Tufi Piyufi

Six. Three brothers, three sisters. One of the brother is registered here, as Tufi is aware. I know I've certainly made you aware of it. Wow. He's still alive. Someone give the guy a medal when he comes back, will you?

There's definitely something to be said for blades, yes. Sure, blunt force is nice and all... but sometimes you need that extra precision and delicacy, yanno? And now you've got me wanting to work on that story thing of mine all over again. Gah. How swell some RPG-style modding would be indeed.

I actually got a very very rough BBC Empire map done today! Yay! Very basic, though. Just general placement of palace, docks, big open-air/not-too-sure MOC display place, some commercial (including best pizza place in all the forums) and some residential. And a random forest near the palace. Why not? So then I think to myself that I should prolly get that thing scanned in while the thing's still in the front of my mind. I'll have to figure out what I can unplug from the powerbar and replug the scanner, but okie. I've known that for a while now, I've done it before, no big deal. I hop downstairs and figure out what cord belongs to what. I eventually unplug that wave machine that's older than I am and we haven't had on since that one guy came over months ago. No clue why we dug it out. It's unlikely anyone would notice it's disconnected, anyhow. Alright, that lovely green light is on at the front of the scanner. That's a good sign. Slide the book under, open up that Smart Panel thing. Save to File, yes. Something about how the scanner is not connected or already in use or something like that. What? Unplug. Replug. Save to File? No, same thing. Then it hits me. It's the exact same reason the card reader's been dead for over a week: neither are actually plugged into the computer. The reason for this, of course, being that the big box itself was unplugged over a week ago to get some serious internal dusting done. Cripes, was it ugly in there. Kept overheating and restarting because of it. A note, folks: keep your computer clean. Make sure the fans have good air flow, and maybe even have it cracked open at least once a year or so for a good cleaning. It's how dad saved the Calgary relation's computer last Materialist Festivus. It's amazing how much difference it can make. Take that away with you tonight. Um... yeah. And now that I have no way to get anything onto the computer, I know I'll come up with a gazillion things for the whole BBC thing. Hooray for progress!

Go Than go! Woo! Yeah, yeah, so I've done everything but post in the actual topic. I'll get to it later, it's in my forum anyways. Conflagellations still stand, though. You gonna do good, Than.

Did the Geek Test yesterday. Got 16.somethingforgottosaveit%. Female geek for the win. Also did more BBC Empire story thing contemplating. Definitely gonna need to mash out a map for the thing. That should be fun and continuitytastic. Maybe dig out those sprites I was working on. Prolly unplug the printer and replug the scanner. Mayhaps a few raids on the sunshine and fresh air with a notebook and writing utensils. You know, little option-providing things like that. As for the various things that could be portrayed... That's still the big question. The whole 'Princess Peach' bit deserves a treatment, definitely. So does some contest-y goodness. Oh yes. I must admit, though, that's about all I've come up with at this point. I know, I know. I really should be able to think of more. And I'm sure I will. But it doesn't hurt to get some inspiration from the people, hn?

Well, we also need somewhere to fish off of, too... I suppose we'll just have to have some coast in there. Cripes, now I'll be needing a map, too. And yes, a contest segment is a must... Just too much fun to leave out. Yes, fun.

I'm sorry you don't get to go to Chicago with all the other girls, Polo. Alright, alright. Sorry. And look, to make up for it, I won't even make some snarky comment about how it's a good thing you'll be playing the guitar off in the mountains, away from all civilization. Nope. Won't even bother. That'd be excessively mean. I'm sure you play the guitar just fine. Seriously. All I ask is that you not snap and turn into one of those crazy bushmen, alright?

Oooh, now there's a concept. Though, I'm kinda hoping to come across ideas for what to write/draw in the first place... Nah, he gets to be his regular purple self. He's suffered enough, hn? Oh. Fine. Then.

And now you truly know the joy of the contest host. Once you host one... you just can't stop, can you? For all the work surrounding them, lists and polls and prelims... it's strangely satisfying, eh? And a most funky semi/final setup you got there. It's great what you can do when you don't have to worry about just getting 100+ entries into the polls sometime this century.

I think I've got something here. So there's this forum, you see. BBC. Bionicle-Based Creations. With these people who staff it. It's affectionataly known as the BBC Empire. We're a crazy lot, too... well, you gotta be to deal with contests and all that other stuff. I daresay, one may even be tempted to call some of our activities 'hijinks.' They certainly ensue, that's for sure. And I've become increasingly more tempted to write some manner of comedic story based on all this. Namely, the hijinks in the more fictional Empire, with palaces and everything. Something could be done there, I'm sure. Except I'm not sure about what that something is. I know it's there, but... So then I had the idea to blog about it. Ideas, folks?

