Archive for the ‘Toys’ Category

My Very Own Opera House

Tuesday, September 16th, 2014

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That’s the Sydney Opera House. It’s world famous. You all know it. Everyone knows it!

Thanks to the support of JBF and JAF, it was time to build my own. Here’s what it looked like in the box:

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And what was inside:

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The real Opera House is constructed of millions of kilograms of steel and glass and concrete, not to mention (exactly) 1,056,006 ceramic tiles. My version is a bit smaller, composed of only 2989 pieces of plastic. It won’t be less grand though!

The original Opera House was built in three distinct stages: The base/podium, then the roof, then the interiors. My version was build in four stages: Stage 1, 2, 3 and 4. Here’s a shot of the beginning of construction of Stage 1:

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Here’s what Stage 1 looked like upon completion:

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It may look simple enough, but there is some radical and unprecedented construction innovations in that piece of the podium, much like in the version in Sydney.

Here’s some in-progress shots:

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Construction of the real Opera House took 15 years and ended up horribly behind schedule (by ten years in fact) and over budget (by more than 14x the original estimate of $7 million). Construction of my opera house had it’s ups and downs as well, not the least of which being a lack of necessary parts. A quick call to a supplier (otherwise known as ‘LEGO customer service’) remedied that problem but resulted in a delay of over two weeks inserted into the middle of construction. All told, I’d estimate about 20-25 hours were needed to finish it.

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The original Opera House is 180 meters long and 65 meters high. My version is about 60 cm long and 25 cm high! In fact, it’s about as long and tall as Yossie and weighs about as much as well!

I loved making this kit, probably the most of any Lego kit I have ever made. Given my love for the original building, I can’t imagine how Lego may top this one. Unless they make the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

So how do I display such a massive piece? Well for now, like this:

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(Long Live) The Playstation Vita (Is Dead)

Monday, August 11th, 2014

Earlier this year I purchased one of these:

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It’s the Playstation Vita, which is their followup game system to the PSP. It actually came out quite some time ago (December 2011), but I held off buying one simply because there was nothing on it that tickled my fancy. The game that eventually lured me enough was TKX by Jeff Minter:

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There’s a lot to like about the Vita. It’s solidly built, has very nice controls (especially the dual sticks), is solid state only (which means no silly discs like the PSP) and has a beautiful screen. And when I say beautiful, I mean beautiful. To save costs Sony has actually downgraded the screen in newer models to an LED, but the first version (and the one I have) includes an OLED screen which is simply the brightest and highest resolution screen on anything I own. Yes it means the battery life is abysmal (maybe 2 hours) and the unit is quite heavy but I’d say the tradeoff is worth it for the great screen.

The problem with the Vita is, well it’s that it’s pretty much a dead system.

What does that mean? It means that here in America retail support for the system has floundered, and interest amongst consumers is at an all-time low. Few games are released for the system and those that are don’t have any sort of wide appeal. Furthermore, there are no games at all scheduled after November this year and Sony themselves have said they will release no games themselves. By this time next year I very much doubt this system will be in stores, if produced at all.

And yet these past few weeks I’ve been having more fun with my Vita than any of my other game systems! These ‘no wide appeal’ games infrequently coming out are mostly niche Japanese RPGs which mean they’re my game of choice and I’ve been snapping them up! Games like…

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Demon Gaze, an awesome Wizardry clone featuring a complex game system and fabulous graphics…

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Toukiden, the closest game every to capture the magic of Monster Hunter. The screenshot above shows how impressive the graphics of the Vita can be in an AAA game…

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Persona 4 Golden which I haven’t played yet (it’s next on my list) but if it’s anywhere near as good as Persona 3 on the PSP will be a gem!

There’s many more, and most of the remaining games are of this genre as well. Even if nothing else is released after November, I’ll still have a library that will take me a year or more to finish (assuming I ever stop playing Toukiden). For a dead system, that’s not so bad!

So what killed the Vita? It was an also-ran outside of Japan, where it seemed to immediately inherit the niche market from the PSP. Western exclusives were nonexistent and ports from PS3 games (such as Borderlands 2) were flawed. Obviously competition from the 3DS (especially Capcom’s choice to move Monster Hunter to 3DS) and tablets/phones hurt as well. But ultimately the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of Sony, who for many many years now have demonstrated they have no idea how to market a handheld outside of Japan.

Rest in Peace Vita. You may be a dead system and simply not know it yet, but I’m going to be playing you for a long time yet!

Liger Zero!

Tuesday, July 8th, 2014

Over a month ago, I started building this:

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It’s my first ‘ZOIDS’ model kit, and was easily the most expensive kit I have ever bought. I knew getting into it that this was no toy, and that assembly may prove challenging, but then I’ve made challenging kits before and looked forward to it.

Here’s what the contents looked like before I started putting it together:

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That’s a lot of pieces! In total there were 28 sprues in 6 colours. Much like the advanced Gundam kits, some of the plastic was flexible (mostly used for joints) and the kit is designed to be assembled without glue. There are 13 pages of instructions with 77 unique steps, and the kit is assembled in 4 distinct sections (head, body, legs, tail).

