Every year BayLUG holds a holiday show in Palo Alto at the Museum of American Heritage, and for the past few years this has featured an annual themed collaboration. This year’s theme is a tour of roadside attractions around the United States, featuring models representing a variety of places around the country.
Gingerbread Man Instructions
I’ve created directions in case you’d like to build the gingerbread man I posted yesterday.
Merry Xmas 2025: Gingerbread Man Ornament
Merry Christmas! This year I designed a festive tree ornament, a gingerbread man! It’s a pretty simple design, some nougat colored plates with a few tiles added for decoration. Hope you are having a pleasant holiday season.
Bricks Cascade 2025
Hi, I still exist! Some of you may have even seen me in Portland when I went up for the Bricks Cascade convention a couple weeks ago.
Advent 2024
I am sorry to say this year I didn’t make it all the way through Advent. We bought a house in November, and I tried to do the usual daily Advent posts while amid the chaos of preparing the house, packing, and moving, but it was difficult to keep up (even more than it usually is) and the last straw was after Day 15 when I had a sewage flood at my LEGO studio! I just couldn’t keep going, and stopped at Day 15, and by the time I would have been able to resume it was well into the next year and didn’t seem appropriate to retroactively be covering the holidays. Plus, I was pretty upset about the election results and busy with the new house. As usual, each post was originally a separate blog entry, starting with Day 1, and continuing with a daily post about that day’s advent models. However, to clean up the site, I’ve condensed all those daily posts to a single post per year.
See me at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend
The annual gathering of creative artists, hackers, and all around cool people known as Maker Faire Bay Area is upon us again! Like last year, it’s at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, CA. Unlike last year, it’s just one weekend.
Advent 2023 MOC Instructions
In Advent 2023, after the first week I built an original model of my own design each day using the parts from the Friends and Marvel sets. Here are the instructions to build these models. Like the calendar posts, each of these was originally a separate blog entry, starting with Day 8, and continuing with a daily post from then on out. Now, they are archived in a single post.
Advent 2023
I can’t believe it’s already December and time to crank up the old Advent Calendar engine once more! This year I purchased two of the available five calendars LEGO has released: Friends and Marvel. Like with last year, I’m doing daily YouTube videos as well as blog posts, so choose whatever medium you like… Starting on Day 8, I also designed original MOCs from the leftover parts – instructions are in a separate post. As usual, each post was originally a separate blog entry, starting with Day 1, and continuing with a daily post about that day’s advent models. However, to clean up the site, I’ve condensed all those daily posts to a single post per year. Here’s the 2023 edition.
Like last year I chose not to do all 5 of the Advent calendars LEGO publishes, just these two. But if you want to build the others, here are some links to them on Amazon: City, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. (But please don’t support Harry Potter, due to the transphobic political views of J. K. Rowling.)
Glory to Ukraine
“Слава Україні” (in the Roman alphabet, “Sláva Ukrayíni”), means “Glory to Ukraine” and is the rallying cry of the Ukranian people as they resist the invasion by Russia. I designed these models to show my support for the cause. I designed a LEGO model based on the a Ukranian flag with the words printed on it. I also created two heart shapes, 6 and 10 studs tall respectively. The instructions for all three models are included in this post.
Advent 2022
Another year’s Advent has come around. Last year I decided not to do LEGO Advent, but I’m going to give it another go this time around with just 3 of the 5 possible Advent calendars. I’m doing the Guardians of the Galaxy, Friends, and City calendars. This year I also started making YouTube videos about each day’s builds. As usual, each post was originally a separate blog entry, starting with Day 1, and continuing with a daily post about that day’s advent models. However, to clean up the site, I’ve condensed all those daily posts to a single post per year. Here’s the 2022 edition.
Brick Geometry Recording from October 2022 BayLUG Meeting
Since 2008 I’ve been giving a presentation at various LEGO conventions, mainly BrickCon in Seattle, Washington, and Bricks by the Bay in Santa Clara, California, called “Brick Geometry” covering a variety of LEGO building techniques. A new recording of the latest version of this presentation is now available on YouTube.
Día de los Muertos 2022
I’ve created a bunch of new MOCs (“My Own Creations”) for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). BayLUG honored the Mexican holiday by displaying our themed collaboration at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. The show will continue through January 15 (see schedule below), if you want to come see it.
BayLUG Meeting October 8, 2022
BayLUG, the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group, had its second in-person, indoor club meeting since the pandemic started on October 8th in San Leandro. I was anxious about the in-person meeting, but I went anyway, and even took my N95 mask off to eat once or twice. Not everyone was as paranoid as I was, but as far as I know, nobody got sick from attending the meeting which is the important thing. Anyway, it was great to see and hang out with other humans again, which is pretty novel for me these days, despite having all my shots. I am looking forward to more such gatherings in the future.
BayLUG July 2022 Tailgate Meeting
The BayLUG meeting at the church in San Leandro was changed at the last minute to being a “tailgate meeting” in the parking lot (like the one in April) due to the rise of new COVID-19 variants and concerns of several members (including me) about the safety and ableism of holding indoor events.
Brick Geometry at Bricks by the Bay 2022
I’ve updated my Brick Geometry Presentations page to include the PDF from my talk given today at Bricks by the Bay in Santa Clara, CA.
BayLUG May 2022 Meeting
Ever since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, BayLUG‘s meetings have been virtual (on Zoom) with the exception of two meetings held in the parking lot of the church in San Leandro (including the April meeting). This is the first time we’ve had a meeting indoors and I was very nervous about going, but I went anyway.
BayLUG April 2022 Tailgate Meeting
This past Saturday April 30th I attended my first meeting of balug since the start of the pandemic. We’ve had plenty of online meetings over Zoom and the club has had at least one other meeting in person before (also outdoors) but this was the first one I have attended.
I’m still here
What do you say when you haven’t been doing anything to talk about? I haven’t built any new LEGO models in a while … somehow over the course of the pandemic my work area where I built stuff has become a collection pile for junk! But I’m really excited about the new season of LEGO Masters coming up next month, and hoping to watch the Australian show which just started this month as well.
BrickCon 2021
I just finished attending the first ever hybrid (both in-person and online) LEGO convention, BrickCon 2021.
BrickCon Presentation Video
My presentation from last October’s BrickCon event is now available for viewing online. They’ve posted this as well as plenty of other great talks from that event for public viewing. Check them all out! Hopefully this year BrickCon can be held in person… in the meantime stay safe and stay healthy!
Birds on a Clock
LEGO set 21301 “Birds” from 2015 is a great model, and I found a new place to display it.
Advent 2020
2020 was the year I chose to only do the City Advent Calendar – no Friends, Star Wars, or Harry Potter. I wrote about that decision in a separate post. As usual, each post was originally a separate blog entry, starting with Day 1, and continuing with a daily post about that day’s advent models. However, to clean up the site, I’ve condensed all those daily posts to a single post per year. Here’s the 2020 edition.