I love these things. I really do. The blogs add a whole other level to this place, make it that much more than just a forum, y'know? Real community. Just love 'em. Then there's the little things about them. Like categories. A note to all present and future bloggers: get your categories set up as soon as you can. You will be struck by the urge to sort things out at some point, and you do not want to have to go through a ton of old entries and file 'em away one by one. Even, oh, say, eleven can get tedious. The first nine may be easy, but you'll find yourself slipping up around the tenth. You will switch that tenth from 'published' to 'draft'. You will not realize this until the next day. On that day, you will be looking through your blog for no apparent reason, and you will notice that something's different about that tenth. You will shrug, go in, and republish that entry. You will feel the fibres of space-time being jolted as the entry you posted the day after you got the blog is yanked to the top of the list. You will feel the stab in the great Continuity Continuum. You will sigh and draft-republish your real latest entry in order to get some sense of order. Then you will post about it So yeah, that tenth step's a doozy.

So I've been contemplating what to post next for a few days now. There's only so much ranting I can do, and I'm not about to turn this into some 'oh my day was so awful here's every minute detail' journal thing. Just can't do it. Then again, coming up with decent ideas hasn't been so easy either. Nothing inspiring, unless we're willing to go back to the modly ranting thing again... It's quite the dilemma. I take comfort in the fact that this is hardly an isolated thing, however: the same block's struck just about everything else. For starters, there's the whole MOCing thing. I am exceedingly selective in what I build. I simply cannot bring myself to build a plain old humanoid with a plain old weapon, simply because that form has been done to death a million times over. I don't like Castle... never a big fan of the whole medieval thing. I don't do Trains, mostly because I don't actually have any Train-y pieces. Town... nah. Never was too big on Space for some reason. It's always got to be somewhere in the area of left field for me, be it System or Bionicle. So I don't settle for any old concept that comes into my head. It has to be off-beat. It has to be different. It has to be strange. The very nature of these ideas results in them not coming around very often. After all, if they hit me every day, they'd start being less and less out-of-nowhere, right? Art... I never really drew all that much. Mostly sticking to the whole Lego thing. But now I draw absolutely nothing. Oh well. And I've even got ideas for a story- yes, something in the realm of writing-, you know, counter to the whole 'Hahli isn't incredibly pretty and feminine end of the world!' thing. But I've not even put a word to keyboard. Le sigh. It would be such a good thing to whack people with, too. Well... at least I got a blog entry out of all this.

Now I know what I'm doing with this thing! It's so obvious now! I'll post whatever I feel like at that moment! Hah! No pigenholing here! Not for puffins! Exclamation marks! Exclamation marks! ... yep, totally going crazy. An insanity which definitely isn't being helped by this little dilemma... Pure black dragon wings. The one colour I could ever ask them to be in, except maybe black/light blue. Oh, that'd be nice, too... Anyways. Big Batmobile with black dragon wings. Big, expensive Batmobile with black dragon wings. Something in the realm of $109.99 Canadian. Just for those wings? Oh, I don't think so. Maybe not even for the other 1000+ pieces. But they're right up there with the black Huna and the teal Kakama in terms of pure must-have awesome, and somehow, I came into one of the former after many years... Well, I suppose I'll just have to weasel in to somebody's Bricklink order. Yes... and then life will be swell.

Yes. As someone who has to go into all the resulting posts, yes. Quoting the content itself won't add to your point, folks. All it does is spread it around and add to the work needed to be done to remove it. The man speaks truth, here.

Face it, Polo. You're getting old. You'll have to wait another year before you can have your big mid-something crisis, though. Sorry.

Yes, the writing might be abysmal, the acting might be horrific, the directing might be Bollish... but look on the bright side: there's all those other crew-type people who got paid and/or work experience(so very very crucial in the film industry... it's amazing how much unpaid work you have to do before they start coughing up dough). ... shame it doesn't make the movies themselves any better. And consider this as well: there are people down in Hollywood South who are paid ridiculous amounts of money just to bang out these awful scripts written around a whole list of exact things the producers/studios want('Tom Cruise leaping from a burning building', 'car chase down I-5', etc.). Which certainly explains a great deal about a lot of movies out there, doesn't it? And then there's the people who are just plain awful on their own, of course. Always.

How, just how is it that my minions are the ones who fight with each other like this? I bet if you took any other FL and their FAs, you wouldn't find this. No, it's just gotta be my set in particular. What is it? Is it the group hugs? ... Can't be. All of you! Get in a group hug until everyone's nice and happy again!

