LEGO® Gentle Giant Luke Skywalker Maquette now appearing in stores!

October 14th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO® | No Comments »

I had this past Friday off so I thought I’d pay the LEGO® store a visit. While browsing the store I peeked into one of the display windows and was shocked to see a LEGO® Gentle Giant Luke Skywalker maquette on display with a sign saying they were for sale! I was too late however. Someone had purchased ALL of them from the store earlier in the week. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to purchase the display model. Here are some pictures I took of that one that I picked up.

Sorry about the crappy pictures, it’s the best I could do with my digital camera and low light conditions.

I was shocked to see them for sale at the LEGO® retail store because the Darth Vader and Stormtrooper Gentle Giant LEGO® Maquettes were sold exclusively through the Star Wars Shop and were numbered limited edition sets. The Boba Fett maquette which is due out in January is also exclusive to the Star Wars Shop and is a low production run of 1,500 and are numbered. These Luke Skywalker maquettes are however NOT numbered. They are still listed as limited edition though and come with a certificate of authenticity. If I hear anything about how many they intend to produce I’ll let you guys know, so stay tuned.

Anyway, so this morning (Sunday) I get an email containing the Sunday ad for Toys R Us and they have them on sale! The ad stated that they were available in-store only though. So I headed down to the closest Toys R Us and was able to snag a couple brand new, sealed maquettes. :) So if you are still looking for them, looks like Toys R Us and the LEGO® retail stores are selling them although many of the stores are sold out.

I called LEGO® S@H and the representative I spoke with had no clue what they were or if they were going to be selling them on the LEGO® S@H site. So stay tuned, if I hear anything new, I’ll let you guys know!

New LEGO® gear at The Star Wars Shop!

October 10th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO® | No Comments »

Not too long ago the Star Wars Shop added a cool LEGO® clock to their inventory:

Today they’ve followed it up with some cool LEGO® Star Wars watches!

LEGO® Star Wars Darth Vader Watch	LEGO® Star Wars Jedi Luke Watch
LEGO® Star Wars Clone Trooper Watch	LEGO® Star Wars R2-D2 Watch

Head over to the Star Wars Shop to learn more about them. They currently run $19.99 each.

Gentle Giant LEGO® Boba Fett Maquette delayed till January 2008.

October 8th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO® | No Comments »

It appears that the Star Wars Shop has delayed the shipping date of the next LEGO® Boba Fett Maquette made by the wonderful artisans of Gentle Giant.

I received this message from the Star Wars Shop on October 5th…

Due to an unexpected delay by the vendor, the scheduled shipping date of the following pre-order item(s) has changed, the new ship date is as follows:
SWLFLLMBF Exclusive LEGO Star Wars Boba Fett Maquette Ships Jan 2008

Ah well, another 3 months to wait.

After seeing the last 3 versions it’s well worth the wait.

For those of you unfamiliar with these LEGO® maquettes, they are 6″ tall, limited edition sculpted statues based on LEGO® mini-figures.

Don’t be fooled by all the Darkside figures, there is a Luke Skywalker Maquette in the works as well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed as I hope my pre-orders are fulfilled. More details [hopefully] later this month.

If you’re looking to snag any of the sold out LEGO® Gentle Giant Darth Vader, Stormtrooper or Blackhole Stormtrooper Maquettes, head over to my eBay store It’s Not Just a Brick.

Adobe MAX 2007: Day 3

October 5th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in Adobe, Developer && Designer | No Comments »

Today’s the last day!

It was tough waking up today, there is so much going on within the three days! I really wish that the conference was split among 4 days instead of 3 with more time between the day and evening portions to relax. In addition, there are so many sessions that it’s very hard to make it to all of them, especially when you have a full schedule as I did. So Adobe, if you’re listening, 4 days instead of 3, got it? Thanks!

The highlight of today was meeting and chatting with Grant Skinner just before attending the session he presented which was about how to use Flash CS3 to build an AIR app. Grant Skinner is a very well known and in my opinion, great ActionScript developer.

If you’re an ActionScript developer, I highly suggest checking out AIR if you haven’t done so. AIR utilizes the ActionScript API to deploy applications to the desktop. So if you know ActionScript, you’re already on a great start to learning AIR.

