Thanks, I've heard that also. My source was a friend from Norway who showed me a book of Norwegian mythology that, except for the character names, read like the audio script for the Bionicle movie.
Bionicles are more like action figures than traditional Lego toys. They were supposed to lure in the 7-12 boy market, but I have no idea how well they sold.
The touble is that Dr Who was a serial. Finding one lost episode doesn't really help much if the other half dozen that surrounds it are also missing.
Then keep looking till you have found the other 5 (I don't think there were any 7 parters:-) till you get to
Of course if there was a serial with just one missing show - then this should be grounds for much rejoicing and the stamping of large quantities of overpriced DVD's. But with all those early episodes being missing, the odds are not good.
...which may have something to do with the rejoycing
My son and his buddy have started making stop-action movies with their bionicles. The ball joints help!
Thats weard I was just going to post and ask if anyone knew of stopmotion Bionicle films
For his information the new balljoints seem much more grippy than before
.. do they really want to keep the bionicle products?
Aside from the fact that Bionicle is hugely popular and responsible for getting
LEGO out of the red last time?
Bionicle is not as generic as the bricks why is this evil? It is very very
good at what it does, make robotoid creatures. My 5 year old son can (on his own) make a
biped creature (with lots of heads and swords:-) which he can actually stand
up. Consider the alturnative I could get him a SuperMegaSnod action figure
which will always be the same (give or take torture by magnifying glass) or I could
buy him a few Bionicle sets and let him make his own action figures.
>> personally I think the complaints about special bricks is based on
>> envy that they didn't have them to play with when they were kids...
>> I once held that view, but changed it when I fitst played LEGO
>> with my son
>So you actually envied other people who got to play with the more recent
>LEGO products, until your son let you play with his? If you envied them,
>why didn't you just buy some earlier?
LEGO is expensive and I did not search my feelings till after 'having'
to buy some
The bioncle parts are bionicle specific, but they're used extensively in the bionicle line.
Most of the the body units are bionicle specific, but the bionicle parts are poping up
in more an more LEGO kits (for example the whindscreen on the H.O.T. Blaster Bike
is a Toa nuva
shoulder pad. parts of the Spybotics guns are Bohrok hands.
I think there not popping up in many other kits because the bionicle range is still
quite new
Hmmm Spybotics are basically Mindstorm. I wonder if they are pulling the plug on them.
It would be a shame they are little robot cars with some cool games to play and the option
of programming them
>>but the things won't stay together unless you use glue!
>Well duh!, the things arent supposed to stay together!
Yes they are supposed to stay together. Children do this funney thing called
playing when they have built them and they will object if the tail keeps
dropping off if you so much as touch it. With LEGO I know the tail will
stay on untill taken apart
I remember my dad complaining about "too many special pieces" when I was a kid in the 80's. We had some older legos (they're legos, not Lego(R) bricks, dammit!)
The LEGO company would beg to disagree. Its all caps and never LEGO's see page 16 of compprofileeng.pdf
that were just the simple colored bricks, but the newer "town" and "space" legos had radar dishes, antennae, car bottoms, etc. Also, the small scale of the little lego people means that you really can't make things at the same scale with plain bricks, because the "resolution" is too coarse.
Amen to that. One of the delights of the special bricks is that they
can be used to create on a much smaller scale requireing less LEGO to make something.
personally I think the complaints about special bricks is based on envy that they didn't have them
to play with when they were kids... I once held that view, but changed it when I fitst played
LEGO with my son (I've now entered my second LEGOhood)
As the father of 7 and 8 year old boys, the elder of which has quite a collection of Bionicles, I've observed one little tidbit about Lego: if you lose or break a piece, it's gonna cost you an arm and a leg to replace it (No Bionicle Pun Intended;).
There is considerable redundancy between the bionicle sets, chances are a lost part can be
made up from stock. So what if you can't make all 6 Rahkshi at the same time? IMHO following the
designs is a very small part of the LEGO experence.
Cool we made our boy a LEGO bionicle mask cake for his 5th brithday.. very easy to do 2 sheets of iceing cut the top sheet to make the
raised details and use a food spray dye to colour. It helps to choose an easy mask !
the worse part of this is that it becomes nearly impossible to build anything but the "set" that you get the pieces with.
You don't have kids do you? Kids get on fine retasking even the smallest LEGO set
There are 102,981,500 diferent ways of combining six eight stud bricks of the same colour,
perhaps there is something wrong with your imagination.
I thought that Gripen was the name for one of those fancy IKEA entertainment centers.
An IKEA catalog can make good party game, one person selects an item, then the others have
to guess what it is by the name... If you don't find this funny drink more till you do:-)
While i aprrcieate your plight (wishing to see the stars again), it often serves to be more practical.
Cutting down light pollution is practical, any light going up and is no use to anyone. Putting a simple reflectors on top of street lights a) cuts the light pollution b) gives more light for people to see where there going and/or c) reduces the amount of power you need to provide a given lighting level (reducing CO2 production). Would you really miss thoes trendy spherical street lights that send 50% of their light straight up?
