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Black Six

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Blog Entries posted by Black Six

  2. Black Six
    Intro
    What are you reading this for, isn't it a holiday weekend? Wait, what am I doing writing this? Ahhh!
     
    Updates
    So, what happened this week...
     
    The 'Super Chapter Book' Raid on Vulcanus was released. I hear it's longer than the older books, but since there are fewer books this year, that's a small consolation for story fans.
     
    If you're still looking for your story fix, the sixth chapter of Empire of the Skrall was posted on Monday. Maybe that'll tide you over.
     
    You should also check out this blog entry by illustrator David White talking about some of his projects and the upcoming movie.
     
    Let's not forget that the summer sets and vehicles are now available on LEGO Shop@Home in the US and some other countries. There have been sightings of them appearing in stores as well. BZPower will endeavor to review these sets along with the canister sets as soon as may be. If you've been eagerly awaiting these sets, and let's be serious, if you're here you probably are, you should start checking your local stores.
     
    On the BZPower front, you need to go check out this topic with pictures of all the prototype pieces I got from LEGO to give away. I'll be working on updating it later tonight and this weekend.
     
    Also, our anniversary if fast-approaching! :-o You'll have to wait to see what we manage to cook up.
     
    Mailbag
    Mailbag is empty this week.
     
    Want to see your questions answered? PM them to me and put 'Mailbag' in the subject line. I'll pick the few I like the best and answer them in the next update.
     
    Conclusion
    I hope everyone has a happy Fourth of July weekend (if applicable)! See you all later.
  3. Black Six

    Weekly Update - 1/21

    By Black Six,

    Intro
    Oh man, is it the weekend already? That is a shame. Well, I guess I should update you guys or something.
     
    Updates
    Bfahome reviewed the Mandalorian Battle Pack. More reviews should be forthcoming, so keep your eyes peeled.
     
    You should check out ChocolateFrogs' look at the LEGO Architecture Exhibit. It's a pretty amazing display, and since most of us can't visit you should totally check out the pictures he took.
     
    Along those lines, you should totally take a look at David Bird's thoughts on the process of designing Krika. It's quite the insight and worth a read!
     
    It's been a busy week over here, off of BZP, so I don't have much more to share.
     
    Mailbag

    1: Nothing happens to the blog. Since the member is no longer Premier, they cannot add new entries.
     
    2: That's me, as interpreted as Schizo Kaita.
     
    3: Tahu.
     
    Want to see your questions answered? PM them to me and put 'Mailbag' in the subject line. I'll pick the few I like the best and answer them in the next update.
     
    Conclusion
    Short update this week, sorry everyone. Send in some Mailbag questions and leave your comments below. Talk to you next week!
  4. Black Six

    Missing Contest Prizes

    By Black Six,

    There were some periods during the past couple of years where I was super busy and wasn't able to send out contest prizes in a timely manner. For the past few months I've been going through my records to get them all squared away. I think I have a majority of them done at this point, except for a couple where I'm waiting to hear back from people.
     
    But there's definitely a good chance that I have missed or overlooked some contests and prizes, and I'd like to resolve that.
     
    So if I still owe you or someone you know a contest prize, please send me a PM or leave a comment here. Spread the word so as many people as possible hear about this. I really want to make sure everyone gets their prizes.
     
    Thanks for your help, and if I owe you something, I'm sorry it's taken so long.
  5. Black Six

    Weekly Update - 12/10

    By Black Six,

    Intro
    The holiday season is in full swing. I would love this time of year if I was in Australia, where it's warm. But since I'm not - here's a weekly update.
     
    Updates
    Let's start things off with a shameless plug: RPG Contest 20 is underway. If you like controlling other people as an all-powerful GM, go enter. Or if you're a nice person who likes to cooperate with people as a benevolent GM you should enter too. If you have no interest in being a GM, you should read all the entries so you're ready to vote!
     
    Sisen reviewed Breez 2.0! More Hero Factory 2.0 (and hopefully other) reviews to come! Hope you enjoy this early look!
     
