If you live in the US, you can preorder Series 7 minifigures from Entertainment Earth in 3 different ways.

• Display Box (60 figs)
• 10 random picks
• 1 random pick

I also found the first box I’ve seen in the wild at my local Toys R Us. According to the cashier they had gone out that morning. Someone had clearly been there before doing the old feel up, as many were out on the shelf with a few remaining in the box. What’s great, in my mind, is there’s no real filler figure in this series. I AM FED UP WITH SKATEBOARDS. Enough Lego. No more skateboards. </end rant>

In fact, there seems to be several army building worth minifigures in this release. It might be time to pack away the pennies to save for a display box, as I’m sure that the army building figures will be heavily marked up on Bricklink.

4191 The Captain’s Cabinis one of the many current licensed sets available from Lego these days. Taking a slice of The Pirate’s of the Caribbean, this set delivers a small vignette of none other than the captain’s cabin. This set, being from a license theme and coming in at $11.99 (us) MSRP seems similar to the Mandalorian” Battle Pack and Clone Trooper” Battle Pack of the Star Wars line. It does have more pieces, but one less figure than those but comes in at $1 less. This is where it gets interesting.

This set is a treasure trove of unique little pieces. It includes a small older in styling globe perched on a brick built stand. I can see lots of uses for this little piece in various MOCs, from current day offices, to steampunk navigation systems and more. In addition, the set comes with a round 2×2 tile printed with a navigational chart. I’ve purchased two of these sets now, and each also seems to come with 2 printed 1×1 tiles representing Jack Sparrow’s trusty compass. As if that were not enough, on the rack in the background comes 2 bottles with a ship on each. All of those elements being printed and not the new norm of self-applied decals. Add in some pearl gold pieces and this set is chock-full of pieces useful in a number of various MOCs.

As mentioned, the set comes with 3 minifigures, Captain Jack Sparrow (in vest), and two zombies. Each of the figures has painting on the back of the torso and Cpt. Jack and the Zombie Yeoman each have a second face hidden by long hair pieces on the back of their heads.

When I purchased 4191 The Captain’s Cabin,it came with a free poster inside. The photo of the package on Lego’s site seems to indicate it likely still does. This poster, a card and instruction book come bundled and protected in plastic with a piece of corrugated cardboard to keep things flat. A nice touch, since in recent years, manuals have been damaged in shipping. The box art is pretty standard fair for Lego right now. Two big photos of the main set depicting battle and no alternative models. 4191 The Captain’s Cabinis still available through Lego’s online store as well as most big box stores. I’d highly recommend the set as it’s a good value, even at licensed set pricing.

I’ve had this set for a while now. It’s not a big set. 18 pieces to be exact. I got it some time ago when I ordered other sets direct from Lego. It came, much to my surprise with a letter stuffed in the box about being a valued customer. Please have this free set, yadda, yadda. Now don’t get me wrong. Any free Lego is AWESOME Lego. Yes, even if someone were to hand me free Galidor, I’d enjoy it, because hey, it’s free!  Besides, if you can get past what all the ‘cool kids’ say, and use a little imagination, you can make cool things from anything. That’s the Lego way.

I suspect though, that they wanted to dump this set, and here’s why.

O.K. Kids, lets play what’s out of place here… It seems they may have forgotten to print the package with the “Choking Hazard” warning. You don’t usually see add on stickers to Lego’s packaging. Unless of course you remember the Admiral Akmar magnets…

Anyway, there’s not much to be said about the set. It’s a construction worker with a cement mixer. It fills up your city workers, but I’m not a fan of the mixer really. It doesn’t remind me at all of the one I used to have to use in real life working for my father. For one, where’s the rust, and this one has wheels! Who knew they came with wheels? My back sure didn’t.

The mixer itself spins and tilts side to side, but can’t pour out. The way in which it’s packaged prevents “Built in Bag” builds. The set originally sold for $3.49 (us). In all honesty, I did, and would give it a skip unless you are one to complete a series regardless of the set. Which if you are, you still can find it on Amazon or Bricklink.

7049 Alien Striker is another one of those sets I had lost to the clutter of Manland and time. I found this set in a box beside 7050 Alien Defender. Once again I had purchased this set purely for the minifigures and at an MSRP of $4.99 (us) it’s a reasonable way to go about picking some of these new figs up. Sure, there’s the battle pack you can pick up. But lets look at it for a second.

You can pick up 853301 LEGO Alien Conquest Battle Packfor a cool $14.99. In that, you get the two common aliens and two of the common ADU figures. In addition you get a snazy dressed business man. Which is all fine and dandy, and I’ve been known to buy battle packs. However, if you’re looking to get bang for the buck (barring the battle pack going on sale) you could pick up 7049 Alien Striker and 7050 Alien Defender for $14.98 and also score some interesting colored bricks. If you’re looking to build a homogenous army, 3 of the 7049 Alien Striker and end up with 6 figures for about the same coin. After all that, if you just have to have that sharp dressed man, you can always go cherry pick him from Bricklink for around $2.

Anyway, back to 7049 Alien Striker, the set at hand. You get 2 minifigures. The human comes with a back painted torso and single face. The alien has the same pattern on the back of the head as in set 7050. Unlike 7050 Alien Defender though, the alien’s ship is a little beefier. It reminds me of the older ships in the classic space line. There’s enough of a ship to be believable, but not so much as to drive up the piece count and bump it in to a higher price point. In fact, at a 4.99 MSRP, this set falls in to the impulse set category. You know the one. When you’re walking down the Lego isle at the local store, you can throw it in the cart and you won’t get yelled at. ;-)

Like all Lego of late, the box art lacks alternative models and depicts the gunfight play. Still though, no one buys these sets for the boxes, right? In my opinion, this is the real keystone set for army building. I’ve noticed the trend of these size sets dropping to around $3 at your local blue big box store at the end of the cycle of themes. At which point you can scoop up several and plot to take over you Lego City layout.

2011 was a busy year. Not that my blog would show it. Happily it chugged along all on it’s own, sad and neglected. Normally I resolve not to make a resolution each New Year, which means I immediately fail. (Not everyone deserves a trophy)

I decided at the end of last year though, that I would get back to it. As is evident with a small rash of reviews, and more in the pipeline for the coming month. Hopefully that gets me back in the swing and I can come up with some more valuable content once the rust is gone. As an exercise, I decided I should look and see what my top 10 pages were for all of 2011. What surprised me was that the top two were nothing about Lego, and in fact 50% of the top 10 were about anything but. I guess it just goes to show, that I’ll continue to keep the posts a little broader than just that topic. Since, after all, the blog was initially set up to share the escapades of dealing with a local pack of semi domesticated Raccoons breaking things in our yard. Anyway, here’s to a hopeful new year. Please enjoy the review of the top 10 favorites bellow. I’d like to identify any of them as one of my more favorite posts, but I can’t.

2011 Top 10

1. Not enough server storage is available to process this command. error.
2. Use Server 2003 to get files to your Xbox 360
3. Lego Brickmaster Replacement – Lego MBA
4. Brick blog, intended about Lego, but wound up everything else
5. Cleaning Lego
6. Manfrotto 055XPROB & Giottos MH 7001-621: A dynamic duo for sure
7. Mommy, my mouth tastes like burning rubber
8. “Working” Lego V8 Engine
9. Coffee Table Makeover: Extreme Edition
10. Lego Crab Instructions

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or any other holiday you celebrate this time of year. To all my readers, may you have a safe and happy holiday.

The author of this book is making it available as a free download for a limited time 12/18/2011. Get your copy!

UPDATE: As you try clicking through the numerous “download now” links you’ll find DP Review saying it was Saturday the 17th you could download it. IGNORE that. Look for this link

https://s3.amazonaws.com/movies.dpreview.com/wildlife/WildlifePhotography.pdf.zip?AWSAccessKeyId=14Y3MT0G2J4Y72K3ZXR2&Expires=1324249200&Signature=diKQU9unVP4Fct3LYtiygHuYW5Y%3D

From the Author:

Wildlife photography
On Safari with Your DSLR: Equipment, Techniques, Workflow

Photographer and environmentalist Uwe Skrczypczak wrote this book with several goals in mind-to teach the technical aspects and the workflow of digital wildlife photography; to show the beauty of East Africa and his beloved Serengeti National Park and to educate about its habitat; and to provide a guide for the photographer who is planning to go on an African photo safari and wants to be prepared to capture the finest possible images.

Beginning with digital photography techniques and workflow, Skrczypczak draws upon his own vast experience in wildlife photography to teach about the equipment, the pros and cons of camera types and lenses, and the specific requirements for this demanding task. Also covered are appropriate techniques for exposure and autofocus-the latter being one of the major challenges in wildlife photography. He discusses an “on the road” workflow, the logistics of transporting your gear, and image editing.

The book goes on to cover the practical aspects of wildlife photography, from shooting animal portraits to panning the camera in order to capture that speeding leopard. Example images are accompanied by a small set of pictograms showing which techniques are ideal for capturing the specific situation.

Loaded with hundreds of breathtaking images, this comprehensive textbook is perfect for the beginning wildlife photographer as well as the seasoned pro. Whether your subject is African wildlife or bird photography in the Arctic Circle, Uwe Skrczypczak’s Wildlife Photography will teach you the fundamental concepts and techniques that can be applied to all forms of wildlife photography. Topics include:
• Equipment and accessories
• Planning your trip
• Conditions on the road
• The right place at the right time
• Image composition
• Where to stay and daily routine
• The light in East Africa
• Migrations and mating seasons
• Habitats and animal behavior
• River crossings
• The big cats, rhinos, giraffes, etc.

I live in a town where the power goes off when the neighbor’s dog farts. No seriously, we lose power once a month minimum. Most of the time, it’s clearly a car accident or something, and it’s only out for an hour or so. Just the same, we’ve found that we need to have back up plans to back up plans. As such, I’ve invested a lot in to portable L.E.D. lighting for those times you get the sense it’s just not worth hauling out the generator. We have an older fabulous Coleman camping lantern which has worked for years, and continues to. We’ve gotten through many outages on the same batteries. It just doesn’t put out enough light to fill a room. That’s when I got looking for additional lanterns.

