Interview: Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer

There’s a very interesting Interview on BoingBoing with Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer.

I grew up on some of these sets! I started collecting Space LEGO sets in the late 1970’s when I was a little kid, and spent most of my spare time building and rebuilding classic LEGO spaceships and bases.

Windows Flickr Live Photos Pro

I saw this picture on the MICROSOFT: KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR group on Flickr.

With Microsoft’s recent announcement of an offer to buy Yahoo! many Flickr users, including myself, are terrified about what will happen to our beloved photo-sharing site.

So I’ve started thinking about where I’ll host my photos in the future. I’m loathe to return to Brickshelf, with its decades-outdated user interface and absentee owner. Perhaps Picasa (Google) can fill the bill? Or maybe photobucket? Anyone have other suggestions?

LEGO Braiding Machine

Thomas Johnson has done it again. The creator of the LEGO knitting machine has a new masterpiece, a braiding machine built using LEGO Technic pieces which creates a three-stranded braid. You can see photos and a really cool video (nice music, too) of the machine in action.

I’d show you a thumbnail, but the Web site doesn’t seem to make that possible. Anyway, watch the video. It’s mesmerizing.[tags]lego,braider,braiding,machine,technic[/tags]

My Track Geometry page translated to Italian

My Track Layout Geometry page has been translated into Italian!

A few days ago I received an email from Alex Cordero of ITLUG (Italian LEGO® Users Group) saying that they were interested in translating the page into Italian. He just contacted me to let me know that it was done; you can view the finished page on the ITLUG Web site (EDIT 9/15/2008: updated URL).

This is the first time something I’ve written has been translated into another language, and I’m very flattered and pleased that it was deemed worthy for this treatment.

I don’t speak a word of Italian – though I do have some Spanish – so I don’t know how accurate the translation is, but I hope that it proves useful to Italian-speaking LEGO fans everywhere!

BayLUG Display at MoAH now through January 6

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.
Entrance

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.

Nelson Yrizarry’s Snowflakes

Another amazing creation from “Big Daddy” Nelson Yrizarry. He’s taken the 5×7 LEGO foliage pieces in white, and turned them into snowflake patterns! Happy holidays!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while… I’ve been either sick or busy almost constantly since early September. I have some big stuff to post soon though!

Modular 16×32 Buildings

These two buildings, both built on 16×32 stud baseplates, have been featured in many BayLTC displays over the past couple of years. They were built in a modular fashion so that floors can be mixed and matched if desired, and taken apart for more compact storage and transport.

Red BuildingBlue Building

The blue building has a removable module for the two upper floors, and another one for the roof. The red building has one removable module, consisting of the upper floor plus roof. The Blackburn Hotel was built according to the same standards.

The trouble with this modular design though is that the architectural style of the different buildings clashes too much; they would never be combined in real life.

These buildings have now been disassembled, largely because I feel that 16×32 is just too small of a footprint for a realistic building. I am now working on new buildings using a 32×32 or larger size footprint. I brought the works-in-progress for this project to the October BayLUG meeting.

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

BayLUG Meeting on October 14, 2007

Pictures from the October 14, 2007 BayLUG meeting.

In the front doorOn 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.

Blackburn Hotel

The Blackburn Hotel is a building that I have displayed may times as a part of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club layouts at train shows and meetings, but never blogged about.

Blackburn Hotel

It is one of several 16×32 footprint downtown buildings which I created for the layout one time a few years ago when I heard that several of the members who usually bring buildings to train shows weren’t going to be participating in one of the shows, and we desperately needed downtown buildings.

The building is five stories tall, built mostly using black bricks with tan trim and red windows. The unique feature of the hotel is the signs: a rooftop “BLACKBURN HOTEL” sign and a vertical sign that says “HOTEL” which is intended to be placed at a street corner, but can be rotated 45 degrees to be used for a mid-block placement.

The name was suggested by my wife. Partly it is due to the color, and partly due to the fact that I was watching an English Premier League football (soccer) match on TV as I was building it featuring Blackburn Rovers (I support any team that has American players, and Blackburn have an American goalkeeper, Brad Friedl, as well as the New Zealander Ryan Nelson who used to play in Major League Soccer).

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