dawn of a New Era

33. Idea for a Firework Display

34. The Cathedral

35. The Shadow of Bones

36. The Bird Roads

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An alternative cover and edition

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Other Links

Mortal Engines Quartet

The Jenny Haniver

Mortal Engines, ‎Universal Pictures, November 27, 2018

"The Jenny Haniver was no elegant sky-clipper, but was in fact a culmination of bits of junk scavenged from junk yards. “There was an envelope of silicon silk from a Shan Guo clipper, twin Jeunet Carot areo engines off a Paris gunship, the reinforced gas-cells of a Spitzbergen war-balloon, it is amazing what one can find at a junkyard”.

Mortal Engines, book 1, Philip Reeve

7mm Scale Flat Wagon

This is a Peco 0-16.5 Narrow Gauge, 2-Ton Flat Wagon from their Great Little Train collection. It was quickly assembled with a bit of solder and a solder iron. It requires a break handle and a little paint. This wagon runs on HO gauge track, the same as On30 trains.

Great Little Trains

Model# Description
OL-1 Tram Locomotive
OL-2 Fletcher Jennings Saddle Tank Locomotive
OL-3 0-4-0 Hunslet Quarry Locomotive
OR-20 4-Ton Mineral Wagon
OR-21 2-Ton Flat Wagon
OR-22 2-Ton Bolster Wagon
OR-23 1-Ton Slate Wagon
OR-24 4-Wheel Open Wagon
OR-25 4-Wheel Box Van
OR-28 Side Tip Wagon
OR-31 4-Wheel Coach/Brake, Maroon Livery
OR-32 4-Wheel Coach/Brake, Green Livery

This is, I am assuming, a partial list of this line of Peco’s offerings.

Cooper Craft G & W Wagon and Van

Cooper Craft G & W Open Wagon

This OO gauge G & W open wagon is first in my “Small Wagon” series. As the title suggests the kit is from Cooper Craft, which are manufactured in England. This is only one of two in my collection and has seen better days. Both of the models have seen some ware and are missing a few of their small details. Though they do track well.

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Cooper Craft G & W Goods Van

Here are few other images of small wagons I recently collected.

Model Train Directories

O-Scale Directory

You might find this O gauge directory useful.

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Model Railroad Locomotives & Rolling Stock Kits

You will find resources for multiple scales in this directory.

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009

Another directory. This one specializes in 009.That is HO narrow gauge. Narrow gauge trains that run on n-gauge track.

If the Shoe Fits, Wear it

“Ours is a world crippled by ignorance, and superstition, its technological and social development held back by deluded nostalgia for outdated aesthetic and ethical philosophies. Always looking backward, never forward into the future.”

Steam Girl, Dylan Horrocks

Steam Girl is a short story that was found in an anthology titled “Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories”