Monthly Archives: July 2006

Playing with LEGO at Work

With looming deadlines and a mountain of work, it’s been a pretty rough week at the office, so I wasn’t looking forward to a four-hour training course on how to conduct customer visits. My day picked up immediately when I saw a big tub of basic bricks on the conference room table.

After a brief overview of the topic, we were divided into teams of three — one “user” plus a note-taker and observer who “worked for LEGO.” Naturally, I wanted to be a user so I could get paid to build! The user was supposed to perform a task: To recreate their living room with the available bricks. Being the sorty sort that I am, I quickly had the bricks sorted by color, telling the observer that I wasn’t happy that my “product” also included some knock-off parts (Mega Bloks, ugh).

Given ten minutes and parts limitations, all while talking through my process, I was fairly pleased with my sorta-kinda vignette (photos by my quick-thinking office-mate, Crystal, who said, “Oh, you should blog this tonight!”):

Kate, my manager’s manager and one of the other “users,” had this to say about my creation: “Overachiever.” Hee hee.

Here’s another living room, by Ilana:

I like her entertainment center, couch, and coffee table. The multi-colored stacks of bricks also work surprisingly well as bookcases. Both Ilana and I kept playing with the LEGO throughout the rest of the meeting. Ilana ended up with a three-foot-tall rainbow thingy and I had a bunch of geometric objects of various shapes and sizes.

After we finished our living rooms, the observers and note-takers presented their findings, writing up a “sequence” of each user’s actions:

Along the way, the group collected various data points or “factoids” about what the users said and did, which we then organized into related sets using a process called “affinity grouping”:

(If you want to read what a bunch of geeks had to say about playing with LEGO, see the full-size versions of picture 1, picture 2, and picture 3.)

Not nearly as fun as free-building at home, but hey, it beats a meeting any day. ;-)

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Moko’s FF7 Characters: Vincent and Yuffie

Moko wraps up his cast of playable characters from Final Fantasy VII with Vincent and Yuffie:

Vincent:

Yuffie:

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Flickr Steampunk Contest

Several people asked for a link to the steampunk contest on Flickr, so here it is:

http://flickr.com/groups/classic-space/discuss/72157594172210603

The contest is almost over, but the judging should be beginning soon, and it’s always interesting to see which creations are selected as the best.

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Moko’s FF7 Characters: Barret and Aeris

For a creative approach to making Final Fantasy VII characters, I didn’t think Moko could top his banana-coiffed Cloud, but here’s Barret:

And Aeris rounds out Moko’s latest pair of figs:

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Sugegas’s Figs 12 and 13

Sugegasa continues his series of numbered minifigs, this time showcasing some pretty cool minifig weapons.

Here’s Fig 12:

…and Fig 13:

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Dirty wormhole walls?

Clean them up with Endigo Vandane space sweeper! (Cue trumpet music.)

Here it is in flight (click for gallery):

And in its even cooler landed configuration:

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New set: 10177 Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Seattle residents will always hold a special place in their hearts for Boeing, even after they ditch the city for Chicago. Oh well. From LEGO employee Steve Witt, here’s a new set — 10177 Boeing 787 Dreamliner (via mumu’s I Love Cute LEGO):

(More pictures in Steve’s Flickr photostream.)

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Kevoh’s Heliocopter and Whirligig

Thanks to the Flickr steampunk contest, there’s been a bumper crop of steampunk lately. Awesome. Kevin Blocksidge adds two more with his Heliocopter and Whirlygig.

Kevin’s heliocopter has gone through several iterations, and I have to say that this, the simplest version, definitely works for me (love the minifig):

The whirlygig is apparently based on a real-life experimental vehicle:

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Nathan Proudlove and the World of Tomorrow

This may be the first steampunk SHIP (that’s a Spacer term for Significantly Huge Investment in Parts). Nathan Proudlove presents a flying steampunk aircraft carrier reminiscent of Angelina Jolie’s ship in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow:

Not surprisingly, my favorite part is the little steampunk bicycle thingie sitting on the deck:

(More catching up. This one via Brick Brick.)

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Mecha Instructions from Soren. w00t!

Ever wanted to build a mecha of your own? Not satisfied with puzzling out building techniques from Brickshelf pictures? Wonder no more! Soren Roberts and Tim Gould have teamed up to announce step-by-step instructions for Soren’s RGM-79C GM mecha:

View the partslist and download the instructions (in PDF format).

(Okay, so I have some catching up to do… Credit to mumu for blogging this first.)

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Street Art Appreciation 101

For the record, I don’t endorse vandalism, but some of these are really rather cool:

From Flickr user yorkshire4 | From Flickr user gfrancis


From Flickr user mmmazzoni


From Flickr user darnolds


From Flickr user loveandunrest

From Flickr user rojotelefono | From Flickr user cherrybiz

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Moko’s FF7 Characters: Cid and Tifa

Moko continues his series of Final Fantasy VII characters with Cid and Tifa (check out Cloud and Sephiroth):

Here’s Cid:

And here’s Tifa:

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