JINZONINGEN73

I recall reading in either a BrickJournal magazine or an interview that a LEGO fan who helped design either Cafe Corner or Market Street (I believe the latter) was shocked and surprised at the limited number of pieces that LEGO Designers are allowed to use in order for LEGO to actually make money and not just die out. In fact, he commented that MOCers have more pieces available to them. So, just as Clonie should probably know something about MOC to comment on MOC quality and design, I think it would probably be fair to assume that you should wait until you know everything about the restrictions on LEGO/BIONICLE designers before you accuse their parts of being lazy. Lazy is when work is not put into something; you are assuming that because these pieces do not suit your taste that no work was put into them. That's simply not true. Here's what I actually said: Still, occasionally their initial, before-budget cut designs show up online, and they're anything but pretty. No, no, it's both. The majority of the mocs, by nature of the current pieces for sale in sets, blow megablocks quite badly. The BBC used to have alot of interesting System hybrids, and the available Bionicle parts by THEIR nature let those parts be MANY different things. It's not like that anymore. Also, experienced mocers stumble over them as well. It's the parts. Those giant, giant parts. And the multitude of silver ones. X / Ok, ok, we get it. Kopaka was liked by everyone because he had a sword instead of a tool, ok. We can stop with all the silver sword type junk now, Lego. Geez.

It plays in the US here on the SciFi Channel, although edited for time and a year behind. Likewise, it plays on cable channel BBC America, a few episodes (unedited, up-to-date) in a block at once, alongside Torchwood and most other finest of the fine British shows. *sweet* The old Doctors got an "ok" amount of airtime, playing on small PBS channels in the 80's. These new episodes though, the popularity is increasing.

Well, yes and no. You're right that it's a beautiful (and educational) thing when someone is clever and manages to turn a more or less annoying part into something cool. But the problem is there's too many of these parts in any one set. It's like... hmm... it's like, okay, say you have a soldier. There's tons of tiny, powerful weapons you can equip him with, and they all interlock for efficient (and cool looking) configurations. OR, you have a soldier with a big freaking cannon, and nothing more. The soldier with the cannon is going to only have one use pretty much, whereas the soldier with a ton of weapons is more all-purpose, probably even able to reconfigure the smaller weapons into a cannon as well. (Ok, that was a bit abstract, hope it was relevant lol). Well, if the foot is a giant foot with no connection points... then it's just a giant foot with no connection points. Yes, a Piraka foot does occasionally get moced interestingly, but with some more connection points it's be awesome. And I'm suprised Lego doesn't go there, y'know? If you see more possibilities for a part (connection points), wouldn't that mean one would buy more sets to fill up those connection points? That was definitely the case for me, but lately, the inspiration hasn't been there. The new sets are just...well, look at the BBC on BZ. That's what these new sets are. Granted, but often those non-mocable gimmick parts bleed over onto the usefulness of decent mocing parts. Take the Visorak spiders... they had one giant front carapace... but looking at it head-on, Lego made the part NON-SYMMETRICAL (ugh) to accomodate the zipper thing to make the spinner go. The other thing that bugs me is... they look bad. Often. Over time, if a kid's buying sets and looks over to see a big pile of useless junk, I imagine that would leave them wondering why they'd want to buy more sets. So more junk can mess up their current parts piles? The nice thing about 2001 was the "gimmick" parts (the masks) were ALSO most useful in mocing, not just sitting in a pile. It's fine. But not in this volume. It's great if your favorite color's silver. :-| It's a step in the right direction, for sure. Still not quite a decent amount to flesh out mocs so that one kid's doesn't look like the next kid's moc, but a positive step. It helps. But you're right to a point. Even though being a builder yourself means you understand the cleverness and complexity in a configuration, it's still going to be crap if it doesn't ALSO appeal aesthetically to people like you who don't moc. More power to ya'. Lego's done marketing research, and it shows that their age groups just wanna' play with whatever they're tossed. That's okay. But only for awhile. These new sets aren't conducive to creating the want to build mocs. Like it or not, the adult mocing community has been an important force in keeping Lego alive. If they keep pandering just to kids, giving them not much more of a creative drive than any other action figure sitting on toy shelves, it's going to hurt them down the road. True, it's easy to toss a few gimmicks and large parts in to get the fast buck, but that only works temporarily. Hopefully, they've got the brains to know when to shift gears back to Bionicle (or whatever new incarnation takes it's place) that one can actually build unique things with.

