So, who else will be going out to get their copy of LEGO Star Wars II today?
I know a ton of my time is going to be spent with a PS2 controller in hand over the next few weeks. The demo I got to play at Traveller's Tales whet my appetite like you wouldn't believe. Several hours flew by.
:-D
I remember the flags. They were everywhere, days after 9/11/01. All over the news, all over the neighborhoods, all over the consciousness of America. The flags brought us together in working through our pain and grief. I didn't lose anybody specific to the attacks, although I know plenty who did.
But it affected me and my family in many ways, not least of which was the loss of my job a month later, due to "post-9/11 economic downturns." The time I was out of work was when I became more active
Anybody noticing my new avatar may be wondering what that's about...
In short form: I got a wild hair.
Longer form: The new season of Battlestar Galactica is coming up in early October, and I'm getting ready to see what they're gonna do to all of the characters. I've always had a soft spot for Gaius Baltar, that Cylon-lovin', sex-addled, ADHD-sufferin', surrender-monkey genuis president of the Thirteen Colonies.
And let's face it, anything is better than the "leadership" afflicting
I bought myself a Mindstorms NXT last week (actually, the wife paid for it, but I'll pay for it in oh so many little ways). First thing was to build "Alpha Rex" and get it to do something. Kinda boring, actually, although an interesting build. I really like the new sensors and motors, there's a ton of potential with them.
After building ol' Rex, I had halfhearted notions of slapping some Bionicle pieces on it and posting a "moc" of Bionicle Rex but I decided against it, for some reason. It's
Techie geeky alert.
I've spent some significant time over the last few days trying to get BZP to run faster. After much analysis and trolling technical forums, I may have found something. I knew that repairing and optimizing the database would help, as would regularly flushing the query cache, which I've done by hand on occasion. But it looks like you really get a bang for your buck by optimizing the entire database and not just some tables.
I finally got sick of sitting by the computer at
It's official. I'm no longer an active LEGO Ambassador.
I hadn't applied for it this time, so it's really no surprise my name isn't on the list. The Cycle 4 Ambassador announcement includes a lot of new faces, and several returning members. It's good to see an increased international contingent, though - only a few of the first cycle were from outside North America.
I've been doing a lot of stuff with LEGO for the last few years, including being an Ambassador, and I felt it was time to let
Well, BrickFest is over, and for the first time in several years, I wasn't in attendance. I would've loved to be able to see the BZP gang that dropped by, but I got a small taste of that when Omi called my cell phone during one of the get-togethers. At least I got that much of it. You'd think the BrickFest webmaster would at least be able to attend his own convention, but noooo....
Part of me is jealous of everybody that got to go, another part actually enjoyed staying home and getting caught
OK, this has nothing to do with LEGO, or Bionicle, so if you're bored with "space" stuff, go ahead and cruise on by.
We lost a planet today. It wasn't a big one, but it has three moons, so you'd think it'd be hard to misplace.
The International Astronomical Union today passed a new resolution that defines what a "planet" is. It was tumultuous, apparently - it even came close to the "gray vs. bley" furor in the AFOL world from a couple of years ago. Yes, it was that big. So, instead of havi
How embarrassing.
I downloaded the Bionicle Heroes demo yesterday, and gave it a whirl. I'd had the chance to test-drive it during development a few weeks ago, and probably made the developers nervous because of how poorly I did. This time I did a bit better, it took a few tries to get good at it, but I did manage to get to the end.
My 12-year-old son watched me for two minutes, and whizzed through the entire thing his first try, in about half the time of my final attempt.
Fine, ya li'l
Hours and hours and hours spent on LSW II demo... and I can't for the life of me find that last bonus canister! I can't believe how much it's bugging me, and how many times I've run through the entire level (at about 1.5 hours a shot). When what I should be doing is writing about how cool Bionicle Heroes is (that should finally be done tonight, hopefully, for a publication time of later in the week).
The good news, I guess, is that LSW II is gonna be a huge hit, and I'm getting a head start.
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
Woke up this morning to read on CNN about a plot to blow up airplanes leaving London Heathrow for the US. Like one of the flights I was on a couple of weeks ago. Sends chills down the spine. I feel fortunate, seeing pictures of the massively long queues in Heathrow, and hearing of five hour delays and things like that.
