*** Updated ***
As you may have seen, things weren’t quite the same around here today. Was it a server issue? Perhaps your browser wasn’t working properly. Or maybe the interwebs were failing! Well, it’s none of those so you’re safe. However, you should have been showing your support for CSS by going naked!
It was a little longer than I expected, but I finally got my site back online.
Now comes the fun stuff, the changes coming to the site…
Yesterday I noticed that Toys R Us began selling the LEGO® Luke Skylwalker&tm; Maquette for $27.98! And it was a clearance price! Wasn’t this set released less than 6 months ago? To add insult to injury, LEGO S@H began selling the set on their site today for the approximate same price.
If you check out a couple of my previous posts, you’ll see I had voiced my annoyances at the fact that the Skywalker&tm; Maquette was the only Gentle Giant Maquette that was NOT released in a limited production run and was not specially numbered. I think those concerns are now validated with the fact that the pricing has been severely cut to sell the remaining units.
So much for having a truly “limited” edition Skywalker&tm; Maquette.
This past week The Star Wars Shop added the Luke Skywalker maquette made by Gentle Giant to their catalog which was first released by Toys R Us and later added to the LEGO® catalog. Since then I’ve been rather displeased with the fact that it wasn’t a limited production like the other 4 maquettes. The LEGO® retail stores I visited have piles of them sitting on their shelves. They also recently added them to their “Sales and Deals” list for a whopping $50. I paid the original $69.99 with Toys R Us so I am a little annoyed at that kind gesture of LEGO®.
Other than those unpleasantries, the following statement included with the description for the Luke Skywalker maquette listing on The Star Wars Shop struck an unpleasant chord as these maquettes look so great!
This is the final of the five LEGO Star Wars Maquettes produced.
Let’s hope they change their minds and introduce more Star Wars maquettes or even an Indiana Jones Gentle Giant maquette. ;)
Shockingly, during this past weekend I noticed some great sets added to the Sales and Deals list at LEGO® Shop@Home.
They’ve added the UCS Imperial Star Destroyer (#10030) and the UCS Death Star II to their sales and deals. What really shocked me was the price. A $100 discount being applied to the $300 price tag of these two sets!
Needless to say I took advantage of that deal and I highly recommend you do to!
Typically these specials are to kickoff surplus’ of new products. Or to make room for new products. There are many rumors about large sets in development and I can’t wait to see if those stories hold up to be true, but for now, we can enjoy these two great collector edition sets!
Well we’re already into the 2nd week of the new year and LEGO® has already begun showing off some of their new items which include some new Star Wars, Technic and much anticipated Indiana Jones sets! Be sure to head over to LEGO S@H and check those and the other new items they’ve added so far for 2008.
Well, we’re currently finishing up the 1st leg of our trip here in South Africa. We started off visiting East London where I have a lot of family. The 2nd leg of our trip will take us to Cape Town which we will be flying to today. The 3rd leg will be taking us to Joburg (Johannesburg) where we have more family as well.
Here’s just one teaser pic of our trip so far. I’ll post up more pictures when we return.
I took this picture at the Lion Park that we visited which is not too far from East London, South Africa.
If you’re looking for some great bargains on LEGO® head over to LEGO® Shop@Home or to Toys “R” Us!
Both have some great deals on some really nice sets. The LEGO® Shop@Home site has furniture that has been discounted up the whazoo and Toys “R” Us has a Buy 1 get 1 at 50% sale with some of those items also getting free shipping!
Earlier this week I was visiting the Star Wars Shop and noticed the Gentle Giant Boba Fett maquette listing was gone.
That could only mean one thing [hopefully]. They sold out on the pre-order.
I hope you got one while you had the chance! If not, you may be in luck. When the Vader and Stormtrooper maquettes were sold, they set aside a few to be sold after the release. And with 1,500 Boba Fett maquettes being produced, your chances of getting one should be better than how it was when the Vader and Stormtrooper maquettes were released since they only produced 1,000 units of each those.
Of course I could be completely wrong and there could be some other force in the universe that caused them to remove the listing. Let’s hope it’s not another delay or manufacturing issue.
I just got off the phone with an Apple representative. Although the online Apple store hasn’t been updated with this, I was able to order a 15″ 2.4Ghz MacBook Pro to come configured with Leopard. Many of my friends said not to worry if I would have to install Leopard myself in case it came with Tiger installed. I just wanted to avoid the hassle of it all.
I was going to go with the 17″ originally, but after thinking about it, the 15″ makes more sense, especially when it’s used at home. I’d want it to take up the least amount of space since it will be working with my 30″ Dell LCD and an external mouse and keyboard. And when away from home, the 15″ will be less of a hassle to lug around.