Using the update to Flash CS3 which is available on Adobe Labs, it allows you to publish an AIR file from Flash CS3 Professional. With the quick updating of a few settings within the Flash IDE, you’re pretty much ready to begin porting your Flash files to the desktop. Of course building AIR applications may require the use of the extended API that allows you to interact with the users machine depending on what your Flash Application does, it’s still a very powerful and simple way of creating richer desktop applications. So if you haven’t checked out AIR, head over to Adobe Labs.

I need to go over my schedule and I’ll post some highlights from the other sessions I attended as well. Stay tuned…

Adobe MAX 2007: Day 2

October 2nd, 2007 by Anil | Posted in Adobe, Developer && Designer | No Comments »

Hello again from MAX!

Well this morning is going well so far. It is about 9:45 right now. I am posting while attending a course on ColdFusion 8.

Today we had a great keynote and sneak peeks session.

Today’s keynote showcased new tools being developed by Adobe. The strongest I felt out of the bunch being Thermo. Thermo is to Flex Designer as Photoshop is to Photographer, that is how I look at it. Thermo allows a designer to create comps for a RIA, and easily port those graphics to Flex. I emphasize “easily” because it truly was that easy. They showed a comp where they simply selected graphics, ran it through a simple conversion tool within Thermo, and created ActionScript. For example, in the comp was a rectangle that was intended to be a search field. They selected it and converted it to a text input field. And that’s it. Thermo looks at the selected item, and created a text input field, written in ActionScript using the selected graphics to skin the text input. It took all but a few seconds. It was really amazing to watch.

I didn’t stay for the entire sneak peaks session, but the one that drew some interest for me was “Flash Home”, or that’s what I remember it being called. It was a new technology that allows people to skin the UI on their cell phone the way they want and the ability to use an ActionScript API to interact with the phone, i.e. going through through your contacts, changing/animating your home screen, adding custom functionality, etc…

I need to go over my schedule and I’ll post some highlights from the sessions I attended as well. Stay tuned…

Adobe MAX 2007: Day 1

October 1st, 2007 by Anil | Posted in Adobe, Developer && Designer | No Comments »

*** Updated ***

Hello from Chicago!

So far, MAX 2007 has been an absolute blast.

As expected, I’ve met some great people, learned new things about Adobe apps, got some great coding tips and I got a picture with BONO, or so I thought!!!

I don’t think Adobe put this on, I’m guessing that one of the exhibitors hired a Bono impersonator to attract more people to their booth. It worked because there were a lot of people that really did think this guy looked like Bono. I guess when you don’t have the real deal there, you can’t really compare and judge properly. Anyway, all of us were fooled.

Alright, enough of the fake stuff, on to the great stuff!

Today was the first keynote. Kevin Lynch talked about the great things that people have been doing with Adobe technology. The one of I want to focus on is Buzzword, which was recently acquired by Adobe. Currently a web RIA allowing users a richer, word processing app than the other more conventional word processing app that we all use, I don’t see anything stopping Buzzword from becoming a great desktop application when it is married with AIR. It may not have all the doo-dads and thingamajigs Word has, but Buzzword showcases the strengths of ActionScript and how great of a language it is when combined with a rich user interface.

With the development of Buzzword already pushing ahead, it’s not hard to see what direction this is going. With AIR, Flash, Flex, PDF and other Adobe Technologies, the desktop RIA business is going to be a very strong one that is going to open many doors for Adobe. I wouldn’t put it past Adobe to create a “Buzz” office suite either. Sorry Microsoft, your chrome is just a little duller than Adobe’s. ;)

I need to go over my schedule and I’ll post some highlights from the sessions I attended as well. Stay tuned…

GameStop.com suppressing reviews???

September 29th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in General | No Comments »

Here’s the scoop.

On August 9th of this year I saw that GameStop.com began taking pre-orders for a “Halo 3 Missle Case” that is actually a storage compartment for your controllers, headset, or other accessories for your 360 or whatever else you can fit into it. I thought it was a pretty cool, novelty case, especially with Halo 3 which was due out just a few days after this accessory’s release date. They released this picture of the item initially:

AFTER they had already started taking pre-orders for the case shown above, on August 22nd, they changed the picture to this:

It was at this time I submitted my first review about it using the review system on their website. In my review I stated that the item looked nothing like what they were initially offering and what they accepted pre-orders for. In addition, it looked nothing like the missile case that is in the actual game! The initial picture of the item at least was the right color. After submitting my review, their site said that the comment should appear within 48 hours as long as my comment adhered to their review guidelines (which it did). A week later, my comment was still not visible; whereas, other people had their “good” comments approved. It was just a $20 case, so I said to hell with it.

