Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
The trouble with the LEGO fan community is that it takes all of the fun out of getting a new Shop-At-Home catalog. Not only is there nothing new that I haven’t seen, but I already own several of the things marked “new.” When I was a kid, a new LEGO catalog was a source of great delight…
Ah well, it’s a small price to pay I guess.
A coworker sent me this link:
What Google Engineers do for Fun: Computerized LEGO Art Project
LEGO mosaics are cool and impressive, but this seems to me more of a software feat than a LEGO one. I do like the way it looks on the guy’s wall though.
As promised, I made a second episode for LAMLtv about BrickCon. The main feature is an interview with Joe Meno, editor of BrickJournal.
This video stuff is a lot of fun. I’ve got a lot more ideas for video projects. For example:
If you have any thoughts about LEGO video projects, you can share them with me here or over on the LAMLradio blog.
We celebrated 10 years of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group on Sunday, October 12. 
The club was founded on October 10, 1998 after LEGO came to San Francisco on a Truck Tour.
At the meeting we had a lot of schmoozing, showing-off of models, snacking, speech-giving, and prize-winning. If you enjoy any of those, you should come to our 20th Anniversary Meeting in 2018. Or one of our regular meetings, where we usually have at least the schmoozing if not the other stuff.
Enjoy the photos on Flickr (slideshow). I also shot a bunch of video footage, which hopefully I can edit into something appropriate for LAMLtv or maybe I’ll just put it on YouTube myself. Either way, I’ll blog about it here when it’s up.
You’re probably well aware of the famous Monty Python sketch about the Spanish Inquisition (if you’re not, or if you haven’t seen it in a while, or just want a good laugh, it’s available on YouTube). Well, it turns out that someone – I know not who – put together a LEGO homage to this great piece of British comedy on the castle display at BrickCon. In fact, I even took a picture of it. But the thing is, I didn’t spot it at all until someone pointed it out on my Flickr photos!
The guy who spotted it, who goes by the name </arpy>, edited my photo and reposted it in his photostream. Isn’t Creative Commons grand? Anyway, here’s his version of the photo:
I guess I should spend more time admiring the creations and not so much time staring at the viewfinder of my camera, eh?
The slides from the Half-Plate Offsets presentation I gave at BrickCon are now available online. The slides are freely available and redistributable using a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike license.
Download here: half-plate.pdf
I took video of the presentation, but I haven’t watched it yet. If it comes out well, I’ll post it online also.
When I flew home I was really worried my suitcase would be overweight. Arriving at the airport, I hauled it up on the scale at the check-in station, and my face fell when it came up at 64 pounds and change. Since most airlines have a 50 pound limit for baggage, I feared I’d have to pay a fee for overweight bags. But happy day, Virgin America’s limit is 70 pounds!
Here’s what I got:
When I went to BrickFair I didn’t win anything in the drawings, and I missed out on the scratch and dent because we got there too late. At BrickCon however, I was much luckier: they had a drawing of sorts to determine the order for the scratch and dent, and my number was the first one called! There was only one Taj Mahal at 50% off, and I got it! Then on the last day I won one of the more valuable sets in the door prize raffle!
The LEGO all arrived home intact, but the suitcase was a total loss. I put it out on the curb hoping a neighbor would take it, and it finally disappeared this afternoon. Both of its handles had ripped off, internal plastic bracing along the sides had crumbled, and one of the zipper pulls was lost. (It was already in pretty bad shape before the trip to Seattle, so it’s not just from that trip).
I got home late last night after returning from BrickCon and slept in until noon.
What a weekend! I finished uploading all my pictures from the show finally. I took 446 pictures in all, which I think is a personal record. I still need to go through them and rotate the vertical ones, though. What I usually do for events like this is make a separate photoset with what I think was the best pictures from the event, but that’s probably going to take at least a week.
I also took a bunch of video footage. I did several interviews on behalf of James Wadsworth for LAML Radio, and once I send them to him hopefully he’ll find some clever use for them as well as other “B-reel” footage I got. LAML Radio, for those who aren’t familiar, is a LEGO-oriented podcast. It mostly consists of interviews and LEGO news, and is usually quite interesting and a great way to get motivated to build something if I’m otherwise not feeling creative. If you use iTunes, you can find it easily there, and/or just subscribe to it in your blog reader.
Anyway, if I didn’t see you at BrickCon this year, hopefully you’ll be able to make it next year.
BrickCon is going very well so far. There are tons of great models on display, many great deals to be had on LEGO, and some amazing news.
I took a lot of photos yesterday and they’re all up on my Flickr account. The biggest news was the unveiling of a new castle set, the 10193 Medieval Village. I made a video of it and posted it on YouTube (but had to wait until 12 noon today so that BrickJournal.com could have an exclusive 3-hour early announcement). I also created a special photoset for just those pictures so you don’t have to dig through all the images in my BrickCon set to find them.
Today was the second and final day of the Great Train Expo at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds.
I was there with the Bay Area LEGO Train Club. I had taken some pictures yesterday, but today I was much more prolific and uploaded almost 80 new pictures which I added to the existing photoset. Click the picture or check out the slideshow to see all the pics.