Bill – Page 73 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

LEGO fan convention in northern California?

UPDATE – The convention, Bricks by the Bay, took place on April 9-11, 2010, and we’re in the planning process for the 2011 event. You can read more about it at the Bricks by the Bay site.

Some of us in BayLUG have been talking about having a LEGO convention here in northern California. This would be similar to some of the existing ones that have been taking place around the country for years:

Brickfest (Washington DC and Portland OR)
Brickswest (San Diego CA)
Brickcon (Seattle WA)
Brickworld (Chicago IL)
Brickfair (Washington DC)

There’s a thread on LUGNET about it started by Russell Clark, the BayLUG president.

If you haven’t heard of these before, here’s the basic idea. We take over a hotel or convention center for a weekend (hopefully a 3-day weekend), and 100+ LEGO fans descend upon it from all over the country (and maybe a few from overseas). The LEGO company usually sends some high level executives and other representatives. The local LEGO store usually has some special discounts and an after-hours sale just for con-goers.

We’re currently looking at hotels in and around Santa Clara and San Mateo, since that’s where our two local LEGO stores are. If you have any ideas for venues or would like to offer support, please let Russell or me know.

Sorting bins

I recently bought some plastic bins at the local pharmacy (Longs Drugs, if you’re curious) and found them to be very useful for sorting LEGO parts.

These are sold for organizing small things in a drawer. My mom used to have something kind of like it to sort her silverware when I was a kid (though not the little ones). I’ve put them to use sorting LEGO. I connect them together in a big array on a small table, and then designate each one for a particular type of LEGO part.

It’s usually not possible to have enough bins for every possible category of LEGO part, so I do a multi-stage sort. First I sort into broad categories, which is what you see here, and then I take each category and do a secondary sort, and in some cases even tertiary, to their final categories.

How do you sort LEGO?

Facebook

I finally joined Facebook. If you want to add me, here’s my public search page.

Another 2006 Garden Gnome by another Bill posted by another Ward

In Ted Ward’s pictures from Northwest BrickCon 2006 I came across a picture a while ago of a garden gnome, created by Bill Volbrecht, former LEGO Master Builder.

As far as I know, Ted Ward is no relation to me, and neither is Bill Volbrecht.

As to why this is interesting, I built my own garden gnome in 2006 as well – while I was in Fairfax VA for the Brickfest convention (it wasn’t at the convention; I built it from parts I bought there, in my hotel room afterward). I posted it here shortly after I built it in September 2006. Here’s mine for comparison:

As for comparing the two, well I think that he did a better job on the mouth and eyes, but then I was limiting myself (as I’ve done for almost all of my sculptures) to only basic bricks, not plates or slopes or round parts. However if I may be so bold, I like my hat better: it is asymmetrical. I also think the details on the belt are better on mine. But the clincher is that his is functional: I believe that the hands are designed to hold business cards. Mine are hidden behind his back because hands are too hard to model :)

Spaceman/Nanoscale Display at Valley Fair Mall

Last Saturday, we changed out the display at the LEGO store in Santa Clara.

The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group installed a new display at the Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, CA featuring a large spaceman model and various nanoscale spaceships by Charles and Adrienne, and a rocket-powered knight by Bruce. This replaces my Blackburn Hotel that had been on display since May 31.