Mike Milo's Journal

Anyone that knows me will tell you I am a tech junkie. I have always had the latest gadgets and toys. It’s just ‘how I roll’ so to speak. My biggest indulgence has always been the PDA. It is an invaluable tool for developing cartoons and ideas. I primarily use them to write with and jot down ideas for development etc. I am almost never without mine be3cause you never know when someone is going to say something funny I can use in a cartoon or a pitch to a studio. Most of my ideas come from life and I am too forgetful to remember it so I write it down. Now of course I could just carry around a pad of paper and in fact I know a few friends who do that but what if I lost it? Tons of great ideas down the toilet. Lose my PDA? I suppose that’s possible too and once someone stole my Psion 5 from the McDonalds outside of Warner Bros. Luckily you are supposed to sychronize them and like a good lil’ boy I did just that and all my files were safely on my computer.

I have had every Palm Pilot since the Palm IIIx which I sold for an upgrade to the awesome Palm V which was then replaced by the Palm IIIc which I really loved. the trouble with it was that you had to write in Palm’s Grafitti text, which while asy to master was difficult in getting anything of substance down on paper because you had to write each word out. Much slower than typing. Anyway when Windows CE devices came out with their little keyboards man I was in heaven. One problem. When you let the battery run down? All your data disappeared! AH well luckily I backed up eh?

Once cellphones started coming out of course I had to have one of those and was one of the first to get one. Lately they have begun to merge and so I tiptoed out on to the bleeding edge and got myself a Palm Treo 650 which has served me faithfully for the last 4 years or so. I loved it and have even tapped out whole chapters of a book I’ll never finish on it while waiting on line for things like tires and doctors. Yeah I loved my Treo but lately it has begun to wear out. It stopped sychronizing last week and as I’ve outlined before I am in serious need of that function so I decided it was time to get a new phone.

Enter the XV6800!

(Took me a long time to get to this spot huh?)

Anyway…

I just switched to Verizon from ATT because I was tired of the service. No, I don’t expect better service from Verizon I just figure it will be different and I won’t have the same old problems but instead will inherit new problems which will at least be different. The XV is pretty cool it has WiFi built in which is ncie because then when I’m home I don’t need to use Verizon’s data plan. I can surf the web free which is awesome. It even lets me log in to Gmail. Google converts all the web content (when it can) to a mobile format which is great too. The VX has Mobile Word and Excel built in as well which is nice so I can write in Word’s native .doc format. I have to say it’s a bit overly complicated though. There are like 9 buttons on the sides of the device. It also seems to be have been developed for a left handed person because everything is on the opposite side of where I’d want it. The stylus, scroll wheel and power button are all on the opposite side of what I am used to. The one thing that bugs me so far is that you have to turn the phone on each time. On my old Treo you hit a button; any button and the phone turned on and asked if you wanted to unlock the screen so you can use it. IF you did want to turn it on, you pressed one button and you were in. With the VX I have to push the side of the device top turn it on. There is no Locking the phone that I can see so far which is odd. I think I would have liked it better if the device was powered by the Phone button like every other device I’ve seen. I guess I’ll get used to it.

A recent pic taken of my daughter Melissa on the XV6800

The camera on it is nice too, it’s a 2 megapixel one and it even has a Flash although you’re still not going to want to take Wedding videos or that video of that sasquatch you saw as it’s not the best but it’s cool to be able to have a camera with you at all times. I even use the camera to record where I parked so I can find the spot later on. I also have used it to snap pics of the sink so I could get the right kind of parts I needed when I had to fix it. Pretty nifty.

All in all the VX6800 is a cool phone but unless your a techie geek like me, it’s probably overkill

When I was a kid there were lots of really cool toys but my favorite was a toy line called The Outer Space Men which was manufactured by Colorforms. I loved those toys… they were bendable action figures and each came from a different planet in our solar system. they were suppsoed to work in conjunction with Major Matt Mason another favorite of mine.  My favorite alien was Colossus Rex the Man from Jupiter but Alpha 7 was a close second place too. Below is some stuff I found on the web about them. They don’t make toys like this any more fellas. In fact with video games action figures don’t even really anymore because kids don’t seem to want to have to imagine if they can have it done for them. Sad. In 30 years will there even be people who come up with original materials? Anyway check out The Outer Space Men! Cool stuff!

