xenologer

For anyone in the USA I saw the set at TRU (instore) today for 25$USD Did not buy it yet tho; I really should use up my current sets before buying more....

Yup both ends on both chains its very consistent looking on each of them Which is why I'm so curious, it Really doesnt look like a broken mould; there are no cracks or jagged egdes or plastic leaks at the edges.... i wish my camera wasnt dead... im sure pics of these would be useful... I have a chain that came in one of the newer vikings sets, and that ones definetly normal height when comparing....

Nice but I am really not seeing how that ship, could in any way be based on red planet protector.... *wacko* they look totally different On another note... one thing I always thought strange about aquatic spaceships is... Underwater the hull would be under pressure from the water but in space the pressure is the other direction, with the air inside wanting to escape seems to me that since these are opposite directions, it would be probably difficult to design a vehicle to survive both. Those mon calimari ships from SW always bugged me cause of this...

Get Mars Mission and City because both represent a return towards classical themes, and they need your support. Also get the AquaRaiders Shipwreck set, for the same reason. Pretty sure that they designed that set as a 'test' to see if oldstyle divers could survive vs the other new action-oriented AquarRaiders.

I say keep studs because without them, we'd have Z'Nap, and we all know how that turned out. eheheh, but thats not what you were asking... Well, I am finding that when I use large slopes in my spaceships, (like that 12*3*1 giant triple wedge), the smoothness of those bricks tend to force me to try and smooth out the rest of the ship. For consistency. Of course, I dont try to hide every last one, just try to make sure theres no shocking disparity in the surface texture. So, I don't really have a preference, its just about what works well for the particular project. One thing I absolutely do hate though, is when people hide studs just for it's own sake; make a totally smooth rounded spaceship, then fill in gaps with tons of 'greeblies'. It's just going to opposite extremes of studless then trying to balance it out with extreme greeblies; when just letting some studs show through in the first place would have provided adequate 'detail' and texture at much less cost...

WTF? I havent been following bionicle, but a submarine?? ...apparently things have been going strange places... At any rate. That is one awesome transRed windshield there. I might be needing some of those for Space MOCs later...

Ya know, when I first saw the submarine from this TigerShark set I was thinking that it looked kinda unrealistic (but cool). And I'm sure more than a few people thought the same. Well I was google searching submarines for some MOC ideas, and I found this. 8-

Thanks for the link. hmmh, I'm starting to think that I do not like these 'technic panel fairing' cars. Too many holes in them. Especially after seeing the new Roaring Roadsters Creator set; System built car bodies just look superiour. About the only thing these pure technic cars have going for them now, is suspensions... and really there isn't any reason why you couldn't do that with a System body and a few technic bits in the chassis.... Heres a fine example of what I mean: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=228440 He's taken the largely System f430 challenge body and installed technic features under the hood... -the very pretty hood

Nope, the box was sealed along with the baggies inside. The chains look good, like any other lego; just that the ends are taller than usual. They don't look like a broken mould either, smooth, clean edges... The fact that they almost the same dimension as a technic half beam makes me wonder if maybe there's a System vs Technic variation on chain pieces... but I've never heard of any such thing.

Not sure if this should go here (since its AquaRaiders) or in general discussion (cause its a parts question) Anyhow, I bought 2161 AquaDozer misb off ebay; and Well the way it goes is they use these: chains to connect the bulldozer blade to a lever in the tail for a action feature.... The wierd thing is... the ends of my chains (where the stud is) are Taller than 1 plate. So, while the instructions indicate that the chain ends get sandwiched between some plates to anchor them... mine don't fit. The stud ends almost look like... instead of being 1 plate tall they're around 1.5 or 1.25 plates tall. Like they are as tall as a technic half-beam is wide. So I'm wondering if mine are some kind of moulding error, or a similar part "substitution"(due to low stock in the normal one) or ...what?... peeron doesnt seem to show any variant chain pieces.... Seeing as how this set is 10 years old... think customer service will send me 2 replacement chains? (seems a long shot to me, since its Old, theyre in discontinued olddkgray color, and chains are expensive, and its not 1 but 2 of them....)

A 'connecter tube' in each set? Wierd gimmick. Not sure I see the usefulness of giving air tubes in even the small ones like the fighter... not like there's a dock or anything that would 'connect' the tube with it...

hmmmh YUP the Mobile Devastator is too ugly, I'm not buying it; not with those useless wheels Wheels really define a ground vehicle, the rest is just normal bricks; at that rate, I'd be better off making my own from scratch. I'm not too pleased with the Golden tower either, the Sonic Raven (robot flier?) doesnt look that great... its just a box with a bluntshooter and two pinwheels on each side for engines. -you know those pinwheels? with the little spinny fan on a stick? yeah thats what it looks like to me. I'm really hating the use of those giant fan pieces with no actual 'engine' behind them to make them look solid.... Hayato's Aero thing is good though, looks to have enough big slopes in it to make 2 or 3 Space Figthers. Im curious what going on with the big gun barrel too, are those wheel peices?

