6mm-Minis

6mm-Minis is Maksim-Smelchak's blog to discuss gaming, miniatures, books, movies, food, Israel, Judaism, life in general and other funny crud. My favorite scale of miniatures is 6mm, which is also called 1/285 or 1/300 scale. I enjoy many different kinds of games including ancients, Napoleonics, WWI, WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Car Wars AKA Autoduel (a sort of crash'n'derby automobile combat game), 6mm Godzilla AKA Kaiju games, and science fiction games. I'm open to everything though!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

COOL STUFF: "Flirting Robots Are Here!" (19 December 2007)

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TOP: Bring it on, Rosie the Robot...
The Jetsons are bored!
Hi Everyone,

Quick post today: I read this article about the advances that robots have been achieving lately the other day ago...

BEWARE OF FLIRTING ROBOTS:
"A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools. The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the 'bot' from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos." More and more, we're living in a William Gibson world.


UPDATE:
Reader John Baker emails: "Professor: as much as I enjoy Gibson, ever heard of the Turing Test?"


Yeah, and it sounds like these robots are passing it in the real world on a regular basis. Though to be fair, I doubt Alan Turing envisioned administering the test with an audience of drunk, horny Russian guys.

I hate SPAM-bots!

They should written those into the Terminator movies... the audience would have cheered more when they were destroyed.

Link here:
http://instapundit.com/archives2/012697.php

And here:
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9831133-56.html

The Turing Test:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

William Gibson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_gibson

Have a great Wednesday!
And happy holidays!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

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Monday, January 08, 2007

QUOTES: Talking About Ideas?

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Hi Everyone,

I had a great weekend and I hope you did too. I got to game a little, visit my parents, made it to the gym, and got to visit an old friend who just happens to own a dry sauna, what they call in Russian, the "banya." It was a good weekend and a good visit.

Another little something I've been pondering for awhile is to add semi-regular posts with quotes from various sources that I enjoyed so here goes:

"Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about themselves, and below average people talk about others."
*** Which type of person do you want to be? ***

See if you can guess the source of the quote and check down below once you have your guess.

Have a great Monday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
In case you're wondering, this quote came from Ann Landers.

P.S.S.
If you're wondering about the photo, I had no method for choosing it other than I liked it.

Notes regarding photos / pictures: These are not all my images. I am using various images from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

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Sunday, December 31, 2006

PERSONAL NEWS: Happy 2007 New Year!

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Hi Everyone,

So, I decided on my 2007 New Years Resolutions:

------PROFESSIONAL / BUSINESS / FINANCIAL:
- Get the next promotion and raise in my career path by the end of the year.
- Pay off all my outstanding consumer debts by the end of the year and go debt-free.
(My car's already paid off and almost everything else)
- Work out a new schedule with my new boss to get out early on Wednesdays so can join the guys for gaming again.

------PERSONAL:
- Go on 4 to 6 or more dates.
- Add at least 50 to 150 sit-ups, crunches or other abdominal exercises to my gym work-outs.
- Keep a cleaner house by doing a major clean-up at least once a month.

------
HOBBY:
- Build 6mm urban metropolis terrain structure bases of at least 1'x1' area or more.
- Run a Monster Island game using the new urban metropolis terrain.
- But a new digital camera that works well for miniatures photography and photograph the Godzilla City Stomp'in Games.

------
Have a great New Year celebration and all the best for 2007!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
Here's a handy dandy flow chart in Russian if you need directions how to celebrate New Years:

If you can't read Russian, pretend it's Greek and say "It's all Greek to me!" ...or just ask me later and I'll translate.

Notes regarding photos / pictures: These are not all my images. I am using various images from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

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Thursday, September 28, 2006

WEIRD NEWS: You've never heard this before...

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Hi Everyone,

My friend Larry sent me this the other day ago... FREAKY!

This guy can sing like a girl (four octave range)...

http://tinyurl.com/qtoo8

Apparently, his name is Vitas and he's Russian.

Here's one of his sites:

http://www.myspace.com/vitasss

Some say that this performance is a "Milli Vanilli" performance AKA fake, but it sounds pretty good either way.

Have a good Thursday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
I found his official web site as well:
http://vitas.com.ru/klip_eng.htm

P.S.S.
Here's a video of his tunes:
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Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

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Tuesday, July 04, 2006

HUMOUR: Socialist Super Mario Bros?

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Hi Readers,

I came across this while surfing...

Imagine if the USA had lost the Cold War...

What would Super Mario Brothers have turned out like in the alternate USSR-dominated universe:

http://briefurl.com/the_peoples_mario

(Check out comments section for full link)

I used this site to compress the URL:

http://briefurl.com/index.php

I found a bunch of old Soviet propaganda posters here:

http://briefurl.com/Old-ussr-posters

Oooh, weird! Norman Rockwell on Socialist crack...

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

MINI WARGAMING: Warlords Of the Wastelands: 2085 (18 March 2006)!

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday, I had a cool opportunity... to hang out with the bunch that hosts the very well-known Zombie Town games held at Great Escape Games every year on Halloween weekend.

