Cleaning up the ol' hard drive, I found an image of the initial whiteboard discussion for the 2008 Phantoka games. This was the very first discussion of how to present games - I think this was drawn last August.
The main idea that was refined was to play as either good guys or bad guys. The original idea was to have a broader set of things to do, but it turned out to dilute the games, so we narrowed it down to just the games.
Kinda fun to compare the original drawing with the final pro
Soooo tired...
Nearly midnight Saturday, and it's been another 16-hour-day at the fest. Been hanging with Omi, Makaru, Roa McToa, and of course KIE, and Shadrahk showed up today with his dad (sorry, don't know your screen handle). It's been busy, but pretty fun, although it's a lot of work to get these things going and keep 'em going. So far nothing major has disrupted the flow.
Thursday night we did initial setup, and got things well under way. We had a pizza party (Pizza Schmizza) for ab
Well, it looks like my little DVD-ROM sparked a lot of interest, gauging by the responses and polls. Enough so for me to start actually working on producing said disc, and finding some "extra" content for it. Initial indications are very favorable in getting some stuff onto the disc that will be very popular, I think. You may be surprised at how much stuff we have lying around, just begging to be put on this DVD.
Estimated timeframe for having it ready for sale: February 2007. Estimated price
So my famous procrastination kicked in, as I'm supposed to be working on LEGOFan, and for the last couple of nights I've been slaving away on a relatively simple MOC. I'm surprised nobody's done this one before.
Actually, I was surfing images on Google, looking for Stargate SG-1 replicators (which I'm gonna build one of these days), and ran across an image from an old movie that came out when I was 4 years old. The image is fairly iconic, so I'm thinking most people here should get it.
Whe
OK, not BIONICLE related, but still a big deal for me.
The sorting I told about here is at long last complete. The basement is now a full LEGO room, with building table, boom box, hanging LEGO and BIONICLE banners, sufficient lighting, and a boombox.
To commemorate this auspicious occasion, I built a Danish flag to match my American flag.
Now I'm off on a new project. I'm about halfway done with a vehicle from Halo 3, and it's turning out really well. It's remote controlled with Power F
Time for a few tidbits from the Bink. Just stomping the final bugs on the updated web site. It will launch a few days into January. We're working on a game, I just got a beta yesterday, and it's looking good. The game will launch in February. Just had a second lunch with the design team, and we got through some more answers. We'll do more in January. Working on 2009 and 2010 communications stuff. I'll be offline for a good part of the time between Christmas and New Year's, so after this Friday a
*sniffle*
The move out of the clubhouse last week put me under the weather, still snotty. At least the sore throat's gone.
I got to go home early yesterday after the wife called in a panic, her car wouldn't start. Turns out the battery died, so I convinced her not to tow it to the dealer to have them run an expensive diagnostic on it. I replaced the battery myself, shocking her that I could actually get my hands greasy by working on a car. Binky the grease monkey. Ook.
Projects are comi
Yesterday, Legoland in Billund opened for 2008, and since it's only 2 minutes by bike from where I am right now - and I have a "sæson pas" - I thought I'd drop in.
It was cold but not raining, and the sun even peeked through the clouds a few times. It was pretty crowded, but not as bad as Disney World in May. The donut stands didn't open until noon, which was a bummer, but the rides were going. There's nothing quite as amusing as watching shivering, bundled-up kids stand in front of the new f
Gotta love that Danish benefits package... so I'm off this week, taking 9 days of vacation. Of course, that means more work piled on when I get back into the office, but what the heck. For now I get to sleep late, ride bikes with the kids, and generally hang out. My worthy assistant, Anne Mette, is handling things for me while I'm away - like pushing Game 6 live earlier today.
Taking two and a half weeks off in July to drag the family through Europe - Rome, London, Ireland. Should be fun.
It's deadline week. BIONICLE.com's update is 98% complete... just a few things left to do, which will get done by end of day Wednesday. The new BIONICLEstory.com is getting there, it's gonna be done a week later. Then it's Juletime holidays and I can r-e-l-a-x for the first time in a long time. (I spent all weekend writing BIONICLEstory.com content.)
OK, so by now the story's been out in BrickJournal for a day or two, about my little trip to Denmark to interview for the position of Bionicle.com Web Producer. My story was basically written for adults, although it's certainly fine for younger readers. But since I've gotten a couple of questions about it, I'll just lay it out here a little more plainly.
