Bio of a BZP Admin

I feel the need to make a new entry here, but I'm not entirely sure of what to say. So we'll ramble a bit and see what happens.

The Bionicle Reference Center was released this past week, finally. Over the past few months members would tell us how our reference section was out of date or ask what it was Reference Keepers do, and all I could say is that there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. It takes a lot to organize all of that data, especially with key resources like BS01 being offline for most of the time. I'm real proud of Bones for bringing this all together and the rest of our storyline gurus. Now all we have to do is keep it up to date (which you'll probably hear more about soon)!

I'm glad the posting of 2008 leaked images have been slowing down. I guess those big warnings at the top of certain forums actually helped, because front page stories and pinned topics didn't seem to be doing it. Just to rehash, there are no official images or information about 2008 Bionicle sets on the internet as of now, anything you see is either a fake or leaked. I have it on good authority that this will be changing soon, and you can expect to see it on BZPower when it does.

So let's see, what else...

Toaraga has been working out great as our new Blog Leader. He manages to tear himself away from Halo 3 (something I have a hard time doing too) often enough to keep on top of things. It's good sometimes to mix things up a little, give people something new to work on. It's just like how we switched around a lot of the forum assignments recently. Sometimes you get so used to doing the same thing over and over it's like you're caught in a rut – you might start missing things or making mistakes, like people who zone out behind the wheel as they make the same commute day after day after day. So we try to avoid that, because we don't want our car insurance to go up any more than it already has (I'm looking at you, Shilo ).

Aside from that, we have some stuff going on behind the curtain that will one day be revealed. In case you haven't noticed, we tend to work fairly slowly. First, because we try to do the best job we can, and second, because most of us are pretty busy and can only dedicate so many hours to BZPower. If only we got paid to do this.

We should have a new set review going up this weekend, time-permitting, so that's something to look forward to.

As a parting note, I've been starting to listen to some Podcasts a lot recently. Obviously they remind me of the BZPowercast (we were so ahead of our time back then). And of course the next logical thought on that train of progression is to bring it back, as many of you have asked about over the years. Unfortunately it's just another one of those time-consuming things that even if it did get off the ground, would fade and die after a couple of episodes. I'd be worried about coming up with new content for every release, not to mention I'd have to go out and buy a decent microphone (which has been on my shopping list for a while, actually).

Well, that was a pretty long parting note, but it's just something I figured I'd toss out there. Let me know what you think!

I know I said I was going to try to post entries more often, but there's a perfectly good reason why it been a while since my last update: a little game called Halo 3. My last entry was on September 20th and Halo 3 came out on the 25th. In between those dates I was visiting some friends at school and beating Bioshock (great game). Then of course on the night of the 24th I went to my local Electronic Boutique and got on line for the midnight release. It was pretty fun, the store bought pizza and soda for everyone, we turned on the TV at a nearby Verizon FiOS TV kiosk and watched the Titans destroy the Saints, and talked about how we were all looking forward to the game. Midnight came, I got my Legendary Edition and drove home. I had taken the day off of work, so no distractions. I put in the disc, launched the campaign, and started going. Eleven hours later, I finally put the controller down and watched the final cut scene, credits, and the real final cut scene. I was definitely pleased with the game, I had a lot of fun playing through on Heroic, and thought the story was great. It's funny how attached you find yourself to the characters by the third installment, there were definitely some really emotional parts, although I won't spoil anything.

Since then, it's been a lot of multiplayer action. Please note that I do not consider myself 'good' by any means. I have my on and off games, and generally try to be a good supporting team player. If you ever want to hit me up on Live, my Gamertag is Black 5ix. I really like most of the new maps, although I've never been a fan of Zanzibar (now Last Resort). High Ground is my favorite, I think, along with Narrows and Isolation. Epitaph is nice too, and Construct, while an interesting idea, usually ends up with players staying on the top level. The Pit is nice, but I only have payed it on 2v2 where it seems too big. Snowbound is well-balanced, but I don't enjoy it for some reason, and Valhalla should be 5v5 or bigger only, I think. 4v4 on that map gets hard because of how spread out things get. I have no real opinion of Sandtrap, as I haven't played a real game on it yet. The Elephant looks fun though.