I used to think like that, only it got to a point where the only suprise was how stupid I felt for buying into hype and wasting $8.50 on the movie, and lord knows how much else on the concession stand. I think that depends on the particular theater. Oh, how many times the audio was messed up, the screen flickered, etc etc. Then there's the unsupervised brats running through the aisles yelling and crying, the morons that won't shut up, the girlies answering their damn cellphones, the sticky junk gluing my feet to the floor which smell of locker room, ancient popcorn and urine the likes of a nasty yeast infection. Yeah, smooth-running VLC player on my comp, thanks. You're right. It will be adequate. There's Transformers advertising for the car dealership on the radio, Transformers on my coworker's Pepsi bottles, ads running all over the internet... it's unavoidable that there'll be a decent turnout enough to produce a sequel or two. But so did X-Men, and those movies were pure megablocks. Then again, I knew the reference material from the 80's which spawned it. Same with Ghost Rider. Gyuuh. It's not hard to make movies that walk in, make a buncha' money, then walk out. It's even easier THESE days because standards of quality have dropped so low. You could make a Teletubbies movie, suit them all up in black, make the baby in the sun some CGI monstrosity that they have to fight, add in a crapload of explosions, pull a ton of strings to get advertisement anywhere and on everything... BAM. Summer 2008's summer blockbuster. :-| I disagree. The movie was made to make money. It's when people say you can't stick closer to the source material and still make money that I get whizzed. Of course I'm taking it too seriously, but there is some justified fun in that. I like pointing out Bay's just a guy who tosses explosions and crappy dialogue around, not some astounding visionary of film making. I mean literally, he tossed out everything old, and made a movie from scratch. Hardly anything was retained. And that's REALLY easy to do.

What the? Another Lego Jar Jar Binks contest? Here it's kill Jar Jar. On In_the_Bricks, it's Finish Olaf's body... whose integral piece I used was Jar Jar's head: So I guess Jar Jar is a REALLY popular character, huh? Oh Lucas, you little balding butterball of genius! You know JUST what kind of characters people love! X D

Woah, woah, easy. Truth be told, we've already experimented with such things in the real world. Plasma guns For The Win. But the main problem with plasma guns in the real world is, just like with why we don't have giant mecha, is because it would take a MASSIVE power source, like a mini nuclear generator. Also, at some point the "projectile" would leave the shape-confining science inside and directly outside the weapon, probably quickly turning into a larger blob instead of a nice beam. ::goes searching for links::

Not always true, though the MPAA would love you to believe it. If you only knew how many movies, sometimes MONTHS before release, show up online in DVD quality. Sometimes there's even missing scenes! Yeah, but see, after three decades of watching movies, I kind of know what to expect from a good film (the unexpected), and a bad film (cliche' EVERYWHERE, cheap attempts at humor, etc)... and the script had it all. Worse yet, after watching the HBO special and every clip known to man, the script from February 2006 WAS the real script, right down to the cliche' of a "the black guy" who has to act all stupid and hyper. (Cuba Gooding Jr. syndrome... might as well be a frog-voiced limo driver from a 1930's film getting scared by ghosts. "Oh mah goodnais! Feets don't fail me nows!") ... Ugh. It looks like there's a ton of special effects, so it'll do good. But it doesn't mean it IS good. And some of the special effects... I mean, why would a bus burst into fflames that badly after being rammed through the middle? And why do "explosion experts" on movies still insist on using those fireworks-type explosions that shoots a comet of sparks? It's so annoying. Meh, I just think too much. The movie will be adequate baby food for the uncreative masses.

Master. He looked into it and went mad... though I'm thinking the creatures may've spoken to him through it, setting things in motion long ago. I thought so too, though he seemed genuinely disturbed at the news that their planet was gone. All I know is it better not be the freaking Daleks again. Christ. Actually, I could've sworn I heard months ago that it was Martha he'd be spending episodes in series 4 trying to save.

