Category: BayLUG

Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group – www.baylug.org

BayLTC at TCA 2010

Last weekend I, along with other members of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club, had a display at the Northern California Train Collectors Association Cal-Stewart Spring Meet in Santa Clara, CA.  This is one of our favorite locations to do a train show – the hall is beautiful, and the crowds are manageable enough that we don’t have to put up our “sneeze guard” plastic barriers on the layout.  It was open to the public only on Sunday for four hours.  Pictures from the show can be seen on Flickr (or view as a slideshow).  Enjoy!

BayLUG January 2010 Meeting at Dave Porter’s house

On January 24, Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) had our annual meeting at Dave Porter’s house in Woodside, CA. Battleship Yamato on display at Dave Porter's houseDave always sets up a very impressive layout in his loft featuring a huge collection of LEGO sets and his own custom creations, with running trains. He has been inviting the club up to his house every January for the past few years to share his layout and give us a chance to show off what we’ve been up to. Marcello de Cicco brought his Japanese Navy ships to show off, and Brian Thiemer and his wife brought their newest MOC, a baby, to the meeting!

We also had a presentation about Bricks by the Bay, and BayLUG agreed to loan some money to the nonprofit org. that is putting on the convention to help with start-up costs. If you haven’t signed up yet to attend the convention (April 9-11, 2010, in Fremont, CA) please do so soon! Early bird pricing ends February 23.

The photos from the meeting have been online for a while now (slideshow) but I have been neglecting to post about it here.

BayLUG Museum Show Open through January 17

This weekend, the Bay Area LEGO Users Group opened our annual “Living LEGO-cy” exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. We’ll be open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day) through Sunday, January 17. Admission is $2 (free for BayLUG and MoAH members and kids under 2), which is split 50/50 between the club and the museum.

BayLUG at MoAH

Come on down and check it out soon before the publicity spreads and we start getting huge crowds! Last year we had 1500 people on the last weekend, with people waiting for several hours in the rain in a line around the block to get in!! We have our first TV interviews this Friday morning for a Spanish language station…

Train show this weekend, then off to Seattle for BrickCon

This coming weekend, I’ll join members of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club (a subgroup of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group) at the Great Train Expo in San Jose. We’ll put out a large train layout, about 25×25 feet, with lots of trains, a city, and the usual stuff. Come on down and say hi. It’s at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds in San Jose. Admission is $7 for adults (good for both days) and kids under 12 get in free.

And then, I’ll be driving up to Seattle next week for BrickCon! A friend of mine happens to be moving to Seattle for the first of October, so I’ll be borrowing/ferrying her car up, while she follows up in a van she’s borrowed from a friend of hers, which I’m driving back home in. Sounds complicated – wish me luck! Anyway I’ll be coming up with an assortment of MOCs, though probably not as much as I took to Portland for BrickFest this spring – I’m carrying some of her stuff up, and anyway I ought to be able to see out the rear window.

Oops, I forgot to blog about Maker Faire

Maker Faire happened on May 30-31, and here it is almost three weeks later and I haven’t posted anything! We (BayLUG) had a 2,000 square foot display featuring a train layout, 8-foot-long battleship, amusement park & goofy train area, giant Technic cranes, robotics demos, and lots of models of all types on display. We even had emiko oye‘s jewelry artwork made out of LEGO, fresh from tours of art museums around the country.

I posted the pictures on Flickr right away after the Faire ended but i never got around to posting anything here about it. Click the photo to view the whole gallery or try the slideshow.

BayLUG at Maker Faire 2009

WIRED photo gallery now online

As I mentioned previously, a reporter and photographer from WIRED met with us on Sunday to document BayLUG‘s plans for Maker Faire. The results are now online, and the photos look great! They have a slide show featuring each of the BayLUG members who were present and at least one of each of our models.

Billl Ward photo on WIRED.com

See you this weekend at Maker Faire!

Special BayLUG meeting for WIRED interview & photo shoot

Yesterday, we had a special meeting of BayLUG members so that a reporter and photographer from WIRED could come and take pictures of some of our models and talk to us. About a half-dozen members showed up at MoAH in Palo Alto and set up an assortment of models that we’re bringing to Maker Faire next weekend.

I forgot my camera, but luckily others didn’t. Mark Warren took a bunch of great pictures and posted them on a Picasa folder. Click the image to see the rest of them:

BayLUG photo op for Wired

This was for the WIRED.com site, not the print magazine. Hopefully the results will be online in a few days, because the point of the exercise was to talk about what will be on display at Maker Faire. I’ll post a blog entry with a link as soon as it becomes available.

BayLUG Meeting, April 4, 2009

Today we had a meeting of Bay Area LEGO Users Group at Johannes’s church in San Leandro.

BayLUG Meeting, April 4, 2009I brought the 10181 Eiffel Tower that I won as a door prize at BrickFest last weekend. I also took along my LOVE and LEGO sculptures, so that if you look at the tower as a letter “I” it would spell out the same message as seen on my car’s license plate. I also brought the motor yacht for display, but that doesn’t spell anything…

Johannes brought along a great 30″x60″ castle scene, with just about every square inch taken up with minifigs, horses, and other medieval stuff either defending or storming the castle. Charles and Adrienne brought some Bionicle models some cars, and checkers/chess sets they’ve been working on, including a chess set for the blind that Charles is donating to a charity auction to benefit Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco. Paul brought an “oriental hall” he was working on, and a four story apartment building with a fully detailed interior, as well as some sets for sale. Bruce had his usual minifigs, mini train engines, and jeeps for sale, along with random $1 baggies of parts.

We had a great discussion of Mindstorms developments and Maker Faire plans with Steve Putz of Robotics Learning. Maybe we’ll start having more robotics activity in the club…?