Tag: lego

Why Does LEGO Ignore Girls?

Blogger and podcaster CC Chapman has set up a great video series where his daughter Emily pontificates on the issues that matter to her.  The latest one is “Why Does LEGO Ignore Girls?” where she makes the case for LEGO to make more products that are accessible to girls.

I’ve always been bothered by this.  They say time and again that their target market is boys ages 8-11 and that’s what they target all their products toward, and they offer token girl sets such as the lame Belleville line and pink brick buckets, which don’t sell well because they are lame!

Like Emily says, girls like the town sets a lot.  She suggests a shopping mall.  I’ve heard this from other girl LEGO fans as well: build sets that model everyday life, and girls will love them.  The town sets always seem to be about police and firefighters historically.  Lately the farm line has some promise, as do the Cafe Corner type buildings (though these tend to be for an older age group, and you’d lose the girls before they got to be old enough to be able to build them without frustration).

Another suggestion I’ve heard many times is to make LEGO babies.  The new 1×1 stud footprint figures used in the LEGO games might be a good starting point for this.

Anyway, watch the video  for yourself, and share it with anyone you know who has girls that might feel the same way.  And more than anything, keep pestering LEGO about this issue.  They won’t do anything about it until there’s a large groundswell of support for LEGO sets aimed toward girls.

Let Your Android Control Your Robot

Today, LEGO has announce a new Android App for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT.  If you have an Android based phone, you can use this to manipulate your LEGO robots using Bluetooth.  I have a Motorola Droid, and I have two MINDSTORMS NXT sets, but have never built anything with them.  I really should get around to doing something about that.

(About half the words in this post are trademarks of someone or other, but I don’t feel like inserting all of the ® and “TM” indicators….)

BayLUG September 2010 Meeting

BayLUG had its September 2010 meeting on Saturday, September 18 at Johannes’s church in San Leandro, CA.  The contest theme was “National Parks” and I put together a model for it in just a couple of hours before leaving home for the meeting.  My model is a Glacier National Park tour bus.  I’ll post more about that with better pictures soon, but you can see it in the photos of the meeting.  Click the image to view the pictures or see them as a slideshow.

Vintage Vehicles and Family Festival 2010

The 2010 Vintage Vehicles & Family Festival was held in Palo Alto on July 25. BayLUG took part with a small booth featuring my downtown buildings, some models by teenage member Jack Marquez, and Paul Sinasohn putting together some LEGO kits. Our club was really overextended this day, as it was also the last day of our San Leandro Brick Show and the Buzz Lightyear event at the Hillsdale Shopping Center. This was the first time our club was involved in three separate events at the same time! (And I made it to all three – if you count the teardown, that is…)

BayLUG booth at VVFF

Click the picture for the photos, or browse a slideshow.

Buzz Lightyear at Hillsdale Mall

On July 23-25, members of BayLUG volunteered to help LEGO Master Builder Steve Gerling and LEGO store employees, and thousands of kids, build an 8-foot tall statue of Buzz Lightyear, from Disney’s Toy Story movies.

Buzz in Progress

The event was held at the Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo, CA, near the LEGO store. Kids built 8 by 16 stud "bricks" out of 2×4 and 2×8 bricks, which were then assembled into the large model corresponding to the 2×4 bricks in a smaller sample model. BayLUG members volunteered to assist with the project, making sure there were always enough bricks for the kids to build with.

I was there on Saturday all afternoon, and came back Sunday night to help with teardown, but they had already done most of it already by the time I got there, thanks to the help of all the kids. We weren’t paid for our help, but we were given discounts on LEGO which is just as good :-)

Click the image above, or here for a slideshow.

Brick Show now open

This was the opening weekend for the the Brick Show in San Leandro, CA at the Bay Area Family Church, organized by Johannes van Galen and featuring BayLUG/BayLTC. The show is ongoing through July 25 so come on out and check it out!

The show features a large train layout and various other displays in all themes of LEGO. Admission is $5 each for adults (age 16+) and $3 for kids ages 3-15. Kids under 3 are free.

I took a bunch of pictures around the display today. Click on the image to see them:
Brick Show (June 27)
You can also view the pictures as a slide show on Flickr.

Seven-way radial symmetry technique

I just stumbled across a way to build a 7-way radial symmetry in LEGO.

7way symmetry

A technique for building 7-way radial symmetry in LEGO. The blue 2×2 plates are connected to each other using plate hinges in a ring, and when I built that I noticed the ring looked like the right diameter to go around a 4×4 round piece. The hinges actually protrude a little into the center, but by sandwiching the two 4×4 rounds together and filling the space inside with a round 2×2 plate and seven (leaving one stud open) 1×1 round plates, you can make it all fit nicely. And since the 4×4 rounds and 2×2 round plate have axle holes, it can easily be connected to any Technic mechanism.

If you stick an axle in the middle it twirls like a top – it’s very well balanced.

LDraw code after the break:

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