Letagi

Sumiki - Thou art too kind. Thou flattereth me with thy kind words.

Also, my name has been missing from your sidebar for about five months.

 

-CF

My goodness, you're right. I'm terribly sorry - I've put you in in the correct chronological order, right after GSR who was the last person I met at the BrickCon before Cascade.

-L

That video was interesting.

I believe the word you're looking for is "perfect".

-L

Can I confess my platonic love for you now, Pat?

But really, the whole West Coast vs. East Coast rivalry is something that I was a part of as well, and I'm sorry for that. I think it's great that there are now West Coasters who regularly attend East Coast conventions and vice versa.

Like you say, whenever a large group of people gets together, there will be disagreements and people who don't like each other. I'm glad we can acknowledge that reality, while still moving past the ridiculous feuds of previous years.

-L

I'm glad to have been present for such a confluence of mathematically aesthetic events. Happy birthday Andrew!

-L

Words cannot express how amazing this is.

AND IS THAT THE PABLO MOSAIC IN THE BACKGROUND OMG THAT IS PERFECT

-L

DeeVee - That's fair. I'll probably go again next year, so I'll have something more to compare this year to.

Xaeraz - Accurate.

LK - I was glad to meet you too! And I'd love to keep in touch; I meant to talk with you more but it was such a hectic five days I didn't get the chance. You seemed like a really intelligent and insightful person to me; don't ever say you're not on the same caliber as someone else!

Six - Likewise! BrickCan 2016? I checked, it's at the River Rock Casino Resort, which I can tell you will be an amazing venue for a convention. If the River Rock hotel is the official event hotel, it'll basically be the fanciest LEGO con ever.

-L

Bottled Water.

(Reference to BrickFair shenanigans for those who weren't there.)

-L

Nice to finally be able to put a face to my tTH debate partner-of-sorts. Hope to see you again next year!

-L

You're likely thinking of Letagi.

Yup, that was me - another awkwardly tall Canadian. It was nice meeting you, however briefly.

We missed you, Mak! Although I'm a little befuddled as to how you came to the conclusion it was me.

-L

I do apologize for one thing... I said too much. Like, quite a few times. Especially when I didn't have my wits about me. And I'm sorry if it hurt anyone.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again - you were in a room with some of the most open-minded and accepting people you'll probably ever come across. Don't sweat it.

-L

I think I'll be present with Xaeraz if you need an extra worker. I usually insist on Canadian dollars, but breadsticks are good too.

-L

Not a fan of the colour - it's a little too glaring for my taste. But I'll be buying one nonetheless.

Hopefully hunting you down won't be too much of a challenge because we're rooming together.

-L

Very true. Eliminating atmospheric turbulence goes a long way to improving image clarity.

-L

I'd recommend warp drive over hyperspace, because that's actually mathematically possible. But if you can't travel at superluminal speeds, don't worry; I've calculated that, going at 99.999% the speed of light, the effect of time dilation will cause only 6.26 years to pass inside your spacecraft. For the plebeians stuck on Earth, of course, 1399.986 years will go by.

-L

Those are already in use, but they're ground-based. I'm not sure if NASA owns or operates any of them, but there are fields of radio telescopes that all work together. They do the same thing with larger optical telescopes; there's a project going on right now that aims to directly image Sagittarius A* (the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way) which involves several major telescopes around the world. There's also a project in the beginning stages called the Colossus Telescope, which is an array of 60 eight-metre telescopes that together yield a 74-metre effective resolution.

-L

Now, let's be fair. Pre-fab boat hulls can be amazing, particularly when you want a boat to be able to float. Having obtained one of the large boat hulls this year, it's amazing how well-designed they are (to the point including slots inside for weight bricks, despite that part being absent from non-educational sets for almost a decade, and not appearing in boat sets for even longer).

 

But not only is this a brick-built boat hull, it's a brick-built boat hull that looks fantastic. It's pretty much exactly what I wish the Fire Nation Ship could have been like.

They're great for playability and can look quite nice and realistic, but I rarely feel good about a LEGO purchase that includes large pre-fab pieces because it drives up the cost per piece. I don't like that literally half the mass of some fairly large sets can be contained in a few pieces (although I do understand that those pieces are much more expensive to design and produce; it's just a personal preference).

-L

 

 

 

Currently, the technology for analysis of atmospheric composition of exoplanets doesn't exist. It's not beyond our current capabilities - we just haven't built a big enough telescope yet.

Read: Seriously guys give NASA money

 

The Extremely Large Telescope (39.3-metre-diameter primary mirror) will be big enough to image exoplanets and analyze their atmospheres, but it's not a NASA venture. It will be built by the European Southern Observatory, to be finished in 2024.

And yes, they're actually calling it the Extremely Large Telescope. We physicists aren't known for coming up with imaginative names; we use up all our imagination doing science.

All that said though, NASA could definitely use more money. Their annual budget is only around 0.5% of the total US federal budget.

-L

Time to find a plucky, rag-tag band of blue collar nobodies to shoot into space as a noble sacrifice to appease our Malevolent but Fair Space Gods.

Can I volunteer?

-L

I was thinking the same thing about the brick-built hull. I've been consistently disappointed by boat sets because of the prefabricated hulls, which are virtually useless for anything else. But this is very nice.

Also, I just realized something - the set is $120 in Canada, but USD$100 is the equivalent of CAD$130 given the current exchange rate. Lego is actually cheaper in Canada sometimes? That doesn't hold true for some other sets I just checked, but it's a pleasant surprise.

-L

This is a great video. The diagram at 35 seconds is problematic because it shows the universe expanding into something, but that's my only complaint. And there isn't really a much better way of illustrating that particular concept anyways.

-L

Dimensioneer is secretly Neil Armstrong.

-L

Wow, these are fantastic. I'm really glad to see these, as a collector of rare Bionicle oddities myself. I noticed something interesting in Bionicle - Synopsis; pages 10 and 11 have the Bohrok-Kal symbols as backgrounds, but it's just the beginning of the 2002 story. Odd

And of course, congrats on ten years!

(And apparently Tahu has a "fire axe").

-L

I tell them I study astrophysics (which I do). They generally don't know how to respond.

If they do, it's usually either a question about the difference between astrophysics and astronomy, or a comment on some recent discovery, in which case I take the opportunity to correct all the misconceptions they've picked up from incompetent media. Occasionally, they ask about astrology, which they shortly regret doing.

Mastering small talk is all about making the other person ask questions that aren't directly about you, which can lead into a more interesting discussion - "What exactly is a black hole?" "What would happen if an asteroid hit Earth?" "Did you hear about the Pluto thing?" "I'm a Capricorn." Sigh...

But to be fair, life was in many ways easier for middle-class people who grew up a few decades ago (our parents' generation, not our grandparents'). University was cheaper and often easier, it wasn't as difficult to get a job, etc. So, when asking us youngsters about where we are in life and not being impressed with the answer, they forget that things are different for each generation.

Also, someone who's had a stable life for many years or decades often forgets that there were a few years after high school when they, too, didn't know what they were doing either.

-L

Coincidentally, I just finished watching The Phantom Menace 20 minutes ago. The speeder shows up in the scene right before the Queen and her guards storm the Naboo palace; it's what they use to blast the AAT. It's never referred to by name, though.

Anyways, looks like a decent set. I actually really like the Gungan figure, but I like Gungans in general so I'm biased. Come to think of it though, there are no Gungans in the scene that this speeder is in, so including him with the set is a bit odd.

(Also I think those droid torsos are backwards.)

-L

Honestly, 20 isn't much different from 19. It's just more fun to tell people how old you are.

-L