Sands of Time Winners Announced!

At long last the votes have been tallied and the winners announced! Who won? Well click and find out!

Build a Minifig-Mobile Contest at BCN

This is a fun one - you know the new LEGO Collectible Series 2 Minifigures that are due out soon? Well, the Brick Comic Network has a contest to help you win them!

The contest is pretty simple - build a vehicle for the figure. It can be a car, an airplane, a train, a space craft...whatever. And the vehicle that best fits the minifig (in the eyes of the judges) will win that minifig!

The contest runs from August 1st through September 19th - plenty of time to enter a build for each of the 16 figures if you're super-ambitious.

Click the banner above for all the details!

New Parts in Buy-Me-Mizer

I've added in some cool Green-Dragon Knight parts into the Buy-Me-Mizer.
Enjoy 'em while supplies last!

Reasonably Clever has teamed up with S.O.S. (Slightly Obsessed Studio) to create a new comic book! Written by Sigrid Ellis and illustrated by yours truly, DENIZENS will be published on-line. A new page appears every Tuesday and Saturday.

Today....take a look at the front cover.

Tranquility Base Guest Comic

Looking for a bit of extra Reasonably Clever humor this weekend? Pop over to Tranquility Base for a guest strip!

2nd Annual Micropolis Building Challenge - EXTENDED

Due to some serious confusion over the entry requirements (No, you don't have to be going to Brickworld) TwinLUG and Reasonably Clever have decided to extend the deadline for entries for the 2nd Annual Micropolis Building Challenge. You now have until July 24th to submit your modules!

Sorry for the confusion, gang. I'll try and be more clear in my contest descriptions in the future.

BoxCars - My little twist on CubeDudes

Here's a bit of bandwagon-expansion. I've started building little cubic vehicles for CubeDude style characters. I call 'em "BoxCars".

Above is the Bat BoxCar, modeled after the '66 Batmobile.

I've also bowed to pressure and made a new Serenity Model...

...cute, isn't it?

LEGO Red Devil Mosaic

What did I build over the Memorial Day weekend? A stylized image of the Humboldt Squid in LEGO brick.

Other than the eyes and frame, all the bricks are transparent. This gives a nice "Stained Glass" feel to the work. As a bonus, the image works from both sides - perfect for setting in a window somewhere.

This is a companion piece to my larger Octopus Stained Glass Mosaic.

Click on through to see more photos on my Flickr Stream.

Keychain Experiment: Update!

Time for another photographic glimpse into the wear and tear on a LEGO Keychain.

Well, the paint is just about gone, but the plastic still looks brand new.

I realized I should have been documenting the wear and tear on the backside, so here's a shot of that...

Be on the lookout for some new developments in the Keychain experiment series very soon!

Photo Set Reviews on Flickr

I know these aren't the in-depth reviews you were hoping for, but as a bit of filler there are three new photo reviews up on my Flickr Stream. All three at Toys R Us "sneak peek" sets due out at general retail later in June.



7566 - CITY - Farmer Impulse Set


7953 - Kingdoms - Jester Impulse Set


7949 - Kingdoms - Prison Carriage Rescue

Collectible Minifigs at TRU

Thanks to my lovely wife, I now have almost two boxes worth of the new LEGO collectible mini-figures. The "official" street date for these in the US is June 17th, but some (most? all?) Toys R Us locations have been putting these out early, along with the first waves of the new summer sets.

What am I going to do with all of these guys? Heh. Don't worry - I have plans.

(And, yes, eventually some of the parts will end up in the Buy-Me-Mizer.)

2nd Annual Micropolis Building Challenge

Observant readers might have noticed this contest a couple of days ago, but here's the official announcement!

Click on through for all the details!

Webcomic Beacon Podcast Archive is up

The archive of the Webcomic Beacon Podcast I was on has been posted...
Listen and be amazed as my internet connection drops just as I'm about to start talking! (Twice!) Just click the pic to head on over...

(If that doesn't work, I also have the mp3 of the podcast mirrored here.)

Keychain Experiment: One Month In

This week's update on the Rock Monster Keychain experiment brings us to a full month of wear-and-tear.

Compared to last week, there's not much change. The grey paint on the body continues to erode, but the plastic bits still look intact.

2010 LEGO Advent Calendars

Thanks to Amazon Japan, we have a first look at the 2010 LEGO Advent Universe. (Actually we have a very close look as they posted set contents. But if you want major spoilers you'll need to go looking for them yourself.)

We'll have two themes to look forward to. As expected, we'll get the inevitable "CITY" theme...and we'll also make a return to Castle with the rebranded "Kindgoms" theme.

No word yet if LEGO will keep their promise to make both themes available to US customers. Fingers crossed!

Keychain Expermiment: Damage Potential

So what sort of damage am I expecting to see on my Rock Monster keychain? Well, let's take a quick look at my last keychain. Mr. Freeze....


(Click to Embiggen)

Pretty rough, eh? His one surviving arm is shattered, his legs have snapped off at the hip, his backpack is missing. Even the silver has worn off from the chain.

How will Rocky survive in comparison? He has fewer parts to deal with...but when/if those parts do break...