    Speaking of next year's Hero Factory sets, the Hero Factory website was updated this past week to show off the upcoming heroes and villains, along with a bunch of other cool content. If that wasn't enough for you, the Pharaoh's Quest website was updated too - LEGO looks like they're doing some great things with next years' themes. I can't wait to get a closer look at them all.
     
    And of course, can't talk about 2011 without mentioning the Pirates of the Caribbean sets. I'm glad LEGO is making good use of their partnership with Disney.
     
    Bunch of things I hope to do this weekend - post the list of recommended builders selected so far and post the list of Ambassadors. Maybe I'll get some other things done to. What would you like to see get done?
     
    Mailbag
    No Mailbag love this week.
     
    Want to see your questions answered? PM them to me and put 'Mailbag' in the subject line. I'll pick the few I like the best and answer them in the next update.
     
    Conclusion
    Enjoy your weekend and your holidays everyone. Questions, comments, and feedback are always welcome!
  7. Black Six

    Week One: Completed

    By Black Six,

    So I had wanted to post an entry about this on Friday night right after my first week, but that didn't happen. Anyway, I've been working at my new internship for a week now, and have been enjoying it a bit. Still getting adjusted to my responsibilities and their policies, but hey, it's a learning experience. It seems like I'll have a significant amount of free time too. Last night I went down and visited some friends from school and hung out there for a while, so it's not all work.
     
    I'm watching the Giants game now, but they're starting to fall apart in the beginning of the fourth. Down by nine, so it's not over yet, but you can see they're slowing down. I'm probably just going to go to bed, it's been a long, tiring weekend and I have another week of work to look forward to tomorrow.
  8. Black Six

    Battlestar Galactica

    By Black Six,

    If you saw tonight's episode, send me an IM (BZP Black Six) if you want to talk about it, because wow, did it deliver on everything they've been hinting at for the past couple shows. No comments here though, as the content is not really appropriate for the site.
  9. Black Six

    Weekly Update - 12/25

    By Black Six,

    Intro
    Merry Christmas everyone! You should be out doing holiday-y things instead of reading this, so I'll keep it short.
     
    Updates
    BZPower launched our new Premier Membership Store this past week. It provides a nice new way to get yourself a membership. Let us know what you think of it so we can make improvements as needed.
     
    We keep churning out the 2012 reviews. ChocolateFrogs took a look at Furno and xccj reviewed Kai's Blade Circle. I have it on good authority that there will be at least one more this week, so keep your eyes peeled.
     
    It's Christmas, so not much else is going on. What did you expect?
     
    Mailbag
    1. Yes. It fills my heart with dread.
    2. Email.
    3. Email.
    4. USPS usually.
    5. Purple and teal, probably. They're nice colors. Brown maybe not as much.
    6. I prefer excellent set design, personally.
    7. Are we talking Bionicle or real life? Fire is the former. Probably Carbon for the latter. It's pretty important.
     
    Want to see your questions answered? PM them to me and put 'Mailbag' in the subject line. I'll pick the few I like the best and answer them in the next update.
     
    Conclusion
    Merry Christmas once again! I hope you all have a good holiday and enjoy your break if applicable. I plan to make the most of mine.
  10. Black Six
    As mentioned last week, I had fallen a little behind on my reading goals, but I managed to finish Halo: Glasslands Friday night (early Saturday morning, technically). It was pretty enjoyable, and a good continuation of the Ghosts of Onyx. There were three main storylines: one following the Spartans, Dr. Halsey, and Chief Mendez as they try to learn more about the Dyson sphere they're trapped in, another following some Elites planning on overthrowing the Arbiter, and the last focusing on Kilo-5, an ONI team performing 'destabilization efforts.' They all intersect each other at various points, and there's some interesting twists along the way. It had quite the cliffhanger of an ending, so I'm looking forward to The Thursday War.
     
