Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar, Day 3: Mechno-Chair

My first thought when I put this together was, "What in the heck? Is this supposed to be a droid or something?" Turns out it's a mechno-chair.

Never heard of a mechno-chair? I hadn't either. You'll recognize it when you see it, though; it's the contraption that projects a hologram of the emperor (technically, he wasn't the emperor yet) while keeping pace with the real-life Neimoidians he is talking to. I'm not sure why Lego thought we'd want a mechno-chair without an Emperor hologram minifig, but whatever.

This thing is also known as a mechano-chair, but if you're doing a Google image search, "mechno-chair" brings up better results.

Mechno-chair:

Lego Mechno-chair:

 

Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar, Day 2: Nute Gunray

When I first got this calendar, I opened it up along the side and slid the tray out to see the pieces. Then, I looked at this minifig and actually noticed that his head was missing. Yipes! Luckily, Lego is super nice about missing pieces, and they sent me a replacement part right away. That was back in October, I think, and I'm glad I caught that early on. Can you imagine the disappointment of opening the little window and finding out your minifig is missing a head? I would've had to use a pumpkin head from Hagrid's Hut! :o)

Nute Gunray:

Lego Nute Gunray:

Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar, Day I: Republic Cruiser

This year, Lego released a Star Wars Advent calendar, which I purchased, and I have decided to share each day with you, my lovely readers. So, for day 1, we get a Republic Cruiser. I actually thought this was the Tantive IV at first (silly me), but it's not.

Republic Cruiser:


Lego Republic Cruiser:

Most of the non-Lego images for these posts will be taken from Wookieepedia, which is an excellent resource for all information Star Wars.

Retrogression

Has anyone else noticed a horrible trend spreading across the internet? It seems like websites are moving back to the 50's, when people didn't have color TVs. Grey is the new it color for fonts, icons, and backgrounds. Let us look at a few examples.

We'll start with Google, as Google is the primary perpetrator of this movement.

I used to love Google. I used to be totally Google gung-ho. But now they've made so many horrible time-wasting changes to their products that I've actually looked around to see what my options are for other email clients, online document editors, and blog readers. I am a lazy person, so I probably won't change, but if Google keeps getting worse, who knows?

Here is the standard Google search page:

Notice the complete and total lack of any sort of advanced options for searching. Where have they gone? Away. The word "Advanced" apparently takes up too much room on this screen and makes it look cluttered. Yes, that's right: I think that single word alone would tip this page from "clean" to "cluttered" in eight letters flat.

If you still want an advanced search, you can find it from the search results page:

Still can't see it? See that tiny little cog wheel in the upper right-hand corner? If you click on that, you will get the option to do an advanced search. It only took me several minutes and multiple Google searches to figure this out. Google, if you are trying to make your site more intuitive, you are failing big-time.

Now let's move on to Google Docs. I like that the icons are updated, sure, but honestly, how are you supposed to distinguish one thing from another?

Even the color options (text color, highlight color) are portrayed in black and white. How does this help anyone? People use colors as visual cues to determine what they are supposed to do and what symbols mean. Take away the color and you've removed one of humankind's primary sensory input mechanisms.

Moving on.

Gmail itself is still ok, more or less. It takes an extra click to switch between Mail and Contacts, but otherwise it's not bad.

Google Reader, on the other hand, is sad. The first sad thing about Reader is that you have to take three steps to even find it. First, you have to hover over the big Google icon in the upper left-hand corner of the Gmail page. This will make a drop down menu appear (which, by the way, is not fully visible "above the fold" on my netbook when using Firefox):

Then you have to go down and hover over the "More" option, which causes another menu to appear:

Then, at last, you can click on the Reader icon.

The link to Reader used to be directly on the Gmail page, and was a one-click deal. Then Google shunted it under the "More" link so it required an extra click, and now they've just buried it completely. At least Google has cleaned up the look of the email page though, eh?

Here is what the Reader page looks like:

Boring, boring, boring. White on white on white. Who designed this?