A few searches turned up the Rayovac SE3DLN Sportsman Xtreme 300-Lumen LED Lantern. It’s a long name for a small in size light. Remember though, good things can come in small packages. This light takes only 3-D cell batteries, which mean the two I picked up only used one package of rayovac batteries, instead of needing to buy two and having an unusable amount of leftover batteries. I wasn’t sure how bright they would be so it was the first thing I tested. The video above shows the different power levels. What I hadn’t discovered is what seems to be a standard feature in led flashlights and lanterns now. If the lantern is off, hold the power button and it will begin flashing give you a seizure mode.

The only consistent downfall from reviews is that this lantern has a couple of notches that must be aligned in order to put the battery cover back on. If you hold the bottom at a 90 degree angle and ling up the two arrows, you can fairly easily put the cover on. My suggestion though, is to put the batteries in the lantern in advance of you actually needing to use it. A minute now, will likely save you several fumbling in the dark.

I have to admit, I’ve only had the lanterns a few days, and thankfully have not lost power since we got them. I’d say though, that these are going to see some pretty good use to hold us off on having to run a gas generator just to see and read stories or play some board games. With a nice handle on top, and a fold out clip to hang the lantern from the inside of a tent, one will also likely go on camping adventures with us as well. I’ll report back if my opinion changes.

7914 Mandalorian Battle Pack is a neat little set if you’re looking to build an army of Mandalorians. I’m pretty sure that’s why Lego refers to sets like this as “Battle Pack.” If you’ll recall Hasbro sued Lego at one point for releasing sets containing only minifigures from a licensed series. So from now on Lego has decided to include little ships or other things so they are still a building set. The ship and turret are almost throw aways in this one. That’s O.K. though, because we all know that anyone that buys this set is doing so for the minifigures.

You get four identical figures (go figure) with printed fronts and blank backsides. Each has a helmet separate from the jet pack, much like the new version of Bobba Fett found in the 8097 Slave 1 set. Since it appears they likely used the same mold for the helmet, they also come with holes for add on accessories. So if you have extra visors and such from those ugly clone troopers, you can put them on these. You also get a small arsenal of firearms. A blaster, blaster rifle and 2 pistols. You also get a brick built ‘heavy machine gun’ which for some reason made me think of the gun Hannibal always carried around.

At 68 pcs for an $11.99 MSRP, the price per piece is pretty high, but that’s always the case with licensed sets. Overall this is a great way to pick up some very cool minifigures.

I recently upgraded my WordPress Installation to the most recent version. This brings in a new way of managing media, but broke a long standing and simple to use plugin which allowed me to visually pick a photo from my photostream and add it to a post. Much to my dismay, finding something that worked out of the box was all but impossible. Make that NOTHING worked out of the box as advertised. With some testing and searches of Google, I finally found something that worked. So I share the steps hoping to pull together a bunch of different resources in to one clear, concise place.

Plugin Used: FlickrPress

The tricky part of this plugin is that it’s not evidently clear how you actually make it work. So to start, you need to make sure you have no other flickr plugins installed or you may find problems with different plugins instantiating (or trying to) functions with the same names. Big problems happen, and it may not even install.

For those not aware how to install plugins, lets start from the beginning.

1. Log in to your wordpress admin dashboard
2. Click on “Plugins”
3. Click on “Add New”
4. Use the search to find FlickrPress
5. Click on install now.
6. If it succeeds you’ll be given a chance to  Activate it. Otherwise
7. Click on “Plugins > Installed Plugins”
8. Click on “Activate” beside FlickrPress

Now comes the fun part. You’ll need an api key, but the plugin doesn’t seem to help you with that part. You’ll need to log in to flickr and once you have:

1. Click on your username to go to your account.
2. Click on the “Sharing & Extending” tab and scroll down.
3. Access the “You’re API Keys” area. (I already have APIs, so I’m not sure what it displays if you don’t.
4. Click on the big blue “Get Another Key” button
5. Follow the steps here to create a new key and secret. Make sure to name the key so you know what it is for.
6. Once the key follow steps 1-3 to get back to your API keys.
7. Click on your new API key and click on “Edit the authentication flow” on the right.
8. You’ll need to enter a callback url. This should look like http://[your-domain.com]/wp-content/plugins/wp-flickr-press/flickr_oauth_callback.php

Now you can finally make the plugin work!

1. Click on “Settings”
2. Click on “FlickrPress”
3. Enter the API key and Secret Key you created.
4. Click on the “Update OAuth Token” button.
5. Scroll down and click “Save Changes”

Phew, now sit back and have yourself a drink. You’re ready to start using your flickr photos in your posts. When you create or edit posts, a new icon that looks like the flickr logo shows up over the editor box. Click it once it loads, there’s a bunch of great ways to search your photostream. It defaults at newest to oldest. Search for the photo you want or navigate. Click on the checkbox beside the photo. If you want to choose the size, click on the “more” link and you can choose the size and layout of the photo.