    On Saturday proper, I started reading Primordium, and I finished it last night. Guess I'm back on track again. Primordium was excellent - it continued the story of Cryptum, but from a different narrative perspective and point of view, and answered a bunch of questions you had at the end of the first book. It ended with a huge reveal though, and now Silentium can't come soon enough. If you've read it and want to talk about it, feel free to PM me.
     
    So tonight I'll be starting The Thursday War, and see where things pick up with Kilo-5. I'm hoping the remaining Spartan 2s and 3s make an appearance after they built their characters up so much in the other books. I'm figuring a week to go through that, then it'll be on to the graphic novels, since it seems like I'll have plenty of time!
  11. Black Six

    Caught Up

    By Black Six,

    Whew! That was fun (not really). I came back from BrickFair on Monday and have just now gotten caught up on BZPower. In addition to all the posts I had to read, there were accounts to approve (or delete), posts and topics to approve, PMs and emails to reply to, and more. Let's just say I'm glad I'm on top of things now and can move forward with things like BrickFair coverage. In answer to the inevitable when: sometime soon I hope!
  12. Black Six

    Weekly Update - 1/8

    By Black Six,

    Intro
    It's that time again already. Come see what's been happening on BZPower or some such thing.
     
    Updates
    A piece of feedback we've received a lot recently is that you guys want to see us highlight fan creations more on the front page. We had started doing that before the forums went offline, but the effort kind of fizzled out. We're trying to get this moving again, and we started things off with Makuta Sethuldur by Stroxx. We followed things up by spotlighting Fractures by GSR. The BZPower community has a lot of talented creators, and I hope we can keep up the trend of showing off the things they make.
     
    Speaking of member involvement, we want to hear your questions for the BZPowercast. Please send them to powercast@bzpower.com so we can answer them on the next show!
     
    We're still trundling on with the set reviews. Today Sisen reviewed Thornraxx. I really think it's a silly name, but the set is pretty interesting!
     
    In general LEGO news, several LEGO sites have been updated. Be sure to check out the new Hero Factory game!
     
    Mailbag
    Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
     
    Want to see your questions answered? PM them to me and put 'Mailbag' in the subject line. I'll pick the few I like the best and answer them in the next update.
     
    Conclusion
    I got this one out on time today - go me! Have a good week everyone!
  15. Black Six
    Keith Severson (Senior Manager, CEE Community Support) recently shared the below information with the Ambassadors about changes coming to the program. I'm really looking forward to the changes and hoping they strengthen and grow the community as a whole.
    If you have any questions about the responsibilities or anything about the new program, I'll do my best to answer them.
  16. Black Six
    Intro
    So a Weekly Update this week, but not many people around to see it.
     
    Updates
    So, it's our eight year anniversary and to celebrate we're giving away prototypes. There's hopefully one other thing we may get around to doing.
     
    Of course not many people are reading this now because the forums are offline. The admins and staff have been hard at work finding a way to protect the site and reduce the chance of accounts being hacked. This takes time - we have to research fixes, implement them, and test them. So again, we apologize for the inconvenience, but we're doing the best we can.
     
    In other news, we got a review up of Gelu, courtesy of Darth Vader. We should have some more material soon.
     
    San Diego Comic Con is taking place this week and weekend, and there's lots of LEGO and Bionicle stuff happening. The new Tantive IV set was announced, among other things. I'm looking forward to seeing what else is going to come out of this event.
     
    There's a new Behind the Scenes movie from The Legend Reborn, showing some of the voice actors performing their lines. Cool stuff!
     
    Mailbag
    Nothing this week, for obvious reasons.
     
    Want to see your questions answered? PM them to me and put 'Mailbag' in the subject line. I'll pick the few I like the best and answer them in the next update.
     
    Conclusion
    So that's about it this week. Hopefully you'll be able to read next week's update as soon as I post it.
  17. Black Six

    Weekly Update - 1/2

    By Black Six,

    Intro
    So I should have posted this yesterday, but I had company over and then I had to clean up afterwards and then it completely slipped my mind. Oops! Happy New Year everyone!
     
