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The Tale of Mycroft and Stocking

Wednesday, June 25th, 2014

Have you heard of Avalon Island? If not, then you’re missing out because a diverse group of citizens is really making it an interesting place to live.

That’s the latest census shot. Take a close look at the front row. There are some familiar faces there! There’s a dude that looks like me, a girl that looks like KLS, and people that look like Adam, Bernard and Florence. Very weird place, Avalon is. You’ll also note a diverse range of other citizens including Einstein, David Bowie, Ali G and even Admiral Ackbar. What an island!!

The islanders have many talents, and I’m particularly interested in their musical abilities. It didn’t take long for instance for Florry and Severus Snape (who must have moved here from Hogwarts) to form a band and start recording techno music. I present the first single by ‘Dark Artists’ named Operation Robodachi:

Now that’s talent! And not only can Florry sing, but she’s also a yoga savant!

But let’s get to the matter at hand, which is a chronologue of a recent ultra-dramatic event that occured on Avalon.

Meet Stocking (of Panty & Stocking fame), here shown in one of her daily jobs as a newsreader:

Cute isn’t she? Anyway she came to me and said she had a mad crush on Mycroft (the guy that looks like Adam). I was not surprised by this, since I had already seen the latest poll of all the girls on the island:

Woah, there’s something about those top three guys that just get the female hearts fluttering! I wonder what it could be?

Anyway, I told Stocking to go for it. “Be cute”, I said, “and confess to Mycroft on the beach!”. And she did…

He was silent for a moment… and then he said…

OMG!!! He spurned her! Or, in her own words:

Poor stocking.

So what happened? Why was such a cute girl rejected by the islands most eligible bachelor? Well the answer is quite simply really. Mycroft has no time for love, since he has sold his soul to rock-and-roll. Behold, the debut single of the new Avalon metal trio The Three Kings:

OMG what talent! Could pop princess Florry have competition for the Avalon charts? And what does she think of the Mycroft x Stocking drama? When asked, her only response was:

Posted in Art, Games, Miscellaneous, Music, Otaku | 1 Comment »

Pinball Wizards

Monday, June 9th, 2014

A few years back we visited the video game exhibit at the Strong museum here in Rochester. Last year they added a large pinball collection to the museum, and many are on display and playable. This morning we went to check it out.

That’s a crazy Atari pinball from 1979 that uses actual pool balls for balls. It was very noisy! This was just one of dozens of pinballs on display, all of which we played.

The games were arranged chronologically, from very early mechanical games all the way up to a Star Trek game from last year. They also had a display of historical documents and prototype pieces.

It’s very cool, and the games are still fun to play. Highly recommended.

Needless to say we also had to visit the arcade in which arcade games from the museum collection are playable. Right now they have a seasonal display showcasing some very rare machines.

That’s the ESB retrofit for a sit down Star Wars cabinet. I haven’t seen that since Orbit 100 over 30 years ago!

Needless to say I had to play the best arcade game ever made…

You may want to compare my score to the best I achieved in Australia back in January.

As I said years ago, Strong museum has an incredible permanent video game exhibit. I’ll certainly be back again one day 🙂

Posted in Games, Otaku | 1 Comment »

One Year Later

Thursday, June 5th, 2014

I’ll just present this here:

I think this is the third game – after Animal Crossing (GameCube) and World of Warcraft (Mac) I’ve played for over a year. And since I’m enjoying it as much as ever, I reckon there’s life left in PazuDora yet 🙂

Posted in Games, Otaku, Time | Comments Closed

Another Lego Crane

Wednesday, May 21st, 2014

Over the last week, I assembled this Lego kit:

As far as these kits go, this one is seriously lacking originality, being almost identical in design and construction to other cranes I have made before.

As it turns out my familiarity with the basic design would almost be my downfall! This kit has 108 pages of assembly instructions, with over 250 individual steps. And on the 19th page, less than 20% into the construction, I made an error. This isn’t the end of the world – everyone makes mistakes with complex Lego kits here and there. But this tiny mistake became massive indeed since I didn’t notice it until over 70 pages later!

Here it is:

See that circled piece? We’ll call than an ‘eleven-er’. It should have been 2 tabs shorter, a ‘nine-er’. But it’s so embedded into the construction of the crane that removal at this point would require essentially dismantling 50% of the build and redoing it – losing many hours of work. What was I to do? I was so close to the finish at this point that my options were few, and I really, really didn’t want to dismantle and start again. So I had a brainwave:

Can’t see the fix can you? The curved piece on the side of the crane is attached using the 9 piece that I should have used 70 pages earlier. I had to attach it differently (the original instructions required the 11 piece and it was attached at the bottom not at the top as I did). But it’s very clean and it’s only visible in profile that there is an error:

Notice how on the left side the side panel is not flush with the body of the crane? Not perfect perhaps, but good enough 🙂

Here’s the final product compared to a very large animal so you can see how big it is:

It’s a very nice kit. The crane can be raised and lowered, and the claw at the end opens and closes using a fascinating mechanism. The kit can also be fitted with the technic motor and be battery driven, but my motor is still in my other crane so I didn’t do that. All things considered this is a great kit and while derivative of the other cranes I’m glad I own it 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys | 2 Comments »

Hidden Treasure

Sunday, May 18th, 2014

Over a year ago I purchased this:

It’s the original AD&D Forgotten Realms box set from 1987. It’s in great condition, and all the elements are included:

I didn’t open it until the other day, and imagine my surprise when I saw this on the title page of the main book:

It’s autographed! Here’s a close up of Jeff Grubb and Ed Greenwood’s:

With a bit of effort I was able to find images of both online and these certainly look genuine.

I wonder where and when they signed this 27-year-old box set? And I wonder if the seller who sold this to me for under $20 realizes it’s easily worth up to $10k due to the signatures 😉

Posted in Games, Otaku | 2 Comments »

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