Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
Since 2008 I’ve been giving a presentation at various LEGO conventions, mainly BrickCon in Seattle, Washington, and Bricks by the Bay in Santa Clara, California, called “Brick Geometry” covering a variety of LEGO building techniques. A new recording of the latest version of this presentation is now available on YouTube.
Continue reading “Brick Geometry Recording from October BayLUG Meeting”
My presentation from last October’s BrickCon event is now available for viewing online. They’ve posted this as well as plenty of other great talks from that event for public viewing. Check them all out! Hopefully this year BrickCon can be held in person… in the meantime stay safe and stay healthy!
Video is embedded below. For more versions of this talk and downloadable slides, see my Brick Geometry Presentations page.
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”
Well 2016 is over and done with… it had its ups but an awful lot of downs. Here’s hoping 2017 is better. I made this little model to celebrate New Years Day. Hope you enjoy!
Continue reading “Happy New Year 2017”
I’ve started a new YouTube channel for Bill Ward’s Brickpile. I’ll be adding videos from LEGO events, and maybe even some original content, tours of my MOCs, etc. So far I’ve just published two videos, which form a 2-part walk-through of Brickworld from 2011: Continue reading “Brickpile YouTube Channel – Brickworld 2011 Videos”
This past Saturday, Matt Walsh came to the BayLUG meeting and bought some parts, and built this cool little mechanism. Watch the video and he explains how the whole thing works.
MonsieurCaron, of Québec, Canada, has made an awesome little Christmas LEGO video, partially using parts from the LEGO City advent calendar set.
He posted about it as a comment under yesterday’s Advent Calendar posting but this is so awesome I needed to share it even if you don’t read the comments…
Blogger and podcaster CC Chapman has set up a great video series where his daughter Emily pontificates on the issues that matter to her. Â The latest one is “Why Does LEGO Ignore Girls?” where she makes the case for LEGO to make more products that are accessible to girls.
I’ve always been bothered by this. Â They say time and again that their target market is boys ages 8-11 and that’s what they target all their products toward, and they offer token girl sets such as the lame Belleville line and pink brick buckets, which don’t sell well because they are lame!
Like Emily says, girls like the town sets a lot. Â She suggests a shopping mall. Â I’ve heard this from other girl LEGO fans as well: build sets that model everyday life, and girls will love them. Â The town sets always seem to be about police and firefighters historically. Â Lately the farm line has some promise, as do the Cafe Corner type buildings (though these tend to be for an older age group, and you’d lose the girls before they got to be old enough to be able to build them without frustration).
Another suggestion I’ve heard many times is to make LEGO babies. Â The new 1×1 stud footprint figures used in the LEGO games might be a good starting point for this.
Anyway, watch the video  for yourself, and share it with anyone you know who has girls that might feel the same way.  And more than anything, keep pestering LEGO about this issue.  They won’t do anything about it until there’s a large groundswell of support for LEGO sets aimed toward girls.
Hillel Cooperman gave an “Ignite” presentation on the adult LEGO community recently. You can see it here on Youtube:
I found this through a post on Facebook by Felix Greco (I don’t think I can link to that because of the way Facebook works). The comments were not entirely positive, mostly around the way he talks about the adult LEGO fans, implying that they are so nerdy that they don’t date. It does sound to me like Hillel is not entirely comfortable with his AFOLishness. If he hadn’t had a kid and a wife who was enthusaistic about Harry Potter LEGO, do you think he would’ve rediscovered LEGO? Somehow I doubt it. However, most of the presentation was pretty positive. I do think he needs to take more pride in LEGO as a hobby and not denigrate his fellow AFOLs. But all in all, it’s a pretty good overview of the LEGO scene, told in an engaging and lively manner.
Last night at BrickFest, the new 10194 Emerald Night train set was officially announced. For the announcement, they played this video on the big screen…
I shot video of the rest of the announcement and will try to get that edited soon!
