Next week, I'll be spending a couple of days in London. Well, London and Bournemouth. The online game developer we've been using (who are very good by the way - yes, that means you, Mike) is going to start on the game(s) for later this year, and we'll be going over what we need to do. Then on Tuesday, I'm meeting some people about another project I'm working on, which is kind of work-related but not entirely. Hopefully I'll be able to talk more about that later.
Enough about me. You don't car
I keep an eye on the server stats - how many people visit per day and month, how many hits we get, how many page views, how much bandwidth is sent out per day, and so on. For the most part, it's fairly consistent over the last year, with peaks and valleys that correspond to new products and announcements or server issues, respectively. With last week's server problems, the stats took a noticeable trip south.
But now that everything's been fixed (or so I believe at this point), we're actually
Last night I performed scheduled maintenance on the server, at the same time as trying to update some core software. It backfired, and the database server wouldn't load. That's fixed, but now I need to adjust the configuration, and I can't do that at work. So the machine will probably run really sluggishly until I can get home to adjust that.
It's either run it and watch it go up and down, or yank the forums offline and have everybody go into BZP withdrawal. It's an ugly sight, so I'll stress
Binky so happy with the server.
As you may recall, last month I found a way to optimize the BZPower database, and the site's been running much more smoothly since then. Our hits have been up, and the weekends have been stellar, with nearly 3 million hits a day during weekends in September. I've seen more than 500 people online at once, with the server behaving itself. After literally years of futzing around with the settings, it's truly gratifying that I've finally stumbled onto the right sol
So I'm watching the server, trying to see why it keeps crawling into its own bellybutton, and notice that it's not always the mySQL processes that lock up. Even when there are no DB threads running, the server load can hit 80, 90, 100+... when the optimum is 5 or under (and the forums shut off at 15). When I kill the http daemon (Apache), the load plummets.
Hmm.
Most of the optimization I've done involves mySQL tweaks. But that's not all of it. This has puzzled me for a while. Now, I'm not
Some Monday,s yu walk into werk and thing look like itll all be good. Som days, not so much.
Today, not so much.
So, the countdown has been scheduled for several months now. I just found out last Friday that one of the servers used to develop the site will be down until Tuesday afternoon, which means I can't make any changes to the site that weren't already scheduled to happen.
That wouldn't be so bad, but it turns out there's a bug in both the Takanuva's Blog Flash, as well as the Movi
Man, what a tough week.
I'm sure you don't want to hear a sob story - after all, I work for LEGO! How hard could that possibly be? But let's just say a combination of jet lag, tons of work, working outside of the office for several weeks, and an intense 2-day marketing meeting in Copenhagen have taken their toll. So even though I was supposed to visit Skærbæk for an AFOL event this weekend, I stayed in Billund instead, recuperating.
And doing laundry. Very important, that.
Anyway, even
Just saw a rough cut of what's coming for 2008 in January. For fans who've been with BIONICLE for a while, it'll be extremely cool. For newer fans - it'll knock your socks off. Lots of good stuff getting ready for '08.
Gravity Hurts
Tension is rising
Gravity hurts
Everything's falling apart
Choosing the right side
Choosing our faith
Choosing is what we must do
Everyone's counting on you
For freedom we rise
Learn to fly
Reach the sky
Legend will carry you
...thousands of miles
Take a stand
Hold the land
Make sure that everyone's
...ready to win
Find the speed
All you need
Team up for battle
We fly, fly...
We fly
Gravity hurts
Creatures keep coming
Reaching within
Stealth
There have been a couple of reorganizations at work, fairly major ones. I'll be working on the same projects I'm currently on, but will do it from another department. I'm looking forward to this, since I get to continue working with people I really like. My boss will be in a different part of the organization, and I'll miss working with him a lot - he's been a great boss. But the future looks bright too.
This doesn't affect plans already in place for BIONICLE, so don't worry about that. We're
OK, now that the drama is over, time to update you on a few things. BIONICLE.com is now updated for US and UK. Other languages will follow in the next 60 days. I really like the overall design of the site. It's the closest I can think of to matching the rest of the campaign. The artwork was actually taken directly from the same Photoshop files used in the packaging. The new song is not yet available for download. That'll come later. It's from the same lady who sang "Creeping In My Soul". The guy
It seems that for the most part, the Mata Nui Saga is being well accepted. I agree with most of the people saying the cool art, coupled with the excellent voiceover by Michael Dorn, really lends BIONICLE an epic feeling - which is exactly what we wanted. I'm pleased that for the most people are enjoying it.
There are two things that come up regularly, which I'd like to quickly address: Scale of the robots, and timing of all story media.
