Advent 2015 Day 1

Each year LEGO produces several advent calendars, featuring 24 mini-models, one for each day of December through Christmas Eve. For the past few years I’ve posted these entries each day on my blog, and as I write this it’s 11:46 PM on December 1st, so I just barely made it before the end of the day…

Day 1 brings us a Friends minidoll in a festive sweater, a micro scale Star Wars ship that I don’t recognize, and a pair of little remote control cars for City.
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Continue reading “Advent 2015 Day 1”

BrickCon 2015

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:

Use a fry bagger to sort LEGO parts?

Use a fry bagger to put LEGO parts into Ziploc bags!
frybagger
What a great idea! I saw this today on Facebook, posted by Soyary Sunthorn‎ in the AFOLs of FaceBook group. He got a fry bagger – a tool used in fast food restaurants to put french fries into the bags or other containers they are served in.

Since my storage system is primarily built around plastic bins filled with Ziploc bags, this should be a huge help when sorting and putting away bulk parts. I’m pretty sure this is the fry bagger in the photo, if you want to get one: New Star 37814 Polycarbonate Commercial French Fry Bagger, Right Handle I am planning to order one of these myself…

Full disclaimer: Amazon affiliate link above.

Bricks by the Bay Just Around the Corner

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.

Anger by Angus MacLane

Angus MacLane, who works at Pixar, recently posted pics of his excellent model of the Anger character from the new Disney-Pixar movie Inside Out. I had the pleasure of watching the movie last night and enjoyed it quite a lot. (Living here in the San Francisco bay area it was an extra treat seeing Pixar’s version of SF, which was a bit grittier than I’d expect but captured the essence of it quite well.)

LEGO Anger

Sorry I haven’t blogged anything in a long time. I’ve been busy with preparations for Bricks by the Bay, but haven’t had a chance to build much in the last couple of months. I did build a couple of train models but haven’t photographed them yet – stay tuned for that.

BayLUG at Maker Faire Bay Area 2015

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”