    Updates
    We had a bunch of reviews last week. Sisen reviewed Rocka, ChocolateFrogs took a look at Surge, and some handsome devil threw together some pictures of the Jet-Copter Encounter. We still have more 2012 reviews in the pipeline, so keep looking for them.
     
    We had a new epsiode of the Powercast too. Please listen and give feedback.
     
    Don't expect much else for the next couple of weeks, probably not until Toy Fair.
     
    Mailbag
    Empty once again.
     
    Want to see your questions answered? PM them to me and put 'Mailbag' in the subject line. I'll pick the few I like the best and answer them in the next update.
     
    Conclusion
    Hope everyone rang in the new year in a way that was appropriate to his or her fashion. And let's hope 2012 is a great year!
  18. Black Six

    So About That...

    By Black Six,

    So in my last Weekly Update I mentioned I hoped the front page would be updated this weekend. Clearly that didn't happen. I'm waiting on one more thing and then we'll be good to go. Honest?
     
    Now everything won't be fixed, but the majority will. Some of the more advanced features require linking to the new database to get data. This update will mainly be focused on all the links so you don't keep getting sent to the archive. (Although some links will purposely still take you there.)
     
    Sorry for the delay everyone. We're working on it!
     
    P.S. I'm going to try to update this thing more frequently. We'll see how it goes.
     
    P.P.S The answer to the above is probably, 'not well.'
  19. Black Six

    Go Vote!

    By Black Six,

    The presidential election is right around... oh right, missed that.
     
    No, the reason I'm posting here today is to get the word out about this poll. We want your feedback to know how best we can improve BZP. So please go let us know what you think.
     
    Thanks!
  20. Black Six

    PAX East 2015

    By Black Six,

    I had the pleasure of going up to PAX East in Boston, Massachusetts from March 6th to 8th. As always, it was a blast and it was great to hang out with Than the Moa and Watashi Wa and meet a couple of WaWa's friends. I thought for a change I'd endeavor to take some more pictures and blog about it and share some of my experiences.
     
    The Lines
    PAX East is famous for its massive lines for everything. When you cram 70,000 or more people into a single space, you're going to have to wait for stuff. It's not unusual for people to line up for panels over an hour in advance, and lines to play popular upcoming games like Overwatch take two hours or more. With the lines being such an iconic part of the event, I decided that would be the focus of what I share. If you follow me on Twitter you probably saw some of my tweets rating the lines and sharing pictures. Below is a little more of the same, but not constrained to 140 characters.
     



    I was able to snag a Media badge for the event, which meant Friday morning I got to wait in the very short Media/VIP line. By PAX standards it was pretty tame, and meant I got to check out the show floor before most people. No regrets!
     



    Saturday, on the other hand, I had to line up with everyone else to get into the expo floor. The reason so many people line up is so they can rush in and get lined up for things like Oculus Rift, Gigantic, Overwatch, and other multi-hour waits. I was trying to line up for Rooster Teeth, but when I got to the booth they weren't even there.
     



    I didn't make the same mistake on Sunday and decided to wait and have some breakfast and not go into the expo floor until after the lines cleared. I snapped this from one of the catwalks that crosses the expo floor on the second level. Yes, there are a LOT of people...
     



    A much smaller and faster-moving line was the one to get swag bags. The bags were a bit disappointing this year, only containing the program guide, a deck of Magic cards, a promotional Superfight card, and some ads. Oh well.
     
    Overwatch



    I definitely took advantage of my early media access on Friday by going to play Overwatch, the FPS being made by Blizzard. Yes you heard that right. The gameplay was tight and certainly seems like it's getting ready for release. I only played three or four of the different classes, and of those, McCree was by far my favorite. I'm intrigued to play more when it comes out.
     
    Harmonix



    The day before PAX East started, they announced Rock Band 4! The game wasn't on display, but you could preorder an exclusive PAX East guitar controller, which I did. They also had Amplitude available to play, which was interesting, but I definitely need more time to really learn it, and not play with a group of people that cranked the difficulty up to expert.
     
