August 2007 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

BayLUG at Chabot Space & Science Center, August 25, 2007

On Saturday, August 25, 2007, members of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group converged at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.

The meeting was primarily supposed to be about LEGO Space, and most of the members brought space-related models to show. Charles and Adrienne stole the show with a huge arrangement of microscale spaceships and a dramatic centerpiece: a giant red and white Bellville/space/castle mashup, which converted at the touch of a hand from a dramatic castle to a viciously armed spaceship! Other models featured were Jim’s version of the pneum-ADD-ic machine (design by Kevin Clague) from the book LEGO Mindstorms Masterpieces, Jeremy’s Mindstorms and Technic models, Kevin’s Star Wars base (on the ice planet Hoth, from The Empire Strikes Back), John’s medieval half-church, a desert train diorama by CJ, and a miniature downtown by yours truly.

We have talked about having more meetings there, perhaps with a bit more promotion, either later this year or early next year. Stay tuned!

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.

Yoda Build Event at Hillsdale Shopping Center

LEGO has been doing these “Yoda build events” all around the country as promotions for their retail stores. We finally got a chance to participate in one!

Members of BayLUG spent most of the weekend of July 20 and 21 helping out with this project. A Master Builder from LEGO, Stephen Gerling, was on hand to construct the giant LEGO sculpture of Yoda from Star Wars. It was based on a smaller model built almost entirely out of 2×4 bricks in brown, tan, and sand green colors.

To build the giant sculpture, kids were invited to come and construct giant LEGO bricks. Each brick was 8x16x4, or exactly 4x in each dimension the size of a standard 2×4 brick. Lots of 2×4 and 2×8 bricks in each of the three colors were on hand, and laminated instruction cards were set out for the kids to follow. We ended up with many many bins full of the giant bricks, which were used to construct the Yoda sculpture. In fact we had plenty of bricks left over, so at the end we took the instructions away and just let the kids build whatever they wanted.

The event was a lot of fun. We didn’t get paid, but we got some very special deals on bricks from the store to compensate for our time :-)

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.

Recent BayLUG Store Displays

My LEGO club, BayLUG, has been honored to be able to display some of our work at the local LEGO stores.

We are doubly fortunate in that we are the only LEGO user group in the neighborhood of not one, but two LEGO stores: Hillsdale Shopping Center and Valley Fair Mall. It can be a bit of a challenge sometimes coming up with two different displays, so sometimes we will cycle them from one store to the other. The last few times we’ve put in a display I have taken pictures using my cell phone camera, but never got around to blogging about them. So instead of having one post for each installation, I’m posting just one entry to cover all of them. There are several dioramas represented here:

A “Save 9V Trains” display, featuring several train models on shelves to show what is possible using our favorite train technology. Installed 1/13/2007 at Valley Fair.
Undersea diorama by Mathew, with various club members adding boats and other small models to complete the display. Installed 5/30/2007 at Valley Fair.
A microscale town, featuring Russell’s COIT tower and several small buildings and vehicles by Loren. Installed 6/2/2007 at Hillsdale.

We’ll be installing new displays in both stores soon, so watch this space. I’ll try to be more reliable about blogging them…

This blog entry corresponds to two photosets on Flickr, so click each of the big pictures to go to the corresponding set page on Flickr, or view the Save 9V Trains slideshow (just 2 pictures), the Underwater slideshow, or the Microscale Town slideshow.