Author: Seb Palmer

In case anyone needs any ideas for gifticles…

BOOKS

Always worth checking with me/other folk, so as to not accidentally duplicate.

I just ordered Country Church Monuments for my b’day…

This movie is about on a par with the book it’s loosely based upon. Strangely enough, I only quite recently bought this very book, amongst several Hassel and Fleming (Bond) paperbacks. Or did I? I know I certainly have this one:

I’m actually quite enjoying this film. Even though it looks and feels rather low budget (stock footage is rather clumsily mixed in, occasionally). Sure, it’s farcical in its machismo, just like Hassel’s books. But it’s also fairly unique, in all honesty.

The main cast includes a bunch of quite familiar faces – e.g; Bruce Davison, David Patrick Kelly – who, I think, acquit themselves just fine. The big guns include David Carradine, as Col. Weisshagen, and Oliver Reed, in a brief cameo.

There are several things I think make it worth watching: the mere fact that a film of a Sven Hassel book exists, at all, for starters. Then there’s the portrayal of the action inside a tank, long before Fury.

The central mission of the film – as described above in most movie ‘blurbs’ – doesn’t get started until about an hour in. And that’s some time after a rather lame-ass segment focusing on a visit to a brothel. I guess that part is in keeping with the book/rest of the movie, but it feels a bit like a distraction/waste of time.

Wheels of Terror, filmed on location in Yugoslavia, is also unusual in how it makes use of Russian materiel, for both Russian and German armour, etc. which is mildly galling to a buff like me.

Ok, this is along way from being classic. Or even very good. But, perhaps rather strangely, it’s still worth watching. There are even a couple of half decent scenes, such as the attack on the munitions base, the encounter with beaucoup de Russkis in the woods.

There’s another gratuitous nudity interlude, when they stumble on a crowd of Russo-German ex-military non-combatants, that’s borderline surreal. But perhaps such things did occasionally occur?

Another thing that grates slightly, like the Russian tanks passed off as Krauts, is the unvarnished American accents of the actors. I think some rudimentary nod towards Germanic accents would’ve been nice.

The thing is, I stuck with it. And I enjoyed it. I’ve bailed out of loads of crap modern movies. This is some slightly older crap. But it’s nowhere near as crap as a lot of modern drivel.

So, this isn’t a glowing recommendation. But on the other hand, if you like WWII movies, and perhaps even more so Eastern Front films, and better yet those from a German perspective… well, in several senses of the phrase, it’s a no-brainer!

I’m dead chuffed with these little boxes. My first was a practice/learning run. And has come out lovely. The second is a commission. And improves on the first in some ways (all edges bevelled!).

Cutting these boxes is quite hard. I think I need to learn how to do that better. And the subsequent sanding needs to be better as well.

Case #2 has been given a coat of teak oil. But nowt else. Should I varnish or shellac it? Maybe I’ll see what Walter thinks?

Which is better, I wonder: the lighter, or the darker lining? Or maybe they’re equally nice, in differing ways? Hmmm…

I’m working on a second little case, or box. This one’s come out shaped more like a cigarette packet than a card carrying case.

It’s actually a commission. My first, or possibly second? I made a mallet for our pal, Yanni, a while back. That was in response to a request. Was that a commission?

Anyway, Walter, a very nice chap at Shedders & Fixers, said he’d like a little case like my first one. He’s mentioned gifting it to his (I think?) daughter.

A significant improvement over my first one of these is the better more accurate bevelling. And the use of this on the tops and bottoms, as well as the sides. This has resulted in a much slicker look.

The two hardest parts of both this and the precious case, are the cuttting of the box(es), and the the inner-sleeve. I think I need to work out better methods for doing both off these steps.

This has kept me busy most of today. Except for a brief interlude of ‘gainful employment’. The latter took me to Cambridge. A rare occurrence. I picked Teresa up, and we visited Sam and dad, en-route home.

This is a terrific book. And I’m really enjoying reading it.

I started this review whilst still in the first third of the text. I did so because I don’t want to forget to mention some of the key concepts Ian Morris uses: eg ‘caging’ and ‘lucky latitudes’. These two are actually deeply interwoven: the caging occurs within (roughly) the lucky latitudes.

I have to be frank, and admit I don’t actually like either term (rather as I dislike Ian Kershaw’s very University-thesis sounding ‘working towards the Führer’, in his huge Hitler biog). But these descriptors do fit. So that’s got to remain a very minor (almost aesthetic?) quibble.

The broad arcs – makes one think of a sword being swiug, very apt! – of his arguments seem to me, eminently reasonable. Indeed, I remember starting to think along these lines myself, years before encountering them explicitly stated, thanks to my ongoing exposure to and interest in evolutionary theory and military history.

There’s also a prescience to what he’s talking about, as modern ‘democracies’ currently struggle with resurgent fascist tendencies, etc… [took a break, at this point]

I’m coming back to writing this review at about 70% of the way through the main body of text. It seems appropriate to resume at this point, as I want to note that the book’s subtitle ‘from primates to robots’ seemed rather odd at first. As the book starts (after the intro) in Ancient Roman times.

