Author: Bill Ward

Bricks by the Bay 2014

Our annual LEGO convention here in the bay area, Bricks by the Bay, just happened! I was so busy organizing it that I’m afraid I never got around to posting a blurb on my blog about it – hope you heard about it through other means and were there! It was a huge event, expanding to add a second ballroom, and adding an extra day (Thursday) for a new workshop program. We almost doubled last year’s attendance on the public day (about 4500 vs 2500 last year) though our convention attendance was down.

I’d like to announce the dates for next year’s convention, but we don’t have a firm commitment on the dates yet. The most likely dates are July 16-19, but we can’t be sure until we have a contract from the hotel. The theme for next year will be “Monsters” and we will be also making a special effort to highlight models with lighting effects similar to what they do at Brickworld in Chicago and BrickFair back east, shutting off the convention center lights for a few hours in the evening to let people enjoy the lit-up MOCs (My Own Creations). So start planning your monsters, especially ones with light-up effects!

I didn’t take photos at the convention, but here are some links to galleries that others have posted:

If you have some to add, post a link in the comments.

Trip Report: Brickworld 2014

I went to Chicago a couple of weeks ago to attend the Brickworld LEGO convention, one of the largest such events in the world. As you probably know I am the president of Bricks by the Bay, our local convention here in the San Francisco bay area, and it’s good to get out and visit other conventions to network, pick up new ideas for our event, and just see what the rest of the AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) world is doing. This was my third Brickworld; I had gone in 2009 and 2011. Continue reading “Trip Report: Brickworld 2014”

Back Online

You may have noticed this site has been down a lot lately.

The machine that hosted the Brickpile, along with BayLUG and Bricks by the Bay, along with some other personal domains that I and some friends owned, was hacked back in January, and then we got another site up briefly and it too was almost immediately compromised. But now this is the third try, this time hosted on Amazon EC3. Wish me luck.

Speaking of Bricks by the Bay, we’re ramping things up for the convention this year and I’m really excited about it. Come down to Santa Clara in August and spend a weekend immersing yourself in LEGO fan culture! The convention is Thursday through Sunday, August 7-10, 2014, with a Public Exhibition on Sunday. I’m putting the final touches on the registration system for this year now, and we’ll have it open shortly. Check out the Bricks by the Bay website for more information and I hope to see you there!

P.S.: I’m also going to be at Brickworld in Chicago this year, and later in the year BrickCon in Seattle. If you’re going to be there, look for me.

Advent 2013 Review

Merry Christmas! The 24 days of LEGO Advent Calendars (Friends (set# 41016), City (60024), and Star Wars (75023)) are over, and here’s a review of all that we got…


Here we have all 72 models (3 calendars x 24 days each) laid out on a towel-covered table. The pics that follow show the models and parts in various combinations. Click each image for a larger view (on Flickr).

Just the minifigs.

Christmas trees, hearth, lamppost, and gifts.

Friends Advent Calendar models.

City Advent Calendar models.

Star Wars Advent Calendar models.

Finally, we have plenty of spare parts. Whenever there is a smaller part such as a 1×1 round plate or tile, you will often see one or two extras included along with it… I’ve shown you the extras for each day as we’ve gone along, but here they all are collected together.

First, Friends spare parts:

Next, we have the City spare parts:

Finally, Star Wars:

Advent 2013 Day 24

The final entry in the 2013 Advent Calendars, on Christmas Eve.

We get two Santas: a traditional one from City (with a cool Santa hat!) and Santa Fett from Star Wars. The Friends entry, however, is a really plain (if large) Christmas gift. I would have preferred a Friends figure with a Santa hat.

That concludes the 2013 Advent Calendar series … look forward to another series of them next December. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! I’ll be back tomorrow with a review of the things we found in the calendars.

Advent 2013 Day 22

Day 22 of the LEGO 2013 Advent Calendars.

Today Friends gives us a medium azure box with a sprig of vegetation coming out from the bottom; Star Wars gives us a minifigure of the young Boba Fett (with torso and stubby legs in a cool shade of blue); and City gives us a micro scale excavator.

Advent 2013 Day 21

Happy Solstice everyone! It’s finally winter. Or summer if you’re down under.

Today we get a confusing musical thing in Friends, a choochoo train in City, and Boba Fett’s “Slave I” spaceship from Star Wars. The Friends model is really weird – there’s a 2×2 tile with some sheet music (the song is Frère Jacques in case you were wondering) on a clip so that a figure can hold it, but also some kind of strange thing with transparent 1×1 round pieces and a tap which I can’t figure out … some kind of horn maybe? The other models are straightforward: a cute little train with one car, and a nice intricate detailed model of Slave I.

Advent 2013 Day 20

Today we get three miniatures in the LEGO Advent Calendars.

The Friends calendar gives us a nice little Christmas tree; City gives us a miniature fireboat; and Star Wars gives us Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter.

Note: I noticed after taking the picture that the 2×4 plate on the bottom of the Christmas tree is on wrong and I missed an extra trans-pink 1×2 round plate, but don’t want to bother redoing the photo shoot. Sorry, I’m lazy.

Advent 2013 Day 19

For Day 19 of the LEGO Advent Calendars, we get three little vehicles and a torch?

The Friends thing seems to be like an Olympic torch. It’s a nice construction using an upside-down tile and cone, with a dark brown “flower” piece providing a hole that the flame can connect into. Clever construction but I’m not sure what it has to do with the other models in that calendar. For City, we get two little airplanes, which go along with the Star Wars mini-spaceships we have been getting all along, and today is no exception (Separatist Shuttle).

Curiously it seems that Flickr has made my life harder yet again… as of yesterday, they changed the HTML they generate to provide links to photos to use an <iframe> tag instead of the <a><img> that they’ve always been using (when I’m viewing a photo and click the “Share” icon, the HTML is presented for copy/paste). So while I’ve been just using that option to share the photos on my blog until now, I’m now being asked to give them a frame which who knows what they might try to use it for – ads? tracking? – and so I have started manually generating the link and image tags. Curse you, Yahoo!