...the LEGO movie was AwesomeTM! Actually, I thought it was just rather cute, but for some reason I can't stop saying AwesomeTM!
My kids really enjoyed it even though some of the parts were, as they tend to say, "derp". I was amazed that some studio exec hadn't managed to hijack the narrative and kept it close to what we understand the LEGO toys to be. I'm not going to spoil any details here since it's still in theaters, (*cough* Batman-is-kind-of-a-jerk *cough*) but I can definitely say that if you enjoy the basic free spirit of play you will enjoy the LEGO movie, and if you are too busy trying to teach your three-year old calculus on the way to his piano competition, then you're going to be mad that you wasted 100 minutes at the movies.
We watched it last weekend. Only a couple of dozen people were there for an afternoon show. I would have liked to see the 3D version, but I didn't want to give my younger child a headache. It was nice to see the adults and the kids laughing at different jokes.
For those of you that have seen the LEGO movie and are familiar with the works of Arthur C. Clarke, we have this video, done by a friend of ours and local LEGO expert.
For those of you that are thinking, "How did they not make a LEGO movie before now?" it's just that this is the first one in theaters. There were four Bionicle movies and a couple of Hero Factory movies that went direct to video. More recently there was the the LEGO:Ninjago TV series, a LEGO Star Wars direct-to-video movie, a LEGO Batman direct-to-video movie that came out at the same time as the LEGO Batman 2 video game, and a couple of movies starring LEGO hero Clutch Powers, one direct to video, and one 4D-direct-to-theme-park. Clutch Powers is voiced by Ryan McPartlin who most of us would know from the TV show "Chuck". He played Dr. Devon Woodcomb, Chuck's brother-in-law. Most often, he was referred to on the show as...
...wait for it...
"Captain Awesome".
Coincidence, or not?
And in other awesome news, speed cuber Kevin Hays totally destroyed the record for the 2x2x2 to 7x7x7 relay.
Showing posts with label LEGO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LEGO. Show all posts
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
...so maybe LEGO is like the Weak Nuclear Force?
I had planned for yesterday to go to a LEGO event with my kids. I wasn't exactly sure how it was going to go, since it wasn't (for us) a usual LEGO event. I presumed that the local movie theater/outdoor mall wanted to capitalize on LEGO fans being there the weekend that The LEGO Movie opened, so the timing was not unusual. We don't have a LEGO store here (the nearest one is at least an hour south of us) so it was run by a third party company that does really expensive half-day summer camps using LEGO and claiming to work on kids' STEM skills. There were two parts to the event, bringing your own creations for judging, and a speed-building competition. The flyer that we saw told us that the event started at 10:30, but not really any specifics about how the rest of it was supposed to go. The theme for the build was supposed to be the Sochi Olympics. Both kids built small structures - my older one built a snowball fight amongst athletes, and my younger child had Arctic Batman on a bobsled. Thinking that it wouldn't pay to show up too early, we opted to get there around 11:30. We drove around the shopping center, found a central place to park, and then figured out where the event was but left the builds in the car. We found the event set up on tables outside, right near the place where the bands play there in the evenings. It was a little warmer than usual, and scattered clouds and fairly high
humidity made us wonder about the viability of an outdoor event. Then, we found the schedule. Submissions went well past 12:00, and the judging was 1-3. The speed build events were broken up into age groups, but the middle school group that my older son would have competed in wouldn't have started until 2:45 according to their schedule. Nobody was enthused about the idea of leaving their builds there alone (sure, there were event people there, but they can't watch everything), and nobody would have been comfortable standing around with their builds for 3-4 hours outside until the judging finished. Plus, there was the matter of lunch, so we'd have to either separate or leave the builds behind.
So, my older son and I seemed too uncomfortable with the whole situation to even bother. We saw an interesting ski jump that someone had made before we left, but it didn't seem compelling for us to stay. On a hunch, we drove to the nearby Toys R Us. As we drove over to Toys R Us my younger one was pretty adamant that he wanted to go home after that, so I didn't bring up the idea of going to the LEGO movie since he didn't seem like he was going to have sufficient attention span to hang out in the theater.
As an intermission to the whole escapade, I was crossing the major thoroughfare that separated the mall from Toys R Us only to have someone creep past the white line by at least a car length. I honked at them, so they would stop and I could finish crossing without incident. As it turned out, they turned into the Toys R Us anyway but I found that odd since they would have had plenty of time to do it way before I was anywhere near them. As I passed by the car, I could it was a rather old woman driving alone. I didn't know what to make of it at all. I parked on the far side of the parking lot and tried to keep a low profile. She snaked through the parking lot and eventually honked at us as we were walking towards the store. I told the kids to stay back at the curb and went over to talk to her.
The second she rolled down her window I immediately apologized. I tried to explain that I had only honked because I thought her intent was to try to jump out in front of the rest of the traffic before the light turned green in her direction, and I wouldn't have honked if I had been able to tell if she was turning right. (No, I didn't see a turn signal. It's Florida, it's rather commonplace.)
She looked at me with a rather dazed expression, and merely said. "Oh."
Then she told me that she only had a question and wanted to know if there was someplace she could buy some printer ink like Best Buy or something. I told her that she had missed the turn for Best Buy and that she was better off going to the Office Depot just east of there so she didn't have to make multiple left turns in a row.
I shrugged off my uncomfortableness and headed into the store with the kids. As it turned out, our hunch was correct! Toys R Us was also doing a LEGO event tied into the release of the movie! So, my kids walked around the store for a few minutes, the event started at 12:00, each of my kids picked up a free minikit that has two different forms, and we got a coupon that entitled us to a $15 gift card if we bought "The LEGO Movie:The Game" for 2DS/3DS that day. We passed on that particular deal since we felt a little too pressured to pick up a game we didn't know anything about, but there were a lot of good 3DS games that were buy one, get one 40% off.
Unlike previous build events, this one was done assembly-line style. Each kid in line was given a plastic bag and two instruction sheets. Each yellow cardboard bin of parts had a number on the front, and you grabbed that many parts from the bin. For example, since we were building a car, the number on the front of the tire bin and the hub bin were "4", and the number on the steering wheel bin was "1". Unfortunately, that meant that the kids didn't get to stand at the tables and build, since there was barely enough room for all the bins. We got our free parts, looked at some tablets in the "R" Zone, and picked up a couple of DS games.
Since we didn't opt to build in the store, it took my older son a few minutes after we got home to realize that the sets were missing a black 1x4 piece. Not really a problem for us, so he added one to both sets and built them pretty quickly.
So, here's the minikit in both forms, flying car and regular car.
It seemed like the shopping center event could have been fun if there was something else for the kids to do - like if they had had a table where kids could freebuild, but I could also see where having a freebuild space could make it complicated for people showing up with their own stuff. If it had been a regular store with its own restrooms and air conditioned space it might have made up for the length of time also, but then you don't have people wandering around the shopping center like the shopping center would want. The LEGO event at Toys R US had a free raffle in an attempt to get people to hang out until 2:00, but that didn't seem like a good idea for us either.
If the event is compelling, then I think it's easy to get people to stay, but the minute it feels like a 'gotcha', there are some of us that are just going to run away as soon as they smell any funny business. On the other hand, maybe there are just people that drive around looking for whatever they can find, compelling or not. Although if that's the case, just remember that they don't usually have printer ink at Toys R Us.
So, my older son and I seemed too uncomfortable with the whole situation to even bother. We saw an interesting ski jump that someone had made before we left, but it didn't seem compelling for us to stay. On a hunch, we drove to the nearby Toys R Us. As we drove over to Toys R Us my younger one was pretty adamant that he wanted to go home after that, so I didn't bring up the idea of going to the LEGO movie since he didn't seem like he was going to have sufficient attention span to hang out in the theater.
As an intermission to the whole escapade, I was crossing the major thoroughfare that separated the mall from Toys R Us only to have someone creep past the white line by at least a car length. I honked at them, so they would stop and I could finish crossing without incident. As it turned out, they turned into the Toys R Us anyway but I found that odd since they would have had plenty of time to do it way before I was anywhere near them. As I passed by the car, I could it was a rather old woman driving alone. I didn't know what to make of it at all. I parked on the far side of the parking lot and tried to keep a low profile. She snaked through the parking lot and eventually honked at us as we were walking towards the store. I told the kids to stay back at the curb and went over to talk to her.
The second she rolled down her window I immediately apologized. I tried to explain that I had only honked because I thought her intent was to try to jump out in front of the rest of the traffic before the light turned green in her direction, and I wouldn't have honked if I had been able to tell if she was turning right. (No, I didn't see a turn signal. It's Florida, it's rather commonplace.)
