Ruby Blue was originally designed for TextMate, the leading text editor for the Mac OS, and was modeled after the code sections of http://ruby-lang.org.

I’ve always had a thing for the color blue, and Ruby Blue’s combination of muted blue-tone colors and eye-catching highlights for reserved words and operators looked simply perfect to my eyes.

The latest versions of Notepad++ comes with a bunch of themes, and Ruby Blue is one of them. But the problem with the default theme is that the syntax highlighting is strangely missing for most of the popular languages (i.e. C/C++, Java, Perl, etc).

So I tweaked it around a bit to include these missing languages… and it’s looking good so far!

If you’d like to give it a try, you can download it here: Ruby New

Most of my friends and colleagues think of me as a non-drinker, but that’s only because I hate tasteless alcohol (like Soju, the national alcoholic drink in Korea) with a passion. On the other hand, I like to enjoy a glass of good wine, cocktail, or beers like Guinness Stout every once in a while.

The only downside about cocktails is that they tend to be rather expensive if you order them at a bar. A typical glass at a none-too-fancy bar will set you back at least 10,000 Korean Won (approximately $9).

This got me to thinking, “Why can’t I mix my own cocktail in the comfort of my home?”

Black Russian also happens to be one of the easiest cocktails to mix, so I went ahead with my plan.

I bought a 1-liter bottle of Smirnoff Red Label and a 400ml bottle of Kahlúa at Home Plus (a local discount store) on my way home, costing me 39,000 KRW (around $35).

And now to mix myself some Black Russian:

1. Put some ice cubes in an old-fashioned glass
2. Pour 50ml of Vodka onto the ice
3. Pour 20ml of Kahlúa on top
4. Give 2~3 brisk stirs

And that’s all there is to it! No wonder it’s called one of the simplest cocktails to mix!

Now let’s see how much I’ve saved…

I should be able to mix something like 20 glasses of Black Russian with these bottles of Vodka and Kahlúa. So the cost of each glass would come down to a mere 1,950 KRW, or a little less than $2!

Quite the deal, if I can say so myself

So they’re more of an experiment for the time being, with my other alternatives being:

1. A single large (4 x 6 feet) terrain board
2. A large (4 x 6 feet) terrain board made up of smaller (1 x 1, 2 x 2, or 1 x 2 feet) square/rectangular terrain tiles
3. A single large (4 x 6 feet) foldable/rollable terrain mat

Option #1 is definitely unfeasible for me, given my space constraints. My wife will probably kill me if I attempt something like that in our small house

So I’ve got myself 30 pieces of laser-cut hex-shaped MDF boards from Warbases, and I’m planning to see how I like the overall effect of 30 hexes before investing in more.

I feel that the pros hex-based terrain tiles over square/rectangular ones are:

1. Small hexes somehow look better and more natural than small squares.
I highly suspect that this is just the wargamer in me. (I’ve been playing hex-based war games for almost as long as I can remember)
In my opinion, Square/Rectangular tiles need to be rather big (at least half a meter long per side) before they start looking good. A board made up of small square tiles remind me too much of a bathroom

2. Small tiles are much easier to make.
I’ve actually bought a few large MDF boards a long time ago, with a plan to cut them down to the required sizes and make rectangular tiles out of them. But each time I look at them, the task ahead of me felt just too daunting…
On the other hand, these small hexes don’t look so imposing and I can work on them whenever I have a bit of free time.

3. Hexes offer more versatility than squares when creating terrain
Or at least, they’re supposed to. I know that there are a number of arguments against that school of thought, but I’m with the school which believes that hex-based tiles can be used to re-create almost any type of terrain convincingly enough for wargaming purposes.

4. There are some hex-based rules I want to try out
I’ve been reading a number of fast-play rules that work on hex boards; something of a cross between board games and miniature games. They look very promising (especially for introducing wargames to non-playing friends), and will very probably allow for fun games that can be completed within an hour.
No fiddling with rulers or squinting your eyes to determine line-of-sight “from the eyes of the model”.
No “You’re only supposed to move 50cm, but you’ve just moved 51cm!!!” nonsense.

So there, these are the reasons behind my experiment with hex tiles. What do you think?