Just kinda makes you think. I'm glad they caught this one before anyone was able to blow up a plane over the Atlantic.
OK, I'm back, and at least slightly less jet-lagged than yesterday. So time for a little low-down on what the Bink's been up to.
A few weeks ago, TT Games invited me to visit their studio and publishing offices. Since I had a valid passport and available vacation time, I obviously jumped at the chance. The trip was about five days long, all told, and I just got back yesterday. The eight hour time difference is still playing merry havoc with my body, but it was a great journey.
Oh, to jump
14 hours in the air. Three hour drive north from London to just south of Manchester. A hectic day rubbing elbows with the developers of LEGO Star Wars / LEGO Star Wars II and Bionicle Heroes. Playing a mind-blowing dev build of BH. Looking at renders and art and concepts. Interviews. Video sessions. Flubbing lines and flushing toilets. Three more hours back south. Four blissful hours the next day playing LEGO SW II (dev version). Playing a sharp-looking early DS version of BH. A rainy, humid aft
OK, it's a new day, and maybe - just maybe - I can write without being too fuzzy.
One exciting opportunity I've had recently is to become involved with LEGOFan.org, which is a portal site that was started by Jake McKee, former LEGO community liaison. It's been a bit neglected, and I have been able to go in and migrate the content to a new server, set up new forum software, and so on. The switchover isn't complete yet (there was a DNS mixup, it should've been finished today but it's not), so y
I haven't forgotten I have a blog. Really.
The last few weeks have been very, very busy, some in a good way, others... not so much. There are a couple of things that are this close to being ready to chat about publicly, but I figured I'd better catch up here quickly, since I probably won't have much of a chance to do this next week.
Lessee, here's the highlights... Completely revised architecture and created new content for a major LEGO web site Getting ready for a BZP-related trip next we
"It's here! The new LEGO catalog! It's in the mailbox! Yay!"
"As daddy, I get to read it first."
"AWWW! No fair!"
"No, but I'm bigger, so gimme."
Every few months, it's the same. Most of the sets I see splashed across the colorful pages of the LEGO catalog are already familiar: better posed pictures of constructions I've seen either at fan sites or by being a LEGO Ambassador. The new AT-ST, for example - that's one sweet set, which will definitely be on Binky's birthday list.
Thi
Who knew? Not only did I get a work laptop last Friday, but today I hear the company is submitting a patent application on one of the projects I worked on. I was the principal inventor, actually. It'd be nice to get one of those patent plaques with my name engraved, but even if it happens, it's years down the road - it takes a loooooooong time for the process to go through. My buddy Steve (who works for a large semiconductor company) has several. The "ooh-aahhh" factor is nice.
For those that
Have ya ever noticed how crawly BZP gets after a while? I sure do. But where everybody else gets to just complain about it, yours truly is the one who actually has to do something about it.
We get lots and lots of hits a day... about 2.5 million, actually. That's a lot of database traffic. Every forum and blog page hit, as well as every news story page, has at least one database call - sometimes up to a dozen per page. So the DB traffic gets measured in number of hits per second, and sometime
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
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
*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
The clubhouse is empty.
We knew it would happen. The space was graciously loaned to us by a local mall, and included two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows. We set up in early January, and were told we'd have it for probably a couple of months. So being able to camp out there until the end of May was excellent.
Unfortunately, it gave us a lot of time to pack in a ton of brick. Which had to be packed out again in three days. Ooh, my achin' back.
So that's what it looks like now, more
This is always fun when you want to post something but don't have time or mental energy to come up with something wittily sparkling (as that sentence proves). So on a Friday afternoon, watching the clock hands crawl through molasses to 3:45 when I can bail out of work, here's what I like to call:
What's on YOUR iPod? (Or [insert generic mp3 player brand])
I'm a bit... how you say... eclectic in my music listening choices, as you may tell from my list.
T'Pau: Heart & Soul Sara McLachl
It was a dark and stormy night. The laptop slammed. A "beep" rang out. The printer screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the monitor!
Too much Snoopy.
How 'bout, "It was the best of weekends, it was the worst of weekends"? Yeah, that's better. Although I'm wary of segues from Schultz to Dickens... it cheapens Schultz.
The long weekend was productive in a lot of ways. We had a kids birthday, which was fun (and yes, he got a LEGO set), but more importantly, I got a few things done