Because I missed tons and tons of things last time. And I know I'm still going to be missing tons of points after I get this up. What can I say, though? There's just that many things out there that deserve a mention. 'You just revived this topic!' This is still in the category of 'things that belong solely in a report', but it gets special mention because... well... it needs it. I can understand if you're posting a normal reply/review in a revived topic; if all you see is the latest, reviving post, you can at least claim ignorance. It would have been best if you had checked the other posts before posting, but then again, you don't usually have to worry about that sort of thing, since so many other topics are current. You obviously can't claim the same when you're posting to say a topic's been revived. It's the exact same thing with telling people their post is spam: just report the post in question and leave it to us to deal with. It's our job. All you do when you post to declare a topic's been revived is add to the revival. 'What a newb/noob/etc.' I'm going to let you in on a little something here. In all my time in BBC and Artwork and GD and the forums in general, I've seen a lot of spam, flame and other nonsense. Tons. Now, the secret little thing here is... I've seen members of all manner of year-spinny do this. Spread out fairly evenly through the generations, too. That's right: spam is not the sole domain of the newcomer. You didn't hear it from me, though. And I realize this is more an Internet-wide thing than anything else, but that doesn't change the fact it's still annoying. You don't need to put each other down by calling other people 'newbs' or whatever spelling people use these days. Being new to a forum doesn't mean you were born yesterday. And, in particular... Faux 'newb-speak' really isn't that funny. There's other ways to make your point than coming up with a fake quote that looks like someone had a seizure over their keyboard. Another secret? I've seen (and deleted) tons and tons of spam that is grammatically fine. It's just, you know, completely devoid in the area of actually adding something worthwhile to the topic. Likewise, there's posts out there that are certainly not spam, but maybe aren't spelled or punctuated so well. Yes, people should always try to use their best English when writing things on the Internet, but you don't have to claim someone's post is illegible if they misspell a word or two. If you've tried, but you still can't puzzle it out, politely ask them to make themselves clearer. Don't attack them for it. I assure you, just because you don't know what they're saying doesn't mean they won't know what you're saying. And that's about it for now. I'm really ranting all too much. Oh well.

Yay... you guys aren't shunning me for my horrible revelation! *dance of acceptance* The whole British humour thing is no impediment... I far prefer it to the sort of dreg that clogs up the theatres these days, anyhow. You know, those movies that all look the same from the trailers (and prolly after full viewings), with all the same (bad) scatological jokes... But as some of those have employed Good Vancouver People, I suppose it's a necessary evil. And yes, I need to see the rest of their movies. I know. I'm hoping we'll actually take this as an opportunity to do so. I need my pop culture, for crying out loud! As for you GD Minions... see it. I really ought to make it mandatory for GD staffiness. I'm sure Janus'd agree... right?

Now that's a display. It's like you've got your own mini-convention just for you guys in there, what with the look of the room and the table arrangement and all that. Nothing wrong with that, now. It adds a certain degree of awesomeness to the whole thing. And then the MOCs themselves are mighty swell, even if a lot of them are... Town... and... Train... ... and now I feel guilty for not keeping in touch with my club for... a couple months now?... busyyyy...*scuttles off w/newfound guilt*

Actually, I've missed a fair few things that I could just go on and on about in this post, such as posting just to point out a topic's been revived, that it should be somewhere else, or chastizing another member for doing something against the rules... Well, that's what next time's for, I guess. And Than... true, very true. Still, don't give 'em an excuse. I write all that up for nothing?

Don't think I have any hesitations about editing your sig. And eleven days isn't quite enough time to make such a decision, hn? And yes, that little bit... Well, it's true: they're just pieces of plastic/markings on paper/bits and bytes. Not exactly something with which such a relationship can be formed, yanno.

Well, slightly moreso, anyways. I have a terrible, awful, humiliating revelation I have to share with you all: for the first seventeen years of my life, I had gone without watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I do not jest. This is something I've had to keep under my hat all these years, all these references around me, every day, everywhere... it's been difficult. I've not gone without a sense of guilt, either. I pride myself on knowing these crucial bits of pop culture, especially those older than I am. And- let's face it- just about everything in this movie is a pop culture reference. Oh, but how would I know that for sure? Allow me to continue. Saturday, June 3. 2006: I finally finally finally see that infernal movie! Oh yes. And well worth the wait, might I say. It's odd... even though just about every joke in the film's been 'spoiled' for me countless times, there was still something awesome about seeing it all in film form. In fact, they even work better in the context of the movie. Things like the whole swallow joke and stuff like that seem much less random and feel much more like the running jokes that they actually are. In fact, I prolly appreciate the jokes even more with all this context. Yes, while a lack of context can create fine humor, sometimes you need to see the whole thing. And now mom's convinced she needs to get us to see Meaning of Life, too. Ah yes, my pop culture understanding is coming together very nicely. Hurrah! Hurrah!

Thus '... but would I? No.' It's easy to take the immature route, sure, but it's so much better to take that effort and use it to explicitly teach people instead. Pocky cake. You're baking me a Pocky cake, since you brought it up. There you go. You may now continue to live.

Hey, now... I was staff before him: he was ST neophyte (with Tomiam) after I was. In fact, I think they might've been the ones to take the title from me. For that, of course, I am grateful. I've actually been contemplating a/some new post(s) to the BBC Rules topic; haven't gotten those puffins in a row, though. I really should. Maybe get some links together, some more stuff like this... Yeah. Gotta keep the ol' Empire at its best, yanno?