Things have settled down a bit now, and I’ve finally managed to complete 3 bases of Napoleonic British Line Infantry. I’ve also finished a few hex terrain tiles that I’m planning to use instead of a terrain mat. Here are pictures of these little Brits posing on top of the hex tiles.
(Note: You can click on the pictures to see a larger version)

Since I’m a relatively new miniature painter, and especially since this is my first foray into Napoleonics… do be gentle with your comments!

I do know that the backpacks, equipment belt and canteen are of the wrong color, and I just couldn’t manage to paint in the facings (sleeves and collars) on such little miniatures… but I have a better idea now, so my next batch should probably look better!

P.S Oops! Only after taking these photos did I notice that I forgot to paint the edge of the bases

I don’t know why, but there’s something intrinsically fun about going through the analytics of your own website. Or maybe it’s just the geek in me

Anyway, here are some of the statistics on MaxAhn.com, provided by Google.

• I’ve had 2,233 visits from 1,849 unique visitors, generating 3,858 pageviews
• Each visitor views an average of 1.73 pages per visit, and remains on the site for an average of 57 seconds (huh? that’s pretty short…)
• 57.55% of visitors come to my site through referral (clicking through links I’ve posted on TMP and such), while 26.11% have found my site through search engines
• My visitors hail from 73 (wow!) different countries, with the top 5 being United States (723 visits), United Kingdom (549 visits), South Korea (158 visits), Canada (142 visits) and Austrailia (101 visits)

Interesting stuff, no?

Allow me the pleasure to introduce… Anselyn.com!

Now, I’ve always known that Baccus (my 6mm manufacturer of choice) sells this basing pack called the “Baccus Basing System”, which includes fine sand and short static grass that are specially selected to be compatible with 6mm miniatures.

But being the cheapskate that I am, I didn’t believe that the “normal” sand and static grass will look too big/long and out of place. So I went ahead with my own way, and this was what I got with my first attempt at basing 6mm minis.

You can see that the grass is so long that it reaches above the knees, making these Spartans look like they’re wading through some thick jungle undergrowth.

I had also scoffed at buying pre-cut MDF bases, so I cut out some 1mm thick plasticard sheets to the required size and glued them together to make a 2mm thick base. Apart from this being a whole lot of work, I just couldn’t cut the sizes accurately enough by hand, so the seam between the two pieces of plasticard sticks out like a sore thumb.

After weeks of agonizing over how best to correct these problems, I finally broke down and bought a pack of 40 pre-cut 60mm x 30mm MDF bases and the “Baccus Basing System”.

Then I removed my Spartans from the old sub-standard base, and re-based them using the “Baccus Basing System”, going “by the book” in accordance with the instructions included with the pack. One slight deviation I made was to paint the base of the figures green instead of the recommended brown, as I thought it would look more natural against the grass.

And now, I hereby proudly present my re-based Spartan hoplites!

Looking at the end results, I think that maybe I should have sticked “to the book” and painted the figure bases brown. The green color seems to give a clean but artificial look.

But all in all, I’m impressed with the “Baccus Basing System”, and how easily it gives good-looking results!

Since this was my first ever attempt at creating terrain, I thought it best to experiment on something expendable. What more expendable than those ubiquitous CDs? I grabbed hold of a couple of obscure ones that came with some digital gadget or another years ago, and “sacrificed” them

Well… while the results weren’t exactly what I was expecting, they were satisfactory enough for a beginner’s first attempt. I think the grass flock I’ve used were a bit too green, giving an artificial kind of look.

Another disappointment was the dirt road. I’ll need to work on a better blend of colors, as the ones I’ve used don’t really give the impression of a dirt road.

Oh, and we welcome our special guest models: 6mm Spartan hoplites!

Now I’ve got a bunch of Line Infantry washed, prepped, primed, and ready for painting!

I hate the noxious smell of spray cans, so I prime all my miniatures (be they 28mm, 15mm, or even 6mm) by hand with black acrylic gesso.

This takes quite a bit of time, but I like the absolute control it gives me. I don’t know how many times I had to apply additional spray coats because there were certain portions of the miniatures that the spray didn’t “hit” properly!

I’ve just received an email from Amazon.com, informing me that Kindle for Blackberry is now available!

Blackberry users can simply type “amazon.com/kindlebb” on their Blackberry browser to download this.

Man, I’ve been waiting so eagerly for this!