Personal Project: Force Pike – Update

Been awhile since I have posted about this. I had been having issues finding cheaper solutions for a couple of the pieces I had been needing to buy. All three were from amazon and with the shipping cost on each one, would have put the cost of those three pieces up in the range of the 20 dollar mark, which would in turn put this project far over budget. So I have spent the last few weeks digging around and just the other day manage to find a site that has them for cheaper.

Then there are some other things in the works which may make the overall cost of the project drop farther as well. So we shall see how things go over the next couple of weeks. Once I see what pieces I have and what needs to be done and bought still, I shall begin ordering in earnest and preparing the pieces for the eventual coupling and paint job that will need to be done.

For those who might be interested in creating your own:

Shopping List – all the parts I have found links for so far (minus a few smaller bits that you can get for cheap at any hardware store)

Original Plans – This is where I got my idea to make this from, as well as the original shopping list of parts as well. From here is where I started shopping around for the pieces.

Now once I begin piecing this together I shall be posting pictures of the process as well as I go. So we shall get a detailed description of the process as well once I get to that point.

 

On a side note, I am a bit jumping the gun here as well, but I have already decided what the next project will be once I create the force pike, and surprisingly it is non star wars related. I am planning on making my own Telescope and mount. More on that though once the force pike is completed 😀

 

Random Star Wars Goodness

Just a few videos that I have come across over time that I think is quite hilarious actually:

Vader Sessions

COPS: Stormtrooper — fills in the blanks for what really happened to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, How did the Imperials figure out what Jawas sold 3PO And R2? Watch and find out…

Chad Vader – What if Darth Vader was a shift manager at a grocery store?

Review: The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology

I will admit, I love zombies.

I have loved almost everything dealing with zombies since I was first blessed to watch Night of the Living Dead all those years ago. Granted, I didn’t see it when it first came out, I was a bit too young at the same, since it came out about 14 years before I was born. Since I have watched many more movies on zombies and been really glad that zombies seem to have had a resurgence in popularity over the past 5 years or so now. Perhaps they are riding on the interest the paranormal, perhaps not, either way; it’s a boon for those like myself who enjoy the undead.

One of the many things that I have always enjoyed from some of the zombie books and movies is how they are often used as a social commentary backdrop for the timeframe that the movies are created. How they can be used to showcase the insatiable hunger that the human species is capable of, whether it’s in the case of eating, greed, corruption or spending or any number of ideas, zombies can be used as a backdrop to teach a lesson. Or, on the other end of the spectrum they can be used as nothing more than a horror element and a reason to have gore, intestines, and blood by the bathtub full. Either way, I am more than happy to spend my time watching or reading.

With the Anthology at hand, The New Dead, this takes the themes of human suffering, survival, gluttony, greed, and mans ever desire to outwit death and brings it to a book near you. Like most anthologies though, not all, at least in my opinion, of the stories are great. I really enjoyed several of them; among them was the story by “What Maisie Knew” by David Liss. In this story you take a simple mistake created by the main character and follow it through to the surprise conclusion. The

moral of the story is, had he just come clean to begin with, the mistake that the whole story is about would have probably been averted.

“In the Dust” by Tim Lebbon puts you in a town that has been barricaded because of the pandemic that had destroyed all but a couple of the citizens who lived there. With the government quarantine stopping them from leaving, they are in a position to try to help the scientist prove that the virus is not alive within them; by bringing to the scientist the corpses of the infected. With this we have a man who is darn near psychotic because of the events that have lead them here, a women who is so fragile she can barely think for herself, and a man who wants nothing else then to find the body of his lost wife. Through the course of the story you get to see these characters grow as their situation goes from being bad, to being in a place of sanctuary.

One thing I have loved about these collection type books is the range of authors that I have gotten a chance to read. Jonathan Mayberry is among those who I have found through their short stories to be among the top of my favorite authors of the genre. His story “Family Business” is probably my favorite story in this which is a tale of two brothers. Without giving anything away to the plot of this great story, we get to see the growth of the younger brother as he begins to find out who his bigger brother is and why he has made the choices he has made. This is a must read and alone makes the book a must buy. I also strongly recommend this author to anyone else as well, his book “Patient Zero” (review coming later) is also a must read for zombie related interest.