We all met at Vynnie's place and the following were present:
- George
- Maksim (me!)
- Marcus
- Mike
- Vynnie

Poor George and I were both pretty exhausted though. George didn't get enough sleep (working too much) and I had done a graveyard shift the evening before with overtime so I had only gotten home that very same morning. Luckily the game didn't begin until around Noon so I took a good nap before heading over to Vynnie's place. George must not have had the same opportunity for a nap because he nodded off several times during the day. Poor guy.

Vynnie has been documenting our games for ages over here at his web site:

PUBLIC DISCLAIMER:
Vynnie is a bit of a Libertarian and doesn't beleive in the concept of "political correctness" so please be warned before you check out his site. He doesn't have any language or thought filters on so, as a result, his web site is most likely banned in neighborhoods of "emminent sensibility" like Berkeley, Davis or San Francisco. Be careful!

http://www.recon-in-force.com/index.html

And specifically here at his "Wastelands and Trailer Parks" page:

http://www.recon-in-force.com/Skank/index.html

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Yesterday, we got together for a post apocalyptic game using Marcus's little-known rule set:

"Warlords Of the Wastelands: 2085"

...and it was a hoot! Yes, I did use the word "hoot!"

Mike had thought out a relatively simple scenario set in the RIFTS world in which a group of Coalition forces would attempt to rescue some scientists who had sent out a distress call earlier. The distress call came through garbled, but we were able to make out the location of the scientific outpost and that part of the distress call resulted from some sort of biological experiment gone horribly wrong. And with such scanty information, we "law men" set out to find us some scientists.

Mike acted as the game's GM / referee and the other four of us ran different detachments of Coalition forces dispatched to the rescue.

Much like all games that Mike and Marcus are involved in, they never take their gaming very seriousy and no matter how well the background is thought out, we always end up with a bad "B movie" plotline anyway! And yesterday was no exception!

I think that Mike had watched "Aliens" one time too many because it quickly became apparent that massed numbers of bugs versus high-tech marines along the lines of "Starship Troopers" was the order of the day.

The four Coalition detachments had barely ambled on to the field in view of the scientific outpost when we were assaulted by wave after wave of bio-bug nasties. Our line initially caved in until we retreated a bit, at which point, we stood our ground and let firepower do our talking. Casualties were heavy, but we left bug guts spread across the fields.

Finally, we hit a pause inbetween what we thought would be the next wave, but it never came. We administered to our wounded, regrouped and began to advance on the scientific outpost again. Marcus had his robot scout advance far ahead of the combat lines and when he entered the villiage, he found the scientists and their rsearch robot (who looked a might bit like Twinkie from Buck Rogers) ambling out of shelter. The robot began to converse with them and received nothing but grief for its efforts. The scientists were acting strangely and that funky research robot kept walking out of edge of the robot scout's photo receptors.

An instant later, the three scientists and the "Twinkie" lashed out at the bot utterly destroying it. We, in the Coalition forces, were confused, but consistent with our mission directives, we had a newly indentified enemy and set out to destroy them, the traitorous research bot and scientists. Our forces used what remained of our artillery and fired a rocket barrage at the scientific outpost. That gave "Twinkie" what for, but...

It also roused the beast.

A gigantic floating biological "brain beast" burst out of the ground and all hell broke loose. Ugly cockroach-like things came bustling out of the ground from every which direction and the skies filled with the buzz of entomological monstrosities. We almost broke from the sheer horror of that ugly horde.

However, the RIFTS Coalition doesn't breed nambie pambies so we figured to die standing our ground and...

We nearly did.

We unleashed everything we had and our troops were slowly but surely falling as we failed to destroy wave after wave of bugs. Suddenly some underappreciated NCO got the bright idea to target the "brain," so we did. And a half hour or so later, the "brain" fell and the waves stopped coming. In fact, the bugs seemed confused and ambled around mindlessly. We mopped up and called it a day.

Hey, the RIFTS Coalition may breed fighters, but we're not known for being the most clever lot! That NCO received a big fat promotion and a huge bonus.

End of story. Amen!

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If you've never played out a game based on a really bad "B movie," I recommend the experience. It's good-hearted no-brainer fun and is a welcome relief from folks who take themselves way too seriously. And the truth be told, every once in awhile I'm one of those folks so the light-hearted fun is a good reminder to loosen up, stop and smell the roses.

And for those of you interested in playing on some of the beautiful terrain sets featured on Vynnie's web site, check out ConQuest Sac coming very soon to Sacramento on April 7th to 9th, 2006. Mike and Marcus will he hosting a special edition of their Zombie Town game series there. Here's a link for more information:

http://www.conquestsac.com/

Just make sure, you don't things too seriously... LOL

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We also discussed getting a group together to see one of the latest films from Russia:

"Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor)!"

"Night Watch" is a sort of vampire film along the lines of a long series of American vampire films and has already received some acclaim. Unfortunately, when we checked, "Night Watch" has already left the Greater Sacramento area. I guess we'll have to wait for rentals.

I found a few links about "Night Watch" here:

http://www.nival.com/nightwatch/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403358/

Apparently, "Night Watch" is the creation of a certain "modern yet already classic science-fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko," whom I have never heard about despite reading Russian science fiction as often as not. I'll have to look him up. There are a few Russian book stores in town and I'll probably only find him there as I'd be greatly surprised if Lukyanenko is available in English translation yet.

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I love this beautiful weather we're having.

Everyone, have a great Sunday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

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