Unfortunately, other pages are starting to take Google's lead, and are washing out all color from their sites. Take, for example, this page of links from the website ifttt.com:

I know those websites' icons are not all in grey.

Grey text is especially difficult to read, especially when paired with a light background. Check these out:

Norton's webpage
A TechCrunch article
and even FedEx

What is so great about grey? I will tell you: nothing. Please, people, bring back the color. I want to keep moving forward, not backward. The 50's are over; let them rest in peace. We don't need to go nuts like this webpage:

...but it might be nice to at least have a little color, you know? Something subtle, not too crazy. One webpage I like (love, actually), is outofmilkapp.com:

By the way, if you are a list person and own a smartphone, you would probably love the Out of Milk app; I use it every day, and it's one of the few apps I've actually upgraded to the Pro version. At any rate, the point is that their website looks nice. It has pleasant colors, it has enough contrast to be able to read the text, and it has a simple and clearly visible menu at the top and bottom of the page. Superb!

What is my conclusion? Boo to grey!

Seriously though, I do like websites which use color to help their readers. Removing color altogether is not helpful, and, in fact, it makes a website harder to use. Subtle coloring and wise use of colors is a good thing, and will make people feel more comfortable when visiting a website. We should not have to retrogress.

Penguin Cam

The Living Planet Aquarium has a live penguin cam! I guess I am a sucker for live cameras, and penguins are pretty darn cute. Check them out:



Also, unlike lions or certain other animals, I think the penguins are active during much of the day.

The official page is here.

Jack-o-Lantern

This year I carved a jack-o-lantern. I haven't carved a pumpkin since 2006, so it was pretty gratifying. Don't you love all those goopy guts dangling from your fingers? I tried to think of something clever to carve, but I couldn't think of anything clever enough, so I just went with traditional evil.

Here's what my pumpkin looks like in the light (yes, those are my Lego sets behind him):

Here's what he looks like in the dark:

I guess he could kind of be a Voldemort pumpkin, eh? He's got the nose, at least. :o)

Unfortunately, I'm not really going to be home tomorrow during trick-or-treat time, so I'm thinking I'll just leave him lit up on the porch and hope the candle lasts until nightfall (it's a big fat candle).

Puzzles Up for Grabs

After extensive cleaning today, I've decided to get rid of some of my jigsaw puzzles. If you'd like any of them before I haul them to DI, let me know. I've created a photo album of the puzzles so you can see what they look like. If you'd like the link to the album, just email me and I will give it to you. :o)

Special Musical Number on the Organ

Two Sundays ago, I was sitting in the foyer a couple hours after church when my bishop walked by. We chatted a bit and then he asked me if I would like to do a special musical number in church sometime.

"Sure," I said. "I could play something on the piano."

"Oh, you can play the organ," Bishop said.

"Uh, ok."

So, I am going to perform a musical number on the organ at some point in the near future.

Performing a musical number on the organ is significantly more difficult than performing a musical number on the piano, for (at least) three reasons:

First, it's the organ. The organ has multiple keyboards, plus the foot pedals, plus the volume and crescendo pedals, plus you have to pick all the stops. On the piano, you just sit down and hit a key and the sound that comes out is always the same. You can make the note louder or softer, but that's more or less it (I'm ignoring modern techniques of plucking the strings and whatnot). On the organ, you can have a mellow tone or a sharp tone or a nasal tone or a brassy tone or a billion other tones. That's a lot of choices.

Second, I don't own any organ music. I do own one little book of Bach fugues or something like that, but that's not something I'd play in Sacrament meeting, even if I did have the skill to perform them.

And third, to perform a musical number on the organ requires that I practice the organ. It is exceptionally difficult to practice an instrument when you don't own one. And as much as I'd love to buy an organ, it's not exactly at the top of my grocery list.

I do happen to have a few books of piano arrangements of hymns. I took those to church yesterday and found one I could modify to play on the organ. I've practiced at the Institute before, so maybe they'll let me do that again, but I don't like having to ask someone to let me into the chapel. Maybe I'll just practice on my piano (which is digital and has an organ setting) and hope for the best.