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SPIRIT

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Blog Entries posted by SPIRIT

  1. SPIRIT

    Potter Is Not Bran

    By SPIRIT,

    On a Harry Potter fansite, there is a caption contest held every so often using various Harry Potter related pictures. A few months ago, I gave an entry for one of the rounds and it was rather well received and was once voted the number one caption on the site (it has since been knocked down to 7, but it has yet to fall off the list).
     
    Recently, I did a Google search and found that I accidentally spawned somewhat of a fad, which was pleasantly surprising. Now, since I'm not as well-known in the Harry Potter fandom as I am in the BIONICLE one, I thought I'd take this opportunity to state that I did, in fact, write this caption that has taken the Internet by storm.
     
    For those interested, here are the picture and caption:
     

     
    Cedric: So. How is it that you - a skinny boy with no extraordinary acting talent - managed to defeat the greatest actor of all time? How did you escape with nothing but eight movies, while Robert Pattinson's powers were destroyed?
    Harry: Why do you care how I escaped? Pattinson was after your time...
    Cedric: Pattinson is my past, present and future, Harry Potter...
    *Cedric pulls Harry's wand from his pocket and begins to trace it through the air, writing two shimmering words*
    ROBERT PATTINSON
    *Then, Cedric waves the wand once, and the letters of his name rearrange themselves*
    POTTER IS NOT BRAN
    Harry: Um... so?
    Cedric: You know, that made a lot more sense in my head...
     
    Granted, there's no real proof that the person you know as SPIRIT and the author of that were the same person, but I offer this as evidence, from which I took inspiration for the caption and which was written several weeks earlier.
     
    In summation, I am funny no matter which fandom I'm in. B)
  2. SPIRIT

    Thief!

    By SPIRIT,

    So this morning my dad got ready for work as usual and went into the garage only to come back inside a few minutes later to report that it had been broken into last night. Some loose change was missing along with random things like a pair of gloves he kept in his car.
     
    Now here's the annoying part: I probably could've stopped this.
     
    My room is right by the garage and as I was up late on the computer, I thought I heard a noise like the side door to the garage opening, but I just dismissed it as the wind. I debated checking it out, but I just assumed that my mind was playing tricks on me. I also probably could've taken the guy since I'm a six foot tall, seventy kilogram, nineteen year old male and there are a variety of weapons I had access to that I could have defended myself with that I had easy access to (a wooden baseball bat and an aluminum cane to name a few).
     
    Right now I'm all jittery with adrenaline thinking "what if I'd gone to check".
     
    And like, nothing important was stolen, we literally keep nothing of value in the garage apart from our cars, but it's just the principle of it all. I live in a supposedly low-crime suburban neighbourhood; people and possessions are supposed to be safe at night. Whoever the thief was, he clearly needed the money more than we did, but all the same, stealing isn't something I condone.
     
    All I can say is, whoever did this better watch themselves. Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.
  3. SPIRIT

    What Is This I Don't Even

    By SPIRIT,

    So I was procrastinating today.
     
    "Whoa, SPIRIT was procrastinating? Stop the presses!"
     

     
    So I decided to see what this whole Twitter craze was about and went to check out the site. On the main page, they've got like this search bar, so I thought to myself, hey, why don't I see if people are tweeting about BIONICLE?
     
    So I search for some random BIONICLE words and while I'm sifting through the results when I come upon a series of... just weird tweets. I don't know if this is a prank or some promotion by LEGO... but it's just... weird...
    [twitter=10]_Tahu[/twitter]
    So yeah, here is the guy's profile. There's also a bunch of other accounts he's following that seem to be doing the same sort of thing.
     
    Has anyone else seen this? I don't even know what to say about it...
  4. SPIRIT

    Stocks With Spirit

    By SPIRIT,

    And now for a brief review of recent stock trends with our financial expert SPIRIT.
     
    Shares in ORLY dropped 0.27 points, AFK dropped 0.34 points, BRB dropped 0.05 points, GTG remained neutral, IMHO dropped 0.670 points, and BFF remained neutral.
     
    Truly this is not a good day for stocks humorously bearing the names of common Internet abbreviations.
  5. SPIRIT
    Hey, folks. It's the time of year where kids from 1 to 92 are writing their letters to ol' Santa Claus and before you finish, allow someone who has experienced many Christmases to give you a piece of advice that he has learned from the ages.
     
