I have a lot of cool people pictures from our fun times at BrickCon. Instead of just posting them all at once, I'll stagger them out into multiple blog entries, and let you submit captions for each of them / comment on em. No prize other than sharing your wit with the community. Part 3
I was chatting with Swert the other day and somehow we started talking about Matoran designs, so despite everything else I really need to do, I designed and built these. They're not really much smaller than the original McToran / Tohunga, which was my intention, but the system builds allow for some more varied colors (like teal). Couldn't figure out a decent way to do their throwing arms, so instead they get socket hands. Yayz. (Fun fact, I wedged round studs behind their masks for eye colo
Man, I'm flying out tomorrow for an interview. Tomorrow morning. Bah, I dislike waking up early. Plus, I have to write a short essay, and I've had ideas for it flowing through my head all week, but now I just need to force it down in writing! In addition to that, I have a news story that I kind of need to work on before I leave... so yay long night. (I can sleep on the flight over, I guess, and it doesn't matter since the interview is actually on Monday morning so I can be rested and prepar
I'm a little behind on my story. Part of it comes from preparing for job interviews. Another part comes from just not being in the mood to write. (Which I guess is something NaNo is supposed to fight, but whatev.) But one thing I had to consider when cataloguing the story was what its genre was. And its hard for me to pin it down to one thing. Here's why. It has definite science fiction elements to it, primarily involving the protagonist and his team. There's also a lot of scientific exp
Wow, like, seriously, I was going to do a day-by-day post, but things just happened so quickly that I hardly had time to just glance through my email, much less post a full blog entry! It was fun and awesome and I hope we can do it again. I had a great group of people who stayed at my place. It was hectic scheduling all their arrivals / departures and everything (not to mention the process of threatening asking them to show up in the first place.) Steven (Swert) came down from Tacoma with o
I have kidnapped your precious Swert. If you ever want to see your web-site owner again, please send a payment of $150 to Xccj at Bricks Cascade. (Okay, it may be a bit much, so I'm willing to haggle.) You have until Saturday at public hours to pay, or else I feed him to the Bionicle-hating AFOLs.
Wait wait wait. What the heck? I finished this? So you can continue to read the blog entry for the background story. Of if you're gonna go all "TL/DR" then just check out the game here and test it out for me. Comments appreciated, granted that you understand this is an armature project and not exactly high quality stuff to begin with. I'm not sure if I blogged about it before or not, but I've had this general idea for a Slizer game in my head for a while. The basis is around my defunct
Let's look at set 76013: Batman: The Joker Steam Roller. I was able to snag this set at 20% off at the Lego Store. They had a sale on a bunch of the winter DC sets, basically all the ones that were kinda lackluster. I've had my eye on this one for a while, but it never appealed to me enough to go out and get it. But this sale made it worthwhile, so I spent the money. But now how does it add up? I don't normally mention the boxes; I do in the official reviews just to cover everything but don't
So I caved in and bought this. It's now the most expensive set I've ever purchases, beating Ninjago City by about $80, and it's definitely looking to be the set that takes up most of the shelf space; it will be taking over the display space where I previously had Ninjago City and the Ferris Wheel. But it just looks so cool that I couldn't NOT get it, right? Now, this does kind of kill my Lego budget for the rest of the summer, and there are some cool sets still coming out, so I am going to have
Sorry, no picts, but I can at least talk about it and the contest in general. I was already planning a project that would require me to rebuild a Toa Metru (I won't tell which one yet). I was thinking about designing it akin to my Toa Mata revamps, in that I would build a custom torso and then use my basic and unarmored limb design. But this contest gave me an excuse to try it out a little more CCBS style. Unfortunately, the finished model ended up being too big for my original project, so I n
What's this? A front page news story on BrickCon? That's right, a one week turnaround! (Okay, I know Black Six has gotten stuff posted up quicker for some conventions, but a week is still better than average for speedy convention coverage, and probably also a personal best.) Anyway, back to caption contest... I have a lot of cool people pictures from our fun times at BrickCon. Instead of just posting them all at once, I'll stagger them out into multiple blog entries, and let you submit c
Back in Dallas. Packed in 45 pounds of Lego in my suitcase, pretty sure some of it will be salvageable when I go to set it up tomorrow. Been interesting to be back, I guess. The 635 freeway was a total mess of construction the last time I was here, but now there's a fabulous expressway there. (Although Dallas traffic is as bad as Portlands, at least they do have a lot of infrastructure... Portland's roads are not expanding and only becoming more crowded.) Anyway, I started that Hero Factory /
Have I complained about this before? I feel like it's something I've complained about here before, but I don't see it in a search. Anyway, a crucial problem I have with Star Wars is the lack of scenes with, y'know, stars. (Not like movie stars, but the big balls of burning gas and such that give off light. For local reference, see sun... just don't look directly at it.) I mean, a big part of this takes place in space. You see planets and big ships. You see big ships casting shadows on other
Honestly, there's so much I could say about the Hobbit, both good and bad. But I'm really not in the mood to write all about it, so I'll keep it short. It does a good job of keeping the feel from the LotR movies, but it also seems to be lacking some of the majesty. This may just be because it's the first; after all, Fellowship was arguably the worst of the three LotR movies. (And it was still pretty good.) The same here. It's also different because they're including so much. In LotRs, t
Gosh, I had this excellent idea for a sequel for one of my stories, and now I can't get it out of my head! The stories and characters just keep expanding in my head, allowing me to create new character dynamics while also retaining some of my originals and stuff and I'm kind of really excited for it. The problem is... the original isn't finished. And like, this is a story that I've been working on since... well, let's say 2000. The basic premise for it developed back then, and I didn't start
Spoilers below Smaug burns and eats everybody and then goes to sleep on his gold pillow. He also burns Sauron too, just cause. And that is the story of how Bilbo and Smaug moved into 22B Baker Street together and now solve crimes.
