One of the (many) LEGO activities I am part of includes providing a window display for the local LEGO store. Every couple of months, my local club Greater Portland LEGO Railroaders (GPLR) swaps out a model. The last one was an airport I built. The new one, which we just put in, is a rocket garden with custom LEGO rockets by a couple of club members: Jeremy Rear and Kim Toll.
You can see more pictures on the club's Gallery page. There's a Titan II missile on the launch pad, a Saturn 1B, an
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
Even though things seem to be going fairly well, the weekends do tend to bog the server down. I ran a couple of new optimization commands last time, they seemed to help a lot, so rather than run the entire 2+ hours of optimizations, I just ran these three commands, which took about 30 seconds. The server seems to be working OK now, but time will tell - as always.
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
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
Sometimes, the past is a country one just shouldn't revisit.
Two decades ago, I shoved the necessities of life into a heavy canvas backpack and boarded a plane for Europe. The three months I spent trekking around the continent remain vivid more than half a lifetime later.
Some of the most vibrant memories: The beautiful, desperate beggar girl clutching a baby in the Milan train station, grabbing my arm and crying for a few lira. Riding an old train through Austria and absentmindedly loo
I've gotten several PMs about comics on BIONICLE.com, so thought I'd answer that here.
It's been May since the comics have been updated - that's way too long. But ever since I've been here, I've been trying to get up to speed on the right processes, the right people to do things. By the time I found out who should do the comic conversion to Flash, he was already busy designing for BIONICLE.com and BIONICLEstory.com - priorities that come first.
So it's a resource and priority issue. My goa
Today, word was passed down through De Bouwsteen that one of the pioneers of AFOLdom, Eric Brok, passed away recently. He had been battling prostate cancer for the last 18 months.
I had the privilege of working with Eric as an Ambassador, and meeting with him several times at various events. His enthusiasm for the hobby was obvious, and his work helped set the tone for future Ambassadors. He was a talented builder and a nice guy. I'd heard he had cancer some time ago, and so this wasn't a com
Regular visitors might have noticed a little something about BZP yesterday... like the fact that it was offline for about 12 hours. Yep, things were happening behind the scenes.
Our hosting company did some tweaking to the server and repaired some databases (although their repairs took a lot longer than mine usually do). Specifically, they updated the HTTP server (Apache) and installed an accelerator module to help cache the content. Then they repaired some database tables that had been damag
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
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
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
Again, mostly just a note for me... optimized the database, did the whole thing. The server had been bogged down all morning. Ran the entire suite of optimization commands I had, and it seems to be cruising along better.
Wonder if I can automate it...
For the last several days, one of my MOCs has been getting a lot of feedback from MOCPages. I wasn't sure why, but it's been pretty consistent. Today, I found out why.
Over the last year or so, I've gotten spurts of attention for my LEGO Stargate, usually when one of the Stargate fan sites publishes a link. This time, though, the attention came from pundit site BBSpot. I wouldn't have known about it unless Dimensioneer emailed me with the link. Looks like my Stargate is in the Daily Links lis
Been sick again. It's funny how my body goes icky for a couple of days at a time, then a switch gets thrown and I feel OK again. Weird.
Better now than in two weeks when I'm on vacation. That's what I keep telling myself.
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 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
Ever since I started at LEGO, one of the major responsibilities has been to create specification documents for the web site(s). In fact, those docs were due a few short weeks after I started, but I was busy getting up to speed on everything. So they languished, needing love but finding none. While I did other important things (like budgets), the unfinished specs for BIONICLE.com and BIONICLEstory.com loomed over my shoulder, begging for attention I couldn't afford to give.
Until today.
At
I usually clean up the database once every couple of weeks... but it's been a couple of months now, I think. So I turned it off and did a low-level optimization, except for the POSTS table (which takes hours and hours). Hopefully it'll help. I did notice several tables had expired locks from improper handler releases, but I reset all those. That might make a difference.
I suppose that the BZP server sitch* could be worse. We could've had our database hosted at Northstar Computers. They host a lot of LEGO-oriented web sites, including many clubs and specialty LEGO sites.
Their database server crashed. As in, CRASHED. Hard, with no parachutes streaming out of it as it vectored into the tarmac at 900 mph. Translation: no backups. (Well, they kinda did, for a few sites, but they weren't any newer than 2006.)
So, even though BZP is working like dogmeat during
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
I've started to take writing more seriously, and have entered a regional writing competition. The prize is only $300, and it won't be announced until August, but it's a start. Writing is where I've decided I want to spend my effort, since time is a river and it ain't getting any deeper for me - although it seems to run faster these days.
Up to now, I've been writing some fanfics and little blog entries, letters to the editor, and so on. No, I won't link, but it's absurdly simple to find them.
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
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