The Keychain Experiment

While I was visiting TwinLUG last month, I picked up a new LEGO keychain at the Mall of America. In tribute to the recent Brick House story arc, I selecteded a Red Rock Monster. (He was on sale, too. What a deal!)

It seems I'm always needing to replace my keychain. I've been through a Pirate, several Exo-Force guys, and most recently a Mr. Freeze. They start out so very nice, but end up mangled blobs of plastic.

Maybe I have too many keys. Maybe they're just substandard LEGO.

I noticed this morning that the process has begun anew on the Rock Monster. His paint is rapidly wearing away...although the plastic parts still look okay.

Here, I took a photo with my phone. (Click to embiggen)
I figure I'll post an update on his status every once in a while - let's see how long this one lasts.

Buy-Me-Mizer Updated

Due to numerous requests, I added two "sword and shield" combos into the Buy-Me-Mizer today.

I also added a few more torsos, some new accessories, and some nifty new hairpieces and helmets. Just look how excited SampleMini is!

Final Day!

Today is the final day to enter both the BCN Caption Contest and the Friend Us On Facebook Giveaway.

There are some cool contests in the works, too - so stay tuned!

Clockwork Ostriches

Just a little bit of fun with the new LEGO Ostrich.


Click through for the full set on Flickr

Webcomic Beacon

Here's a bit of upcoming fun to add to your calendar! On Sunday, May 18th at 12 Noon EST, I'll be taking part in the following podcast:


Click on through to visit The Webcomic Beacon.

It's been a while since I've been on a podcast...the last time was back in August of 2008. Hopefully I'll be a bit more articulate this time....

Rough Week

This has been a pretty rough week for those around me. I've had co-workers lose their parents, friends lose their pets, and other friends lose their jobs and relationships. Sickness and strife abound.

(Not to mention the deadly earthquake in China this morning. The universe definitely has a mean on right now.)

Into that mix comes the untimely death of one of the brightest stars in the AFOL community - Nate 'nnenn' Nielson. The Brothers Brick have a nice eulogy up for him - it speaks more eloquently than I can.

I didn't have much direct interaction with nnenn - but I was still inspired by his work and will miss his presence in the online community.

Friend us on Facebook and you could Win a Rock Monster

So I've finally entered the year 2005 and set up a Facebook page for Reasonably Clever. As an incentive for folks to follow along there, I'm holding a quick mini-contest.

On May 1, 2010 I'll randomly pick five Facebook Fans...and each of those lucky individuals will win...

A ROCK MONSTER!

Yes, one of the many Rock Monsters currently invading the Brick House Comic could be yours!


Come on. That has to be worth a click...

---

And the winners are:
Carole Vogel, Tettee Green, Théo Charré, Eamonn O Donnell and Flamero Burns

For those of you who where curious how the winners were selected, I used Radom.org to generate five random numbers, and matched those up with the friends list.

Congrats to the winners, and everyone else stay tuned for your next chance to win!

Comic Archive move is complete!

I finally finished moving the full comic archive into the Comicpress system!
The comic posted-on dates aren't very accurate (a compromise between hacking Comicpress' one-comic-per-day code and having a one-strip-per-archive-page archive) but the content is all there.

As a bonus, the story is now broken up into discrete chunks - it should make moving around a lot easier. I still need to go through and update in-strip quick links, but that's not a priority at the moment. I figure I'll update those as I find them/find the time.

I have a few projects that need to be completed first, but my next goal with regards to the archive is to finally get some decent character bios put together. Having the comics in the new archive was a necessary first step.

The question now is do I go the full wiki route (like Legostargalactica) or opt for a series of wordpress articles that I could update from time to time.

Something for me to think about, anyway.

Ostrichsized - The Trendy Emo Band

Click for more photos in my Flickr Stream

Annnnd.....you can now get this image as T-Shirt from the Reasonably Clever Cafe-Press store!

Contest at BCN

I know it's been a bit since the last contest here at Reasonably Clever - I do have an exciting one in the works, so keep watching for that.

And, in the meantime, I'd like to announce a nice little contest over at BCN. It's quite a bit different from the standard LEGO challenge - and really worth a look.

Intrigued? Then click on through to The First Annual BCN Caption Contest!

Site migration still underway

Still working on moving the comic archive into the ComicPress system. The first 250+ episodes are in there, as well as current strips backdating to late December of 2009. I'm hoping to have the rest uploaded and configured over the next two weeks. In the meantime the old archive page is still up.

Comicpress is a pretty neat Wordpress mod - it really does make managing the comic a lot easier. Instead of hand editing six HTML/XML files every day, I can just upload the comic in advance, set up any additional info that I need, and the system takes care of the rest. It's let me actually start to build up a bit of a head-start buffer for the first time in years.

Yeah, I should have automated this years ago. But when your day job is working with computers, it's tough to go home and seriously contemplate even more web design work. Y'know?

Guest Appearance at YOLT!

Looks like Wash and Mary Sue have found time to take a break from hunting Bilbo - they've made a guest appearance in the audience over at Ye Olde LEGO-Time Theatre. There are a lot of other LEGO Webcomic characters in the crowd - can you spot them all?

