Brickfest MOC Exhibit – Setup

The annual Brickfest LEGO convention has begun! Brickfest MOC Exhibit - Setup It starts today (Friday) but all day yesterday folks were setting up their models in the exhibit room. I took these photos late last night.

This is the first time I’ve been able to attend Brickfest, though I have gone to a similar conference, BricksWest, twice. Brickfest is being held in the Sheraton in Tysons Corner, VA and is being put on by folks from the Washington DC area LEGO club, WAMALUG. Holly and I are staying at the hotel here and will go visit her family in Pennsylvania afterward.

The LEGO designer moonbase Contest seems to have been won by my favorite – Hungry Hippos. Or at least, I spotted it in the Moonbase layout.

If you’re at Brickfest introduce yourself to me. If not, keep watching the blog as I’ll be adding entries all weekend. But now, I gotta get downstairs and see what’s going on![tags]lego,brickfest,brickfest2006[/tags]

Vintage Vehicles & Family Festival

My LEGO club, BayLUG at the Vintage Vehicles festival the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group had an exhibit at the Vintage Vehicles and Family Festival in Palo Alto on August 13, 2006.

The event was a benefit for the Museum of American Heritage, held in a park along El Camino Real, just across the street from the Stanford Shopping Center. Mostly, it consisted of interesting cars on display and occasionally being driven around. While I never left the BayLUG display area, I saw and heard about several of the things there, including a working Stanley Steamer (steam-powered car from the early 20th century)!

In our area, we had three spaces, with canopies covering them. The LEGO models on display were in the middle space, with for-sale items on the two sides. One of the sides was devoted entirely to “Uncle Dan,” our club’s professional LEGO vendor. The other side featured items for sale by various members.

In the middle, we had some vintage Technic vehicles on display thanks to David Wegmuller, several pirate ships by Brian Thamer, and I brought my DC-3 airplane, a few cars & trucks, and my RV’s. We also had the contest entries on display. The theme of the contest was “vintage vehicles” and my entry in the contest was a vignette of “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. I’ll be displaying it, along with a few other poetry vignettes that Holly and I have been working on, at BrickFest in a couple weeks in Washington, D.C.

Click the image to view all my photos of this event on Flickr.
[tags]lego,baylug,vintagevehicles,paloalto[/tags]

LEGO embraces Moonbase

The LEGO company has set a challenge to their own designers – create a moonbase module and present it at Brickfest!

I think this is the first time that LEGO has embraced a fan-created system like this. It’s great news for the relationship between adult fans of LEGO (AFOLs) and the LEGO company.

You can vote for your favorite of the designs presented. Here are the candidates; click the images to see more pictures:


1. The Loony Luna Knight

2. Command and Defence

3. Squidman Module

4. Space Hungry Hippos

5. Ice Planet Dome

Personally I voted for the Hungry Hippos. Remember that game from when we were kids in the 70’s? See the video if you’re not convinced just how cool this LEGO model is![tags]lego,moonbase,space,contest,brickfest[/tags]

What to do for Brickfest?

I’m attending my first Brickfest this year. This annual convention for LEGO fans is held in Washington D.C. every summer and since we were going to go back east to visit Holly’s family anyway I finally am getting my chance to go to Brickfest!

But my problem is deciding what to bring? There are a lot of contests and building challenges being discussed on the LUGNET BrickFest forum.

Here are some ideas…

  • There are several Town / Train contests that I might want to enter. But what to bring? Existing MOC’s or new construction? If the latter I’d better get busy…
  • As for Space, they’re having an Asteroid Field Display and Contest, and of course a Moonbase display. I was thinking about building something for the Asteroid thing but I’m not sure if it will work out. I don’t know if I can transport a Moonbase module cross-country in my suitcase but maybe if there’s a micro-moonbase layout it would be doable…
  • The Great Ball Gathering & Gladiator Sumo contests – I’m not much of a Mindstorms person but I’ve been meaning to do more robotics…
  • There’s also a Micro-Scale and Vignette contest that might be more suitable for me as a suitcase-based attendee.
  • How about the Dark Room (Undersea)? I wonder how many people are building angler fish for this?

But, what can I realistically build in the next few weeks and carry in my suitcase to DC? That is the question.

Of course, I plan to bring some spare bricks so I can participate in the Dirty Buildster game, shop at the Brick Bazaar, take lots of photos and video, and meet a lot of people I only know from online.

Are you going to be there? What are you bringing?[tags]lego,brickfest,space,town,trains,microscale,robotics,mindstorms,anglerfish[/tags]

BayLUG Space Meeting June 18, 2006

On June 18, the Space contingent of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group had its first Space-only meeting.

We met on a Sunday evening at the Round Table Pizza parlor in Mountain View. They have a nice back room that you can reserve for free if you call ahead, which we’ve used for various members-only events in the past. Besides bringing our latest Space models to show off, we also had a contest and a parts draft.

