News I learned that the Star Fleet facebook group has reached 1,000 users, which is a great achievement.
Congratulations, and here's to the next 1,000. Recently, my Clevo P150EM laptop developed an intermittent fault on its graphics card, which caused me to replace it.
10 years of solid use isn't bad going for a gaming laptop and I was sad to stop using it.
I bought that machine in April 2013 when I worked for Apple and practically all income was disposable.
I had my eye on PC Specialist's Ionico, which has a really good display and quite a bit of power while being very thin and light.
I kept an eye on their website, since the Ionico is often out of stock, and I managed to get the well-balanced i7 CPU and 3070 Ti GPU variant which sold out almost right away after it was restocked.
After that, I got thinking of the Aquanox series of underwater combat games and, since the new laptop has a much more modern graphics card, I decided to give the 2020-released Aquanox Deep Descent a spin.
It's quite a bit different to the original games from a gameplay and atmosphere stance, which makes sense as it reveals itself to be a fairly distant prequel to the others.
I see that the game has received some lukewarm reviews. Perhaps the 1.4 version that I downloaded is a bit more polished than the original release.
In any case, it was an extremely beautiful game that ran very smoothly and reliably, with what soon became a very engrossing story and a lot of really fascinating weapons, which the ships were able to 'dual-wield' in very useful combinations.
Having just finished it, it makes me want to go back and explore it some more. As a little side-project to X-Bomber the Game, I am adding some creatures into the game which will spawn very occasionally in level 3 and trundle and hover around a bit and add a bit of variety to the environment.
Since that level already has a secondary objective to destroy all the deathballs on the planet, as well as the shield generators for the base, I think I'll make it so that the creatures are harmless and will just cost you some points if you happen to destroy them.
I'd wanted to do this for a long time and I was having a look around my documents folder and came across a very old game (last modified in 1999) that I wrote which was an 8-direction, non-scrolling shooter that was various little test-tube bugs fighting in a terrarium.
The game is a bit primitive to release by itself but I am improving the sprites so that they can see the light of day as friendlier Starship Troopers-style aliens on Simetra VI. 
I spotted that twitter user in Japan: Nopple, had updated his illustration of Dai-X and given it the colours of one of the 1980s toys.
It looks nice that way.
I saw one twitter user comment that it made it look like a later mass-produced version of the Dai-X, which I thought was a fun idea. 
Dan showed me a great example of the Goodsmile/Moderoid Dai-X, where the owner has painted it beautifully and got (for me) just the right colour, finish and amount of weathering put on it.
Incidentally, I noticed over Japanese nitter/x/whatever it calls itself now, that the unpainted model has pre-painted white stripes on the insides of the legs, which don't appear on the Dai-X in the show, as shown here:
Post by gakupon on nitter
Oddly enough, these weren't on the prototype of the model that was shown, but were added to the production version. 
I received some great images, thanks to Dan at SFFB, on a range of Star Fleet subjects, which include Gary Cass' model of Lamia. I like how it's turned out! 
I chucked some pictures of the Eaglemoss Daedalus battleship-carrier from Stargate Atlantis (which is my favourite Stargate series) in the cool stuff folder.
Eaglemoss went under a little while ago but a lot of unsold stock is getting sold over the Master Replicas website.
Daedalus had a short first run and to get one of those will cost you some money on ebay, but MR have some stock of the second run and these go for a great deal less.
I was surprised that it is a fair bit smaller than the Vipers that Eaglemoss did for Battlestar Galactica.
In any case, it's level of detail is very high - maybe more-so than the Vipers.
The hazard stripe pattern around the missile launchers near the front and the numbered fighter launch doors on the bottom of the hangar pods really set it off.
Daedalus was a banging ship that expanded the possibilities of the show in the same way as the Defiant did in Star Trek DS9. It was one of the only ships in Stargate that looked "right" and it had good weapons coverage with a diversified weapons system. 
I had a little browse around FromJapan and found an X Bomber colouring/activity book that I hadn't seen before.
This one has the same photo on its cover as on the rarer Portuguese notebooks that you can sometimes find on ebay.
Normally, the covers of these have a unique colour illustration. This is the first that I've seen that has a photo of the characters.
This photo must presumably take place after the events of the series. It didn't seem to me, from the show, as though the three pilots had visited the EDF command centre together prior to their flight to Moonbase.
Maybe this shows the three pilots after Dai-X touches down on Earth after the events of the last episode. 
Mission 6
- Player missiles and turrets now track cloaked enemies, once revealed by collecting 20 adaptive camoflage debris fragments.
- Asteroid with crashed attacker type astrofighter added 2-minute mark
Hover over it to investigate for points bonus.
Enemies
- Deathball improved
- Deathball 2 improved
- Tank turret pairing logic improved
- Dust clouds for larger ground vehicles
Mission Briefings
- Mission 16 briefing complete
- Mission 15 briefing almost complete
Level 16
- Omega laser activates during approach
- Dock area expanded with new background graphics, green heavy bombers and minelayers
Level 16 Boss
- Overall graphics improved
- Segment ordering improved substantially, especially regarding the shield ship as it docks and undocks
- Head animations and weapon cycles improved
Special Weapons
- Special weapons pod - Dai-X plasma grenade launcher improved
- RFSG - side shots now orange, rather than red
- Quantum blaster - retested Here's a creative video that I found about the Moderoid Dai-X model (Japanese narration), that gives a good idea of what to expect in the box:
MODEROID STAR FLEET X-BOMBER BIG DAI-X Stopmotion Review
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