Dude! Automotive Tractor Beams? Government control of private vehicles! That is SO 1984. {rolleyes}
Big Brother does not need Tractor Beams. Big Brother is watching you. If you commit any speed crimes the police would be waiting when you got to your destination. Anyway where did you get that petrol? You know all the petrol is needed for our war with Eastasia.
I think you are missing the point. If you combine all the choices you have to make and in the end you still end up with sev 1 issues, then you should consider the fact that your mission is impossible to achieve and abort in the planning / design stage.
Beagle 2 (and of Mars Express) could have blown up on the launchpad, thats a sev 1 issue. Are you suggesting that the entire space program should be junked because of this?
Listening out for Beagle 2
The 76m Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory is ready to try and find Beagle 2 on Christmas evening. At 10:40 pm GMT Beagle 2 will begin to transmit an on/off sequence each minute - like very slow Morse Code - and about nearly 9 minutes later the signals should reach Earth. The transmitter power, at 5 watts, is little more than that of a mobile phone, but the team at Jodrell Bank have installed a very sensitive receiver to pick up the Beagle 2 frequency.
See more details on the Jodrell Bank website>
Betting on Life on Mars
Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, has cut its odds of finding life on Mars from 33-1 to 25-1 after a flurry of bets following the successful separation of Beagle 2 from Mars Express.
Whilst these might not be true odds, the firm has taken the decision to minimise payouts in case Beagle 2 finds any evidence. Bets have been placed on the "Life on Mars" outcome since 1969.
Link to Times story
since virus genomes do not do any sort of recombination that allows them to exchange genetic material.
All you need to get recombination between virual 'species' is a double infection or a single cell
ie a bird and mammal virus infect the same cell at the same time (an unlikely event but given the numbers of virus sloshing around happens from time to time). When they replecate there is a lot
of 'naked' viral genomic DNA which spends a lot of time recombining with the host genome and each other (assuming they have sequences in common).
The accumulation of random mutations is much more likely, especially considering that viruses have very few defenses agains mutation, and little, if any, DNA (or RNA) repair mechanisms.
Absolutly true the virus has no repair mechanisms OTOH the host cell which they hijack to replecate in has all the DNA repair mechanisms it needs (I don't think there are RNA repair mechaninisms for obvious reasons).
In any case the conclusions are based on sequence comparison it is very unlikely that a mamalian gene randomly mutated to look like a bird virus gene
Yes, it is. I would say we're not mystified, just a little bemused. And stop calling it football! Football is played by big men in armor, not little men in shorts.
American football... a game where something that is not a ball is hardly ever kicked... at least they got the American bit right
Thanks for the link, but really, that's the most boring space picture I have ever seen.
Ture, the NASA film trailers are much more exciting. The CGI sequences of Mars Express releasing Beagle 2 are so much more slick.
The picture of Beagle 2 is real, its not some imagineered artists impression designed to thrill a bit more cash out of the backers or drup up popular support from a jaded populous. Its a picture of something that actually happened 100 million miles away, thats why its an exciting picture.
Slashdot Mirror
>Don't make us come over there and liberate your legos.
At least with 52 LEGO bricks for everyone in the world, you stand a better than normal chance of finding what your looking for :-P
Interesting .... Do you recall what it was called?
Very very well indeed. More background here.
Then keep looking till you have found the other 5 (I don't think there were any 7 parters :-) till you get to
Of course if there was a serial with just one missing show - then this should be grounds for much rejoicing and the stamping of large quantities of overpriced DVD's. But with all those early episodes being missing, the odds are not good....which may have something to do with the rejoycing
Thats weard I was just going to post and ask if anyone knew of stopmotion Bionicle films For his information the new balljoints seem much more grippy than before
Aside from the fact that Bionicle is hugely popular and responsible for getting LEGO out of the red last time?
Bionicle is not as generic as the bricks why is this evil? It is very very good at what it does, make robotoid creatures. My 5 year old son can (on his own) make a biped creature (with lots of heads and swords :-) which he can actually stand
up. Consider the alturnative I could get him a SuperMegaSnod action figure
which will always be the same (give or take torture by magnifying glass) or I could
buy him a few Bionicle sets and let him make his own action figures.
That would be cool they could even do a Web page with online ordering. The it would be nice if they had a pick n'mix system in their shops :-) :-).
>> envy that they didn't have them to play with when they were kids... >> I once held that view, but changed it when I fitst played LEGO
>> with my son
>So you actually envied other people who got to play with the more recent >LEGO products, until your son let you play with his? If you envied them, >why didn't you just buy some earlier?
