There was a minor kerfuffle this past week about LEGO declining to produce a model based on the Serenity spaceship from the TV series Firefly. I would link to the project page but it has already been removed from the site. Suffice it to say that the project did reach 10,000 supporting votes, the minimum required for The LEGO Group to officially consider the proposal for a production release. However LEGO declined to continue the project.

I will say that I am not particularly surprised that LEGO declined to produce the set. It was a long shot in the first place, especially given that they responded similarly for the Winchester building from Shaun of the Dead and later provided a clarification of their stance on incorporating other brands into their product line. From a corporate standard it actually does make some sense: LEGO is attempting to manage their image to affiliate it with childhood, toys, and to some extent naivete. That’s their choice and it’s not an unreasonable one even if I don’t always agree with all of their decisions.

However it was this morning on Twitter that I saw what is apparently the specific reason that the Serenity model was rejected: Sex. Here’s the relevant tweets.

@khaleesi_jp Sorry to disappoint u & the 10K who voted for the idea. We design many sets for older builders but all LEGO products must – 1/2

— The LEGO Group (@LEGO_Group) May 9, 2012

@khaleesi_jp be content-app for child 6-11 why we didn’t want to link d LEGO brand 2 d Inara character who’s a cntrl part of the story – 2/2

— The LEGO Group (@LEGO_Group) May 9, 2012

@khaleesi_jp Inara is a central character and we did not deem it impossible to license the IP without creating a link to this character

— The LEGO Group (@LEGO_Group) May 9, 2012

So it wasn’t the violence, as should be fairly obvious given their enormously successful Star Wars line of products, it was all about the sex. That Inara is un-apologetically in the sex industry means that LEGO can not associate themselves with the entire brand. Well, at least those tweets were fairly honest.

BTW – Prostitution has been legal in Denmark for over a decade.

Summary: If you like action movies, comic book movies, special effects, Jos Whedon’s work, or pop culture experiences: go see it. It’s worth seeing on a big screen with the sound a bit too loud.

Fair warning, there will be spoilers below. If you have a problem with that stop reading now.

As some of you may know, I’ve been an Avengers fan for the majority of my life. I was thirteen years old when I picked up a copy of West Coast Avengers issue #31. The next month I picked up Avengers #291, and from there on I was hooked. I own 90% of the issues published (including the myriad of spin-offs) between 1963 and 2006, when I decided to spend my discretionary money on LEGO instead of comics which just become increasingly difficult to store over time. I grew into my adulthood with the Avengers. I said this to give some context so that you might understand why I had been dreading and looking forward for this movie to come out ever since they released the first Iron Man movie in 2008.

Because it’s exceedingly early in the morning and I’m feeling like rambling, I will say that Iron Man is not my favorite Avenger. That would be Hawkeye, followed pretty closely by Captain Marvel (Monica Lambeau), She-Hulk, Captain America, and Hank Pym (Yes, really: Hank Pym). However the first Iron MAn movie was really excellently done. The updated the origin story in a way that made sense, they cast a nearly ideal actor for Tony Stark, and it really worked on a lot of levels and was very enjoyable to watch. For me it really hasn’t lost much of it’s luster either and when I saw it earlier today on the big screen again, it was still a thrill. It also started a flicker of hope that when the eventual Avengers movie arrived it would be worth seeing.

Oh yeah: I arrived at a local movie theater today at 11:10am so that I could watch Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton version, not the crappy Ang Lee versions), Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and then (at midnight) The Avengers. To be honest I had already been planning on doing essentially this at home however the allure of doing so with a big screen, though without a pause button, was too much to pass up, and I’m glad I did it. It was an excellent opportunity to interact with fellow fans of all kinds and see the movies in a format that does them credit. It doesn’t quite feel like I actually spent 16 hours at the theater yet, though I’m pretty sure it will in the morning. Well, later this morning. Or perhaps this afternoon. Anyway…

As I said on Twitter while waiting for the traffic to clear out of the parking lot: I have a few quibbles with the movie but overall it was quite good and I am likely to see it at least one more time in the theater. I think it was true to the spirit of the comics and worked pretty well in the universe they’ve created with the movies so far. I was thrilled to see Maria Hill as a character, and a pretty kick-ass one at that, and having Hawkeye as a founding member in this version of the Avengers was a treat for me though really not nearly enough of him since he spent half the movie on the bad guy’s team against his own free will.