She looked at me with a rather dazed expression, and merely said. "Oh."
Then she told me that she only had a question and wanted to know if there was someplace she could buy some printer ink like Best Buy or something. I told her that she had missed the turn for Best Buy and that she was better off going to the Office Depot just east of there so she didn't have to make multiple left turns in a row.
I shrugged off my uncomfortableness and headed into the store with the kids. As it turned out, our hunch was correct! Toys R Us was also doing a LEGO event tied into the release of the movie! So, my kids walked around the store for a few minutes, the event started at 12:00, each of my kids picked up a free minikit that has two different forms, and we got a coupon that entitled us to a $15 gift card if we bought "The LEGO Movie:The Game" for 2DS/3DS that day. We passed on that particular deal since we felt a little too pressured to pick up a game we didn't know anything about, but there were a lot of good 3DS games that were buy one, get one 40% off.
Unlike previous build events, this one was done assembly-line style. Each kid in line was given a plastic bag and two instruction sheets. Each yellow cardboard bin of parts had a number on the front, and you grabbed that many parts from the bin. For example, since we were building a car, the number on the front of the tire bin and the hub bin were "4", and the number on the steering wheel bin was "1". Unfortunately, that meant that the kids didn't get to stand at the tables and build, since there was barely enough room for all the bins. We got our free parts, looked at some tablets in the "R" Zone, and picked up a couple of DS games.
Since we didn't opt to build in the store, it took my older son a few minutes after we got home to realize that the sets were missing a black 1x4 piece. Not really a problem for us, so he added one to both sets and built them pretty quickly.
So, here's the minikit in both forms, flying car and regular car.
It seemed like the shopping center event could have been fun if there was something else for the kids to do - like if they had had a table where kids could freebuild, but I could also see where having a freebuild space could make it complicated for people showing up with their own stuff. If it had been a regular store with its own restrooms and air conditioned space it might have made up for the length of time also, but then you don't have people wandering around the shopping center like the shopping center would want. The LEGO event at Toys R US had a free raffle in an attempt to get people to hang out until 2:00, but that didn't seem like a good idea for us either.
If the event is compelling, then I think it's easy to get people to stay, but the minute it feels like a 'gotcha', there are some of us that are just going to run away as soon as they smell any funny business. On the other hand, maybe there are just people that drive around looking for whatever they can find, compelling or not. Although if that's the case, just remember that they don't usually have printer ink at Toys R Us.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
There is a force stronger than LEGO.
Based on my kids' behavior since the holiday break, I would have to say that there is one force in the world stronger than LEGO.
It's Minecraft.
For those of you unfamiliar with Minecraft, it's a 3D adventure game with whimsical low-res graphics with an emphasis on building structures, crafting objects from mined materials, and basic agriculture. While the graphics look like they came from 1995, I'm not sure you could have built a world as large as Minecraft's back then.
I got LEGO Marvel Super Heroes for PS3 this Christmas. Like most of the other LEGO games, they take a simplified storyline, infuse it with LEGO sets and characters, and have you play through it with the main characters, and then go back later for additional playthroughs with the other characters to find secrets and unlock even more characters. The LEGO Marvel Super Heroes story takes us to Manhattan just after the Avengers have saved it, only to find that the Silver Surfer has crash-landed on earth and Doctor Doom is hot on the trail of the broken bricks of his surfboard. Naturally, when the Silver Surfer appears, Galactus can't be far behind. With a possible grab for cosmic power and the fate of the Earth at stake, a lot of heroes and villains start coming out of the woodwork. All of the major characters from the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy make an appearance, along with some unsurprising additions. You know Stan Lee has to be there, since he's everywhere else.
Normally with that many days off from school my kids (or at least my older one) would have completely torn through the game by now. They had LEGO Batman 2 at 100% in a matter of days. However, they spent the majority of their gaming time during the holidays playing Minecraft, with Super Mario 3D Land for 3DS coming in a close second for my older child and Scribblenauts Unlimited coming in a rather distant second for my younger one. It's even gotten to the point where they're playing with actual LEGO less than Minecraft. Luckily, one of the LEGO sets my older son got for Christmas was a Minecraft set.
More so than for any other game, my kids are watching a lot of things on Youtube pertaining to Minecraft, and even sometimes while playing the game at the same time. I recall watching a few things for Resident Evil 4 in an attempt to improve my Mercenaries scores, but once I got the info I required I went back to playing the game. They're watching Minecraft videos like me binge-watching Community.