LEGO is expensive and I did not search my feelings till after 'having' to buy some
The do come with instructions
Most of the the body units are bionicle specific, but the bionicle parts are poping up in more an more LEGO kits (for example the whindscreen on the H.O.T. Blaster Bike is a Toa nuva shoulder pad. parts of the Spybotics guns are Bohrok hands. I think there not popping up in many other kits because the bionicle range is still quite new
Hmmm Spybotics are basically Mindstorm. I wonder if they are pulling the plug on them. It would be a shame they are little robot cars with some cool games to play and the option of programming them
>Well duh!, the things arent supposed to stay together!
Yes they are supposed to stay together. Children do this funney thing called playing when they have built them and they will object if the tail keeps dropping off if you so much as touch it. With LEGO I know the tail will stay on untill taken apart
Someone already makes lego compatible blocks, there called Mega Blox (I would link but could not find company web page)
The LEGO company would beg to disagree. Its all caps and never LEGO's see page 16 of compprofileeng.pdf
that were just the simple colored bricks, but the newer "town" and "space" legos had radar dishes, antennae, car bottoms, etc. Also, the small scale of the little lego people means that you really can't make things at the same scale with plain bricks, because the "resolution" is too coarse.
Amen to that. One of the delights of the special bricks is that they can be used to create on a much smaller scale requireing less LEGO to make something. personally I think the complaints about special bricks is based on envy that they didn't have them to play with when they were kids... I once held that view, but changed it when I fitst played LEGO with my son (I've now entered my second LEGOhood)
There is considerable redundancy between the bionicle sets, chances are a lost part can be made up from stock. So what if you can't make all 6 Rahkshi at the same time? IMHO following the designs is a very small part of the LEGO experence.
Cool we made our boy a LEGO bionicle mask cake for his 5th brithday.. very easy to do 2 sheets of iceing cut the top sheet to make the raised details and use a food spray dye to colour. It helps to choose an easy mask !
You don't have kids do you? Kids get on fine retasking even the smallest LEGO set There are 102,981,500 diferent ways of combining six eight stud bricks of the same colour, perhaps there is something wrong with your imagination.
An IKEA catalog can make good party game, one person selects an item, then the others have to guess what it is by the name... If you don't find this funny drink more till you do:-)
Cutting down light pollution is practical, any light going up and is no use to anyone. Putting a simple reflectors on top of street lights a) cuts the light pollution b) gives more light for people to see where there going and/or c) reduces the amount of power you need to provide a given lighting level (reducing CO2 production). Would you really miss thoes trendy spherical street lights that send 50% of their light straight up?
Didn't you get the memo??? Reeducation for you me'lad
Big Brother does not need Tractor Beams. Big Brother is watching you. If you commit any speed crimes the police would be waiting when you got to your destination. Anyway where did you get that petrol? You know all the petrol is needed for our war with Eastasia.
Beagle 2 (and of Mars Express) could have blown up on the launchpad, thats a sev 1 issue. Are you suggesting that the entire space program should be junked because of this?
more stuff from the Beagle 2 weblog
Listening out for Beagle 2
The 76m Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory is ready to try and find Beagle 2 on Christmas evening. At 10:40 pm GMT Beagle 2 will begin to transmit an on/off sequence each minute - like very slow Morse Code - and about nearly 9 minutes later the signals should reach Earth. The transmitter power, at 5 watts, is little more than that of a mobile phone, but the team at Jodrell Bank have installed a very sensitive receiver to pick up the Beagle 2 frequency. See more details on the Jodrell Bank website>
Betting on Life on Mars
Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, has cut its odds of finding life on Mars from 33-1 to 25-1 after a flurry of bets following the successful separation of Beagle 2 from Mars Express. Whilst these might not be true odds, the firm has taken the decision to minimise payouts in case Beagle 2 finds any evidence. Bets have been placed on the "Life on Mars" outcome since 1969. Link to Times story
All you need to get recombination between virual 'species' is a double infection or a single cell ie a bird and mammal virus infect the same cell at the same time (an unlikely event but given the numbers of virus sloshing around happens from time to time). When they replecate there is a lot of 'naked' viral genomic DNA which spends a lot of time recombining with the host genome and each other (assuming they have sequences in common).
The accumulation of random mutations is much more likely, especially considering that viruses have very few defenses agains mutation, and little, if any, DNA (or RNA) repair mechanisms.Absolutly true the virus has no repair mechanisms OTOH the host cell which they hijack to replecate in has all the DNA repair mechanisms it needs (I don't think there are RNA repair mechaninisms for obvious reasons).
In any case the conclusions are based on sequence comparison it is very unlikely that a mamalian gene randomly mutated to look like a bird virus gene
American football... a game where something that is not a ball is hardly ever kicked... at least they got the American bit right
Ture, the NASA film trailers are much more exciting. The CGI sequences of Mars Express releasing Beagle 2 are so much more slick.
The picture of Beagle 2 is real, its not some imagineered artists impression designed to thrill a bit more cash out of the backers or drup up popular support from a jaded populous. Its a picture of something that actually happened 100 million miles away, thats why its an exciting picture.