Come, and take choice of all my library,  And so beguile thy sorrow. - Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare Welcome, dear readers to the 6th Annual* Autumn Reading List on The Art of Caesura! I'm sending loads of positivity your way, especially if you need it today! The "Annual" above has a little asterisk beside it because I actually missed the Autumn Reading List last year and by the time I remembered it, autumn had come and gone! So there was no way I was missing it again this year! And, before you say autumn has already past again, according to the Astronomical Calendar, it runs until Dec 21st. So there! I made it with a few days to spare! I'm always reading! I studied literature for my undergrad and now I do a lot of academic reading for my work. But in addition to this "baked in" reading, I'm also in a long-distance book club with my best friends from high- school (which we've kept going for over 8 years now!) and, through them, I'm forever gettin...

Music gives a soul to the universe,  wings to the mind,  flight to the imagination,  and life to everything. – Plato   Welcome back to The Art of Caesura! I continue to send loads of positive vibes your way especially if you need them today! Today is something a little different! I used to be in LOADS of choirs. Throughout my school years I was always in the school choir and by high school (secondary school) I was in 3 choirs (Concert, Competition, and Jazz) I was singing almost every night of the week, plus I was also the lead singer in a band ("Good Craic") at the time - more singing! After high school and the built-in choirs that I had always been part of, I went a bit wayward in the singing department. I joined my university choir but it was more academic than I was used to. My friends and I started up a jazz choir ("Gumbo") but it fizzled out after a few months. I was still playing in the band and I eventually joined a church choir (St. Christopher Singers) whi...

The flesh is weak. - Iron Hands  Hello one and all, welcome back to Friday on The Art of Caesura! I'm sending loads of positive vibes your way, especially if you need them today! I'm sorry this post is a tiny bit late. As I write this, I'm a few hours away from performing in Dublin's Convention Centre, so spare time has been short leading up to this moment.  Today we're looking at my sixth game in our Warhammer league, it was against Rowan and his very nicely painted Iron Hands.  In our local group there are three of us who self identify as painters Rowan and I are two of those people. Prior to this league, neither of us had ever played a 2000 point game. We also spend every match learning new rules and trying to improve at the nuances of the game. For this reason I was really excited to play Rowan, it felt like he and I were really evenly matched. Also, while we both play black power-armoured loyalist Space Marines, our armies and play style could not be more diffe...

In a few short months there is a very big birthday coming up on this blog, and it's not my own! Mine was a few days ago (Happy Birthday to me). The big one I'm alluding to is The Art of Caesura's 10th birthday, which is coming up in January.  Anyway, this week is for me so I'll share a quick anecdote from a couple days ago. We were listening to our classical music radio station (RTE Lyric FM) - as we do every morning to try to bring a little peace into our lives - when the host, Marty, made an announcement for the concert of the choir that I'm in. Saoirse, my six year old, shouted "Daddy! Marty talked about your choir on the radio! Your famous! ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!" It was very adorable So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! And wish me luck on my next league game tonight! See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Accept Any Challenge, No Matter the Odds! - Black Templars Oath Welcome one and all to another Friday on The Art of Caesura! Today, we're looking at Game 5 of the Warhammer 40k league that I'm involved in at the moment. It was a fun game against my opponent Chris's Tyranids.  I think I heard subsequently that Chris is currently standing in second place in the league (of around 16 people or so) and his Tyranids are beautifully painted as Hive Fleet Gorgon. I was excited to play against 'nids, I've always had a soft spot for them since my days of "maining" Zerg in Starcraft 1. I professed my love for these bug-like aliens when I painted a Von Ryan's Leaper as Hive Fleet Klendathu (inspired by Starship Troopers).  Anyway, the Primary Mission was Scorched Earth where you still get points for holding objectives, but you get more points again for "burning" them (then they're gone from the board and no-one else can claim them). The deployment z...