The Brothers Brick

Master mecha modeler Tac has posted several mecha inspired by pieces from Exo-Force set 7705: Gate Assault.

This one’s my favorite, mainly because green is my favorite color and I just got that alligator minifig (complete with rare green hair):

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It’s been a while since Megan Rothrock posted her Tragon, which attracted quite a bit of attention last November.

Nathan Wells picked up a number of her latest creations, but missed my personal favorite, “Hemi” the hotrod racing turtle:

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Richard McCarthy recently blogged a video parody of Spider-Man 2 titled “The Peril of Doc Ock,” from Spite Your Face Productions — the same company that created the LEGO Monty Python Camelot song.

Here’s one I hadn’t seen before, a parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey titled “ONE: A Space Odyssey” (because it’s only one minute long):

And here’s another, not to be confused with Darth Vader conducting the stormtrooper orchestra. (D’oh! Thanks Sean! Sorry Treehouse Animation!)

Be sure to check out SYF’s Web site, and stay current by subscribing to their blog, the aptly named Blog Your Face.

Flickr user jastermereel08 has been exchanging insults with the world at large through his 133t-speaking insult bot, but this little vehicle caught my eye this morning:

jastermereel08 identifies this as a boat, but I also think it works rather well as a speederbike, and quite possibly a rototiller. Whatever the case, it’s actually kind of cool.

Today is Bastille Day. Hurray for France!

Here’s Digger Digger Dogstar’s tribute to the French Revolution (via Brick Brick):

And for good measure, a French knight insulting some silly English royalty:

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I really respect builders who can cross thematic lines with ease, and Chris Malloy is one such builder, active in the LEGO Star Wars, Castle, and Space communities. His latest creations include two great dioramas that reflect a slice of medieval/fantasy life.

Here’s Chris’ “Road Less Traveled” (I love the mushrooms):

And in this scene, a necromancer finally gets what he deserves:

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LEGO Train fans are some of the most passionate, committed LEGO fans out there, and they create really fantastic buildings for their layouts. Jim Garrett is no exception with two unbelievable skyscrapers (click for galleries):

Brickshelfer Warren McCoy has uploaded several new vehicles recently, and my favorite is this riding lawn mower:

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Hurray for mecha with German names! Today’s installation brings us a super-detailed mini-mecha from Squieu.

Check out the rifle, missile pod, and shoulder-mounted Gatling gun on this little beastie, called “Kluge Jaeger”:

Virtual LEGO? Meh. While I understand that finessing the software can be a challenge, it seems a bit like cheating. (Unlimited parts? In any color you want? C’mon!)

Well, that’s what I usually think, but Tim Gould — who mainly uses LDraw — actually makes virtual LEGO interesting. Here’s Tim’s UDK38 Schenkel, inspired by Japanese model designer Kow Yokoyama:

Jonesy demonstrates that costume-wearing indie-rockers can indeed inspire LEGO with Leslie Anne Levine, a cool little steampunk dirigible:

(Check out The Decemberists and even legally download several of their songs from their label, Kill Rock Stars.)

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Photographing all-black LEGO creations can be pretty hard. Lego Addict succeeds in capturing his new “Night Rebel” quite nicely:

Apparently, mumu has been working on a little project for some time — his interpretation of Gundam RX-121-2A “Advanced Hazel.” Sweet!

Fully articulated and heavily armored, this beauty sports all the usual accessories, including a booster pack, shield, and rifle:

Annie Preston rounds out her series of vignettes with three more 20th-century artists (via Vignette Bricks):

Mark Rothko:

Andy Warhol:

Jasper Johns:

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This post’s for bloggers. You can skip it if you’re looking for pictures of minifigs or mecha or space ships or castles.

Sean’s LEGO Bloggers’ Code proposal last month got me thinking about other ways we LEGO bloggers can cooperate more, helping to create more of a network of blogs that compliment each other.

In addition to linking back and forth, one way I think we can create this network — something that adds up to more than the sum of its parts — is through tagging.

Tagging is a lot like the art of indexing a book. An index isn’t just all the words in the book listed alphabetically — that’s a concordance, and search engines already do this (though they call their process “indexing,” just to confuse you). A human indexer evaluates information and assigns keywords that a reader might use when trying to find that information. These keywords might not appear in the content itself. Similarly, the author of a blog post assigns tags based on how they want their information to be found. For example, I don’t always use the word “LEGO” in my posts, but I want people looking for information about LEGO to find my posts.

Since several of us are now using Technorati tags to categorize our posts, I thought it might be time to see if ways we could standardize our the way we use tags. Standardization will help our readers find related information across all of our blogs. For those of you who aren’t using tags yet, I’ve found that people really are using Technorati to find information on blogs; I get a fair number of referrals from Technorati searches, and the added keywords get picked up by Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. (And let’s just admit it’s all about readers, because otherwise, what’s the point?)

As I copied and pasted tag sets from one post to another, I’ve developed a standard of my own that I may as well share with you. Each string of tags at the end of my posts includes the following information: