danny316p

Last I checked, a substantial amount of Android devices weren't properly supported by the LEGO Life App, so that won't be an option for many. BZP continues to work fine on mobile, though. Now if only it rendered nicely in lynx...

Coincidences are fun. This morning, BZP's front page announced that I'd be joining the staff here. This evening, my dying phone ate the phone numbers of every BZP member I had in there. I maintain that this is not a "message from the universe". A better conspiracy theory: AT&T has plans to launch their own competing Bionicle fansite and wants to leave the competition in disarray.

I had to get my cell phone replaced today. Because of how the old one died, I lost many old text messages and saved contacts. You might want to try texting me to see if you made the cut or not (I think it may have something to do with which year I added you to the "Address Book").

I had the WeDo question myself. I'm having trouble finding details on what's under the hood, too...it looks like this fills some pretty obvious gaps in what LEGO offers already, though. They haven't had any retail offerings to go with WeDo 2.0 before, and they needed to find a cheaper/faster/simpler way of delivering Mindstorms features. This looks like it does all that and does it with some system and constraction ideas thrown in too. ...from what I've read so far, I think the "speakers" might only be the ones on your tablet already. Which might be fine - it's probably cheaper than figuring out a speaker size and/or including output jacks. I wonder what the "3D printer" model actually can do...

On the Mindstorms discussion, it's overwhelmingly obvious in the hobby robotics space that LEGO has both priced their way away from their competitors and moved too far away from what they initially offered. The RCX and NXT were small, essentially real-time devices with firmware. The EV3 takes a minute to load up a custom flavor of Linux. In the hobby robotics world, people use Arduino boards to meet one of those needs, and Raspberry Pi computer-on-a-boards for the other. While being able to boot up a server on a LEGO product is awesome in my book, it's probably way beyond the needs and desires of the typical robotics team or amateur wanting to tinker with robotics. This may have been a side effect of how much of LEGO's product offering's can be tied up in robotics kids, but to stay comparable to how newbies approach robotics today, LEGO would have had to make something like the NXT and something like the EV3 available at the same time. Kids these days think nothing of hacking up a project that uses both Arduinos (for handling motors, sensors, and real-time components) and Raspberry Pis (for communication, networking, and ease of use), but someone wanting a similar capability from LEGO will have to mix in a platform that isn't widely available anymore. ...and $30 will cover the cost of either platform (Arduino or Raspberry Pi). Sure, you'll pay more for "shields", "hats", motors, sensors, etc, but most of the time that will add up to less than the cost of an EV3. As it stands now, someone buying a new LEGO robotics set is essentially purchasing the convenience of having things ready out-of-the-box and being able to use it easily with other LEGO parts. Someone who doesn't need LEGO compatibility isn't going to go to LEGO for easy-to-use robotics anymore, even though they would have when the RCX came out. WeDo has only been released in the educational market, and has (so far) been rather limited when not attached to a PC. We are definitely due for a new robotics platform - probably something fairly low end to complement the EV3 (similar to how Spybotics, Cybermaster, the Scout, and the Microscout complemented the more high-powered RCX). Bonus points if they find a way to deliver a passable robotics kit for under $100. Then again, they don't listen to me, so we could be barking up the wrong tree entirely. As for the Bionicle G3 rumor - I highly doubt it. Lines don't get cut that suddenly without a good reason. An awesome new platform out of LEGO Futura could do that, but seems unlikely. A new licensed line that Bionicle would directly compete with is more likely - and that category could include arbitrary changes related to the Star Wars figure line.

Have you visited this page lately? http://www.bzpower.com/bzpstaff.php For those of us who have seen the staff in person in recent years, it's a bit of a blast from the past. I don't think I'd seen that page before, but looking at it now, I'm thinking "wow, everybody looks so young here!" Not that anyone's all that old now...but you know what I mean. Also, maybe there should be some newer photos on there...

I feel like it's a healthy approach to handling the monobrand store phenomenon. Overreach would be requiring them to sell to LEGO Brand Retail, or suing the stores to oblivion. An interesting side topic would be the role of LEGO's independent toy store distribution arm in the US. A few AFOLs have launched stores of their own and wanted to carry LEGO products, but LEGO has turned them down. Company policy says that an AFOL-owned store that primarily sells LEGO shouldn't be allowed to get stock directly from LEGO, because that would compete with LEGO Brand Retail (yes, they actually say this, even in areas that are hours away from the nearest LEGO store).

