Blog

The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

Clamshell MacBook Touch ID

An incomplete Lego enclosure for the Touch ID sensor and control board from an Apple keyboard.
Building the Lego enclosure

I have a fingerprint reader for my Windows desktop computer (a Kensington Verimark FIDO key) that easily allows me to log in with Windows Hello without typing a password.

For my work computer, I haven't had the same luxury. I use my work MacBook Pro exclusively in 'clamshell' (closed) mode when I'm at home, as I have two monitors and a separate keyboard and mouse.

This means that I can't use the 'Touch ID' fingerprint reader on the laptop's keyboard, and Apple doesn't support any third-party fingerprint readers. The only option for users in this situation … Read more →

The Lego Movie 2

The Lego Movie 2 poster

Today I saw a preview screening of The Lego Movie 2. It was a preview screening, because although it was released globally a few days ago, it is not actually released here in Australia until the end of March. Yes, Village Roadshow are again pulling the whole "but kids don't watch movies outside of school holidays!" timing excuse. However, these limited preview screenings in sync with the global release are a compromise that I can live with.

Getting to the actual movie: I really loved it. I had pretty high expectations, especially considering how much I loved the first Read more →

The Best and Worst of 2017

Best and worst time! This is my personal review of 2017's media that I was exposed to, and the ones that I liked the most and the least.

GotG2 & LoganMovies

This year was quite a tough one to pick. There wasn't really anything that good that I can think of as being the stand-out, and by the same token, I can't remember anything that I saw that was really that bad. Nevertheless:

Best Movie: Two-way tie between Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Guardians 2 gave me more of what I loved about the first: space, sci-fi, 80s, humour, … Read more →

The Lego Video Game Dimension

Lego DimensionsOver the past couple of months I played through Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Although I've liked the previous Lego Star Wars games, this is the first Lego game that I have played since my big Lego reawakening a few years ago.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the game, I wouldn't say it was perfect, because it had more than a few rough edges: the 5.1 sound balancing was all wrong (the rear channels were obnoxiously loud), and there were quite a few other bugs. Overall though, it was a great game made even better by all the … Read more →

Modding Rey’s Speeder

Rey's Lego SpeederA while back I got the Rey's Speeder Lego set, and although it's good to have the main character of The Force Awakens in Lego form, it always bugged me that the side of the speeder where the cargo net is in the movie, was just some stuff stuck on using 1x1 clips.

So I decided to do my first serious Lego mod! I noted down the parts I thought I'd need, and then went to BrickLink and ordered them. They arrived in the mail today, and I went to work modding.

I'm quite happy with the result. In … Read more →

Lego Cleaning and Science

Washing LegoToday was the third time I've put a bunch of grubby Lego in the washing machine to get it clean.

Yes, the washing machine.

Thanks to the internet, I learned that this was the most effective and painless way of cleaning a large amount of Lego at once. Just chuck the separated pieces into a laundry bag (usually used for bras etc.), add a little detergent, and set the machine on a delicate or hand-wash cycle.

The results are surprisingly good; just be careful of putting in large and/or transparent pieces because they might get a bit scratched.

One of … Read more →

Lego New and Old

My completed old LegoI posted last year about my rekindled love of Lego, and since then it has gone slightly nuts. My desk at work is now covered in minifigures and small Star Wars sets, and I recently completed The Simpsons series of minifigures. After seeing The Lego Movie (which is my favourite movie of the year so far), I couldn't help myself but get Benny's Spaceship from Amazon (super excite), and am now waiting for the Super Secret Police Dropship to be released here in Australia.

A few weeks ago I retrieved most of my childhood Lego from my … Read more →

My Rekindled Love of Lego

Me building the Lego SSDJust over two years ago, I saw this video of one the biggest and most terrifyingly awesome Lego sets: the Super Star Destroyer (10221). I remember being awed by it, as it awakened my childhood love of Lego combined with my continuing adult love of Star Wars.

I can't remember a specific point in my life when I stopped playing with Lego. Like every kid born from the 1970s on, my family had loose Lego that we would make neat things with.

Rather than just loose Lego, it was around the start of the 1990s that I can … Read more →