Bill Ward’s Brickpile

I’ve fallen a bit behind blogging about recent BayLUG meetings, though I did post the pictures online. Here we have pics of the meeting in January at Dave Porter’s house in Woodside. We also had a meeting in Palo Alto on February 24, but I missed that one as I was out of town that weekend. Our next meeting is this coming Sunday, April 20, at MoAH in Palo Alto, and it’s open to the public so come by and say hi!

Club member Dave Porter has a house in the mountains where he puts up a display every year for the holidays featuring a very detailed train layout with lots of great scenery. And every January for the past few years, the club is invited up to view the layout and have a big meeting at his house. It’s always a lot of fun.

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

Exhibit of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA.

Every year BayLUG puts on a “Living LEGO-cy” exhibit at the museum during the Holidays. We put it up in early December and take it down in early January. Families crowd the room to stare at our creations every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during this period. It’s a lot of fun, but it can be a lot of work. I took these pictures on the last day of the latest exhibit, on January 5, 2008, just before we tore it all down and took it all home.

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

The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group has a display currently on view at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. The display was installed on December 8, and these photos were taken on December 15.

You have two weekends left to enjoy the display! The exhibit is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 11am to 4pm. Hope to see you there! If you plan to stop by, let me know in advance and I’ll see if I can meet you there. I’m scheduled to help staff the layout on Saturday January 5, but may make other random appearances as my schedule and whim suit me.

My models on this layout include all the buildings in the city block containing the “Blackburn Hotel” and the coast guard base on the “water” table.

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

Pictures from the October 14, 2007 BayLUG meeting.

On Sunday we had our ninth anniversary meeting of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group. Here are the pictures I took during the meeting. I used my cell phone camera, so sorry about the quality. I used it because I forgot to bring my digital camera. The ironic thing is I discovered I had my digital camera in my bag after all, but not until after several people had gone home… See the individual photo pages on Flickr for captions and more information.

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

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 8×16x4, 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.

The BayLTC meeting in May, 2002, was to plan for the upcoming train show.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

BayLUG took part once again in the Museum of American Heritage’s annual Vintage Vehicles and Family Festival in El Camino Park in Palo Alto, CA. We had a small booth with several models on display and lots of LEGO for sale. The festival featured lots of classic cars on display and live music performances all day long. It was a lot of fun! The pictures featured here are of our LEGO club booth, but I also went around and took pictures of all the cars. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Technorati Tags: lego, baylug, vvff, vvff2007, moah, paloalto

Another post from my old site. This was one of the first BayLUG meetings I ever attended.

The BayLUG meeting in January, 2002, featured a contest for models of 100 pieces or less. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Another repost from my old site…

BayLUG meeting pictures from October, 2001 Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

We had a great time at Maker Faire again this year.

We had a train layout like usual, around 23 feet square, featuring a city downtown, CJ’s Hollywood diorama, a suburban area, farm, Bruce’s 10 foot bridge, rail yard with lots of rolling stock on display, James’s Goofy Train, and a new feature, with Jim and James collaborating on a double-figure-eight loop with Mindstorms control preventing any wrecks at the crossover tracks, and featuring Jim’s Hogwarts castle diorama. In addition we had several tables along the perimeter of the room with several items on display, including Jim’s Mindstorms/pneumatic calculator. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos. I also had a chance to wander around Maker Faire and take pictures of some of what I saw. You can find those pictures on Flickr (slideshow) as well.

Technorati Tags: lego, baylug, bayltc, makerfaire, makerfaire2007