Still working things out.

Okay. Wordpress is being a bitch. So I guess I'm going to hybridize the site - the blog can stay here at blogger, and I'll use Comicpress to manage the comic (assuming I can get that to work right.)

Comic comments and updates will be from the front page of the site now, though.

*grumble*

Episode 900

Read the comic here.

Episode 899

Read the comic here.

Episode 898

Read the comic here.

Episode 897

Read the comic here.

Buzzkill

Buzz tries out the Fairy Princess' outfit.
(Part swap from a new LEGO Keychain)

Episode 896

Read the comic here.

Update Again

So....Reasonably Clever is now running from a new host. Things seem to be okay - the only thing that's forver borked is the old forum areas (only linked to in a couple of odd places). They're not coming back, so I really don't care too much about that.

If you spot any other major glitches, post a comment. I may or may not fix 'em, but it'd be best if I know about them.

The main reason for the move is that Blogger is getting rid of FTP support - the way I choose to host my blog. Fixing all the soon-to-be-dead links meant a major overhaul of RC - and if I'm going to do that, I might as well go ahead with a full revamp. (The last one was back in 2007, after all.)

As things stand, I can keep this blog (and this version of the site) as-is for a little longer. Meanwhile, I'll be configuring the new Wordpress version of the site. You might see occasional blips as I break things in the background. Pardon the dust. This will take a bit.

The end result will be much nicer for everyone - particularly since I won't be hand-publishing the comic HTML every day. (Yes, I've been hand coding pages for years. Yes, I'm insane.)
Since I have to go through the full archive page-by-page to move it into Comicpress there should be some incidental upgrades, too - stuff like a up to date character list, chapter tags, improved archive navigation, etc.

Speaking of the comic - I should have new episodes starting in a couple of days, Monday at the latest.

Anyway, that's what's going on.

Wonkyness on the way

I've decided to move Reasonably Clever to a new webhost, one that will run Wordpress. The migration will (hopefully) take place this week. The site will most likely be majorly broken for long stretches as I make the transition. I'll try and get at least a ghost copy of things up as soon as I can.

So...likely no comics this week.

Updates as they happen. Or don't.

-----

Update: Site move now in progress. I'm re-uploading a copy of the current site...but it's going to take a while. I tried to put the more frequently used areas (Mizers/Comic/Blog) up first to minimize the hassle.

Episode 895

Read the comic here.

Episode 894

Read the comic here.

Episode 893

Read the comic here.

Episode 892

Read the comic here.

Photo Review: Luke's Landspeeder

Photo Review of LEGO set 8092 - Luke's Landspeeder

This one's been out for a while, but I just now got my sets from shop@home. (Limited Edition stuff makes me SO grumpy...)

There's one huge selling point for this set - minifigure updates to the classic New Hope cast. I broke out the "vintage 2000" figures for comparison photos. Click through for all the fun on Flickr.

Arecibo Message in Mosaic and 4D

Here's my latest building self-challenge - render the arecibo message in LEGO form.

A basic mosaic (at left) wasn't much of a challenge. 23 rows by 73 columns is small for one of my mosaics, and the image itself is as basic as you can get. I decided to follow the Wikipedia article's lead and add some color to help showcase the various portions of the message.

Sure, it's interesting enough as projects go, but why stop there? I spent some time trying to think of a new way to show the message.

Eventually I realized that if I build the message studs-to-the side I could show the image two ways - in the 23x73 grid, but also as a continuous stream of data, allowing the viewer to walk along the length of the message and view it as it was beamed into space...one bit at a time. I would capture the dimension of time...and show the message in 4D!

The first step was to rebuild the mosaic.

I used trans-clear plate for the "zero" bits - mainly because I had a ton of them on hand.

I decided to keep the false colors seen in the flat mosaic for the "ones". It adds a touch of visual interest to the long string...and also helps show where in the message you are. The proportions are bit squashed - LEGO plates aren't in a 1:1 aspect ratio. But The image is still legible, particularly with the studs-out mosaic next to it for comparison.

As you can see in this photo, you can disassemble the "compact" version of the message into the original data stream. The rows can be reconnected end-to-end.

This photo shows the start of the code. You can follow the full message by walking along the length of the model.

1679 LEGO plates were used to depict the message - each 3.2mm tall. The total length of the 4d-configuration is 5.37 meters, or 17.6 feet.

To see more photos, check out the full set on Flickr.

Episode 891

Read the comic here.

Set Photos - 20014 March/April Brickmaster 4x4

I received my March/April Brickmaster promo set in the mail yesterday.

It's decidedly meh. No new parts, no clever building techniques...just a pretty average creator set.


Photos are up at my Flickr Stream...click through to check out the set for yourself!

Episode 890

Read the comic here.

As was mentioned in the blog comments yesterday, Luka does indeed still have her own hair - the hairball was on top like a wig. (There's in strip dialog downstream that clarifies that a bit.)

Episode 889

Read the comic here.

Episode 888

Read the comic here.

Episode 887

Read the comic here.