June 2008 BayLUG Meeting

BayLUG (Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group) held a meeting on June 22, 2008. Here are the pictures from that meeting.

Drag Line

We had a club contest at the meeting with a theme of “rolling stock.” Bruce’s entry, a revamped 4-8-8-4 Cab Forward locomotive, sporting a new larger diameter boiler, won first place in the adult category. Charles and Adrienne contributed a flatcar with an assortment of hobos. In the younger categories we had two entries, a 7-year-old named Ryan who won his age category with a “Police Spy Train” and Tim (age 11) whose boxcar came in second place. There were no entries in the 12-18 category.

I didn’t bring any models but I did bring the plastic trays I’ve been using for sorting, and demonstrated them by working on the new LEGO Factory Star Justice set during the meeting. I purchased the colorful plastic bins at a local drugstore and have found them to be very helpful when sorting bricks.

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

BayLUG at Maker Faire 2008, Day 1

For the third year, the Bay Area LEGO Users Group (BayLUG) is taking part in Maker Faire.

Train layout and admirers

We have a 25-foot square train layout and several additional tables, including a large Technic crane and excavator. The show is open until 6pm today (Saturday, May 3) and tomorrow (Sunday, May 4). Hope to see you here!

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

April 2008 BayLUG Meeting

We had another meeting of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) today at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto.

Sorting

Members of BayLUG descended on the museum’s meeting room for a day of buying and selling parts, schmoozing, and displaying our latest models.

For the meeting contest, which had a Disney theme, I brought a pair of Mickey Mouse ears I had made out of LEGO. I won the contest in the adult category! (Of course, I was the only entry in the adult category, which takes a little bit of the fun out of it…) Unfortunately in the excitement I failed to take a picture of the contest entries…. I’ll post about the mouse ears separately.

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

Yuri’s Night 2008

The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) took part in Yuri’s Night Bay Area at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, on April 12 2008.

P1000277Play AreaFire

The event was a cross between an airshow, a rave, and a mini Maker Faire (which we will be taking part in next month). We had a display of some of our LEGO models, mostly following a space or futuristic theme, as well as a play area where adults and kids alike could crawl around and build stuff. I brought my DC-3 and the “Fast Flyers” jet.

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

January 2008 BayLUG meeting

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!

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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.

MoAH Exhibit 2008-01-05

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

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.

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.

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.

BayLUG at Chabot Space & Science Center, August 25, 2007

On Saturday, August 25, 2007, members of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group converged at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.

Charles 2The meeting was primarily supposed to be about LEGO Space, and most of the members brought space-related models to show. Charles and Adrienne stole the show with a huge arrangement of microscale spaceships and a dramatic centerpiece: a giant red and white Bellville/space/castle mashup, which converted at the touch of a hand from a dramatic castle to a viciously armed spaceship! Other models featured were Jim’s version of the pneum-ADD-ic machine (design by Kevin Clague) from the book LEGO Mindstorms Masterpieces, Jeremy’s Mindstorms and Technic models, Kevin’s Star Wars base (on the ice planet Hoth, from The Empire Strikes Back), John’s medieval half-church, a desert train diorama by CJ, and a miniature downtown by yours truly.

We have talked about having more meetings there, perhaps with a bit more promotion, either later this year or early next year. Stay tuned!

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

Yoda Build Event at Hillsdale Shopping Center

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! 20070721-6481

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 8x16x4, 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.