Events – Page 16 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

Another 2006 Garden Gnome by another Bill posted by another Ward

In Ted Ward’s pictures from Northwest BrickCon 2006 I came across a picture a while ago of a garden gnome, created by Bill Volbrecht, former LEGO Master Builder.

As far as I know, Ted Ward is no relation to me, and neither is Bill Volbrecht.

As to why this is interesting, I built my own garden gnome in 2006 as well – while I was in Fairfax VA for the Brickfest convention (it wasn’t at the convention; I built it from parts I bought there, in my hotel room afterward). I posted it here shortly after I built it in September 2006. Here’s mine for comparison:

As for comparing the two, well I think that he did a better job on the mouth and eyes, but then I was limiting myself (as I’ve done for almost all of my sculptures) to only basic bricks, not plates or slopes or round parts. However if I may be so bold, I like my hat better: it is asymmetrical. I also think the details on the belt are better on mine. But the clincher is that his is functional: I believe that the hands are designed to hold business cards. Mine are hidden behind his back because hands are too hard to model :)

Blackburn Hotel at Valley Fair Mall

From May 31 to July 5, my Blackburn Hotel (Version 2) was on display at the LEGO Store at Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, CA in the BayLUG window.

This is a redesigned, bigger model of the mythical Blackburn Hotel that I originally built for the Bay Area LEGO Train Club layout. I haven’t done a proper photo-shoot of the hotel itself, but you can see pictures of it in a Flickr set I created to collect all the images of it, including the ones from this store display.

For the store display, however, I had to customize it a bit. I left off the rooftop sign, and modified the baseplates. The version that was used in BayLTC train shows used regular road plates for the street, rather than the tiled half-road (16-stud-wide baseplates) seen in the store display. Also, because the left side of the hotel was located on a street corner, the model didn’t include the road there, while on the right side there was an 8-stud half-alley. When we installed the hotel at the store, that caused the sign to be pressed against the background side wall, and the right side to have a strange gap. So, we ripped the baseplates off the bottom of the hotel and moved everything over by eight studs, putting in a partial road on the left side. Thanks to Russell and Bruce for their help reconfiguring the baseplates.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

BayLUG at Maker Faire 2008, Day 1

For the third year, the Bay Area LEGO Users Group (BayLUG) is taking part in Maker Faire.

We have a 25-foot square train layout and several additional tables, including a large Technic crane and excavator. The show is open until 6pm today (Saturday, May 3) and tomorrow (Sunday, May 4). Hope to see you here!

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

April 2008 BayLUG Meeting

We had another meeting of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) today at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto.

Members of BayLUG descended on the museum’s meeting room for a day of buying and selling parts, schmoozing, and displaying our latest models.

For the meeting contest, which had a Disney theme, I brought a pair of Mickey Mouse ears I had made out of LEGO. I won the contest in the adult category! (Of course, I was the only entry in the adult category, which takes a little bit of the fun out of it…) Unfortunately in the excitement I failed to take a picture of the contest entries…. I’ll post about the mouse ears separately.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Yuri’s Night 2008

The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) took part in Yuri’s Night Bay Area at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, on April 12 2008.

The event was a cross between an airshow, a rave, and a mini Maker Faire (which we will be taking part in next month). We had a display of some of our LEGO models, mostly following a space or futuristic theme, as well as a play area where adults and kids alike could crawl around and build stuff. I brought my DC-3 and the “Fast Flyers” jet.

Click one of the pictures to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

January 2008 BayLUG meeting

I’ve fallen a bit behind blogging about recent BayLUG meetings, though I did post the pictures online. Here we have pics of the meeting in January at Dave Porter’s house in Woodside. We also had a meeting in Palo Alto on February 24, but I missed that one as I was out of town that weekend. Our next meeting is this coming Sunday, April 20, at MoAH in Palo Alto, and it’s open to the public so come by and say hi!

Club member Dave Porter has a house in the mountains where he puts up a display every year for the holidays featuring a very detailed train layout with lots of great scenery. And every January for the past few years, the club is invited up to view the layout and have a big meeting at his house. It’s always a lot of fun.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

MoAH Exhibit 2008-01-05

Exhibit of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA.

Every year BayLUG puts on a “Living LEGO-cy” exhibit at the museum during the Holidays. We put it up in early December and take it down in early January. Families crowd the room to stare at our creations every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during this period. It’s a lot of fun, but it can be a lot of work. I took these pictures on the last day of the latest exhibit, on January 5, 2008, just before we tore it all down and took it all home.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

BayLUG Display at MoAH now through January 6

The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group has a display currently on view at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. The display was installed on December 8, and these photos were taken on December 15.

You have two weekends left to enjoy the display! The exhibit is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 11am to 4pm. Hope to see you there! If you plan to stop by, let me know in advance and I’ll see if I can meet you there. I’m scheduled to help staff the layout on Saturday January 5, but may make other random appearances as my schedule and whim suit me.

My models on this layout include all the buildings in the city block containing the “Blackburn Hotel” and the coast guard base on the “water” table.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.

BayLUG Meeting on October 14, 2007

Pictures from the October 14, 2007 BayLUG meeting.

On Sunday we had our ninth anniversary meeting of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group. Here are the pictures I took during the meeting. I used my cell phone camera, so sorry about the quality. I used it because I forgot to bring my digital camera. The ironic thing is I discovered I had my digital camera in my bag after all, but not until after several people had gone home… See the individual photo pages on Flickr for captions and more information.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.

Yoda Build Event at Hillsdale Shopping Center

LEGO has been doing these “Yoda build events” all around the country as promotions for their retail stores. We finally got a chance to participate in one!

Members of BayLUG spent most of the weekend of July 20 and 21 helping out with this project. A Master Builder from LEGO, Stephen Gerling, was on hand to construct the giant LEGO sculpture of Yoda from Star Wars. It was based on a smaller model built almost entirely out of 2×4 bricks in brown, tan, and sand green colors.

To build the giant sculpture, kids were invited to come and construct giant LEGO bricks. Each brick was 8x16x4, or exactly 4x in each dimension the size of a standard 2×4 brick. Lots of 2×4 and 2×8 bricks in each of the three colors were on hand, and laminated instruction cards were set out for the kids to follow. We ended up with many many bins full of the giant bricks, which were used to construct the Yoda sculpture. In fact we had plenty of bricks left over, so at the end we took the instructions away and just let the kids build whatever they wanted.

The event was a lot of fun. We didn’t get paid, but we got some very special deals on bricks from the store to compensate for our time :-)

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.