    You might be asking yourself, "what platform should I get this game on? Nintendo DS or one of the consoles?" The answer to this is quite simple:
     
    DO NOT GET A MULTI-PLATFORM GAME FOR THE NINTENDO DS.
     
    99/100 times, it will result in disappointment. For some reason or other, despite the DS being a highly versatile and powerful system, developers put an incredibly much smaller amount of effort into making games for it that also have platform versions. Granted, there are exceptions to this, where the DS version is greater than or equal to the console game (BIONICLE Heroes, for instance), but unless your family has an orchard of money trees, it's not worth the risk.
     
    Instead, go for the DS-exclusive games. 100% of the developers' time and effort has gone into making it and it's pretty much guaranteed that they're better than the multi-platform ones.
     
    And that's my bit of Christmas advice for you.
  6. SPIRIT

    Paradox-free Time Travel

    By SPIRIT,

    "Paradox-free time travel? Now I know you're crazy, SPIRIT."
     
    This has been bugging me lately, so I felt I needed to get it off my mind. So listen well, sirs and madams, while I explain the mechanics and feasibility of time travel that doesn't have to interfere with physics or logic as does much of the time travel we see in popular media.
     
    Parallel Universes
     
    First thing's first. For paradox-free time travel to be possible, we need to assume that there are parallel universes or timelines. Many prominent physicists agree upon this, that our universe is simply one of many floating in the 11th dimension. Where do these universes come from? They split off every time a sapient being makes a decision, thus making all possible choices for them real.
     
    Now, we also have to assume that humans have free will. You can argue the philosophy of this until the cows come home, but if humans don't have free will, they can't make choices, and then we can't have our parallel universes, and now we have some angry physicists.
     
    But wait, couldn't random events trigger these timeline splits? Like what if the sun randomly blew up one day?
     
    Nope. And to explain why, here's a quote from Stargate:
     
    "According to Newtonian physics [...] if you could know the position and velocity of every particle in the universe at any given moment, you could accurately predict all of their interactions for the rest of time."
     
    Now, assuming we have free will, that means that apart from the choices we make, all things that happen in the universe are inevitable and governed by fate: a domino effect throughout the universe that began since the dawn of time. Therefore, unless something with the ability to make conscious decisions intervenes, everything will happen in a predetermined way that will not alter from timeline to timeline.
     
    In conclusion: human decisions make parallel universes.
     
    The Nature of Time
     
    "Time isn't made out of lines! It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round!"
     
    This is absolutely wrong. Time is made out of neither lines nor circles, it is more like the branches of a tree. We'll call the trunk of the tree the original timeline, the one that existed when everything began. Then come along us clever humans who can make conscious decisions. Each decision we make, the tree branches off, each branch representing the various different choices we could have made. This is obviously quite a large tree.
     
    Now, don't get me wrong, universes aren't shaped like trees (physicists can't agree on the shape, but it really relevant at the moment), rather, the conceptual functioning of the splitting of timelines looks like a tree.
     
     
    The Time Machine
     
    Right, we've got our parallel universes and we've got our time tree, now for the fun part: our time machine. Before we begin, we have to imagine that cost and technology are not an issue as this deals with things that may take eons for humanity to develop.
     
    The machine itself doesn't need to be anything fancy. Just something big enough for you and anyone you intend to bring with you to fit in. Here's what it needs to do, though:
     
    1) Escape the fourth dimension
     
    According to Einstein (who seemed to know what he was talking about), we live in four dimensions of space-time (length, height, depth, and time). As we are all moving forward through the fourth dimension at more or less the same speed (except for those of us who can move at the speed of light), if we want to move backwards through time, we will need to escape its clutches. Now, since dimensions 5-10 are somehow wrapped up in superstrings, we'll need to journey to the 11th dimension, or the plane that contains all the various universes on membranes (just go with me on this, it's what physicists are saying).
     
    Going forward through time is much easier (just freeze yourself and wait), but if ever you want to get back to where you started, you're still going to need to go back.
     
    2) Make you feel at home
     
    As you depart the fourth dimension, you'll find that you sorely miss the laws of physics as the atoms that form your body begin folding in on themselves. So, the interior cabin of your time machine will need to retain or simulate a pocket of four dimensional space-time so that you don't crumble into dust.
     