About 2 weeks ago I placed an order for the missile case, it didn’t look good but I needed a place to store my controllers rather than leave them sitting on top of my 360 Elite. At this point the Halo 3 Missile Case was on back order, but somehow they shipped the item out and I received it yesterday. I have never been more displeased with anything I’ve purchased until now. The plastics used on the case were sub-standard, the look was very cheap, the color was worse than the color of puke. The latches holding the cover were cheap and the case itself isn’t even stackable so if you wanted to buy two of them, good luck putting one on top of the other to save space.

So I decided to go back to the GameStop.com listing for it and submit another review. This time though, I took screenshots of my review before and after I submitted the review. It’s the only evidence I could get proving I submitted the review.

Here is what I stated in the review (misspellings and all):

I ordered on for the hell of it thinking it would be a good thing to store my controllers in.

1) The plastic they use on this thing is very cheap,
2) The latches look like something off a $1 toy
3) It looks NOTHING like the missle case from the game
4) It’s not even stackable in case you want to buy more than one if you have more than 2 controllers and a headset, etc…
5) It’s crap.

Do not buy this!

I wanted to post this for two reasons:

1. To post MY review of an item that as of 6:14pm Saturday, September 29, 2007 hasn’t showed up on GameStop.com (they have another day before their 48 hour limit is up.
2. To call GameStop.com out on why [it appears as if] they neglect to post reviews that are negative about their products. Sure it’s business, marketing, but isn’t the public entitled to reviews that their own patrons submit?

Now I know it’s only a $20 item that shouldn’t even get the time of day. That’s beside the point though. I don’t think it’s fair of any company, especially larger ones like GameStop.com to keep reviews from the public. Even Amazon.com shows a review regardless if it’s a good or bad review. Isn’t that the point of a review?

*** Update ***

Well it’s October 5th, I returned from my trip to Chicago last night and thought I’d check GameStop.com to see if my review posted….

Read all reviews for the Halo 3 Missile Case

Anyone see it in there? I sure don’t, although I do see that some other reviews HAVE posted that are dated after my review submission date, and they are all good reviews …. so, I rest my case.

This just in! My new LEGO® sets have arrived!

September 29th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO® | No Comments »

I finally received my Star Wars UCS Millennium Falcon (#10179) and Motorized AT-AT (#10178) sets! In addition, I received my PodBrix “Young Woz and Jobs Playset” set too!

Just my luck though I don’t have my camera at the moment (forgot it at my relatives house) so I’m unable to take some good quality pictures of them. I’ll post some pictures from my phone later today so be sure to check this post later today!

New Adobe support forums!

September 27th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in Adobe | No Comments »

I’ve been experiencing an issue with Illustrator CS3 so I decided to head over to the Adobe Support Forums to see if anyone else has been experiencing the same problem. Aside from submitting bug reports, this is usually the first place I go for support.

I couldn’t get to the forums and after a few attempts at refreshing the browser, the forums finally loaded up to reveal that Adobe had revamped their forums! The service is running a little sluggish and unresponsive at times, but it’s glad to see that they are taking measures to improve their support forums. It’s hard to tell what they did to the forums since it’s response is a little slow, but I’m glad to see that they started taking steps to improve this service.

About 2 years ago at MAX 2006 in Anaheim, CA., I was invited to attend a focus group to evaluate and discuss how Adobe should approach the merging of the Adobe and Macromedia websites since Adobe had just acquired Macromedia not too long before the MAX 2006 conference. The major improvement I suggested was to the newsgroup and forums area. I hope that whatever information I provided at that time helped them to advance their efforts in providing their customers with a much richer way of sharing thoughts and concerns about Adobe products.

Thanks Adobe! :)

Things to come…

September 25th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in General | No Comments »

After experiencing a renewed focus earlier this year, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the shadows getting caught up on my work and thinking about the direction I want to go with my site.

