Each year for the past several years, Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group has been invited to hold a meeting at the home of one of our members, Dave Porter, at his house in Woodside, CA. He has a huge LEGO display in his house every year, and we get to see it in person before he takes it down each February.
Bill Ward
MoAH Display Wrapup
We took down the BayLUG exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage (MoAH) in Palo Alto, CA, on Sunday, January 11. I finally got around to dumping the camera today and uploaded the pictures to Flickr. Sorry about the delay.
BayLUG Exhibit Closes with Record Crowds
We had some great publicity for the exhibit by the Bay Area LEGO Users Group at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA for the last few weekends.
There were television coverage by two different local stations, articles in the newspaper, and lots and lots of word-of-mouth advertising. We got several new members in the club and lots of people signing up for our club mailing lists or taking business cards home.
Winners of the Go Miniman Go video contest
The technogeek blog Gizmodo has announced the winners of the Go Miniman Go video contest.
New LEGO blog: Sariel’s LEGO Technic creations
One of the most well-documented LEGO builders out there is “Sariel,” a Polish LEGO builder specializing in Technic models: construction equipment, trucks, military equipment, etc. They feature a lot of moving parts, often with motorized and/or pneumatic power. He takes excellent quality photos and even has Youtube videos of his models.
BayLUG on TV?
Yesterday, a crew from KTVU channel 2 television came to see the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group exhibit. Watch this Video on KTVU.com about our exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto. Russell (the club president) and I weren’t there, but Loren did a great job explaining the exhibit for the camera. I’m sure that must have been nerve-wracking but I think he’s got a great voice for that kind of thing so I’m glad he was willing and available to do it.
SavaTheAggie’s #2602 Angus 0-8-8-0 Locomotive
I rarely blog about other people’s models, but I wanted to talk a little about the latest work by Anthony Sava (“SavaTheAggie”). It’s the Erie Railroad’s #2602 L-1 Camelback Angus class 0-8-8-0 Steam Locomotive.
My license plate: “I ♥ LEGO”
A few years ago I got a special custom California license plate that says “I ♥ LEGO.” And though I’ve had it for several years, I never got around to posting a picture of it online. Well, apparently Flickr user r0wb0t has beat me to the punch. My car was in the parking lot at the Museum of American Heritage as I was helping staff the BayLUG exhibit, and he took a picture of it and put it on Flickr.
Fleetwood Revolution LE 42K Motorhome
This high-end luxury motorhome allows you to travel in class! Features three slide-outs, including one that is almost the entire left side, a powerful diesel engine in back, two bathrooms, plentiful storage underneath, a well-appointed kitchen, and much more.
Shasta Teardrop Trailer featured on LAMLradio Podcast
I just wanted to say thanks to Jonathan Bender for selecting my Shasta Teardrop Travel Trailer as his “MOC of the Week” when he was interviewed on LAMLradio Episode 69. (If you just want to hear what they had to say about my trailer, skip to 39:02)
Advent 2008
This year was the first time I blogged about the Advent Calendars, a tradition I continued most years through 2024. At the time, there was a lot of sturm und drang on Lugnet.com about how the Castle calendar was only being made available in Europe, until LEGO offered it here eventually as mentioned in the Day 1 post. 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 2008 edition.
Amazing Great Ball Contraption video
This is really a work of art – not just for the clever LEGO creations, but maybe even more so for the filmmaking. The modern classical music accompanies the images very well. By taking a series of close-up video shots of various parts of the contraption, each one well composed and from an interesting angle, our interest is maintained throughout. Exceedingly well-done!
Another LEGO Video of the “Numa Numa” song
Properly titled “Dragostea din Tei,” this song became an Internet fad a couple of years ago when Gary Brolsma posted his “Numa Numa Dance” video on YouTube. A couple of years ago, I posted on Brickpile about a LEGO animation based on Gary’s video that I had seen on The Brothers Brick. I was going over some old posts on Brickpile and saw that video was not available any longer, but did a quick search for “numa numa lego” on YouTube and found that the video had been reposted, so updated that old blog post.
BayLUG MoAH show updated
I spent today at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto helping staff the exhibit there by my local LEGO club, the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group. I took a few pictures of things that had been added since my last update.
LEGO Cruise Ship Contest
There are LEGO building contests organized by LEGO hobbyists all the time, but this may be the first time a company (other than LEGO itself) is soliciting entries in a contest. STX Europe, a shipyard that builds some of the world’s largest cruise ships, is sponsoring a building contest using LEGO Digital Designer.
Shasta Teardrop Travel Trailer
My latest vehicle MOC is a camping trailer, based on the 1960’s Shasta travel trailer.
Bricklink Store now Open
So I have decided to take a stab at a little LEGO e-commerce. I now have a Bricklink store where you can buy new and used parts. My plan is to put into the store any sets that I buy duplicates of, and to hold back just the parts from those sets that I want. I’ll also be selling off the instructions and sticker sheets that I don’t want.
LEGO survey of adult fans
This showed up in my email today. I filled out the survey, and encourage everyone else to do it too.
BayLUG show at MoAH opens
This past weekend, I joined with other members of Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group to set up a train layout and other exhibits at the Museum of American Heritage, which will be on display through January 11, 2009.