No Dark Side? No Problem! by Xccj, on Flickr So this is my new last-minute BrickCon Project. I mentioned in my earlier entry that the Dark Side display, which is meant for black light MOCs and MOCs with lights that look better in the dark, has apparently been discontinued this year. I'm basing this on my observation of them removing it from their theme list on the website. (I had a few MOCs registered for it, and then they got moved to "uncategorized".) In previous years, the display was a g
I dunno how common place they are, but I've been listening to the band Jimmy Eat World lately. Also, their band name. I mean, I originally had their album back in 2001, which was I guess their breakout album? (And I had it on CD! For those too young to remember, that's how we used to store our music... which was a step up from cassettes, which were a step from records, ext... okay really CDs aren't that old of a technology.) But while I was a fan of their music then, I wasn't really following
So I have a cross continental fight at the end of the month, for like 9 plus hours both ways. It’ll be a red eye on the way out, so hopefully I can try to get some sleep, but it’s going to be middle of the day on the way back. Just my experience two years ago with airplane rides was that my electronic devices won’t hold a charge long enough to provide ample entertainment over the full course of the trip. As such, I need an old fashion, non electronic form of media. Y’know, like a book. But I hav
Aaaaaand done! Bag 10 builds up the rest of the left side, including the large pole tower with the angled supports. As precarious as it is, the geometry on the angles is impressive. Honestly, I don’t know how I could MOC my own Roller Coaster; I was not keeping up with the various brick heights to get the math just right. I did have one column that wouldn’t fit on right… and lo and behold, it was because I forgot a single 2x2 round plate in the stack. You start off Bag 11 by building the ro
That's how long I've been on BZPower now. I can't think of anything significant about 14 years... although I guess this does mean I've been on BZPower for about half my life. Yay. (That spinny mask of water should appear any time now...) In other news, I was gonna mail out some prizes the other day... then the region I live in got hit with the worst snow storm in 30 years. Sooooo... yeah, maybe later.
So I went to my first Comic Con yesterday. I found it to be a combination of something I disliked greatly (crowds) and something I’m only mildly interested in (comics.) I would probably not go again on my own, as it was expensive and I would rather attend a Lego convention, but it would be fun to go with a friend or something. (I was planning to attend with some people, but they all dropped out for various reasons and I ended up going alone.) It was an okay event, but not quite worth the money a
Every event has Brick Badges, which are usually made out of engraved bricks. My problem with them is that they tend to break easily, so for Bricks Cascade I designed a reinforced badge that held together fairly well. (Sure, the bottom bricks did break off at one point and fall into an elevator shaft... but I have since dealt with that weak point.) As such, I was surprised when Kakaru informed me that this years BrickCon Badges are merely 1x6x5 bricks with printing on them. Totally lame, b
You have failed this city. by Jason, on Flickr Lookie at me, I made a Bionicle MOC! It's been a while. So this will fit with the BZPower colab of Super Hero characters, and I got it finished in time for BricksCascade next month. The system to technic ratio would probably put it over the limit for any BBC contests, but that's not an issue at conventions. Plus, the simple building façade makes use of most of my dark red masonry bricks, so yay that.
I think I'll fill up an entry all about my feelings on the Piraka...
They were some of the oddest Bionicle characters yet, in my opinion (in case you need a warning, all of the following is my opinion). They have odd light up eyes, glow in the dark teeth, and spines. I really didn't need any of that... but I'm a sucker and I was determined to buy some anyway. I bought based off the weapons, and I only planned to get two or three. After I got Thok, Reidak, and Zaktan, there was a sale (buy
