Final Tap

It's with a certain degree of sadness that I've just shut down my old Lenovo laptop for the last time.

Retiring to the knackers yard of tech, this laptop, my fifth, has served me well for 10 years as the main writing console for the blog, my last three books and my ebaying up till about this Spring when it started playing up.

Held together with gaffer tape and sporting the soon-to-be redundant Windows 10, it began failing to connect to the internet around April this year, the start of its swan song really.

I had to switch to doing everything on my mobile phone, everything except creating books on Blurb, which remained the sole activity I still did, albeit a huge struggle, on my old Lenovo.

Today I cut the cord completely and transfered photos, documents,  everything from my dying laptop to an external hard drive, ready for the arrival of a brand new laptop, with Windows 11, this evening.

Yes, a new dawn of fresh computing begins at Moonbase and after some editing on the new machine, there'll soon be news of a new publication by Bill and myself.

Have you got a new computer, laptop or iPad readers? Or is it old? Or do you just use your phone?

🦢

Lance's SpaceX and Roxy Haul

Hi Woodsy!

So recently I won an auction that included 5 Spacex cardbacks ........

and a lot of various space vehicles.

I was intrigued as it had an alternate color of the Nova Rocket in green (pics to come later in the week) and an alternate color of the Reconnaissance 2.

Turns out the R2 is not an alternate color but an actual different take on the Reconnaissance 2. This one is actually made by Roxy Toys. It is marked underneath with MADE IN HONG KONG, Roxy Toys, and a NO.2006. It stands a little bit taller than the original most due to the slightly more robust gear.

Big differences are the back of the missile launcher is molded into the lower body instead of the glued on piece of the original.

The lower half of the body is also a thinner shape and the very back of it is angled. It has two engines in each wing instead of one and a fifth in the center of the body.

While this brings each ship to 5 engines, they are not in the same locations and actually mesh together when parked back to back.

Lance

USA

Skipton Bits

 A few things caught my eye on a recent mooch in the Charity shops of Skipton

This unusual picture could well have been a depiction of my fave song by Canadian rockers Rush, By Tor and The Snow Dog. It's an epic guitar battle between good and evil and even introduced me a new word as a young teenager, Tobes as in the Tobes of Hades. I still don't know what a tobe is! Ha ha.

Have you heard the song?

This implement took me back to my Mum's kitchen in the Sixties.  I showed it my older sister and she said it was a palette knife. So readers, myself being a useless cook, what do you do with it?

Another blast from my parents home, we had a group of these Masai paintings on the walls.  Very stylised and of their time, I'm not sure they'll fly now.

In Oxfam books I clocked the original novel, which I inspired a brilliant film I love, The Riddle of the Sands.

Starring the late Matthew McCorkindale and Michael York, it's the story of duck hunting in the Friesian Isles at the turn of the Century. Sounds boring but it isn't. Those ducks are packin'!

These caught my eye.

I've seen something odd-looking before like the Vaderesque troops on the Cataclysm cover, this little pot astronaut and helmeted spaceman in Kitaharia's fantastic Yesterday's Toys.

I was thinking of another duck-faced ceramic astronaut too, but which book is it in? To follow.

Another amazing Vargo Staten cover, that spaceship could almost be the Project SWORD Task Force 2!

Anything here you like readers?

Car Boot Wednesday

 The Missus and me had a car boot stall this morning at the local sale. We did OK and sold quite a lot of unwanted bits and bobs. Same again, next week, the last of the year before Winter arrives.

As usual, as there were two of us, we were each able to have a wander and a rummage. I personally like lots of house clearance boxes (bit sad I know) to rifle through and here's my inexpensive £3 haul for ID'ing and fixing. Well, it keeps me off the streets!

See what you think. Anything you like?

Rear: 1984 MOTU Battle Bones, just missing the backbone pins.

LtoR: unknown clockwork doll, Mertrade van, unknown pirate, unknown Disner figures, Dr.Who Tardis salt and pepper pots, MASK bike copter, Thrushbuster spares, TAT truck, unknown Laurel and Hardy figs.

Yesterday I invested a bit more, £7, on two well boxed Charity shop toys, a Borrowers keepsake and a Schleich Lava Hyena.

Any good?

Right, time for a kip. Pilates classes start again tonight. Nooooooooooo! 

Kevin's War of the Worlds Martian Eye

 Hi,

Here is my scratchbuild of the camera eye from the 1953 War of the Worlds movie.

Keep watching the skies

Kevin

UK

A Bone on the Range

 A trip to Smyth's toys and the Range today was interesting.

In Smyths, among countless amazing toys for Christmas, were Metroid carded figures going cheap. I've never heard of them. You?

I was blown away by this huge moving and talking Optimus. I mean Wow!

Here's a fantastic review of it by a superfan kid. It's hilarious and good.

https://youtu.be/ugCfz77QyHI?feature=shared

I also liked this mega chomp shark with the GI Joe style figure. The shark lights up when it eats!

Anything here for you?

Here's a few Halloween morsels I saw in the Range too.

A lovely animated haunted house with underground train. So cute! 

Life size corpse boney bride and groom. Blimey, they could be film props! 

Nurse Skeleton. She's been nursing for centuries! 

Quaint Haunted house bath soap made from real ectoplasm.

This shape reminded of the old and beautiful Marx tinplate Hootin Hollow haunted house.

It was a work of art with mechanical keys at the side to operate sounds and effects. I'd have loved one!

Here's a collectors short showing the keys.

https://youtu.be/MCeenBc-c18?si=VIJ2mdA-pj6U-Nft

Have you a haunted house?

Remember Smoking Monkeys?

Some of our Sixties toys and novelties were distinctly of their time.

Take the Smoking Monkey for instance! You remember, the seated plastic monkey with the pouting mouth and long thin cigarettes that you lit.

With a few different names like Smokie Pets, these little toys were part of a whole world of gags, jokes and novelties available to kids back then. I'm not sure where you bought them but I know I had one of these monkeys.

The toy trick extended to actual TV characters too, which personally I never saw, like these carded figures by Elvin: Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw and Huckleberry Hound.

Consigned to the ashtray of toy history now, these smoking toys were part of that time when cigarettes were everywhere and the Marlboro Man was a TV personality.

Did you have one readers?

Terranova47's War of the Worlds Steam Ram

Hello Woodsy

As a kid I was taken to three science fiction movies back in the early 50's.

Forbidden Planet

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

War of the Worlds

With Dan Dare in comics I was firmly on track to enjoy science fiction, whether in book form or movies.

I remember being told that War of the Worlds was a book and the story was British rather than the US setting of the movie. 

I read the Classics Illustrated comic version before the actual book and for me the sequence of the HMS Thunder Child ramming a tripod was the highlight.

I recently read a Graphic Novel version of the book by Chris Mould which was interesting but didn't mention HMS Thunder Child. 

Shortly afterwards I found the bottom of a ship's hull in my parts bin from when I kit bashed a trawler into a coastal tanker waterline model. 

That prompted me to research what a Royal Navy Ram looked like and instead found an image of a US Navy one.

 Using scraps and bits again from my parts bin I created the steam ram seen here, about to commence sea trials with an Admiral aboard.

Hope you like it.

Terranova47

USA