You have a note on Holonomic vs Non-Holonomic robots, but do not explain why the difference is important; Clearly the difference will affect your Pathfinding algorithm choices, perhaps you should elaborate on this before moving on to the Methods section of the presentation. What you call 'wave propogation' might more accuratly be the 'A*' (A-Star) algorithm or 'Breadth First Search' Be sure that you are using the correct terminology and Citations if they turn out to be the same concept. Look those methods up if you are not familiar. Also, is this paper an in-progress Draft? because you listed several methods of 'robot positioning' ('Pathfinding' is the usual term I see used btw) but only show one of them. I would also argue that since the title of the presentation is "Methods and Algorithms for Robot Positioning"; that the specific details of the RCX are not necesarially relevant to the presentation, since this is a study of Algorithms in general which can be applied to any number of robotic platforms, not just RCX. Well, good luck with your presentation. When is it due?

EWW a mech with bionicle spikes instead of hands; not even nice ones at that! I thought Hands were standard now? And the face print still looks like a guy... Sure hope its just prototypes....

The other day I walked by Target to find the last3 of last years Mecha sets on clearance for $3.70USD (normal price $15USD), got a Stealth Hunter, Thunder Fury, Fire Vulture; thats cheaper than the mini-Mecha sets! once found a Technic Forklift 8416 on clearance at TRU for 15$USD!! (normal 70$) Got Motion Power on a wierd clearance sale at Target for 15$ (WHY?? did they put it on clearance? the set is still being produced and you can find it everwhere full price still?? wasnt anything wrong with it either) Uhh, letsee... I was able to order from legoeducation.com discontinued sets of Ocean Oddysey(for $10 cheaper than normal) and Hot Buster (a Racer from 2003, i guess they still have tons of them in stock cause what kid would think to buy Racers at an education store? lol :-D )

Useless, non-reusable character-specific faces, more clones to toss with each new set... actually, incompatibility with other minifigs wouldn't bug me so much if they werent so UGLY! It's like TLC decided to use DragonBallZ as their reference material for 'manga', ugh, they don't look anything remotely close to a typical manga...at least not a good one Ironically, the Avator head looks pretty good in comparison, even though Avatar is an american cartoon! (still not worth buying though, that huge grin hes got is just scary :-D )

looks like someone finally found a use for all those minifigs who's hands had been stolen to make guns X-D clever use of batman capes to make that umbrella

Thanks for the detailed pics Construction Notes learned from this: Awesome airlock door concept, great for a spaceship sometime on the Sub based on the 'floatation tanks' on the bottom: 7plates+studded top == 3studs actually, we already knew that 5plates == 2studs; which implies that 7.5plates ==3studs but their example here illustrates a major question that bugged me, do the studs on the end of the last plate count as .5 or not? -I guess it does now :-)

If you are reffering to the 20 set, that has the alien fighter and human rover with drill. Then I would say that the green thing on the rover's tail is one of the new ugly trans-green gummibear alien figs. :-X See how he's strapped onto one of those old LoM 'sled' things? (in white) but yeah, the aliens seem to serve the same purpose as those old crystals did, the humans are apparently harvesting them and plugging them into engines

Thanks for the better pics! hmmmh Now the base is a definete pass for me as well as the large alien mothership -for its size i dont see any special features-heck it doesnt even have an interiour, its a big flat flying disk! The human dropship... at that price, we will wait and see, it is kinda expensive, and I can probably build my own (albeit in black) using parts I already have lying around.-mine wouldnt be having stupid shooters on it either! the alien fighter, sure, I must have, cheap, good parts, decent representative of a story... EDIT: gross, look at how the cockpit 'elephant tusk' pieces are held on, that should totally be "illegal" construction, they could slip off at any second! human rover, must have 2! need wheels to build SpyTrack remix! and those cockpit bubbles will be great in AquaRaider mocs Tiny fighter, ugh, I hate that cockpit they're using its Not Airtight, and the pilot is forced to lie on his back (all you MOCs out there with sleeping pilots *n* *n* *n*) On the other hand, you can argue that since the pilot is a cool *android minifig* :-D that its OK for him since he doesnt need air anyway, and he probly has an uplink to control the ship mentally (but in that case, i woulda preffered the cockpit glass in white, so it would look more like a Drone fighter) So bad points aside, Must Have this as well, cheap, and a good minifig

Never seen that windshield. megabloks?? Ohwell, its still kinda interesting to see a Classic Space fighter

I dunno... there something wrong with the brick's hes using, see the wierd jaggy lines around all their edges? like the mould went bad or somthing :-D oh wait, they arent real bricks I'm never impressed with Cad models, sure I do it on occasion myself, but only for prototyping and online PaB orders. With Cad the challenge of finding rare colors for bricks is just gone. And you can never be sure a Cad model actually works without falling apart or weak spots in real life... And seeing a Gigantic model in Cad also does not impress as much as a Gigantic real model, cause heck in reality its using 0 pieces.

Neat little trains I'm not a train fan tho.... The high speed locomotive looks nice tho, !female minifig!, nice slopes, windows except it has those train wheels that I wouldn't be needing... Train guys: do the train wheels and axles separate from one another and the 'wheel frame' thing? the wheel frame could potentially be a Space greeblie of some kind if the wheel's were removed is that axle, once removed the same thinkness as a lightsaber rod?