First, the scale.
Yes, the scale is difficult to p
It's almost here.
Today's setup day at the Oregon Convention Center. I'm about to scoot out of work and head down to unload a bunch of stuff from the wife's van, then bop back home to pick up more boxes that just arrived from LEGO today. Apparently there's a big mysterious black box on the porch, can't wait to see what that is. We're expecting door prize stuff from TLG, so that should be it.
The last couple of weeks have been hectic, trying to get everything done and ready for the fest. La
Ever since NW BrickCon, where one of the Dirty Brickster gifts was a modified USB thumb drive embedded into a 2x6 LEGO brick, I've wanted to try playing with something like that. So, with all the good deals on personal electronics last weekend, I picked up a 512MB Flash drive for $14 - heckuva deal. It's pretty tiny, and came with a keychain and carabiner which I'm not going to use. The thumb drive itself, when removed from the external plastic case, was just a tad too big to slide into a hollow
It was a long week, but one in which I knew a lot more on Friday than on Monday. I've been learning a lot, getting my head around all the tasks and processes that I need to know to do this job, and there's a lot more than you might imagine.
But one part stands out - I pushed my first change live on the site. It was a small little thing, really... finding a song lyrics file that was too big (5MB for a one-page PDF), I sampled it down and went through the process of updating BIONICLE.com.
Wh
Peak Oil
One of the blogs I regularly cruise, the amusing and quixotic Dilbert Blog by Scott Adams (language warning, so I'm not linking), featured an entry today about Global Warming. Reading the comments, I ran across a couple of interesting links that made me think a lot, and maybe change part of my world view.
(Boringness warning: the following talks about non-Lego, non-toy, end-of-the-world grownup stuff. Skip if you are easily bored or display any symptoms of ADD.)
Now that I've s
Guilt wracks my body day and night. Night sweats, nervous shaking, and other less pleasant physical ailments assail me and never let me forget just how much I'm letting the LEGO community down. It assults me first thing in the morning: that awful realization of another day where I haven't done my part. Hours and hours later, another evening spent lying awake, exhausted, struggling with the overwhelming guilt of not getting the job done.
And then I think, "Meh, it's only LEGOFan."
For some
Have you ever felt like you had so much to do that you don't know where to start? I've got that feeling, big time, and have had for a while. So much writing... so much web work... so much other stuff... sometimes I just want to crawl under the blanket and only peek out when I smell fresh cookies being baked.
Too bad life doesn't work that way.
So, after much waffling, I've made the decision to just get through it and power through what I need to power through. Fulfill the obligations so I
I've seen threads and gotten PMs about the order of the videos on the front of BIONICLE.com. Several people seem to think there's been a mistake in which video is shown when.
No mistake, this is the way it's been planned.
Once all the videos have been released, you will see the narrative that flows from one to the other. The videos tell a story. The CGI is coming from different sources, including commercials and custom-made videos like the Ignika starting the Energy Storm. One of the comme
OK, so it's not really my news, but I'm sure Cajun will get around to posting it shortly.
One of the projects I've been lightly helping with (although not as much as I'd really wanted to) has been with MECHAHUB, a new site created by our very own Cajun. If you can't figure out what it's about just from the name - I don't wanna even think about it.
Cajun is da man, he's done a great job putting this together from scratch. I helped with a few things, most of which aren't live yet. But it's a
I've always known I work better under pressure. Well, at least I get things finished under pressure.
So my local club is involved with the local LEGO store, we get to display anything we want (within reason) in one of their in-store "window boxes". One of the tall ones. The last few have been really good, starting with a mountain diorama (which Binky dropped in the parking lot), and an industrial facade built by my friend Steve. I helped with the mountain, but none of it was really mine.
T
Just how stupid do those screenwriters think we are? I mean, sheesh already.
I've watched my share of really bad TV movies, but maybe I'm getting ornery in my old age. Last night I watched Sci-Fi Channel's Black Hole where St. Louis was gobbled up by a man-made (you guessed it) black hole. It was so bad, both my scifi junky kids turned up their noses, and they usually eat this garbage up with a spoon. Even the original Buffy couldn't save anything - and those nerd-scientist-chick glasses to m
Tomorrow I'm off to Zwolle, The Netherlands, for LEGO World. They expect some 40,000 people to go through the gates over the course of the event, so it's a pretty big deal. This will be my first public event as a LEGO employee. Of course, I've been to plenty of US-based fan events, but they're more fan conventions than expositions, so LEGO World will be pretty different for me.
Since I couldn't go to NW BrickCon, I'll have to settle for LEGO World.
Back in the office, I'm just finishing up