Hopefully if what the representative told me is true, by the end of next week I’ll have my new MacBook Pro. Now the question is, what to do with those damned orange computers. :D
I never expected I’d be making this “life” decision, but after having been exposed to it, I felt it was the right time to come out and say it.
I’m buying an Apple Computer.
There I said it. It’s done. I’ve made my decision. Time to move on and move on I must, but there’s a problem. A life decision? Well for a programmer it can be, and I’ve been using Windows for the past 12 or 13 years!
Apple is to, well apples and Windows is to oranges. One is nice and sweet, sometimes. While the other is tangy and hard to get to. The apple you can just bite into and get started. The orange, well you first have to peel it, separate the slices, yada yada yada. Enough with the cliché, you get the idea.
The first week of September I attended a training course for Flex Programming and to my surprise we were seated at Apple workstations that were running Windows XP. I had heard of Parallels and Boot Camp prior to this, but had never seen either of them in action. At first, it was strange looking at an Apple iMac that had Windows XP nicely displayed on the screen. Then the strange feeling went away and a sense of comfort set in. Other than the keyboard and mouse, everything was the same. We went through the 3 day course with no issues. These Apple Computers were running Boot Camp which is what allowed us to use Windows XP. That’s not all though, if you want, you could also install Vista using Boot Camp.
This experience left a huge impression on me. Not because it’s an Apple computer and they “should”. Instead, it was because of the power of having one computer, out of the box, with the ability to dual, even triple boot. Some of you may say that’s been around for years with Linux and Windows, but it’s not the same. It doesn’t take a scientist to know that Windows and OSX are the dominating operating systems on the market. Having both of those on one machine, running the native hardware, NOT emulated, is a gift.
I love it for a lot of reasons, but the main reasons are:
So when Apple begins selling MacBook Pro’s configured with Leopard, which is being released tomorrow, I’ll be diving into the Apple culture, but at the same time enjoying my oranges, errr I mean Windows. :)
One of my good friends shared a Flash game with me. I don’t know how long it’s been out, but it’s new to me. It’s called Rhythm Firewoks.
It’s basically Dance Dance Revolution except your fingers are doing the dancing.
The game is played by watching arrow icons move in the game and when they gets to a certain point, hitting the corresponding arrow key on the keyboard. Sounds easy? Well there’s more. Not only do you have to quickly hit these arrow keys, but the arrows are different colors as you move up in the levels. So while one hand is hitting the arrow keys, the other is switching colors. Now it just got really interesting!
This game perfectly illustrates just how much fun a simple Flash game can be and why Flash Game Developers should think about making their games as simple as possible because the last thing anyone on the web wants to do is read a bunch of instructions to play a game. And that includes us developers! If you make your games simple, but challenging you can attract a wider range of players from all ages, genders, etc. and the side effect of all that, the simpler the game, the easier and less complicated the code running the game will be. Theoretically of course. ;)
That’s my Flash tip for the day. :)
The ninth issue of BrickJournal was published yesterday!
Interesting highlights for this issue:
There are but 3 of the many topics in this issue. Be sure to check it out!
When I received my copy of Flash CS3 Professional, the first thing I did was try to reproduce bugs I had found in earlier versions to see if they had been fixed. One of them I tried was a bug in the way fonts are embedded. Low and behold, the bug feature was still there.
The bug occurs when you type the name of a font you want to use for a TextField, into the “Properties” panel. If what you type, does not match EXACTLY with what the title of a font is in the font list, you run the risk of having the same font embedded multiple times.
Why is this important to you? Two words: Filesize Bloating. I don’t know of many Flash developers in the world that don’t care about making their files download as fast as possible and making them as small as possible. That being the case, this bug is probably important to you.
If you ALWAYS use the dropdown font selection tool, then this bug probably doesn’t affect you. Like most designers though, if you know the names of the fonts and quickly type them in, I hope learning about this bug will help you.
I’ve outlined how to reproduce the bug and see how it can affect your files. Don’t be scared by the number of steps. Even though there are many, all of them are very easy to complete.
The new Luke Skywalker maquette made by Gentle Giant that I’ve been talking about is now being sold on LEGO® Shop at Home!
The catalog/set number for this collectible is #66254 and is being sold for the same price of $69.99 as seen at Toys R Us.
Head over to LEGO® Shop at Home and buys yours now!
I am still rather disappointed that these aren’t a limited run of say 1,000 or 1,500 like the Darth Vader, Stormtrooper and Boba Fett maquettes. :( How about some consistency here people!