Hey here it is finally the Singapore Toy and Comic Convention 2008 was finally here. Held at the Suntec City convention center over the last weekend, the event is one of the few first public events to bring the whole toy and comic industry closer together in a series of annual cons and events held throughout the year and man was the place packed!

Here we are at Suntec for the SG Toy & Comic Con

View of the Singapore crowd wahhh!

The open stage

There is no entrance fee and you get a neat informational booklet with coupons upon entry, so any similar minded Singaporean will sure pop by to give a look. But don’t expect to find any goldmine of limited collectors editions comics from the dusty garage sale area or find trades for that all rare issue of superman missing from your collection- our comic fan base here is almost zero to nothing, so the only stuff we are getting here are not old 5c marvel comics dating to the ages, but rather reprints and rather commercialized bookstores simply selling their “goods”.

Few reputable companies were there as well, Imaginary Friends, the company which brought us the rather nice drawings and illustrations we can see in Capcom games (just to name afew) were there as well. Well not that the design scene in Singapore is appreciative of their work or many who know about them unless you are in the field. They have a life photoshop session on the projectors during showtime, where you can catch a few paint brush and spray tips here and there, but otherwise, for the average layman visitor there, all they can do is simply is stare in awe as the artists transforms a plain document into a nicely coloured illustration. Gary Erskine, who brought us lots of comics, notably even back from the old transformers era (no kids, it’s not that generation of transformers you see on TV now) was present at my visit and he was around to sign autographs as well as work on few on-the-spot commissions. Even old masterQ (lau fo zi) was there as well so that really added to the asian touch of the show, interesting.

Imaginary Friends studios double booth

Gary Erskine @ work

Some inedible bread anyone?

I was surprised to find an Singapore Polytechnic booth there as well, NUS was there too, specifically their comic club, but their presence was so small, I hardly even took notice. Otherwise for education institutions that very much about the attendance besides few private animation school offering courses of their own. I was surprised to find Mr Choy, one of my old lecturers who taught me in school back then who was the lecturer on duty at the SP booth that time. He proudly showed me his exhibits on display together with some background information and him being the coordinator chairperson of the event for the SP booth. Looks like they are intending to use the not only to showcase student’s works but largely to sell their design and animation courses as well.

Mr Choy at the SP booth

Some of the rather plain looking lego on display

Creepy dolls area getting photo raped

For the average visitor, this con is definitely an eye-opener for many, but if you’ve been to overseas comic enthusiasts conventions, things are really very much different, and they usually have one thing- focus and a very large fanbase, in fact it’s the people themselves there which makes it such a big hit, but it’s no evident here.

One reason why I find this local con rather disappointing is that besides it’s rather commercialized feel, there is no solid targeted crowd, with toys, dolls, game consoles, manga, animation, Japanese, Taiwan, Americian comics all thrown in one area. It’s like the organisers just want to hold the event to make a quick buck or two. You can’t put them all together and it dilutes the feel and authenticity of each genre. Coupled with a weak fan base here, it just makes this con here feel kind of aimless, not to mention pointless. There is no exclusivity as well especially with almost all “collectables and comics” sold can be brought from any common comic store on the streets. But hey I am in no position to talk about all this, so only things will change when our comic fanbase here becomes bigger.

On the forefront, we won’t be looking forward to the size of comic cons we see in the States such as those by Marvel or Dark horse fans, neither will we be seeing a Blizzard con or an E3 equivalent on our shores too soon too, but hey at least this is some baby steps forward into realizing that in in the future to come.

I had been always a fan of Lego, having grown up with them since I was a kid, even I do occasionally build some contraptions of my own especially with the Lego Mindstorm series. So what do you get when you bind them and the world largest commercial passenger jet? You get the world’s largest Lego airplane model.