    Gabe and Tycho



    We caught part of the Gabe and Tycho panel where they basically spent an hour answering people's questions and making us all laugh. As the minds behind Penny Arcade and PAX, it's great to see that they stay so involved with their fans.
     
    Rooster Teeth



    The reason we caught Gabe and Tycho was because we wanted to get good seats for the Rooster Teeth panel, which we succeeded at! The panel was pretty great and we got to see some awesome videos, including the Red vs Blue Season 13 teaser, a Minecraft Let's Play rap (the content of which isn't really BZP-safe), some rough work for the next season of X-Ray and Vav, and a hilarious Funhaus video. The Q&A sessions were a bit groan-worthy at times, but overall I had fun as always.
     
    Rooster Teeth Line



    Of course I also wanted to go to the Rooster Teeth booth to buy some stuff and get them to sign other stuff. Any time Jack, Adam, and Jordan were there though, the line was super-long. I probably went by the booth fifteen times all told seeing if they were there, and if they were, trying to get in line. It was frequently capped though, and when I'd go back to see if it was uncapped I ended up missing the opportunity. Eventually I got in though, and scored some swag and got some signatures.
     
    Halo Cosplay



    One time while I was walking by the Microsoft booth a group of Halo cosplayers had gathered. Those costumes are incredible and I wish I had the time and talent to make one of my own.
     
    Major Nelson Radio



    Another staple of PAX East for me is the Major Nelson podcast panel. The whole crew was there, consisting of Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb, Eric 'e' Neustadter, Laura 'lollip0p' Massey, and Jeff 'Jef United' Rubenstein. They were joined by Eric Pope of Harmonix to talk about Rock Band 4 and Jeff from Undead Labs to talk about State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition. It was a great show and I definitely enjoyed it.
     
    Halo Championship Series Season 1 Finals



    By a stroke of luck, after I finally decided to go to PAX East, 343 and ESL announced that the finals of Season 1 of the Halo Championship Series, the competitive Halo e-sports league, would be held at the event. I've been a competitive Halo fan since 2003 or 2004, so I was super-stoked by this. It had been a while since I had been to a LAN competition in person (honestly it has been a while since competitive Halo was really worth watching) so I made a point to watch as much of the event as I could. I was not disappointed, as the nine teams (top eight seeds and a wildcard from Europe) all put on a great show. The Losers Bracket Finals was quite possibly the best series I've ever seen in the history of the game. CLG went down 2-0 to Noble Black but then tied up the series at 2-2. Game 5 would decide the winner and who would go play in the championship match for a grand prize of $50,000. And then the two teams tied! The official rules stated that there would be a shortened replay of the game, in this case Shrine (Sanctuary) Team Slayer, but that ended up in a tie too. Long story short, the two teams tied four times total before CLG finally won to advance. The crowd at the event was massive and everyone was on the edge of their seat watching (if they had a seat - there were so many people it was standing room only). Even though CLG ended up losing to Evil Geniuses in the finals, it was amazing to be there in person and feel the energy of hundreds of other Halo fans all cheering when a sick play was made. It was definitely the highlight of my weekend and a memory I hope to never forget.
     
    All in all PAX East 2015 was a rousing success. There were a lot of other things I did that didn't make it above, like Elite Dangerous with Oculus Rift, a bunch of indie games, the Harmonix party, and good times with friends. If you're a fan of gaming, I definitely recommend making it to a PAX event at some point, as they're second to none.
  21. Black Six

    Operation: RR Update

    By Black Six,

    It's been a week since I kicked off Operation: Reading Rainbow. So far I've finished The Fall of Reach and the Flood and started on First Strike.
     
    Some thoughts:
    -Man Fall of Reach is so good. It covers so much ground and does it so well.
    -Why did Bungie try to shoehorn in all those retcons in Halo: Reach? It's like Star Wars - it wasn't broke, so why fix it?
    -The Flood is definitely underrated. There are some slower parts, sure, but it really adds a lot more depth and backstory to Halo: CE.
     
    I'm looking forward to the rest of the books. If I keep going at this rate I might even have time to reread the comics too.
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