* I'd heard last November that LEGO was looking for a new web producer for Bionicle.com.
* I sent in my resume via a couple of LEGO contact
I just realized how negligent I've been with my blog. Bad Binky.
Second week at The LEGO Group of companies. Weather here in Denmark has been stormy at times, sunny at times - but more former than latter. Commuting by bicycle has been fun, and I think I'm losing weight. Which is only a good thing. (Although I've had homemade tacos for two nights in a row, so I might actually be packin' on the kilos [note the European weight measurement - I appear to be assimilating].)
I'm starting to get m
Just finished writing the content for the BIONICLE.com update, and got Greg's blessing on it. That's always a good feeling. The story section of BIONICLE.com will be in 5 sections, like it was last year, and will be updated monthly. So you'll need to visit regularly to get the story updates.
For those of you asking about the song... I'm still working on trying to get the date for that. There were rumors that the licensing might be changed so we couldn't have the song for download on the site
OK, it's finally up!
This one was a huge project, as you can tell by looking at the number of character bios on the site. It was done in a rush, so it's not perfect, but we'll definitely be adding to it. I have some fairly big plans to beef up the site over the next half year, which I think you guys will really appreciate.
Some new content from Greg will be put on the site, probably starting this week.
This was a pet project of mine. BIONICLEstory was born of necessity, and the Mahri Fl
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.
The server itself seems to be doing OK, but we're continuing to get corrupt database tables once in a while. They're causing some minor grief. In an effort to get away from that grief, we've decided to upgrade to the latest version of Invision Power Board. The request has been submitted to our host, so the boards could go offline at any point in the next day or two.
This means the forums will be unavailable for several hours once this process starts. We'll try to put a news story online when
Well, after a full day, the forum software has been updated. I haven't completely finished putting in all the custom bells-n-whistles (like proto, online/offline, premier header, mod haus, etc.) but those will come.
The skins are being problematic, I'm not sure I like the graphics that are being used, I may revert some of them back to the IPB default. And there's apparently an issue with uploading images for profiles, I think that's probably a permissions issue.
For the inevitable comments
It's really gratifying to see the My LEGO Network campaign taking off so well. I see a lot of interest in this game, and there are some fun tidbits in there. We had a creative roundtable last year with me, the MLN producer, Greg, and Leah to work through the story, and I think Peter (the MLN producer) and Eric (the graphic artist) did a great job.
Now, on to the real reason for the blog entry...
I've been receiving lots of PMs about MLN issues. Unfortunately, I'm not really able to help.
Top 10 ways you can tell it's spring in Denmark:
The smell of cow manure becomes more prominent... eye-wateringly so Screams from Legoland carry through the air much better Wind, wind, wind! There's more sunlight than darkness, dingy though it may be The office seems emptier these days, for some reason A shortage of bandages in the stores, due to football injuries Just when you start getting used to blue sky... it rains All those "hardy vikings" have colds Scarves become optional ... and your
Having an obsessive-compulsive personality can really suck up your free time, y'know?
Ever since I picked up LSW2, I've spent most of my time playing it. At this rate, I won't have any mocs ready for NWBC. My kids are PO'd that Daddy is hogging all the video game time. Blah blah blah. Whadevah. Talk to the hand, squirts.
I've gotten through the "story" mode, and am working my way through the Free Play mode, collecting all the goodies and building up my stud count. EpIV is done, except for
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
For the last several days, the server has been running fairly well, except when the database gets corrupted. It's easy to fix, but takes a while. On Sunday, apparently the DB was corrupted and I wasn't available to fix it for several hours. And then again this morning, one of the tables was corrupt, so I had to rebuild.
I did notice that the times when the server gets busybusybusy is when the Hot Topics on the front page are updated. Those used to be updated once every four hours. So now, I'v
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
I start a new job next Monday. It's a 3-month contract gig, boring yet well-paying, that may be extended in February '07. It's a little nerve-wracking going to a job where I don't know what's going to be happening in a few months, but now is a very good time for me to get the heck outta where I've been working for the last 5 years. And the job market for what I do is looking up, so I'm not too worried.
My new job probably won't allow me the latitude to go onto BZP during the day, as I've had
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
