Akkhraziel

Are talking a lovely pattern weld ? I do love a good pattern weld. Perhaps we should talk, assuming niether of us gets arrested for this abysmal murder thing. Fortunatly, mind bullets are hard to trace... As an aside, Akkh has actually gotten to hold a viking piece from around 1000 A.D. that was owned by a private collector. A fabulous piece of work, still flexible to this day. In any event, back to the murder at hand, so to speak, is there an open air deck or railing at the rear of any of the cars ? If so, I'd like to search those carefully. Call it a small pyschic creatures hunch. Akkh

All right, where to begin. Commenting on 'insecurities' and the need for the admins to 'feel bigger' does very much come off as snarky and or sarcastic. Especially when you seem to feel the need to play the 'small guy held down by the system' as of late. It might not be your intent to come off as sarcastic, but when impugning the ego and or moods of moderators, it cetainly comes across that way. Fallacy: Calling them observations does not make them any the less your opinion. Attempting to couch it in scientific jargon just makes it seem as though you are impartial, or that your opinion is somehow more valid than the next persons. And its this last why I am addressing this at all: Because the strong impression is given that one of two events is transpiring. Either you have a real tendency towards passive agressive behavior as is borne out in your sarcastic comments made towards the mods which then you move to a stance of "I didn't mean it that way, I'm just misunderstood." Or, that you simply do not translate well to text. Text is a medium in which inflection is extremely hard to read, and meaning is not always conveyed as one would hope. If this latter is truly the case, then I would suggest choosing your words more carefully, and make ample use of the smilies made available to better give indication of meaning. If anything, take from this that Vader wasn't the only one who percieved that post as sarcastic, and that being the case, it may be less that we don't understand you than that you do not communicate very efficently in text. Akkh

In the end, I'm relatively content. Is my post count high ? Nope. I pick my words and my posts carefully. I'll plod along at my own speed. Is it important to me what someone elses post count is ? Nope, so as long as they tend to be helpful, courteous and add to the community, I don't typically care if a given poster is a lurker who has posted once, or a someone with 3300 posts under his belt. This is a relatively small forum, and the mods are friendly. Its why I de-lurked in the first place. I think that about everything I have to say on the subject at the moment. :-D Akkh

That set also features two men and one woman...precisely the same number of victims we currently have. Hrm.

Congrats, you have defeated the universe for another year. Hope there is much celebrating for you. Akkh

ed I have to say I loe that asian attack ship. Very very nice. I'd been conetmplating trying to expand one of those little vessels. Akkh

We also have the musical link. Its either a tie in to the latin theme that has been commented on before, or it is in fact a tie in with Evita...which ties it to Madonna...but also Argentina. Argentina, if memory serves me correctly, had a number of German immigrants. Is one of our suspect German ? Also, is the room, does it appear that a trajectory can be found for the gunshot ? Akkh

Just my two cents: It might be a very good idea to draw up a set of guidlines for the forum and have them posted. That way all visitors, new and old, will know wht the standing rules are. I'd be happy to assist in this or point the mods in the directions of some sites that have what few rules they have spelled out pretty plainly. I'm not meaning to imply that Eurobricks is in need of lots of rules or anything like that, but having an easy reference puts everyone on the same page of what is and is not allowed. Additionally, I'd like to encourage all members to make their posts a little bit longer, myself included. It is hard to have a conversation on any given topic when a majority of posts in a topic consist of "Yeah, me too" or "I don't agree." Its not that there is a lack of conversation topics, its just that a lot of people post very short messages that leave little further direction for conversation. For example: all the "How many of _____ sets do you have." could also just as easily turn into a conversation about that particular line or some of the sets contained within. Why do you like _____ but not blank. Do you not own a set becasue it never appealed to you? Do you think that set ____ is the greatest thing since sliced bread ? This also will likely cut down on the volume of posts in that in that the conversations will start to go longer and individual posts will look less like a private message reply to something that someone said. Hmmm, in any event, thats enough rambling for now. Akkh