So in the next few weeks you’ll see quite a few changes around here. Here is some quick info about the changes:

1. I’ll be moving my LEGO® posts to a new site:

   http://www.itsnotjustabrick.com/

   I’m hoping to post more LEGO® related content along with other material including the LEGO® products that I sell on eBay.

2. My personal ramblings will be moved to:

   http://www.slyraskal.com/

3. As for this site, well it’s going to become my professional endeavor. In addition to hopefully creating my portfolio (should have done that a long time ago) and migrating to a new web host, I’ll be posting up a lot of topics related to web development with a strong focus in Flash and hopefully Flex development as well. You guys are seriously in for a treat as I have a lot to share. :)

Tonights the night the fight continues!

September 24th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in General | No Comments »

On my lunch break, I went by the GameStop where I placed a pre-order for Halo 3 long ago and paid off the pre-order for a copy of the game for myself and my brother-in-law to make it easier to get tonight. I already know the line is going to be ridiculously long as it was for Halo 2.

No matter what, work tomorrow or not, we’re going to be there to pick it up at midnight to start playing. Yea, we’re crazy, but how many times in your life do you do stupid stuff like this? Wait, don’t answer that. It’s too bad the season premiere of Hereos is on tonight as well.

I wonder if anyone is going to come dressed up as Master Chief like the crazy dedicated Star Wars Fans do for their movies?

My PodBrix order shipped!

September 24th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO® | No Comments »

Last month I had greatest stroke of luck and was able to secure an order for the new “Young Woz and Jobs Playset” from Podbrix.com.

For those of you that don’t know, PodBrix (not affiliated with Apple® or LEGO®) has been making collectible sets using events in Apple history as the theme for each set.

Back to the big story. Only 300 of these highly collectible sets were made! This prompted a flurry of LEGO® and Apple® fans to visit their site when the item was launched, needless to say, crashing the server by the invading hordes. Within seconds the server began responding slower and slower, and in the end crashed and was rendered useless. Collectors, still determined, continued to try to secure an order. It was during that time I somehow managed to get the set added to my shopping cart and submit my payment; however, I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I wasn’t sure if my order was successfully submitted and if I would actually receive my order. This is why I didn’t report anything on my site. Until now.

Last night I received an email stating that my order had shipped. WOO HOO! Now the waiting game begins to receive it.

Click the image above to see more pictures of this highly collectible set.

LEGO® accepting pre-orders for the Star Wars Motorized AT-AT (#10178)!!!!

September 19th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO® | No Comments »

I spoke too soon earlier today.

Looks like while I was on my way home that LEGO® S@H added the new Star Wars AT-AT (#10178) to their catalog and are now accepting pre-orders to be shipped by October 4th!

New LEGO® Star Wars Motorized AT-AT(#10178) is selling in Europe!

September 19th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO®, LEGO® Links | No Comments »

The new LEGO® Motorized Star Wars AT-AT (#10178) has started selling on the LEGO® S@H site!

I haven’t heard anything about the number of pieces, how it differs from the original Star Wars AT-AT that LEGO® released some years back. I also haven’t been able to figure out the price as it doesn’t report that info since of course I’m not in Europe. Whatever the price is, this is going to be a must have for any LEGO® and/or Star Wars fan this holiday season!

With rumors of a new UCS Death Star set, the Star Wars line looks strong and will continue to provide us some great looking sets!

The wait is almost over for the LEGO® Star Wars UCS Millennium Falcon™ (#10179)!

September 14th, 2007 by Anil | Posted in LEGO® | No Comments »

I got an email from my bank that there may be a suspicious charge on my account.

So, I logged into my account and saw the charge. Normally one would be upset, angry, frustrated, and worried all at the same time. This time, I was happy. Why you wonder? It is because the charge was for the pre-order I had placed back on February 11th of this year with LEGO® for the Star Wars UCS Millennium Falcon™ (#10179).

The charge was a for the pre-authorization. After speaking with a LEGO® S@H rep, she informed me that the sets arrived at their facility and will be shipping to their customers soon. :) Now the issue is I will be in Chicago, attending the Adobe MAX 2007 convention when the shipment is slated to arrive. Two good things in one week :D

Update 09/24/2007:

I just got off the phone with LEGO® S@H and they informed me that my order has shipped. I can’t wait to get these. I’ll post pics of the box as soon as I get my hands on it.