Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks

Q*bert

I built a little model of the beloved 1980s video game character, Q*bert.

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Use a fry bagger to sort LEGO parts?

Use a fry bagger to put LEGO parts into Ziploc bags!

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.

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Updated Brick Geometry from BBTB 2015

I gave my Brick Geometry presentation yet again at Bricks by the Bay this year, and here’s the slides.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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BayLUG April 2015 Meeting

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.

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Easter Bunny

Spring is here and with it come two ages-old symbols of fertility – the rabbit and the egg. But since Easter comes in the springtime, these symbols are part of the Christian tradition of Easter. Either way, they’re cute and so I decided to make a LEGO bunny and some eggs.

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Desktop LEGO: Easter Bunny and Trees

I won this bulk bricks box (#6177 Builders of Tomorrow) at the annual BayLUG raffle, and took it to work, where I built a couple things: Easter Bunny with two eggs, and a couple trees (not to scale).

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Sheep

The February BayLUG meeting had an “animals” contest theme, so I put this together the night before. Like the Xmas Ornaments I posted about a couple months ago, it’s basically an elongated Lowell sphere, with head and legs attached and an ice cream tail.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day

March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, the day when just about everyone in the U.S. claims to be at least a little bit Irish, which means wearing green clothing and often imbibing copious amounts of beer with green food coloring added, especially when it falls on a weekend. (There’s very little to do with saints involved.) And more to the point, images of leprechauns.

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Pie for Pi Day

In the American way of writing dates at least, today is 3/14/15 which is of course, Ï€ (pi), that irrational mathematical constant we all love to memorize the digits of (or at least the geekier of us do). In honor of this special day I have created two new models…

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BayLUG Living LEGO-cy Show 2014-15

Pictures from just before opening of the last day of the "Living LEGO-cy" show by the Bay Area LEGO Users Group (BayLUG) at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA.

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Improved LEGO Calendar

If you’ve built the LEGO Brick Calendar 853195, you might have discovered that it’s a real pain to rearrange it each month. So I’ve created my own version, using the parts from that set plus others from my collection, to create a better version.

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Xmas Ornaments

This year I built a set of Christmas ornaments that I gave to someone special as a gift. I haven’t posted a MOC (My Own Creation) in a while, so I thought I’d share them with you all too.

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Advent 2014

The time has come for my annual tradition of blogging each day of LEGO’s Advent calendars. This year again we have three calendars, for Friends, Star Wars, and City. I selected winners afterwards, rating the best and worst models across all three calendars. As usual, each post was originally a separate blog entry, starting with Day 1, and continuing with a daily post about that day’s advent models. However, to clean up the site, I’ve condensed all those daily posts to a single post per year. Here’s the 2014 edition.

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New Pictures of Snoopy and Red Baron

I finally found my lightbox and took some better pictures with a real camera of my chibi Snoopy and the Red Baron.

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Chibi Snoopy and Red Baron

A couple of weeks ago, The Brothers Brick announced a Chibi Micro Contest inviting people to build and submit models along the same lines as the Star Wars Microfighters style (like the awesome Millennium Falcon), with models that are a bit too small for the minifigs that fly them.

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Book Review: Steampunk LEGO by Guy Himber

There is a new book coming out about the intersection of two of the most creative hobbies I know: LEGO and Steampunk. The book “Steampunk LEGO” by Guy Himber, a.k.a. V&A Steamworks covers a wide range of LEGO creations in the Steampunk genre.

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BayLTC at Great Train Expo Pleasanton 2014

The Bay Area LEGO Train Club exhibit at the Great Train Expo in Pleasanton, California, November 22-23, 2014. See www.baylug.org for more information about the club.

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BayLUG October 2014 Meeting

Last month the Bay Area LEGO Users Group (BayLUG) had its annual Anniversary meeting on October 11th at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto.

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Octan Gas Station

My LEGO gas station is now on display at the LEGO store in Pleasanton, California at the Stoneridge Mall. I built it in 2012 and first showed it at Bricks by the Bay, but never posted a blog entry about it until now.

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The Frustrating World of LEGO Trains

The world of LEGO trains can be rather frustrating for the adult hobbyist. Here’s a quick primer for those who are interested in getting into this part of the LEGO hobby. (This is adapted from a comment I made on Facebook in response to someone who was just getting into LEGO trains in 2014.)

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