You are right about the greens, though the Covenant forces use a lot of purple and other colors. I have one of the mini Banshee's from Joyride studios, and the color is really nice. And I'd love to see the spider asault mech from Halo 2 in lego. Though honestly, it is one of the few vehciles that would probably lend itself well to lego. A lot of the Covennant vehicles are very smooth in their appearance, which would require either a lot of SNOT bricks, or would probably come out looking a bit odd. So, in essence, a lo of the cooler vehicles wouldn't probably look al that great legoized...or would end up probably needing to be <insert that tiresome argument> with large custom parts to maintain appearances. But, since this is al in the realm of blue skyin...if the models could be well done...it would be nice. Vikings needs to hurry up and get here. Akkh

With the Maids comment of "It's our funeral too..." let's defiantly check her room. Akkh

The first game was a very enjoyable first person shooter which also benefitted from a very interesting storyline, an overall great design, insanely fun multiplayer, and comfortable and slick gameplay. On the X-Box (I cannot speak for the much delayed computer port) it plyed extremely well, especially for a launch title. The Halo universe was intriguing, the characterizations intereting, and at its core it was still a great fps that was a blast to play. It became a favorite of many gamers. Halo 2 would see mixed results. Mixed becasue the storyline felt a little rushed, and terribly short, though still expanding a universe that had only been explored in the first game and a couple of books. THe big draw for most, however, was that it was playable over X-Box live now as opposed to the first Halo, which was lan party only. Is Halo all that? only if you are a real fan of the fps genre. Is a it a great franchise ? Absolutely. It is a great fps set in a memorable universe with characterization typical of many rpg games. Akkh

This is not your brain.... ....but you are weleocme...in it.... Gravemind Akkh

And I still wonder where that sword went. I don't want it scuffed before its delivered....I mean, it would be a shame if it wasn't returned to his crew. I'm taking that recovering the victims rooms doesn't turn up much new ? Akkh

Something else that crossed my mind was that at least a couple of the 'innocent passengers' don't necessarily need a gun to shoot someone with a bullet. For critters with psychic powers or an innate mastery of the force, it would be a small matter of imbedding a spent bulet into a corpse. Though this side theory only really implicates the french green jedi and myself. Hrm. On that same note, mind control shouldn;t be ruled out...though it probably should. So, two dead pirates and a dead cleaning lady, and clues a-go-go. Is there a way to pick, or force the lock of the lockbox E-44 ? Akkh

To those asking about the subject matter and why...make sure to read the article linked before the first pic. It details why the artist chose the subject matter, that Lego really didn't know what they were 'sponsoring' and that a few Jewish communities find it to be an interesting look on a painful memory and raises questions about the world adults present to children. After all, we don't get Indigo Islander sets where minifigs are dying of smallpox in droves, nor is there a small set consisting of a minifig, a horse, and 'clean blankets' to give to indians. I'm also fairly certain that the Vikings theme isn't going to include some of the more mature elements of the dark ages. It does raise the question of what kids will think of when they look back on WWII 150 years from now, and how those stories will be portrayed. Edit: My mistake, the link was edited. Akkh

Hrm. What abut the cutlass ? It is suggested it could have strong historical value. At that, my bets move to: Sarg: He's a pirate hunter, and that would make a fine trophy to hang over the mantle. Bloody Jay: Loot. What Viking doesn't like loot. Our Ewok: Look at the shiny stick. Its like a stick, but its shiny. How could he resist ? However, its the notion of historical value that leads me to need to add co-conspirators Two members of the voard have gone on record as lovers of history: Darkie and myself. Did one of these suspects kill Mister Phes to win a lovely historical treasure to attempt to woo the lovely Darkie (I'm now looking at a lady killer Ewok). Did I, obviously a fan of ninja, ask someone to retrieve another sword for my mantle ? And why has no one heard these gunshots. I guess I'll have to tune in and see what happens next. Akkh

