Bill Ward’s Brickpile

Every once in a while I get a request to share building instructions for my models. I am willing to do so, but haven’t quite figured out the best way. I was wondering if people might want to comment and make some suggestions?

Some possibilities for formats are are:

• LDraw files
• PDF of instructions generated using LDraw and LDpub
• Printed instructions in black & white or color

The ugly side of the equation comes when I contemplate compensation.  Do I sell them or just give them away?  I think it depends on how much work I have to put into them.  I won’t go through the trouble of creating printed instructions for free, but I might be willing to share the LDraw files for free (Creative Commons licensed).  The question is, how much would people be willing to pay, and is that enough to justify the work it would take me to prepare nice looking instructions?

I had an email inquiry about my LEGO sculptures (see also sculptures on my old site), and I sent the person a bunch of information about where to get LEGO parts in quantity. But then I thought it might be useful to share that information with the world on my blog, so here it is:

[Update 12/23/2008: the rest of this blog entry has been moved to a Page "Buying Bulk LEGO" so it can be found more easily.]

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. 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?

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?

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?

Technorati Tags: lego, games, boardgames, strategy

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.

Technorati Tags: lego, snot