This Lego A380 is the largest aircraft model on display in LEGOLAND and is built entirely of over 75,000 LEGO bricks in eight colours. Situated at its exclusive display at “MiniWorld” in the main LEGOLAND Park in West Denmark, the SIA A380 model spans 2.9m in length, has a wingspan of 3.2m and is 1m tall.

It weighs a total of 125 kg including 100 kg of LEGO bricks, where the rest are made out of mainly supports, binding glue as well as the motors and speakers which spins the turbine blades and create sound effects. The SIA A380 model required the skills of the entire team of professional LEGO model builders at LEGOLAND and took 600 hours to produce.

You can view a short video of it here.

Greetings from Mars and they come in peace! In the search for habitable regions on the Mars’ north pole region, the Phoenix lander had began digging into the area to sprout some interesting finds, clumps of white stuff. These were discovered in shallow trenches excavated by the lander’s backhoe-like robotic arm have turned up specks and at times even stripes of mysterious white material mixed in with the clumpy, reddish dirt. For the last three weeks scientists had been trying to find out what that mysterious substance is.

Led by the University of Arizona and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Phoenix (built by Lockheed Martin Corp) landed in the Martian arctic plains on May 25 on a three-month, $420 million mission to study whether the polar environment could be favorable for primitive life to emerge. The lander’s main job is to dig into an ice layer believed to exist a few inches from the surface. It had merged two previously dug trenches over the weekend into a single pit measuring a little over a foot long and 3 inches deep. The new trench was excavated at the edge of a polygon-shaped pattern in the ground that may have been formed by the seasonal melting of underground ice.

It’s no surprise man looking to find ways to live out of his home planet, such bits of information are just the baby steps to conquering the outer regions of the universe. And we believe Sergey Brin’s 2011 space tourist flight had nothing to do to it.

Preliminary results from a bake-and-sniff experiment at low temperatures failed to turn up any trace of water or ice in the scoopful of soil that was delivered to the lander’s test oven last week. Scientists planned to heat the soil again this week to up to 1,800 degrees, said William Boynton of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Now get those vacuum Ph meters out already!

I had few ideas of a technically possible self-sufficient green home, only that I didn’t put much of it to work till the recent recent increase in oil prices which resulted in a corresponding increase in goods and service, utility bills, not to mention paying for gasoline for your car. As a picture speak more than words, here’s a simple schematic of my plans:

Shaun’s GreenHome

Just like how Volkswagen came out with the W16 engine which took life in a Bugatti, this home is a showcase and challenge to be able to realize my dream of a self-sufficient home completely running renewable energy with zero dependence on wall outlets for electricity. I’ve seen such houses in Sweden before, with home idle currents and water usage the only costs factoring into the utility bills.

Generally the plan consists of 2 phases introduced gradually overtime with subsequent additions allowing for more self-sufficiency and power sustainability. Heres a little gist of the setup:

• Electricity generation day or night, rain or shine.
• Fully self-sufficient electric transport solution with zero emissions and gasoline cost with Fortwo electric and Segway
• Fully automatic night security lumination
• Enough efficiency and sustainability to run high demanding appliances such as electric dryers and ovens
• All small drain appliances such as phones, iPods, laptops all run off renewable charging sources.

There are few ideas of a compressed air vehicle and generator which I am planning to build with a friend in Australia, but ironically I can only do that out of Singapore as we are not allowed to do so here. I have few ideas I am researching and developing on my side which allows for electricity to be generated on everyday household usage, but I won’t be including them as of yet as to protect them as patents and from intellectual property thief.

It’s pleasing that such homes are becoming much of a reality now with solar panels very much cheaper than it was 10 years ago. There are however few things which have to be ironed out before such plans can take flight- There had been word from Daimler Chrysler and sadly, there are no plans to bring the smart series of city cars into Singapore, together with LTA and NEA’s red light for the Segway Human Transporter to be used on our walkways here. So realistically, I will give this home about 5-8 years down the road before this zero emissions transport and self-sufficiency concept can become real.