Articles – Page 2 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

Brickshelf v Flickr

I’ve been using my Flickr account exclusively for LEGO photos as well as other things, like pictures from Earthquakes soccer games or various scenic shots I may take from time to time. Flickr Logo Brickshelf Logo I always tag my LEGO pictures with the lego tag though. I stopped using Brickshelf in 2006 when Kevin Loch suddenly shut it down. At that time I uploaded my back catalog of LEGO photos to Flickr and updated links in all the blog entries… what a chore that was! Then he said it would stay up after all, but I was so miffed I didn’t go back.

But I recently realized that a lot of people are still using Brickshelf. So, I’ve started uploading my pictures there too. I’m working my way backward in time through the blog, uploading all the photos to my Brickshelf account that are only on Flickr. I’m not planning on posting any links to the Brickshelf pics, but in case anyone finds me through that outlet, they’ll not miss what I’ve been doing. I am putting a ‘readme.txt’ in every folder I add, which has links to the corresponding Flickr page and blog entry.

How do you do your image hosting?

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?

Games using LEGO?

Lately I’ve been getting into board games, card games, etc. And it got me thinking. LEGO would be a great medium for games.

I’m not talking about regular games that just happen to use LEGO as pieces… There’s Brikwars but I don’t think that’s really LEGO-specific enough. And there are various LEGO-produced games, such as chess and such, which are neat but not really innovative at all.

No, I’m thinking about a game where you have to build some structure out of LEGO while your opponent tries to stop you while building their own. I remember once I came across rules for such a game but don’t know what I did with it.

Does anyone know of any such games? If not, how about creating one?[tags]lego,games,boardgames,strategy[/tags]

Clever new SNOT technique

As I wrote recently, Unique Brick Tecniques is a great blog for discovering some of the clever ideas people have posted about.

The obvious way to connect two LEGO pieces is by putting the studs of one into the underside of another. But there are other ways. For example you can use a right-angle bracket to connect bricks at a 90 degree angle. For example, the headlights or taillights on most LEGO cars and trucks are often attached this way. In the AFOL (Adult Friends of LEGO) community, the term for this is SNOT (“Studs Not On Top”).

But the trouble with most SNOT techniques is that the bracket pieces take up bulk that sometimes you can ill afford in your model. One of the techniques featured on Unique Brick Techniques a few weeks ago is a very compact way to make a 180 degree connection between two plates. It seems to have been discovered by Brickshelf user “kerouac” (whose full identity I have not been able to find). Read more about it in the threads on Classic-Castle.com and LUGNET.
[tags]lego,snot[/tags]