Well, in some regards that does make sense. It is fairly accepted as standard now that in all lot of writing now speaking in first person is no longer acceptable. Additionally,. it is common practice for people to try to cut 'padding' from sentences. That said though, if they were to tell me that a sentenece like "all good men should come to the aid of their country" was a sentence consisting of only 4 words because the majority of the words of the snetence contained three or less letters, I'd tell them to learn how to count. then again, I'd also attempt to diagram the sentence and demonstrate how they were wrong. But then again, I think that efficent communication requires things to be said in different ways. Somethings are best left terse and unadorned. Others, however, flow much more smoothly and become much more elopquent with the proper application of additional words. Akkh Edit: And amusingly enough, this post of mine is the answer to life the universe, and everything. Somehow, that seems fitting.

Better late than never. Heyas Ed, and welecome :-D Akkh

This was up a while back: Lego 'sponsored' him in that he was an artist using Lego, and as such they donated peices to help out the artist. What Lego was *not* aware of, however, was the intended subject matter for the art. As such, Lego was real thrilled with the tack on that they sponsored such work. These were debated back and forth for awhile. If I remember correctly, a semtic musueum (the anti-defemation league) in New York city purchased one of the sets for display. Some view it as major controversy. Some review it as a reminder. Anyway you cut it, it rasises good questions about time, events, and what is portrayed to children. Edit: I see one of the original articles is linked, so a lot of what I just typed was redundent. In any event, here are also other articles that can be googled, its one of the most interesting lego/history collisions in a long time. Akkh

But in the context of of a writing narrative, the letters 'a' and 'i' are words, 'I' being the first person singular noun in the english language. At the very least, the spelling of Evil-Bay makes it a compound noun. As someone already mentioned, english is a lot like german in the way that it often combines words over time till they are one word (like the aforementioned bookkeeper). In the end, I think its less a matter of it being one word or two, becasue it serves as a compound noun, and at that a slang variation of a proper noun. If one were daigramming a sentence with the word(s) "Evil-Bay" inside of it, you wouldn not seperate the aspects of the word, even though obstensibly in this case 'evil' is being used as an adjective to describe 'bay'. Another way to put it: ever notice that you'll find compound nouns and even compound adjectives as whole entries in the dictionary ? For example: commander-in-chief, fly-by-night. While the compounds might have once been more than one word, they have a definition that is set by their combinations. As such, I think that as a compound noun, it makes it one word. Ohhh, and on the notion of using it in offcial writing and the like, as it is slang, you wouldn't want to use it without prefacing it as slang in some form or fashion. i.e. "Ebay, also referred to as Evil-Bay by a sardonic collecting community..." Akkh

I think I have an answer for you: Using Microsoft word, I typed in the word "Evil-Bay" and then ran word count. Apparently, the word counter counts such an entry as one word. So, it seems hypenated words are counted like other compound words (like bookkeeper) as one word. And so, with that bit of reasoning, I'd say its one word. Akkh

Well, if you ever have to use it some sort of official correspondence, you write it as it is spelled (which, in their official press releases is eBay). Its a proper noun, as it indicates a specific web business that is very well known. Given that there mission purpose and press releases lack a hyphen and are listed simply as eBay, I'd say its one word, now. Akkh

It depends on where you were. I've heard that some of the sets from the second year (especially ones with the red ninja) were hard for our Euro friends to come by. And on the whole stand alone thing, I've always considered ninja to stand alone, but thats primarily because it can blend wel with either Castle or Pirate. The cannon's and firearms can make for interesting set ups, as can the inclusion of samurai and ninja into for fantastic Castle set ups. Akkh

One slight suggestion, green jedi pilot. Wounldn't the last line of your sig look better as "Hunting season, it is." ? Akkh

On Faithfulness to the book: From what I remember hearing a while ago, Douglas Adams requested that each iteration or take on the Hitchhikers franchise be slightly different from that which had gone before. Which is to say, he preferred that there be little variations in it each time it was done. Nifty, that. Akkh