My winning 'top greeble' contest entry
My winning “top greeble” contest entry

The contest was for “best greeble” and there were two categories: top greeble and bottom greeble. But what is a greeble? When they were building the models for use in the Star Wars movies, the modelers used the term “greeble” for the little bits of detail used to break up the otherwise smooth skin of the spacecraft. Read more about it on Wikipedia. Members brought examples of greebles on both the top and the bottom of their models (or looking another way, studs-up vs. studs-down). I won in the “top greeble” category!

Parts laid out for drafting
Parts laid out for drafting

The parts draft was an opportunity for us to leverage our buying power to get large numbers of interesting parts. A parts draft is where each person brings a particular LEGO set and then we sort the contents of the boxes into piles, and take turns drawing from the piles. We used Set 4881 “Robo Platoon” since it could be obtained for $5 at the local LEGO store (it sold out before the meeting was held though, so some members couldn’t get a copy), and had a lot of great parts. We limited it to 2 copies of the set per person, to keep things fair. We sorted the parts out into baggies and literally drew straws – Pizza Hut drinking straws cut to various lengths – to determine the order for selecting. Even though everyone got at least one unwanted bag (toward the end the choices were pretty limited), I think everyone was happy with what they got for their $5 (or $10 for those who brought two boxes).

The meeting date for our next Space meeting hasn’t been set yet, but it will probably be later in the summer. We did select a contest theme though – build a spaceship without using any grey (light grey or dark, old or new).[tags]lego,space,baylug,meeting,partsdraft,greeble,greebles,contest[/tags]

BayLUG Meeting, May 27 2006

This past Saturday, BayLUG Meeting, May 27 2006 we had a Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group meeting at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto. The theme for the contest was “micro scale space” with two contests, one for micro moonbase models and another for micro scale spacecraft. The term “micro scale” refers to any model built to a model where instead of using LEGO minifigs, the size of a human is taken to be about the height of a LEGO brick, or smaller.[tags]lego,baylug,space,microscale[/tags]

BayLUG at Maker Faire

Maker Faire BayLUG at Maker Faire sure was a lot of fun! We (Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group) had a great time showing off our LEGO train layout to the public and other Makers at the event.

I uploaded my pictures of the LEGO layout as well as other things from Maker Faire up on my Flickr account.

One of the highlights was when I got interviewed by Blaed Spence about the club on the Yahoo! Answers stage.

I don’t know if it’s going to be an annual event or what, but I sure hope they do another Maker Faire event again soon![tags]lego,makerfaire,baylug,bayltc[/tags]

Halfway through Maker Faire

Wow, this has been a great show! It’s quite different from the train shows we (BayLTC) usually do. The Maker Faire crowd is a very diverse group of artists, geeks, and craftspeople. Plus, a lot of families with kids which is just like what we’re used to. One of my favorite things about the LEGO hobby is when little kids are staring through the “sneeze guards” at our layout with their eyes and mouths open, and just about the only thing they can say is “wooooaaahhh.” That’s fun.

Unlike the train shows we have a lot more non-train stuff at this show. David brought in his big crane (it’s about 12 feet tall, entirely made of unglued LEGO bricks, mostly Technic), and an assortment of other Technic creations including pneumatic walkers and an inclined cog railway. I also brought in the only sculpture I currently have assembled, my Maneki Neko (Japanese good luck cat) statue.

I haven’t had a chance to take many pictures, but we shot an hour of video, including an interview of me at the Yahoo Answers stage which was a lot of fun. Hopefully I can edit that down to a reasonable size and make a little video of the Faire. I am planning to take a lot of stills tomorrow, and will post those on Flickr in the next few days.

If you come by the BayLUG layout at Maker Faire today (Sunday, April 23) please stop by and say hi!

Getting Ready for Maker Faire

Next weekend (April 22-23) is Maker Faire, an event featuring “the MythBusters, and thousands of tech DIY enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, science clubs, students, and authors,” put on by the publishers of MAKE Magazine. This event is kind of like a giant science fair for grownups, mixed with an art show and all kinds of stuff. I don’t really know what to expect but we’re planning to treat it pretty much the same way we do the train shows.

We have a space that’s 30 feet square, which will feature a train layout and some additional non-train LEGO exhibits such as David Wegmuller’s giant Technic crane.

I’ve been frantically busy “making” things for the Faire all weekend. But last night I seem to have caught a cold. The worst part is the difficulty sleeping. And I don’t have the strength to build much LEGO even though I am home sick from work.

Also I want to apologize for the dearth of posts lately. Holly and I went to Charleston, SC for a week last month and when we got back, I was quite busy with regular life and just didn’t get back into the swing of things in the blog. But I’m going to start posting more soon, I promise!!