Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
Over the past few years I have followed a tradition of blogging each of the LEGO Advent calendars every day from December 1st through 24th. I’d buy the 2, 3, or 4 calendars produced by LEGO that year, and each day during the lead-up to Christmas, I’d open that day’s models, and build, photograph, and blog about them. But this year I’ve decided to only do the City Advent Calendar 60268. (CW: Harry Potter)
Continue reading “Why I’m only doing the City Advent Calendar this year”
The LEGO Ideas team has announced the results from the second 2016 review and Women of NASA project by Maia Weinstock has been selected as the next LEGO Ideas set!
Continue reading “LEGO Ideas honors Women of NASA”
On some LEGO Facebook groups, I’ve seen posts lately from people who are new to the hobby and confused by the names used for the shades of grey that LEGO makes. So I wrote an article explaining what happened in 2004 as LEGO rolled out the new colors which many people call “bluish” greys. (They’re not bluish! The old ones were yellowish!) Continue reading “New Article: Grey, Bluish Gray, Stone Grey, or Blay?”
Have you ever been talking about LEGO with someone who said “LEGO didn’t make those specialized parts when I was a kid”? It happens all the time at shows. Whenever we have a BayLUG exhibit at a model train show or museum or Maker Faire, or on the public day at Bricks by the Bay or other conventions, there are always adults coming through who look at the clever uses of parts in our MOCs and make a comment like this. Continue reading ““LEGO didn’t make those specialized parts when I was a kid””
Yesterday the Supreme Court overturned California’s Proposition 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). I created this simple rainbow heart sculpture design to celebrate justice being done at last.
This isn’t an opinion or politics blog, so I won’t go on any more than this, but I just wanted to share this design with the world.
Have you seen the latest stupid decision from Yahoo? They’ve not only completely redesigned the Flickr user interface, they’re phasing out the Flickr Pro account system. According to this article from Mashable, they’ve stopped selling Pro accounts, and they’ve taken away almost all the advantages that Pro account holders have had. In fact, it would seem that Pro accounts now have a smaller maximum file size than free ones (50MB vs 200MB, 90 seconds vs 3 minutes for video)!
So for those of us who have Pro accounts, the only real advantage that seems to be left is unlimited (vs. 1 TB) storage, and the ability to see view counts and referrer statistics.
Oh yeah, and they royally screwed up the UI. Sigh. Yahoo, what were you thinking?
Should I still upload my Maker Faire photos? I’m tempted to just stop using Flickr altogether… but then I have to figure out where to put my photos, and then there’s all the past posts in the blog to think about.. Ugh.
My version of the red and pink equality sign meme that’s taking over Facebook this week as the Supreme Court hears the Prop 8 and DOMA cases.
Readers of the “Brick House” comic at Reasonably Clever will have noticed that the characters are now wandering around the author’s home in Detroit. Does this mean Christopher Doyle finally got too lazy to build new sets? ;-)
Hillel Cooperman gave an “Ignite” presentation on the adult LEGO community recently. You can see it here on Youtube:
I found this through a post on Facebook by Felix Greco (I don’t think I can link to that because of the way Facebook works). The comments were not entirely positive, mostly around the way he talks about the adult LEGO fans, implying that they are so nerdy that they don’t date. It does sound to me like Hillel is not entirely comfortable with his AFOLishness. If he hadn’t had a kid and a wife who was enthusaistic about Harry Potter LEGO, do you think he would’ve rediscovered LEGO? Somehow I doubt it. However, most of the presentation was pretty positive. I do think he needs to take more pride in LEGO as a hobby and not denigrate his fellow AFOLs. But all in all, it’s a pretty good overview of the LEGO scene, told in an engaging and lively manner.
This showed up in my email today. I filled out the survey, and encourage everyone else to do it too.
The LEGO Group Wants to Hear From You!
As Adult Fans of LEGO, you bring an important perspective to the LEGO Group. We respect your creativity and passion for our brand.
Please take a few moments to complete this short online survey to let us know your opinion on how we are doing.
We promise to listen to you and use your feedback to improve!
You might notice that the link refers to the LEGO Kids Inner Circle; this is because Satmetrix, which hosts that site, is also supporting our efforts to track AFOL opinions. Rest assured that this survey is for AFOL’s only.
Thank you.
Steve Witt
LEGO Community Relations Coordinator
Truthfully I didn’t have a lot to suggest. I think LEGO’s pretty much doing everything right these days. My only beef is the discontinuation of 9V trains but then, I understand why they are doing it. I just hope the new Power Functions trains that are supposedly coming out next year are good enough.