Now though, not all the stories are gems. “Copper” was pro

bably one of the most uninteresting and boring reads I have probably read from any collection book so far. I found the style of the writing to be uninteresting as well as the story from it. Nothing seemed to really happen in it, it’s sort of told from the perspective of a zombie though, which was interesting at least a little. Though the ending to it was just anti-climatic and not worth the nearly 40 pages this short story was.

Otherwise though, the rest of the book is pretty good, and more then worth a pickup if you are interested in horror or zombies. If you are looking for something that is filled with different types of zombies and just not your run of the mill gore fest that most people tend to associate with anything zombie related, this book is a must read. Even with the couple of less than stellar stories the couple extraordinary ones more than make up for it.

Rating: 7/10

Review: Star Wars – Red Harvest by Joe Schreiber

Before the rule of two came into play for the sith, there used to be thousands of sith warriors in the galaxy. In fact, they were an empire of the day, back 3500 years before the rise of Emperor Palapatine and Darth Vader were even whispers of being the consummate evil in the galaxy. The Sith and the Old Republic fought a war for control of the galaxy, the classic battle of good vs. evil.

In Red Harvest, the partial prequel to Death Trooper that came out on October 13, 2009,  Joe Schreiber takes us back to this time to the sith training world of Odacer – Faustin, a world not to dissimilar to the planet of Hoth, consisting of mostly just snow ice and deathly cold. Here, the ruling Darth Scabrous has an interest in completing an ancient sith ritual of immortality. Of which, in order to complete the ritual, he would need the petals of the Murakami Orchid; a flower that has the ability to speak to force sensitive’s via a force link between it and its caretaker. In this case, Hestizo Trace, a Jedi (dropout?) who has an innate ability to communicate with plant life, more specifically the murakami orchid.

After having seized both Hestizo and the orchid, Darth Scabrous is able to put his plan into motion. This is where Joe Schreiber’s writing style shines. His descriptions of the havoc the zombie(ish) creatures that are unleashed due to the orchids unique abilities, are truly grotesque. I say zombie(ish) as while the creatures in the book has similarities to the conventional zombie, i.e. eating flesh of the living, infecting those who are bitten with the contagion and such, they differ in the sense that these creatures abilities far exceed those of your typical zombie. Either way though, you are treated to plenty of people being ripped apart and disemboweled in a very graphic fashion.

While through the story, you are always sure who shall survive till the end, everyone else is fair game. Of which seems every few pages another gets picked off in a ever greater. The story keeps a really fast pace from the onset, which truly allows the atmosphere to hold on to your attention which I truly loved, although, this is truly a double edged sword. While I loved the quick pace for the horror elements, the side effect is that none of the characters are really fleshed out. At the end of the day, you really don’t have any knowledge of who the characters are, where they came from, or really anything about them outside of their names. It seems as well that, the few characters that start to get fleshed out tend to get ripped apart in the book around the same time you start to have any feel for who they were.

While the ending was sort of anti-climatic, as well as a bit easy to see coming, it was what I expected from a horror genre book. For those who are looking for a straight Star Wars novel, this one may disappoint. For those though who love the Star Wars series and are ok with a side story that really has no effect, characters or otherwise, on the rest of the timeline, or those who in general just love a good horror book, this one comes highly recommended.

8/10

I have found a new home?

So this is actually not my first blog. I have another one and actually came across this site while trying to find better alternatives after I had some issues setting up the blog with more then one picture in it. As of right now, I am unsure which way I am going to go. I originally started this one in the pretense of wanting to use it for just a book review type setup, which I still intend to do. Although, the more I use it the more I am starting to really like it.

Either way though, right now the main idea of this blog is to use it for reviews which I fully intend to do here soon. Here are the first few that I plan to add here.

• Star Wars: Red Harvest – by Joe Schreiber —- Review up
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – by Sean Williams
• The New Dead – by assembled authors —- Review up
• Chasing the Dead – by Joe Schreiber

There are many more I intend on doing, but this is just the beginning list. I might change the order, as I do intend to re-read the books that I have not read in sometime as to refresh my memory on it. I do plan on rating them as well. I will be using the common 10 point system, 1 being bad, 10 being great.

The genre’s I will be hitting are going to mostly be science fiction and fantasy, but I shall also but horror and pretty much anything else that I find an interest in as well.

Now, as I mentioned before, in addition to these, I am thinking about also making this my main blog as well and killing the other one. If I do this, then the variety of the posting shall be wide and varied. Photography, 3d modeling, random rambling, out right non sense, could be anything. All in good fun though, trust me on this. 🙂