    3) Be able to navigate the "time tree"
     
    Since your eyes probably aren't adjusted to working in the 11th dimension, you'll need your time machine to have the capability to detect your point of origin on the time tree and then calculate where it is you would like to re-enter the fourth dimension. Once again, problematic in that the concept of "where" would be quite different in the 11th dimension, but let's just say it's doable.
     
     
    Changing the Past
     
    The main issues that people have with time travel is that if you mess with the past you could alter the future so that you would never have travelled back in time in the first place, thus never having changed the past...
     
    This is a paradox. Logically, an action cannot cause or prevent itself from occurring.
     
    Therefore, as your time machine enters the past, you will instantly create a new time branch, given that you did not exist in the original series of events. Now, you can do whatever you like, even kill your past self with no adverse effects because the future that your actions create is a different one than the one you came from.
     
    Similarly, if I were to go into the future and bring back a Playstation 4, I would create a different timeline and thus a new future than the one the device originated from.
     
     
    Benefiting from Changing the Past
     
    Unless you wanted to watch the Egyptians build the pyramids or see what colour dinosaurs were, chances are you travelled back in time to change something in order to improve the life you presently live.
     
    Let's say you're a broken-hearted inventor with a time machine. Five years ago, your wife got in a car accident and now you're all alone. The accident was preventable, though, and you could have saved her. So you go back in time and save your wife's life. She happily returns home to your past self and it looks like all is well.
     
    Feeling rather pleased with yourself, you return to your own time only to find that nothing has changed. "That's right," you say. "I need to go to a future that stemmed from the change I made." So you hop back in your machine and jump one universe over, to the exact same time, where you find your alternate universe self still happily married.
     
    Now you're left with a difficult decision:
     
    A) Let them live together happily and get on with your life.
    B) Convince your alternate universe self to trade lives with you (this shouldn't be too hard, heck, in your life, you own a working time machine!).
    C) Kill your alternate universe self, dispose of the body, and then pretend to be him.
     
    Sticky, yes, but paradox-free.
     
     
    Well, I hope you budding geniuses out there will be able to use this lesson to work out the kinks in your time machines. If this does help you, you can repay me by getting me a pet Compsognathus.
  7. SPIRIT

    Two Places At Once!

    By SPIRIT,

    That's right, folks, I've been hit with the classic sitcom conundrum of wanting to be two places at the same time. If anyone had a Time Turner or fast car they'd be willing to lend me, that'd be great.
  8. SPIRIT

    This Isn't The End!

    By SPIRIT,

    Well, it might be the end of BIONICLE, but it's not the end of me.
     
    For those who have been wondering whether I'm coming out with a new Flash video or writing anything else after my comedy, the answer is yes, but they won't to be about BIONICLE.
     
    I plan to still create stuff, but I think it's high time I started making something a little more original than the BIONICLE-based projects I've saddled myself with these past six years. I'll try to keep you guys updated on what I'm up to, but at this point all I can say is that there is stuff on the way, but it isn't BIONICLE-related.
     
    Now return to your chaotic panic about the end of the world.
  10. SPIRIT

    Sets Forum

    By SPIRIT,

    Well, my first set of acts as Forum Leader of Sets was to pretty much burn the place down and rebuild from the ashes. Check out the new rules and new Official Topics and familiarize yourself with them.
     
    Or else.
  12. SPIRIT
    Words that mean nothing to SPIRIT, for he does not dream... and his power makes all things possible!
     
    Yes, Black Six has rearranged who works in which forum and so I have been moved out of Short Stories, the Voting Booth, and Comics and I have been moved into Software and Movies & Books. Not only that, but I have been made head Forum Leader of Sets and Software, which means that in those forums, I am unstoppable!
     
    For those who are having trouble keeping track, here are the forums SPIRIT works in right now:

    Sets Storyline & Theories Software Movies & Books BIONICLE Sector 01 The tanks march soon and all shall tremble in my wake. Pack an umbrella.
  13. SPIRIT

    Calling All Texans

    By SPIRIT,

    Hello LEGO fans of Texas. As you may or may not know, LEGO has released a promotional website for LEGO Universe called www.bradfordrant.org.
     
    On this site, the goal is to find LEGO pods that have been scattered around the globe and can be found with GPS coordinates. I have calculated the point of intersection between the current batch of coordinates and have determined that there is a pod at (32.845, -98.17), just west of Fort Worth, Texas. If I understand the game correctly, you can find your prize there. So if you or someone you know lives in the area, I suggest you type those into a map website and check it out.
     