It’s only at this 70% point that Morris zips back, 3.8 billion years, to pre-cellular ‘blobs’, quickly sketching an entire evolutionary arc, whilst considering the balance between cooperation and conflict. This chapter – Red in Tooth Claw – introduces some mathematical ideas, inc. game theory, and is fascinating.

After a book that’s over two-thirds chronological, from Rome to post WWII, the sudden and massive jump back in time is followed by a sudden jump forward, to the Cold War, nuclear deterrence, the ‘pacifist’s dilemma’ (more game theory) and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I have to confess that this is where – particularly in the chapter Last Best Hope – certain strands of Morris’ thinking start to trouble me more than just a little… particularly in relation to the idea of America as the new and liberal/democratic ’Globocop’.

His flights of fortune-telling fantasy – as he summarises likely Sino-American conflict outcomes – strike me as scarily akin to the solemn celebrations of one of the authors and experts he quotes (I forget exactly who), prior to WWI, and Chamberlain, pre WWII, with his ‘peace in our time’! Predictions of this sort can be embarrassingly wide of the mark.

This book was written before Trump’s second disastrous destabilising term as POTUS. Someone needs to bring home to Trump that ‘Globocops… pay huge reputational costs for brutalising the innocent’, as Morris puts it.

A fascinating and thought-provoking book. Well worth reading.

A book has been published recently… pictured above. I first saw this on Amazon UK’s website. And I was intrigued.

I subsequently discovered that some of the content, or something remarkably similar, is available, free, online.

If you’re interested in seeing more, check this link out.

Here are a few samples:

It would appear that the above are night time fireworks, whilst some others (some of which are shown below) are for daytime use!

Are they not wonderful!? I find them exquisite and charming. I’d quite like the book. But with the imagery freely available… hmmm!?

Phew!

I took both (old) hoops off, sanded and polished them (180/400 grit; Brasso), and reinstalled them (& the snare wires, obvs).

I also swapped out the temporary cheapo heads I had on their thus far, replacing the batter side with a coated CS Dot, by Remo, and a clear 300 Snare Side, from Evans. I’ll need to spend some time exploring tension/tuning.

A quick first tap, with sticks, suggests – as expected – that I’ll need to ‘cut’ some snare beds, to get a tighter more focused snare-on sound.

Well… I need to cut the snare beds, ASAP (prob tomorrow?), and dig out a few snare stands (I’ve got three or more DIY snare projects on the go!), and get this baby set up, and start wailing on her.

Wow? I can’t quite believe it. But this drum is now very near completion.

I cut slots in an old hoop, for the snare straps to pass through. That was nerve wracking! But I appear to have done alright.

The snare – a 20-strand Puresound ‘Blaster’ – is fitted, and works.

At present there are: no snare beds; the shellac finish needs re-doing (after damage during hardware installation); the old hoops need sanding/cleaning & buffing; better quality drum heads need fitting.

I’ll be playing her, with sticks, for the first time today. Seeing how she tunes up/sounds. Determining if I need to cut snare beds or not. I’m expecting I will.

But she’s now a functioning snare drum. That I built, from scratch. Can’t quite believe it!

These parts arrived today. A Trick style throw and butt-plate combo. Cheap (aka affordable!) Chinese version.

I just couldn’t wait, and had to fit them.

The snare side hoop has no slots for the snare wires. I could either cut some, or buy dedicated snare side hoops (I’ll need another for snare #1, as well). Hmmm!?

I’ve got several sets of snare wires. Hopefully I’ll have something that will fit this drum? It’s exciting, getting nearer to completion!

One very important little job will be removing all the hardware – now that all the mounting holes have been drilled and sanded – and re-shellacking/polishing the wood.

For which I need to buy some more of this:

… as our previous bottle ran out. Fab stuff.

Progress on the larger slab of herringbone went well today. All I did was put both sides through the drum-sander, at S&F.

With the smaller herringbone that I did earlier, I matched the strips. With this larger slab, I’ve randomised them. I like both results.

After that I worked on Snare #2. Now that I’ve got some hardware to attach, I was hoping for some satisfying progress. Instead, I made a very slow-mo pig’s ear of it all!

It seems I’m destined to make every conceivable mistake possible. Often repeatedly, and that’s really annoying!

Today’s litany of frustrations included: repeatedly measuring for marking out, with the results never stacking up to a neat/accurate outcome; drilling the first two holes in the wrong place, despite constant measuring and re-measuring; finding out the supplied screws aren’t long enough to actually attack the hardware (or put another way, the shells I’ve made are too thick, for the hardware as supplied).

That was all at S&F. Then, once home, I attempted to make Keruing dowels, to patch the inaccurately drilled holes. This – trying to make the dowels – was a nightmare! My dowel-making tool doesn’t work very well. Guess I should make a newer better one?

And then I went and put the dowels in the two holes that were accurately drilled, as opposed to the misplaced ones. Gaah!!!

Knocking the dowels out and putting them into the correct holes? That more or less split the drum, for the umpteenth time! I guess tomorrow I’ll have to address that. Superglue, of wood glue? Hmmm…