I started with the head and immediately noted a problem: the instructions are printed quite small. My eyesight is changing, and I’m finding I don’t need my glasses anymore for near vision. However I’m stubborn and don’t want to take them off so I struggled with working on this since I found it quickly hurt my eyes. (Many of you now I know are saying “Why didn’t he just remove his glasses???“)

So construction was completed in many steps of perhaps 2 hours each, spread over an entire month. It was challenging, but a lot of fun.

First to be completed was the head:

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The complexity of this kit is staggering. The head alone has 38 pieces in it, and 5 points of articulation. The mouth and cockpit open, and the jets on the side and frill on the top can be positioned. By the time I had finished this piece it was clear I was building a kit with an incredible level of detail.

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The two tools you see above were indispensable. The cutters to remove pieces from the plastic, and the file to smooth them down. Such is the precision in this kit that even submillimeter bumps are significant. If you make a Zoid, be sure to have the right tools.

For a month or so my work table looked like this:

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You can see by the above point I had also finished the body:

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That’s not a rigid piece. It can bend and elongate, and all the joints are articulated as well. Many dozens of pieces went into it, including the smallest one in the entire kit:

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That’s just absurd!

The legs took the most time of all the sections:

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Each leg contains a whopping 78 pieces! They are even more articulated than the rest of the kit and there are significant differences between the front and rear legs. Compared to all this the tail was simple, and then it was time to put it all together:

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Or, in a rather more dramatic pose:

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Looks great doesn’t he? The finished kit is about 20 cm long and stands 12 cm at the shoulder. According to the instructions, the actual Liger Zero is a mighty 84 meters in length and weighs 85 tonnes!

Such is the engineering of this model that painting is hardly required, and in fact the instructions seem to mention it only as an afterthought (they give the paint codes for the plastic used, rather than show a repainted version). However the armor is detachable and Kotobukiya actually sells (not inexpensive!) armor upgrade kits if you want to convert your Liger Zero into Liger Zero Panzer (green, with a back-mounted cannon) or other variants. Fascinating.

My next kit will be another Musha Gundam that I purchased in Japan last year. It will be another time consuming and precise build that may wait until next Summer. After that, who knows?

The Price Of A Smile?

Friday, June 6th, 2014

I’ve been dealing with some acute homesickness these past few days, which has been difficult. I tried several things to snap out of it, mostly with little success. And then I realized I should have paid more attention to a certain recent marketing blitz, since the solution was only a walk away from home. What is this solution I speak of? A Happy Meal!

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It had been many years since I’ve eaten McDonalds; even longer since I’d eaten it in America. It was with no small amount of curiosity that I ordered my lunch and handed the exotically attractive cashier my $2.15. Such was my giddy anticipation that I wasn’t even offended by the weird look she gave me when I asked for “no ice” in my soda.

I sat equidistant from the army of screeching children and the drooling geriatric and tried to suppress my excitement as I opened the paper bag my food was presented in. Here’s what it looked like:

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Have you ever seen such a fine collection of cuisine for only $2.15?!? A few immediate observations:
1) Happy Meals now come with apple slices as standard. I wonder if they do this to appease local laws?
2) The Happy Meal fry portion size has shrunk considerably.
3) Caloric content is now written on the packaging itself (the above is 365 Calories in total).

As delicious as this looks, the smell was even better. In particular, the effect of fat molecules subliming from the fries and directly infusing into my bloodstream via my nostrils was… beyond words!

Let’s eat shall we? Here was my ‘hamburger’:

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Deceptively simple isn’t it. But a treasure of taste is to be found between the buns:

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Wonderful! Forget the (single) pickle, the strange sauces and the mysterious onions. The true success of this burger came from the seductively artificial texture and taste. As I sat chewing, gazing distantly at the view of an industrial wastebin out the window, I became acutely aware of the way the plasticine taste of the meat patty combined with the hint of rubber texture in the bun and created a new sensation in my mouth that was revolutionary and even challenging and seemed to herald the future of food. I watched an evil child hiss demoniacally while he destroyed his Happy Meal toy, and once again marveled at how McDonalds could deliver such an experience for so little cost.

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There were 22 fries in my meal, with an average length of about 4.5 cm. That’s about a meter of potato, which is more than enough for a healthy individual like me. They were delicious of course, so much so I didn’t quietly judge the large man that sat near me and started eating two large fries. If only I had his gusto, I thought! But then he didn’t have my apple slices, and couldn’t enjoy the crisp, chemical taste of the fresh apples, almost certainly peeled and packaged this morning. I was delighted.

All things considered it was an interesting and challenging meal, and one that this supertaster would not hesitate to recommend to those that seek to explore the limits of cuisine (as I do). Of course I experienced stomach cramps as I walked home, but I think you would agree that fifteen minutes of agony discomfort were certainly worth it.

And what of the toy?

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It’s a Pokemon X combo of a wonderful plastic thing with extremely high play value and a undoubtedly very powerful card for the Pokemon TCG. Highly collectible, these toys will be sealed inside a box and then placed in another box in my attic and then auctioned for many dollars decades from now. Or maybe thrown away.

And what of my goal? Did the bold marketing claim work, and was this indeed a meal that left my happy? For reasons I hope are obvious in this review, I think I would have to say that yes, yes it did πŸ˜‰

Another Lego Crane

Wednesday, May 21st, 2014

Over the last week, I assembled this Lego kit:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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

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

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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 πŸ™‚