Tonight I went back and played some more campaign, I'm trying to go back and find all the skulls and pick up a couple more Achievements. I'm kind of annoyed though, twice I used the Trip Mine to destroy vehicles and didn't get the associated award, anyone know what's up with that? I got through the first three levels, I think I'll go for the next three tomorrow.

So that's where I've been and will be, I think this game is going to keep my attention for quite some time.

So, with the past two RPG contests, a trend has started where members review one another's RPG entries in the official discussion topic. This is great, the feedback goes to improve a lot of entries and results in an overall higher quality of stories for our members to vote on and participate in. On the other hand, it makes the discussion topic very cluttered and makes it hard to see any questions anyone may be asking. So I've been thinking of ways to remedy this; here's what I've come up with so far:

• Make a third contest topic for Entry Reviews and Feedback. Basically, just take all of the posts in there now and have people make them in a separate topic.
• Adopt a system similar to the BBC Contests. Members make a topic for their entry, and any and all feedback and reviews can go in there. The member can then post in the entry topic with a link to their entry and it will be added to the list.

I have some reservations with the second idea. Doing this suddenly introduces another 30+ topics into the RPG forum, and might push down the current winners' topics as well as the BZPRPG. In addition some members may not know what's going on and try to join and start playing these entries.

So, as always guys, I'm interested in seeing what you have to think about these ideas, and if you have any solutions of your own, please share them. Also, if you think the system is fine as it is now, say so, maybe it's just me.

Happy RPing!

So today the first commercial from the Halo 3 ad campaign was released exclusively on Yahoo! While personally I enjoyed it, I can definitely see how people who aren't fans of the series may miss what it's trying to convey. Then again, they may get it completely, as it completely lacks any game footage and focuses on story and emotion. I encourage everyone to check it out.

Next up, the first Iron Man movie trailer was released the other day. The movie looks really good, and really has a lot of potential. Iron Man has always been one of my favorite comic book characters, so I really hope they don't screw it up.

Finally, the other movie I'm looking forward to next year, Indiana Jones 4 finally got its official title: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. At first it seems kind of tacky, but in retrospect so do titles like "Temple of Doom" and "The Empire Strikes Back," but they're still good movies (ESB is still my favorite Star Wars film). I'm definitely hoping they don't screw this one up, or else I'll be very mad. Apparently it's taking place in Central and South America, and will be focusing on Aztecs and UFOs. I need to read up on some of the crazy Stargate-like theories that are out there about this kind of stuff. It definitely seems a little out of place for an Indy film, but we'll see next Memorial Day.

In other news, work is going well. I get Friday off this week, so tomorrow is my 'Friday.' Woohoo!

So I had wanted to post an entry about this on Friday night right after my first week, but that didn't happen. Anyway, I've been working at my new internship for a week now, and have been enjoying it a bit. Still getting adjusted to my responsibilities and their policies, but hey, it's a learning experience. It seems like I'll have a significant amount of free time too. Last night I went down and visited some friends from school and hung out there for a while, so it's not all work.

I'm watching the Giants game now, but they're starting to fall apart in the beginning of the fourth. Down by nine, so it's not over yet, but you can see they're slowing down. I'm probably just going to go to bed, it's been a long, tiring weekend and I have another week of work to look forward to tomorrow.

For those of you who don't know, yesterday marked the beginning of the seventh RPG forum contest. This marks the first contest since the creation of the Fan Created Games forum, which made the RPG forum consist solely of Text-Based RPGs. One thing I've noticed is that this has greatly reduced the overall activity in the forum (obviously). I'm thinking whether it might not be a bad idea to increase the number of contest winners. Nothing is going to change for this contest, but I want to hear your feedback for when December rolls around. So let us know what you think!

Also, as you hopefully noticed by now, there's no theme for this contest. We think we've decided to only have once contest each year have a theme. Again, we welcome any feedback or thoughts you have on this.

Finally, this contest also marks the introduction of Nukora as a Contest Assistant. He's been kind enough to volunteer to check through the entries to make sure everyone meets the requirements and to help answer any questions you guys might have. So join, me, Smeagol4, and Dr. Bionicle in welcoming him to the team!

P.S. - Two entries in two days! This is never gonna last...