I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. As someone who's been to the park lately, it's not very surprising - LLFL has long been excessively geared towards kids at the expense of other LEGO fans. The stores in the park have had Kidz Bop recordings in rotation for some time now. I remember being offended by a kid-unfriendly Justin Bieber hit during my last visit. Have we had headlines for other recent change-ups in LEGOLAND Florida partnerships? There have been some big ones in the past year, such as Pepsi being replaced by Coca-Cola, and Cartoon Network ending their sponsorship of the park (they didn't renew it after the end of the Chima and Mixels cartoons). Edited to reflect that I only know about sponsorships at the Florida park. For example, Coke was still a partner in California while Pepsi was a sponsor of the Florida park. That was why the two Miniland New York Times Square scenes didn't match when the Florida park opened (replacement billboards for gaps left by Cartoon Network and Pepsi had not been installed when I visited the park in November - when I asked a master model builder about it, I was told they'll be designing new ones on-site soon).

You're hitting on my earlier point - LEGO has more of a hobbyist community than a fandom. There's some overlap, but calling us a fandom misses the point in many ways. Heck, it's trivial to find AFOLs who call themselves "brick artists" and have little or no admiration for the LEGO company. The very term "AFOL" is a misnomer, since many builders aren't "fans" in any traditional sense. If you were replying to me, I wasn't saying 200 posts a day was terrible in itself, I just used it to show that activity could and did drop even when the board was active and not simply because it went offline for a while. The board often struggles to get 100 (counted) posts a day now, judging by the "Today's Top Posters" percentages. I did all I could, ever since it hit me in June 2013 that things were dying down. I guess I could have done more. Forums in general seem to be doing less well these days. People with short attention spans flock to "social media" instead. Those websites (that care little for any community) are cannibalizing many websites that are actually useful. It's bad enough that BZP's had downtimes and data loss over the years, but Facebook is basically a black hole and most "social" websites don't hesitate to completely delete things that people spent years putting online (MySpace being the worst example, but it's not like LEGO ReBrick did much better at respecting users' time and effort).

The Metru torso does have a gear-shaped indentation in there, as if they intended for us to be able to use it as a gearbox with that size of gear in that position. The axle holes around it, however, would normally prevent you from using that spot for a gear at all (unless it was still and purely decorative). This could be an artifact of how that part was designed, or maybe there's some complementary part I don't know about. This trick, however, makes it more useful as a gearbox in larger Technic creations. It also provides some cheap clutch functionality, since the antenna piece isn't a firm connection like an axle would have (although this would probably wear out the antenna eventually if too much torque were applied over time). ...admittedly, it's little useless if you actually want to build Toa, although I could imagine some weird side-kicking mechanism being built this way. Is there a smaller piece that has a ball like that antenna element?

I think I can help, but I'd have to pop open a few sets to do so. Still, it'd make sense to price these at less than the cost of shipping...

I think I'm in the right forum area... I'm on an e-mail list for "Flash Deals" from Booster Bricks. Their deals aren't generally that good, but today's "Bionicle" parts by the pound deal isn't bad: https://go.boosterbricks.com/order-form-9-bionicle-pack This probably ends sometime tonight (or when they sell out, whichever comes first). I've never bought any real quantity of brick from these guys, so I don't have any advice regarding how the brick shows up...

Neither of these is a full-blown MOC, but I thought people here might find them interesting. We always need new uses for old Bionicle pieces. First up, a way to drive a gear through an axle hole in a metru torso by using an antenna piece instead of a Technic axle: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31633743645/in/dateposted/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31633743135/in/dateposted/ Video: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31596751296/in/dateposted/ Second, a way to make something that opens and closes in a synchronized manner built out of Bohrok levers: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31596761676/in/dateposted/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31633740975/in/dateposted/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31596760926/in/dateposted/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31633740035/in/dateposted/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31596760036/in/dateposted/ Video: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/31487030892/in/dateposted/ I think the next step would be to make something pop out from between the levers once they're opened up - but they're up here now, so let me know what you'd do with these techniques!

Bionicle fans build MOCs. I can't think of something equivalent in most "fandoms". Sure, "fan art" is a thing, but that's still fundamentally different from something being made out of pieces that are designed to be used to build a variety of things.