    If it happens that I've sent you on a wild goose chase, I offer in advance my sincerest apologies.
  14. SPIRIT

    Macadamia Nuts

    By SPIRIT,

    Hello, world.
     
    My sources have recently informed me of a rash of atrocities performed by a man masquerading as "Black Six" (pictured here). Mr. Six has been quoted many times saying hateful things about the fruit of the Macadamia tetraphylla plant, more commonly referred to as the macadamia nut. The following is a quote which may or may not have been said by him and which may or may not have been about macadamia nuts.
     
    "I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I HATE THEM!"
     
    If you or someone you know is a macadamia nut, please make sure that your doors, windows, and cookie bags are locked tight and that your children are kept safe.
     
    Now over to Jack Sampson with the weather. Jack?
  15. SPIRIT

    Masterful Plan

    By SPIRIT,

    So I'm doing a random online survey, and I get this question:
     
    A Hectic Morning:
     
    Your dog wakes you up at 8:00am because your alarm clock has failed to wake you up. Taking a look at your dog, you realize he desperately needs to be groomed, and let outside to do his business. You have a 2-hour exam at 8:30am and the last bus that will get you there on time leaves at 8:15am.You realize you should probably shower, and you feel a little sick and hungry due to lack of sleep from cramming for your exam.
     
    The phone begins to ring, and it's your landlord probably calling about the broken air conditioner. You receive a text from your best friend, and you catch another glimpse of the time: it is 8:03am. As you realize your limited amount of time, you think about the breakfast foods you have: cereal, chocolate bar, banana, and a frozen pizza pocket, because you can't write an exam on an empty stomach. Your mind races to the unpaid phone and Internet bills due by tomorrow and you can't risk anymore bad credit with all those student loans needing to be paid off. It's also your turn to clean the kitchen this week or your roommates will be very upset. You still need a pencil, eraser, and student ID for the exam, but that will take 2 minutes of searching though your very messy room. You scan your room and your eyes briefly rest on the job ads taped to your mirror, you need to find a job soon. It would probably be advisable to change out of those food-stained and very dirty clothes before being seen in public.
     
    It is 8:05am now, what do you do during this day? Make sure to get everything done, and be realistic about timing. It takes exactly one minute to get to the bus stop.
     
    So I thought for a bit, and came up with this response:
     
    Get on your skateboard and hang the frozen pizza pocket in front of the dog so that it will chase after it and pull you along. As you get the pizza pocket, snag a few ice cubes from the freezer and toss them around the kitchen -- by the time they melt and evaporate, everything will be washed away. As you shove the banana into your mouth, pick up the phone and answer the landlord with "mhmm" until he hangs up. Have your dog sniff out your school supplies and then set him lose into the street. As he pulls you along on your skateboard, lead him towards a puddle, whose splash will wash both you and your clothes. As you get on the bus, sell your dog to one of the passengers to pay for the bills and get your salesmen skills noticed by a pet store owner who's also on the bus. Keeping your banana peel with you, get to the exam hall a few minutes ahead of schedule. Slyly drop the banana peel so that your professor slips on it and drops a copy of the exam. Snap some pics with your camera phone and send them to your friend who's already taken the course. Use the stolen answers to ace the exam and you're done by 9:00. Enjoy the rest of your day.
     
    Thoughts?
  16. SPIRIT

    Silly Dvds

    By SPIRIT,

    Just for kicks the other day, I decided to check out the Spanish and French audio on my TLR DVD just to hear how the characters sounded and to see how well I could follow (since I also speak French and Spanish). To give myself a hand, I turned on the subtitles only to find that some genius had decided to translate the subtitles and the actual audio separately! So while the same message comes across, the wording between the subtitles and the non-English dialogue is different!
     
    Now, before we start bashing LEGO and the people they work with, this is not the first time I've seen this on a DVD. In several DVDs I've rented/purchased/seen in school, if you put on non-English subtitles and audio, they don't always match up.
     
    I really have to wonder the logic behind this. They pay a guy to translate the script into French and Spanish so that they can hire new voice actors to dub the movie. Then they pay another guy to translate what the subtitles say rather than transcribe what the first guy actually wrote. Call me crazy, but this sounds like a ridiculous waste of time and money. I mean, how hard is it to put stuff into a movie THAT YOU'VE ALREADY WRITTEN?! Like is there some point down the line where they realize "oh wait, we totally already got a guy to translate the script." "Well, should we just fire the guy translating the subtitles?" "Nah, he's almost done anyway."
     