Alpha 7 The Man From MarsThe smallest of the aliens, he has a clear blue plastic helmet and a pistol. Alpha is the quintessential “little green man” He is finished in blue metallic paint. There are two variations, the dark blue paint seen here, and a lighter blue.Far below the surface of the dying planet Mars, the descendants of a once great race live on. Above them the majestic cities have long since crumbled and the vast canals lie buried beneath a silent sea of rust red sand. With time and water running out, Alpha 7 and the other members of the Martian armada travel the galaxy in search of a suitable planet to make their own. Their frequent reconnaissance missions and landings on our Earth have given rise to what most earth men consider “wild” stories of “flying saucers” and “little green men”.	Alpha 7
Astro Nautalis The Man From NeptuneThe rarest of the aliens, he comes with a trident. He appears to be a rough approximation of a squid or octopus, give or take a limb. Deep beneath the stormy seas of Neptune, great cities loom majestically in the shimmering twilight of a vast and beautiful water world. Here the mighty Triton people live. Not content to see the sun as but a glimmer and the stars as tiny ripples floating on the surface of the sea above, Astro Nautilus and his band of Triton mariners venture forth to sail and chart that greater ocean, Outer Space. Often visiting our planet they land, secretly, without all human knowledge, in the very depths of Earth’s great oceans.	Astro Nautalis
Commander Comet The Man From VenusThe only alien with a human appearance, he has a clear pink plastic helmet, white plastic wings and a brown crossbow. The commander is a cross between an astronaut and cupid. He was originally painted gold, but with time fades to a greenish color.From Olympus, largest of the great cloud cities of Venus, the mighty cloud ship Cumulus sets forth. Like a fiery comet it blazes through the blackness of outer space toward Earth. Its captain, Commander Comet, is a direct descendant of the mighty Zeus, leader of the historic first Venusian expedition to Earth, which landed near the Grecian Isles 3,000 years ago. Commander Comet’s present mission is one of routine Earth surveillance, and once within the atmosphere of Earth, his ship will join the great fleet of Venusian craft that float like clouds above our planet night and day, watching undetected over our world.	Commander Comet
Electron + The Man From Pluto1950′s movie style android with clear purple plastic helmet, amber jewel in his chest and sidearm. He has a benign almost angelic expression. He is gray rubber, painted silver.The cold and desolate planet Pluto is too far from the sun to derive its heat and, thus, the very atmosphere lies frozen and life as we know it cannot exist. But there, at the very edge of our solar system, the great Intergalactic Winds that blow between the stars carry with them great masses of cosmic energy. In the beginning, this living energy bombarding the frozen planet did itself freeze to become living matter and, thus, a mighty race of beings began. Created of energy, they can become energy at will and Electron +, from his laboratory in Electra City, can transport himself throughout the universe as a beam of light.	Electron
Orbiron The Man From Uranus (No Jokes, Please)Do you remember the Metaluna Mutant from “This Island Earth”? Orbitron has a clear red pistol. Orange with brown accents. From the barren mountains of Uranus great waves of thought reach out through the blackness of outer space probing the universe. Thus, Orbitron and the men of Uranus search the stars seeking the lost knowledge of the Ancient Ones. On great ships they travel to the farthest reaches of our galaxy and beyond. Able to read the minds of men, they have collected the learning of a thousand worlds, and yet they go on searching in a never ending quest to learn that which it has been ordained no man shall ever know.	Orbitron
Colossus Rex The Man From Jupiter Large, knurled, and for some reason, aquatic. Comes with translucent purple mace. The mace has a small loop at the end to facilitate his holding it. Green rubber with aqua metallic paint and purple shorts.From the huge red spot near the equator of the giant planet Jupiter, a great ship travels forth. On board is the mighty warrior, Colossus Rex, strongest of the strong. The colossal strength needed merely to survive the crushing pressure of the atmosphere and enormous force of gravity on his native Jupiter make him a veritable superman on other worlds. Invulnerable to attack, invincible in battle, brute strength alone is his only weapon. Yet no power in the galaxy can defeat him. We hope his mission is merely to explore the universe and not to conquer it.	Colossus Rex
Xodiac The Man From SaturnXodiac has clear orange accessories including a helmet, staff and pistol. The staff is fragile and easily broken. There is a saturn logo on his chest. He is orange fluorescent rubber with dark blue metallic paint.Saturn is the most beautiful of all the planets. Its symmetrical rings give it a matchless grace and there is nothing like them anywhere else in the solar system. Constructed and placed in orbit by the Elders, millenniums ago, they give the people of Saturn complete mastery over the forces of gravity on their planet. Thus, all work is done by perpetual motion and men can fly above their world in great machines tuned to the frequency of the rings. Freed from manual labor, the men of Saturn have developed great wisdom and the wisest among them is Xodiac. It is said of him that he can tune his staff to play upon the great rings; the music of the spheres resounding throughout the universe to be heard by wise men everywhere.	Xodiac

This is amazing! Someone certainly is talented and patient to create such a masterpiece.

LEGO CHURCH………
A few quick facts:

How long to build it? It was about a year and a half of planning, building and photographing.

How many pieces of LEGO to build it? more than 75,000

How big is it? About 7 feet by 5 1/2 feet by 30 inches (2.2 m x 1.7 m x 76 m)How many LEGO people does it seat? 1372

How many windows? 3976It features a balcony, a Narthex, stairs to the balcony, restrooms, coat rooms, several mosaics a nave, a baptistry, an altar, a crucifix, a pulpit and an elaborate pipe organ

Written by Mike Milo in: Interesting,Religion,Toys |

Mar
31
2006

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Xiaolin figurines!

Written by Mike Milo in: Animation,Personal,Toys |