Well, it's been about a month and a half since my last entry, I guess that tells you a little bit about how the last while has been. So, quick run through, for those of you who care:
Second summer session of classes at college: They went well, finals were last week and now they're over.
My birthday: It was back at the beginning of August. I had a small party with some friends and we had a good time.
Other stuff: Shilo (Omicron) came down from Massachusetts and we hung out for a couple of days. We saw Rush Hour 3 with Janus and LehvakLah.
BZPower: I've had to come to terms with my new responsibilities as a full administrator. It's been an interesting transition, although you guys haven't really seen too much of it.

Aside from that, there's been a lot of little things that have been going on, hanging out with friends, enjoying my summer, earning some money, all that fun stuff.

On Tuesday I start an internship working for the Army. Nothing too amazing, I'll just be working on some software development. I'm looking forward to it much more than my last internship, which was mainly IT/help desk work.

I hope to try to update this more in the future, but I've said that before and it hasn't come to anything yet, but we'll see.

So that's about it, hope you enjoyed.

Well, the forums have been offline for over a day now, and it doesn't leave me with a whole lot to do, which is a rather unexpected change. So I figured I'd use this time to update my long-atrophying blog. Read on, if you dare.

First on the list: BZPower's server. Many of you have been frustrated with the performance of the site recently, and believe me so have we. The kicker is that the server is running fine and all of the recent upgrades have helped speed things up dramatically. There was a time when using the search feature could bring the server to its knees (hence why it was turned off). These days you can actually use it. Who knows, maybe there's a chance of it coming back in the future (that's not a promise by any means). The issues we're currently having involve the database files that store all the information. If we get those fixed up, will be right as rain. Hopefully by the time you're able to read this everything will be working again.

Next on the list, Brickshelf and the BBC Contest. As of my writing this, Brickshelf is offline and  there is no official word to suggest that it will be returning. I've heard some rumors from people who claim to have information on the subject, but I'd be hesitant to believe it until I see something official. I hope the rumors are true, because otherwise that's a lot of broken links all over the internet and will make things substantially harder for BZP members that need a place to put their MOC pictures, artwork, and other things. BZP would love to help pick up the slack, but whether or not that is possible remains to be seen.

Finally, we have the 2008 set information. As of right now we're undecided as to post this or not. On one hand, if it's true, it means major spoilers for 2008, and we're barely halfway through 2007. Lego really needs to learn to keep a better lid on things. On the other hand, the information is out there all over the internet, and if we don't post it members will find it anyway. I am leaning towards posting it, because I believe if you see news you should report on it, but some of my coworkers heavily involved with the storyline disagree. We'll see who wins that battle.

The anniversary is less than a week away, and we have some fun stuff in store for you guys. Some good news to look forward to.

Until next time...

Last weekend was Major League Gaming's second event of 2007, which took place in the Meadowlands in New Jersey. Being a short trip away and a huge Halo fan, I of course stopped by to watch the pros do their thing. In my mind, gaming has recently gone to a whole new level, there are people making a living off of playing games competitively, and people like me who watch it and follow it almost as if it's a sport. And if you want my opinion, it's a whole lot more interesting than watching something like baseball or golf.

As for the actual event, I've been fairly busy with summer classes and such (which is why it took a week for me to get this posted) so I only attended during the Halo 2 Championship 4v4 on Saturday night and Sunday. I'm a Final Boss fan, having admired the Ogre twins since the Halo 1 years and the AGP LAN events, so I was hoping they could repeat their success at Charlotte in April. Let's just say I wasn't disappointed, as Final Boss put an end to those who questioned if they still had what it takes to beat Carbon. When you win Warlock CTF 5-1 and beat Carbon at their best gametype without breaking a sweat, you know who's in charge.

In addition to Final Boss, I was really impressed with Perfect Storm's performance. They came out of the Open 4v4 to place third overall. Granted, Legit and Naded are two of the best slayers on the circuit, but that's still a lot of matches to play. I think they may have what it takes to beat Carbon in Dallas.

As a parting thought, here's a picture that was posted on MLG's website during the event. That dashing young man on the far left watching intently as Final Boss dominated Type Z is none other than yours truly:

Last Friday was the last day of my internship. Today was my first day of summer classes. Sometimes it seems like I never get a break, but summer classes aren't too bad. Sure I may be taking 25 credits this summer, which is probably twice what some schools require during a normal semester, but I'm crazy like that. I'll probably end up having more free time than when I was interning, since there will be less commuting and more downtime during the day when I can log on.

But nonetheless, it's school during the summer, which never sounds like a good thing.

Oh well, that's life for you.