    I encourage any of you who own DVDs with this option to go check them out and see if things don't line up just right. It may sadden you to discover how prevalent this actually is...
  17. SPIRIT

    Wireless Success

    By SPIRIT,

    Well, it took some fiddling about, but I've finally managed to get my Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector working again, which means that now I can start playing Nintendo DS games against people over the Internet once more. If you have any of the games listed in the content block marked Gaming Info, drop me a PM and hopefully we'll be able to face each other. I'm particularly keen on getting a game of Civilization Revolution going to see if beating the computer on Deity level is actually something to be proud of.
  18. SPIRIT

    Cool Stuff

    By SPIRIT,

    In case you haven't seen already, here's some cool stuff I've recently released on BZP.
     
    1) Comedy Trailer: a trailer I made for my comedy just for fun. There are some TLR clips, so that's pretty cool.
     
    2) The Awesomest TLR Spoof: yep, it's another one of my famous movie spoofs, come check it out!
     
    3) One of Us Music Video: a music video I made, using clips from TLR, based on the song One of Us by Joan Osborne.
     
    4) One Last Hope Music Video: another music video made with TLR clips, this time to the song One Last Hope from Disney's Hercules.
  19. SPIRIT
    They stole it from us... sneaky little Hobbitses! Wicked, tricksy, false!
     
    As you may or may not remember, I posted a joke in my blog for the heck of it, right after checking on Google that it hadn't already been made and that there were no variations on it.
     
    So I'm in the hospital with my broken leg, when my parents bring me the July 2009 issue of the Canadian Reader's Digest. What do I find on page 25, but a joke submitted by one Phillip Tilley:
     
    How come Sherlock Holmes never paid any income tax? Brilliant deductions.
     
    So either Phillip and I have a psychic connection or there is a thief in our midst!
  20. SPIRIT

    Car Crash

    By SPIRIT,

    In the words of Hagrid, "A CAR CRASH!? A car crash kill Lily an' James Potter?! It's an outrage! It's a scandal!"
     
    As is such, I had a car crash and did not die. But I broke all three bones in my right leg. I tell you this now from my laptop on the hospital Wifi. Don't expect a lot of activity from me in the near future.
     
    I've already had surgery and they've taken my off the morphine. I'm doing well, considering.
     
    UPDATE ON July 15th: they've taken out all my staples and I'm home now.
  21. SPIRIT
    Have you seen my entry for Epics Contest #8 yet? It chronicles a surprising twist on the events in Chapter 33 of Wildfire (i.e. the Jaller vs. Vakama chapter) and above all, it contains a huge explosion!
     
    Gape in awe as minor characters are given DEPTH.
     
    Be amazed at the introduction of a NEW WEAPON.
     
    And like I said before, there's a HUGE EXPLOSION.
     
    Read it TODAY.
     
    This blog entry was sponsored by the Boost SPIRIT's Ego Corporation™
  23. SPIRIT

    7000th Birthday

    By SPIRIT,

    I just did the math and I missed it by a few days! :annoyed2:
     
    Oh, not the 7000th year since my birth, but rather the 7000th day. If my calculations are correct, I experienced my 7000th sunrise on June 6th, 2009 (it looked just like all the other ones, mind you). From now on I guess I'll have to go back to expressing my age in days like a newborn child. Today, for instance, I turned 7005 days old.
  24. SPIRIT

    Xi

    By SPIRIT,

    Has anyone else beaten Xi on Playstation Home yet (or even heard about it, for that matter )? I did this morning and managed to secure myself three shiny trophies.
     
    But I will admit it, I had copious amounts of help from online walkthroughs.
  25. SPIRIT

    Nuhvok-kal Cd

    By SPIRIT,

    Hi, friends. Do you or someone you know have the mini CD that came with Nuhvok-Kal? Would you like to help your favourite Reference Keeper with the BIONICLE Reference Center's Pronunciation Guide?
     
    If you said "yes" to both of these then SPIRIT needs your help and would really appreciate you PMing him for more information.
     
    If you said "yes" to the first one and "no" to the second then you are a cruel and heartless human being.
     
    EDIT: I don't know what's on the Rahkshi CDs, but if they have the narrator guy say "Pakari" and "Onua" or even "Onu-Koro" they'll do just as well.
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