As a result of watching all of the videos, they have downloaded some of the texture packs for the game, but they haven't quite figured out the full mods yet. I suppose I'll have to work on that.
Over the last couple of weeks, they have played some of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, and have completed all of the levels in Story Mode, but they haven't obtained all of the characters yet. My younger one still thinks that the hub area (Gotham) in LEGO Batman 2 is more fun than the Marvel hub area (Manhattan including the Statue of Liberty, The Baxter Building, the Daily Bugle, Central Park, and Grand Central Station), but he has fewer characters unlocked. It's nice that in addition to things like my kids finding out about Howard the Duck without having to watch the questionable film version, I can find out about oddball things like Superior Spider-Man without having to set foot in the comic book store to be berated about not reading enough titles.
It's Minecraft.
For those of you unfamiliar with Minecraft, it's a 3D adventure game with whimsical low-res graphics with an emphasis on building structures, crafting objects from mined materials, and basic agriculture. While the graphics look like they came from 1995, I'm not sure you could have built a world as large as Minecraft's back then.
I got LEGO Marvel Super Heroes for PS3 this Christmas. Like most of the other LEGO games, they take a simplified storyline, infuse it with LEGO sets and characters, and have you play through it with the main characters, and then go back later for additional playthroughs with the other characters to find secrets and unlock even more characters. The LEGO Marvel Super Heroes story takes us to Manhattan just after the Avengers have saved it, only to find that the Silver Surfer has crash-landed on earth and Doctor Doom is hot on the trail of the broken bricks of his surfboard. Naturally, when the Silver Surfer appears, Galactus can't be far behind. With a possible grab for cosmic power and the fate of the Earth at stake, a lot of heroes and villains start coming out of the woodwork. All of the major characters from the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy make an appearance, along with some unsurprising additions. You know Stan Lee has to be there, since he's everywhere else.
Normally with that many days off from school my kids (or at least my older one) would have completely torn through the game by now. They had LEGO Batman 2 at 100% in a matter of days. However, they spent the majority of their gaming time during the holidays playing Minecraft, with Super Mario 3D Land for 3DS coming in a close second for my older child and Scribblenauts Unlimited coming in a rather distant second for my younger one. It's even gotten to the point where they're playing with actual LEGO less than Minecraft. Luckily, one of the LEGO sets my older son got for Christmas was a Minecraft set.
More so than for any other game, my kids are watching a lot of things on Youtube pertaining to Minecraft, and even sometimes while playing the game at the same time. I recall watching a few things for Resident Evil 4 in an attempt to improve my Mercenaries scores, but once I got the info I required I went back to playing the game. They're watching Minecraft videos like me binge-watching Community.
As a result of watching all of the videos, they have downloaded some of the texture packs for the game, but they haven't quite figured out the full mods yet. I suppose I'll have to work on that.
Over the last couple of weeks, they have played some of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, and have completed all of the levels in Story Mode, but they haven't obtained all of the characters yet. My younger one still thinks that the hub area (Gotham) in LEGO Batman 2 is more fun than the Marvel hub area (Manhattan including the Statue of Liberty, The Baxter Building, the Daily Bugle, Central Park, and Grand Central Station), but he has fewer characters unlocked. It's nice that in addition to things like my kids finding out about Howard the Duck without having to watch the questionable film version, I can find out about oddball things like Superior Spider-Man without having to set foot in the comic book store to be berated about not reading enough titles.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
A few recent months of cubing
So, having properly claimed that I have not fallen off the face of the earth, I try to catch up on cubing stuff, both personal and otherwise.
In a small group of people assembled by my sales manager for the express purpose of watching me solve a cube, I was able to do a 30-second solve with my black DaYan. I found it rather funny because five or six of the people had written times on a piece of paper to see who was going to be the closest, and right before I started the solve I spotted my operations manager and suggested to the group that he would be able to write my exact time down on the paper. He looked at the list, saw that the two closest times written were 25 seconds and 35 seconds, and quickly wrote '30' on the paper before I got started. I was a little amazed when I finished in 30 seconds as I felt that I had made a couple of mistakes, but I have been a few seconds faster on the DaYan than on my regular stock Rubik's cube lately. On a stock Rubik's cube, I average around 37 seconds or so but can occasionally get down towards 33 once in a while.
