Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
LEGO Events
I attended the Bricks by the Bay convention on August 3-6, 2017, for my first time as an ordinary attendee. It was a great exhibit of LEGO talent from near and far, but the show-stealer was this amazing “California Dreamin'” theme park model from Flynn and Richard which won several trophies including both Best In Show and Public Choice:
This year I made another international trip for a LEGO event – this time to Portugal. The Portuguese LEGO Fan Weekend in the town of Paredes de Coura is a unique event and this is the second year they’ve held it. I was so impressed when I read an article on Brickset about last year’s event that I just had to go!
Continue reading “Paredes de Coura 2017 Fan Weekend”
This spring, I went up to Portland and attended the Bricks Cascade LEGO convention. I posted my photos online shortly afterward, but neglected to post on my blog about it for some reason! So in the spirit of “better late than never” I bring you the Bricks Cascade 2017 MOCs (My Own Creations).
I just got back from Portland, Oregon, where I attended the Bricks Cascade 2017 LEGO convention. I’ll be posting my photos and my story soon, but to tide you over here’s a video of the keynote speech by renowned LEGO train builder Tony Sava.
Continue reading “Tony Sava: Keynote at Bricks Cascade 2017”
After the flurry of activity on my blog in December for the Advent Calendars you may have wondered why I disappeared… well the reason was I took a vacation to Australia right after Christmas!
I spent New Year’s in Sydney, did lots of sightseeing, and ended up at Brickvention in Melbourne. I’ll be posting the travel photos soon on a new travel blog I’m going to be starting, and will post a link to it here when it is live so you can check those out if you want. But the photos from Brickvention are now available online, and here they are! (Click images for a bigger one, or see links at the bottom to Flickr albums.)
Continue reading “Brickvention 2017”
Just got back from Seattle where I attended the latest edition of BrickCon, their annual Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL) convention. I had a great time – played some games, won some free LEGO, and got a trophy (Best Sculpture) for my Teddy Bear.
I also gave an updated version of my “Brick Geometry” talk, and a new presentation on “Studs on All Sides” which talks about techniques I’ve used in models such as the Teddy, Easter Bunny, Q*bert, etc. (Which reminds me, I really should do a photo shoot of Teddy Bear and blog about him.) Here are the slides to the talks:
I didn’t take any photos at BrickCon, but plenty of other people did. I’ll post links to them here as I find them:
I gave my Brick Geometry presentation yet again at Bricks by the Bay this year, and here’s the slides. The slides are the same as last year’s BrickCon version, but I’ll be updating it to present at BrickCon this year. You can download a copy of the slides here: brick-geometry-bbtb2015
I’ve been quiet on here recently, and haven’t been building anything in a while, but I wanted to say something about Bricks by the Bay which is coming up in just over a week.
This is our annual Northern California LEGO convention, and I’m the president of the nonprofit that organizes it. It’s coming up at the Santa Clara Convention Center from August 6-9, 2015. We’ve been super busy over the past few months getting all the planning and preparations done, and I haven’t had much time for anything else.
The theme this year is “Monsters” and we’ve got a great event kit which is a dragon designed by Charles Esseltine, and I’m preparing the instructions for building it as we speak. We have a great Guest of Honor this year, Alice Finch from Seattle who is bringing down her collaborative build with ArchLUG, the World of Mouse Guard, and giving a keynote speech. We also have a speech by Megan Rothrock, author of the LEGO Adventure Book series on Thursday night, and one by Tim Courtney of LEGO IDEAS on Saturday.
Convention registration closes this Friday, July 31st, so get your badge now! We will be open to the public on the last day, Sunday, August 9, for a Public Exhibition, so if you can’t make it for the whole weekend at least drop by to see the show.
More information, including convention registration and public day tickets, can be found on our website, http://www.bricksbythebay.com.
Earlier this month, BayLUG (Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group) participated once again in the annual Maker Faire Bay Area, in San Mateo, CA. This is the 10th annual Maker Faire and the 10th that we particpated in (though I personally was out of town for last year’s show). We had a 75′ by 15′ space featuring a train layout, Great Ball Contraption, robotics demonstrations, sculptures and mosaics, WWII ships, and a kids’ play area. Continue reading “BayLUG at Maker Faire Bay Area 2015”
We had a BayLUG meeting on April 19th, and I took a bunch of photos. The meeting was held at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto and was open to the public for the last half of the meeting.