It was every bit a Joss Whedon movie. Long sections following a particular piece of the action without a cut. Witty dialog and the almost trademark humor. And he kills off a fan favorite character. I’ve really enjoyed the Agent Coulson character through the various movies. The way the actor continued to pull off understatement in the face of everything going on around him in some cases had him stealing scenes. During the marathon they had specially shot introductions to each of the five preceding movies with just Coulson talking to the camera for a couple of minutes and they were all funny and endearing and added to the experience. (I’ll be shocked if they aren’t a DVD extra) For those who may not be familiar with Mr Whedon’s previous history on this point, it’s an actual thing. Assuming he had the choice, I can see why he picked Coulson. Hill didn’t have enough time on screen to have enough impact. Nick Fury is… well, Nick Fury. I’m sure he’ll die someday. Or maybe not. Hawkeye or The Black Widow? It’s not worth killing off a character you can milk for merchandising and possible sequels later. Any of the big three (Cap, Thor, Iron Man) is pretty close to inconceivable for somewhat obvious reasons, including the previous. Hulk? Ditto. I don’t really pay much attention to channels that might have leaked Coulson’s death before hand. I don’t actively avoid spoilers, but I don’t generally seek them out. So when The Avengers finally started to roll tonight I went into it actively watching for who I thought he might take out, and I didn’t see it coming. Here’s the thing: Having that sort of reputation means that every time he does it, the impact is lessened and in the case of a character I really liked and to some extent cared about, I think it seriously cheapened the whole thing.

Oh look, Mr. Whedon killed off somebody we care about again. Ho hum.

I think I’m pretty much done with that Mr. Whedon. We get the point. We got the point before Serenity. Now that you’ve done it in a movie that a hugely significant portion of the population of the western hemisphere is likely to see I think it’s time to move on before that horse you are beating becomes less then paste.

Moving on, we have the three female characters with names in the movie. I’m not sure if I should feel elated or disappointed that there were three real characters with speaking parts that were female in a mega-blockbuster comic book movie. Given the demographics at the marathon that I was at today, which was at least 30% women (Really. Yes, I was a little surprised. And clearly MANY, or possibly most, were there NOT because they came with their boyfriends) having 25% of the major cast being female isn’t too bad for this kind of movie. Somewhat more interesting was the kind of range I thought the characters had. Maria Hill is a soldier, and as previously mentioned a pretty kick-ass one. On the other end of the spectrum, Pepper Pots played a purely supporting role as essentially a wife (Sure, not married, but whatever). Granted, a wife that didn’t put up with much from her husband and can give back in kind but unlike the strong, take-charge Pepper Potts we saw in the first two movies the very first opportunity for her to leave town for safety she gets sent packing. And then there was Natasha Romanov, The Black Widow.

Of ALL of the characters who should have emotional issues in the Avengers, it’s the Hulk. It’s kind of his thing. Yes, occasionally in the comics for whatever reason he gets over it temporarily. It is always, however, temporary. Why in this movie is the Hulk over his anger issues but they go back to the 1960′s to play out the Widow/Hawkeye stuff? I can tell you, it wasn’t very good the first time around and it didn’t come off a lot better this time. I dunno, maybe I’m wrong on that point but it didn’t quite feel right. I’m looking forward to hearing a feminist deconstruction of the character.

One last set of thoughts, and then I really must go to bed.

In all of my time reading comics the cliche that has always irritated me most is the bit where the good guys have to fight one another for the first half of a story. I know some people seem to adore that bit and debate endless who could beat-up who scenarios but I was bored with them before I was done being a teenager and have only thought the pretense for that particular brand of fan-service to have gotten more and more irritating since then. It will surprise no one then when I saw that in some ways that the big fight between Thor and The Hulk was the most boring part of the movie. I really thought about going and getting some more pop, maybe stroll to the bathroom, and then take in some movie posters but I figured how long could they possibly take to wank on the screen? Nearly 20 minutes is the answer, and it was about 19 minutes too long. The bit not long after that where they’re all in a conference room and bickering? That was fine. That shows actual relationships and conflicts of interest and all sorts of interesting stuff. But who would win if Thor and the Hulk got in a fight and Captain America tries to break it up? WHO THE FUCK CARES! That said, the single punch delivered by Hulk to Thor in the big battle at the end? Unnecessary, but funny.

I was doing some shopping today and ran across three new lines of soda that I had not previously seen. Haven’t tasted them all yet, but figured I’d at least mention them here before I forgot.

First up, while I was looking for the new Dry Soda flavors at Kowalski’s (which they did NOT have) I found Oogavé in Root Beer, Cola, Ginger Ale, and Watermelon Cream. I gave the Ginger Ale a miss this trip but if the other three are decent I’ll probably give that one a try as well. It was nice that the Cola was non-caffeinated and it’s great to see a different flavor like Watermelon Cream put out by anyone.

On the other side of the aisle in the drink mixers was Fever-Tree Ginger Beer. It’s diminutive size (200ml/6.8 fl oz) is what really marks it as a drink mixer instead of intended as a typical premium CSD and seems similar in approach to Fentimans line of smaller bottles for mixing. I do think it’s interesting on their website though that they appear to have both Ginger Bear and Ginger Ale flavors.

Later at Rainbow I saw they were carrying Big Bay Brewing Company Pierjumper Twisted Citrus and Oh Bouy! Cherry Cola. Unfortunately I skipped the Oh Bouy on the grounds that it might have actual cherry in it which wouldn’t do so well for me. (Oh, do I miss cherries…)

Hoping to take a couple of each to a party tomorrow night, so if you see me and want to try one just let me know!

New Marvel Comics Available on Nook 12/26/2011

• Avengers Forever
• Earth X
• Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman, Volume 1 [Fantastic Four (1997) #570-574]
• Ghost Rider, Volume 1: Vicious Cycle [Ghost Rider (2006) #1-5]
• Infinity Gauntlet
• Runaways, Volume 1: Pride and Joy [Runaways #1-6]
• Secret War
• Secret Wars
• Spider-Man: Blue
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Volume 3 [Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #559-563]
• Ultimate Spider-Man, Volume 5: Public Scrutiny [Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) #28-32]
• Ultimate Spider-Man, Volume 6: Venom [Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) #33-39]
• Venom vs. Carnage
• Wolverine: Weapon X, Volume 1: Adamantium Men [Wolverine: Weapon X (2009) #1-5]
• X-Men: Phoenix Endsong
• X-Necrosha [X-Force (2008) #21-25, X-Men: Legacy (2008) #231-234, X-Necrosha One-Shot, X-Necrosha: The Gathering One-Shot, New Mutants (2009) #6-8]

I find that it is often nice to be wrong, and yesterday’s bumper crop of releases is very welcome. I wasn’t expecting to see any more titles for at least a week and honestly only checked very late last night on a whim. Obviously I need to be more diligent about that daily checking.

Six of the sixteen new collections are from regular titles and the others are limited run titles of one sort or another including the “X-Necrosha” event collection which spans multiple titles (I’ll have to ask Sigrid Ellis if that one is worth buying or not). It is good to finally see a Fantastic Four collection though I’m not familiar with this particular writer or his storyline. Ghost Rider has never been a character I really understood but it is good to see an increase in the diversity of characters from the Marvel U. IIRC Spider-Man: Blue was pretty well received though I couldn’t tell you why and it might be awhile before I get around to finding out for myself.

However it’s not all good news. Remember last week when I said they were doing the Ultimate books right? Well this week sees the release of Ultimate Spider-Man volumes 5 and 6. Last week had the release of volume 3. Where is volume 4? Maybe stuck in someone’s email inbox somewhere…

New Marvel Comics Available on Nook 12/23/2011

• Avengers Under Siege [Avengers (1963) #270-277]
• Civil War: Amazing Spider-Man [Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #532-536]
• Dark Avengers, Volume 1: Assemble [Dark Avengers (2009) #1-6]
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Volume 2 [Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #552-558]
• Spider-Man: Crime and Punisher [Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #574-577]
• Ultimate Spider-Man, Volume 3: Double Trouble [Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) #14-21]

It’s been 11 days since the last batch of new comics got released which seems like an odd number but at a guess it is because Sunday is Christmas in the US and Monday seems to be the day many businesses are giving as a holiday. Could it be that instead of the world of physical comics, where a holiday means delayed shipments, that in the world of electronic comics we’ll have early shipments? It would be nice but it seems more likely that Marvel wanted more titles in the catalog for all the people who are about to receive a shiny new device in the next two days. In any case we’ll know if the two week release window is the general plan on or around Jan 9, 2012.

This release is fairly Spider-Man heavy gives us a little mix of vintages starting with a classic Avengers storyline in “Avengers Under Siege”. (Personal anecdote: That is the story that ran immediately before I started following the Avengers.) In a similarly dark tone we have the first collection from the recent “Dark Avengers”. Both of which I’m looking forward to reading through, Under Siege for the umpteenth time and Dark Avengers for the first.

The spate of Spider-Man titles that arrives this week continues the odd release pattern we’ve got going for most titles. Doing it right is the Ultimate line with the consecutive release of Volume 3 and continuing to make a mess of things is the release of the Civil War story (Pre-Brand New Day), the second volume immediately following Brand New Day, and a volume long AFTER Brand New Day (though previous to “Big Time” released last week), but still no Brand New Day. So for those of you keeping track that gives us the following contemporary issues of Amazing Spider-Man: #532-536, #546-558, #574-577, #648-651.

To balance the complaints about the order of release I do want to point out that at least there are digital releases and I personally find the reading experience to be quite good.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

New Marvel Comics Available on Nook 12/12/2011

• Mighty Avengers Volume 1: The Ultron Initiative
• Spider-Man: Big Time
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Volume 1
• The Amazing Spider-Man Marvel Masterworks, Volume 1
• The Avengers Marvel Masterworks, Volume 1

The list for this week includes a couple of firsts for the the Nook releases. First and foremost it’s the first 616 Spider-Man trades released (Ultimate Spider-Man vol 1 & 2 were much earlier) though it does show part of the problems in the release schedule by putting out books on either side of the One More Day special event without also publishing THAT story. Previous weeks have shown similar issues with the Civil War and Captain America assasination timeline and I expect that it will continue in that vein until someone can talk some sense to whatever poor intern got the job of getting this schedule together.

The second first is the inclusion of the Masterwork trades. Already owning them in physical form I am still debating if I’m going to pick them up or not though I would imagine they look as good as the modern stuff. It does at least point to some intention to publish some of the classics from the vault.

I’ve been a Nook user since I got a free Color last Christmas and liked it enough to upgrade to the Tablet on day one (which honestly is a somewhat marginal upgrade) and also a long time Marvel Comics reader though a few years ago I had to decide financially between LEGO and Comics and then once my finances had stabilized I still wasn’t able to return to the comics because I just don’t have any space for them. So when the Nook Tablet announcement included news that Marvel would be publishing exclusively on the Nook platform I was incredibly excited.

Sadly that announcement said essentially nothing about what they would be publishing and several weeks in, some of the shine has worn off the thrill of finally being able to buy Marvel comics digitally however I can say that it has not been a total disappointment. Currently Marvel is only publishing trade collections for Nook and the selection is still somewhat small. Today there are a total of 48 items available in the special Marvel Comics section, and that includes the five new items that were the first new items in two weeks.

The pricing for the trades is decent, though probably nothing to look forward to if you have already bought any of these in print, generally maxing out at $16.74 (currently only for Planet Hulk) and as low as $5.59 for several good items. Most items are within a dollar of $10.

Users of the Nook software on other platforms should beware: These purchases are ONLY viewable on a Nook Tablet or Nook Color with the latest firmware. I’m hoping they open that up a bit some day and since I’m a Tablet owner I’m don’t have too much of a problem with it, but it really feels like a purely artificial imposition for no good reason.

The reading experience is pretty good if not perfect. The default display is a full page taking up the entire screen and the text is quite readable and the graphics come through well. If you want to see detail a quick tap zooms in for a closer look. Tilting the device into landscape mode will resize to display two pages which is handy for big spreads, though makes the text unreadable at that size. Additionally the TOC navigation is visual rather then by page number so it makes it really easy to move around.

The actual problem from my point of view is the what they are publishing and when they are publishing them. Early in the release cycle they published books on either side of the story where Captain America was assassinated without publishing the story where the assassination happened. They seem to be keeping with that kind of idiocy with this week’s publishing of Spider-Man trades on either side of the One More Day storyline, though hopefully they’ll follow up next week with that story as well. The assassination story I wasn’t as bothered by since I had already read that one in print. I have not read the Spider-Man story and so it feels a bit spoilerish to be reading what happens afterwards and I might wait till they correct that oversight before I actually crack that one open.

The initial point of this post however was to make a note of the items that are available when they are released since I can not seem to find anywhere else on the net that talks about it and figured it might be useful for someone else. I’ve been checking the store daily for awhile so hopefully will keep this up for at least awhile in some format.

For whatever reason I have either never had a reason to use an Environment Variable for a Path Variable in InstallShield before now, or it’s been long enough that I forgot how to do it so this morning when I went in to try and set one up I was a bit surprised to find it to not be quite as straightforward as I thought it might be.

I had originally just gone straight to the Path Variables section of the IDE [EDIT: after creating the environment variable before starting InstallShield] and created a new Path Variable entry and changed the type to “Environment” however no matter what I did I could not get it to resolve to the value of the Environment Variable that I had already created. The help files were no help and I didn’t see anything in a quick search on the InstallShield Community Forums (which are normally a great resource for exactly this sort of problem). I had been using InstallShield 2009 Professional and verified that it worked the same ways in 2010 and 2011. Eventually I stumbled on to this method:

1. Create the environment variable on the system first through the usual methods.
2. Open the InstallShield project that you want to use the variable in. (If you have the project open when you create the variable it does not always propagate until you’ve restarted InstallShield. It’s a fairly consistent problem with Windows environment variables.)
3. In Tools | Options on the Path Variables tab, make sure you have either “Always recommend…” or “Always display…” selected. If you want to use an environment variable that an existing path variable points to you will want to either modify/delete the existing path variable or have the option set to “Always display…”.
4. Add or modify the location of a file in some part of the IDE and use the environment variable in the “Browse for File dialog”. This could be in a component or in something like the signing certificate file location in the Release settings.
5. When the “Path Variable Recommendation” dialog appears make sure to select “Create a new path…” and enter a name that is identical to the environment variable you want to use.
6. Go to the Path Variables section of the IDE and change the Type for the new variable to “Environment”.

If you did everything properly the “Current Value” field should immediately change to “” where “VARIABLENAME” is the name of the environment variable that you are referencing.

If someone knows of an easier way of doing this I’d love to hear about it!

In the conversation on the TwinLUG list about the recent proposal for a change to the Micropolis module bases, there was an assertion that the use of 2×1 Inverted Slope 45 bricks would be a problem because they weren’t as common as Technic bricks.

I didn’t quite disagree, however it seemed like a strong assertion to make without actually researching the available data. So I did.

The result is the following graph which plots the number of sets that each part appears in from 1977 through 2011, the avg number of sets per year, as well as the trendline for the appearance of the part. Absurd overkill for the conversation? Absolutely, but it was fun to put together.

Ri Co Le Go on Flickr has proposed a new module base for Micropolis. (Composite example and Building Instructions)

I started working on a comment on the image with my reactions and analysis and it got really big very quickly, so I decided to move it here instead. Please be sure to look at those links and the associated comments first for better context.

First off, I think it’s a really interesting idea and certainly deserves discussion.

I like that it remains compatible with the existing standard and doesn’t compromise the depth of the module. Additionally it seems like there would be a lot more possibility of being able to overcome table height differences with only some small modifications.

To elaborate on Dave DuJour’s observation about pin usage in TwinLUG, we’ve pretty much given up on pins in the big layouts for a few different reasons:

1. Laziness.
2. The size of even our medium layouts means that we almost always run into weight limitations that result in cracked or sheared pins across table edges.
3. These days we have quite a few modules that are larger then 1 block which makes managing the connections much more complicated.
4. Probably most importantly, we find being able to make quick changes by simply lifting a module out to be incredibly useful, especially in convention layouts where people are dropping off new modules at random times and we want to make sure we get good placement for all modules so that you can still see everything.

The proposed change resolves being able to maintain a nice and even layout while still maintaining the ability to make easy changes. The implementation seems fairly straightforward as well since it can use pretty common parts.

However I think my biggest concern is about part count for the base modules. These days my quarter block bases use exactly 14 parts at an average cost of $2.72 per base. (LDD File for reference)

I went ahead and threw together a really quick minimal implementation of the proposed module base and came up with 28 parts at an average cost of $2.28 per base. (LDD File for reference)

That did NOT include the cost of each of the H connectors which I came up with several different permutations for. The most sturdy using two 1×4 Technic Bricks ($0.04) and a 2×2 Modified Brick with 2 pins ($0.03), most common parts using two 1×4 Bricks ($0.04) and one 2×2 Brick ($0.03), and your proposal with four 2×2 Corner Bricks ($0.06). If we used 1×4 Tile ($0.07) on all three of those permutations the average cost comes out to $0.31 per connector. Supplying enough connectors for a large layout could become quite expensive and even for a medium layout could be slightly prohibitive. (LDD File for reference)

Still, if you figure an average of 2 H Connectors per module that does make the price difference $0.18, which isn’t huge for the possible increase in functionality.

However I think the best place that this will be useful, and the best reason for adoption, will be with Bluff modules. There is currently a big issue with assembling Bluff modules and keeping them together plus the common need for support structures underneath standard modules arranged behind Bluff modules. If we included the H Connector (or maybe “Rico Connector”?) in the Bluff standard on the high sides of the module that would go a long way towards resolving a lot of the problems I’ve had there though not entirely obviating the need for under structure. However since I am in the minority of people working with Bluff modules I doubt that will have much sway with the rest of the community.

As for concerns about this change causing difficulty for using the depth of the module, I do not find that to be a compelling argument. Most modules that make use of the depth of the module do so towards the middle of the module and not towards the edges. The exception I can think of would be Thomas Anderson’s Construction Site, but even in that case there is an intact road on one side. So if the implementation of this change involved requiring at least one (or possibly two) connection points I think that would probably be enough.