Ahem. ...but then, this does seem like a good time to remind people how joining BioniLUG is easy ($5 a year!) and fun (exciting LEGO opportunities like this!)

Are we really just a "fandom"? I've figured that it's the creative aspect of building something new out of the stock elements that lends us more credibility and longevity. Not that there's anything wrong with pop culture fandom or toy collecting, but we do have a distinct advantage over those two categories...

We actually have multiple walking encyclopedias around here. My expectation, though, is that people would check against a database (such as Brickset or BrickLink) before posting something inaccurate about what LEGO has made so far. The Dimensions sets in particular are recent enough that even a quick skim through the LEGO Shop-at-Home website would cover it (most of those sets are currently in stores). Same, anyone else? That would be nice. I'd assume we'll get something else similar, but different instead. To set expectations, we'll probably get something soon that is to G2 what Hero Factory was to G1. I wish LEGO would make a non-store version of their digital boxes. As long as they're trying out weird concepts, why can't they come up with an app that can identify sets and download animations based on them on-the-fly? I'm probably in the minority in this thread, but I think the problem is that LEGO makes too much good stuff...most of what I'd wish for over the years has already happened. Short of giving us a value bucket full of currently rare parts, I'm not sure they could please me more. ...oh wait, we've already got keetorange bricks in Pick-A-Brick. So we're already seeing parts that sold for $30+ a few years ago become readily available in bulk.

This is the old Customer Service system - they modernized it with reasonable online ordering a few years back. The main appeal is the ability to get current parts that aren't available elsewhere in quantity. It's been kept semi-secret out of concern that resellers will ruin it for everybody (it's already explicitly mentioned when you order that you cannot resell parts bought through Bricks and Pieces).

Yep, I've grabbed most of the harder-to-find ones from there. There are other sites that have powers online, but Spyrius.org is the best I've found. I have to wonder if the kids playing it have figured that out too...

Seriously? Here's the official Sonic the Hedgehog set: http://brickset.com/sets/71244-1/Sonic-the-Hedgehog-Level-Pack They also did a multi-year Lord of the Rings series: http://brickset.com/sets/theme-The-Lord-of-the-Rings ...followed by a multi-year Hobbit series: http://brickset.com/sets/theme-The-Hobbit Are you yanking our chains? You mean something like this? http://brickset.com/sets/8078-1/Portal-of-Atlantis Combine that with Pharoah's Quest sets from that same year, and you're golden. I think they've pushed as far as they can in that direction without obtaining a license that wouldn't be kid-friendly.

I'm curious if anyone else has gotten hooked on the Merlok 2.0 game for Nexo Knights. It became my latest vice after I found several "exclusive" Nexo Powers at LEGOLAND Florida. I've since made the weekly leaderboards, hit level 88, and collected 104 of the 177 Nexo powers. I can't tell if that's impressive, or if I'm just the only non-child playing the game. I'd be interested in talking strategy if we have other players here. This might also be a possibility for a convention activity next year - I'd like to gauge interest on whether people would want to trade powers at events, or if we think there would be interest in setting up powers to be scanned at BioniLUG events. Or am I the only one getting into this?

Ahem? Maersk is Danish. Hans Christian Anderson is Danish. Doctor Who is British. The car companies (Ferrari, Volkswagen, Volvo, Mercedes, BMW, etc) span a wide variety of countries. The "Soccer" sports theme never would have worked if football wasn't massively popular in non-American markets. The oil companies (Exxon, Shell) are all multinational conglomerates. I guess Disney's American, but otherwise, this seems completely wrong (and Disney brought us things like Winnie the Pooh, which brings us back across the pond). FWIW, the US only recently surpassed Germany as the largest market for LEGO. It's only natural that LEGO would cater more to that market today, although that's still not that common.

Are we allowed to talk politics in the blogs here? I understand but am disappointed by most of the results. I'm also disappointed that the big headline has drowned out other important news at the state and local levels. The future looks unpredictable. (Is that the most I can say without really saying anything?)

Sure, sure, after I had narrowed it down to 3 pieces. At least there isn't a prize on this one... It was a 16 hour difference, so he didn't exactly sneak up on it. Besides, that's just the fun nature of these games.

Is bright green the part's color? Yes. (You know you can just edit questions into your last post once I've answered the first one...)