My older son reassembled a 4x4x4 for one of our friends while I made dinner the other night. Let me be clear on this - reassembled, not solved. I was still glad and more than a little bit proud of him. It had been dropped, and was brought to us in pieces in a Ziploc bag. His LEGO construction skills come in handy, and he still has good closeup vision and smaller fingers. I asked him to inspect all the pieces for damage, but this 4x4x4 appears to be a newer build than mine. My 4x4x4 is an Ideal Toy Company model, and the 'feet' that hold the center pieces in place are a little bit thinner than the one that was brought to me. As I recall, more than a few of my center pieces were glued back together with jeweler's glue and I still have to treat it like an antique. (But, it's a 30 year old plastic toy, so maybe it's almost an antique.) I like knowing that DaYan makes a stickerless 4x4x4.
Well, perhaps now that I feel a little more caught up, I can get back to writing more regularly.
In a small group of people assembled by my sales manager for the express purpose of watching me solve a cube, I was able to do a 30-second solve with my black DaYan. I found it rather funny because five or six of the people had written times on a piece of paper to see who was going to be the closest, and right before I started the solve I spotted my operations manager and suggested to the group that he would be able to write my exact time down on the paper. He looked at the list, saw that the two closest times written were 25 seconds and 35 seconds, and quickly wrote '30' on the paper before I got started. I was a little amazed when I finished in 30 seconds as I felt that I had made a couple of mistakes, but I have been a few seconds faster on the DaYan than on my regular stock Rubik's cube lately. On a stock Rubik's cube, I average around 37 seconds or so but can occasionally get down towards 33 once in a while.
My older son reassembled a 4x4x4 for one of our friends while I made dinner the other night. Let me be clear on this - reassembled, not solved. I was still glad and more than a little bit proud of him. It had been dropped, and was brought to us in pieces in a Ziploc bag. His LEGO construction skills come in handy, and he still has good closeup vision and smaller fingers. I asked him to inspect all the pieces for damage, but this 4x4x4 appears to be a newer build than mine. My 4x4x4 is an Ideal Toy Company model, and the 'feet' that hold the center pieces in place are a little bit thinner than the one that was brought to me. As I recall, more than a few of my center pieces were glued back together with jeweler's glue and I still have to treat it like an antique. (But, it's a 30 year old plastic toy, so maybe it's almost an antique.) I like knowing that DaYan makes a stickerless 4x4x4.
Well, perhaps now that I feel a little more caught up, I can get back to writing more regularly.
Friday, June 22, 2012
LEGO Batman 2: A few days in, a couple of bugs.
My older son seems to have a reasonable array of heroes unlocked for LEGO Batman 2:DC Super Heroes at this point, plus the 5 extra villains from the villain pack and a few other miscellaneous characters. However, we had a small problem with Green Lantern. Around the Gotham Zoo area, there are some piles of green translucent bricks that are made for the Lanterns to build. Holding the circle button (PS3 version) is supposed to build the group of bricks into an object, and then the object does whatever it is supposed to do and leave behind a significant number of LEGO studs. However, we here having the problem that the group of bricks would be built and then no action taken. Once the built bricks lay dormant for a moment, they disassemble, and then we were left to try again. It didn't seem to matter if some of the extra options were turned on or not. The only thing that seemed to resolve the issue was exiting to the main PS3 menu and restarting the game.
I had a different problem previously - after I loaded the villain pack the first afternoon, I started my own game but picked 'Load Game' even though I was pretty sure that there wasn't a game on my profile to load. It appeared to start a new game, but it locked up at the first save point. I played again the next day, and was correctly kicked out of the 'Load Game' screen into the 'New Game' screen the second time and had no problem saving the game.
I don't know if there are more bugs to find, or if this is even the sort of game that will be bothered to be patched. We had problems with the Wii LEGO games locking up periodically, but of course those games didn't get patched.
I had a different problem previously - after I loaded the villain pack the first afternoon, I started my own game but picked 'Load Game' even though I was pretty sure that there wasn't a game on my profile to load. It appeared to start a new game, but it locked up at the first save point. I played again the next day, and was correctly kicked out of the 'Load Game' screen into the 'New Game' screen the second time and had no problem saving the game.
I don't know if there are more bugs to find, or if this is even the sort of game that will be bothered to be patched. We had problems with the Wii LEGO games locking up periodically, but of course those games didn't get patched.
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