I have to agree somewhat, even where the Toa Mata torsos were used in my own mocs. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=402510 Wow, a little trouble "hiding" the torso there? Yeccch. A few tweaks on the configuration, and the part could've been sweet. At the same time, I REALLY hate all these newer torsos. Because they're so wide, nearly every moc I look at on BZPower's Bionicle Based Creations section is SUPER-CRAP. But it's not the torsos that are exclusively the problem. It's wide-assed feet with toes jutting out really far, ending in no connection points. It's ridiculously useless play action parts, such as spinners, rubber slugs and other junk. It's over-sized silver weaponry, with not nearly enough colors of those same parts available in Lego sets for a kid to even START making a moc that's color-coordinated. It's the sets having like, NO classic Technic parts aside from axles and pegs. It's the sets having not enough normal System parts, to at least let people SEE first-hand that System + Technic = freaking awesome robot mocs. (Talk about a missed opportunity for cross-marketing! Sorry, those System playsets are NOT enough to get the point across, no thanks to their disgustingly minimalistic design / production budget). So, the problem goes way past torsos. It's that there's not enough "small" parts for figures to actually be "constructed". They all might as well be... well, what they are... just figures with pop-off limbs. Anyway, here's what I always wanted... --Mata torsos made up of at least 4 parts, not one. --Swiveling waist. --Not 1-piece arms and legs, but at least 3, (knee, lower leg, upper leg). --Parts available in MANY colors, not 1 or 3. --Hands. Some real freaking hands. Though the Bionicle minifig / Exo-Force arms now do the trick. There is only ONE reason that the Toa Mata couldn't work in a modern Bionicle line. ...The "Master Designer" dudes at Lego SUCK BADLY, as do the executives who keep them on a shoestring budget. Bionicle sets and parts are god damn LAZY in design. The way to buffer this is to buy System sets and alter those wretchedly inferior parts into something useful. Now, for the positive aspect of Bionicle sets. "Hey. Ball joints".

That's what bothers me. With such a vast amount of robot source material, there's not too much of an excuse for having time wasted on human scenes that leave you going, "...why?" I'm guessing, and it shouldn't be this way, that all the human junk was added not to appeal to a broader audience, but instead to reduce CGI costs. Oh, there's a good few initial bashers who've changed their minds, but you have to admit, the media blitz of cross-marketing has been MASSIVE. But like American Godzilla, it didn't mean the movie was what it should've been. It's not close-mindedness that has me goofing on the film, it's the script I read combined with images, trailers and reviews so far. As for standing in line... I'm downloading it first. X-D

::can't see images:: I go out to this page, click on the topic RH: RH: New Lego Castle set 7036 - Trolle, dwarves uvm, but then get redirected to the main forum, that topic not there. Is USA blocked from certain topics or was it deleted?

The Rani, perhaps? Romana? (good, but still an icon) Wouldn't suprise me at either of those two, what with all the romantic tension / love story stuff of the new ones.

:-| Flames weren't that big a deal to most fans. It's all the... other... stuff. Diary #4 is out. :-D

http://www.maskofdestiny.com/article2.asp?i=106994 THE GOGGLES... they come off! Mahri Respect +1

They better not be Daleks. Enough of them, after their last (crappy, silly) appearance.

ALL I have to say is

Diary #1 Diary #2 Diary #3 I dunno... they made me laugh. *sweet*

And his ability to regenerate a 13th time. I hope The Doctor doesn't just pop up in the last 60 seconds of the show to foil his plans, do some small, clever thing, then have the credits roll.

I know. It was when Templar's fine, emotional work vanished and was replaced by comics that I lost interest. Agreed. Though, I do remember him saying at some point that he had an amazing amount of room to "create". Then again, that was a good few years ago. :-|

I was thinking they'd have to beat their way through the hungry, fangy hordes to get to The Master's TARDIS... though I doubt he has one any more. Having been turned to protoplasmic goo by the Daleks, having gotten sucked into the Eye of Harmony, ... it's probably not around. : p

Ugh. No offense, but I need to return to a simpler, much more cooler time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPhJmt3qI2M&NR=1

Because at the end of the first series, Rose sucked in the time vortex from the TARDIS, then set the cosmic value of Jack to "alive" (much as one does when hacking codes into a videogame) ...only, she was new to the power and didn't give his "life" any parameters. And before she COULD fix it, she was already back to human. My memory might be bad, but wasn't something important in regards to the sounds of drums in the old series? Or maybe it was a bell bonging (Peter Davidson era)... or was it during the movie where he got sucked into the eye of harmony ohiforgetlol.

Crappy, one-piece dinosaurs of rubber.

The beginning of that episode... didn't quite jive with the end of Torchwood, did it? And where'd our old friend get more lives? I thought his whole schtick was that he'd used all 13. (Better yet, how'd he get out of the eye of harmony inside the TARDIS?)

This guy's worse than all the above mentioned. Soldiers are dying in Iraqq from inadequate armor, and these fat tools blow money on training some disgusting old fossil to rap and make an megablocks out of themselves. http://youtube.com/watch?v=8HEjMhqC5sE (shorter version)